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Chapter 9  
     
1.
 What then of the great cycle of stories of Cúchulainn?  
2.
 Surely these have merit in the pantheon of history?  
3.
 The Ulster Cycle  
4.
 Hound of Cualann  
5.
 The Irish Achilles  
6.
 One, familiar with the art of bezerk  
7.
 A temper of terror, so fierce,  
8.
 it was as if transformed into a monster  
9.
 And how dare we say his name and title?  
10.
 The Ulster Cycle is clear.  
11.
 Cualann were no poets, nor wise sages, but the name of a lowly smith,  
12.
 whose home guarded by a ferocious hound.  
13.
 Yet this lowly smith did feast a king at his home no less.  
14.
 A miraculous event matched only by a poor carpenter of the same age.  
15.
 Upon which the young Sétanta did kill the dog of the smith  
16.
 and in reply was indebted to the smith and named the hound of Cualann, was named Cúchulainn.
  
17.
 And of his appearance, but one fact is true-  
18.
 that he was beardless  
19.
 a point worthy of note
 
20.
 But what of the beardless Cúchulainn, the Hound of the Holly?  
21.
 Did not they write of even his death being an act of magic?  
22.
 Three spears, a Herculean doom, worthy of the Iliad.  
23.
 There lies a great shame.  
24.
 For many a story, many a guilded word bears not the mark of Cúchulainn,  
25.
 but those who know nothing of the man, but zeal for fables and myth.  
26.
 Do then any of history connect the Hound of the Holly to the Holly?  
27.
 Are any signs there?  
28.
 What of the O’Coileain of the Holly, the O'Collins  
29.
 whose name bears the same hound and connection?  
30.
 None. Dumb silence and ignorance abounds.  
31.
 Shame you keepers of fables.  
32.
 For in your midst are the entrails of the Holly,  
33.
 yet you refuse to let the awakening.  

 
 
 

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