Keltische Mythen En Legenden

Before Tolkien imagined Middle-earth, before George R.R. Martin built Westeros, there was the Celtic twilight: a world of warrior-poets, shape-shifting gods, and heroes doomed by their own glory. T.W. Rolleston's 1911 masterpiece gathers these ancient Irish and Welsh tales into one indispensable volume. You will find the Ulster Cycle here, with its thunderclap hero Cuchulain and the tragic queen Deirdre, whose beauty launched a war. The Ossianic cycle follows Finn mac Cumhal and his son Oisin, bards who walked among the first mortals. There is the Voyage of Maeldun, a surreal island-hopping odyssey that predates similar traditions by centuries. And of course, the Welsh tales: Arthur before Malory, the Grail before it became everyone's Grail. Rolleston writes with scholarly precision but never loses the fire of the original bards. This is where Western fantasy was born, in the mists between Ireland and Wales, where every ford held a monster and every bard carried a sword. Fifty illustrations by artists including J.C. Leyendecker bring this lost world into haunting focus.