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Also called Suidigud Tellaich Cruachna

Editions

• Vlad Bănăţeanu (ed. & tr.), ‘Die Legende von König Dathí’, ZCP xviii (1930) 160-188.

• R. I. Best and Osborn Bergin (eds), Lebor na hUidre (Dublin 1929, reprinted 1992) 90-4.

• Samuel Ferguson (ed. & tr.), ‘On the Legend of Dathi’, PRIA 2, Ser. II (1883) 172-3.

• John O’Donovan, The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach (Dublin 1844) 17-27.

• Heinrich Zimmer (ed. & tr.), ‘Auf welchem Wege kamen die Goidelen vom Kontinent nach Irland?’, K. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften 1912.

Manuscripts

• Early Recensions:

• LU

• YBL

• (For information on the later recensions, see 'Notes' below.)
  

Date

• No date has been suggested, but early Middle Irish seems likely.
  

Characters

• Nath Í (died in early fifth century): king of Connacht from the Uí Fiachrach.

• Forménus: the king of Thrace

• Amalgaid: leader of the Irish forces after the death of Nath Í.  In the LU text, he is identified as the son of Nath Í.

• Torna Éices: a famous poet and in some texts the foster-father of Níall Noígíallach and Conall Corc.

Notes

• In YBL, this story is entitled Suidigud Tellaich Cruachna.

• Later accounts of Nath Í’s death are found in O’Donovan’s Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of the Hy-Fiachrach, Cóir Anmann §146, and Keating’s Foras Feasa (Vol. II p. 412).  See EIHM p. 213 f.n. 3.

• O’Donovan’s text contains much more information about Nath Í’s encounter with Forménus.

• O’Rahilly believes that the story of Nath Í’s death is modeled on that of Níall Noígíallach (EIHM 213).

• According to O’Rahilly, the king’s name was originally Nath Í, but ‘was later changed to Da thí (or Dá Thí) under the influence of Da (or Dá) thó, Da (or Dá) Derga, and the like’’ (EIHM 211 f.n. 1).  For more information on the name, see DIL s.v. Dathí.

Summary

[LU text]  On his journey to the Alps, Nath Í and his men destroy the tower in which Forménus, the king of Thrace, lives in monastic retirement.  Although God whips Forménus away to safety in a mass of fire (ina dlúim tened), Forménus prays that God will cut short the king’s life and make his burial place unknown.  As soon as Nath Í completes his destruction of the tower, he is struck dead by lightning.

After the death of his father, Amalgaid mac Nath Í assumes the leadership of the Irish forces.  Bringing his father’s body with him, he and the Irish forces win nine battles on the way home, before Amalgaid is slain among the Déisi Temrach.  Back in Ireland, Nath Í is buried at Cruachu.

Some time later, the men of Ireland put an irresistible request (áilges) upon the poet Torna Éices to reveal the burial place of Nath Í.  The poet chants a rhetoric (retairic) beginning Atá fót-su rí fer Fáil in which the graves of many people at Cruachu, including Nath Í, are mentioned.

Then one day, the poet Dobran is traveling across the Óenach Cruachan.  He too composes a poem about the graves of Cruachu, Tailtiu, and Brega.  It begins Níam 7 Drucht 7 Dathe.

Next comes a prose catalog of the burial sites of various legendary and mythological figures from early Irish tradition.

The text ends with a blurb to the effect that all this information was gathered by Flann and Eochaid ua Céirín from various books, including those of Eochaid ua Flandacán in Armagh.