Talk:Táin Bó Cúailnge

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I'll double check, but I believe that there are three disctint recensions or versions, LU, Leinster, and then the Stowe/Lecan traditions. DigitalMedievalist 05:32, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC) Lisa

[edit] Lady G

Oughtn't we mention the Lady Gregory translation? Darkfrog24 14:52, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Very belated response, but Lady Gregory didn't do a translation of the Táin. She wrote Cúchulainn of Muirthemne, a collection of paraphrases of a large number Ulster Cycle tales, including a much-abridged version of the Táin. --Nicknack009 (talk) 20:43, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotation in opening

I removed the reference to "[Samuel Butler's version of] Homer's Odyssey" in relation to the age of the Tain because it didn't make any sense to me--surely there are a number of older vernacular translations of the Odyssey than Butler's if that's what it was trying to suggest, though even that seems odd to me--but now as the quotation exists I still don't find it satisfying. Since I do not have access to the text from which it was taken I cannot say exactly how it should read, but surely there's little evidence to claim that the Tain as we have it is older than the epics of Homer? Can somebody who knows more about all of this check this out please? (138.16.59.36 (talk) 04:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC))

Also weird is that the claim made is that the Táin is the oldest story of Western Europe, so comparisons with the Odyssey (which is from Eastern Europe) are moot. Oh, and the Iliad is older than the Odyssey, so why pick Greece's second-oldest epic? But indeed, the cited source says, "The Táin Bó Cuailnge represents the oldest vernacular tale of Western Europe, predating both Beowulf and Homer’s Odyssey (Butler)." Maybe the point is that Butler's translation of the Odyssey is from Western Europe? But then it's trivial that the Táin is older than a translation that was published in 1900. Anyway, the source the quote it's taken from doesn't present any evidence to back up the claim, and the website is anonymous, so we have no way of determining how reliable it is. If no one presents compelling reasons to keep this weird claim in, I'll take it out in a few days. —Angr 17:30, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
It's ridiculous to claim that the Táin is older than the Odyssey itself. The oldest surviving allusion to it is the poem Conailla Medb Michuru, which is dated to c. 600. From the context we can probably assume it had been around in some form for some time before that, but how long it's impossible to say. I wouldn't be prepared to push it any further back than the 4th century. Another editor (User:Cordless Larry) added the quote, and rather than simply delete it and risk getting involved in an edit war, I modified it to what the site seemed to be saying - treating Butler's translation of the Odyssey as an English "vernacular epic". I agree the article would be better off losing it entirely, but so long as it's here it needs the qualification that it's Butler's translation rather than the Odyssey itself that it's older than. --Nicknack009 (talk) 19:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Could the website perhaps be saying that it's Butler's claim that the Táin is older than the Odyssey? If so, Butler certainly doesn't say it in the preface to his Odyssey translation. Anyway, I'm not prepared to take that website's word for anything. —Angr 19:39, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Since no-one has offered anything in this quote's defence, I've removed it, and, in the interests of demonstrating the age of the Táin, added some details showing that elements of the story were already in place in the 7th century. --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:08, 26 May 2008 (UTC)