#i feel like incorrect ulster cycle and ILP were contributing factors in this and i'm proud of that. frankly.

[trans-cuchulainn]

i do love how the tumblr nerds care about láeg. i like to think i've played a significant part in making this happen and it's wild to think there are probably more people alive right now who a) know who láeg is and b) care about him than there have been for at least a few centuries, because he has NOT had this level of attention in the past. seriously. i can't stress enough how fleeting most references to láeg are in scholarship from the past 150 years. he does get a look-in in some 19th and 20th century novels but there's no sign that his characterisation there had a massive impact or sparked a lot of attention; he's not in the super late ulster cycle tales so then you're having to go back to the early 18th century and he's barely in coimheasgar na gcuradh; that means toruigheacht gruaidhe griansholus (1679) is the last time anyone really focused on him and given that that only survives in one manuscript i don't think it had a massive impact/audience, etc; so then you're probably going all the way back to the 15th-16th centuries, and remember this is all manuscripts so it's not mass print media, though there's gonna be some oral trads too... it's been a while, is what i'm saying, and the scale of the internet means higher numbers of people can be reached by the same things

tumblr really went "anyway this is our guy now" (of course we did. he's the loyal sarcastic best friend with homoerotic tensions. we were never not going to) and plucked him from obscurity and now people are drawing him!! there has been virtually no art of láeg before!! especially not art outside of illustrating a specific story for the purposes of a retelling!! (he gets drawn sometimes in graphic novels and there are like, two depictions of him and cú chulainn in their chariot, but that's p much it) and people make jokes about him! and know how to spell his name! etc