Irish Mythology - a History of the Tain Bo Cuailnge
Tain Bo Cuailnge meaning the Cattle Raid of Cooley is a legendary epic from early Irish literature. The Táin Bó Cuailnge represents the oldest vernacular tale of Western Europe, predating both Beowulf and Homer's Odyssey. It describes the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Queen Medb of Connaught and her husband Ailill intending to steal the Brown Bull of Cuailnge. They are faced only by the boy warrior Cuchulainn, the rest of the men of Ulster being incapacitated by an ancient curse placed by the ancient Celtic goddess of war, Macha. Cuchulainn is young enough to be free of the curse, he manages to hold off the invading armies until the Ulstermen are free of the curse. Aided only by his charioteer Laeg he wages a guerrilla campaign against the invading hordes. However Medb succeeds in capturing the bull but Cuchulainn prevents her from returning to Connaught by invoking the right of single combat at fords. For months Cuchulainn challenges and defeats warrior after warrior. The greatest of these fights is against his foster brother and best friend Ferdiad, a fierce contest rages for three days, Cuchulainn eventually killing his opponent with the mighty spear called the Gae Bulg. Eventually the Ulstermen are freed from their curse and one by one they appear on the battlefield and the final conflict occurs in which Medb's armies are routed, however she manages in hauling the Brown Bull of Cuailnge back to Conaught where he fights her white bull, Finnbheannach. The Brown Bull kills him but is mortally wounded, it wanders around Ireland creating place names before returning home to die of exhaustion.
The world portrayed in the Tain is an essentially pre-Christian heroic age. War is conducted between warriors armed with swords and spears and mounted in chariots with drivers. Interestingly, it is also a world in which a queen may possess wealth independently of her husband and, indeed, compete with him and raise an army. The Tain Bo Cuailnge has survived in two main recensions, the first is contained in the Lebor na hUidre, an eleventh century text compiled in Clonmacnoise and in the fourteenth century Yellow Book of Lecan. A complete text can be compiled by combining these two sources. The second recension can be found in the twelfth century Book of Leinster.
Russell Shortt is a travel consultant with Exploring Ireland, the leading specialists in customised, private escorted tours, escorted coach tours and independent self drive tours of Ireland. Article source: http://www.exploringireland.net
(ArticlesBase SC #588687)
Charles Dickens was a famous writer when he was alive and he is now one of the best-known and most widely read of English writers. Dickens wrote from comedy to social criticism and from history to journalism. The history of Dickens’s life that made him wrote many novels about social life and criticized of Victorian.
Translation has played and plays a key role in the development of world culture. It is common to think of culture as national and absolutely distinct. If we begin to examine the impact of literary translation, the possibility of communication beyond anything so confined by geographical location is clear.
Six Famous Americans Whose Birthdays are February 15th
Six Famous Americans Born on February 14th
Five Famous Americans Born on February 13th
Americans who share February 12th birthdays
Who does Thomas Edison share a birthday with? Check it out!
February 9th birthdays of five famous Americans
Dylan Thomas has always being a man trapped between eras, very difficult to pin-down, far from easily definable, charmingly elusive. His origins are murky, perhaps not murky in fact but murky in attempting to ascertain his influences, in attempting to pinpoint where his Muses flock. By the age of four the young Dylan was supposed to be able to recite some Shakespeare that his father force fed him, this smacks of a fatherly blindness, perhaps bestowing the lofty ideals that had eluded him on his
7. Club Rock Shandy An even mixture of Club Orange and Club Lemon in a pint glass with chunks of ice. Club Rock Shandy has quietened many the young fella in the pub, it’s pure exoticism swotting out any thoughts of wanting to go home and leaving many the auld fella thanking God for Club!
7. Irish Stew Recipes for Irish stew run the length of your arm, there are thousands upon thousands of variations. Each household has a specific way of making this fine dish and each counters that their mother’s is the best. A simple rule of thumb is hock in what vegetables are lying around, just ensure you have lamb as your meat, none of this fancy beef business that some hostelries are offering up these days. A great filler on a chilly winter’s day.
John Keats, I am not sure why but he has always struck me as being somewhat old, but of course he was never old, he died at the tender age of twenty-five. I don’t know why I think that way, whether it be his worldly views or his whole of the moon visions or perhaps the way the legion of Romantics exalt him so.
Lord Bryon, at this stage of the game, more myth than man, was the first of the rock and roll stars, a maverick and an original. His life is like a cartoon, everything appears larger than life, he lived it by his own set of rules, no matter to the consequences. He was born in 1788 into the ying-yang relationship of Captain Mad Jack Byron and Catherine Gordon, heiress of Gight in Aberdeenshire and descendant of King James I.
Martin Luther is the rarest of creatures, a man who knows his own mind, speaks it and refuses to be swayed. There is something so, so logical about the man and his life; he was baptised on the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, he fulfilled his father’s wishes by enrolling in law school but he dropped out almost immediately as he viewed law as symbolising uncertainty, he entered the monastery because he had made a vow on the spur of the moment that he would become a monk if he was saved from a storm
James Dean, strange you know the name before the man, indeed many film buffs I know never even seen the movies he made and many are startled on discovering that he only starred in three movies. Yet, everyone knows James Dean, his ubiquitous image charms us from all kinds of angles, you would have to live on the moon to not recognise his face, and indeed it appears that to know him is to be seduced by him.
You won’t find St. Michan’s Church in any of your run of the mill guidebooks, the place is just too scary to have trusting tourists wandering into. The place drips with history, the existing structure is built on the original site of a Viking chapel dating from the eleventh century.
1