부산대학교 도서관

Imthechta Tuaithe Luchra agus Aided Fergusa is a lengthy medieval Irish prosimetric saga, composed sometime c. 1300, and preserved in a manuscript from the early 1500s. The text relates, in a burlesque, farcical, and, at times, obscene manner, the adventures of the legendary king of Ulster, Fergus mac Leite, with various members of the eponymous Tuath Luchra, a diminutive race of beings who correspond with the ‘leprechaun’ of later folklore, along with Fergus’ death while fighting a monster dwelling within present-day Dundrum Bay. While this text has received relatively little critical attention, it has had a noteworthy afterlife: to give two examples, the first two parts of Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), featuring the diminutive Lilliputians and gigantic Brobdingnagians respectively, seem to have taken inspiration from this text; and the name of the primary antagonist of the horror film Leprechaun (1993), Lubdan, is taken indirectly from this text. The first and, at present, only English translation of the text was published by Standish O’Grady in 1892 as part of the collection Silva Gadelica. O’Grady’s translation is marked by a florid style and several lacunae. Linguistically difficult or repetitive passages are absent in the translation, while other omissions seem more purposeful, as several episodes which may have offended Victorian mores are left out. As the only English translation, O’Grady’s interpretation of the text formed the basis for subsequent retellings, many of which were aimed at children, including the Irish-language author Peadar Ua Laoghaire’s novella Eisirt (1909). In this presentation, I intend to trace the line of development from the later Medieval saga to Ua Laoghaire’s novella; discussing the various decisions and omissions made by the authors in order to make the text more palatable to their different audiences, within the context of the conservative cultural revival of pre-independence Ireland.