Pictish Mystic · Lore · Red Branch
Celtchar mac Uthechair: The Three Pests of Ulster
One drop of blood on a gaming board marked his crime, and one drop of blood on his own spear ended him. This is Celtchar mac Uthechair of the Red Branch.
Bláí the Hospitaller was one of the great men of Ulster, with seven herds of seven score cows, a plough-team with every herd, and a guest-house open to all. He was also bound by a strange geis: any woman who came to his house in company, without her husband, must share his bed. When Brig Brethach, Celtchar's wife, arrived that way, the old man warned her, then gave in. Celtchar came looking for her. Bláí ran to King Conchobar's side in the royal house, where the king sat over a game of fidchell with the young Cú Chulainn, and Celtchar drove a spear through him so hard it stuck in the wattle wall behind. One drop of blood fell on the board. The players measured it, and it lay nearer Conchobar, so his revenge would be the longer in coming.
Celtchar fled south to the Déisi of Munster, but the Ulstermen had no wish to lose a second man. Conchobar sent Celtchar's son to bring him home under his protection, since in those days a father's crime was never laid on his son. The fine for Bláí was heavy: Celtchar must free Ulster from the three worst pests it would see in his lifetime. The first was Conganchnes mac Dedad, "Horny-skin", come to avenge his brother Cú Roí, whose hide turned spears and swords as if they were horn. Celtchar promised him his daughter Niam and a dinner for a hundred every afternoon, and Niam coaxed out his secret: red-hot iron spits through the soles of his feet and up through his shins. A host crept in on their bellies, hammered the spits home, and Celtchar took his head. Every man who passed laid a stone, and a cairn rose over him.
The second pest was the Dun Mouse, a whelp found in a hollow oak and raised by a widow until it killed her flocks, her son and herself, then laid waste a homestead in Ulster every night. Celtchar boiled an alder log in herbs, honey and grease until it was soft and tough, hollowed it the length of his arm, and waited in its cave. When its teeth sank into the wood, he reached through and tore out its heart by the jaws. A year later cowherds heard whelps squealing inside Horny-skin's cairn and dug out three pups. The spotted one became Ailbe, the hound of Mac Da Thó. The dun one went to Culann the smith. The black one, Dóelchú, was Celtchar's own, and while he was away it broke loose and killed a living creature every night: the third pest. Celtchar called it three times. It came and licked his feet, and he struck it through the heart. As he lifted the spear, a drop of its blood ran down the shaft and through him to the ground, and he died. His lament was raised, and his stone and tomb were set where he fell.
Source: "The Tragic Death of Celtchar mac Uthechair" (Aided Cheltchair maic Uthechair), translated by Kuno Meyer in The Death-Tales of the Ulster Heroes (1906), read on CELT (celt.ucc.ie) and Mary Jones's Celtic Literature Collective (maryjones.us).
These are legends from medieval manuscripts, not recorded history.
First shared on X @dalriada36963 and TikTok @johnshaw333.
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