Further episodes in the boyhood deeds continue to establish Cuchulainn's exceptional and dangerous nature. He deliberately seeks out the ritual of taking arms years before the usual age, having overheard that a boy armed that particular day would be short-lived but eternally famous, choosing glory over longevity in full knowledge of the trade-off, a choice the wider Ulster Cycle bears out when he dies young at the height of his powers. His early feats include defeating, single-handed and while still a boy, groups of older warrior-trainees who mock him.
These boyhood episodes foreshadow his single-handed defense of the whole province of Ulster during the Cattle Raid of Cooley, the cycle's central tale, when the rest of Ulster's warriors lie helpless under a curse of birth-pang weakness and Cuchulainn alone, exempt from the curse because of his semi-divine parentage, must hold the border against an invading army by himself. James MacKillop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology situates these boyhood tales as the standard prelude Irish tradition supplies before the Cattle Raid narrative proper.
During the single-handed defense that follows in the Cattle Raid of Cooley itself, Cuchulainn repeatedly invokes a right recognized in the tale's own internal logic to fight the invading army's champions one at a time in single combat at a ford, a convention that lets one boy hold off an entire army for as long as its warriors continue honoring the custom rather than simply overwhelming him together.