Irish Wolfhound ( Cúchulainn )

I am writing my own story. Let me write and write. In all the lies maybe you’ll find me. It was I who tore my master’s arm from his torso. In the rage that was on me he did not know me. Next day I dressed and licked his wounds, like the cur I am, while another arm was forged. They thought they would deify me with the ability to turn water to wine. But I am no biblical foreshadowing. No, men or Ireland, my real power is in my wrath. It nourishes me. On it I have thrived down a flood of time. Do not blot my real name with your rosy blood red wine fantasies. I’ll tell my own story.

For not a cur at all am I but a woman. Ferocious as Lug with his silver arm. Out of focus, I wait. Let me tell you a tale of an Irish cur.

When the boy arrived at the gates I greeted him, not with bare teeth but with a resignation to abuse. For to abuse I had long been accustomed. He raised a missile and struck it. In my mind’s eye I contemplated it. I reflected long on the ways of the world and my journey through it, on my bondage, on the missile hurling towards me. I reflected with contempt on it all as the object completed its course. Then I raised up and grabbed it in my teeth. I grabbed it in my teeth like the cur that I am. We locked eyes, he and I, but more out of form than purpose. I already knew my course. He was still, surprised but not thrown. My master shackled me at the gate, as a vulgar sign of his social prowess. I have no loyalty to such a cur, nor he to me, whom he shackled at the gate.

I have bided my time. I bided my time now as my assailant approached. Perhaps he thought some cur of a Fir Bolg bitch was no match for the beating he would give me. I bided my time. He advanced and in one leap I was upon him. He made no sound, shocked at the unexpectedness of my weight on him, of my teeth at his neck, deep in his neck, in his jaw, and then his arms, he was already dead but I ripped them from his torso. As far from his body as my shackle afforded, I dragged them. Then I began the keening. Keening, keening, not for the dismembered flesh, but for myself, for me the cur, and for all the curs.

My master and his guests exited the fort, sobered by the pitch of my lament, more sobered still by the scene of gore that awaited. He came forward silently, they were all silent, and struck me on the jaw. “Bitch of a Fir Bolg”, master said to me. “Get up, cur, and put on his clothes. Take the life you stole, you cursed bitch of a Fir Bolg.”

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