SOURCE: "Great-Bladdered Medb; Mythology and Invention in the Táin Bó Cuailnge," Éire-Ireland, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1975, pp. 14-34.

In this essay, Bowen examines the interaction of "mythology and invention" in the character of Queen Medb, claiming that "she has become a queen who, in spite of being human and fallible, is never quite free of her former divinity."

"Probably the greatest achievement of the Táin and the Ulster Cycle," says Thomas Kinsella in the preface to his recent translation, "is the series of women, some in full scale and some in miniature, on whose strong and diverse personalities the action continually turns.… It may be as goddess-figures, ultimately, that these women have their power; it is certainly they, under all the violence, who remain most real in the memory."¹ Queen Medb is often said to be a goddess, or a goddess-figure; probably no one who reads Irish literature...