Cuchulain Of Muirtheme [Paperback]

Lady Augusta Gregory (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2004

On the morning of the morrow the fight was begun again, and the two sans of Scathach were going up the path of feats to fight against three others of the best champions of Aoife, Cue, Bim, and Blaicne, sons of Ess Enchenn. When Scathach saw them going up she gave a sigh, for she was afraid for her two sons, but just then Cuchulain came up with them, and he leaped before them on to the path of feats, and met the three champions, and all three fell by him.

Editorial Reviews

Review

a selection from the Preface by W. B. Yeats:

I THINK this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time. Perhaps I should say that it is the best book that has ever come out of Ireland; for the stories which it tells are a chief part of Ireland's gift to the imagination of the world ? and it tells them perfectly for the first time. Translators from the Irish have hitherto retold one story or the other from some one version, and not often with any fine understanding of English, of those changes of rhythm for instance that are changes of the sense. They have translated the best and fullest manuscripts they knew, as accurately as they could, and that is all we have the right to expect from the first translators of a difficult and old literature. But few of the stories really begin to exist as great works of imagination until somebody has taken the best bits out of many manuscripts. Sometimes, as in Lady Gregory's version of Deirdre, a dozen manuscripts have to give their best before the beads are ready for the necklace. It has been necessary also to leave out as to add, for generations of copyists, who had often but little sympathy with the stories they copied, have mixed versions together in a clumsy fashion, often repeating one incident several times, and every century has ornamented what was once a simple story with its own often extravagant ornament. We do not perhaps exaggerate when we say that no story has come down to us in the form it had when the storyteller told it in the winter evenings. Lady Gregory has done her work of compression and selection at once so firmly and so reverently that I cannot believe that anybody, except now and then for a scientific purpose, will need another text than this, or than the version of it the Gaelic League is about to publish in Modern Irish.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (June 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1419114662
• ISBN-13: 978-1419114663
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,444,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)