MAYV
The warrior-queen of Connacht whose jealousy over a prize bull sets the entire Táin Bó Cúailnge in motion.
Medb ("she who intoxicates") rules Connacht from Cruachan, and insists on equal wealth with her husband Ailill down to the last animal — a boast that unravels when it turns out Ailill owns one bull, Finnbennach, with no equal in her own herds. Learning of an even greater bull, Donn Cúailnge, kept in Ulster, she raises an army to take it by force, and that campaign is the Táin Bó Cúailnge itself.
She is no distant instigator: Medb personally leads the invasion, negotiates single combats, and orchestrates the sorcery and broken taboos that eventually bring down Cú Chulainn, who alone holds Ulster's border against her while the rest of Ulster's warriors lie incapacitated under a curse. Medb survives the Táin's failure and appears in later tales as well, one of Irish mythology's most consistently formidable figures rather than a one-story villain.
Medb's name is usually connected with an old word for mead, and she is sometimes described as a goddess of sovereignty, in which the king of Connacht has to be married to the land in the form of a woman. Whether she was ever a goddess is hard to say, but the texts do give her a series of husbands and the right to choose them, and the pillow talk makes her insistence on equality plain.
The tradition about her death is as vivid as her life. In the tale Aided Meidbe, she bathes in a pool on Lough Ree in the Shannon, as she does daily, and Furbaide, the son of Conchobar, who is angry about the death of his mother, shoots a ball made of hard cheese from a sling and kills her. Folklore also says she is buried standing in her armour on Knocknarea in County Sligo, facing her enemies in Ulster, under the large cairn known as Miosgán Medb.
As a name: Maeve is still given to children today. See its meaning, pronunciation and popularity on NameCipher →
| Cycle | Entries here | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| The Mythological Cycle | 21 | The oldest of the four cycles, telling of the Tuatha Dé Danann and the successive invasions of Ireland. |
| The Fenian Cycle | 7 | Tales of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his band of warriors, the Fianna, set generations after the Ulster Cycle in a world of hunting, romance, and roaming adventure. |
| The Ulster Cycle | 12 | The heroic tales of Conchobar mac Nessa's court at Emain Macha, centered on Cú Chulainn and the great cattle raid of the Táin Bó Cúailnge. |
| The Historical Cycle | 1 | Also the Cycle of the Kings — legendary and semi-legendary tales of Ireland's High Kings, treated by medieval scribes as genuine national history. |
Medb (Maeve) is the powerful Queen of Connacht whose refusal to be outmatched in wealth by her husband Ailill triggers the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Ireland's central heroic epic.
An argument with Ailill over which of them is wealthier reveals she is short exactly one prize bull to match his herd; when its owner in Ulster refuses to sell it, Medb raises an army to simply take it by force.
The Ulster warriors are disabled by ces noínden, a curse laid on the men of Ulster that strikes them with birth-pain-like weakness at their moment of greatest need, leaving only the young Cú Chulainn (who is exempt) to hold off Medb's forces alone.