In the Ulster Cycle, Macha was a woman of the otherworld who came unannounced to the house of a widowed farmer, Cruinniuc, and kept house for him. She became pregnant and his wealth grew while she stayed. She warned him that she would remain only as long as he never spoke of her, and he promised.
At a gathering held by the king of Ulster, Cruinniuc boasted that his wife could run faster than the king's horses. The king ordered him held on pain of death unless he could prove it. Macha, heavily pregnant, was brought and forced to race. She won, but at the finish she cried out and gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. For the shame done to her she cursed the men of Ulster. At the time of their greatest need each would be as weak as a woman in childbirth for five days, and the curse would last nine generations. The place where she gave birth was named Emain Macha, which the tale reads as Macha's twins.
The curse is why, in the Táin Bó Cuailnge, Queen Medb can invade when the Ulstermen are lying powerless at Emain Macha. Only the youth Cú Chulainn, who was outside the curse, is able to hold the border. In the Faraday translation of the Táin the invasion is timed for the sickness that fell on them periodically, and the editor's introduction says another story relates the cause as a curse laid on them by a fairy woman.
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