Old Welsh lit: Dave punched Steve. This incurred a fine of twelve cattle and a nine-inch rod of silver and is known as one of the Three Mildly Annoying Blows of the Isle of Britain

Old Irish lit: Dave punched Steve so that the top of his skull came out of his chin, and gore flooded the house, and he drove his fists down the street performing his battle-feats so that the corpses were so numerous there was no room for them to fall down. It was like “the fox among the hens” and “the oncoming tide” and “that time Emily had eight drinks when we all know she should stop at six”

Old English lit: Dave, the hard man, the fierce man, the fist-man, gave Steve such a blow the like has not been seen since the feud between the Hylfings and the Wends. Thus it is rightly said that violence only begets more violence, unless of course it is particularly sicknasty. Amen.

I just love this contemporary interpretation of Cú Chulainn by Smug One in Dundalk

It is a beautiful day in Ulster and you are a terrible 17 year old boy

Tháinig mé ar neart fanfic don Táin, ach faraor ní raibh fiú ceann amháin i nGaeilge. Mar sin, thuig mé go raibh orm an bearna a líonadh. Tá cosc tiomána sé mhí ar Chú Chulainn, agus an tionól ealaín chomhraic is mó in Éirinn ar siúil i gCuaille ag deireadh na seachtaine. Mar sin, téann sé ag lorg síbe ó Lao Mac Rianghabhra, a sheanchomrádaí fadfhulangach. (Irish-language fanfic: in a modern au of the Táin Bó Cuailgne, Cú Chulainn, under a six month driving ban, wants to travel to Cuailgne and compete in Ireland's largest martial arts tournament. Therefore, he begs a lift off his long-suffering childhood friend Láeg.)

please share the setanta gossip video you put on IG here, i know the tumblr nerds will appreciate it and i want to share it with them 💚

ÚÚÚÚÚÚÚÚ yass

d'athraigh setanta a ainm? slé!

Cú Chulainn, the nation’s babygirl

Real talk: i have been pretty absent from this blog (i wouldn't say slacking necessarily because it is first and foremost a hobby, a means of communication second, and i do not consider it a job to any degree). Do not worry, nothing bad has happened, and a big part of it is rediscovering my love of literature. Got my hands on a copy of Thomas Kinsella's The Táin, read The Handmaid's Tale, and recently finished Ivanhoe through audiobook.

I've already been singing the praises of the Táin Bó Cúailnge so i'll spare you having to read through that gushing. Ivanhoe is incredible and shockingly sensitive on the topic of antisemitism for something written by an early 19th century Christian author intended for a majority Christian audience. The scenes with Robin Hood also filled me with a childish glee and i think it was suppose to be a surprise that this guy is Robin Hood but he introduces himself as Locksley and wins an archery contest and leads a gang of outlaws in the woods, including a hermit who refers to Alan-a-Dale quite a bit so it's very obvious to a modern reader. Handmaid's Tale was also as good as i've heard it was, but there's a specific detail i want to discuss that feels relevant to how i think of this blog and how others use it.

I've read the reviews and the plot synopses amd analyses, i knew about the epilogue that frames the story as a historical document a century or so in the future. This did not surprise me. What did catch me by surprise, and something i feel is entirely overlooked, is that this story of an oppressive theocratic regime that uses Biblical precedence to excuse extreme atrocities of human rights violations and turned out to not even last very long, is contextualized as the topic of a discussion hosted by First Nations academics who study white people cultures. You can be pedantic and say "oh but technically they're only First Nations coded because it's presented as a transcript with no physical descriptions" and to a degree you would be right; but when you see names like Maryann Crescent Moon and Johnny Running Dog used for professors of a University of Denay (an anglo-phonetic spelling of Diné/Dene) in Nunavit, there isn't much room for speculating what ethnicity they're supposed to be.

There are so many little details in the book referencing Indigenous genocide. Details suggesting forms of genocide Atwood would be familiar with as a Canadian citizen. To only bring up religious fanaticism and patriarchal regressive politics in Middle Eastern nations like Iran and Afghanistan as well as the United States as inspirations for a surface level five minute summary is one thing, but to ignore all the anti-Indigenous policies that are also obvious inspirations (literally just read the passages about how the Narrator/Offred's daughter was taken from her, renamed, and given to a "proper home" to get what i mean, it's that blatant) when the iconic epilogue makes it as explicit as it can be without writing "THESE ARE NATIVE ISSUES" in big red letters? I won't lie to you, it feels like a slap to the face. Especially when the take away message of such a conclusion seems to be that Native peoples will outlive these regimes.

reject coffee shop au embrace medieval au

As a Japanese person who is used to reading manga, I find comics outside Japan to be so different beyond size, color, reading direction, and language that I wish there was a book explaining comics of various kinds and how to approach them. For example, I have read The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag, Magical Boy by The Kao, Hound by Paul J. Bolger and Barry Devlin, An Táin by Colmán Ó Raghallaigh, and the excerpts of Franco-Belgian comics in the guide Invitation au monde de la Bande Dessinée (はじめての人のためのバンド・デシネ徹底ガイド, 2013).

Neither The Witch Boy nor Hound were divided by chapter to my surprise—especially Hound since it was first released in three volumes. Dialogue in Franco-Belgian comics are lengthy compared to what I see in manga, which the academic book Les échanges culturels entre Manga et Bande dessinée : Historie, Adaptation et Création (日仏マンガの交流 ヒストリー・アダプテーション・クリエーション, 2015) has commented on.

Hound was created by at least two Irish people and edited by one British person (Hugh Welchman) but I find this graphic novel to be similar to a certain kind of Franco-Belgian comics like the works of Jean "Mœbius" Giraud. These comics have impressive art and imagery—and I love how Hound portrays Cú Cullan's berserk state and uses dashes of red in an otherwise black and white setting—but they give me little or no idea about what's going on unlike, say, Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa. I have heard of the international popularity of manga—in France in particular—but I wonder why people outside Japan embrace manga so much when it's not like comics produced in their countries.

Thoughts?

Táin Bó Cúailgne Mosaic | Dublin

Along Dublin’s Nassau Street there is a mosaic mural, created in the 1970s by Belfast artist Desmond Kinney. Táin Bó Cúailnge (the driving-off of cows of Cooley), sometimes rendered The Cattle Raid of Cooley or The Táin is a legendary tale from early Irish literature, often considered an epic, although it is written primarily in prose rather than verse. It tells of a war against Ulster by the…

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'Cúchulainn in warp-spasm' (Illustration from The Táin, Trans. Thomas Kinsella) (1969) by Louis le Brocquy

hmm i'm getting. possibly over-ambitious. again. we'll see how this goes.

I just know the Book of Leinster/Recension II scribe was the Jenny Joyce of the twelfth century

Shostakovich you say? 👀

Which pieces from one of my favorite Russian composers inspired parts of your fic that I absolutely have to read now? I’m particularly fond of his 8th symphony and his first cello concerto. Sometimes you just have to listen to musicians like him and have all the feels

a large section of the fic (like really very large) revolves around a pas de deux choreographed to the tango from The Bolt and the piece i was talking about yesterday is the largo from the piano trio no. 3 in e minor

i am however also a huge fan of the gadfly and the fifth symphony

gang i know you love the epic of gilgamesh so i raise you Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad, from the Kinsella translation of the Táin Bó Cuailgne. fuckinnnnnnn... kills my ass dead

Táin spoilers, beloved

Barring three lines that I want to refine further, I finally finished writing the Cú Chulainn-themed parody of Welcome To The Black Parade that I started at 3am several months ago, and I think that's very sexy of me, actually