Senchan Torpeist

Alfred Webb

A Compendium of Irish Biography

1878

Senchan Torpeist, was a distinguished bard, Chief Poet of Ireland, who flourished about the year 600. He was a native of Connaught, and was a pupil of Dallan Forgaill, whom he succeeded. O'Curry tells how he called a meeting of the bards of Ireland to ascertain whether any of them remembered the whole of the celebrated tale of the Tain Bo Chuailgne (Cattle Spoil of Cuailgne). All said that they remembered only fragments, whereupon Murgen, Senchan's only son, and his friend Emine went in search of it. Resting by the grave of the renowned chief, Fergus MacRoigh, on the banks of Lough Ein, in Roscommon, it is fabled to have been revealed to them by the shade of that chief. The story is beautifully told in Ferguson's "Tain Quest," one of the Lays of the Western Gaill.

Sources

210. Lays of the Western Gael: Samuel Ferguson. London, 1865.

260. O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History. Dublin, 1861.

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