In 1879, P.W. Joyce sat down with a stack of Irish manuscripts, some of them five hundred years old, and he pulled out twelve of the best stories and told them again in plain English. Earlier scholars had rendered the Irish word by word, footnote by footnote, and the result read like a legal deposition. Joyce wanted something you could hand to a child, or a farmer, or a tired adult on a winter night, and they would keep turning the page. He succeeded.
This edition gathers all twelve tales Joyce translated, organised into three Parts. The Three Tragic Stories of Erin: the Children of Lir turned to swans for nine hundred years, the Sons of Turenn paying an impossible ransom across the known world, and the Sons of Usna betrayed and killed for love of Deirdre. Voyages, Visitations, and Visions: the Overflowing of Lough Neagh, the Fairy Maiden of Connla, the long wondrous Voyage of Maildun through thirty-three islands of the Otherworld, and Oisin's return from Tirnanoge to meet St. Patrick three hundred years too late. And the Tales of Finn and the Fena: the Fairy Palace of the Quicken Trees, the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, the great Pursuit of Dermat and Grania, and the two Chases of Slieve Cullinn and Slieve Fuad.
Joyce's own preface, his notes, and his alphabetical list of proper names in their original Gaelic forms are all preserved, with an introduction placing his achievement in context for the modern reader by the Editors, Rosmerta Publishing.
