Publisher's Synopsis
This is a reprint of Kuno Meyer's translation of the ancient Irish saga Tairired na nDéssi - 'The Wanderings of the Déise' with a new preface by Gerald A. John Kelly. The saga is also known in English as 'The Expulsion of the Déisi'. This translation, with Old Irish and English on facing pages, originally appeared in Y Cymmrodor magazine in 1901.
Full of sex, violence, sorcery, prophecy, and horror, Tairired na nDéissi is the origin-tale of the Déisi Oirthir ('Déise of the East'), also known as the Déisi Mumhan ('Déise of Munster'). Sometime between the 4th and 8th centuries, they conquered and occupied a territory roughly equal to the modern dioceses of Waterford and Lismore in what is now Co. Waterford. The county itself is often called 'The Decies' in their honor.
The royal dynasty of the Déise Mumhan are the Dál Fiachach Suidge - the protagonists of this saga. Their descendants are still among us: the Ó Bric family of the Déise (anglicized as O'Brick and distinct from the Ó Bruic / O'Brick family of the Dál gCais) and the Ó Faoláin family of the Déise (variously anglicized as O'Phelan, O'Whalen, Whelan, Fallen, etc.). In addition, it is likely that many who live in the territory of The Decies today descend from one or more of the thirty-two forshloinnte ('alien kindreds') listed in the saga as recruits and allies of the Dál Fiachach Suidge.
