Where do I begin reading Celtic Mythology?
October 18, 2016 1:54 PM Subscribe
I would like to know more Celtic myths - what are the best books to start with? I'm looking both for accurate retellings that might be more accessible to a newbie and good translations of primary sources. Thank you!
Best answer: * pulls up chair and sits down *
Hi.
One good place to start is with the Tain Bo Cuailnge which is pronounced "toyn bo coolee" and translates to "The Cattle Raid of Cooley". It's one of the big Irish Mythological Epics, where you'll find a lot of side-stories that make up Irish mythology (in much the same way that all of those stories we know about "Greek mythology", we first discovered in a couple of epics by Homer and stuff). I especially recommend the translation by Thomas Kinsella, which is pretty accessible (in terms of language, at least). It was the version we used in an Irish mythology and literature class I had in college, which blew my mind, was the best class on anything I've ever taken in my life, and is the only course I ever took for which I kept all the books.
I'll peruse my bookshelves when I get home from work and see what else I can recommend. but that's a good start, because you'll get a crash course in all the random stories (one of my favorites is about how the hero Cuchullain used to get so amped up in battle that he would just go all berserker on everything, and one time the only way that his men could get him to calm down was for his wife and her ladies-in-waiting to all walk out onto the battlefield and flash him en masse).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:07 PM on October 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
Hi.
One good place to start is with the Tain Bo Cuailnge which is pronounced "toyn bo coolee" and translates to "The Cattle Raid of Cooley". It's one of the big Irish Mythological Epics, where you'll find a lot of side-stories that make up Irish mythology (in much the same way that all of those stories we know about "Greek mythology", we first discovered in a couple of epics by Homer and stuff). I especially recommend the translation by Thomas Kinsella, which is pretty accessible (in terms of language, at least). It was the version we used in an Irish mythology and literature class I had in college, which blew my mind, was the best class on anything I've ever taken in my life, and is the only course I ever took for which I kept all the books.
I'll peruse my bookshelves when I get home from work and see what else I can recommend. but that's a good start, because you'll get a crash course in all the random stories (one of my favorites is about how the hero Cuchullain used to get so amped up in battle that he would just go all berserker on everything, and one time the only way that his men could get him to calm down was for his wife and her ladies-in-waiting to all walk out onto the battlefield and flash him en masse).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:07 PM on October 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
I still have Mythology of the Celtic People by Charles Squire from my College Arthurian Legend course.
Which seemed like a decent overview, with some translated myths and a little bit of commentary.
Photo of some of my arthurian books + that one.
posted by dreamling at 3:09 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Which seemed like a decent overview, with some translated myths and a little bit of commentary.
Photo of some of my arthurian books + that one.
posted by dreamling at 3:09 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Back! And I should clarify that my focus is on Irish myth specifically just 'cos that's how the class I was taking shook down.
And I am reiterating Kinsella's Tain. The Penguin Early Irish Myths and Sagas may also be a good entry, not because it's an interesting translation but rather because it does a good job of pulling some of the individual stories out and telling them by themselves. Stories about things like the Labor Pains of the men of Ulster and the death of Cuchullain's only son can get lost if you don't know to look for them.
Now, the Tain and the related works will get you a look at the myth cycle that was kicking around before Christianity came to Ireland. But there was a period right after St Patrick came along, right in the early "Dark Ages," when the Vatican couldn't get to Ireland all that frequently, and so the Irish Celts were able to adapt Christianity to their own roll, and it made things kind of....weird. There are a bunch of new myths from this time that are a funky sort of mind-meld between pre-Christian myth and Christian thought. And one of the biggest works from this period is the "Acallam na Senorach," which gets translated into either "The Colloquy of the Ancients" or the "Tales of the Elders". It's another big work that has a lot of little stories in it, about a band of warriors who are lead by a guy named Fionn Mac Cummal. But instead of being an epic, it's more like a Canterbury Tales kind of situation, where a couple people are telling a bunch of stories - in this instance, the storytellers are a pair of Fionn's warriors, now grown impossibly old, who've run into Saint Patrick on a hill somewhere and they're sort of hanging out and telling Patrick about the good ol' days. There's a bit about midway through where after hanging out and listening to them a while, Patrick has a sort of crisis of conscience about "should I be listening to these heathens," and he's visited by a couple angels who tell them that naw, it's cool, all this stuff went down before Christianity came along - and in fact, these stories are fun and other people may like 'em, so write 'em down, Pat.
I don't have any translation in mind for those stories - I'd look for anything either with that "Tales of the Elders" name, or look for stories from "The Fenian Cycle". Similarly, the stories from the Tain are sometimes referred to as "The Ulster Cycle", so if you come across that reference that also may be a source.
There are those who may say that Yeats would be a good introduction to some of these myths, because ie did a lot with Irish Celtic myth in his work. I actually would say it's the other way round - that familiarizing yourself with the myths may help you appreciate Yeats more. I didn't quite get Yeats' "Cuchullain's fight with the sea" when I first read it, but after reading the myth about the death of Cuchullain's only son, the last stanza of the poem comes like a punch in the gut to me now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:51 PM on October 18, 2016
And I am reiterating Kinsella's Tain. The Penguin Early Irish Myths and Sagas may also be a good entry, not because it's an interesting translation but rather because it does a good job of pulling some of the individual stories out and telling them by themselves. Stories about things like the Labor Pains of the men of Ulster and the death of Cuchullain's only son can get lost if you don't know to look for them.
Now, the Tain and the related works will get you a look at the myth cycle that was kicking around before Christianity came to Ireland. But there was a period right after St Patrick came along, right in the early "Dark Ages," when the Vatican couldn't get to Ireland all that frequently, and so the Irish Celts were able to adapt Christianity to their own roll, and it made things kind of....weird. There are a bunch of new myths from this time that are a funky sort of mind-meld between pre-Christian myth and Christian thought. And one of the biggest works from this period is the "Acallam na Senorach," which gets translated into either "The Colloquy of the Ancients" or the "Tales of the Elders". It's another big work that has a lot of little stories in it, about a band of warriors who are lead by a guy named Fionn Mac Cummal. But instead of being an epic, it's more like a Canterbury Tales kind of situation, where a couple people are telling a bunch of stories - in this instance, the storytellers are a pair of Fionn's warriors, now grown impossibly old, who've run into Saint Patrick on a hill somewhere and they're sort of hanging out and telling Patrick about the good ol' days. There's a bit about midway through where after hanging out and listening to them a while, Patrick has a sort of crisis of conscience about "should I be listening to these heathens," and he's visited by a couple angels who tell them that naw, it's cool, all this stuff went down before Christianity came along - and in fact, these stories are fun and other people may like 'em, so write 'em down, Pat.
I don't have any translation in mind for those stories - I'd look for anything either with that "Tales of the Elders" name, or look for stories from "The Fenian Cycle". Similarly, the stories from the Tain are sometimes referred to as "The Ulster Cycle", so if you come across that reference that also may be a source.
There are those who may say that Yeats would be a good introduction to some of these myths, because ie did a lot with Irish Celtic myth in his work. I actually would say it's the other way round - that familiarizing yourself with the myths may help you appreciate Yeats more. I didn't quite get Yeats' "Cuchullain's fight with the sea" when I first read it, but after reading the myth about the death of Cuchullain's only son, the last stanza of the poem comes like a punch in the gut to me now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:51 PM on October 18, 2016
I did my senior thesis on the Mabinogion as it compares to Chrétien de Troyes' version of Arthurian legend. I highly recommend the Mabinogion as a starting point.
posted by guster4lovers at 5:52 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by guster4lovers at 5:52 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Nthing any version of the Mabinogion you can get your hands on and I think you'd enjoy Celtic Fairy Tales, collected by Joseph Jacobs, also.
posted by Lynsey at 9:56 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Lynsey at 9:56 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by Vortisaur at 2:06 PM on October 18, 2016 [4 favorites]