Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/260

 236 Reviews.

Medb (Maive) is represented as a woman of extraordinar>' vigour and force of character. She openly prides herself on being the better half, both as regards birth, wealth, and fighting qualities, than her spouse, as before her marriage she boasted herself to have been the noblest in her father's house.

The interesting "bolster-conversation " which forms the prologue to the Tain in L. L., in which Medb sets forth her attainments and her superior position, is not given in the versions followed by Miss Faraday, and the story thus begins without a sufificient explanation, which this conversation provides, of the cause and meaning of the raid. " As regards wage-giving and largesse, I was the best of them," says Medb ; " as regards battle, strife, and combat, I was the best of them. Before me went fifteen hundred royal merce- naries from the ranks of the sons of adventurers, and in the centre

an equal number of native chieftains' sons " Medb is Queen

of Connaught in her own right ; it is she and not her husband who leads the armies of Ireland, and Ailill has to acquiesce in taking the inferior position of a mere prince-consort to his imperious wife.

Now there is, in the Book of Leinster version, a very dramatic contrast drawn between the setting forth of Medb, in all the majesty of a barbarian princess at the head of her armies, and the ignominious rout of their return. This contrast, which is entirely lost in the versions followed by Miss Faraday, shows that the author of the Leinster version had in his mind a well conceived drama, with beginning, middle, and final catastrophe. To use a musical simile, the story presented itself to him not as a Suite but as a Symphony, not as a mere series of disconnected incidents, but as a whole whose parts followed each other in natural and necessary sequence.

For the whole year the hosts of Medb have paraded the north- eastern districts and the centre of Ireland, cut off and harassed at every point by the valour of Cuchulain ; finally they break into flight and are driven back in utter rout across the Shannon by the "rising-out" of the men of Ulster. From noon to twilight they fly westward towards their homes, and nothing can restrain them. Imperial Medb, undaunted by defeat, herself undertakes to cover their retreat, and to protect the rear of her army from the troops of Ulster, who have descended into the fray at this late moment in all the ardour of a first onset. But at this crisis, when most she