Narrative literature
Ulster Cycle
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.
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.
This dissertation provides critical editions of two medieval Irish aideda (‘death-tales’): Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig (‘The Death-Tale of Ailill and Conall Cernach’) and Aided Cheit maic Mágach (‘The Death-Tale of Cet mac Mágach’). The editions are accompanied by translations, textual notes and linguistic analyses, followed by discussions of the textual traditions of both tales and literary commentary. The thesis consists of two parts. Part I, entitled Texts & Traditions, introduces the manuscripts in which the tales are contained: both tales are preserved in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 72.1.40, while another copy of Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig is found in Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, MS 1319. Following Thomas Owen Clancy, it is argued that the former manuscript is of particular interest, since the gathering in which the two tales are found consists of a collection of seven Ulster Cycle aideda. These constitute an independent thematic unit that should be read as an anthology of aideda. An examination of the evidence for the compilation and transmission of the group is provided, tracing the existence of the collection back to the twelfth or possibly tenth century. This is followed by a thematic analysis of the aideda anthology, arguing that the group of aideda constitutes a narrative cycle based on its generic unity. Following on from this discussion of manuscript context, linguistic analyses of both tales are presented, each followed by the edited text and translation. Any textual ambiguities, problematic forms or interpretational issues are discussed in the textual notes. The second part of the dissertation, which is entitled Context & Commentary, is split into two sections. The first section examines how the two extant aideda relate to references to the deaths of Ailill mac Máta, Conall Cernach and Cet mac Mágach in other sources, shedding light on the traditions that surround the deaths of these literary characters. It is demonstrated that the narrative tradition of the death of Conall is depicted relatively uniformly across all sources, and shows a particular connection to East Bréifne. References to the deaths of Cet and Bélchú reveal that the traditions of their deaths may have undergone changes, pertaining specifically to the setting of the narrative and the character of Bélchú, who may once had a different role. The second section presents an analysis of the literary themes and motifs that appear in both tales, focussing in particular on interpreting the narratives as part of the aideda anthology in the Edinburgh manuscript. It is argued that the placement of Aided Chonchobair within the aideda anthology impacts upon the interpretation of the group, and that the tales should be read as anti-heroic tales. The tales depict Irish heroic society as one of dysfunction and self-destruction, caused by the tragic breakdown of the relationships upon which this society was founded. The literary commentary examines how these traditional relationships in Aided Ailella ⁊ Chonaill Chernaig and Aided Cheit maic Mágach are subverted, leading to social chaos and disorder.
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.
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.
DIL s.v. forrind ‘point (of a weapon), barb’ provides three examples. One of these is taken from a quatrain preserved in the late Middle Irish prosimetric tale Aided Guill meic Carbada 7 Aided Gairb Glinne Rige (hereafter AG), edited by Stokes (1893). The word in question is found in the final line of the second couplet: ni ḟail díb ar talmain tend / crecht arna fagbaim fairrend, ‘Of them on the firm earth there is none for which I do not leave a spearpoint’, LL 12881 (trans. Stokes 1893, 423). Stokes’s translation of fairrend as ‘spearpoint’ suggests he understood it as a word consisting of for- + rind ‘a point, tip, apex’ (DIL 1 rind), an i-stem. The editors of the Dictionary suggested emending tend … fairrend to tind … fairrind, presumably on the basis that a palatalised final -nd would be expected for an acc. sg. i-stem and therefore emendation to tind would also be needed to fulfil the requirement for deibide rhyme. In this note I revisit this proposed emendation in the Dictionary and provide a new analysis and interpretation of the second couplet in AG, suggesting that fairrend has a more nuanced meaning than forrind ‘barb, spearpoint’ and that perhaps no emendation is needed.
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 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 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 thesis is presented in two parts. Part 1 is a study of the application of the term remscél prefatory tale to Early Irish literature, specifically to those tales associated with the Táin Bó Cúailnge (TBC), and the wider implications of its usage, which led to the emergence of this medieval literary series. My starting point is the lists of so-called remscéla, which are extant in the following manuscripts: 12th-century Book of Leinster, p. 245b; 15th-century RIA MS D iv.2, f. 47vb; 17th-century RIA MS C vi.3, f. 27v; and two sets of transcriptions of a now-lost manuscript, NLS MS Adv. 72.1.46, by the Scottish antiquarian Ewen M Lachlan, i.e. NLS MS Adv. 72.3.5, p. 253, and NLS Ingliston MS A vi.1, box 4, p. 17. I include also in this study the compilation of the 16th-century BL MS Egerton 1782, which contains thirteen of the tales, described as remscéla in the aforementioned lists, as a complete collection that physically preface TBC in this manuscript. This represents the idea that, at least, the Early Modern Irish scribe of Eg. 1782 viewed the remscéla as complementing TBC in the manner of a complete series. What follows is an investigation of the relationships of individual tales that fall under the classification of remscél in the remscéla lists to the TBC; these are also plotted along a relative chronology of their composition, including the composition of various recensions of individual tales. Additionally, I include a study of the application of the term remscél to tales associated with Togail Bruidne Da Derga and the Middle Irish adaptation In Cath Catharda; both of which contribute to understanding the term remscél within the context of those tales associated with TBC. Part 2 of this thesis presents a new edition of the Old Irish text Aislinge Óenguso (AÓ), complete with full manuscript readings, a translation, and textual notes to each section of text discussing noteworthy linguistic features and editorial choices.
