Contemporary Literary Criticism | Sutcliff, Rosemary - Padraic Colum

PADRAIC COLUM

Ever since Standish O'Grady published his bardic history of Ireland in the nineties, storytellers and poets have been exalting Cuchulain….

Cuchulain's story is the grand episode of the epic tale of pagan Ireland, and, like a good deal of Irish romance, has much of supernatural and irrational in it. Here is the hero who is to die young, the one who defends his uncle's kingdom against the forces of the whole of Ireland, who has to meet a well-loved friend in single combat, who unwittingly slays his son and whose love story is charming in a way that is rare in ancient romance.

Rosemary Sutcliff, who has finely presented the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, makes a stirring narrative out of Cuchulain's career ["The Hound of Ulster"]. Here and there she misses a trick. The ancient storytellers had to make Cuchulain undefeatable. His victorious returns become monotonous as Miss Sutcliff relates them. There is one episode that would have provided relief:...

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