Texts

Esnada tige Buchet ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’

  • Late Old Irish, Early Middle Irish
  • Cycles of the Kings
Manuscripts
pp. 113a–114b (facsimile) cols 756 (line 47)–759 (line 4)
ff. 73rb, line 31 – 73va, line 49
Abbreviated prose version, "varying a good deal in wording and omitting the rhetorical passages".(1)n. 1 David Greene, Fingal Rónáin and other stories (1955): 27.
f. 50ra, line 1 and further (= pp. 87a–88a in facsimile)
Metrical version "which obviously derives from the prose.(2)n. 2 Greene, supra.
Language
  • Late Old Irish Early Middle Irish
  • Late Old Irish or early Middle Irish.

Date
may be 10th century or earlier in origin (Greene, Stokes)(3)n. 3 Whitley Stokes, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, Revue Celtique 25 (1904): 19; Greene, supra (“the rhetorical passages are certainly old, and the prose may well have been written in the OIr. period”). Greene disagrees here with Myles Dillon, The cycles of the kings (1946): 25–27, who assigns the tale to the 10th century.
Textual relationships
Related: Metrical Esnada tige BuchetMetrical Esnada tige BuchetMiddle Irish poem which gives a version of the tale known in prose form as Esnada tige Buchet.

Classification

Cycles of the Kings
Cycles of the Kings
id. 80

Sources

Notes

David Greene, Fingal Rónáin and other stories (1955): 27.
Greene, supra.
Whitley Stokes, ‘The songs of Buchet’s house’, Revue Celtique 25 (1904): 19; Greene, supra (“the rhetorical passages are certainly old, and the prose may well have been written in the OIr. period”). Greene disagrees here with Myles Dillon, The cycles of the kings (1946): 25–27, who assigns the tale to the 10th century.

Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.

[ed.] Greene, David [ed.], Fingal Rónáin and other stories, Mediaeval and Modern Irish Series, 16, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1955.
CELT – Fingal Rónáin (ed.): <link> TITUS – Fingal Rónáin (ed.): <link> CELT – Orgain Denna Ríg (ed.): <link> CELT – Esnada tige Buchet (ed.): <link> CELT – Orgguin trí mac Diarmata meic Cerbaill (ed.): <link>
27–44. Edition based on LL, with variants from YBL, Rawl. 512 and TCD 1319; Appendix A: Dinnsenchas of Odra; Appendix B: part of the Testament of Cathair Már; Appendix C: Edition of the metrical version (cf. Hayden).
[ed.] Byrnes, Michael [ed.], “An edition of Esnada tige Buchet from MS Rawlinson B. 502”, in: Dan M. Wiley (ed.), Essays on the early Irish king tales, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. 91–103.
Edited from Rawlinson B 502.
[ed.] [tr.] Stokes, Whitley [ed. and tr.], “The songs of Buchet’s house”, Revue Celtique 25 (1904): 18–38, 225–227.
Internet Archive: <link> Internet Archive: <link>
Edited from LL and Rawlinson B 502 (prose), with variants.

Secondary sources (select)

Dillon, Myles, The cycles of the kings, London: Oxford University Press, 1946.
25–27
Contributors
Dennis Groenewegen
Page created
October 2010, last updated: January 2024