ABSTRACT
Irish myths and legends were fi rst published for children during the Cultural Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as manifestations of national distinctiveness. The role of myth in nation building and its particular signifi cance in postcolonial societies has been well documented (Fanon 2001; Brown 1991; Kiberd 1996; Foster 2002). The reclamation through myth, and in Ireland’s case, also, through translation, of a glorious (imagined) precolonial past acts as an inspiration for national self-determination. Romantic retellings in the English language of Ireland’s ancient myths and legends, by writers such as Lady Wilde (1821-1896), Standish O’Grady (1846-1928), and Lady Gregory (1852-1932), inculcated national pride by awakening Ireland’s youth to the richness of their literary heritage and, signifi cantly, to the heroism of their noble ancestors. Many Anglo-Irish Protestant writers of the Revival saw in myth a means of evoking a unifi ed pagan Celtic past capable of transcending the sectarian divisions of their time. ‘If we will but tell these stories to our children,’ wrote William Butler Yeats in his preface to Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), ‘the land will begin again to be a Holy Land as it was before men gave their hearts to Greece and Rome and Judea’ (1970, 16). Writers of the Revival, therefore, mythologized Ireland’s past with a view towards shaping its future. However, although Irish mythology proved the inspiration for a body of literature for adults that came to be celebrated around the world, its adaptation for young readers was, until very recently, characterized by its national orientation rather than its literary innovation.
