Coire Sois

The Cauldron of Knowledge

A Companion to Early Irish Saga

Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

Edited by Matthieu Boyd
Forword by Declan Kiberd

"Tomás Ó Cathasaigh has long been known for his sensitive and superbly nuanced readings of early Irish literature. This impeccably edited collection brings together his most important articles of the past thirty years, many of which appeared originally in anthologies and periodicals not always easy to find outside Ireland. Ó Cathasaigh's deep learning and profound insights are evident on every page. This is truly a 'must-have' book both for specialists in Celtic and for all medievalists interested in vernacular culture and the intersection of native and Latin traditions."
- Robin Stacey, University of Washington

"To read Tomás Ó Cathasaigh's essays gathered and ordered in this splendid volume is to explore the web of early Irish literature with a learned and witty guide. Each chapter stops at a particular point in the early Irish literary record, but the light that Ó Cathasaigh sheds on each text or theme illumines the entirety of the landscape. His close attention to the nuances of language and his finely tuned sense of social relationships in medieval Ireland are but two of the qualities that make Ó Cathasaigh perhaps the most skilled reader that early Irish literature has ever had. Coire Sois will be and indispensable vade mecum for generations of students and scholars to come."
- Catherine McKenna, Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic languages and Literatures, Harvard University.

"A turning-point in Celtic studies occurred in 1981 when Tomás Ó Cathasaigh began a series of thematic studies of Irish sagas, starting with 'The Theme of Lommrad.' Now, three decades later, his ground-breaking collection of essays has been gathered together in a book. The student experience has been transformed. No essay or article on Irish sagas can be written without consulting Professor Ó Cathasaigh's close readings. We are all in debt to him, Matthieu Boyd, and the University of Notre Dame Press."
- Patrick Sims-Williams, Aberystwyth University, Wales.

Tomás Ó Cathasaigh is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Irish Studies in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

Matthieu Boyd is an assistant professor in the Department of Literature, Language, Writting, and Philosophy at Fairleigh Dickinson University.