The last four tales are all short, and perhaps are more truly “preludes” (remscela) than the Tain bo Fraich, which has indeed enough of interest in itself to make it an independent tale, and is as long as the four put together.  All the five tales have been rendered into verse, with a prose literal translation opposite to the verse rendering, for reasons already given in the preface to the first volume.  A short introduction, describing the manuscript authority, is prefixed to each; they all seem to go back in date to the best literary period, but appear to have been at any rate put into their present form later than the Great Tain, in order to lead up to it.  A possible exception to this may be found at the end of the Tain bo Flidais, which seems to give a different account of the end of the war of Cualgne, and to claim that Cuchulain was defeated, and that Connaught gained his land for its allies.  It may be mentioned that the last four tales are expressly stated in the text to be “remscela” to the Great Tain.

INTRODUCTION IN VERSE

When to an Irish court of old
Came men, who flocked from near and far
To hear the ancient tale that told
Cuchulain’s deeds in Cualgne’s War;

Oft, ere that famous tale began,
Before their chiefest bard they hail,
Amid the throng some lesser man
Arose, to tell a lighter tale;

He’d fell how Maev and Ailill planned
Their mighty hosts might best be fed,
When they towards the Cualgne land
All Irelands swarming armies led;

How Maev the youthful princes sent
To harry warlike Regamon,
How they, who trembling, from her went,
His daughters and his cattle won;

How Ailill’s guile gained Darla’s cows,
How vengeful fairies marked that deed;
How Fergus won his royal spouse
Whose kine all Ireland’s hosts could feed;

How, in a form grotesque and weird,
Cuchulain found a Power Divine;
Or how in shapes of beasts appeared
The Magic Men, who kept the Swine;

Or how the rowan’s guardian snake
Was roused by order of the king;
Or how, from out the water, Fraech
To Finnabar restored her ring.

And though, in greater tales, they chose
Speech mired with song, men’s hearts to sway,
Such themes as these they told in prose,
Like speakers at the “Feis” to-day.

To men who spake the Irish tongue
That form of Prose was pleasing well,
While other lands in ballads sung
Such tales as these have loved to tell: 

So we, who now in English dress
These Irish tales would fain
And seek their spirit to express,
Have set them down in ballad verse;

And, though to Celts the form be strange,
Seek not too much the change to blame;
’Tis but the form alone we change;
The sense, the spirit rest the same.

CONTENTS