Castle Gregory - Standish oGradys Cuculain

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Copyright 2016 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 13244-5290

All Rights Reserved

First Edition 2016

16 17 18 19 20 21 6 5 4 3 2 1

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ISBN: 978-0-8156-3491-1 (hardcover)

978-0-8156-3477-5 (paperback)

978-0-8156-5389-9 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Available from publisher upon request.

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Camille, Claire, and Owen,
who already know the meaning of heroism.

Contents

GREGORY CASTLE

1. Fleshing Dry Bones
OGradys Sensory Revivalism

RENE FOX

2. Lost (and Found) in Translation
The Masculinity of OGradys Cuculain

JOSEPH VALENTE

MICHAEL MCATEER

4. Cuc(h)ulain in Bronze
The Afterlife of a Republican Icon

PATRICK BIXBY

Illustrations

Note on the Text

T he text for this edition derives from the two-volume edition of History of Ireland (London: Sampson Low, Searle, Marston and Rivington; Dublin: Ponsonby, 1878, 1880). We have also drawn from History of Ireland: Critical and Philosophical, which was issued by the same publishers in 1881. Facsimile versions of these editions are available, but the three volumes are unwieldy, somewhat repetitive, and difficult to manage for classroom and basic research purposes. The present edition is designed to make this material readily accessible to contemporary readers.

OGradys spelling of proper names in Irish was idiosyncratic, but perhaps no more so than that of other Irish writers in the late nineteenth century. All significant names can be found in the glossary, where we have provided their variant spellings and contextualizing information, sometimes drawn from OGradys work, sometimes from contemporary scholarly sources. But because there are so many variants for most names and no clear consensus as to the best ones, we have decided not to change OGradys spellings in the text (though we have silently corrected obvious errors).

Most prominently, we have preserved the spelling Cuculain, which OGrady favored, over Irish spellings and other Anglicized forms of it, such as Cuchulain. The multitude of spellings reflects not only a loosely codified language but also a tradition of transliteration with no central organizing orthographic principle. John Harvey has noted that OGrady, upon meeting Pdraic Pearse, pronounced the heros name Cutch-ul-ane, whereon Pearse corrected him, explaining that the pronunciation was Coo-hu-lin. OGrady was overwhelmed by the discovery, and after a long pause informed Pearse that he would have written an entirely different book if he had known the correct sound of the name.

Our selection of chapters from the three volumes of the History of Ireland was guided by a single consideration: how best to tell the story of Cuculain as OGrady presented it, a version that enjoyed tremendous popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To allow the reader to get a sense of the larger scope of OGradys story, we have summarized the omitted chapters in separate sections corresponding to these chapters placement in the original. Many of the included chapters have epigraphs, typically from nineteenth-century poetry, and we have identified the epigraphs sources in footnotes, save for those few that can be found only in OGradyin particular those attributed to an ancient bard. We have included substantial excerpts from the introductions to all three volumes of OGradys History, which will help the student understand the bardic culture that informs it.

Citations to History of Ireland in the introduction and critical essays are given parenthetically in the text rather than in notes, and they include an abbreviated title (see the list of ), volume number, and page number from the original three volumes published in 1878, 1880, and 1881. If quotations also happen to be from material included here, we have provided page cross-references to this edition. In addition, we have placed an asterisk next to names and terms in the text that can be found in the glossary.

. John Harvey, Dublin: A Study in Environment (1949; reprint, London: Batsford, 1972), 17.

Acknowledgments

T his project began with a suggestion from Jim MacKillop, who thought an accessible collection of Standish OGradys historical writings on Cuculain would find an audience among students, teachers, and the general public. I had been frustrated with the lack of access to OGradys History of Ireland and had to satisfy myself with the materials I could find online through the Colby College Library, so I was eager to take up the project. Shortly after I began work on it, I enlisted my friend and colleague Patrick Bixby as coeditor, and together we designed and completed this volume. Our gratitude goes out to our contributors, whose readings of OGradys work have made our own understanding richer and more precise. We thank our graduate student, Scott Icenogle, and the director of the Fletcher Library, Dennis Isbell, for their assistance in researching and compiling the materials presented here. We also thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments enabled us to highlight and emphasize what we had imperfectly realized, and our editor at Syracuse University Press, Deborah Manion, whose kind attention and steadfast support have helped us to bring the project to a conclusion.

Abbreviations