More than a thousand years before the bards of Ireland were silenced, the story of the Cattle-Raid of Cooley was being told by firelight in royal halls. It is the Ulster Cycle's masterpiece: a war that begins with a pillow-talk quarrel between Queen Medb and her husband Ailill over which of them is the richer, and ends with armies pouring into Ulster to seize a single magnificent brown bull. Standing in their way is the young warrior Cú Chulainn, who holds the fords alone while his kinsmen lie under a mysterious curse. This modern-English edition renders the ancient epic in clear, present-day language while keeping its strange beauty, humour, boasting and grief: the superhuman combats, the ferocious war-goddess, the four-day duel between foster-brothers, and a finale in which two immortal bulls tear the landscape into shape. Faithful to the spirit, meaning and sequence of the original, it invites today's reader into one of the great heroic visions of European literature. Part of The World Scriptures Library.