Heroic Romances of Ireland

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that Finnabar was promised to Fraech in return for the help that he and his recovered cattle could give in the Great War; but a difficulty, which prevents us from regarding the second part as an original legend, at once comes in. The second part of the story happens to contain so many references to nations outside Ireland that its date can be pretty well fixed. Fraech and his companions go, over the sea from Ulster, i.e. to Scotland; then through “north Saxon-land” to the sea of Icht (i.e. the sea of Wight or the English Channel); then to the Alps in the north of the land of the Long-Beards, or Lombards. The Long-Beards do not appear in Italy until the end of the sixth century; the suggestion of North Saxon-Land reaching down to the sea of Wight suggests that there was then a South Saxon-Land, familiar to an Irish writer, dating this part of the story as before the end of the eighth century, when both Saxons and Long-Beards were overcome by Charlemagne. The second part of the story is, then, no original legend, but belongs to the seventh or eighth century, or the classical period; and it looks as if there were two writers, one of whom, like the author of the Egerton version of Etain, embellished the love-story part of the original legend, leaving the end alone, while another author wrote an account of the legendary journey of the demi-god Fraech in search for his stolen cattle, adding the geographical and historical knowledge of his time. The whole was then put together, like the two parts of the Etain story; the difference between the two stories in the matter of the wife does not seem to have troubled the compilers.

The oldest manuscript authority for the Tain bo Fraich is the Book of Leinster, written before 1150. There are at least two other manuscript authorities, one; in Egerton, 1782 (published by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Zeitschrift für Celt. Philologie, 1902); the other is in Ms. XL., Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh (published in the Revue Celtique, Vol. XXIV.). Professor Meyer has kindly allowed me to copy his comparison of these manuscripts and his revision of O’Beirne Crowe’s translation of the Book of Leinster text. The text of the literal translation given here follows, however, in the main O’Beirne Crowe’s translation, which is in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy for 1870; a few insertions are made from the other MSS.; when so made the insertion is indicated by a note.

For those who may be interested in the subsequent history of Fraech, it may be mentioned that he was one of the first of the Connaught champions to be slain by Cuchulain in the war of Cualnge; see Miss Faraday’s translation (Grimm Library, page 35).