How the Táin Bó Cuailnge was Found Again

Summary

This is the first page of Before the Táin, and it is about the book itself. It is two short paragraphs and a list, and it explains how the story came back after it was lost.

The poets cannot remember it

The poets of Ireland gather one day around Senchán Torpéist. They want to see whether they can recall the Táin Bó Cuailnge in its entirety. They all say they know only parts of it.

Senchán asks which of his pupils would travel to the land of Letha, in return for his blessing. A certain sage has taken a version of the Táin there, eastward, in exchange for the book Cuilmenn. Emine, Ninéne's grandson, sets out for the east with Senchán's son Muirgen.

The gravestone at Enloch

The grave of Fergus mac Roich lies on their way. They come upon the gravestone at Enloch in Connacht. Muirgen sits down at it, and the others leave him for a while and go looking for a house for the night.

Muirgen chants a poem to the gravestone as though it were Fergus himself. If this royal rock were Fergus mac Roich, halted here with sages searching for a roof, he says, then they could recover Cuailnge, plain and perfect, in the person of Fergus.

A great mist forms around him. For three days and three nights he cannot be found. The figure of Fergus walks up to him in fierce majesty. He has brown hair, a green cloak, a hooded tunic embroidered in red, a gold-hilted sword and bronze blunt sandals. Fergus recites the whole Táin to Muirgen, how everything had happened, from start to finish.

Muirgen and the others go back to Senchán with the story, and Senchán rejoices over it.

Another account

There are some who say the story was told to Senchán himself, after he had gone on a fast to certain saints of the seed of Fergus. The text adds that this seems reasonable.

The seven tales before the Táin

The page ends with a list of the seven tales that prepare for the Táin Bó Cuailnge:

• How Conchobor was Begotten, and how he took the Kingship of Ulster
• The Pangs of Ulster
• Exile of the Sons of Uisliu
• How Cúchulainn was Begotten
• Cúchulainn's Courtship of Emer and his Training in Arms with Scáthach
• The Death of Aife's One Son
• The Quarrel of the Two Pig-keepers and how the Bulls were Begotten

Some say the tales before the Táin should also include three more: Cúchulainn's coming to the house of Culann the smith, his taking up arms and mounting into his chariot, and his going to the boy-troop in Emain Macha. These three are given in the body of the Táin.

Kinsella's note on this list says that a different list is given in the text, and that the stories used in his translation have been kept to the minimum needed to understand the plot and motivations of the Táin. His note on the second account says a long and rambling version of it is given in a later story, Tromdámh Guaire.