The Essential Táin Bó Cûailnge and Other Stories from the Ulster Cycle, ed. and trans. by Matthieu Boyd. Peterborough, Ont.: broadview press, 2025, 378 pp., 4 maps, 4 character trees.

What the Chanson de Roland is for French literature, and the Nibelungenlied for German literature, the Táin Bó Cûailnge is for Irish literature; that is, heroic, legendary literature filled with much historical references, mythical lore, major battle descriptions, blood and guts, quasi-gods, and magical forces. The present book adds to a long list of previous editions and translations of this text corpus, but the editor and translator Matthieu Boyd claims to have superseded at least previous translations by being more transparent and modernized, thus appealing more to students and the general readers, by situating it within its pre-tales and death-tales, being more curtailed to keep it within a manageable framework, and offering corrections and background information. The extensive introduction confirms this. Although I cannot claim to be an expert on this early medieval Irish epic poem, as a fellow medievalist and teacher of medieval literature, I am able to confirm that Boyd’s efforts have yielded a rich harvest, inviting, indeed, the public to engage more deeply with this famous text, foundational for early medieval Irish culture.