Early Irish Myths and Sagas Read Online Free PDF

will – is whether the Druimm Snechtai version was very different from the one in the Yellow Bookof Lecan, whether the tale assumed written form earlier than in the eighth century, and what the tale was like before it was first written down. Even the surviving manuscripts, which we are fortunate to have, are far from ideal: obscure words abound, some passages seem obviously corrupt, and there are lacunae and entire missing leaves.
The Irish Material
    Convention and tradition have classified the early Irish tales into four groups, called cycles: (1) the Mythological Cycle, whose protagonists are the Síde and whose tales are set primarily among the burial mounds of the Boyne Valley; (2) the Ulster Cycle, which details the (purportedly historical) exploits of the Ulaid, a few centuries before or after the birth of Christ; (3) the Kings Cycle, which focuses on the activities of the ‘historical’ kings; (4) the Find Cycle, which describes the adventures of Find mac Cumaill and his fíana and which did not achieve widespread popularity until the twelfth century. Although these categories are useful, it should be remembered that they are also modern (no particular arrangement is apparent in the manuscripts, while it seems that the storytellers grouped tales by type – births, deaths, cattle raids, destructions, visions, wooings, etc. – for ease in remembering) and artificial. Characters from one cycle often turn up in another: the Síde-woman Bóand is introduced as Fróech’s aunt in the Ulster Cycle’s ‘Cattle Raid of Fróech’; the otherworld-figure Manandán appears in the Ulster Cycle’s ‘Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulaind’ and in the Kings Cycle’s ‘Adventures of Cormac’; Ulaid warriors join the invaders in the Mythological Cycle’s ‘Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’; Ailill and Medb, king and queen of Connachta, take part in the Mythological Cycle’s ‘Dream of Óengus’. Also, one should not suppose that the MythologicalCycle is populated exclusively by deities or that the other cycles are inhabited exclusively by mortals: many of the ‘humans’ are barely euhemerized gods, many of the ‘gods’ behave much like humans, and the two groups are often difficult to distinguish.
    The material of these tales encompasses both impacted myth and corrupted history. Although Irish mythology does evince the tripartism detected by Georges Dumézil in other Indo-European cultures (‘The Second Battle of Mag Tured’ is on one level an explanation of how the priests and warriors – Dumézil’s first two functions – wrested the secrets of agriculture from the third function, the farmers), its fundamental orientation seems more seasonal than societal, for the mythic subtexts of the tales focus on themes of dying kings and alternating lovers. (This strong pre-Indo-European element in Irish mythology probably derives both from the Celts’ innate conservatism and from the fringe position of Ireland in the geography of the Indo-European world.) These themes are stated most clearly in ‘The Wooing of Étaín’ and ‘The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu’. In the former story, Bóand passes from her husband, Elcmar, to the Dagdae (also called Echu) and then returns to Elcmar; Étaín goes from Mider to Óengus and back to Mider, from Echu Airem to Ailill Angubae and back to Echu, and from Echu Airem to Mider and back (in some versions) to Echu. In the latter tale, Derdriu passes from an old king, Conchubur, to a young hero, Noísiu, and back to Conchubur after Noísiu’s death; when Conchubur threatens to send her to Noísiu’s murderer, she kills herself. Sometimes, the woman’s father substitutes for the dying king (this variant appears in the Greek tales of Jason and Medea and Theseus and Ariadne): Óengus has to win Étaín away from her father in ‘The Wooing of Étaín’ and Cáer Ibormeith away from hers in ‘The Dream of Óengus’; Fróech has to win Findabair from Ailill and Medb –