Setanta refused to come until the play was over. While the banquet was progressing, Culann let loose his great watchdog, which had the strength of a hundred, and when Setanta reached the fort, the beast attacked him, whereupon he thrust his ball into its mouth, and seizing its hind legs, battered It against a rock. Culann complained that the safe-guard of his flocks and herds was destroyed, but the boy said that he would act as watch-dog until a whelp of its breed was ready; and Cathbad the Druid now gave him a name—Cú Chulainn, or "Culann's Dog." This adventure took place before he was seven years old.11 Baudis suggests that as Cúchulainn was not the hero's birth-name, a dog may have been his manito,12 his name being given him in some ceremonial way at puberty, a circumstance afterward explained by the mythical story of Culann's Hound.13
One day Cúchulainn overheard Cathbad saying that whatever stripling assumed arms on that day would have a short life, but would be the greatest of warriors. He now demanded arms from Conchobar, but broke every set of weapons given him until he received Conchobar's own sword and shield; and he also destroyed seventeen chariots, so that nothing but Conchobar's own chariot sufficed him. Cúchulainn made the charioteer drive fast and far until they reached the dún of the sons of Nechtan, each of whom he fought and slew, cutting off their heads; while on his return he killed two huge stags and then captured twenty-four wild swans, fastening all these to the chariot. From afar Levarcham the prophetess saw the strange cavalcade approaching Emain and bade all be on their guard, else the warrior would slay them; but Conchobar alone knew who he was and recognized the danger from a youth whose appetite for slaughter had been whetted. A stratagem was adopted, based upon Cúchulainn's well-known modesty. A hundred and fifty women with uncovered breasts were sent to meet him,14 and while he averted his face, he was seized and plunged into vessels of cold water. The first
