Epic:Frank O'Connor called it "a simply appalling text". It compares unfavourably with more elegant "national" epics, such as Beowulf, or Njal's Saga. Part of the problem is the complicated history of The Táin, which some scholars have suggested reflects conflicts and cultural conditions c. the second century BC, but the earliest extant document of which is an allegedly 11th-century manuscript.
Carson summarises this history succinctly in his excellent introduction. He makes a strong case for The Táin'sliterary value, describing it as "a magnificently ruined cathedral", or - with a tad more casuistry - "the supple stylistic continuum of early Irish writing".
The Táinhas a perfectly satisfactory basic storyline. But this line is twisted and muddled in its wealth of sub-plots and repetitions. Carson's division of the text into bite-size chunks does much to redress the difficulty. His use of witty headings - "Guerrilla Tactics", "They Find the Bull" - is inspired. These chapter divisions, originally devised by Thomas Kinsella, as Carson acknowledges, act as signposts for the reader and are extremely useful.
THERE IS MUCH more to admire in this translation than I can give account of here. Carson captures particularly well the humour of the work.
It is of course essentially tragic: thanks to a silly domestic squabble, thousands of men, birds, dogs, and the odd woman die (Cú Chulainn doesn't like to kill women); the bulls kill one another. Nobody wins. It can be read as a savage anti-war satire. But for all its darkness it has plenty in common with burlesque folk drama, or with cartoons. As one of the snootier scribes put it, "it is for the entertainment of idiots". Absolutely:
The first doctor came and examined Cethern.
"You won't last long," he said.
"Then neither will you," said Cethern, and he dealt him such a blow that his brains spurted out from his ears. In the same way he killed fifty doctors. Or maybe it was fifteen . . .
"It wasn't a good idea," said Cú Chulainn to Cethern, "to kill the doctors. We'll get none of them to come now."
Carson's zest for the English language renders him the ideal translator for a text which delights in exuberant description, as when Cú Chulainn dolls himself up:
Gorgeous indeed was Cú Chulainn Mac Sualdaim as he paraded himself before what was left of the army. His hair was arranged in three layers: dark next to the scalp, blood-red in the middle, and yellow at the ends, which were set like a gold crown on his head, falling to the nape of the neck in a braid of three coils, with little ringlets and gold-shiny strands combed out in artful disarray around his shoulders.
The real tour de force of Carson's Táin, however, is in his treatment of the Combat of Cú Chulainn and Fer Diad. For all its over-the-top grotesquerie, The Táinholds at its heart this deeply serious movement. The final combat is rich with real emotion; in it the characters come to life as rounded people, capable of genuine love and friendship, of tenderness and sorrow. The manic pace slows down and the reader is for the first time moved. That Carson succeeds in conveying the deep pathos of this encounter, having dealt with the ridiculousness of several previous combats, is above all testimony to the immense range of his skills.
The question has to be asked: do we need a new version? There have been a number of scholarly translations of the main recensions of The Táin, and several literary translations - most are referenced in Carson's reading lists. By far the most significant was Thomas Kinsella's, published in 1969 (what a year!), the publication of which aroused national jubilation. Ciaran Carson acknowledges his indebtedness to this great classic, and describes clearly the ways in which his differs from it. He has the advantage of having at his disposal a scholarly translation that was probably not available to Kinsella - Cecile O'Rahilly's translation of Recension Onewas not published until 1976. An interesting exercise for the reader is to compare the two, and it's even more interesting to compare them to O'Rahilly's translation, although of course the really interesting exercise would be to compare them to the original Old Irish recensions.
My answer would be: yes, we need Carson's version. Each generation deserves a new interpretation. Kinsella's was outstanding. But Carson adds his own individual voice and energy to the story. It is not hugely different from Kinsella's, and how could it be? General fidelity to the source is important.
I SEE CARSON as not so much a translator as another poet in the long line of narrators, poets, and scribes remaking this, our strange, confused, and - although this seems racist - terribly Irish epic: Irish, in its mixture of comedy and tragedy, its love of flowery language, its obsession with genealogy and place, its energy. Its blend of comedy and tragedy. Merry wars. Confusions. Carson compares it to Joyce's Ulysses. But many Irish literary works, old and new, share some of the Táin'squalities. Few Irish writers are naturally drawn to understatement and the wild imaginativeness of The Táinhave inspired some of the best - Flann O'Brien being the prime example.
It can inspire us all. Ciaran Carson has carried the magnificent ruined cathedral across the ages, or at least the decades, and delivered it, restored sensitively, in a version that is highly entertaining and immensely readable, to us.
So: a blessing on Ciaran Carson. And on all who have translated The Táin.
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a curator at the National Library and teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at UCD. Her novel, Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow was published this year by Blackstaff
The Táin Translated by Ciaran Carson from the Old Irish epic Táin Bó Cúailnge Penguin, 223pp. £15.99