‘We Irish should keep these personages in our hearts, for they lived in the places where we ride and go marketing, and sometimes they have met one another on the hills that cast their shadows upon our doors at evening’.

So wrote W.B. Yeats in his preface to Lady Gregory’s Cuchulainn of Muirthemne. And Ireland’s Classical, Old and Middle Irish literature are redolent of heroes and feats that seem as much real as mythological. Few mediaeval European languages can rival the richness of literature extant in Middle Irish. Much of this survival is due to the tenacity of a few early modern Irish antiquarians, but the sheer volume of sagas and annals which endure shows how much confidence the Gaelic learned orders had in their own language. Tonight IMRAM’s audience will have a unique opportunity to listen to writers and scholars Pádraig Ó Cíobháin, Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha and Edel Bhreathnach discussing and reading their favourite stories from the vast corpus of ancient Irish literature.

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