Serglige Con Culainn

Serglige Con Culainn (English: The Sick-Bed of Cú Chulainn or The Wasting Sickness of Cúchulainn), also known as Oenét Emire (English: The Only Jealousy of Emer) is a narrative from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. It tells of a curse that fell upon the warrior Cú Chulainn as a result of his attacking otherworldly women, and his eventual recovery by reluctantly agreeing to give military aid to those he had wronged. His developing relationship with one of the Otherworldly women, Fand, occasions his wife Emer's "only jealousy."

In the assessment of Myles Dillon,

The story survives in two manuscripts, the twelfth-century Book of the Dun Cow and a seventeenth-century copy of this manuscript, Trinity College, Dublin, H. 4. 22.

It is clear, however, that the earliest manuscript combined two different versions of the text: parts are in the hand of the main scribe of the mainscript (referred to by Dillon as Recension A), but parts have been erased and rewritten, or leaves removed and replaced, by a scribe with a different hand, apparently copying from a now lost manuscript known as the Yellow Book of Slane (referred to by Dillon as Recension B). This scribe may have made further additions of his own. Precisely how much of our surviving text belongs to each source has been the subject of debate. The material judged to derive from Recension B exhibits linguistic features pointing, amongst later ones, to the ninth century, while the language of A seems to be eleventh-century. A has long been considered the earlier version of the story nevertheless, but John Carey has argued that B is the earlier version.

The combination of material leads to some inconsistencies and incoherence in the story, prominently an apparent shift from calling Cú Chulainn's wife Ethne Ingubai to calling her Emer.

The Ulster hero Cú Chulainn is with other men in Muirtheimne, hunting birds by the water. A number of the men kill two birds for their wives, so the women may wear feathers on each shoulder of their gowns. When all the women but Emer have birds, Cú Chulainn becomes determined to kill the largest, most beautiful birds for her. The only birds still in the sky are indeed the largest and most exotic-looking, but the two seabirds are linked by a golden chain and sing a magical sleeping song. Emer recognizes that this means they are from the Otherworld and tells Cú Chulainn not to kill them. He attempts to do so anyway, but only manages to strike one of the birds on the feathers of her wing, damaging her wing, but not inflicting a mortal wound. Cú Chulainn falls ill, and lies unconscious and feverish next to a standing stone.

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