Ireland possesses one of the most extensive vernacular literatures in Europe, some stories going back at least to the seventh century. Heroic tales, especially, contain many descriptions of the dress and equipment of their aristocratic protagonists. The question of how seriously these should be taken as accurate depictions of ancient artefacts has been discussed by J. P. Mallory, in a study of the Ulster Cycle of Tales. The stories in this cycle purport to describe a distant past, and it has been famously claimed that they provide a “window on the Iron Age.” However, when the objects described in the sagas are compared with actual items which survive from the Irish Iron Age, they do not make a good fit. On the other hand, they often match finds dating to the early Middle Ages, either to the period immediately preceding the Viking settlement (sixth to ninth centuries) or to time when the Viking taste for silver strongly affected the Irish (mid-ninth to mid-tenth centuries). Mallory concluded that the material culture employed to flesh out the stories was more or less contemporary with the language in which the text was composed, rather than with the period in which the drama purports to take place.

This paper examines references to clothing and accessories in a tale from the Cycle of the Kings, “The Wooing of Becfhola” (Tochmarc Becfhola), with a view to seeing if Mallory's findings hold good in this instance.