The bronze statue in Dublin's General Post Office shows a noble warrior dying on his feet, strapped to a stone with a raven on his shoulder. The mythological source material is far stranger: a short, beardless teenager who transformed into an inside-out monster, killed his own son, and died because he was trapped into eating dog meat. This deep dive strips away the polish to examine the raw biography of Cu Chulainn, champion of the Ulster Cycle, from his dual parentage as son of the god Lugh to his first battle frenzy against the king's boy troop at age seven.

The episode explains how killing a blacksmith's guard dog earned him his name and reprogrammed his identity into a weapon, the prophecy that traded a long life for immortal fame, his training under Scathach on the Isle of Skye, and the gae bolg that opens into thirty barbs inside a vi ...