Heroic Romances of Ireland | Page 5

English,
pronouns, in which Irish is very rich, are often replaced by the persons
or things indicated, and common words, like iarom, iarsin, iartain,
immorro, and the like (meaning thereafter, moreover, &c.), have been
replaced by short sentences that refer back to the events indicated by
the words. Nothing has been added to the Irish, except in the Leabhar
na h-Uidhri version of "Etain," where there is a lacuna to be filled up,
and there are no omissions. The translations of the verse and of the
rhetoric are, so far as is possible, made upon similar lines; it was at first
intended to add literal renderings of all the verse passages, but it was
found that to do so would make the volume of an unmanageable size
for its purpose. Literal renderings of all the verse passages in "Etain,"
the first of the tales in volume i., are given in the notes to that story; the
literal renderings of Deirdre's lament in the "Sons of Usnach," and of
two poems in "The Combat at the Ford," are also given in full as
specimens, but in the case of most of the poems reference is made to
easily available literal translations either in English or German: where
the literal rendering adopted differs from that referred to, or where the
poem in question has not before been translated, the literal rendering
has been given in the notes. These examples will, it is believed, give a
fair indication of the relation between my verse translations and the
originals, the deviations from which have been made as small as
possible. The form of four-line verse divided into stanzas has generally
been used to render the passages in four-lined verse in the Irish, the
only exception to this rule being in the verses at the end of the "Boar of
Mac Datho": these are in the nature of a ballad version of the whole
story, and have been rendered in a ballad metre that does not conform
to the arrangement in verses of the original.
The metre of all the Irish four-lined verses in this volume is, except in
two short pieces, a seven-syllabled line, the first two lines usually
rhyming with each other, and the last two similarly rhyming,[FN#4] in
a few cases in the "Boar of Mac Datho" these rhymes are alternate, and

in the extract from the Glenn Masain version of the "Sons of Usnach"
there is a more complicated rhyme system. It has not been thought
necessary to reproduce this metre in all cases, as to do so would sound
too monotonous in English; the metre is, however, reproduced once at
least in each tale except in that of the "Death of the Sons of Usnach."
The eight-lined metre that occurs in five of the verse passages in the
"Combat at the Ford" has in one case been reproduced exactly, and in
another case nearly exactly, but with one syllable added to each line;
the two passages in this romance that are in five-syllabled lines have
been reproduced exactly in the Irish metre, in one case with the
rhyme-system of the original. With the rhetoric greater liberty has been
used; sometimes the original metre has been followed, but more often
not; and an occasional attempt has been made to bring out the strophic
correspondence in the Irish.
[FN#4] An example of this metre is as follows:--
All the elves of Troom seem dead, All their mighty deeds are fled; For
their Hound, who hounds surpassed, Elves have bound in slumber fast.
In the first volume of the collection the presentation has then been
made as near as may be to the form and matter of the Irish; in the
second volume, called "Versified Romances," there is a considerable
divergence from the Irish form but not from its sense. This part
includes the five "Tains" or Cattle-Forays of Fraech, Dartaid, Regamon,
Flidais, and Regamna; which in the originals differ from the five tales
in volume i, in that they include no verse, except for a few lines in
Regamna, most of which are untranslatable. The last four of these are
short pieces written in a prose extremely rapid in its action, and
crowded with incident. They are all expressly named as "fore-tales,"
remscela, or preludes to the story of the great war of Cualnge, which is
the central event in the Ulster heroic cycle, and appear suited for rapid
prose recitations, which were apparently as much a feature in ancient as
they are in modern Irish. Such pieces can hardly be reproduced in
English prose so as to bring out their character; they are represented in
English by the narrative ballad, and they have been here rendered in
this way. Literal translations in prose are printed upon the opposite
page to the verse,