2022 1-4955-1010-7 This is an oversized (8 x 10), softcover book.
"There has not been a recent full-scale scholarly work concerned with the transmission of the beheading-game motif from Irish to Arthurian traditions.... [The present work] is focused on three main points of research: (1) The comparison of the several beheading-game narratives in order to assert their points of connection along with their differences; (2) The analysis of the possibility that Wales functioned as the intermediary between Irish tradition and the English and Continental milieus; (3) The tracing of subsequent channels of transmission of Irish motifs from the possible intermediary to England and the Continent." -from the author's Introduction
2022 1-4955-1011-5 This is an oversized (8x10), softcover book. The author: "The development of the churlish headless challenger and his variations does ...seem indeed to be a process about which we have quite clear indications due to the literary evidences. Headless figures which retain their conscience post-decapitation are not exclusive to the beheading-game narratives or other medieval narratives involving some form of decapitation, however. Even in hagiographic tradition we have a similar figure in the form of the cephalophore, a headless saint, and to this day there are creatures sound in Irish folk traditions such as the Dullahan: a headless horseman sharing many characteristics with the churlish challengers we have focused on."