apparently at the "Homeric" stage of development, though the Irish heroes suffer in comparison with the Greek by reason of the immeasurable inferiority of these Gaelic Sagas to the Iliad and Odyssey. There is the same custom of fighting from chariots, the same tried charioteer, the hero's closest friend, and the same unstable relationship between the chieftains and the king.[1]
The Achilles of the Ulster Cycle is Cuchulain. The Tain Bo Cuailgne (Englished rather improperly as the "Cattle-raid of Cooley") is the long and famous Saga that brings his glory to its height.[2] Other Sagas tell of his mysterious birth, his youthful deeds, his wooing, his various feats, and then the moving, fateful story of his death. Loved by many women, cherished by heroes, beautiful in face and form, possessed of strength, agility, and skill in arms beyond belief, uncontrolled, chivalric, his battle-ardour unquenchable, he is a brilliant epic hero. But his story is weakened by hyperbole. Even today we know how sword-strokes and spear-thrust kill. So do great narrators, who likewise realize the literary power of truth. Through the Iliad there is no combat between heroes where spear and sword do not pierce and kill as they do in fact. So in the Sagas of the Norse, the man falls before the mortal blow. But in the Ulster Cycle, day after day, two heroes may mangle each other in every impossible and fantastic way, beyond the bounds of the faintest shadow of verisimilitude.[3] In this weakness of hyperbole the Irish Sagas are
- ↑ This comparison with Homeric society might be extended so as to include the Celts of Britain and Gaul. Close affinities appear between the Gauls and the personages of the Ulster Cycle. Several of its Sagas have to do with the "hero's portion" awarded to the bravest warrior at the feast, a source of much pleasant trouble. Posidonius, writing in the time of Cicero, mentions the same custom among the Celts of Gaul (Didot-Müller, Fragmenta hist. Graec. t. iii. p. 260, col. I; D'Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction, etc., pp. 297, 298).
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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).
