Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/255



has been well advised in giving the reading public a collection of the chief stories about the greatest of the Red Branch heroes, together with an analysis of the Táin bó Cuailgne. Many scholars have lent her their aid. Dr. Stokes has contributed the Death of the Sons of Usnach, the Siege of Howth, the Death of Cuchullin; Mr. S. H. O'Grady, the Epitome of the Táin and the Defeat of the Plain of Muirthemne; Dr. Windisch, Cuchullin and the Morrigu and the Debility of the Men of Ulster; Dr. K. Meyer has helped with the Birth of Conachar, the Wooing of Emer, and the Training of Cuchullin by Scathach; from Eugene O'Curry come the Death of Conachar, the Institution of a Prince, How Conachar became King. O'Beirne Crowe's version of the Phantom Car of Cuchullin is the last piece in the book, and M. Louis Duvau's French version of the Beginnings of Cuchullin among the first. There are some good and useful tables in the appendix (which represent a great deal of work, and will be, no doubt, found useful both to students and general readers), besides an index, a map of early Ireland, and an introduction.

It is a handy book of reference for the important mass of legend that has crystallized about Cuchullin's name; and one would now hope that Miss Hull may see her way to co-operate with some Irish scholar and bring out the English of the whole of the Táin. Surely it is not creditable that there should be English versions of Kalevala, of the Rámáyana, and the Mahábhárata, of the Epic of Pentaur the Egyptian, and the legends of Ishtar's Wanderings by some nameless Assyrian composer, but no complete version in English of the great prose epic of Ireland. A brief note on the Welsh mentions of Cuchullin and a translation