Myths and misses in Ireland

He was around when the myths were real.
Bog body ("Gallagh Man"), National
Museum of Ireland, Dublin. Photo by
your humble blogkeeper.

I brought back with me from Ireland Lady Gregory's celebrated collection of Irish mythology. Its early stories, presumably taken from The Book of Invasions, offer marvelous deeds, a flair for drama, conventional numeric denominations (lots of nines and three times fifties), a bit of humor, and some good poetry amid their telling of the peopling of Ireland.

They also include the following, and I wonder if you will notice the same feature I did that distinguishes this from other tales of ancient battles:

"And three days after the landing of the Gael, they were attacked by Eriu, wife of Mac Greine, Son of the Sun, and she having a good share of men with her. …

"It was in that battle Fais, wife of Un, was killed in a valley at the foot of the mountain, and it was called after her, the Valley of Fais. And Scota, wife of Miled, got her death in the battle, and she was buried in a valley on the north side of the mountain near the sea. … And Eriu was beaten back to Tailltin, and as many of her men as she could hold together; and when she came there she told the people how she had been worsted in the battle, and the best of her men had got their death."

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An episode or two from the myths struck me as ripe for treatment as crime stories. See the short-story collection Requiems for the Departed (Gerard Brennan and Mike Stone, eds.) for evidence that old Irish myths can inspire new Irish crime writers.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Crime fiction and the power of myth

Declan Burke's forthcoming novel Slaughter's Hound is full of characters named Finn and Gráinne and Saoirse, and invocations of Queen Maeve, and a short prefatory note hints at wolf hounds' rich role in Irish mythology.

One need not recognize the allusions to enjoy and appreciate the dark, serious, and occasionally funny story (and I may well have missed more of them than I caught), but it doesn't hurt, either.

While waiting for Burke's book, why not dip into Mike Stone and Gerard Brennan's Requiems for the Departed,  a collection of short stories by seventeen contemporary Irish crime writers based on Irish myth?

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That's Ireland. What myths from other cultures have contemporary crime writers used? The Oedipus story? Cain and Abel? Which could they use? What ancient myths and tales would make good crime stories?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

New arrivals from Northern Ireland

• Gerard Brennan's award-winning newborn son, Oscar.


• Gerard Brennan's Requiems for the Departed, co-edited with Mike Stone and now available everywhere. The volume brings together some of Ireland's best crime writers in a collection whose stories "invoke Irish myth, most of them updating settings and, often, names, but retaining what seems to this non-expert the chilling power and bringing it to crime fiction," raved Detectives Beyond Borders.


• An advance copy of Collusion, Stuart Neville's follow-up to the chilling and much-honored Ghosts of Belfast (released as The Twelve in the United Kingdom). Early reading suggests some interesting variations on the tone of the first book's story of a haunted former IRA terrorist and his agonizing quest for redemption.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010