Cuchulain's account of his own battle is omitted by Thurneysen,
possibly because the account that he gives differs from that in the
text, as is pointed out by Windisch, Ir. Text., vol. i. p. 201). But
it is quite in keeping with the hero's character that he should try to
lessen his own glory; and the omission of this account destroys one of
the features of the tale.
The literal rendering is:
I threw a cast with my light spear
into the host of Eogan the Stream;
not at all do I know, though renowned the price,
the victory that I have done, or the deed.
Whether he was better or inferior to my strength
hitherto I chanced not on for my decision,
a throw, ignorance of the man in the mist,
certainly he came not away a living man.
A white army, very red for multitudes of horses,
they followed after me on every side (?),
people of Manannan Mac Lir,
Eogan the Stream called them.
I set out in each manner
when my full strength had come to me;
one man to their thirty, hundreds,
until I brought them to death.
I heard the groan of Echaid Juil,
lips speak in friendship,
if it is really true, certainly it was not a fight (?),
that cast, if it was thrown.
The idea of a battle with the waves of the sea underlies the third
verse of this description.
PAGE 79
Five pieces of rhetoric follow, all of which are translated by
Thurneysen. A few alterations may be made, but all of them would be
small ones. The verse translations given are, it is believed, a little
closer to the text than Thurneysen's. The metres of the first three
pieces are discussed by Professor Rhys in Y Cymmrodor for 1905 (pages
166, 167). Professor Rhys reduces the second of these to a hexameter
followed by three pentameters, then a hexameter followed by a
pentameter. The other two reduce to hexameters mixed with curtailed
hexameters and pentameters. The last two pieces of the five, not
mentioned by Professor Rhys, show a strophic correspondence, which has
been brought out in the verse translation; note especially their
openings, and the last line of Emer's speech, cia no triallta, as
balancing the last line but four of Cuchulain's speech, cia no
comgellta. The last of these five pieces shows the greatest
differences between the verse and literal translations. A literal
translation of this would run:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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