Content area
Full Text
Although it is increasingly generally recognised that much of the narrative of Irish legendary history, including its overall framework, is to be understood in terms of Latin sources and imported concepts, this does not exclude the possibility that some elements within the scheme have an older, indigenous background. This paper focuses on three key figures in the account of the Gaelic settlement of Ireland - the brothers Donn and Amairgen, and their kinsman Íth - arguing that they reflect ancient origin myths with significant analogues elsewhere in Indo- European tradition.
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Writing in the year 1919, Kuno Meyer concluded his criticism of various points in Arbois de Jubainville's 1884 book Le cycle mythologique irlandais with a sweeping dismissal of that study's approach to the Middle Irish treatise known as Lebor Gabála, the work which provided medieval Ireland with the most influential account of its legendary history:1
...Unfortunately, a great part of Arbois' book is built upon similarly inexact interpretations - above all, however, on the aforementioned mistaken view that the story-telling (Fabeleien) of early Irish scholars is always somehow based on native saga and tradition. Thus he already refers in the first chapter, for example, to the content of Lebor Gabála as 'the Irish mythological cycle', and without more ado proposes comparisons with Hesiod's Theogony. The days when this fabrication (Machwerk) was regarded as the prehistory of Ireland are, it is to be hoped, gone for good; but it it also time to stop using it, without qualification, as a mine of Irish mythology and legendary history. It is van Hamel's achievement to have uncovered many of the sources - for the most part misunderstood passages from classical authors - from which the authors of Lebor Gabála derived their wisdom (Meyer 1919: 546).
Ninety-one years on, Meyer's expectations can be seen to have been a good deal too optimistic. Far from its being the case that the notion of using Lebor Gabála as evidence for Irish prehistory had been abandoned forever by the second decade of the twentieth century, it could be said that the idea is still ubiquitous in those areas of popular culture and 'fringe' speculation which concern themselves with such questions. That it has not been...