Legendary Horses

[silk_noir]

One wonders if the seanchaí who imparted the Táin Bó Cúailnge to the monks who transcribed it was familiar at all with the Iliad, or if perhaps the monks themselves were.  I'm thinking specifically of the similarities between Achilles' chariot horses and Cú Chulainn's chariot horses.... 

Comments

[tedeisenstein]

You've got a small open structure on two wheels; you need to hook up one or more horses to said structure; you need some way of controlling the horse(s) and structure. How many different ways could that be done?

(I'm someone who tends to think that similar problems tend to have similar solutions, even between cultures that are distant in both time and distance, and have had little or no contact for those reasons....)

[silk_noir]

Ah--it's the behavior of the horses, not the fact of their existence.

[tedeisenstein]

Oh: what the horses do, rather than how they're attached or how many there are per chariot.

Ignorance speaking: are the breeds of Greek and Irish horses sufficiently different that there would be a noteworthy similarity? It's strange to see a lapdog behave the same way as a Grand Pyrenees, such that if I saw both act the same way I'd certainly comment. Can this happen with warrior-used horse breeds?

[silk_noir]

Well, two of the horses of Achilles are not mortal horses. With regards to the difference between 1st century AD domestic Irish equids and who-knows-what-century domesticated Greek equids, you'd have to look at differences in fodder and training, rather than any... breed difference.

I really suggest looking up the source reference.

[intrepida]

I seem to recall that Ireland did pretty well with preserving and transmitting Classical scholarship in the early Medieval period -- but this is based on having read a bit of "How the Irish Saved Civilization" almost a decade ago. What I _really_ don't know is what texts they may have had access to and in what languages, though stories connected to the Trojan war were pretty popular throughout antiquity and into the middle ages.

So. Maybe?

[martinhesselius]

Also --
Lugh (in disguise) as charioteer is very similar to that in the Bhagavad Gītā of prince Arjuna's charioteer, who turns out to be Lord Krishna.

I <3 the Táin.

[ccjohn]

Yeah you wonder, did it come over from the Romans, or was it already there.

[ccjohn]

Now I am so curious, about the book. I have to know, were they Titans!

[noveldevice]

Or is there perhaps some core myth about prophetic horses that both are responding to, rather than one descending from the other.

(BTW, the Iliad is Greek, not Roman.)

[ccjohn]

Yes. I was wondering that too: Jung and the collective unconscious.

The Iliad is Greek but we have the Romans to thank for keeping the Greek myths alive, like Persephone/Proserpine. Roman Catholicism put monks in Ireland copying the Bible, and sometimes translating into Latin stories they thought worth keeping.

Re-reading the source material, as Marguerite said, the gods and goddesses come alive. More than I remembered! Homer talks about passions, affection. Puts you right in the scene.