Ireland produced some of the earliest vernacular texts in Europe, and Old and Middle Irish literature flourished for centuries. Despite the rich diversity of this literature, which encompasses legal texts, onomastics, annals and genealogies as well as sagas and lyric poetry, it is not as well known as it should be. This can be attributed to the difficulty of the language, but also to the tendency of Irish scholars, until recently, to focus more on the linguistic aspects of the texts than on their literary and historical value. This has begun to change, however, and in this book, aimed at students and interested non-specialists alike, Ní Bhrolcháin provides a thorough introduction to the vast array of texts from medieval Ireland, providing plot summaries of both well known and more obscure tales, along with relevant historical background. Although this book does not provide translations, its comprehensive notes direct readers to translations and/or editions for further study.
The Introduction and Chapter 1 together provide an outline of relevant historical events in Ireland, including the early arrival of Christianity, which brought with it literacy and the established written traditions of the classical world. These first sections also sketch in the complicated and often fruitful relationship between the pre-Christian oral tradition in Ireland and the new literate culture of the church. Ní Bhrolcháin outlines the general features of the surviving medieval texts in Old and Middle Irish, written in both prose and poetry, and sometimes in 'prosimetrum,' a mixture of the two.
The remainder of the book is divided according to categories which have been used by scholars of Irish literature to distinguish various types of texts. Thus, there are chapters on "The Mythological Cycle," "The Heroic Cycle," "The Fenian Cycle" (stories about Finn mac Cumaill), and "The Cycle of the Kings." There are also more thematic chapters devoted to "The Otherworld," "The Hero and Heroic Biography," and "Kings, Goddesses, and Sovereignty." As Ní Bhrolcháin notes, many of these categories overlap, and some tales could fall within more than one of them; in such cases, the reader is directed to the section which contains the extended discussion of the text. The book concludes with an Afterword calling for more accessible translations and more sustained analysis of these texts as literature in the interests of opening up the field to a broader public.
Ní Bhrolcháin's summaries and her detailed discussions of various tales are complemented by brief but valuable overviews of past and current critical approaches to the texts in question. For instance, at the end of the chapter on "The Mythological Cycle" she outlines some of the types of myth criticism that have been applied to these tales in the past, including Frazer's notion of the dying god, and Georges Dumézil's theory of a tri-partite structure in Indo-European society which has been discerned, by some Celtic scholars, in the mythological text Cath Maige Tuired (The Battle of Moytura), the tale of an epic battle between the Tuatha De Danaan and the Fomoiri. She also notes the influence of structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and his belief that "myth is a way of communicating like economic exchange or kinship exchanges." (40)
The chapter on "The Heroic Cycle" ends with a focussed discussion of the great epic, the Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), its dating, evolution, and mythological features. "The Fenian Cycle" outlines the evolution of these tales from the earliest fragments to the later flowering of traditions about Finn and his band of heroes. Ní Bhrolcháin discusses possible connections between the fenian stories and continental tales such as those about Tristan, and notes the scholarly debates around whether this tale type originated in Europe or in Ireland. The "Cycles of the Kings" comprise more than a hundred tales of rulers both legendary and historical. In this chapter, Ní Bhrolcháin wisely selects only a few of the most important ones for summary and discussion, notably those that deal with major dynasties such as the Uí Néill. Some of these tales seek to represent the ideal qualities of a good king.
The chapter on "The Otherworld" usefully breaks down the mass of tales containing Otherworld journeys into two main categories, Adventures and Voyages, and outlines the major features of each. For instance, in Adventures (echtraí) the hero is usually invited to the Otherworld and may end up staying there, never to return, while the Voyages (immrama) are usually undertaken for personal reasons, and the hero always returns (81). Ní Bhrolcháin's discussion of the many scholarly debates about these tales, particularly concerning the significance of apparently Christian features in some of them, adds valuable context. She also discusses the many Vision tales, in which the Otherworld depicted is clearly the Christian Otherworld of Heaven and Hell; in these stories, the receiver of the vision returns to describe his experience to others. A discussion of the exuberant parody of the Vision genre, Aisling Meic Conglinne (The Vision of Mac Conglinne) rounds out the chapter.
"Kings, Goddesses and Sovereignty" addresses one of the most persistent motifs in Irish literature--the depiction of the relationship between a king and his territory through the figure of a beautiful woman who represents the sovereignty of the land, and who often signals his right to rule by giving him an alcoholic drink and/or sleeping with him. Ní Bhrolcháin notes the three main manifestations of this "sovereignty goddess" in the tradition: the old woman who becomes young again when she meets the rightful king; the madwoman who regains her sanity on meeting the rightful king; and the young woman who regains her lost status when she meets the rightful king (105-06). Many of these tales also express concern about the qualities of a good ruler, and stress the connection between the reign of the rightful king and the fertility of the land.
The chapter on "The Hero and Heroic Biography" is particularly lengthy because hero tales are so numerous and important in the medieval Irish tradition. Ní Bhrolcháin sets her discussion of the main features of these heroic biographies--extraordinary conception and birth, an account of boyhood deeds, the hero's invulnerability, his fight with a monster, his acquisition of a wife, a visit to the Otherworld, his exile and return, and finally his death--within the framework of anthropological approaches such as Van Gennep's concept of liminality that have been used fruitfully by scholars in analyzing heroes like Cú Chulainn and Finn.
The concluding brief discussion of "Poets and Poetry" touches on the main features of medieval Irish poetry, most of which was composed by male poets. The few references to female poets in early Ireland are also highlighted. The book includes a number of beautiful full colour photographs of some of Ireland's ancient landscapes and decorative objects and manuscripts.
Ní Bhrolcháin's prose is accessible and free of jargon; technical terms are always explained and Irish titles are translated, all in an effort to welcome the non-specialist in. Despite some sloppy proofreading which results in occasional punctuation errors and repetitions, this book provides an extremely valuable overview of medieval Irish literature, and offers students an excellent starting point for further exploration of this rich literary tradition.