I’ve recently been doing a little reading on the legends of the Irish legendary figure Cu Chulainn, and I was wondering if there was any speculation from historians about a link between the stories and one or more historical figures (much like some historians speculate about possible real-life inspirations for King Arthur). Or if there’s historical evidence for any of the other characters in the legends, like his foster father King Conchobar of Ulster or his antagonist Queen Medb of Connacht.
Thanks!
(Apologies if I’ve made any mistakes in the Irish names, I don’t speak the language and am copying what I’m seeing online.)
There's no evidence that Cú Chulainn or Conchobar were ever thought of as real historical figures. They're positioned in a pseudohistorical past (around the time of Christ), but there's not much to suggest they were believed to be real; yes, Conchobar is included in lists of kings, but these lists are as much fiction as history and frequently include figures who can only have been legendary. It's worth noting that the author of the Book of Leinster version of the Táin specifically denounces the Táin as fiction in a colophon at the end of text, saying it's a 'fabula' rather than a 'historia' and shouldn't be believed.
Medb is an interesting one, as there's a cave at Cruachan (Rathcroghan) with an Ogham inscription that mentions her name: it reads ‘VRAICCI...MAQI MEDVVI’ (‘of Fraech, son of Medb’). There may have been mythological associations between Medb and this site, but it's hard to extrapolate much from a single inscription (anyone who says anything with confidence about that kind of thing is usually making it up!).
In the light of this, I'd tentatively suggest it's more likely that Medb's character derives from a mythological figure or goddess than from any historical personage, but I'd caution against embracing "goddess" interpretations with too much enthusiasm (as people tended to do in the past) since we have so little evidence to unambiguously support them. The same goes for the other figures, including Cú Chulainn -- while it has often been suggested that he might have been a pre-Christian god of some sort who was euhemerised into a hero, this is, again, not something we actually have definitive evidence for, as our texts considerably post-date Christianity and we don't have archaeological or literary evidence for pre-Christian mythologies/religion. Any attempts to reconstruct it are therefore largely speculative, and need to be treated with extreme caution.
("All of these characters are euhemerised gods" is now a slightly old-fashioned idea, though it was very popular for a while. That doesn't mean there's no mythological basis for them, we just have to be cautious about how we express that.)
tl;dr, no, the characters aren't usually identified with historical figures -- if anything, people tend to suspect their roots lie in mythology, the historicity of which is a whole other question...
EDIT: I'm new to this subreddit, so I hope this answer followed the rules. Some references: