When I first read your proposal, I was excited to see such a worthy challenge. Then I groaned. The amount of research this exercise calls for is the very sort of thing I relish...most of the time. With Goldfest and Samhain upon us, though, I will not have as much time to tacke this wonderfully daunting challenge as I would like. I will do my best, but will probably have to return to this discussion in November.

Be that as it may, challenge it I will! Who else is with us?

I highly recommend reading Thomas Kinsella's The Tain, as it has a wonderful index and glossary. The one thing to watch out for is that Kinsella did such a masterful job of cobbling together eight of the remscéla (pre-tales) with two recensions that it's not clear where one begins and the other ends.

Is anyone familiar with Old Irish? I have but a smattering, which is hardly enough to read the original Táin Bó Cúailnge from the manuscripts and will have to rely on English translations. A few translations of the Cattle Raid of Cooley are available online:

You can also read an overview of the Táin Bó Cúailnge at Wikipedia HERE.

Now Fenian, before I go getting this discussion into too much of an academic twist, where should we start?