The Táin retold: ‘Maeve and Ailill’s spat could be out of a soap opera’

The Táin Bó Cuailngne is recognised as the great Irish epic. Epic in this case meaning a sweeping narrative of heroism and adventure. While it may not match the Trojan Wars or the adventures of Odysseus and Aeneas of the Greeks and the Romans, it does appear a tad more winsome than the terrors of Grendel. Cynics have argued that it is a spat about cattle raiding, which only emphasises our obsession with agriculture, but it is much more than that.

One of the reasons we call it an epic is because it is twice as long as any other story of early Ireland. While we will always be uncertain of its past, we are clear that its past is uncertain. Scholars have argued about its origins and have come to no definite conclusion. It could be that it was composed in pre-Christian times, or that it came some centuries later using the past to validate the present as all historians do. It might be that its origins are entirely native and unsullied by outside influences, or that it is merely an echo of biblical and of classical stories well-known to the Irish clerics who wrote it down and gave it a local twist.

There is a further debate as to whether it was composed by a single author in one time and place, or the accumulation of bits and pieces of narrative glued together over centuries. The answer is probably that both are true. Somebody somewhere must have conceived the butt of the narrative and told it or recited it, or even written it down, in some place at some time. Every composition has its origin in a single skull, and while layers may be added to it and fragments stuck on or flaked off along the way, it did start in somebody’s head either as pure fiction out of the madness of the imagination or as a realistic account of things that happened, or a mish-mash mangling of both.

The truth is that we do not know, but that it is a story that has gripped the attention of Ireland for centuries long, and latterly of a wider world. We suppose that in the distant past people were much different to us, but reading early literature shows that they were just the same. The old agonies reign supreme. Even more importantly, that petty peevishnesses rules the roost. While the row over two bulls might seem not as important as the War of the Golden Stool (which is not what you think it was) or The War of Jenkins’ Ear, it had all kinds of symbolic importance lost on us now.

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[ A picture book on the Táin would be daft. What if I tried writing it as a YA novel? ]

What remains is that it is a great story. It would have not survived if it had been a boring respectable comedy of manners where the whingeing privileged sought out occasions where they had been offended. It is a tale of everything, beginning with jealousy and power and standing involving loyalty, betrayal and the conflicts of companionship. There is love and calculation, honour and betrayal, heroism and cowardice, promises and those broken, magic and detail, crude realism and mad fantasy, savage battle and gentle mercy, hatred and comedy and, as they say now, everything you are having yourself. All the ingredients of a great story, which is what it is.

It can be asked, why the need for yet another version? The easy answer is that all classics need to be rewritten constantly in order to be reinterpreted for a new audience.

I was asked by Little Island Books some years ago to consider writing a new version of the Táin for younger readers and because of the usual other commitments I put it on the long finger. Being the dogged and determined publishers they are, they got back to me and I wilted willingly. It was a privilege to be asked.

Wrestling with a classic is always an honour but is made more difficult because on the one hand you are contending with a venerable original, and on the other attempting to shape it for a new unfamiliar readership. I think I read and swallowed most, if not all, of the previous versions. I was familiar with the original redactions in Old Irish which I could manage with some assistance and had read and imbibed all of the more recent translations into modern Irish and English.

There were the contending impulses to steal, to rob, to borrow from all of them, and on the other hand to reimagine the whole lot and refashion it as you pleased. The honest answer is that there has to be a bit of both.

Any redactor, that is to say, rewriter or revisionist of the Táin is beholden to what went before. The very first one we have is already a version of the tale which existed before, however far back we want that to be. All other retellings are cannibalisations or refleshings of what went before. I was beholden to, of course, not only the standard old Irish text edited by Cecile O’Rahilly but also others including the well-known translations by both Thomas Kinsella and Ciarán Carson. There are also several renderings into modern Irish, the most recent being a wonderful gutsy telling by Darach Ó Scolaí.

[ The Táin by Thomas Kinsella: A beautiful rigour ]

My purpose was different, however. I had to put together a modern version for younger readers which, as a politician might say, was challenging. Frank O’Connor, who was mostly right and sometimes wrong about literature, once said something to the effect that the Táin was a long rambling narrative about two bulls. He was certainly right about the rambling bit. Over the centuries the story accumulated lots of moss and dross as it rolled along, and particularly in the middle of the story there are descriptions of single combats that become redundant and repetitive. After a while you just don’t care who the next sacrificial victim to Cúchulainn is going to be as you know he is going to thrash them.

That is why the spine of the story has to be preserved: the row between Maeve and Ailill, the Connacht treachery that they would take the bull anyway, the dire prophecies, the Morrigan’s magic, Cúchulainn’s youth and childhood where he did something good with a hurley, his single-handed defence of his people, his anger and spasms, the great battle and the fight between the two bulls. There is enough here to stir any great adventure story.

[ ‘Merging Irish myths and Irish history gave my story its soul’ ]

O’Connor is not correct in suggesting it is just about two bulls because it is about all human emotions. It may have been read in the past because it gloried local heroes, or reflected older beliefs, or explained the names of places, or was connected to other tales. All of these it may have done, but part of its attraction is just that it is a rattling good story, and story is the building block of all our knowledge.

There is the difficulty also that, in earlier times, readers or listeners were familiar with the characters, the heroes, the gods. They didn’t have to get to know them, they were just there. In that sense, modern readers are entering a completely different world.

But then, we don’t have any difficulty in inhabiting the strange and magic worlds of JK Rowling or Game of Thrones or Narnia. Fantasy is as modern as fairy tales. And yet, much of the Táin is quite realistic. Maeve and Ailill’s spat could be out of a soap opera, without the cattle. Cúchulainn might have otherworldly relations, but he can still be killed. He is not Superman. The blood and the gore would do justice to a Quentin Tarantino script.

[ Brigit: Trinity conference to discuss if she was a real person, a goddess or saint ]

A striking feature of the Táin is its variety of styles. The speech can be clipped and sharp, the rhetoric can become bombastic, the poetry shaved and to the point. The presumption is that young readers are put off by unusual words or some locution not heard on the television. I have found that readers delight in the savour of the language itself and in all of its possibilities if it is borne along with the story. The point is not to be bland.

I did not dumb this down, but tried to capture, no matter how distantly and shadowly, some of the taste of the originals. I have retained some of the poetry as poetry is used either as a heightening of effect or as a summary of what has happened or as a dramatic contest. Not to do so would have diminished the story.

The old stories, the great stories must always be shaped anew. In the Irish tradition, the storyteller could do as he or she pleased once the shape of the main was retained. Within that, there was always room for invention, diversion and deviation.

I was happy to be privileged to recast this great tale, like many others before me.

Alan Titley’s retelling of The Táin, illustrated by Eoin Coveney, is published by Little Island Books on March 17th