Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Jeffrey Gantz [10]
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, was slain 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 will – is whether the Druimm Snechtai version was very different from the one in the Yellow Book of 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’.