Ollam: Studies in Gaelic and Related Tradition in Honor of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh ed. by Matthieu Boyd

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ollam: Studies in Gaelic and Related Tradition in Honor of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh ed. by Matthieu Boyd D. Blair Gibson Ollam: Studies in Gaelic and Related Tradition in Honor of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, ed. Matthieu Boyd( Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2016) 350 pp. It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to read and review this magnificent festschrift dedicated to celebrating the career of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, emeritus professor of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literature at Harvard University. The volume's 21 contributions are arranged in a sequence mirroring the chronological development of the Irish language from the Old Irish period to the early nineteenth century, and is divided in good Celtic fashion into three thematic sections concerned with heroes, law and language, and poetry. Ó Cathasaigh is a prominent scholar of the literature of Early Medieval Ireland, and wrote a study of the heroic biography of the legendary chieftain Cormac Mac Airt, relying heavily on the model of Jan de Vries. Kim McCone examines Jan de Vries' treatment of the killing by the Ulster hero Cú Chulainn of his only son Conlae. McCone sagely lays open to question the implied inevitability of a singular heroic biography pattern that the de Vries model [End Page 249] asserts, and also debunks psychological/structural explanations. For McCone, the value of the heroic biography pattern as an analytical tool lies in the study of the variations of sub-motifs. Aled Llion Jones takes us out for a spin in the chariots of the saga Táin Bó Cúailnge, considering and cataloguing the various literary motifs in which chariots figure. I am particularly sympathetic to Matthieu Boyd's "On Not Eating Dog" given the anthropological comparative approach it assumes to explain an episode that prefigures the death of Cú Chulainn. Recourse to Van Gennep's rite of passage model does not seem a particularly apt way to elucidate the way the Ulaid dealt with Cú Chulainn's warrior frenzy post-combat, but using Kwakwaka'wakw hamatsa rituals and food taboos stemming from prohibitions deriving from animistic beliefs does reward the effort. Patricia Kelly's chapter concerning an episode of Esnada Tige Buchet does a good job of elucidating both the political sub-text of the tale, and a number of legal and rhetorical norms of Early Medieval Irish society that make the actions of the protagonists comprehensible. In the subsequent chapter, Morgan Davies relates how the Middle Irish tale Bórama propounds a translatio imperii from the secular chieftains and supernaturally endowed heroes to the church and its clerics. Rory McTurk's contribution Wavering Heroes in the Icelandic Sagas marks a departure from the prevailing Celtic focus of the book. It treats with the propensity of Germanic heroes to follow courses of action that frustrate the formation of an enduring bond with their principal love interests – think Brünnhilde. He traces the iterations of this theme from medieval Icelandic family sagas back to the earlier Eddic poems of the Codex Regius, and ultimately to Norse fertility rituals. Katherine Simms contributes a note detailing the use of Old Irish mythology to console or flatter medieval Irish chieftains through analogic comparisons. Continuing in the same vein but at historical remove of several centuries Ruaidhrí Ó hUiginn examines the effects of Ó Domnaill dynastic patronage on the compilation of the seventeenth century Annála Rioghachta Éireann, better known as the Annals of the Four Masters. These included not only biases of omission, but also those of commission whereby the annalists employed dramatic devices akin to those employed by modern-day movie script writers in order to create dramatic heroic narratives out of the unruly tangles of history. Drawing from his publication efforts connected to poetry of the Bardic Period (1200–1650), Damian McManus categorizes the uses to which allusions to the mythology concerned with Cormac Mac Airt were put. This discussion is wide-ranging—too wide-ranging for any central thesis to emerge except to demonstrate the poet's deep familiarity with both the genealogical and mythological sources. Barbara Hillers touches on how another group of specialists, modern Irish storytellers or seanchaithe, made use of the surviving mythology surrounding Cormac. Surprisingly, given the vast...