Láeg: What did you do with Fer Diad’s body? Cú Chulainn: What didn’t I do with the body? Láeg: Cú Chulainn: Okay, that sounded more sexual than I intended. I disposed of the corpse respectfully.
“When someone points at your black clothes and asks whose funeral it is, having a look around the room and saying ‘Haven’t decided yet’ is typically a good response.”
I told myself a long time ago that I wasn’t allowed to buy the modern Irish version of Táin Bó Cúailnge until my modern Irish was actually good enough to read it. But, well, I was in An Siopa Leabhar on Saturday, and it was just there, waiting for me, and my other six versions of the Táin were getting lonely, so…
I was actually at a paper Darach Ó Scolaí gave in Cork in 2019 about working on this translation/update, and how he ended up thinking of it as a kind of “fourth recension”. Since I’m spending most of my time in the linguistically chaotic early modern period when it comes to the Ulster Cycle at the moment, I’m enjoying seeing how stories and their language develop over time, and this feels like an extension of that.
But also I just really enjoy collecting copies of the Táin. This is number 7. (The others are Kinsella and Carson’s English translations, Cecile O'Rahilly’s editions of R1, Book of Leinster, and Stowe, and Colmán Ó Raghallaigh’s graphic novel An Táin.)
Bonus: I got through the whole visit to An Siopa Leabhar without speaking English! Granted, I didn’t say much more than “go raibh maith agat” in Irish either, but hey! I tried! I maybe panicked and ran away rather than trying to say more words but it could have been worse.
