Tara of the Kings: Ancient Irish Myths and Legends Retold

Irish mythology comprises a rich and diverse body of stories accumulated over thousands of years in a variety of oral and literary forms. The stories reach back into pre-history, telling of the island’s ‘original’ inhabitants and their relations with a series of invading races throughout what is assumed to be the neolithic, bronze and iron age periods. Preserved in memory by professional castes of druids and bards, the stories survived in oral form until they began to be written down towards the end of the first millennium by monkish clerics keen to establish a narrative of Irish history culminating in Christian hegemony. This new collection rewrites stories from the canon as simply and as accessibly as possible to win a new audience for this wonderful tradition. Such stories will include Deirdre and the Sons of Ulster from the Ulster Cycle and Finn mac Cool and the Salmon of Knowledge from the Fenian Cycle, as well as The Children of Lir and The Coming of Patrick. These stories will be accompanied by commentaries which introduce readers to some of the historical and literary issues attending the survival of the stories, all beautifully illustrated with images from the printed collections of the British Library.