Hello, I hope you're having a good day. Is there any manuscriptal (I don't think that's a word) basis for the tradition/idea of "Cú Chulainn dies smiling/laughing"? It seems to be a very prevlant motif throughout what I've seen/read in...pretty much everything that is not BMMM/Aided Con Culainn (unless I'm misremembering things). Is this another Oideadh Con Culainn thing that's prominent in the general image of the character/story but the exact source isn't known because OCC hasn't had a translation or is it more a folkloric element of the character that he just kinda...absorbed over time for various reasons. It's always been an engaging and intriguing part of his story for me and I'd appreciate if you were able to shed some light on its origins. Thank you for your time and I hope you have a great day
Hmm, so, it's definitely not in BMMM or in OCC -- here's the moment of his death from OCC, which is one bit I translated for my thesis so I already have it to hand:
“Alas that,” said Cú Chulainn, “I give my word and I swear by the noble gods, that it was not possible that it was not a heart of stone or bones or iron that was in me until today, and if I had thought that it was a heart of blood or flesh which was in me, I would not have done half of that which I did of arms or high deeds.”
It is then Cú Chulainn faced the men of Ireland, and he put his shield to protect himself and he put his lance against his shoulder and he took his unsheathed sword in his hand. His soul departed from his body after that, and his upper part and breast against the standing stone.
It is then fell the chief of valour and arms, glory and prowess, protection and bravery of Ireland.
The closest he gets to smiling in this whole section of the text is feeling "great gladness" when Láeg comes back to him on the battlefield and helps bandage his wounds, which is probably not what we're looking for.
There's an early modern poem about his death that has this same motif of him talking about realising for the first time that he had a heart of flesh and blood -- aka recognising his own mortality -- and I don't remember any smiling there, either.
And BMMM has no smiling either:
He came then to a territory a great distance west of the lake, and his vision failed him, and he goes towards a pillar-stone in the plain, and placed his body-belt around it so that he might not die sitting or lying down, but rather so that he might die standing. Thereafter the men came around him, and they did not dare approach him. They thought he was alive ...
Most retellings do in origin derive from BMMM or OCC, and when they're by Irish writers, it'll often be from OCC. Remember, not having a translation into English makes it inaccessible to English readers and scholars, but being such a late text means it's in a version of Irish that's not all that challenging for those who have modern Irish -- making it easier to read than the more difficult and medieval language of BMMM. One of the reasons it hasn't been translated is because Irish speakers don't necessarily need it to be, unlike the earlier text where the language is more archaic and challenging.
However, a lot of those retellings will have gone through a few intermediaries, who've added details which get passed on. For example, Lady Gregory's version of the story, which looks like a mixture of the two, has a detail about a cuckoo towards the end that I think is her own addition. This is how I worked out that Lady Gregory was probably the source for Rosemary Sutcliff's version -- Sutcliff also references the cuckoo, which is very distinctive.
Happy are they, happy are they, who will never hear the cuckoo again for ever, now that the Hound has died from us.
(Cuckoos show up as, like, a symbol of grief in some of the medieval Welsh poetry, so I was super intrigued to know if this was actually in the Irish text as it would be an interesting comparative point with the englynion. But as far as I can tell, it's a Gregory detail -- although there's a lot of poetry from OCC that I haven't translated, so I may be wrong there. If it is hers, perhaps she took inspo from the Welsh?)
There's no smiling in Lady Gregory's version, though, which would have been my best guess, since she's so many people's introduction to the story.
The most popular source for the majority of Ulster Cycle retellings, like Standish O'Grady's stories about Cú Chulainn, is Keating. When it comes to the death tale, I don't think they're using the History of Ireland, because Keating's treatment of Cú Chulainn's death there is to say, "I don't have time to tell you this story, here's where to find it:
Know, O reader, that if I were to relate here how Cuchulainn fell by the sons of Cailitin, and Fear Diadh son of Damhan by Cuchulainn, and the death of the seven Maines sons of Oilill Mor and of Meadhbh, and of many other stout heroes who are not mentioned here, a long narrative would be needed concerning them. But if thou wishest to get a lengthy account of them, read Brisleach Mhuighe Muirtheimhne; Oidhidh na gCuradh; or Tain Bo Cuailgne; or Tain Bo Reaghamain; or Deargruathar Chonaill Cheamaigh; or Feis Eamhnan; or Tain Bo Fliodhais; or similar tales which are now to be seen in Ireland; and thou shalt find therein a copious account of the above-mentioned persons and of many other champions and warriors of their history and adventures.
Helpful! However, I think Keating tells the story somewhere else, because O'Grady tells us that he he does, and in this version the medieval and early modern accounts are combined, which creates some confusion for O'Grady: Láeg both dies and doesn't die, a fact O'Grady found understandably puzzling.
So, if I could find where Keating tells the story, I could check if it's a Keating detail (my brain gave that for me as a "keating deating", thanks brain), but if it were, I'd have expected to come across it in a few more of the places I've looked.
It could be a folkloric tradition or from one of the bardic poems or something, but my best guess is that somebody added it into their retelling because they thought it was a nice touch, adding a bit of poetic drama, and other people copied them because they liked it (and because a lot of the retellings out there in the world are derivative of each other rather than going back to the source material). The fact that I've never seen it doesn't mean it isn't widespread, though; my knowledge of retellings is limited largely to Gregory, O'Grady and Sutcliff, since I generally prefer to work from the earlier texts, and that means my knowledge in that regard is pretty incomplete.
If it were a 'canonical' detail, I would have expected to have come across it by now, and I've never seen this in any version of the story I've worked with. Doesn't mean it's not out there, though -- I'm learning new things all the time, and there are things in this tale I would have sworn down weren't there at all if you'd asked me two years ago!
So, yeah, this is a very long answer to say, "no idea, I'm afraid", but hopefully it was useful or at least interesting.
