I HAVE often wondered why Northern Irish poets of the last fifty years have drawn so much from the Greek and Roman classics and an answer is suggested in the latest issue of Granta.
There was a problem with our native Irish mythologies in that the early Christian church got hold of them and sanitised them.
The version that I read of Oisin’s three century sojourn in Tir na nOg, the land of eternal youth, was said to be the story as told to St Patrick.
The Granta editor, Thomas Meaney in a special issue celebrating Scandinavian writers, says that where the pagan gods of most of Europe were Christianised, this did not happen to the Viking sagas and cosmologies.
So Scandinavian writers ‘did not need to fawn over Homer and Virgil, epics from another world: they had their own’.
Read the rest of this article on the Irish Post App...
The complete Irish Post — in your pocket - for just £4.99 per month, download it for Android or Apple IOS devices today...
See More: Northern Ireland, Poets
