Finn Longman

Medievalist and author of YA books about murder and Adult books about sad queer medieval monsters (among other things). #1 fan of Láeg mac Ríangabra, currently researching friendship and affection in the late Ulster Cycle. This blog largely comprises liveblogs of my PhD research, updates about my writing, reblogs of posts that inspired or amused me, and whatever else comes to mind. I follow/like/send asks from @laegmacriangabra. Most recent book: THE WOLF AND HIS KING (Nov '25, UK; Jan '26, US). Pronouns: they/siad/nhw/iel

[finnlongman]

About Me, My Books, and My Research

[last updated: March 2026]

Hello, I'm Finn Longman! Welcome to my blog. I tried to keep this introductory post short and allow the links to speak for themselves about the details, and failed entirely, but here's my best attempt:

Who I am:

An author of YA and adult fiction in a range of genres, with four novels traditionally published and two forthcoming, as well as various other WIPs not currently under contract.

A medievalist specialising in Irish literature. Specifically, I'm a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, working on friendship and affection in the later Ulster Cycle (12th-17th century). I also have an MA in Early and Medieval Irish from University College Cork, and wrote my thesis about Láeg mac Ríangabra, Cú Chulainn's charioteer.

An amateur folk musician frequently found at local pub sessions in Cambridge (sometimes I post videos of these)

Things I write:

Academic articles about medieval Irish literature, mostly the Ulster Cycle. You can find abstracts and links to these on my website. Topics include the seven Maines, transmasculine readings of Cú Chulainn, and various discussions of my special little guy, Láeg mac Ríangabra. Whenever possible, I try to make my research available Open Access. If you’re ever having trouble finding one of my articles, please contact me!

YA novels about a traumatised teenage assassin trying and failing to live a normal life in a fictional closed city in Yorkshire (The Butterfly Assassin trilogy, published by Simon & Schuster UK 2022-24). Featuring friendship, street art, Esperanto, zero romance, and a whole lot of murder, as well as increasingly unsubtle commentary on the UK arms industry and the military recruitment of vulnerable teenagers.

Queer fantasy novels retelling medieval stories, including 'Bisclavret' (The Wolf and His King, out now in the UK from Gollancz and in the US from Erewhon/Kensington Books, and coming later in 2026 in France from City Editions); 'Math fab Mathonwy/The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi' (The Animals We Became, coming Nov 2026 [UK, Gollancz] or some time in 2027 [US, Erewhon]); and various Ulster Cycle tales including Táin Bó Cúailnge (To Run With The Hound, probably coming 2028, Gollancz)

Other novels not yet under contract or available to purchase, but which Tumblr sometimes enjoys updates about, such as the Paranormal Postgrads series of deeply chaotic and extremely niche paranormal academic romance novels.

Long blog posts, such as this one about aromantic queer histories, this one about weeding out anachronistic clichés in my writing, or this one about material culture and clothing in medieval literature.

What I post:

Updates about my books, whether that's the writing process or a cover reveal or a sale etc, as well as any public events I might be doing relating to those books

Extensive and deeply niche liveblogs of my PhD research, particularly when I'm down in the weeds of manuscript connections (see #finn is not doing a phd, #laegblogging, #the cork occ, #finn vs occ, and other similar tags)

Fun facts and resources about medieval Irish literature and related topics

Videos of folk sessions I've been playing at

Photos and videos of craft projects (currently, I'm into weaving)

Reblogs of things that interest or entertain me

And more, probably!

Where else to find me:

My website has all the info about my books and research, as well as longer-form blog posts and information about upcoming events.

I'm active on Bluesky, reluctantly (occasionally) present on Instagram, and used to make YouTube videos about medieval Irish literature, although this last has fallen by the wayside lately.

I'm a UK Bookshop.org affiliate, and if you want recommendations for books about medieval Irish (or Welsh) literature, this list has most of my go-to recommendations for newcomers to the topic. If you buy via this link, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, so this is a great way to support me.

My Ko-Fi tip jar is here if you've found my research useful or otherwise want to buy me a cuppa :)

[finnlongman]

Ever get really sad about someone who died c.1359?

[finnlongman]

A couple of years ago I shared a piece of marginalia written by a 21-year-old scribe and law student who was living through the plague: "May this great plague pass over me and my friends, and restore us once more to joy and gladness," he wrote on Christmas Eve around 1350. He came back a year later to tell us he survived: "May we reach the anniversary of this night many times."

Today I was reading a legal text associated with his family, and in the introduction I learned that that scribe died nine years after he wrote that first message, when he was thirty years old.

The Annals of Ulster writes: "Aedh son of Concobur Mac Aedhagain, who was to be chief professor of jurisprudence, died." (This is under the entry for 1356, but its dates are consistently a little off; the plague is first mentioned under the entry for 1346, which is a couple of years before it actually reached Ireland, and Aedh told us he was writing in the second year of it – hence "c.1359".)

I don't know what he died of. But I am sad to think he did not see the anniversary of that night all that many times. :(

[finnlongman]

Ever get really sad about someone who died c.1359?

[finnlongman]

By the way, the UK e-book price of The Wolf and His King has dropped to £2.99. I don't know if this is permanent, or a Pride month promotion, or a brief sale, but if you've been wanting the Kindle/Kobo edition, now is a great time to get it!

Here's an affiliate link for the Kindle edition (I'll earn a few pennies from qualifying purchases): https://amzn.to/4dX7Mpk

Here's a regular Kobo link (I don't know if they do affiliates but if they do, I'm not one): https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-wolf-and-his-king

It's possible the same promotion appears on other platforms too. I do not know about non-UK prices.

Anyway, enjoy! :)

[finnlongman]

'PhD by published works' but it's just all the asks I've answered on Tumblr when I was meant to be working on my actual PhD

[finnlongman]

It's not that I don't enjoy the things I learn researching the answers to these questions (it is interesting that TGG's portrayal of the ríastrad maybe doesn't reflect the bits of TBC in between the Boyhood Deeds and Comrac Fir Diad, I need to come back to that when I work more on TGG's sources), but, uh, I have spent Several Hours today on that and not on my actual work, so I think I'm going to turn off anon for a little bit. Sorry!

I know that nobody is making me answer them immediately, it's entirely my own fault. I just see something and think, Well, I'll just look up this one thing before I start on my actual work, and then an hour later I've missed the library opening hours entirely because I was too busy with that. So I'm turning off anon because I have no self-control, not because I don't like you and your questions. I'll turn it back on again once I've made a bit of PhD progress 😅

[finnlongman]

'PhD by published works' but it's just all the asks I've answered on Tumblr when I was meant to be working on my actual PhD

[finnlongman]

Medieval cots would be lined with Lady's Bedstraw as a natural bug repellent, which might be where it gets that name.

Both meadowsweet and LB were used to treat inflammation, seelljmg/bruising, and pain-relief. LB was also used to make burn ointments (aka Cú Chulainn's skin/Cú Chulainn's lotion) while meadowsweet was used to treat fevers.

So there's a connection to heat/temperature there, on top of the golden/sweet-smelling properties we'd associate with dog-man.

If the ríastrad is connected to body heat/fever and there's folklore where herbs cure it, then its the same idea as dunking him in cold water. Only instead of plain water, you're giving him a lotion/extract or putting it into his bath to "break the fever" and reduce swelling (the Warp Spasm is boiling hot and "[swells] like a bladder full of breath").

A modernized version might be giving him a cold bath mixed with Icy Hot, Neosporin, and petroleum jelly. Instead of straitjackets and flower belts, he'd wear a weighted vest and carry bottles of these lotions for emergencies.

Yeah, it's possible to theorise lots of possible connections. But, as I say, to my knowledge there is never any reference within the narrative texts themselves to the use of these plants in these contexts. It's impossible to know whether the connection originally was with the ríastrad, or whether it was a more general association. Even if it's related to fevers, that doesn't mean it's related to the ríastrad: heat, valour, strength etc are all strongly linked -- e.g. the word gal means 'seething heat' and 'rage' and 'warlike ardour' and 'steam, mist' -- so it being attached to Cú Chulainn specifically might be a red herring when another preeminent warrior could have served the same role. That is to say, the ríastrad may not be the crucial part: being a really valourous fighter may be the bit that's relevant. Especially when the name itself seems so uncertain even in the herbal texts, and his involvement hardly integral.

I suspect it is not originally to do with the ríastrad purely because I would expect it to show up in some form in at least one text about it, or for the ríastrad to be more explicitly referenced in medieval medical contexts as an analogy for fever or illness (to my knowledge, it isn't). I may be wrong! I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for any references. But, for example, even when we have Láeg making a sickbed for Cú Chulainn after a fight, he consistently uses fresh rushes (urluachra) for it, so we don't even have a reference there.

"If there's folklore where herbs cure it" is the real question here. Without knowing McKenna's source, there's no way to know if this actually an established oral tradition, or a conflation of several details, or something invented by a modern novelist that has become detached from its creator (sometimes these details do get incorporated back into 'tradition'!), etc. So I won't be hanging any speculation on that hook myself for the moment.

And, again, I caution that even if there were folklore collected in the 19th-20th century that said this, we have no way to know whether these stories are the same reason that this name is given in the early fifteenth century, or if these stories developed to explain an older name whose origins were no longer known. That doesn't mean those folk traditions are not valid folklore and that that's not a meaningful tradition in certain areas now. It just means we do not and cannot know if they're the origin of the name, because the gap between those sources is too big and that information does not appear to be given to us in the older context.

(And, once more, I'll say that I'm neither a folklorist or a specialist on medical tracts, so both sets of sources are outside my expertise. In your original ask, however, you just asked whether this was part of the pre-modern textual corpus, which is my specialism, and I'm pretty confident in saying the answer is no. Beyond that, I am only qualified to talk about what's actually in the texts we have.)

[finnlongman]

You mention the ríastrad becoming less relevant over time in the prose texts. Thats interesting bc the thing that stood out to me in TGG is that... Cú Chulainn warp-spasms near the beginning of the story and we get the formulaic de-transformation sequence (naked women dunking him in hot water + Cú's teary-eyed remorse when he sees the destruction) but the narrator ommits the rage-controlling property of Cú's jacket during the armor-up scene. It still has the rope/chain bindings, but it's just another piece of (very weird) armor. (And its worn over clothes like a jacket, instead of "next to his skin" like an undershirt.) The ríastrad is also lacking in detail. Instead of the colorful description of the Taín, TGG just says his face becomes a hideous snarl and he swelled into a giant.

There's a similar-ish disconnect in the older Bricriu's Feast where Cú isn't wearing his armor at all. Not in the Feast Hall, amd not in Emer's song. Yet he uses the WS one or 2 times (the chopping block scene repeats the "he stretched his ribs til a man's foot could fit between them" bit) and he never loses control.

Tbf, these are very different literary traditions from different time periods, but its interesting to see how the ríastrad and jacket become disconnected over time.

It's important to remember always that although we as modern readers and researchers label all these texts as belonging to "the Ulster Cycle", they're not actually a coherent body of texts that are internally consistent, have a chronology you can follow from one text to the other, etc (as you've noticed and acknowledged).

It's something I've discussed enough with a couple of friends that I don't remember which of us came up with the model, but we concluded that there are a few different strands at work, a few different Ulster Cycles: one focused on Teenage Prodigy Cú Chulainn, with Táin Bó Cúailnge as the centrepoint and texts radiating out from that as prequels and sequels; one that has an Adult Cú Chulainn, who has a foster-son and a position of adult responsibility in the community (e.g. Serglige Con Culainn, Mesca Ulad, maybe Fled Bricrenn*); one where Cú Chulainn is not the main character or involved at all (e.g. Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó, Togail Bruidne Da Derga); one where Cú Chulainn is theoretically around but not a priority, etc.

*There's a reference in Fled Bricrenn to Derbforgaill and her husband Lugaid Ríab nDerg; if we remember Aided Derbforgaill, we know that Lugaid is Cú Chulainn's foster-son, though that isn't spelled out here. This story would then happen chronologically after their marriage but before Derbforgaill and Lugaid die and Cú Chulainn avenges them. In Mesca Ulad, however, Cú Chulainn has a different foster-son, Furbaide mac Conchobair; to my knowledge he doesn't show up as Cú Chulainn's foster-son anywhere else, whereas Lugaid does. But anyway. I consider stories where Cú Chulainn has teenage/adult foster-sons to be stories where Cú Chulainn is a Real Adult, and thus chronologically separate from stories like TBC, where he is not and that's important.

These strands are not wholly separate, especially since most stories survive in manuscripts considerably later than their date of composition, meaning that they're copied by people familiar with other stories from other strands who might incorporate details. And in the early modern period, the Teenage Prodigy Cú Chulainn/TBC strand becomes dominant but incorporates into itself a lot of details from elsewhere, before giving way to the Babyfication of Cú Chulainn in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus draws heavily on Táin Bó Cúailnge, especially Comrac Fir Diad, so it's not surprising that it would reference both the ríastrad and various pieces of armour found there, but it's also stylistically very different from TBC, so it's similarly not that surprising it would do something different with them.

However, it's not entirely clear what version of TBC it's using: it looks like the author probably had access to Recension IIb, the 'Stowe' Táin, which does contain a version of these lines (ll. 1523-25, ll. 2275-76), but since Comrac Fir Diad was circulating as an independent story at this point in a version that resembles Stowe, it's not impossible they were using that instead as their primary reference point. Notably, the armour's role in allowing him to stay sane isn't referenced in the Boyhood Deeds (where we get the main dunking in water incident iirc) or in CFD (where he uses it to fight Fer Diad, and is upset about the results), so maybe their depiction of it is a sign of their sources: perhaps they had a copy of the Boyhood Deeds + CFD, and not the whole Táin? I don't know, this is one of those things that needs more thorough study. These kinds of details are the sort of thing one can pull out to try to understand which texts an author was drawing on, though, so there might be something significant in that.

But if you think about Comrac Fir Diad being a major point of reference, if not the main point of reference for Tóruigheacht Gruaidhe Griansholus... some of Cú Chulainn's emotional reactions make a bit more sense, I think. CFD is a flowery text full of heightened emotion and dramatic regrets and so on; its influence is plain.

As for its absence in Fled Bricrenn, it might be that the armour is itself an innovation of Táin Bó Cúailnge, and other texts borrow it from there; FB I think belongs to a very different textual strand to TBC overall. There is only one reference to the armour in the first recension of TBC, which I think is original (i.e., found in Lebor na hUidre and not one of the H-interpolations), but I'm not 100% sure; from what I can see, it does fall during one of the lacunae in the Yellow Book of Lecan, so it's not one of YBL's later additions. There are two references in the second recension (Book of Leinster) and in Stowe, so that suggests it slightly gained in significance there.

Why TBC would add this is another matter. There's a reason that when I wrote my gender and monstrosity article, I focused only on TBC: Cú Chulainn's relationship with his body is quite specific in this text, and quite distinct from how it appears elsewhere.

Anyway, it's a cliché for academics to be like "Perhaps we should not speak of [topic name in the singular], but of [topic name in the plural]", but I do actually think there are Ulster Cycles, lol. And I think whether the ríastrad is a tool to be used or a threat to be contained (and therefore whether there are systems for doing so) depends on the priorities of the text or group of texts in question.

But I suspect probably a major reason the late texts get less interested in describing the specifics is that the language is very difficult. Very obscure, very weird, very hard to make sense of if you are a seventeenth century scribe with an only middling grasp of the finer nuances of the language from several centuries ago, and you can't even use context to help you. I think some of them skip or simplify it because they didn't know how to update the language to match the rest of their text, or didn't understand it themselves and concluded that their source was corrupt, and I cannot blame them in the least.

I also think there are probably some broader characterisation and genre changes at work too, but I don't really know what. I'd need to do more study of the eighteenth century material to figure that out.

[finnlongman]

Okay, can't go do medieval law stuff today because it's a non-borrowable book and I have annoyingly short windows of time on either side of an afternoon commitment, so I cannot spend enough time at the library to make it worthwhile. Gonna look at my supervisor's comments on my Comrac Fir Diad translation instead, which I've been avoiding for a few days.

A number of mistakes on my part, and also some awkward wording that needs fixing, but I do love that several of the comments on the Irish just read "???", because honestly, same.

[finnlongman]

Meadowsweet is hard to cite... I could've sworn i saw it in a Gaeilge dictionary too... I did find a painting by the artist Margarat McKenna titled: "Crios Chú Chulainn ar Loch Mucnú / Meadow sweet on Lough Muckno." In the description, she says the "Chrios Chú Chulainn" is meadowsweet 's name in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic and tells us the legend:

"Meadow Sweet has a really interesting connection with Irish folklore. In Irish there are two names for it, Airgead Luachra, meaning Rush Silver, and Crios Chú Chulainn, which is also its name in Scottish Gaelic. This version I love as it tells how Cúchulain would sometimes be over come by battle frenzies in which he turned into a monstrous being, and the only thing that would calm him was Meadow Sweet which he tied around him like a belt, the Irish for belt being Crios."

The Lady's Bedstraw/Cú Chulainn connection is from Tadhg Ó Cuinn's An Irish Materia Medica which seems to be an early 14th century text:

"lus cnis Conculainn, lady's bedstraw, Galium verum Webb; The name as given by Threlkeld p. 67 is (standardised) p.790

Bealadh cnis Chon gCulainn, ‘Cuchulainn's skin lubricant’. His account of the use of the plant for washing after exertion explains the name."

Okay, so I checked out An Irish Materia Medica about lady's bedstraw. It's a fifteenth-century text (1415), and provides no explanation for the name, only lists it. The editor, however, does make that comment referencing Threlkeld.

So, I then went to find out who Threlkeld was. It turns out that refers to an 18th century text about plants, so I went looking for that. One incredibly crunchy PDF later and I can report that he does not actually connect the plant to Cú Chulainn himself except for the name. He says:

Apologies for the lack of alt text, but I cannot transcribe this while being unable to see what I'm doing due to the terrible Tumblr alt text interface, and the PDF is not OCR'd for copy-pasting; I will come back and try to do it later.

So: he gives this name as an Irish name for the plant. He gives a description of the plant and various uses. He goes off talking about cheese in Cheshire. He doesn't actually connect any of the uses of the plant to the Cú Chulainn reference.

I'm also not even 100% clear what he's saying about the name; the PDF is so crunchy. He seems to give just Balah chnise (boladh cnis) as the name, with a full stop after, then Chongulloin, with a dot, and then "in Ulster Madra Freaugh", which appears to be a different reference. (I think that word is madra, but it's incredibly hard to read... crunchy PDF is crunchy.) So that connection seems... a little tentative. I'm not quite sure what that means.

Going back to the medical text, I think all the editorial comment there is saying is: "this plant is named after Cú Chulainn. We don't know why, but since it seems to be associated with travel and exertion, and he is highly athletic, probably it's because of that". Even that seems a little speculative to me; there probably was a story behind the name, but it is not given here, nor in the medical tract that I can see, although that's harder to work with in the edition available to me and there might be more detail in the untranslated parts.

The modern Irish name is boladh cnis, not bealach; Threlkeld's "balah" is an Anglicisation and thus potentially imprecise, especially if we don't know the accent he's trying to render. Boladh is smell, scent, which makes sense given the smell of the plant, although I'm not sure how to interpret the cnis element in this context; this would mean, like, body-scent, surface-scent? Sligo Abbey on Facebook suggests bed-scent, but I'm not sure where they're getting that, except by analogy with other names and stories about it.

I do not know where McKenna is getting her story from. This does not appear in any source that I have ever seen. That doesn't mean there has never been a story in which this happened, or any local traditions associated with the plant of this kind. But it does mean it isn't a surviving medieval story. (They never go for anything that delicate; the aesthetics/vibes of this just flag all wrong for the literary Ulster Cycle, to me.)

Clearly, there was some kind of association of lady's bedstraw with Cú Chulainn in the plant name as recorded from the fifteenth century to around the eighteenth, but the origin of that is unclear to me and perhaps to everyone; it's possible some version of that survived in the oral tradition, or that a new explanation was created to explain the name. It doesn't look to me like there's any reference to meadowsweet in this context. This name also doesn't show up in eDIL in any form that I could find. (However: I couldn't find any name for meadowsweet there, so if it's listed at all, it may be in a form I couldn't see.) Airgead luachra is the only Irish name listed for meadowsweet in the modern dictionaries on Teanglann.

I wonder if it might be something more straightforward originally ("Oh, this is the colour of Cú Chulainn's hair", "Oh, Cú Chulainn slept on a bed made out of this", "Oh, Cú Chulainn was just so great that he smelled like this even when he was sweaty and exhausted, romance novel protagonist-style") and has got reinvented over time once the original explanation got forgotten and people wanted something more dramatic. I say this because a) there are established ways of dealing with the ríastrad in the texts and this is not one of them; I would not expect it to have been lost from every text if it had previously been present, and b) the ríastrad seems to become less prominent in later tradition, so elements like this seem less likely to develop naturally in later folklore, but might well develop in the last century or so to explain half-remembered names and terms, especially if you have the benefit of medical knowledge to make them seem plausible.

I will also say that I have recently been working on a text from seventeenth century Ulster in which Cú Chulainn is repeatedly treated with healing herbs and lotions and they did not name this specific herb at all, which would be surprising, if that was the connection and the area and the time period. In fact, I've worked on multiple texts that involve Healing Scenes and/or Ríastrad Scenes and none have ever mentioned it. So that suggests the association with him was potentially not a medical one, even in early modern Ulster, at least in the narrative literary context.

Again, I'm not a folklorist (or a herbalist!), it's an entirely different field of study, and I'm also not ruling out that this was an established tradition in some of the Scottish ballad material with which I'm largely unfamiliar, but to my fairly expert knowledge it's not something that shows up in medieval or early modern Irish literary texts, and I'm not sure these references are saying as much as they seem to be saying. McKenna may be referencing a folkloric tradition known to her, possibly a recent one; as far as I can see, the other texts are only giving us a name, that itself somewhat uncertain, and not explaining why it's used.

[finnlongman]

Deborah Hayden wrote a very interesting article ("Cú Chulainn's Bizarre Adventures") that draws connections between the warp spasm and ancient medicine. Specifically, the warp spasm seems to a mal-expression of the "choleric" (hot and dry) temperment in the Four Humors theory. It's characterized by extreme heat/fever, swelling, muscle spasms, and mania.

Wouldn't you know it, meadowsweet and Lady's Bedstraw have anti-fever, anti-inflammatory, and (very mild) analgesic properties. ;)

(Bedstraw was also used as flea repellent and as a curling agent in cheese. There's another dog joke in there somewhere.)

As for Cú's armor...

The article then links the violent mania and spasms of the ríastrad to the medical concept of "mania lupina" (wolf rage) and "mania canina" (dog rage). Hayden is one of several academics who have compared Cú Chulainn's armor (specifically the jacket, which IIRC he also wears with normal clothes) to a primitive straitjacket in function and composition.

In antiquity and medieval times, manic/violent/seizure-prone peoples were "treated" by tying them up in ropes and chains so thry couldn't hurt themselves/other people. The logic was that if you restrain the body, you can "ride out" the choleric wolf-rage and tame it into the more reasonable "dog rage."

(The next part is just my speculation. Im no academic, im just fascinated by Cú's armor.)

The text doesn't tell us the specifics of how the armor is put together but the important layer is the jacket. It is extremely stiff (27 layers of dense fabric that are treated with wax and maybe quilted like a gambeson), so stiff he needs to be laced into it. (Also, unlike the "chathcriss" it is not a defensive garment despite its thickness/stiffness) . Then, from what I understand of the Irish description, its wrapped in either "chains and ropes," or he's trussed up with "loops of rope" for good measure.

So I guess the jacket + harness acts like full-body handcuffs. Cú Chulainn's warp spasm form is huge ("as vast as a Fomorian"); perhaps the rope/chain is slack normally and draws tight like a slipknot when he transforms?

If Cú Chulainn wants to be a guard dog instead of a wild wolf, he needs to wear his leash

To go back to Hayden connecting the warp spasm to medicine, I wonder if another analogy for the jacket could be "prosthetic skin" or a "cage" for his mind. Hayen cites mania being controlled with chains. Medieval folklore oft linked "insane" shapeshifting (esp. werewolves) with the loss of clothing and/or wearing of animal skins.

Cú Chulainn's jacket is the inverse of this, as it is forcibly bound to him and (in one version I read) stops his body from "bursting" which somehow kept him sane-ish. But if his link to this idea of "control the body to control the mind" has any merit, this makes sense.

Yes, there are a lot of interesting readings of the ríastrad from a medical or philosophical point of view. In my article about gender and monstrosity, I wrote about the 'straitjacket' reading of the armour in the context of social norms, gender, and self-policing one's body to be perceived in a certain way. I was mostly citing Künzler's reading of the armour and Amy Mulligan's Isidorean readings of the ríastrad itself and how particular aspects of it evoke specific medieval ideas about the body and medical science.

I wasn't familiar with Hayden's article -- I see it's an academic blog post from 2024, so it postdates me publishing that article, which makes me feel better that I hadn't missed it, haha.

Although I don't know if I 100% subscribe to the Isidorean reading, I do think it makes sense a lot of elements of the description that really aren't explained when you try to take a more medical, diagnostic approach to it, as well as suggesting reasons it might be structured the way it is. The descriptions get very formulaic, especially in later texts (though the ríastrad diminishes in popularity somewhat and some of the late ones just omit it entirely), but I think the formulae are kind of... important to it?

Anyway, I have taken various different approaches to how I read the armour, but I think the thing I stick on is that it reveals Cú Chulainn's own interest in controlling it, and this combined with his discomfort about his 'distorted' form and his interest in showing his 'beautiful' form in TBC implies a real level of struggle over how he's perceived that I think is compelling and interesting. (Which is substantially what my linked article is about, tbh.)

[finnlongman]

Do you know of a folklore link between Cú Chulainn and the meadowsweet or lady's bedstraw flowers?

Supposedly, there is folklore about him using these flowers to calm his warp spasm (bathing in floral water, drinking teas or tinctures, braiding these flowers into belts, ect.). Meadowsweet is "Cu Chulainn's belt," and Lady's Bedstraw is "Cú Chulainn's skin." Wiktionary even recognizes "crios-Conchulainn" as a Scottish Gaelic name for Meadowsweet and "lus-Cuchulainn" as the name for Lady's Bedstraw.

Other variations I've seen for these flowers are:

"Crios Conchulainn"

"Cneas Chu Chullain"

"Crios Chù Chulainn"

"Rios Cuchulainn"

"Ius cnis Cuchulainn"

Is any of this familiar? Are there references tk anything like this in the pre-modern corpus?

I have never come across any of this before! Which to me suggests it's a later folkloric tradition, not a medieval/early modern/modern literary one. Possibly also a Scottish one, if that's where the names survive.

That doesn't exclude the possibility that it comes up somewhere that I just haven't seen it, but I would expect to have encountered it at least in passing, and can think of multiple places where it would show up if it were present and it isn't there. It might be something that develops more in poetry and the later ballad tradition rather than the prose tales that I focus on. The main methods of calming the ríastrad there are dunking in cold water and the use of some kind of special armour of unclear construction, but which appears to enable him to keep his reason. The dunking is always much more violent than bathing in floral water suggests, and it's a temperature thing rather than an ingredients thing, and frankly, I don't think I've ever seen a reference to Cú Chulainn drinking a hot drink... (or anyone else in these texts, for their matter)

It's very interesting, though. My primary medieval association with meadowsweet is with Blodeuwedd, since that's one of the flowers used to create her. I spent a bit of time researching meadowsweet while working on TAWB, and didn't encounter this then either, but that was more from a botanical (and a Welsh) POV, so it may not have come up. I believe it is in some way related to aspirin (acids derived from meadowsweet, now used in synthetic form, are the basis of it, or something?) and thus has painkilling associations, so I don't know if that medicinal use would be at the root of the idea that it can calm the ríastrad. I know I get very angry and unpleasant when I'm in pain...

Anyway, I would love to know where you read about this, beyond Wiktionary; I'm curious to know when and where it develops. Where did you come across it? I'd like to follow it up!

(Sometimes these traditions are very late and very local relating to a particular bit of placename lore or one storyteller's traditions, but references online can generalise them and make them sound more widespread than they are. That many name variants suggests something that isn't just one person's local tale, but it may belong to the Scottish ballad tradition, which is almost entirely outside my expertise. I have a friend who works on that, though, and would be interested to ask him about it.)

[llyfrenfys]

Also unfortunately yeah I had to head home from the gender symposium yesterday afternoon as I am currently dealing with a health problem. I'm so glad I was able to present my paper before my symptoms got worse!

Very glad to catch @finnlongman 's paper online this morning however!

[finnlongman]

I'm sorry your health was causing you trouble! I'm glad the online option was able to keep you connected though 💚 Sending you good wishes.

[finnlongman]

It was so exciting to be at a conference with Lára Ní Mhaoláin and to meet her virtually the last couple of days so that I could tell her how much time I've spent with her thesis and edition of Oidheadh Con Culainn. I'm really hopeful we'll be able to stay in touch and potentially link up in our work on this text going forward 🥰

[finnlongman]

For those joining the gender conference online today, be aware that they do all the questions to all papers at the end of the session. Therefore although I am the third paper in the session, it will probably start more like 11.10ish, not 11.30 as it would if they did the questions after each paper. If you're planning to slip in just in time for my paper due to timezones, it may be slightly earlier than you think.

(I realise I should have said this last night, because if timezones prevent you making the whole session, they also probably mean you won't see this in time.)

[finnlongman]

Okay, I think we have an actual date for the French translation of The Wolf and His King now? I believe it's 8th July. It was delayed by some translation issues, which have been resolved. Don't ask me what they are. They sent me both versions of the translation for my perusal, but my French isn't good enough to pick up the nuances, so I don't know as I'll be able to gauge why they didn't like the first version.

Also, Amazon has this image for the French edition, so maybe it'll have spredges! Who knows! Certainly not me!

There is a chance that I will be doing some events in France around publication, but it's all a bit uncertain at the moment. Shifting dates have made everything rather last-minute, and between PhD deadlines and health issues, I'm unsure if I'm going to be able to travel. More info on that when I know literally anything 😅

[finnlongman]

Wondering whether to begin my paper by explaining that I did not look at my abstract at any point in the writing of it and also, to be entirely honest, mostly ignored my title, or whether to let people judge for themselves whether I lived up to expectations