Book Review OIDHEADH CHLOINNE HUISNEACH

Full Title: Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach (The Violent Death of Uisneach

Edited and Translated by: Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith

Published by: Irish Texts Society

Published: October 1993

ISBN: 1 870 16656 6

Pages: 219, including Appendix I, Appendix II, Index of Personal Names, Index of Place and Tribal Names, Bibliography, and Abbreviations.

The cover of the book. It is green with the symbol of Irish Texts Society.

Review: The book has 9 chapters which the editor calls sections. In the Introduction (Section 1) the editor says that the book aims to provide a critical edition of the Early Modern Irish prose tale Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach.

As usual when I talk about the Irish Texts Books I don’t usually talk about the stories or the analysis specifically because small as most of these books are the contain a boat load of information that anyone interested in Irish Mythology. This review is no different.

What is different about this book is that they have an analysis to the text but the editor also looks at the manuscripts and how they were or were not transmitted, and how all the manuscripts that contain the text date and relate to each other.

The editor makes a point of talking about the basis for this edition of the text, the method of transcription and then he gives you the Irish text of the story.

Next he gives you an edited version of the text which the reader of Modern Irish can recognize. But before that, he makes sure to tell you exactly what he did during his editing process to get the text presented. Then finally in Section 7 you get the Irish text of the story on the left and the English translation on the right. It starts on page 86 and ends on page 141.

Two text pages from the book. On the left the writing is in Irish and the right is in English.

The pages after the text and translation are notes on the text and translation, Appendix I, which is the text of Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach from the Manuscript RIA B IV 1 (MS 2), Appendix II, which is Keating’s Introduction and Epilogue from NLI G113, both in Irish, Index of Personal Names, and an Index of Place and Tribal Names.

I have to admit that I was a little bored with the analysis provided but at the same time I am glad it was there I would rather know what was done to the manuscript while bored than not know what was done to the manuscript I am reading. As usual I really like these little green books!

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