#if anyone should get the credit for cursing the ulaid it's macha

[an-ruraiocht]

no she didn't. medb isn't responsible for the debility of the ulstermen.

there are two different stories about why they suffer from this curse: ces ulad (weird, short, and confusing), and noínden ulad (the most famous one that you'll usually see included in retellings)

in noínden ulad a man has an otherworldly wife, macha. he's boasting about how fast she is, so the king of ulster makes her race his horses to prove these boasts, while heavily pregnant. she wins, but gives birth at the finish line, and as she does so, she curses the men of ulster to suffer from labour pains in times of need/invasion. there's a somewhat elderly translation of it here.

ces ulad usually gets ignored because it's baffling and weird and only preserved in one manuscript iirc. there's an encounter between cú chulainn and a woman called fedelm foltcháin which leads, in extremely uncertain terms, to the debility. presumably because cú chulainn is involved in it, that's why he's not affected. you can read it here if you want to see what i mean about it being baffling and weird (seriously it's fragmentary as anything)

neither of these are actually referenced within táin bó cúailnge, the story in which medb invades ulster for the sake of a bull*, and several details in the táin actively disagree with details in noínden ulad, such as NU saying that cú chulainn isn't from ulster by blood, whereas TBC explicitly says that he is

*her motivations are honestly not clearcut across different versions, but the most famous version does make it about wanting to own the bull, yes

the debility in TBC really functions purely as plot device -- it lasts as long as it's narratively convenient for it to last, it affects whoever it's narratively convenient for it to affect, and they never explain who or what caused it. but it wasn't medb, even though she attempts to take advantage of it. it also shows up in other stories, such as in the death of cú chulainn, explaining why none of the ulstermen are able to help him. again it's mostly just used to keep most of the ulstermen out of the way for the drama of it

(cú chulainn's exemption is notable, questionable, and explained in different ways across different texts. various academics have written about a) why this is the case and b) what this means for how we read cú chulainn. the main thing i think though is that it's convenient for the plot for everyone else to be out of the picture so that he can do hero shit without them getting in the way)

the three genders: boys, women, and cuchulainn