The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel

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The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel or Togail Bruidne Dá Derga is an Old Irish language epic. It recounts the birth, life, and death of Conaire Mor, a legendary High King of Ireland, who is killed at Da Derga's hostel by his enemies when he breaks his geasa. It is considered one of the finest Irish sagas of the early period, equal or superior to the better known Táin Bó Cúailnge.[1]

The theme of gathering doom, as the king is forced through circumstances to break one after another of his taboos, is non-Christian in essence, and no Christian interpretations are laid upon the marvels that it relates. In its repetitions and verbal formulas the poem retains the qualities of oral tansmission.

It has been argued that Geoffrey Chaucer's The House of Fame borrows features from the Togail Bruidne Da Derga.[2] The tone of the work has been compared with Greek tragedy.[3]

Contents

[edit] Manuscript tradition

The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel is a tale in the Lebor na hUidre, the Book of the Dun Cow, a late twelfth-century manuscript containing material that may in part be of the eighth century. The translation by J. Gantz, in Early Irish Myths and Sagas (1986) has an introduction that discusses its probable relationship to a king's ritual death, more fully explored by John Grigsby, Beowulf and Grendel 2005:150-52.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Carney, p. 483; West, p. 413, quotes Rudolf Thurneysen as ranking the Togail after the Tain.
  2. ^ McTurk, pp. 67–68.
  3. ^ Byrne, pp. 59–64.

[edit] References

  • Byrne, Francis John, Irish Kings and High-Kings. Batsford, London, 1973. ISBN 0-7134-5882-8
  • Carney, James Patrick, "Language and Literature to 1169" in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (ed.), A New History of Ireland, volume 1: Prehistoric and Early Ireland. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005. ISBN 0-19-821737-4
  • Gantz, J. Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1986
  • McTurk, Rory W., Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005. ISBN 0-7546-0391-1
  • West, Máire, "The genesis of Togail Bruidne da Derga: a reappraisal of the `two-source' theory" in Celtica 23 (Essays in honour of James Patrick Carney). DIAS, Dublin, 1999. ISBN 1-85500-190-X (etext)

[edit] External links

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