Medb

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Meadhbh, Méadhbh, Maeve, Maev, Meave, Maive
[Irish, she who intoxicates; cf. Gk. methu, wine; Latin medus, mead; Welsh meddw, drunk]

Warrior-queen of Connacht, leading figure in the Ulster Cycle, and the most vibrant female personality in all of Celtic mythology. Once thought historical, Medb now appears to be the apotheosis of several forces and antecedents, including goddesses of territory, fertility, and sovereignty; she seems to owe something to Mór Muman of Munster. Like a Gaulish mother-goddess, Medb is often portrayed with creatures, a bird and a squirrel, on her shoulder. By literary convention she is pale, long-faced, with long flowing hair, wearing a red cloak and carrying a spear that may be flaming. Like Macha, she can run faster than any horse, and the sight of her is enough to deprive men of two-thirds of their strength. Medb dominates men, both by the force of her personality and by her sexuality. She is always governed by her own will. In the Táin Bó Cuailnge [Cattle Raid of Cooley] she demonstrates more conviction than her husband of the text, Ailill mac Máta, and both leads Connacht forces and provokes the central action of the narrative. Her allure is ageless; she appears to be a beautiful young woman regardless of the chronology. Called ‘Medb of the friendly thighs’ by translators, she claimed that it took thirty-two men to satisfy her sexually; she boasted of having any lover she wished, ‘each man in another man's shadow’. Many men are named as her ‘husbands’, but Fergus mac Róich was her favourite lover.

In historicizing her, medieval scribes constructed a detailed biography for Medb. Her father was Eochaid Feidlech, one of the most important pre-Patrician kings of Tara according to the annals; her mother is sometimes named as Cruacha, for whom the fortress Cruachain was named. Her sisters, each famous, were Clothra, Eithne (5), and Mugain (2). All four sisters were at one time ‘married’ to Conchobar mac Nessa, ultimately one of Medb's great enemies. Medb killed her sister Clothra while she was pregnant with Conchobar's child, treachery that would later bring about her own death. Among her brothers were Finn Emna, the Three Finns of Emain Macha. The order and total number of Medb's husbands is not certain. Conchobar mac Nessa may have been first, but ‘through pride of mind’ she departed from his company; he still lusted for her and later violated her while she was bathing in the Boyne. Three husbands became kings of Connacht: Tinde son of Connra Cas (killed by Conchobar), Eochaid Dála, and the best-known, Ailill mac Máta (a mere boy at the time of their marriage); Eochaid, at the least, became king only because Medb consented to have him as a husband. Medb was led to Ailill by a ‘water worm’, who eventually became Finnbennach, the White Bull of Connacht. For a woman with such a demanding military and administrative career, she was often pregnant herself. She gives the name Maine to seven sons she bears to Ailill, under a misreading of a druid's prophecy that a son with that name would kill Conchobar. Her best-known daughter, Finnabair, has extensive stories of her own; two others are Cainder and Faife. Two love-children fathered by Fergus mac Róich give their names to the land; Ciar is the eponym of Ciarraí [Kerry], and Conmac the eponym of Conmaicne Mara [Connemara]. An adoptive son is Etarcomul.

Although her fortress is always named as Cruachain [Co. Roscommon], Medb is usually seen elsewhere. In stories she was reared at Tara; in fact she was probably worshipped there. As a force from Ulster sought to displace the Connacht men, her cult had rivals from the north; this early power struggle may well explain the links between Medb and the Ulster hero Fergus mac Róich. The misty early Medb cannot always be directly linked to later literature. The Leinster queen Medb Lethderg, also associated with Tara, appears as a separate character within narrative texts, but is probably identical with Medb of Connacht and may have preceded her.

Our most coherent portrait of Medb of Connacht comes from four Ulster Cycle texts: Táin Bó Cuailnge [Cattle Raid of Cooley], Fled Bricrenn [Briccriu's Feast], Echtra Nerai [The Adventure of Nera], and Scéla Mucce meic Da Thó [The Story of Mac Da Thó's Pig]. In the latter three she is a strident supporting player, but in the Táin she leads the action, beginning with her bickering pillow-talk with Ailill in the opening scenes over who owns the greatest bull. Sensing that she has greater determination than her husband, she takes command of her armies and its allies. Her judgement is not always prudent. In reviewing troops from the Galióin sept of Leinster, Medb is awestruck at their grace and power and fears that they may overshadow her own force. Her first thought is to slaughter them, but she is dissuaded by Ailill. Fergus recommends that they be dispersed among the Connacht men. Her adultery with Fergus continues throughout most of the narrative, Ailill once finding them in flagrante delicto. The cuckold eventually gets his revenge, arranging to have Fergus speared while the lover is swimming with his erring wife. Elsewhere in the action, two henchmen always do Medb's bidding: the steward Mac Roth, who spies on the Ulster forces, and the champion Nadcranntail, who first brings Donn Cuailnge [the great brown bull] home to her.

Medb's conflicts with Cúchulainn, however, shape the human focus of the narrative. At first she thought she could dismiss him with the back of her hand, but she came to regard him as a worthy adversary. Her scheme to entrap him by inviting him to come unarmed to meet with her is thwarted by the charioteer Láeg. She is more successful motivating Cúchulainn's friend Ferdiad to act against him; she first gets Ferdiad drunk, offers her beautiful daughter Finnabair as a wife, and taunts him for cowardice. But in the single most dramatic scene in the Táin, Cúchulainn overcomes Ferdiad, frustrating Medb once again. In face-to-face encounters Cúchulainn taunts and humiliates her, once shooting a pet bird from her shoulder. Once when he comes upon her alone during her menstruation, she has to plead with him to be spared; in sneering condescension he says that he will not be a killer of women and leaves. Her revenge is to set the children of Cailitin against the Ulster hero, beginning a sequence of events that will eventually bring Cúchulainn down.

The story of Medb's own death comes from an 11th-century text, composed much later than the Táin. When Medb kills her pregnant sister Clothra, the child cut from the dying woman's womb, Furbaide Ferbend, survives and lives on an island in Lough Ree, Co. Roscommon. For unexplained reasons, Medb goes to live on the same island, where she goes bathing each morning. As an assembly is being held on the shores of the lake, Furbaide sees a beautiful woman going to bathe and learns that it is Medb, killer of his mother. He thereupon takes a hardened piece of cheese he has been eating, places it in his sling, and shoots it, hitting the queen squarely in the forehead and killing her. This curious death is not the only oddity in the text, as Furbaide had been thought the son of Eithne (5) in earlier accounts. Oral tradition, however, supports this version. The highest point of the island, where Medb is thought to have been killed, Inis Clothrand (today, Inchcleraun or Quaker's Island), is known as Greenan Hill, earlier Grianán Meidbe [Medb's sun-porch].

Medb does not, however, inspire a rich body of literature from oral tradition. She is sometimes described as a queen of the fairies. Many commentators, with scant evidence, assume she is an antecedent of Shakespeare's Queen Mab (Romeo and Juliet, I. iv). She is alluded to in dozens of place-names, notably the cairn called ‘Maeve's Lump’ or Miscaun Maeve [Irish Miosgán Méabha] atop Knocknarea, Co. Sligo.

See Tomás Ó Máille, ‘Medb Cruachna’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 17 (1927), 129–46; Vernam Hull, ‘Aided Meidbe: The Violent Death of Medb’, Speculum, 13 (1938), 52–61; Charles Bowen, ‘Great-Bladdered Medb: Mythology and Invention in the Táin Bó Cuailnge’, Éire-Ireland, 10 (1975), 14–34; Arthur Gribben, ‘The Masks of Medb in Celtic Scholarship’, Folklore and Mythology Studies, 10 (Fall 1986), 1–19. Medb has been the subject of dozens of portrayals in modern literature, most unflatteringly as a minor character in James Stephens's Deirdre (1923). See also Eva Gore-Booth's unproduced verse drama ‘The Triumph of Maeve’, in Poems of Eva Gore-Booth, ed. Esther Roper (London, 1929). See also GUNDESTRUP CAULDRON.