Narrative literature
Finn Cycle
Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches is a collaborative project which has been set up to preserve, digitise, catalogue and make available online several thousand hours of Gaelic and Scots recordings. This website contains a wealth of material such as folklore, songs, music, history, poetry, traditions, stories and other information. The material has been collected from all over Scotland and beyond from the 1930s onwards.
The recordings come from the School of Scottish Studies (University of Edinburgh), BBC Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland's Canna Collection.
Please note that not all material from the School of Scottish Studies Archives is available on the website.
Examples from these collections include- Stories recorded by John Lorne Campbell on wax cylinders in 1937
- Folklore collected all over Scotland by Calum Maclean in the 19
- 50s Scots songs recorded by Hamish Henderson from travelling people in the 1960s
- Conversations recorded on Radio nan Gàidheal
Contents: Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Preface -- Chapter 1. Beginnings -- Chapter 2. Tírechán -- Chapter 3. Muirchú -- Chapter 4. Beyond the seventh century -- Chapter 5. Expanding the tradition: Vita secunda, Vita tertia & Vita quarta -- Epilogue -- Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index.
This article examines the healing of Caílte in the late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century text Acallam na senórach from a medieval medical perspective. According to the text, Caílte suffers from long-lasting injuries, particularly from mobility issues caused by a poisoned spear. The healing itself, performed mainly by Bé Binn, a female member of the Túatha Dé Danann, takes place in three stages: (1) healing through vomiting; (2) curing Caílte's head afflictions with a head rinse; and (3) extracting the poison and other gore from his legs. After this, as a parting gift, Bé Binn provides Caílte with a potion that restores his memory. This article argues that the healing sequence shows familiarity with medieval medical practice derived from European and Arabic medical sources up to two centuries before the appearance of the earliest medical manuscripts.
The ninth-century Irish tale Orgguin trí mac Diarmata meic Cerbaill is something of an outlier, both in terms of the Leinster Cycle, in which it is explicitly included by Rawlinson B 502, and, especially, in terms of the corpus of the tale's featured Uí Néill king, Diarmait mac Cerbaill. So at odds is this tale with elements of the identity established for Diarmait by the rest of his corpus that it appears that he is being used in the text anachronistically and as a proxy. Indeed, certain details in the tale, particularly the names of the titular three sons and the place of the tale's climax, Lagore Crannóg, indicate that the Uí Néill king in the tale would have been better identified as Áed Sláine. However, while Áed is the best match, this reading, too, presents challenges, and it is clear that Orgguin trí mac was not written to describe true events of the sixth or seventh century, but rather to use representatives from the past to comment upon the historical reality contemporary with the tale's composition. Examination of the characters, peoples, and place-names within the tale, as compared to relevant historical figures and events as described in the annals, reveal close ties between the details of the tale and the reality of the ninth century. Specifically, these details combine to provide compelling evidence that Orgguin trí mac Diarmata meic Cerbaill was written ca. 867–868 to explain and justify an alliance between the Laigin and Síl nÁedo Sláine.
The Early Fenian Cycle is concerned with texts primarily written before the end of the Middle Irish period (up to 1200) which deal with Finn mac Cumaill and his fían (‘warrior band’), his son Oisín, his grandson Oscar, and with other fíana and their leaders. This work provides a catalogue of early constituent texts pertaining to this Cycle, with a focus on their dates of composition, on the manuscripts in which they are found and on the editions and translations currently available.
Liam Breatnach’s Quiggin Lecture, The Early Irish law text Senchas Már and the question of its date, proposed that the Senchas Már was written in a single effort mounted by the church of Armagh within the date range c. 660 × c. 680. This revised and expanded version of a lecture given in 2017 accepts that there was a link between Armagh and the Senchas Már, sets the latter in the context of the written laws of Western Europe, 400–800, and investigates how the Senchas Már might have fitted into the sequence of seventh-century texts pertaining to Patrick. It also tackles two related issues: the relationship between evolving ideas of Irish nationality, the Patrician legend and the Senchas Már, and how one might bridge the gap between the Patrick of the saint’s own writings and conceptions of Patrick current in the seventh century.
This article provides a critical edition and translation of a dialogue between the mythical king, Cormac, and his son, Coirpre. In the first part, Coirpre confesses to raping a woman. Cormac asks why he did such a thing, and Coirpre’s excuses for his actions follow in a series of repetitive questions and answers. The second part of the dialogue is ascribed entirely to Cormac and forms his ‘instructions’ to his son. They describe the steps from flirtation to kissing to seduction to conception without resorting to violence. Cormac’s ‘instructions’ also touch upon the real legal consequences of begetting a child, whether by rape or consent.
It is a familiar cliché, even a trope, to characterise Cú Chulainn as 'the Irish Achilles' and to exemplify this by citing the shared motif of the hero choosing an early death and eternal fame in preference to a long inglorious life. Building on Brent Miles' insight that knowledge of the 'choice of Achilles' story could have come to the Irish literati through the commentary on Vergil known as Servius Auctus, this article aims to reconstruct the reading strategies that might have been applied to this text in the period when Táin bó Cúailnge was taking shape. The argument is pursued by examining two manuscripts of Servius Auctus (MSS Bern, Burgerbibliothek 167 & 172), of which other sections preserve direct evidence for Irish engagement with Virgilian poetry in the form of marginalia focussed on the word picti in connexion with the British race known as the Picts. The picti material provides the model for a hypothetical reconstruction of how the literati might have interpreted and re-contextualised the Achilles material in these or similar annotated manuscripts of Vergil. This encourages a revised assessment of how and why the makers of the Táin may have been engaging creatively with the perceived parallelism between Cú Chulainn and Achilles.
Explanations of the three rare words sennin, sincreth and nemceissi in a tale to which the title Úath Beinne Étair has been assigned are proposed. It is also argued that there is little justification for assigning this title to the tale.
This article examines the patterns of history-writing in Geoffrey Keating’s retellings of the tales from the Ulster cycle in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. The study illustrates how Keating’s familiarity with Irish medieval sources, his clerical education, which placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric, and his awareness of the English and continental traditions of history-writing, influenced the composition of the fragment of Foras Feasa ar Éirinn dedicated to the tales from the Ulster cycle. The author shows that in this fragment Keating tended to apply native narrative strategies more. As regards authorial intentions, Keating used the selected tales from the Ulster cycle as exempla of sin and its drastic consequences, which may explain his particular interest in the death tales.
This contribution concerns gruesome tales of cruelty and the intersection of fact and fiction. The case study is the image of some dangerous mythological women: Lilith, Lamia, Alecto, and the Morrígain. Late-antique and early-medieval authors have clustered (some of) them by identifying them with each other. This contribution tries to explain the etymological association of Furies in general or Alecto in particular as being ‘unstoppable/incessant’ within a narrative context. While the characteristic of ‘unstoppable’ appeared to make sense for Lilith/Lamia/Alecto, the Morrígain suddenly seemed to fall outside the equation. She is not a strangler of babies and we have no textual witnesses of her lacerating a male partner after sex. In order to understand Eriugena’s equation of the Morrígain with Lilith/Lamia, we need to read the whole chapter of the Book of Isaiah to which he added his glosses. This contribution ends with the intersection of human and superhuman when discussing the fifth/sixth-century rule to exclude from the Christian community those who accused their fellow human beings of being such a destructive supernatural female.
This article suggests that an iconographic design found on early instances of a series of Iron Age British coins may foreshadow medieval Celtic myths about fantastic boar. Parallels are drawn with traditions about Balar’s boar, Cú Chulainn and Formáel’s boar, and with the Welsh episode of Menw and Twrch Trwyth.
This paper investigates the nature of the hunt in Medieval Ireland. It confirms from the evidence of Fianaigecht material backed up by contemporary Classical Irish poetry that the hunt was in the nature of a drive and ambush rather than a chase; that two types of hound were used in the hunt, the gadhair to drive the quarry from its covert and the coin to hem it in by securing the corridor to the ambush site, where the latter were slipped on the quarry; that this practice was common in Scotland as well as in continental Europe at the time; and that the deployment of the hunt was an important part of the training of a young nobleman in Ireland. Crossover material reflecting parallels between hound and hero celebration is also investigated.
According to medieval (from a modern perspective entirely fictional) Irish tradition, Tuathal Techtmar is a pre-Christian king of Ireland, grandfather of Conn Cétchathach and thus ancestor of Leth Cuinn.
Two major traditions are associated with this legendary figure: his recon-quest of Ireland through a series of battles, and eventual restoration of the legitimate kingship, after a revolt of the provincial kings; and the imposition of the bórama tribute upon the Laigin, subsequently to be levied by Tuathal Techtmar's successors over a period of several generations.
The best-known sources for these traditions are the réim rígraide paragraph dealing with Tuathal Techtmar included in R.A.S. Macalister's edition of Lebor Gabála and the Bórama tale as preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster (Dublin, Trinity College MS 1339).
This book adds to the available source material in providing a first edition, with translation and commentary, of the three anonymous Middle Irish poems Augaine ar n-athair uile, Teamair teach Tuathail trēin intech, and Cid toīseach dia·roibi bōroma Laigen.
The poems are solely preserved in the Book of Lecan (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23 P 2), a manuscript produced in the scriptorium of Clann Fhir Bhisigh in the early fifteenth century, there forming part of a version of the réim rígraide which is interwoven with a copy of the Bórama tale.
Both Augaine ar n-athair uile and Teamair teach Tuathail present versions of the list of Tuathal Techtmar's battles. They are complemented by a diplomatic edition of two copies, found in the same manuscript, of the hitherto unedited Old Irish poem Fland for Ērind, which also contains a version of the battle list. Cid toīseach dia·roibi bōroma Laigen and the final part of Augaine ar n-athair uile deal with the bórama matter. The texts published here bear witness to the variance of medieval traditions, differing in detail, displaying peculiarities and treating of aspects not found in the better-known sources.Contents: Front matter -- Introduction: an island of the ocean -- 1. ‘Cadualadrus Conanum uocabit’: political prophecy in England, the Welsh March, and Ireland, c. 1130s–1260s -- 2. ‘E si finerount les heirs d’engleterre hors de heritage’: Galfridian prophecy and the Anglo-Scottish border, c. 1301–30 -- ‘Whan shal this be?’ The English Erceldoune tradition, c. 1310s–90s -- ‘A dede man shall make bytwene hem acorde’: Cock in the North and Ceiliog y North, c. 1405–85 -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.
