Mac Cécht (warrior)

Mac Cécht (Early Modern Irish: Mac Céacht) is the patronymic or cognomen ("son of power") given to one or two warrior champions from Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of early Irish literature. The personages may be identifical or may have been conflated at some stage, although the connection is nowhere made explicit and different fathers are ascribed to them in the tales.

Mac Cécht first appears in the tale Togail Bruidne Dá Derga ("The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel") as the bodyguard of the High King Conaire Mor along with the Ulster hero Conall Cernach. In this tale he is called a son of Snaide Teichet. When the king goes to settle a quarrel in Munster and returns to Tara via Leinster, he is obliged to violate his gessi or taboos and is subsequently doomed. When he stays in the house of Dá Derga, a Leinster hospitaller (briugu), he is stalked by his fosterbrothers (the great-grandsons of Donn Deasa) and a British exile named Ingcél, who have become freebooting pirates and fallen out of favour with the king. While Conaire and his people feast in Dá Derga's hostel, the freebooters attack them and a battle ensues. Conaire, Mac Cécht and Conall perform prodigies of valour and kill a great many of the attackers in the melee, defeating them, but Conaire dies of his wounds. On the third day, Mac Cécht dies of his wounds on the battlefield. The interpolator +H of the Lebor na hUidre version offers an alternative ending in which Mac Cécht buries Conaire and returns to his own country, Connacht. No other version associates Mac Cécht with Connacht, which may possibly mean that the interpolator had intended to connect him with the Mac Cécht of the tale below.

Mac Cécht's role in the tale is recalled in a dindsenchas prose text on Ráith Cnámrossa, which gives his father's name in garbled form as Slaite Seched of Connacht. He is presented as the fosterfather of Lé Fer Flaith, son of Conaire, whom he tried to bring into safety when Dá Derga's hostel was on fire. However, the boy, who was kept in the hollow of his shield, died a threefold death in Corra Ednecha, having been mangled, burnt and drowned through Mac Cécht's sheer force, heat and sweat as the warrior was attempting to rescue the king. Mac Cécht buried the remaining bones, cnám-fhros "bone-shower", in a place afterwards called Cnámross. The text then offers two alternative explanations for the placename.

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