Cuchulain of Muirthemne
Augusta Gregory (1852–1932)
Cuchulain of Muirthemne
London, John Murray, 1902
Gregory recalled that Yeats “was slow in coming to believe I had any gift for writing, and he would not encourage me to it, thinking he made better use of my folk-lore gatherings than I could do.” After he turned down a publisher’s request to compile English versions of the Irish legends from the Ulster Cycle, Gregory took over the project herself. Her Cuchulain of Muirthemne was widely acclaimed and helped inspire several plays by Yeats. Instead of using a stale Victorian idiom, she found a fresh style for her translations. Their “Kiltartan” English, drawing on syntactical features of the original Irish, became the signature style in her folklore prose and plays. The book, with its deliberately “Celtic” cover design, remained in print throughout Gregory’s lifetime.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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