We Irish should keep these personages much in our hearts, for they lived in the places where we ride and go marketing, and sometimes they have met one another on the hills that cast their shadows upon our doors at evening." - W.B. Yeats.

Yeats penned these words in 1902 as the preface to Lady Gregory's 'Cuchulainn of Muirthemne".

Of more relevance to my story, the quote appeared on the sleeve notes to the Horslips 'The Táin' LP of 1973. I was 14 when I bought it (at the exorbitant price of £2.40, I think) and that LP must surely have had more influence on my future cultural experience than any other music, book or film - it opened a gateway to Irish music and literature, and I rushed headlong down that path.

I had (sort of) read the Kinsella translation a couple of years earlier as a first year at St Malachy's College, Belfast but the story only really exploded into this 14 year old's life through the music, words and images of that Horslips LP (which is sitting in front of me now). This was against the backdrop of the scary days of the early to mid 70's in the north of Ireland and I suppose there was a lot happening in my mind at the time; filtering and affirming all that stuff about self and cultural identity, allegiances, moral choice and attitudes - on top of the 'normal' coming of age confusion (all that must have had an influence on how I turned out but I haven't quite worked that out for myself yet).

I came back to Kinsella later, and here is the blurb from Oxford Univ Press:

"The Tain Bo Cuailnge, centre-piece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's greatest epic. It tells the story of a great cattle-raid, the invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, and their allies, seeking to carry off the great Brown Bull of Cuailnge. The hero of the tale is Cuchulainn, the Hound of Ulster, who resists the invaders single-handed while Ulster's warriors lie sick. Thomas Kinsella presents a complete and living version of the story. His translation is based on the partial texts in two medieval manuscripts, with elements from other versions, and adds a group of related stories which prepare for the action of the Tain. Illustrated with brush drawings by Louis le Brocquy, this edition provides a combination of medieval epic and modern art."

The le Brocquy illustrations were brilliant, of course, and made Kinsella's text into a work of art.

Ciarán Carson's more recent "The Táin: Translated from the Old Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge" is described with a more compact blurb:

"This landmark publication is the first new translation of the central Irish epic, The Tain, since Thomas Kinsella's version in 1969. Ciaran Carson has brought his linguistic and lyric brilliance to bear on the cornerstone of Irish mythology."

Kinsella and Carson are both great poets and each produced a great translation - so buy them both!

Anyway, when I came to write 'Blood from a Shadow' I had something in my mind of that image of the long gone generations casting their shadows on our world (and maybe it has something to do with those teenage memories of the Troubles).

Although I was writing a contemporary thriller I couldn't resist inserting the little coded markers that hinted something of that spirit to me.

My choice of character names were a dead giveaway, of course - nobody with even a passing knowledge of Irish literary culture would miss Con and Ferdia as having been swiped from the saga.

The 'Cú' in Cú Chulainn means 'hound' (the boy warrior Setanta was renamed Cú Chulainn after he killed the ferocious watch-hound of Culann) and 'Con' is interchangeable with 'Cú'.

Cú Chulainn is not to be confused with the standard model of a modern hero; he wasn't a wholesome blend of courage and compassion, didn't stand for justice and virtue against the immoral and corrupt. His most obvious characteristic was his 'Ríastrad', the brutal and indiscriminate battle-rage which could erupt against friend as easily as foe.

Maknazpy's ríastrad is attributed to PTSD as a result of his experiences in America's recent crusades to the East. I'm not convinced on that score but he certainly isn't a 'hero' in the Jack Reacher mould, or even Philip Marlowe - whatever he is, his lineage stretches back much further than the modern code which excuses/glorifies brute force as long as the victor can construct a sufficient veneer of moral virtue.

Kinsella's translation has the Ríastrad as:

"The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child... he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tange of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage."

Ciarán Carson's translation is equally gripping:

"The first Torque seized Cú Chulainn and turned him into a contorted thing, unrecognizably horrible and grotesque." Carson continues, "The hero's light sprang from his forehead, long and thick as a warrior's whetstone, long as a prow, and he clattered with rage as he wielded the shields, urging his charioteer on and raining stones on the massed army. Then thick, steady, strong, high as the mast of a tall ship was the straight spout of dark blood that rose up from the fount of his skull to dissolve in an otherworldly mist like the smoke that hangs above a royal hunting-lodge when a king comes to be looked after at the close of a winter's day".

Like I said, you should buy and read both of these translations!

(I know some readers have had a problem with Maknazpy's exaggerated violence ("I don't like a character who behaves badly so this book sucks!")- well, there are plenty of other and better reasons not to like it but hopefully this piece will help divert those readers away from this book and towards something else that they might enjoy.)

Ferdia's name offers even better opportunities for the kind of deflected meaning and interpretation I was seeking.

Carson's excellent notes (which give his translation the edge over Kinsella's, I think), advise that Ferdia (Fer Diad) is "One man of a couple" or, possibly, a "Man of smoke".

My Ferdia is nicknamed 'Two Heads McErlane' by the other youths when his family return to Ireland for a few years.

The spatial disorientation Con experienced flying in to Belfast marks his entry into another world/culture, nudging him back to the Irish 'Otherworld' that his ancestors may have come from.

My Inspector Mehmet Kaffa is named after the English language pronunciation of the Táin's Cathbad,

Lou, the retired cop/concierge is Lugh Lamhfhada – the Irish equivalent to the God Mercury, and possibly Cú Chulainn's father, although his provenance is shrouded in mystery.

Belfast Ryan - Cú Chulainn unwittingly killing his own son, Connla.

Rostam and Sohrab refers to Iran's epic Shahnameh which, curiously, shares storylines with the Táin - Rostam kills his son Sohrab, in similar circumstances to Cú Chulainn’s fatal error.

Much of Cú Chulainn's exploits are launched from his deadly chariot, just as Maknazpy tells us "My red chariot to Bologna was dead on time, the FrecciaRossa high speed train glided out of Roma Termini at 14.15 hrs." Funny enough, as Ciarán Carson points out, there is scarcely any real archaeological evidence for chariots having been used in Ireland as described throughout the Táin.

Cú Chulainn and Ferdia eventually face each other in combat after Ferdia has boasted that Cú Chulainn would die if there ever was a fight between them. After a vicious struggle, Cú Chulainn kills Ferdia by kicking his magic Gae Bolg spear into his stomach.

I plundered Byron's poem to the 'Dying Gaul' for this, and the famous statue is on display in the Capitoline Museum in Rome (another St Malachy's image in my head since 1971/72).

There isn't a real Davan, but it was supposed to be the anglicisation of the Irish for 'Two Rivers' and reflects the significance of water to the early Irish, especially two rivers meeting; dark and bright, good and evil - always the instinct that the fabric between this and the other world was fragile.

I imagine my Davan to be close to Eamhain Mhacha, also known as Navan Fort, the royal palace of the Red Branch Knights and now an historic monument close to Armagh City.

Archaeological digs have established the site was first inhabited during the Neolithic Period (4,000 BC - 2,500 BC) but the main mound that is still present is dated to 95 BC - more or less contemporaneous with the Red Branch era. One part, dated 600 - 250 BC revealed the surprising discovery of the skull of a Barbary Macaque Ape - how did that get there?

Con reminisces about being in the McErlane apartment and expecting to take his place in their kingdom refers again to the Red Branch knights, but the promised inheritance had disappeared before he grew up - a bit like my memories of the different world of my old relatives

The death scene at the waterfall brings in the Morrigan/ Mór Ríoghain symbolism from the Táin again (and that Irish female deity thing, which somehow sometimes still rubs off on the Irish mother/son relationship).

Mór Ríoghain (Great Queen, Ghost Queen, Nightmare Queen) is a Goddess of sorts; associated with war and slaughter, and taking the form of a Raven at times.

Con sees a raven drinking blood from the snow when he is on the run with Artie - a reference to another story in the Rúraíocht, the Ulster Cycle of Tales about the Red Branch Knights, of which the Táin is central.

Con Maknazpy doesn't have a conscious awareness of any of this, of course, but he does suspect that his view of the world is slightly askew from the 'normal'. He certainly doesn't realise that he follows Cú Chulainn in any sense, whether in his footsteps figuratively, in time or space or, perhaps, even genetically.

Neither is he aware that he literally follows in the footsteps of another Irish hero, Aodh Mór Ó Néill - but that's a story for another blog.