THE THEMES AND STRUCTURE OF AIDED ECHACH MAIC MAIREDA

Celtica 32, 2020

It has long been claimed that Early Irish literature portrays a form of reembodiment which is the equivalent of Pythagorean metempsychosis. But his is not what we find in most examples. Where a human is said to have traversed multiple embodiments, the process of reembodiment generally comes to an end once the person in question has been restored to their proper form and bequeathed their memories of ancient history to the Church. However, some of the earliest stories about Mongán mac Fiachnai do not fit this pattern. Immacaldam Choluim Cille and Scél asa mberar co mbad hé Find mac Cumaill Mongán offer no indication that Mongán's sequence of embodiments is drawing to an end, or which of his bodies may properly be his. This study will interpret the open-endedness of Mongán's rebirths, in these two instances, in light of related stories which have also been attributed to Cín Dromma Snechtai. Doing so will allow us to determine the degree to which Mongán's rebirths show parallels with Pythagorean metempsychosis, and the meaning these rebirths had for their medieval Christian context. Moreover, it will demonstrate further links between the tales that the current consensus places in Cín Dromma Snechta.

Folk Life - Journal of Ethnological Studies, 2005

Taking into account the birth and conducts of the Uí Néill’s king Niall Frossach, The aim of this work is to exemplify how the supernatural sign operates in the story as a forecast of what the child will signify for the realm and for his people. Starting with Niall’s famous Act of Truth, the analysis will show how the figure of the right king and the destiny of his realm have been predicted since the beginning

This book – the result of about ten years research – deals mostly with the mythological substratum of narratives, composed and written down in early medieval Ireland, within the broader context of Indo-European and Eurasian mythologies. Some chapters of this book were published previously as articles in different periodicals and proceedings of conferences. Studies in Irish Mythology relaunches them, reworked and updated, together with hitherto unpublished chapters, as a single comprehensive book with the aim of providing a reader towards a tentative reconstruction of an early Irish mythological worldview.

Seanchas Ard Mhacha, 2012

2014

In 2006, Ann Dooley brought out an important monograph on the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Playing the Hero: Reading the Irish Saga Táin Bó Cúailnge, a volume that dared to go beyond mere analysis or summary and grappled headlong with Ireland's crown jewel of storytelling. Dooley challenged readers with an "open text" approach to the complex epic, using a Barthesian critical methodology. Needless to say, her conclusions would have unsettled the venerable likes of Whitley Stokes, Brian Ó Cuív or Fred Norris Robinson when she wrote: "It may have struck readers as odd that this entire volume has been skewed, biased even, against a straightforward investigation of the main show attraction of Irish sagas generally and the Táin in particular" (2006: 204). To celebrate such forthrightness, her gifted teaching and Dooley's thirty years plus of scholarly publications, fellow Torontonians and prominent scholars in medieval Celtic studies in 2013 published sixteen fresh and important studies of early Irish and Welsh literature and history, literary theory and feminist approaches to medieval Celtic literature. The title refers to the "branching," "intricate" or "complicated" nature of storytelling (see page 1) as well as to the learned Dooley's varied pursuits. A detailed introduction by Sheehan, Findon and Follett (1-8) offers a dense overview of the contents. To lead off, Michael W. Herren offers "Patrick, Gaul, and Gildas: A New Lens on the Apostle of Ireland's Career" (9-25) in quest of more comprehensive information about the saint's training and episcopal ordination. While the argument rambles, Herren does draw on recent revelations (in particular on Gildas and the early British church), deducing evidence regarding monastic styles. He concludes convincingly that Patrick was ordained a bishop in Gaul where he had been "nourished and encouraged" by fratres "for whom he openly expressed [...] admiration" (25). Next, in "The Sea and the Spirit: Two Notes," John Carey analyzes Eriugena's interesting (quasi-Augustinian) sea metaphor-the vast deep of the ocean as divine substance or dangerous path of sin and hardship-as a follow-up to Peter Dronke's invocations on the subject. Drawing on the "voyage itself as the vehicle of enlightenment" (28), Carey then proceeds to adduce further Hibernian analogies, as forerunners, with various immrama: the voyages of St.

2013

Landscape and Myth in North-Western Europe, 2019

More than a century after editions of the texts were first published, the connection between the medieval Irish corpus of placename lore known as Dindṡenchas Érenn 2 'Lore of Eminent Places of Ireland' and other medieval Irish narratives is still little understood. 3 The textual complexity of the Dindṡenchas alone-with its myriad versions, in prose and in versemakes this task rather challenging. 4 Yet, the issue is not only textual, but also literary: not only do we need to out which version of which medieval Irish saga borrowed, copied, or paraphrased which item from the Dindṡenchas corpus (or, indeed, vice versa), we need to address what function this item occupies in the text into which is has been embedded. The Middle Irish recension of Tochmarc Emire 'The Courtship of Emer' presents a particularly interesting case in point since it makes use of several dindṡenchas narratives and even seems to supply some of its own. 5 Tochmarc Emire forms part of a group of medieval Irish narratives commonly referred to as the Ulster Cycle (Irish Rúraíocht) since it primarily focuses on the court of Conchobor mac Nessa in Emain Macha (Navan Fort, Co. Armagh) in the province of Ulster. Its main protagonist is Cú Chulainn mac Súaltaim, whose heroic biography supplies many of the