#an tain bot commentary

[finnlongman]

One of my favourite things to do on Twitter is respond to whatever passage An Táin Bot has decided to put on my feed today.

[finnlongman]

Today's An Táin Bot commentary.

The bio for the bot says, "If you want to read the Táin really slowly, this is your chance." I feel like I should change my bio to, "If you want to read incredibly piecemeal literary analysis of the Táin that's mostly just my feelings, this is your chance."

(Since the bot is currently doing Comrac Fir Diad, my commentary has gone from "occasional" to "most days". I'll chill out once this section's over, although since it's using Dunn's weird translation, we still have all the extra Stowe stuff to come, so we'll be here a few more days at least.)

[finnlongman]

Today on Twitter, I'm talking about what makes the Stowe MS's version of Comrac Fir Diad so strange. It's at this point in the Táin that it becomes most noticeable that An Táin Bot is using Dunn's translation, and I'm... actually coming to the conclusion that I don't like these fifteenth century additions on a narrative level, even though I find them fascinating for other reasons.

[finnlongman]

Today’s An Táin Bot commentary is about Láeg and Idh mac Riangabra!

I am honestly obsessed with literary doubles. Wrote my A-Level English coursework about doubles and foils and I’ve legit just never stopped.

[finnlongman]

More An Táin Bot commentary, this time about the gae bolga, with a digression into talking about Aided Oenfhir Aife rather than TBC itself.

[finnlongman]

Here's the previous segment of my An Táin Bot commentary, which possibly provides useful context for today's.

Quick explanation of recensions: a recension is a distinct version of a text. They're the same story, but there are enough differences to consider it a new version, not just a different manuscript. There are three recensions of the Táin, but the third is late and fragmentary, so most people focus on the first two. Recension one is found in manuscripts including Lebor na hUidre and the Yellow Book of Lecan. Recension two is primarily found in the Book of Leinster (twelfth century), but there's also a later version of it, fifteenth century, known as the Stowe MS. Stowe is mostly the same as LL but with later spellings and so on; however, in places it diverges sufficiently to be referred to as "Recension 2b", because it's not quite just another manuscript of the LL text.

An Táin Bot tweets a (somewhat old-fashioned) translation of the Táin by Joseph Dunn, published in 1914. To my knowledge, this translation makes no distinction between recensions, and is -- as far as I'm aware -- the only published translation to include the passages that are unique to Stowe. Since the section that diverges most is Comrac Fir Diad (the Encounter with Fer Diad), and since An Táin Bot has been tweeting this section for the past month... there's been a lot to talk about on this front.

Earlier this year I tried to embark on a project translating these unique passages from Stowe, not being aware of Dunn's translation, as I don't know of any scholarly translations solely of that MS. I didn't get very far, but I intend at some point to go back to it.

[finnlongman]

Apparently today is a day for even more An Táin Bot commentary than usual, but to be fair, it has just reached the really weird part.

AU where Fer Diad does just kind of... unzip his skin, and things go very differently...