This hefty collection of studies comes from the Fifth International Colloquium on "Ireland and Europe," devoted this time to the topic inscribed in the book's subtitle, held at the University of Konstanz in 1998, and organized by the editors, who also edited the proceedings of three previous colloquia (published in 1984, 1987, and 1996). The contributions, twenty-six altogether (some very long), are listed on the website for Four Courts Press (http://www.four-courts-press.ie/), which has produced here another characteristically attractive book, bearing witness to Four Courts' leadership among Irish scholarly presses. Weighing in at 400 large-sized pages of dense (but still eminently legible) print, this is a bargain for the price.
Some of the entries to this installment of "Ireland and Europe" do indeed deal with the stated subject of texts and transmission vis-a-vis Ireland and the wider European scene in the Early Middle Ages (for instance, Martin McNamara's "Apocryphal Infancy Narratives: European and Irish transmission," a complement to his 2001 edition of the relevant texts from Irish sources). Others do not but offer their own particular scholarly thrills, such as Wolfgang Meid's magisterial survey of Indo-European words meaning "love," "friend(ship)," and "own(er)(ship)" ("'Freundschaft' und 'Liebe' in keltischen Sprachen"), and Michael Enright's plucky exercise in comparative mythology, "Fires of knowledge: a theory of warband education in medieval Ireland and Homeric Greece." A couple of the pieces folded into this collection by Ni Chathain and Richter have precious little to do with Celtic Studies but do treat subjects of text and transmission (and concomitant issues having to do with written and oral tradition) in other medieval milieux. There are also some articles here that are bewilderingly specialized and detailed, unwelcoming even to the game Celticist, Hiberno-Latinist, or medievalist, and the inconsistent policy of the editors in regard to including translations and the originals of the textual extracts does not help to overcome the bewilderment. Other contributions, however, stand out as lucidly presented studies of particular strands of medieval Irish literature, managing both to encompass the subject and to offer fresh insights. These include Charles Doherty's demonstration of the state of the art in Irish hagiography studies, "The transmission of the cult of St Maedhog," Peter J. Smith's helpful introduction to "Early Irish historical verse: the evolution of a genre," and Robin Chapman Stacey's innovative "'Speaking in Riddles'", about the "False Judgments of Caratnia", one of the most literary of early Irish law tracts.