A massive amount of the historical sources we’ve talked about on this page can be accessed – for free – through a number of different websites, although it has to be said that sometimes the only translations we have (or may be easily accessible) are very out of date. This is changing, slowly, but do be careful; on the whole, the more recent translations are likely to be the most accurate.
It’s important to look at ‘proper’ translations of the tales (not ‘retellings’ or summaries) so you can fully appreciate and better understand what’s going on. You would really be doing yourself a favour if you avoid authors like Lady Augusta Gregory, Charles Squire, Ella Young, and W. B. Yeats (at least to start with, anyway), because these authors are very much a product of their day. They don’t offer direct translations, but instead concentrate on giving the general gist, or a summary of a story, which means you’ll miss key details that really are important. They also often gloss over a lot of the more unsavoury or saucy bits, or even just made up their own stories (like Ella Young’s creation myth), so it can be difficult to get an accurate idea of what these myths are actually about, and what really happened.
To a degree, the same can be said of the more academic translations that were made in the same sort of period – there’s at least one entire episode missing in Whitley Stokes’s translation of Cath Maige Tuired, and Stokes is up front in admitting that he declined to translate it because of its crude nature (it involves the Dagda taking a massive shit on the side of the road, after which he then has sex with a woman because the gentle brush of her pubic hair across his shoulder, as he lifts her up to give her a piggyback home – at her insistence – turns him on). So as a general rule, the more recent the translation (by a reliable translator) the better. Even then, there can sometimes be a limit to what a translator can do when the language gets too obscure, or the manuscript is too damaged to read in certain places, and a case in point here in the more recent translation of Cath Maige Tuired by Elizabeth Gray. She included the bit with the Dagda and his massive dump on the side of the road (etc.), but there are a number of roscada – poems written in an extremely obscure and archaic style – which Gray was unable to (or chose not to) translate in full. Their absence is especially unfortunate considering their magical nature, and the potential light they could shed on the characters of a number of deities.
With these caveats in mind, then, you might be wondering were you can find ‘good’ or ‘reliable’ translations. The CELT website offers a good range of texts in translation (and with the original Irish), while the Ancient Texts and Mary Jones sites have collated a pretty impressively comprehensive list of just about everything that’s freely available out there. The latter two sites seem to have had some stability or accessibility issues in the not too distant past, but that seems to have been resolved now (thankfully). If it’s a problem, you can always access them via the Way Back Machine at archive.org, if need be.
I would recommend concentrating on these versions, instead of antiquarian works like Gregory, Squire, et al. The same can be said for a lot of modern authors who’ve done retellings of the myths (or just plain fabricated their own) and Peter Beresford Ellis is a case in point here. His work has a number of problems and there are more reliable authors out there who cover the exact same sort of ground, so you’re not really missing out on anything.
Some stories, and some sources, are more useful to us than others (and more accessible, too, it has to be said), and when you’re just starting out it can help to know where you might want to concentrate your time and energy. The group of tales known as the Mythological Cycle are probably going to be a good place to start, because these are the myths that really showcase the gods and give them a starring role. In particular, though, you might want to look at:
Tochmarc Étaíne – The Wooing of Étaín
Cath Maige Tuired – The Second Battle of Mag Tuired
Lebor Gabála Érenn – The Book of the Taking of Ireland (but best known as The Book of Invasions)
It’s important to remember that although these stories are presented as historical events – things that actually happened – they are from it. At best, they can only really be viewed as pseudo-historical stories, if not outright fabrications. The Book of Invasions, in particular, might describe the origins of Ireland as linking in with Biblical history, but there’s an obvious reason for that: The medieval scribes wanted people to believe that was the case. It’s not, and it shouldn’t be taken literally.
There are decent versions of each of these stories available online (which I’ve linked to), but some people prefer books. If you’re looking for recommendations, I’ve got you. Try:
John T. Koch and John Carey’s The Celtic Heroic Age (1995)
Jeffrey Gantz’s Early Irish Myths and Sagas (1982)
By sheer luck, both of these books are available to read on archive.org, as are many other books that come highly recommended on most Gaelic Polytheist reading lists nowadays. It may also be worth mentioning the two main translations that are available of the Táin, one of the central epic tales in Irish myth. Both of them – one by Thomas Kinsella (1969), the other by Ciarán Carson (2007) – can be highly recommended. Carson’s is available on archive.org, but as yet Kinsella’s hasn’t been added.
These books only offer translations of the tales they include. If you’re looking for a single book to read that contains every single tale and anecdote there is to know, then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed because it just doesn’t exist (bear in mind that some of the tales are long enough they’re the length of an entire book in their own right, so it would be difficult to contain them all in just one volume).
None of the books I’ve just mentioned really explain anything, so if you’re looking for commentary on what it all means, or what the hell’s going on (like the finer points of why those ladies are having a literal pissing contest, or whether that episode in the Táin really is as homoerotic as it seems to you)31 then you’ll need to look elsewhere.32 It can take a bit of digging around to find discussions of the finer points of this or that myth in particular, but there are a ton of books available that will introduce you to the general basics. These can help give you a good background on everything you need to know, so you can better understand what the hell is going on when the stories start to get really weird. On the whole, it may even be more helpful to start with this sort of book, just so you don’t get completely lost. With that in mind, the following books useful:
John Carey’s The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature (Cork Studies in Celtic Literatures 3, 2018)
Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin’s An Introduction to Early Irish Literature (2009)
The first recommendation here, from John Carey, is a neat little booklet that gives you a really good idea of the basics – who the tales are talking about, and a bit of background on the myths that are included in the cycle. It has a useful (and short) chapter on the gods, which is probably worth the price alone.
The second book is more comprehensive and deals with the subject of Irish myth and literature as a whole, and it gives a lot of the background you might be looking for. It’s aimed at the beginner so you don’t have to have any prior knowledge.
Some additional suggestions include:
Marie-Louise Sjoestedt’s Gods and Heroes of the Celts (1940)
Mark Williams’ The Celtic Myths That Shape The Way We Think (2021)
The first of these is fairly short and although it is older and a little bit out-of-date in places, it’s a really good read if you want to get a feel for who the gods are. The second title is far more recent and it will help clear a lot of the more common misconceptions that a lot of people start out with. It doesn’t assume any real prior knowledge, or an academic background, so it’s perfect for the beginner. It deals with Welsh (and British) myth as well as Irish – weighted a more towards the Welsh side, to be honest – but it’s well-written and it deals with pop culture and the way various characters or myths have been portrayed over the centuries as much as it explains the myths themselves.
References
31 This episode, that is. And why, yes. Yes it is…
32 Joanne Findon’s A Woman’s Words: Emer and Female Speech in the Ulster Cycle (1997) is a book that springs to mind for the pissing contest, while Tairis offers an overview of the homoeroticism of Cú Chulainn’s killing of his foster-brother, with references that offer pointers to further reading.
Eòlas 