Bleah, there is nothing like being sick on your days off to really screw up your week.
I have been pretty much solid in the non-productive column except for some important things like remembering to make myself eat a couple times a day, drinking lots of stuff, trying out ibuprofen vs tylenol, (have sworn off dayquil after a less than stellar dose).
I did reach the end of The Táin, in part because there were several pages where one of the instigators rattles off every known name involved in the slaughter. I did enjoy (?) the several pages of Fergus describing each wave of Ulster men arriving with their hero or heroes (the kings still asleep as it was early, I kid you not).
Some will be relieved to know that after awhile Cúchulainn ran out of warp-spasm and was too fatigued to go on single-handedly fighting back those who came for the great bull.
At the end:
Finnabair stayed with Cúchulainn, the Connachtmen went back to their own country, and the men of Ulster went back to Emain Macha full of their great triumph.
FINIT. AMEN.
Now, when I read this I thought: but Finnabair died quite awhile ago from shame. I flipped back and there it was:
When Finnabair heard that seven hundred men had died because of her deceipt, she fell dead of shame. From this comes the place-name Finnabair Slébe, Finnabair in the Mountains.
I took the ending to mean that Cúchulainn kept her body perhaps for burial, in that region. The footnotes say though that this was “merely part of the story-teller’s final flourish” and anyway, Cúchulainn was married already.
Those final two words lead to one of the best footnotes ever:
Finit, amen: The Book of Leinster [one of two extant versions of this tale] ends with the following scribal notes:
(in Irish) ‘A blessing on everyone who will memorise the Táin faithfully in this form, and not put any other form on it,’ and (in Latin) ‘I who have copied down this story, or more accurately fantasy, do not credit the details of the story, or fantasy. Some things in it are devilish lies, and some poetical figments; some seem possible and others not; some are for the enjoyment of idiots.’
Have I read something like this before?
