Heroic Romances of Ireland, Translated into English Prose and Verse — Volume 1

These are the oldest heroic tales in Europe, and they feel like no mythology you know. Long before the Greeks told their stories of Achilles and Hector, Irish poets were singing of Cuchulain, the hound of Ulster, who fought alone against the armies of Queen Medb; of Etain, the beautiful woman reborn across centuries, caught in a deadly triangle between mortal king and supernatural lord; of Fergus mac Roich, the exiled hero whose great sword could cut through any armor. This volume gathers the Ulster Cycle's greatest narratives, translated from medieval manuscripts into English that preserves the roll and cadence of the original bardic performances. Here you will find love that spans lifetimes, warriors bound by terrible oaths, and the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods who became the faerie folk, moving unseen through mortal affairs. Leahy's 1890s translation argues passionately for Celtic literature's equal standing beside Greek and Roman classics, and his version remains striking for its fidelity to the strangeness of the original: this is not sanitized folklore but fierce, poetic narrative saturated with magic, violence, and longing. For readers who have devoured the Prose Edda and the Mabinogion, these tales offer another vanished world, one that predates them both.