Reviews

The Tain: Translated from the Irish Epic Tain Bo Cualinge by Louis le Brocquy, Thomas Kinsella

elakudark's review

i want le brocquy’s warp spasm paintings as tattoos

ronanmcd's review against another edition

2.0

I tried very hard to enjoy and appreciate this important work. The junction of pre-medieval epic texts, a modern translation by a wonderful poet and superlative brush drawings by an artist of renown, it should be perfect. It should be the Irish answer to Homer (something it suggested in the text with the myriad Greek references). But it isn't.
For the most part it is a collection of rambling lists; gore, wounds, killings and victims, random names twinned with random places, marvellous and improbable feats mentioned only by name without expansion of what they entail. The narrative is hidden under these layers. And that narrative is very small.
The pictures are great though.