![]() Then he put on his horses their iron inlaid armour, covering them from forehead to forehand and set with little spears and sharp points and lances and hard points, and every wheel of the chariot was closely studded with points, and every corner and edge, every end and front of the chariot lacerated as it passed. In his left he grasped the thongs to check his horses, that is, the reins of his horses which controlled his driving. In his right hand he took the long spancel of his horses and his ornamented goad. His hand brought to his brow the circlet, red-yellow like a red- gold plate of refined gold smelted over the edge of an anvil, which was a sign of his charioteer status to distinguish him from his master. This was an adornment to him and was not an encumbrance. This charioteer now put on his helmet, crested, flat- surfaced, rectangular with variety of every colour and form, and reaching pass the middle of his shoulders. Simon Magus had made it for Darius King of the Romans, and Darius had given it to Conchobar and Conchobar had given it to Cú Chulainn who gave it to his charioteer. Over that he put on his overmantle black as raven’s feathers. Of this outfit which he donned was his smooth tunic of skins, which was light and airy, supple and filmy, stitched and of deerskin, which did not hinder the movement of his arms outside. Then the charioteer arose and put on his warlike outfit for chariot-driving. On the matter of military headgear, below is the relevant extracts from the Táin Bó Cúailnge Recension 1 (1976) by Cecile O’Rahilly, the most popular academic translation of the earliest manuscripts, though one made slightly obsolete in places by more recent scholarly interpretations. The second version of the tale is found in the Leabhar na Nuachongbhála or Leabhar Laighneach (“Book of Leinster”) and is a more florid and narratively concise expansion of the older recension coupled with some alternative sources of its own, largely using Middle Irish orthography. Despite the seemingly late dates of creation both of these documents are written in the characteristically terse vocabulary of Old Irish, passages of which go back to at least the 8th century, with snippets of later Middle Irish and Hiberno-Latin text interspersed throughout. The oldest surviving copy of the story, known to modern scholars as Recension I, is split between two partial but related texts contained in the Leabhar na hUidhre or Leabhar na Bó Doinne (“Book of the Dun Cow”), an 11th to early 12th century manuscript, and the Leabhar Buí Leacáin (“Yellow Book of Lecan”), a 14th century manuscript. ![]() Some of the oldest descriptions of military helmets in Irish literature can be found in the earliest versions of the Táin Bó Cúailnge (“Cattle-raid of Cooley”), perhaps the most famous epic in the mytho-historical tradition of Medieval Ireland.
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