個人用メモ
「Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster」より
クーフーリンの「ねじれの発作」つまりríastradについて描かれた箇所引用メモ。
六月に来るという第二部六章で本来のバーサーカークーフーリンが出たりするかな？とソワソワしたりしているので久々にレンスターの書英語版を拝読したのもあり、その描写について、改めて。
（レンスターの書でこの発作について描かれているのは、Táinであれやこれやルール違反、姦計なんでもありなメーヴ女王率いる軍とたった一人で戦っている時、アルスター年少組がクーフーリンが休んでいる間に全滅し、そのかたき討ちに向かった際、あまりの怒りで変身が起こったとされます）
この時、「his first distortion」とあります。
つまり、セタンタさん時代にこの発作は起こっていない感じ。以下引用になります
Then his first distortion came upon Cú Chulainn so that he became horrible, many-shaped, strange and unrecognisable. His haunches shook about him like a tree in a current or a bulrush against a stream, every limb and every joint, every end and every member of him from head to foot. He performed a wild feat of contortion with his body inside his skin. His feet and his shins and his knees came to the back; his heels and his calves and his hams came to the front. The sinews of his calves came on the front of his shins and each huge, round knot of them was as big as a warrior’s fist. The sinews of his head were stretched to the nape of his neck and every huge, immeasurable, vast, incalculable round ball of them was as big as the head of a month-old child.
Then his face became a red hollow (?). He sucked one of his eyes into his head so that a wild crane could hardly have reached it to pluck it out from the back of his skull on to the middle of his cheek. The other eye sprang out on to his cheek. His mouth was twisted back fearsomely.
jawbone until his inner gullet was Seen. His lungs and his liver fluttered in his mouth and his throat. He struck a lion’s blow with the upper palate on its fellowso that every stream of fiery flakes which came into his mouth from his throat was as large as the skin of a three-year-old sheep. The loud beating of his heart against his ribs was heard like the baying of a bloodhound [gap: two words untranslated/extent: 2 words] or like a lion attacking bears. The torches of the war-goddess, the virulent rain-clouds, the sparks of blazing fire were seen in the clouds and in the air above his head with the seething of fierce rage that rose above him. His hair curled about his head like branches of red hawthorn used to re-fence the gap in a hedge. Though a noble apple-tree weighed down with fruit had been shaken about his hair, scarcely one apple would have reached the ground through it but an apple would have stayed impaled on each single hair because of the fierce bristling of his hair above him. The hero’s light rose from his forehead so that it was as long and as thick as a hero’s whetstone. As high, as thick, as strong, as powerful and as long as the mast of a great ship was the straight stream of dark blood which rose up from the very top of his head and became a dark magical mist like the smoke of a palace when a king comes to be attended to in the evening of a wintry day.
After Cú Chulainn had been thus distorted, the hero sprang into his scythed chariot with its iron points, its thin sharp edges, its hooks, its steel points, with its sharp spikes of a hero, its arrangement for opening, with its nails that were on the shafts and thongs and loops and fastenings in that chariot.
Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster
なんというかそこまで！？と思うくらいに異形感がすごい。常日頃はとにかく折につけて外見が美しいと表現されているので、このギャップ感、只事ではないです。ちょっと読んだだけでも物凄い表現がならんでいるんですが、これ絵にしたらどうなるだろう…とはずっと前から思っていたりです。たぶん、どう描いてもすごいことになりそうですけど。姿かたちだけでもものすごいところ、額から光を放ち、赤黒い血の霧を纏っているという。演出効果までばっちり決まっています（ちょっとしたホラーみたいになりますね…足の表現みるたびいつも恐竜とか竜が思い浮かびます…）
このセンテンスの少し前に、この戦いに赴くクーフーリンがとんでもなく物凄く恐ろしい叫び声をあげたという個所は
Then he put on his head his crested war- helmet of battle and strife and conflict, from which was uttered the shout of a hundred warriors with a long-drawn-out cry from every corner and angle of it. For there used to cry from it alike goblins and sprites, spirits of the glen and demons of the air, before him and above him and around him, wherever he went, prophesying the shedding of the blood of warriors and champions.
Táin Bó Cúalnge from the Book of Leinster
おそらくこれがオルタニキの「精霊の狂騒」の元ネタの部分なんだろうと思っています。どう表現したものかなあ…。
キャスニキもクラスこそキャスターですが、クーフーリンであるなら本来的には、滅茶苦茶に怒り心頭になればこの変化が可能ってことになりそうですけど、ギャップがさらに凄まじい事になる気がします。Fate世界だとどんな扱いになるんでしょうね。
余談ですがこの、年少組の仇討ちってモチーフ、物語としては最高に盛り上がる部分ではあると思うので、だからこそこの場面での（演出としての）凄い変身なのかもですけど、とても古い時代からこういう物語の骨組みがあったんだなあと長く残り、磨かれ続けてきた物語の、今にも通用する骨太さを想ったりします。表現としては古い時代なのでかなりバイオレンスな面がありますけども、今の少年漫画にもつながる、物語としてとても美しい型です。
