The Names Upon the Harp

As a visit to any Irish bookshop will prove, retellings for a young readership of the country's ancient stroies come in considerable quantity and variety. Few, however, are as luxuriously produced as this new compendium, which has the overall feel of a volume likely to set standards in the gnere for some time to come. In her selection of eight stories from this earliest Irish literature Heaney concentrates on the unique mixture of passion and pathos which creates their drama and ensures the immortality suggested by the volume's Yeatsian title; the inclusion of a new translation by Seamus Heaney of a poem attributed to the poetic warrior Finn Mac Cumhaill evinces the literary continuity of the narratives. Lynch's full-page paintings and textual decorations are atavistic evocations of scenes and charcters which, in his vibrant recreations, remain to haunt the imagination.