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The Odyssey of a Folktale: "Merugud Uilix Meic Leirtis"Author(s): Barbara HillersSource: Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, Vol. 12 (1992), pp. 63-79Published by: Department of Celtic Languages & Literatures, Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557238 .

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Barbara Hi?lers

THE ODYSSEY OF A FOLKTALE: MERUGUD UILIX MEIC LEIRTIS

The medieval Irish saga Merugud Uilix Meic LeirtisJ The Wanderings of

Ulysses Son of Laertes,' offers us the opportunity to take a new look at the

extraordinary combination of elements that go into the making of Early Irish literature. On the one hand, this short saga can claim to be the only extant version of the Odyssey in medieval Ireland, ultimately derived from Homer and thus evidence of Ireland's indebtedness to Classical learning. On the other hand,

Merugud Uilix is clearly not derived directly from any Classical text, or indeed from any one text at all; its rendering reveals an acquaintance with the story at a remove. Into the Homeric framework the narrator has inserted an international folktale which is demonstrably taken from oral tradition. Merugud Uilix

represents thus a complex fusion of written and oral sources.

The stories of Classical Antiquity were as popular in Ireland as they were

elsewhere in medieval Europe;2 "In what land in the world has not been heard the misery of the Trojans!" the hero of the Irish Aeneid exclaims.3 We find allusions to the heroes of Greece and Rome in Irish poetry and prose already in

the Old Irish period. The bulk of full-scale translations and more or less free

adaptations from Classical sources date to the Middle and Early Modern Irish

periods. There seems to have been a burst of literary activity and interest in the

Classics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rather earlier than elsewhere in

Europe,4 that resulted in the translation of Statius' Thebaid* Lucan's

Pharsalia,6 Dares Phrygius' Historia de excidio Troiae1 and Vergil's Aeneid!

However, none of these works are 'translations' in our sense of word-for-word

correspondence; they are more or less free adaptations which have been altered

structurally, as well as stylistically to fit in with native narrative tradition.9 The

result is "not so much a translation from one language to another, but from one

culture to another."10

These adaptations from Classical sources are clearly of the highest importance for the understanding of how the Irish processed the Graeco-Latin culture they

adopted. One would expect them to be eagerly studied by scholars in the field,

especially since the old tendency to view Ireland as *a place apart' from the rest

of medieval Europe has been replaced by the tendency to emphasize Ireland's

indebtedness to Latin-Christian culture. However, despite this change of outlook,

inteipretive studies of the major works are still lacking, and there are numerous

minor texts that remain unedited,11 badly edited, or badly understood.

One case of such neglect is the text under discussion here, Merugud Uilix

Meic Leirtis (henceforth called MU). A study of the relation between the text



64 BARBARA HILLERS

and its ultimate origin shows not only the obvious presence of Classical

influence; a careful consideration of all the sources can offer us exciting insights into its composition.

MU is preserved in three late medieval manuscripts, the Book of Ballymote, Stowe12, and a MS in the King's Inn Library, Dublin. It has found two editors, Kuno Meyer, who attempted a critical edition based on the Ballymote and Stowe text in 1886,13 and Robert T. Meyer, who edited the Ballymote MS in 1958.14

Robert Meyer dated the saga to ' 'the late twelfth or the early thirteenth century"

and does not hesitate to call it "Middle Irish."15 The only translation of the text so far is Kuno Meyer's, which is badly in need of revision.16 Both editions are somewhat flawed; for example, Kuno Meyer, in a passage which is

uncritically adopted by Robert Meyer,17 has Odysseus' travelling companions

being swallowed by an earthquake. There is no earthquake; what the text really says is that the companions are overtaken by a band of marauders.18

The story is set "after the capture and destruction of the chief city of the

Trojans," when each of the Greek heroes "came to their own borders and to

their own sweet homeland." Only Ulysses ? called Uilix mac Leirtis ? is lost

at sea for some time with his ever-diminishing band of men. After escaping from the Cyclops, they come to a place ruled by the Judge of Right. He sells them three pieces of advice, for thirty ounces of gold apiece. The counsels are:

1) Hold your breath three times and think before acting; 2) Follow the highway, not the by-way; 3) Don't set out before a certain time in the morning.

Before they leave, the Judge of Right gives Ulysses a box19 which he is to open on his return home.

Opportunity to observe these three precepts comes to Ulysses in reverse order. On their journey home they stay at an inn. The next morning they are invited

by some other travellers to journey with them, but Ulysses insists on obeying the third advice, and delays his departure. They watch while the entire company is

being destroyed by a raiding party, while they themselves journey on safely. Two of Ulysses' men take a shortcut "and meet death instantly"

? we do not

know by what cause. Finally, they return home, and find a beautiful young man

sitting by Penelope's side. Ulysses determines to revenge himself on his wife

for her perceived infidelity. Through an underground tunnel he enters the

queen's private chamber at night. Unseen by either Penelope or the young man?

Ulysses raises his sword three times to strike off the young man's head, but each

time holds off, remembering the advice to hold his breath three times. The third

time, he is about to strike when the queen, waking from a dream, addresses the

lad with a male, 'my son.' She tells him that she saw her husband in a dream

standing above them and ready to kill them. Ulysses realizes his mistake and



MERUGUD UILIX MEIC LE?RT1S 65

leaves again, using the same secret route by which he came. The next day he reveals himself to Penelope, who is initially as reluctant as her Homeric

counterpart to believe him. Only when Ulysses' old dog recognizes him is she convinced. When Ulysses gives her the Judge of Right's present, they find inside the ninety ounces of gold Ulysses had to pay for his three advices.

Already Kuno Meyer pointed out that Merugud Uilix was not a translation as

such, as the text has "no close analogues either in the Latin or in the medieval French versions of the Troy Tale." Kuno Meyer concluded therefore that "the Irishman was himself the author of this work."20 Neither of the two editors succeeds in offering concrete suggestions about the Classical sources for MIL

Robert Meyer seems to suggest21 that the author of MU used Aristotle's brief

summary in his Poetics; but apart from the question of how well known Aristotle was in twelfth-century Ireland, there is nothing in this summary that would

particularly fit the MU;

The argument of the Odyssey is not a long one. A certain man

has been abroad many years; Poseidon is ever on the watch for

him, and he is all alone. Matters at home too have come to

this, that his substance is being wasted and his son's death

plotted by suitors to his wife. Then he arrives there himself after his grievous sufferings; reveals himself, and falls on his

enemies; and the end is his salvation and their death.22

No mention is made of Poseidon in MU, nor of the suitors and their plot to kill

Odysseus' son. Aristotle's focus on the events after Odysseus' return is not

reflected in the Irish story, which ends with the recognition scene. On the other

hand MU has plenty of details which Aristotle does not have, such as personal names, the Cyclops episode etc. Whatever the Irish author's source was, it could

hardly have been Aristotle.

As a version of the Odyssey, MU is a disappointment. It preserves only, in

Robert Meyer's words, "some waifs and strays of the Homeric tradition." Only two Homeric characters are named: the hero, Uilix mac Leirtis, and his wife

PeneloipU and the only episodes that are recognizably Homeric are the Cyclops

episode and the recognition scene. Both editors additionally saw "dim

reminiscences of the Homeric episodes" of the Oxen of Helios and the Island

of the Lotus Eaters.23 However, a textual borrowing seems out of the question: the Irish passage in question does not resemble either of the two Homeric

episodes closely.24 There is no trace of many of the most popular incidents in

the Odyssey, such as Odysseus' sojourn with Circe, his encounter with the Sirens



66 BARBARA HILLERS

or with Scylla and Charybdis. The Irish tale ends with Penelope's recognizing her husband; there is no mention of Odysseus' struggle with the suitors to reclaim his regal authority. The author of MU is unaware of even the most basic facts of the Odyssey; he does not know, for example, that Odysseus' home, Ithaca, is an island; his hero reaches home dry-shod. The Homeric content of

MU is so slim that we have to conclude that it could not have been based on any

complete version of the Odyssey; as Robert Meyer puts it, "one thing at least is certain: we cannot expect the twelfth-century Irishman to have read the Odyssey in the original."25 What, then, can we expect him to have read?

The form of the hero's name gives us a first clue; the Irish Uilix is clearly derived from the Latin Ulysses, rather than the Greek Odysseus, and indicates that the Irish got the Odyssey through Latin intermediaries.26 But the author of

MU gives us another, more direct, clue to his source. After Ulysses has blinded the Cyclops, and flees with his companions, one of his men is left behind, gurub ? in fear sin d?rala dAenias mac Ainchis dia mbaifor loingis, 'and this was the

man Aeneas son of Anchises met when he was in exile.' This is not an example of medieval name-dropping; the author is simply stating his source. In his

Aeneid, Homer's Roman imitator Vergil refers back to his model, by letting his

Trojan exile Aeneas encounter many of the marvels traditionally associated with the Greek Odysseus.27 Vergil tells us that when Aeneas reaches Sicily, the

home of the cyclopes, he is met by a ship-wrecked Greek who identifies himself as Achaemenides, son of Adamastus, a follower of Ulysses, and tells him about the encounter with Polyphemus.

Kuno Meyer was the first to point out that "our author's acquaintance with

Vergil is attested by his mentioning the meeting of Aeneas with

Archaemenides,"28 though he does not seem to draw from it the logical conclusion that the Aeneid was the source for the Cyclops episode. Robert

Meyer refers to Vergil, but does not think the Aeneid is the source for MU: "it does not seem to be the source of the present version of the Polyphemus episode."29 The Polyphemus episode in MU, he argues elsewhere, is "greatly distorted and could hardly be from Vergil's Aeneid."m However, if we

compare the Cyclops episode in Homer, Vergil, and MU, we find that the Irish

story contains almost all the details of the Aeneid, and has no Homeric details

beyond those found in Vergil, In the Aeneid, the Greeks witness the death of two of their comrades at the hands of Poliphemus, who dashes them against the

walls of his cave, and then devours them. However, the Greeks avenge the death of their comrades when the Cyclops is "replete with eating and sunk in a drunk

sleep;" "with a pointed instrument" they blind the Cyclops' single eye and make good their escape.31



MERUGUD UILIX MFJC LEIRTIS 67

MU basically follows Vergil's outline; the murderous Cyclops dismembers some of the comrades:

In bail a mbid in cur no in cath-milid ro iadad a lama umpu guro br?dh 7 guro minaiged a mama 1 a fe?il, 1 lar marbad sochaidi d?b do t?argaib nonbur leis dib etir a dh? l?im.*.. (1.33-36)

Where there was a hero or a battle-soldier he closed his arms around them and broke and minced their bones and their flesh.

Then, after having killed a great number of them, he lifted up nine of them between his two arms....32

Ulysses frees his captive friends from the giant's cave, and avenges their dead comrades by blinding the Cyclops:

T?inic da indsaigid, 7 in cen-s?il mor ro bai a tulphortaib a

?dain, ro chuir fograinni na slegi etir in d? abra 7 tucustar s?thad arin sieg isin sail gurbo monur do a imdttin ar in loch lethan-m?r lind-usci ro mebaid esti. (1,67-70)

He went up to him, and into the one big eye that was in the front part of his forehead he put the point of his spear, between the two brows, and gave a thrust to the spear in his

ey. And he had a difficult task to save himself from the broad and large loch of water that burst from it.33

Vergil does not tell the whole story; he could, and did, assume a knowledge of

Homer in his audience. For example, he leaves out Ulysses* ruse of offering wine to the ogre; we are merely told of Polyphemus' "drunken sleep," and his

vomiting up "thick wine." Vergil also makes no mention of Polyphemus

blocking the exit of his cave and keeping the Greeks captive; nor does he refer

to the sheep under whose bellies the comrades manage to escape from the cave.

MU shares the same omissions; but unlike Vergil's Latin readers, who would

have needed no reminder to fill in the details of the story> the Irish narrator of

MU is rather at a loss. Having only Vergil's brief summary to go on, he does

not know, for example, how the Greeks get into the dangerous cave in the first

place. His narrative is constructed to motivate this situation; the Greeks are

attacked by the Cyclops who carries them off to his cave. The author even

invents a motive for the Cyclops' aggression: the Greeks are helping themselves



68 BARBARA HILLERS

to gold from a mountain of gold which is in the giant's possession. At this point we have to consider whether the author of MU used the Latin

Aeneid, or its Irish translation. The Irish Imtheachta Aeniasa follows the Latin

original closely, and it would be hard to judge which of them was the source for MU. However, the form of the name may give us a clue: The form cicloipecda

is used in the Irish Aeneid, and the same form ? an adjectival formation derived

from Latin Cyclops ?

appears in Stowe.34

Robert Meyer was not entirely unjustified in calling the MU version of the

Polyphemus episode "greatly distorted." The MU account differs from the

Aeneid in a number of details. Whereas the Cyclops kills and devours only two

of the Greeks in the Aeneid, he kills "a great number" (sochaidi) in MU, which

also does not mention his cannibalism. In the Aeneid the blinding is carried out

by the comrades in a cooperative effort, and their tool is "a sharp instrument,"

harking back to Homer's great wooden pole, which was too heavy for one man

to lift. However, MU interprets the "sharp instrument" as a spear, and it is

Ulysses alone who is credited with the blinding. These differences make it

unlikely that the MU author had a text of the Aeneid in front of him. If he had,

why should he have changed minor details? Why should he have left out the

Cyclops' cannibalism, or his intoxication? Why should he have relocated the first part of the episode from the cave to the beach, necessitating the Greeks

being carried off? And why would he have left out the name of the Cyclops, which appears in Imtheachta Aeniasa as Polipebus (from Polyphemus), and of the Greek survivor, Achenmedes (from Achaemenides), if not because he had

forgotten them? The omissions and misunderstandings indicate that the author did not have the text in front of him to verify his account; he either read the text some time previous to the composition of MU, or heard it read.

Whereas in the Latin version the Cyclops episode occurs well into the epic (iii, 588), in Imtheachta Aeniasa it takes place at the beginning of the story, on the fifth page of Calder's edition (1.145-170). It may be that the author of MU did not get much further than the first few pages; as Stanford has pointed out, apart from the Cyclops episode, MU "ignores Virgil's Aeneid."' The Irish Aeneid contains two more of Ulysses' adventures: the story of the Wooden Horse,35 and a brief account of Ulysses' sojourn with Circe.36 Both are among the most

popular of Ulysses' adventures, yet neither of them is in any way reflected in MU. If the author read Imtheachta Aeniasa in its entirety, and certainly if he had

the text in front of him, it seems odd that he did not use the opportunity to add to the list of the hero's adventures.

Before we turn to the non-Classical source for MU, let us sum up the rather inconclusive evidence for the Classical sources: the Cyclops episode is taken



MERUGUD U?UX MEIC LE1RTIS 69

from the Aeneid, probably via the Irish Imtheachta Aeniasa?1 However, the author of MU did not use the Aeneid otherwise, and he must have had other sources. While he cannot have dealt with a complete version of the Odyssey, he

must have learned more than a few isolated scraps of the story, He has a grasp of the general atmosphere of the Homeric tale, of the character of Ulysses, his astuteness, the grumblings of his comrades, and the feeling of despair that they share in face of their ever diminishing number. It seems likely that the author of MU had read, or heard, a selective retelling or summary of the story. It may well not be possible to trace these Homeric elements to an extant source. The author of MU knew the Odyssey perhaps in the same way that people believe

they know the Odyssey, because in their childhood they have read some version of the story adapted for children.38 This parallel may not be as anachronistic as it seems; Curtius has shown that throughout the Middle Ages, generations of students studied Moments without ever reading a line of Homer, either in the

original, or even in translation.39 Interestingly, Hum?rus was contemptuously relegated to the lower grades of the curriculum; he was considered easy reading and was used as a teaching tool for the junior students to learn Latin. One can

speculate on instructors composing plot summaries in easy Latin of the most

popular adventures of the Odyssey. Some didactic aids of this kind must have

existed, but would have had a slim chance of surviving because of their purely ancillary nature. Despite their low status, such retellings of Homeric plots would no doubt have been more widely known than the more sophisticated Latin

authors.

While the introduction of Classical literature lay by definition in the hands of

the learned Christian literati, once it became popular it must have strayed outside

the limits of Latin and of letters. There is no evidence in MU that the author's source was in a language other than Irish, and there is no conclusive evidence

that he read rather than heard any part of his story. Rather than proving the

extent of Greek and Latin learning in Ireland, MU seems to indicate the extent

to which at least some elements of that learning had been assimilated into a

lively native tradition.

Let us now turn to the non-Classical source of MU which most clearly

expresses the debt of the author to the native oral tradition. Robert Meyer was

the first to point out that MU was a version of the popular international folktale

of The Servant's Good Counsels,' or, as it is popularly known, *The Three

Good Advices.'40 This folktale was known throughout Europe at an early date

and spread to Ireland orally, In theTypes of the Folktale, Stith Thompson lists

circa 120 international versions with a distribution ranging from Finland to North

Africa, and from Japan to Ireland. Jean-Pierre Pichette's full-length monograph,



70 BARBARA HILLERS

Vobservance des conseils du ma?tre?1 which analyses as many as 369 versions, has by no means exhausted the subject. The tale continues to be told to this day in areas where there is an active storytelling tradition, and it is particularly well

represented in Gaelic tradition. A Scottish version was recorded in 1955, and the

story was still being told in Donegal in the seventies.

Here is a version of the story told by Joe Heaney from C?rna, County Gal way, who is best known as a traditional musician, though this tale shows that he also knew how to tell a story:42

The poor man ? he was, he was only six months married and

his wife told him she was expecting a child, and that he'd have

to go and earn some money. And he went to work for a

farmer. To make a long story short, he stayed with the farmer

for seven years. And of course after the first seven years he

had forgotten a bit about home, so he stayed on another seven

years, and finally he made it twenty-one years. He stayed

working for the farmer for twenty-one years. And after

twenty-one years he said he'd have to go home to see his wife,

forgetting when he left she was expecting a child. But, ah, the

farmer asked him would he rather his wages than to give him

three good advices. So the poor man said he'd take the

advices. And the first advice ? he said he'd give him an

advice for each of the, of, of the seven years ? and the first

advice he gave him was, whatever way the road is, never take

the short-cut. Whether the road be long or short, never go a

short-cut. Never sleep in a house where there is an old man married to a young woman. And the third one was, never do

anything at night you'll be sorry for in the morning. So she gave him the cake43 and she told him not to cut that

cake until he arrived home. And he set out to walk the twenty miles. And when he was passing by a lake he saw a short-cut down to the road.44 And he went through the cut. But he

thought of that advice he got when he was halfway, and he turned back and went the road. And the following morning he heard an old man, an old man told him, that two robbers killed a man the previous night to the place where he was going to take the short-cut.

And the second night of his, of his journey he came to a

house, and when he walked in, there was a lovely young woman serving supper. And an old man with a big long beard



MERUGUD UILIX MEIC LEIRTIS 71

sitting down by the fire rocking the cradle. So they said they'd put him up for the night and, ah, he

thought better when he thought of the second advice not to

stay one night in a house where there'd be an old man married to a young woman. So he slept outside in the stable.45 And about twelve o'clock at night he saw a man coming to the

door, and herself, the woman of the house, and the man took off the old man, and killed him outside the door. So he said to himself, if that was him that would be the same picture.

Finally, the third day, he came home. And when he walked in he opened the door ? he lived in a small house ? and he

put his head inside the room, and he saw his wife in the bed, and a young man with a big beard on him in the bed with her.

And he put his hand behind the door where they always kept the hatchet, and he picked up the hatchet to strike the man.

And that's when he thought of the third advice he got never to

do anything at night he'd feel sorry for in the morning. And then he spoke to the woman, and he, he said to her, who is the

man? And of course she said that was the son that was born three months after he left..,.

The happiness of the reunited family is further increased when they cut the

"cake" or loaf of bread brought home by the hero, and find in it the wages owed him by his master.

The fusion of the Ulysses story with the folktale of The Three Good Advices'

was presumably triggered by the common denominator shared by the two stories:

the hero has been away from home so long that he does not know his own son,

and he has doubts about his wife's fidelity. After twenty years of absence, such

doubts are perhaps not entirely unwarranted. At the very beginning of MU, a

despondent Uilix remarks:

Is doiligh lind tr? inn? fog?bam and si?t, 1 in r?gan ?laind

?ilgen rof?csamar and abeith agfir eili i n-ar fiadnaisi 7 rig eli arar crkh} 7 arferand do beith aigi, ocus ar s?naf?n im

ar ndeilb gid ar firindi beam. (11.5-8)

The thing we shall find there seems hard to us: the beautiful

noble queen whom we left there being with another man in our

presence, and another king in our country, and our land being in his possession, and us being denied because of our looks,



72 BARBARA HILLERS

even though it be us in truth.46

It is his suspiciousness which makes Uilix prone to believe that his wife is indeed being unfaithful when he sees a young man by her side.

The loose, episodic structure of Ulysses' wanderings easily accommodates the

folktale, and the structure of the folktale is left largely intact. After the encounter with the Cyclops and a couple of other adventures, Uilix comes to the

palace of the Judge of Right. The Judge of Right corresponds to the 'master' of the folktale who gives the hero good advice and a loaf of bread. The upper-class hero Ulysses cannot, of course, work for wages, so he buys the advice with the treasures brought back from Troy; similarly, a loaf of bread might seem an odd

farewell present from one nobleman to another, and our hero is given a

mysterious box (citfing) instead. He is told by the Judge of Right not to open it until he reaches home. When at the end of MU Ulysses presents it to

Penelope, he reiterates the Judges's injunction:

Ata cilfing beug agam tuce m'oidi dam 7 adubairt rium a

tabairt id laim-siu gan foslugud furri no co tuccaind duit-siu

hi (11. 282-284)

I have a small box which my teacher gave to me and he told

me to give it in your hand and not to open it until I would

give it to you.47

The form of the injunction resembles closely the injunction given by the master, or mistress, in many of the modern version.48 In the world of the folktale, which is ruled by poetic justice, this present is the wife's recompense for her

long years of faithful waiting. In MU, as in the folktale, the hero receives three pieces of advice, the first two

of which enable him to reach home safely. Two of the three counsels of the traditional tale we find in MU: hold your breath three times and think before

acting, md follow the highway, not the by-way. The third counsel ? never sleep in a house where there is an old man married ta a young woman ? has dropped out, and with it the murder plot, although the setting is still there: the inn at

which Ulysses and his friends stay, A look at the oral versions confirms that this

motif is by far the most complex and unstable part of the story, and indeed the

only part where storytellers tend to slip up. The MU author is thus no exception in dropping it, nor in substituting a non-traditional counsel, presumably in order to preserve the threefold sequence of the counsels. In the folktale, the advice



MERUGUD UILIX MEIC LEIRTIS 73

follow the highway, not the by-way saves the hero from joining his comrades, who are murdered by highwaymen. In MU, two of Ulysses' comrades, who take the by-way, "meet death instantly"

? we are not told how. The highwaymen seem to have been transferred to the non-traditional advice don't set out before a certain time in the morning: Ulysses' travelling companions who leave early in the morning are overtaken and killed by a band of marauders.

It is not surprising that Kuno Meyer, who was not aware of the folktale, was

mystified by the latter part of the story; no wonder he attempted to equate the

Judge of Right with Aeolus. It is more surprising that Robert Meyer, too, misunderstood the tale, since he knew a number of modern versions, and was

indeed the first to point out the oral story as a source of MU.m In all of his three brief discussions of MU%) Meyer maintains that, as he puts it in one

article, "the tunnel episode represents the Visit to Hades in the eleventh book of the Odyssey." He continues:

Here Penelope is confused with Persephone; nothing surprising that the thirteenth century Irishman should be hazy about the details of classical Greek mythology.51

It is not likely that either Hades or its queen were on the narrator's mind;52 the tunnel episode is best interpreted as the result of adapting the folk story to an

upper-class milieu. In the folktale, the hero is usually a landless labourer, and his house is usually described as a both?n, a one-room cabin. He returns home at night and lets himself in, not wanting to wake anybody up. Ulysses, on the other hand, can hardly barge into the queen's chamber at night; as a stranger, h

would not have been allowed near her. The tunnel is simply an expedient plOv device to bring the hero into Penelope's bedroom.53

Robert Meyer calls MU "simply one of the international tales of the Three Wise Pieces of Advice,"54 without commenting on the considerable differences between the medieval text and the modern folk stories. "Over 300 versions of the Three Wise Counsels have been recorded and await further classification and

study in the archives of the Commission,"55 Meyer writes; but despite his

eloquent eulogy of the oral storytelling tradition,56 he does not undertake this

work himself. However, if we want to understand the medieval narrative, we

must first strive to understand its component parts, and it is therefore essential

to study not only the Classical sources, but also the folktale of the 'Three Good

Advices, '

MU is an example of how crucial folklore can be for the appreciation o\

medieval texts: without an understanding of the folktale, MU is. simply a versior



74 BARBARA HILLERS

of the Odyssey that went terribly wrong.57 MU is a creative and original fusion of two very different stories, coming from two very different worlds, the world of letters and the world of the non-literate storytellers. What I would suggest is that these two worlds may in fact have been less hermetically divided than we

have hitherto assumed. One and the same narrator could draw both on written

texts, such as the Irish Aeneid, and on the oral storytelling tradition, and weave them together into a unique and yet traditional fabric.

Barbara Hillers Harvard



MERUGim mux Mme iimt?s 75

NOTES

1 in Kuno Meyer's edition the saga title appears as Merugud Uilix make Uirtis; Roben Meyer's edition is entitled Merugud Uilix M aie Leirtis. However, m Gcaroid Um Nioeaiil has pointed out (?igse 9, 1958, I!, 134} the Maie of the title should he Mtit\ "the MS form can be expanded either way, and the former was at this period obsolete/1

2 Vide W. B. Stanford, "Towards a History of Classical Influences in Ireland,"

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 70? 1970, 13-91.

J G. Calder, Imtheachta Aeniascu The Irish AenekL Irish Texts Soeieto VI iLondon, 1903), 1. 320f.

4 Stanford, 37.

5 G. Calder, ed? Togail na Tehe. The Thehaid of Statins (Cambodge, 1922).

6 Whitley Stokes, In Cath Catharda. An Irish Version ofLucan's Pharsatkt* Irticiie Texte

4,2 (Leipzig, 1909).

7 W. Stokes, T?gail Trot (Calcutta, 1881); Togail TroL Irische Texte 2,1. E, Curtios calls De excidio Troiae historia "a Latin Troy romance of the later Empire period"

which "enjoyed great prestige in the Middle Ages'* {European Literature and the Lah Middle Ages, 50n).

8 G. Calder, Imtheachta Aenkisa, The Irish Aeneid^ Irish Texts Society VI ? London, 1903),

9 For example rather than starting medias in res into Aeneas" adventures as Vergil does,

the Irish adaptor of the Imtheachta Aeniasa tells the story in its proper chronological order. In Cath Catharda stops after book seven of Lucan's Pharsalia, the great battle

between Caesar and Pompey? clearly a more satisfactory ending than Lucan's from the

point of view of the Irish scribe.

10 Edgar Slotkin, "Medieval Scribes and the Fixed Text," ?igse 17, 437.

11 Philip Freeman's "Middle Irish Version of. the . Romulus and Remus Story"

(Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium XI 1991,1) is an example of such minor

texts.



76 BARBARA HILLERS

12 Ms D.IV.2 at the Royal Irish Academy.

13 Kuno Meyer, ed, and trans., Merugud Uilix Make Leirtis. The Irish Odyssey (London,

1886).

?4 Robert T. Meyer, ed., Merugud Uilix Maic Leirtis, Medieval and Modem Irish Series

XVII (Dublin, 1958),

15 Robert T. Meyer, "The Middle lush'Odyssey and Celtic folktale", Papers of the

Michigan Academy of Sciences..., 553. This dating is confirmed by Gear?id Mac

Niocaill, op. cit., 135.

lA ? am grateful to Dr M?irin Ni Dhonnchadha, who pointed out to me some of the

vagaries of Kuno Meyer's translation in my first acquaintance with the story.

17 Robert Meyer's edition does not include a translation of the text; however, he gives two

plot summaries, both of which refer to the 'earthquake'.

18 The text leaves little room for doubt: "Dar lium-sa tr?,

' ar Uilix, 4n? dib in buidin sa

a timceall in guiri amuig ? ni dib in sirid sa dun leith eli. '

Ocus ro condeadarfo ch?t?ir

ag sceinmfon chuitechta tat co n?rf?csat duine a mhethaid (R, Meyer, MU, 11. 187-190),

Iy If this is indeed what cilfing means. Kuno Meyer glosses this rare word as 'box;'

Robert Meyer translates it as 'sack, bag' in his glossary, but nevertheless speaks of a

lbox' in both of his paraphrases of the story, no doubt following Kuno Meyer. On cilfing v. DIL, and Mac Niocaill, op.cit., who draws attention to the gloss in Stowe cilfing .L

bolg, "cilfing, i.e. bag',

20 Op. cit., ix.

21 "The Irish material concerning the genuine Odyssey itself... is curiously enough little

more than the brief account given by Aristotle in the Poetics" ("Folktale, Fiction, or

Saga," 74).

22 Poetics, ch. xvii.

23 R.Meyer ("Celtic folktale," 556), paraphrasing Kuno Meyer's "faintechoes" (op.cit,

ix).

24 In the Irish episode the sea-bound comrades come to an island where they kill and eat

sheep and which they are reluctant to leave. Aside from the fact that in Homer the two incidents occur in quite different places (books ix and xii respectively), the following



MERUGUD UJLIX MEIC LEIRTIS 77

differences make it unlikely that the episode could be derived from the Odyssey: the food consumed by the Irish travellers is not cattle, but sheep; nor is it under the protection of

any particular deity, and if their killing represents the breaking of a tabu this is not made

explicit in the story. The reluctance of the comrades to leave the island seems perfectly

understandable and can hardly be equated with the magic change of consciousness that

affects the comrades who join the lotus eaters in Homer.

25 "The Middle Irish Odyssey ? Folktale, Fiction or Saga" Modern Philology 50, 1952,

77. Indeed, it is hard to see how a complete version could have been available in Ireland

at this time. Not only does reading knowledge of Greek seem to have been scarce

(Stanford, op. cit., 22-7; L. Bieler, Ireland, Harbinger of the Middle Ages, London 1963,

14), but Homer himself, unlike his Latin imitators Vergil and Statius, was not generally part of the classical liberal arts curriculum in Europe during the early or high middle ages (v. Curtius, op. cit., 48ff on the "curriculum authors").

26 Curtius refers to the so-called ?lias Latine, a condensation of the ?Had in 1070

hexameters composed in the first century AD, which he calls "a wretched piece of work"

(op. cit., 49).

27 There is more than a hint of competition between the two, Vergil's hero out-doing his

Greek model; thus Aeneas has the good sense to sail straight by Circe's island, rather than

tempt fate; and instead of attempting to go through Scylla and Charybdis, Aeneas simply circumnavigates the malicious rocks.

28 Op. cit., xi.

29 "Folktale, Fiction or Saga," 76,

30 Ml/, xv.

31 Aeneid, iii, 588.

32 K. Meyer, op. cit., 18.

33 Ibid., 20.

34 Cicroipecda (1.32); the odd reading from the Book of Ballymote, olcpetta, is, no doubt,

a misreading of the same form (v, Kuno Meyer, op, cit., vi).

35 Ibid., 11. 414-517.

Ibid.. 11, 1458-64.



78 BARBARA HILLERS

37 This would provide a relative dating for Imtheachta Aeniasa as predating MU, which

suggests a rather earlier date for the former than its editor posited,

3SI would like to thank Alex Hollmann from the Harvard Department of the Classics for suggesting this analogy to me.

3V Op. cit., 48ff.

40 In the international tale type index, Aarne and Thompson's The Types of the Folktale, it has been assigned the type number 910 B. Aarne's original title for this type was 'Die

guten Ratschl?ge des Dienstherren,' 'the master's good counsels' which Thompson translated rather ambiguously as 'The Servant's Good Counsels,' leaving open whether

the servant is receiving or giving the counsels. Inofficially, however, the tale is known

among storytellers and collectors worldwide as 'The Three (Good) Advices,'

4i Folklore Fellows Communications 250, 1991.

4: In fact Joe Heaney tells his version, which was first pointed out to me by Dr William Manon of the Harvard Celtic Department, as an introduction to a song, T?ig?n is

Peadair,' Heaney's song is an adaptation of a traditional ballad (Child 274 'Our

Goodman'), changed to suit the folktale. Both story and song are collected on a record,

Joe Heaney: Irish Traditional Songs in Gaelic and English, recorded by Bill Leader for

Topic Records Ltd. The transcription is my own.

43 Sic. This might conceivably be a slip on the part of the narrator, but I do not think so.

In most modem versions, while the advice is given by the master, the 'cake' or loaf of

bread is given by the mistress, the baking of bread being her domain,

14 Heaney says he shaw a, saw a....

15 Heaney says in the, the, in the, the stable,

161 have modified K. Meyer's translation which is rather too free at this point.

t7 Translation by the author.

IS Usually an injunction not to break the loaf of bread.

w Meyer was a student of the eminent folklorist Kenneth Jackson; in fact it was Jackson

who suggested the dissertation topic to Meyer, and pointed out to him the modern oral versions of the tale.



MERUGUD UtUX MEIC LEIRTIS 79

50 "The Middle Irish Odyssey: Folktale, Fiction, or Saga?" MPh 50, 1952, 73-8;

Merugud Uilix Maic Leirtis, (Dublin, 1958); "The Middle Irish Odyssey and Celtic Folktale," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences... 46, 1960 (1961), 258-60.

51 "Celtic Folktale," 556.

521 can see no reason why Penelope should be confused with the queen of Hades; aside

from a certain similarity between their names, the two have little if anything in common.

Positing a confusion with the Persephone story also presupposes an awareness of that

myth and raises the question of its availability to the author of MU.

53 The narrator wastes no time on describing the tunnel: Ulysses tells his comrades about

the tunnel, which he had designed himself many years ago. After this brief explanation, the tunnel is not mentioned again.

54 "Folktale, Fiction or Saga," 75.

55 "Celtic Folktale," 561.

56 * ijQ reconj these hero and wonder tales today is to participate in the heroic age of

which we read in books. The finest tale of the twelfth century vellums is but a pale ghost, a mere outline, compared with the living story on the lips of man" ("Celtic

Folktale," 560).

57 The reverse, of course, holds also true; as a version of the folktale of 'The Three Good

Advices,' MU is a very poor specimen, However, it is of course of the greatest interest

for our understanding of the story's development in Ireland, and it can even elucidate its

international distribution. An in-depth discussion of all Irish versions, medieval and

modern, is beyond the scope of the present paper, but will be the focus of a separate

study.



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