Back to Heroines & Queens Index

Maeve was a queen living in approximately the 1st century B.C. She is most famous as a protagonist in the story of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (The Táin Bó Cuailnge) and adversary of Cúchulainn the legendary Celtic hero.

She lived in Co. Sligo in Connaught and there are many monuments that are linked to her name. Firstly she married Conchobar Mac Nessa of Ulster but they did not get on well so her sister Ethne married him instead. She then married a Connaught chieftain called Ailill but that did not work out either, so finally she was married to Ailill a son of the King of Leinster. She also frequented the area in Roscommon known as Rathcroghan today, which was called Cruachain in ancient times and was said to hold the entrance to the Otherworld, which is now called the Cave of the Cats.

In the Cattle Raid of Cooley it is Maeve who begins the raid out of her desire for the brown bull of Ulster. For if she was to posses it her standing in wealth would finally have been greater than her husbands.

Maeve has an insatiable sexual appetite and boasts openly of sleeping with thirty men in one day. She has a sacred grove known as Bile Meibe and two tree-dwelling creatures perch on either of her shoulders the squirrel and the raven.

She mates with the hero Fergus Mac Roich 'Son of Great Horse' who himself has a large sexual appetite so that he satisfies her. 'She used to know thirty men every day or go with Fergus once.' During the battle of the Táin Bó, Maeve wanted to pass water and Fergus hid her with his shield, the water she passes forms three great dykes 'so that a mill could find room in each dyke'. The place became known afterwards as Fual Maevea, 'Maeve's Urine'. Natural features are frequently formed through the actions of supernatural beings and ancestors.

Maeve murdered her sister Clothra while she was pregnant with Furbaide son of Conchobar Mac Nessa, the baby survived this and when he grew up he murdered Maeve in revenge with a slingshot while she was bathing in a lake on an island in Lough Ree, Co. Roscommon.