(no subject)
Mar. 20th, 2014 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreSo, I'm currently reading Ciaran Carson's translation of Táin Bó Cuailnge. I've never read it before or any Irish mythology/legends, really, and I have a question.
Are we really doing all of this over a cow? One cow? A cow the queen of Ireland doesn't even really appear to need for any purpose other than her husband has an awesome cow so she has to have one too? I mean, yeah, cattle were hugely important in some ancient European societies* but Medb and Ailill have an army of something like 50,000 guys (most of whom I assume Cù Chulainn is going to slaughter) to steal a single cow. Considering that they didn't know about Cù Chulainn when they set out, this seems like overkill.
It is a very enjoyable story but I keep getting stuck on the fact that huge numbers of people are presumably going to die over a single cow that the aggressors don't actually need. It's weird.
I assume there is a cultural context here that I'm missing.
*The first rune of the first aett of the futhark is fehu, which is usually translated as "wealth" but really refers to mobile wealth in the form of herds. In shape, fehu recalls the horns of a cow.
Are we really doing all of this over a cow? One cow? A cow the queen of Ireland doesn't even really appear to need for any purpose other than her husband has an awesome cow so she has to have one too? I mean, yeah, cattle were hugely important in some ancient European societies* but Medb and Ailill have an army of something like 50,000 guys (most of whom I assume Cù Chulainn is going to slaughter) to steal a single cow. Considering that they didn't know about Cù Chulainn when they set out, this seems like overkill.
It is a very enjoyable story but I keep getting stuck on the fact that huge numbers of people are presumably going to die over a single cow that the aggressors don't actually need. It's weird.
I assume there is a cultural context here that I'm missing.
*The first rune of the first aett of the futhark is fehu, which is usually translated as "wealth" but really refers to mobile wealth in the form of herds. In shape, fehu recalls the horns of a cow.
