Medb turned in her chariot, to survey the assembled armies across the plains of Cruachan.

“Everyone leaving a lover or friend today will curse me”, says she, “for they gathered for me”. She raised her arm to signal setting off, with the men around her mad to be on the move, but faltered as she saw a single chariot approach from the South, up from the Cave of the Cats, portal between the Otherworld and this.

A singular woman was driving, pulled by two strong stallions as deep a blue-black as midnight without moon.

She was young but full grown, with two tresses of yellow hair bound about her head, while the third flowed down her back, brushing her calves behind. Her speckled cloak shimmered as she drove across the plain, fastened secure by a gold clasp at her shoulder, and she was armed as she came. More gold was around her hooded tunic embroidered with red, and the clasps on her sandals.

As she drew closer they saw more clearly her true beauty, for didn’t she have a broad fair brow and a narrow, elegant jawline, with her beauteous fine black eyebrows and long lashes casting shadows in the noonday sun right across her smooth cheeks. Her teeth were like jewels set between full scarlet lips, but it was her eyes that brought gasps from the gathered men – as she stopped her chariot and looked upon them they saw a universe of grey, green, blue and gold, with a triple black iris in each.

“What is your name?” Medb said to the woman before her.

“I am Fedelm Banfhile, the woman poet and prophetess of Cruachan”, says she. “I’ve come lately from learning verse and vision in Alba”.

“Have you Imbas Forasnai then, the Light of Foresight? Tell me what is in store for us now”.

Fedelm cast her Otherworldly eyes across the host that were there from all the provinces in Ireland. Medb scarce breathed while she waited for what the woman had to say. Then she turned sad faced to her Queen.

“I see it Crimson, I see it Red”.

This was not what Medb had hoped to be hearing, so she drew herself up and proclaimed;

“Sure that can’t be true! I’ve had messengers back fresh from Ulster who swear that the King Conor and all his fighting men lie abed with the curse of a goddess upon them, to suffer the pangs of childbirth even until we attack their homes and steadings. Look again woman”.

Again Fedelm cast her eyes across the plains of Cruachan, teeming with bright life and strong energy. Again she told Medb; “I see it Crimson, I see it Red”.

“But it must be false!” says Maeve, disbelieving. “All the Kings of Ireland have sent troops to this Táin, even Conor of Ulster, as Fergus and the three thousand exiles sit with us waiting to attack their very own homeland”.

Without hesitation this time, Fedelm proclaimed as she saw; “I see it Crimson, I see it Red”.

“Wrath and rage and red wounds are common when battle is taken, and it is surely this which you are seeing with your strange eyes”, says Medb, but the prophetess cut her off sharply;

“I see the battles – a blonde man, young, with much blood around his belt and a false hero halo around his head. Who he is I cannot tell, the hound is with him and he has a power that is great and terrible. It warps his form and twists his mind to fight and frenzy, I see the whole host coloured crimson by his hand. Total ruin at his touch, torn corpses, your warriors dead because of him, the Hound of Ulster”.

Without another word, Medb raised her arm and signalled the men to march and move, riding to the forefront in her chariot alongside her husband Aillill. 

“What did the prophetess say of this?” he asked, for word had spread.

“She said nought awaits us in Ulster but a boy with a hound”, says she, restless eyes not meeting his.

Now, that’s not the last we’ll hear of Queen Medb in Connacht, but sure, they are all stories for another day.

For the true story of Queen Medb...