gairech, followed (7) by
the rout of Medb's army and (8) the tragic death of the bulls.

The text of the _Tain_ has come down to us as a whole or in part in
nearly a score of MSS., most of which, however, are modern. The most
important MSS. containing the story are LU., LL. and YBL. Of these LU.
and YBL. are substantially the same, whilst LL. contains a longer and
fuller text later in both style and language. LL. attempts to give a
complete and consistent narrative in more polished form. In ancient
times there were doubtless other versions now lost, but from the middle
of the 12th century the scribes seem to have taken few liberties with
the text, whilst previously the _filid_ were constantly transforming the
material and adding fresh matter. The YBL. version preserves a number of
forms as old as the O. Ir. glosses (i.e. 8th century or earlier), and a
curious story contained in LL. seems to point to the fact that the
_Tain_ was first committed to writing in the 7th century. Senchan
Torpeist, who lived in the first half of the 7th century and succeeded
Dallan Forgaill as chief _ollam_ of Ireland, summoned the _filid_ to
inquire which of them knew the _Tain_ in its entirety. As they were only
familiar with fragments he despatched them to discover it. One of them
seated himself at the grave of Fergus MacRoig, who appeared to him in a
mist and dictated the whole story to him in three days and three nights.

At this point it will be well to say a few words about the form of the
_Tain_. The old Irish epic is invariably in prose with poems of varying
length interspersed. The narrative and descriptive portions are in prose
and are frequently followed by a brief epitome in verse. Dialogues,
eulogies and laments also appear in metrical form. The oldest poems,
termed rhetoric, which are best represented in LU., seem to be
declamatory passages in rhythmical prose, not unlike the poetical
passages in the Old Testament, and the original _Tain_ may have
consisted of such rhetorics bound together with short connecting pieces
of prose. At a later date poems were inserted in the metres of the
_filid_ (particularly the quatrain of four heptasyllabic lines) which
Thurneysen and Windisch consider to have been developed out of medieval
Latin verse. When in course of time the old rhetorics became
unintelligible they were often omitted altogether or new poems
substituted. Thus the LL. version contains a larger number of poems than
the LU.-YBL