Cym, Irish: Bull
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The Bull (male bovine), is another of the great Celtic animal totems. Though perhaps not as notable as the Boar or the Stag bull imagery still occurs in all Celtic societies from the Urnfield period (800 BCE) onwards. The Remarkable conservation of the word for bull in the extant Celtic languages (and in Gaulish) strongly suggests that the bull was an important totemic animal to the Celts whose name was preserved in all the Celtic tongues.
In Celtic belief the bull was often accompnied by the crane and this survived in the form of the Tarvos Trigaranus (Bull with three Cranes). We also have the bull deity, Deotaros, of the Celtic peoples of Asia Minor. There is also the Gaulish god, Donnotaurus (Brown/Dark Bull) who may well be the cognate of the Donn Tauros of the Táin. The tale of the Táin Bó Cuailnge is itself a tale of the battle between the Donn Cuailnge (Dun Bull of Cooley) and the Finnbennach (white horn), Queen Medb's white bull. Here the climax of the narrative is the battle between the bulls and the eventual triumph of the brown bull.
In Cymric mythos there is an allusion to sacred or divine bulls in the Mabinogion of Culhwch ac Olwen where two of the tasks given to Culhwch by Ysbaddaden are to: 'obtain the wo dun oxen of Gwlwlyd, both yoked together, to plough the wild land yonder'; and to obtain 'the two horned oxen, one of which is beyond, and the other this side of the peaked mountain, yoked together in the same plough. And these are Nynniaw and Peibaw, whom God turned into oxen on account of their sins'. This, of course, being an allusion to the legend of Rhudda Gawr.
In Irish mythos we also have the figure of Furbaide Ferbend, son of Conchobar mac Nessa who is portrayed with bull horns and thus probably represents the late survival of a horned deity. In Goidelic traditon the bull is also an animal of augury or divine inspiration. At the sacred heart of Ireland, Tara, a new king might well be chosen by the Tarbfheis (the 'bull-feast' or 'bull-sleep') where a bull was slain and a man ate his full of the meat, drakn the cooking broth and then lay down to sleep. Four druids chanted an invocation above him and the nature of the new king would be revealed to the sleeper in a dream. In Scotland it was believed that an important question about the future would be answered if the querent wrapped himself in the still-smoking hide of a newly-slain bull in a remote place. The person would then enter a trance to gain the answer to their question. There is also a Socttish folk-tale of two bulls fighting. One bull representing England and the other Scotland. The Scottish bull (of course) wins the combat.
