Ulster Cycle - Adaptations

Adaptations

The Ulster Cycle provided material for Irish writers of the Gaelic revival around the turn of the twentieth century. Augusta, Lady Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) retold most of the important stories of the cycle, as did Eleanor Hull for younger readers in The Boys' Cuchulain (1904). William Butler Yeats wrote a series of plays - On Baile's Strand (1904), Deirdre (1907), The Green Helmet (1910), At the Hawk's Well (1917), The Only Jealousy of Emer (1919) and The Death of Cuchulain (1939) - and a poem, Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea (1892), based on the legends, and completed the late John Millington Synge's unfinished play Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910), in collaboration with Synge's widow Molly Allgood.

More recent literary adaptations include Rosemary Sutcliff's children's novel The Hound of Ulster (1963), Patricia Finney's novel A Shadow of Gulls (1977), and Vincent Woods' play A Cry from Heaven (2005). Cartoonist Patrick Brown is adapting the cycle as a webcomic, beginning with the story of Conchobar's mother Ness, now complete, and continuing with "The Cattle Raid of Cooley", adapting Táin Bó Cúailnge. Oghme Comics also are in the process of adapting the story of Cúchulainn in graphic novel format, as a series of webcomics, as well as Illustrations of Characters from the Ulster cycle.

The dramatic musical program "Celtic Hero" in the Radio Tales series for National Public Radio, was based on the Ulster Cycle story Tochmarc Emire.