The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel: Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga by Ralph O’Connor (review)

Full-length studies of individual medieval Irish texts are a rarity. Consequently, the publication of Ralph O’Connor’s monograph on the Middle Irish tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel) is greatly to be welcomed, representing as it does a fresh and exciting development within the discipline of medieval Irish literature. Outside of Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), no other Irish-language text from medieval Ireland is better known, and it is a staple of most undergraduate courses in the discipline. Therefore, the production of this detailed monograph on the Togail responds to a great need in the field, one only surpassed by the fact that we have as yet no fully satisfactory edition and translation of the text (although one is being readied for publication currently).

The Togail is concerned with tracing the rise of Conaire Már to the kingship of Tara; the legacy of his youthful relationships with his foster brothers and with the Otherworld; the initial prosperity of the land under his rule; the disintegration of social stability after his issuing of a false judgement; the subsequent breaking of his taboos at the instigation of the Otherworld; and his death in Da Derga’s hostel. The work under review here deals with these topics among others in a large volume comprising an Introduction, ten chapters, and an Afterword, with substantial space devoted to Conaire Már’s relationship with the Otherworld, the practice of díberg (plundering), the role of the “watchman device,” and the demands and pitfalls of sovereignty. These studies are incorporated within a broadly chronological literary analysis that maintains a sustained focus on the extant tale with comparanda drawn from Classical sources, the Bible, and other medieval Irish texts.

The analysis presented by O’Connor contextualizes the tale clearly within broader scholarship on medieval Ireland and is written in a way that is sure to appeal to scholars without the field and within. Building on “the long-established Anglo-American critical tradition of interpreting and ascribing value to a text in terms of its formal attributes” (p. 7), the author extends this approach to incorporate detailed analysis of the minutiae of the tale, alongside investigation of its wider social and historical contexts. He makes a compelling case for the overall literary coherence of the Togail, notwithstanding its many inconsistencies of detail. Occasionally, however, such arguments may be overly deterministic, such as the claim that “most of its apparent inconsistencies turn out to be conscious compositional strategies” (p. 49). While such may be the case, we must be wary (in the words of John Dagenais) of choosing ‘“coherence’ or ‘intelligibility’ as the sine qua non for undertaking work on medieval texts.” Dagenais argues forcefully (in The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de buen amor [1994] p. 111) that academic medievalism is misguided in taking “as its mission the restoration of coherence.” The issue of coherence extends in particular to the editing of texts and the subsequent creation of critical editions. However, Ralph O’Connor is well aware of this dilemma, noting that “we need not be always waiting for the perfect edition before getting down to the business of literary analysis” (p. 50).

This volume is very carefully produced (apart from a small bit of bleed with the print on pp. 15 and 227), and is generally free from errors and misprints. A few small slips might be noted: Eterscél (recte Eterscéle [p. 64]); fíli, pl. fílid (recte fili, pl. filid [p. 341]); miniscule (recte minuscule [p. 342]); and Ó Ríain (recte Ó Riain [p. 363]). Locating Brí Léith alongside “the adjacent plain of Brega” (p. 67) is incorrect; the territory of Brega is mainly in Meath, and in the adjoining parts of Louth and Dublin...