Dhomhnaillís Gaelic text, semi-anglicized into the word ëfeaigí which
is neither orthodox Irish nor English.^9
OíConnor also notices how the traditional myth of C ̇ Chulainn
as Ulster hero has been rewritten so he is represented in the role of
loutish lover and soap opera character: hero born of multiple fathers,
he asks his mother to put away her knitting, take the fag out of her
mouth a minute and tell him who was his father. His childhood, filled
with courage, is reduced to a fairly meaningless existence as he throws
stones at trains while his single mother abandons him to go to the
pub.^10 Rather than being the centre of attention, he complains in
Michael Hartnettís translation:
Iím fed up living
on the edges of your lives
thrown in a heap on the pub doorstep
when you go drinking porter.^11According to myth, C ̇ Chulainn was
a low-sized man doing many deeds of arms; there are many wounds on his
smooth skin; there is light about his head, there is victory on his forehead; he is
young and beautiful, and modest towards women; but he is like a dragon in the
battle.^12Elsewhere in NÌ Dhomhnaillís ëC ̇ Chulainní sequence he is presented
as a ësmall poor dark maní ëwhoíd satisfy no woman.í The mythol-
ogical version of C ̇ Chulainn as an irresistible hero is undermined
and so a national giant is cut down to size; he is turned from a
hallowed and sacred figure, into a secular and seedy little character; a
bastard who asks Deichtine ëwho is my father?í
The effects of the ëC ̇ Chulainní poems are defamiliarizing as the
familiar and authentic terrain of Irish myth is changed and challenged.
NÌ Dhomhnaill makes strange what is familiar and a further example
9 Mary O’Connor, ‘Lashings of the Mother Tongue: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s
Anarchic Laughter’, The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers, ed., Theresa
O’Connor (Florida: University Press, 1996), p.153.
10 Ibid., p.164.
11 Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘Cú Chulainn II’, Selected Poems trans. Hartnett, pp.114–15.
12 Lady Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe,
1993), pp.146–7.