Heroic Romances of Ireland: Verse and Literal Prose Translations

Arthur Herbert Leahy published Heroic Romances of Ireland in two volumes in 1905 and 1906, and made a decision no other translator of the period made: for the verse passages he prints his own metrical rendering and a literal prose translation of the same Irish, so the two can be read against each other.That is the reason to reprint him rather than a smoother modern retelling. Early Irish verse does not survive translation intact, and every English version is an argument about what to sacrifice. Leahy shows his working. A reader with no Irish can see where the metre forced a word, where a kenning was unpacked into a phrase, and where the literal sense is stranger than any translation makes it sound.The tales are the core of the Ulster cycle. The Courtship of Etain with its prologue in fairyland. Mac Datho's Boar, which is a quarrel over who carves. The Sick-Bed of Cuchulain. The Exile of the Sons of Usnach, and Deirdre's lament over them, which is one of the oldest surviving laments in a European vernacular. The Combat at the Ford, where Cuchulain kills his foster-brother over four days.Volume two adds Tain Bo Fraich, the raids for Dartaid's, Regamon's and Flidais's cattle, and the Apparition of the Great Queen, where the Morrigan comes to Cuchulain in three shapes.Both volumes are printed complete in one, with Leahy's preface to each, his pronunciation guide, his list of names, his special and general notes, and his transcription of the Leabhar na hUidhri text that closes the Courtship of Etain.