outdone only by the monstrous doings of the epics of India.
Besides hyperbole, Irish tales display another weakness, which is not unpleasing, although an element of failure both in the people and their literature. This is the quality of non-arrival. Some old tales evince it in the unsteadfast purpose of the narrative, the hero quite forgetting the initial motive of his action. In the Voyage of Mældun, for instance, a son sets out upon the ocean to seek his father's murderers, a motive which is lost sight of amid the marvels of the voyage.[1] As may be imagined, qualities of vanity, truculence, irrationality, hyperbole, and non-arrival or lack of sequence, frequently impart an air of bouffe to the Irish Sagas, making them humorous beyond the intention of their composers.[2]
Yet true heroic notes are to be heard.[3] And however rare the tales which have not the makings of a brawl on every page, these truculent Sagas sometimes speak with power and pathos, and sweetly present the loveliness of nature or the charms of women; all in a manner happily indicative of the impressionable Irish temperament. Examples are the moving tales of The Children of Usnach and the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne.[4] They bring to
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ 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."
- ↑ "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)
