The Tain. Translated by Thomas Kinsella from the Irish. With Brush Drawings by Louis Le Brocquy. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1969. First Edition, Limited Issue. Bound by P. Kavanagh and C. Moore, Museum Bookbindings, Dublin. Original decorative vellum with a design by Le Brocquy to covers. Light discolouration to spine, otherwise a fine bright copy, housed in publisher’s slipcase and  preserved in custom calf-backed drop-back box.

Number Two of Six Specially Bound copies in calf vellum, Signed by Liam Miller, Louis Le Brocquy and Thomas Kinsella.  With pencil note “Liam Miller’s copy” to front free endpaper, 

This edition of The Táin Bó Cúailnge, or ‘Cattle Raid of Cooley’, was launched in Hodges & Figgis bookshop, Dawson St. Dublin, on the 4th of September 1969, in a limited edition of 1750 copies. Fifty of these were bound in Vermilion Oasis Niger Goatskin, Numbered & Signed by the Translator, the Artist and the Publisher/Designer. In addition, a further six copies bound in vellum were reserved for the creators of the edition.

The most famous tale in Irish mythology, it is at the centre of the Ulster Cycle of mythological sagas, known as the Rúraíocht in Irish. The tales in the Ulster Cycle are the most heroic of all the Irish myths that have been recorded in writing, and also the most renowned. The images that Le Brocquy created for Kinsella’s rich text have a powerful, primal effect on the reader. From their making Louis Le Brocquy – Ireland’s most renowned artist after Jack Yeats – derived both the impulse and motifs of his later tapestries and paintings.

The Dolmen Press’ most sumptuous publication combining the talents of Ireland’s premier poet, artist and publisher.