The Curse of the Morrígan
Date: 1992
Medium: Bronze and stone
Dimensions: 1m x 2m (including stone and at widest point)
Location: James Street Dundalk
More about this work:
In Irish folklore, The Morrígan is associated with foretelling doom and death in battle. In this role she appears as a crow, flying above the battlefield. In the Táin Cycle, Cú Chulainn meets the Morrígan a number of times- before one combat the Morrígan visits him in the form of a beautiful young woman and offers him her love, but he spurns her. She then reveals herself and curses his next battle. She does this by appearing in the form of an eel who trips him in the ford, then as a wolf who stampedes cattle across the ford, and finally as a heifer at the head of the stampede, but each time, Cú Chulainn wounds her. After he defeats his opponent, the Morrígan appears to him in the form of an old woman milking a cow, with wounds corresponding to the ones Cú Chulainn gave her in her animal forms. She offers him three drinks of milk. With each drink he blesses her, and the blessings
heal her wounds. He meets her again, and at another time, after he has been dead for three days tied to a rock, she appears as a raven on his shoulder to confirm he is dead.