Does History Support the Theory That Cú Chulainn Was a Comet? [Cosmic Cú Chulainn Part 3]

[Note: Read parts 1 & 2 if you haven’t already! >> “1) Was the Irish Hero Cú Chulainn Actually a Comet?“ / 2) The Science Behind the “Cú Chulainn Was a Comet” Theory]

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Historian and archaeologist Michael McCormick once described the year 536 CE thusly:

“It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year.” 

source: Science

No, McCormick didn’t have to analyze tree rings or ice cores to reach this conclusion. Instead, he listened to voices from the past and paid close attention to what those voices had to say.  

Granted, sometimes the message was pretty straightforward. 

Case in point: Here’s Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea’s accounting of the year 536—a year he himself lived through. To quote his History of the Wars:

“And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.”

Yikes. That is a very bad year indeed.

But before you cry narrative embellishment or sensationalism or poetic license, it’s widely believed that the event of 536, regardless of whether it was triggered by a volcano or a comet (or both!), sort of set the stage for the plague of Justinian—a bubonic plague pandemic that killed between 15 and 100 million people across Eurasia and North Africa.

First reported by our pal Procopius in 541, the plague of Justinian was caused by the same bacterium—Yersinia pestis—that, centuries later in 1346, would cause The Black Death.

Anyway, the thinking is that the nuclear winter-type event of 536 led to widespread crop failures, leaving populations in a weakened state and making them more susceptible to potential outbreaks of contagious diseases.

And yes, some of these crop failures were documented.

The Annals of Ulster mention “A failure of bread in AD 536,” while the Annals of Inisfallen mention “A failure of bread from AD 536–539.” 

And of course, there are the Annales Cambriae, which noted that “there was great mortality in Britain and Ireland,” in 537.

There’s also the testimony of the twelfth-century patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Michael the Syrian, who wrote in his Chronicle that in the year 536:

“The sun became dark and its darkness lasted for 18 months. Each day it shone for about 4 hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow. Everyone declared that the sun would never recover its full light. The fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes.”

But let us return to contemporaneous sources, shall we?

To quote the Roman statesman Cassiodorus, writing in a letter to one of his subordinates in 538:

“The Sun, first of stars, seems to have lost his wonted light, and appears of a bluish color. We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigour of his heated wasted into feebleness, and the phenomenon which accompany a transitory eclipse prolonged through a whole year. 

“The Moon too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural splendour. Strange has been the course of the year thus far. We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat. Whence can we look for harvest, since the months which should have been maturing the corn have been chilled by Boreas? How can the blade open if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied to it? These two influences, prolonged frost and unseasonable drought, must be adverse to all things that grow. The seasons seem to be all jumbled up together, and the fruits, which were wont to be formed by gentle showers, cannot be looked for from the parched earth.”

Sooo yeah. McCormick’s claim about 536 and the years following it being the worst time to be alive ever? It’s starting to make sense. 

And I think it’s safe to say that the historical evidence does indicate that a climate-altering event definitely took place around this time.  

But what caused it?

The Magical Mystery Comet

The cosmic Cú Chulainn theory hinges on there being a comet or a comet fragment that has a close encounter with the earth in the year 536—but what historical evidence do we have to support that?

Because so far all of the reports we’ve looked at could be explained by volcanism.

Except, perhaps, for a few choice phrases courtesy of the aforementioned Cassiodorus. 

Here he is describing the status of the “middle air”, i.e., the atmosphere, directly after his discussion of the failed harvest:

“The middle air is thickened by the rigour of snow and rarefied by the beams of the Sun. This is the great Inane, roaming between the heavens and the earth. When it happens to be pure and lighted up by the rays of the sun it opens out its true aspect; but when alien elements are blended with it, it is stretched like a hide across the sky, and suffers neither the true colours of the heavenly bodies to appear nor their proper warmth to penetrate.”

Coincidentally—or, actually, probably not coincidentally?—a few years earlier, sometime between 534 and 536, this same Cassiodorus wrote: “who will not be disturbed, and deeply curious…if something mysterious and unusual seems to be coming on us from the stars?”

And to be clear, Cassiodorus wasn’t the only one writing about what was going on in the “heavens” around this time.

In December of 538 (or 539), the bishop and historian Zachariah of Mitylene recorded that “a great and terrible comet appeared in the sky at evening-time for one hundred days.”

And then there was the medieval chronicler Roger of Wendover (of the 13th century), who, while clearly not a first-hand witness to events, wrote the following:

“[I]n the year of grace AD 541, there appeared a comet in Gaul, so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire. In the same year, there dropped real blood from the clouds, and a dreadful mortality ensued.”

I mean, that is pretty specific. 

If only the years lined up a little better, right?

Because according to the tree-rings, it was 536 when the “big one” allegedly hit, or skimmed, or whatever.

Yet the history doesn’t really bear that out, does it? The bulk of the documentary evidence we’ve looked at comes a few years later.

So let’s turn back the clock and see if we can get to the bottom of this cosmic mystery.

Halley in the Sky With Diamonds

To find another historical cluster of comet chatter before 538-541, we need to go back to 530 CE, when, predictably, Halley’s Comet passed by. 

The Irish Annals recorded “running stars” during this year. And in China and Byzantium it was noted that the comet “shined” for a period of 20 days.

According to research scientist Dallas Abbott, Halley’s comet would have been “astonishingly bright” at the time, suggesting a closer-than-usual passage to the earth and thus a higher likelihood of pieces of the rubble pile-type comet coming loose.

And yet, science writer Ian Ridpath wrote of the 530 Halley’s comet fly-by: “Noted in China and Europe, but not spectacular.”

How do we square two such contradictory accounts?

Was the passing of Halley’s comet in 530 astonishing, or unspectacular? 

Either way, the history from this time is…unsatisfying.

It just seems like there’s this huge gap around the year 536. And the grim reality is…that’s potentially because so many people perished.

So how are we to understand what happened when the history books are blank?

Professor Mike Baillie, dendrologist by trade, reluctantly turned to mythology—something we’ll learn more about in part 4.

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P.S. Hope you had a great Lughnasa!

Get the low-down on the August 1st feast over at the IrishMyths YouTube channel.

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Want to learn about the darker side of Irish mythology? Check out…

Samhain in Your Pocket

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Irish Monsters in Your Pocket

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Neon Druid: An Anthology of Urban Celtic Fantasy

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More the listenin’ type?

I recommend the audiobook Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes by Philip Freeman (narrated by Gerard Doyle). Use my link to get 3 free months of Audible Premium Plus and you can listen to the full 7.5-hour audiobook for free.