Deirdre: James Stephens Retells Ireland’s Oldest Tragedy
A prophecy, a king who thought he could outmanoeuvre it, and the woman who decided for herself. James Stephens’s 1923 retelling of the Exile of the Sons of Uisliu.
Our own editions: what each book is, what we restored, and where to get it.
A prophecy, a king who thought he could outmanoeuvre it, and the woman who decided for herself. James Stephens’s 1923 retelling of the Exile of the Sons of Uisliu.
Kuno Meyer gathered the finest short poems of early Christian Ireland in 1911: Pangur Bán, the Old Woman of Beare, Colum Cille in exile. What we restored, and what we left alone.
Scholars had translated this material into something unreadable. In 1879 P. W. Joyce told twelve of the tales again in plain English.
Yeats called it one of the best books ever to come out of Ireland. Lady Gregory’s 1904 retelling of the old gods and the Fianna, restored.
Donn Byrne wrote Ulster the way a man remembers a first language. His 1923 collection is back, and the whole repair list runs to three characters.
Graves collected 43 Irish fairy tales in 1909, from Yeats to Croker. What the Sidhe actually are, what a changeling is, and exactly what we repaired.