[152] Probably first written down in the seventh century. Some of the Cuchulain Sagas are rendered by D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique; they are given popularly in E. Hull’s Cuchulain Saga (D. Nutt, London, 1898). Also to some extent in Hyde’s Lit. Hist., etc.
[153] See the famous Battle of the Ford between Cuchulain and Ferdiad (Hyde, Lit. Hist. of Ireland, pp. 328-334). A more burlesque hyperbole is that of the three caldrons of cold water prepared for Cuchulain to cool his battle-heat: when he was plunged in the first, it boiled; plunged into the second, no one could hold his hand in it; but in the third, the water became tepid (D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique, p. 204).
[154] Certain interpolated Christian chapters at the end tell how Mældun is led to forgive the murderers—an idea certainly foreign to the original pagan story, which may perhaps have had its own ending. The tale is translated in P. W. Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances (London, 1894), and by F. Lot in D’Arbois de Jubainville’s Épopée celtique, pp. 449-500.
[155] Perhaps no one of the Ulster Sagas exhibits these qualities more amusingly than The Feast of Bricriu, a tale in which contention for the “hero’s portion” is the leading motive. Its personae are the men and women who constantly appear and reappear throughout this cycle. In this Saga they act and speak admirably in character, and some of the descriptions bring the very man before our eyes. It is translated by George Henderson, Vol. II. Irish Texts Society (London, 1899), and also by D’Arbois de Jubainville in his Épopée celtique (Paris, 1892).
[156] For example, in a historical Saga the great King Brian speaks, fighting against the Norsemen: “O God ... retreat becomes us not, and I myself know I shall not leave this place alive; and what would it profit me if I did? For Aibhell of Grey Crag came to me last night, and told me that I should be killed this day.”
[157] “Deirdre, or the Fate of the Sons of Usnach,” is rendered in E. Hull’s Cuchulain Saga; Hyde, Lit. Hist., chap, xxv., and D’Arbois de Jubainville, Épopée celtique, pp. 217-319. The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne was edited by O’Duffy for the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language (Dublin, Gill and Son, 1895), and less completely in Joyce’s Old Celtic Romances (London, 1894).
[158] Cf. Hyde, o.c., chaps. xxi. xxxvi.
[159] The Voyage of Bran, edited and translated by Kuno Meyer, with essays on the Celtic Otherworld, by Alfred Nutt (2 vols., David Nutt, London, 1895). A Saga usually is prose interspersed with lyric verses at critical points of the story.
[160] On Tara, see Index in O’Curry’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish; also Hyde, Literary History, pp. 126-130. For this story, see O’Grady, Silva Gaedelica, pp. 77-88 (London, 1892); Hyde, pp. 226-232.
[161] See D’Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction à la lit. celtique, pp. 259-271 (Paris, 1883).