Mark Williams, _Ireland's Immortal: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth_ (2)

THE SECOND HALF of Williams's book is about how Irish mythology was revived and in some ways re-fashioned in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly with nationalist intentions. The paintings one is likely to see on the covers of paperback collections of Celtic myth were typically produced in this era, which accounts for the Pre-Raphaelite/Gustave Moreau look a lot of them have.

Williams underscores that the revivers--W. B. Yeats foremost, but he had many fellow workers--tended to be Protestant. That is a little surprising--wouldn't the Celtic-identifying Irish be the likeliest to be interested in this material, not the Anglo-Irish? But it is not surprising at all, once Williams explains that it was the Protestant nationalists who were most eager to find an ancient basis for a distinctively Irish cultural identity that could somehow sideline the Catholic Church. Hence the variations on the Swinburnean "Thou hast triumphed, o pale Galilean" theme when these Protestant writers imagined Patrick and Catholicism suppressing the swiftness, strength, and beauty of the old gods.

Two more surprises, one a bit disappointing, the other delightful. I was sorry Williams didn't have more time for the most extensive of the old Irish mythological narratives, the Táin Bó Cúalinge. Williams himself seems to have regrets on this score: "I made it clear at the beginning of this study that it could not be exhaustive, and works that have been neglected (not least the Táin) press upon my conscience," he tells us on p. 490. I wish it had pressed a bit harder, sir. Why such short shrift for such a magnificent tale?

The delightful one was that Lady Gregory's versions of the legends get top marks. Many scholars of the Irish Literary Revival drift a little into condescending to her, aristocratic dabbler and wannabe, etc., but Williams notes, "It is greatly to Gregory's credit that she--the amateur folklorist and littérateur--could tolerate the basic idiosyncrasy of the god-peoples and so convey an accurate impression of the medieval material." Less focused than Yeats or AE on shaping the Tuatha de Danaan into awe-inspiring Wagnerian presences, Gregory did a better job of letting the sources speak for themselves, and in a way did them greater honor.