The older version of the “Tain bo Cuailnge” has been translated by Miss Winifred Faraday (Grimm Library, No. xvi. 1904).  In her Introduction (p. xvii.) Miss Faraday argues against the assumption “that L.L. preserves an old version of the episode,” and questions “whether the whole Fer Diad[FN#67] episode may not be late.”  The truth of this one contention would by no means involve that of the other; and again, both might be true without invalidating any of the conclusions drawn by Mr. Leahy (supra, p. 115).  If the episode as we have it first took shape in the tenth century, it would be late as compared with much of the rest of the “Tain,” and yet it would be the earliest example in post-classic European literature of the sentiments and emotions to which it gives such fine and sympathetic expression.  In comparing the two versions, the following fact is at once noticeable.  The Y.B.L. text occupies pp. 100-112 of Miss Faraday’s translation, in round figures, 320 lines of 8 words to the line, or some 2600 words; the Leinster version, omitting the verse, fills some 500 lines of 14 words, or 7000 words.  Up to a certain point, however, the actual meeting of the two champions, there is no difference between the versions in length; the prose of both runs to about 2200 words.  But the whole of the actual fight (supra, pp. 129-153 in the Leinster version) is compressed into a page and a half in the older redaction, some 800 words as against over 4000.  Obviously this cannot represent the original state of things; it would be psychologically impossible for any story-teller to carry on his narrative up to a given stage with the dramatic vigour, point, and artistically chosen detail displayed in the first portion of the Y.B.L. version of the combat, and then to treat the culmination of the tale in such a huddled, hasty, scamped manner.  The most likely explanation is that the original from which the Y.B.L. scribe was copying was imperfect, and that the lacuna was supplied from memory, and from a very faulty memory.  No conclusion can thus, I think, be drawn from the fact that the details of the actual combat are so bald and meagre in the only extant text of the older redaction.

[FN#67] This is the spelling in Y. B. L. In L.L. the name appears as one word, “Ferdiad”; usually scanned as a dissyllable—­though occasionally as a trisyllable.  The spelling Ferdia is the conventional one sanctioned by the usage of Ferguson, Aubrey de Vere, and others; the scansion of the word as a trisyllable is on the same authority.

If the two versions be compared where they are really comparable, i.e. in that portion which both narrate at approximately the same length, the older redaction will be found fuller of incident, the characters drawn with a bolder, more realistic touch, the presentment more vigorous and dramatic.  Ferdiad is unwilling to go against Cuchulain not, apparently, solely for prudential reasons, and he has to be goaded and taunted