The oldest of these manuscripts - Lebor na hUidre, familiarly known as the Book of the Dun Cow - was compiled in the monastery of Clonmacnoise in the twelfth century. It contains, in a badly flawed and mutilated text, part of the earliest known form of the Táin Bó Cuailnge. Another partial version of the same form of the story, also flawed, is contained in a late fourteenth century manuscript, the Yellow Book of Lecan. Between them these give the main body of the Táin as used in chapters II to XIV of this translation.
The origins of the Táin are far more ancient than these manuscripts. The language of the earliest form of the story is dated to the eighth century, but some of the verse passages may be two centuries older, and it is held by most Celtic scholars that the Ulster cycle, with the rest of early Irish literature, must have had a long oral existence before it received a literary shape, and a few traces of Christian colour, at the hands of the monastic scribes.
As to the background of the Táin, the Ulster cycle was traditionally believed to refer to the time of Christ. This might seem to be supported by the similarity between the barbaric world of the stories, uninfluenced by Greece or Rome, and the La Tène Iron Age civilisation of Gaul and Britain. The Táin and certain descriptions of Gaulish society by Classical authors have many details in common: in warfare alone, the individual weapons, the boastfulness and courage of the warriors, the practices of cattle-raiding, chariot-fighting and beheading. Ireland, however, by its isolated position, could retain traits and customs that had disappeared elsewhere centuries before, and it is possible that the kind of culture the Táin describes may have lasted in Ireland up to the introduction of Christianity in the fifth century. [viv]
The Táin itself, considered as a unit, lacks a number of essential elements: the actual motive for the Connacht invasion of Ulster, the reason for the sickness of the Ulster warriors throughout most of the action, the reason for Fergus’s opposition to Conchobor and for the presence of a troop of Ulster exiles in the Connacht army.
The last three of these elements are supplied in separate tales. Many remscéla, or pre-tales, lead up to the Táin. Though not strictly part of the story they are important tributaries. Some tell of the origins, wooings and adventures of the kings and heroes of the cycle. The first section of this translation consists of a group of remscéla chosen for their contribution to an understanding of the plot and motivations of the Táin. Their sources are identified in the section of detailed notes beginning on page 255. A separate series, not represented in the translation, deals with Connacht’s build-up of alliances for the war on Ulster and the arrangements for provisioning the armies.
The motive for the invasion, given in chapter I of the translation, is supplied from a later form of the Táin, four centuries younger, of which the most famous copy is contained in another major manuscript compiled in the twelfth century, the Book of Leinster.
The language of the Book of Leinster version of the Táin is dated to the twelfth century, and the story survives complete. The author or compiler was at pains to produce a consistent and integral narrative. Perhaps because of its completeness the Book of Leinster Táin has had considerable attention from editors and translators; among others, there is an abridged translation by Standish Hayes O’Grady in Eleanor Hull’s The Cuchullin Saga, published in 1898; the text, with a German translation, was published by Ernst Windisch in 1905; d’Arbois de Jubainville published a partial translation into French in 1907, and joseph Dunn a full translation into English in 1914. It is also the version employed by Lady Gregory in Cuchulain of Muirthemne, one of Yeats’s source-books. Most recently, in 1967, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies published a new edition of the text, with an English translation, by Cecile O’Rahilly
Of the earlier version only one English translation has been published - by Winifred Faraday, in 1904 - but it is incomplete, and difficult to read with any pleasure, partly because it transmits the flaws of the text so accurately.
These might be thought sufficient grounds for choosing the Lebor na hUidre/Yellow Book of Lecan version for a new translation, but there is also strong reason in the actual quality of the earlier recension. The compiler of the Book of Leinster Táin had, besides a care for completeness, a generally florid and adjectival style, running at times to an [x] overblown decadence. It has seemed better, despite the defects of the earlier text, to try to give an idea of the simple force of the story at its best.
This early text is the work of many hands and in places is little more than the mangled remains of miscellaneous scribal activities. There are major inconsistencies and repetitions among the incidents. On occasion the narrative withers away into cryptic notes and summaries. Extraneous matter is added, varying from simple glosses and comments to wholesale indiscriminate interpolations from other sources, in some cases over erased passages of the original; Frank O’Connor, in The Backward Look, his short history of Irish literature, says that, as a result, ‘the Cattle Raid has been rendered practically unintelligible’. Many of the defects can be remedied however, and a reasonably coherent narrative extracted, with a little reorganisation. This the present translation has attempted to do, taking it as a principle that any interference with the text as it stands, even when it seems most necessary, should be kept to a minimum.
As far as possible the story has been freed of inconsistencies and repetitions. Obscurities have been cleared up and missing parts supplied from other sources, generally the Book of Leinster text, but this has been done as economically as possible, sometimes with only a word or phrase. The passages introduced by the compiler or interpolator, where they are not involved in this tidying process, have been left undisturbed; they will be readily recognised by the changes in style. Such matters are noted (it is hoped adequately) as they occur, together with any changes in sentence order or other similar amendments. A reader who is anxious to know how the text actually runs should be able to restore the original disarray.
Nothing has been added in the translation beyond a very occasional word or phrase designed to keep the narrative clear, these additions are noted. But there are two aspects of the translation not fully ‘covered by guarantee.’ The first has to do with the main purpose of the work, which is to give a readable and living version of the story: it is that no attempt has been made to preserve the actual texture of the Irish narrative. Sentence structure and tense, for example, have been changed without hesitation; elements are occasionally shifted from one sentence to another; proper names have been substituted for pronouns, and vice versa; a different range of verbs has been used; and so on. Ibis is not, therefore, a literal translation. But it is a close compromise with one, and tries not to deviate significantly at any point from the original.
The second exception has to do with the verse passages: greater [xi] freedom has been taken with the verse than with the prose, though the sense and structural effects are followed with reasonable faithfulness. For one category of verse, however, the guarantee has to be withdrawn completely - the passages of rosc or retoiric which occur in ‘stepped’ form throughout the translation. In the original these are extremely obscure. This is partly because, as is generally believed, they are more archaic, but it seems likely that in some instances, where the utterance is ‘deep’ or prophetic, the obscurity is also deliberate. Scholars have preferred on the whole to leave these verses unattempted, but it seemed worthwhile to try to make some sense out of them, especially where something central to the action is going on, as in the long sequence in chapter VI. The aim has been to produce passages of verse which more or less match the original for length, ambiguity and obscurity, and which carry the phrases and motifs and occasional short runs that are decipherable in the Irish. It is stressed that they are highly speculative and may reproduce little if anything of the original effect. It would have been impossible to attempt these rosc passages without expert help, and for most of those in the Táin itself this was given with much tolerance, patience and generosity by Dr. Proinsias Mac Cana of University College, Dublin. His suggestions were offered as starting points for the imagination and they have undergone much violence in the process that followed, for which the translator is solely responsible. No attempt has been made to follow the Irish verse forms.
For a great deal of detailed information in a short space on the Táin and its background, the introduction to Cecile O’Rahilly’s Táin Bó Cuailnge is recommended. For a proper consideration of the place of the Táin in saga literature, or in the Irish tradition, and for comments on the historical, mythological, symbolic, or other larger aspects, a list of further reading is suggested on page xxiv.
Scholars and commentators continue to pursue these topics with fascinating results. For Alwyn and Brinley Rees, for example, in Celtic Heritage, ‘[...] the Táin appears as an example of the classic struggle between the priestly and the warrior classes, each of which tends to usurp the functions of the other.’ Heinrich Zimmer saw the pillow-talk which gives rise to the Táin as a conflict between Celtic-Aryan fatherdominance and the mother-dominance of the pre-Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles. Frank O’Connor suggested that the earliest layer of the story, incompletely preserved in the rosc passages, constitutes the remains of an ancient ironic anti-feminist poem. T. F. O’Rahilly believed that the Ulster stories describe the historical circumstances of the invasion of Ulster by Uí Neill invaders from Leinster (not Connacht), [xii] the idea of Medb as queen of Connacht-Medb was in fact the tutelary goddess of Temair, or Tara, in Leinster-being a mistake on the part of writers who were unaware that Irish tribes did not have queens.
Discussion of these and similar matters is outside the scope of this book, but a few features of the Táin as it is presented here seem to call for comment. It is quickly apparent, for example, that even allowing for the later interpolations there is no unifying narrative tone: the story is told in places with a neutral realism, in places with an air of folk or fantasy. It is clear also that the verbal or conventional quality of the narrative counts occasionally for more than consistency: Finnabair, for example, who dies of shame in chapter XII, is brought back to life and ‘stays with’ Cúchulainn for the sake of a storyteller’s flourish at the end of the Táin, a flourish that is factually inconsistent with that at the end of “Cúchulainn’s Courtship of Emer”. Lists of heroes, similarly, are very likely to contain some who (taking the story realistically) are dead or absent; the seven Maine, however many are killed, remain seven; hero after hero is reluctant to meet Cúchulainn because he is a beardless boy, despite the mounting evidence of his prowess; Cúchulainn vows to kill Medb whenever he sees her, but foregoes his chance at the end of the Táin, ‘not being a killer of women’ - though he has just previously killed the two lamenting women sent by Medb to deceive him (not to mention Lochu, in mistake for Medb, in chapter V and Eis Enchenn in “Cúchulainn’s Courtship of Emer”.) But these things are familiar in epic literature; to see them as ‘mistakes’, or even flaws, is to misapply modern conventions and ignore the real nature, and perhaps the oral origin, of the stories.
One of the major elements of the Táin is its topography. Place-names and their frequently fanciful meanings and origins occupy a remarkable place by modern standards. It is often enough justification for the inclusion of an incident that it ends in the naming of some physical feature; certain incidents, indeed, seem to have been invented merely to account for a place-name. The outstanding example is in the climax of the Táin itself, where the final battle (toward which we might assume the action is leading) is treated very casually, while attention is directed in detail to the wanderings of the mortally-wouinded Donn Cuailnge around Ireland, naming the places as he goes.
This phenomenon is not confined to the Táin, or the Ulster cycle; it is a continuing preoccupation of early and medieval Irish literature, which contains a whole class of topographical works, including prose [xiii] tracts and poems of enormous length composed by the professional poets, who were expected to recite from them on demand.
The topographical element is important for a full appreciation of the Táin. Much of the action consists of the movement of the Connacht armies across Ireland and back and forth over the country which makes up part of the present-day County Louth. We can be certain about the identification of some of the Táin place-names and certain also that others are unidentifiable, having been replaced by English names over the years, or being merely descriptive words or phrases that might apply to any number of places, or the result of a storyteller’s or scribe’s rationalisation or fantasy. But there are many names which, short of complete certainty, can be identified with reasonable confidence. The Táin’s sense of place is on the whole much more realistic than its sense of place-names and their origin, and it is possible to follow the route of the Táin in all its essentials.
Maps of the route are given on pages xix-xxiii. Simplified as these maps are, it would have been impossible to put them together without expert help. This was provided by Professor John V. Kelleher and Mr. Gene C. Haley of Harvard University, who have been extraordinarily generous with the fruit of their researches, and with many suggestions. Their findings however, are not yet final, and are by no means adequately represented here. The maps in the present work are designed only to give enough information to follow the movements of the story.
A strong element in the sagas is their directness in bodily matters: the easy references to seduction, copulation, urination, the picking of vermin, the suggestion of incest in ’How C6chulainn was Begotten’, and so on. This coarseness was a source of some uneasiness to Lady Gregory (I left out a good deal I thought you would not care about for one reason or another’, she wrote to the people of Kiltartan), but it seems very mild to a modern reader - an effect of the same directness with which the story treats killing and mutilation. If Fergus’s adultery with Medb calls for special comment it is only because their relationship is of central importance in the Táin, from the clash over the Galeóin at the beginning of the expedition to the true curtain-line uttered by Fergus at the end of the great battle. Their encounter in the wood, where Fergus (clearly not up to Medb’s demands) loses his sword, is the source of continual phallic joking in the Táin until the sword is restored before the battle and Fergus goes out to pour his released fury on Conchobor, the old usurper.
Probably the greatest achievement of the Táin and the Ulster cycle is the series of women, some in full scale and some in miniature, on [xiv] whose strong and diverse personalities the action continually turns: Medb, Derdriu, Macha, Nes, Aife. It may be as goddess-figures, ultimately, that these women have their power; it is certainly they, under all the violence, who remain most real in the memory.
The story, as the Táin ends, is not finished; other tales continue the action. The most important of these for the plot are: