Grá mo Chroí

Love Stories from Irish Myth

Ali Isaac & Jane Dougherty

I would like to thank Sue Vincent for inviting us (Jane Dougherty and Ali Isaac) to talk about Grá mo Chroí. So here goes, in time for the Saint Patrick’s Day binge.

For the tiny handful who are not fluent Irish speakers, the title means ‘Love of my Heart’: the collection of retellings Ali Isaac and I put together being of some of the great love stories from Irish myth.

Why did we do it? Because we love the rhythm and the language of these stories, written, or rather told, so long ago, in the pre-Christian era before the shadow of Christian purity fell upon Irish culture and expunged many of the legends of inappropriate material. Women, of course, being anathema to the Christian Church, ended up with the short straw in many of the later versions…