Early Irish Myths and Sagas Read Online Free PDF Page A

the most part – not literary artists; and of course, they lacked the incentive of an appreciative (and remunerative) audience. Banquet-hall transcription cannot have been easy, and the scribe doubtless grew weary before the storyteller did; consequently, it is not surprising that spelling is erratic,that inconsistencies abound (this could also result from a story-teller’s attempting to conflate multiple traditions) and that many tales deteriorate after a promising beginning. Some formulaic passages, such as in ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’, are represented simply by ‘et reliqua’. As manuscripts were recopied, moreover, additional errors inevitably appeared. Some areas are manifestly corrupt, and in the case of the archaic poetic sections it seems doubtful whether the scribes understood what they were writing. All this is hardly surprising – just consider the problems attendant upon the texts of Shakespeare’s plays, only four hundred years old – but it should be remembered that what survives in the manuscripts, however beautiful, is far from representative of these stories at their best.
The Irish Manuscripts
    The language of these tales varies considerably as to date; but at its oldest, and allowing for some degree of deliberate archaism, it appears to go back to the eighth century; one may assume the tales were being written down at least then, if not earlier. Unfortunately, Scandinavian raiders were legion in Ireland at this time, and they tended to destroy whatever was not worth taking away; consequently, very few manuscripts predating A.D. 1000 have survived. Among the missing is the Book of Druimm Snechtai, which belonged to the first part of the eighth century and included ‘The Wooing of Étaín’, ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’ and ‘The Birth of Cú Chulaind’.
    Of the manuscripts that have survived, the two earliest and most important for these tales belong to the twelfth century. Lebor na huidre (The Book of the Dun Cow) is so called after a famous cow belonging to St Cíaran of Clonmacnois; the chief scribe, a monk named Máel Muire, wasslain by raiders in the Clonmacnois cathedral in 1106. Unfortunately, the manuscript is only a fragment: though sixty-seven leaves of eight-by-eleven vellum remain, at least as much has been lost. Lebor na huidre comprises thirty-seven stories, most of them myths/sagas, and includes substantially complete versions of ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’, ‘The Birth of Cú Chulaind’, ‘The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulaind’ and ‘Bricriu’s Feast’ as well as an incomplete ‘Wooing of Étaín’ and acephalous accounts of ‘The Intoxication of the Ulaid’ and ‘The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’.
    The second manuscript, which is generally known as the Book of Leinster, is much larger, having 187 nine-by-thirteen leaves; it dates to about 1160 and includes in its varied contents complete versions of ‘The Cattle Raid of Fróech’, ‘The Labour Pains of the Ulaid’, ‘The Tale of Macc Da Thó’s Pig’ and ‘The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’ as well as an unfinished and rather different ‘Intoxication of the Ulaid’ and a complete, more polished ‘Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’. Two later manuscripts also contribute to this volume: the Yellow Book of Lecan, which offers complete accounts of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’ and ‘The Death of Aífe’s Only Son’ and dates to the fourteenth century; and Egerton 1782, which includes ‘The Dream of Óengus’ and has the date 1419 written on it.
    These manuscripts do not, of course, date the stories they contain. Our earliest complete version of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’ appears in the fourteenth-century Yellow Book of Lecan, yet we have a partial account in the twelfth-century Lebor na huidre, and we know from the contents list of the Book of Druimm Snechtai that the tale was in written form by the early eighth century. What we do not know – and probably never