The Táin Quotes

“Courage has a brutal core.”
― Ciarán Carson, The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge

“The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins and knees switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front. The balled sinews of his calves switched to the front of his shins, each big knot the size of a warrior’s bunched fist. On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child. His face and features became a red bowl: he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn’t probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram’s fleece reached his mouth from his throat.”
― Thomas Kinsella, The Táin: From the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge

“I am alone against hordes
I cannot stop nor let go
I stand here in the long cold hours
alone against every foe.”
― Ciaran Carson, The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge

“[Cu Chulainn will] spill the blood of everybody in the fort unless you act quickly and send the naked women out to meet him."
... "Bring on the naked women!" said Conchobar.”
― Ciaran Carson, The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge

“The hero's light sprang from his forehead, long and thick as a warrior's whetstone, long as a prow, and he clattered with rage as he wielded the shields, urging his charioteer on and raining stones on the massed army. Then thick, steady, strong, high as the mast of a tall ship was the straight spout of dark blood that rose up from the fount of his skull to dissolve in an otherworldly mist like the smoke that hangs above a royal hunting-lodge when a king comes to be looked after at the close of a winter's day.”
― Ciarán Carson, The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge