[citation needed] Lady Gregory volunteered instead, initially hoping that the work might serve as a source of raw material to nationalist poets, as well as a rebuttal to critics of Irish literature like Atkinson and Mahaffy.
[4] Lady Gregory used many sources and looked to many literary figures within her social circle in her styling and writing of her version of the Cú Chulainn myths.
Standish James O'Grady published his History of Ireland: The Heroic Period in 1878, which included tales about Cú Chulainn, Deirdre, and Medb.
Standish Hayes O'Grady (often confused with his cousin) published the Silva Gadelica in 1892: a corpus which does not include Cú Chulainn himself, but does contain stories of his kinsmen.
Her book, The Cuchulain Saga in Irish Literature related many tales of the hero, though not connected in the manner Lady Gregory would edit her own version.
[5] Yeats recalled Nutt's suggestion of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as a model for the translation, and Lady Gregory wrote of the work in her diary as a guide for selecting and weaving together her disparate sources with pleasing, literary prose.
[citation needed] As her first published book, Cuchulain of Muirthemne also earned Lady Gregory a place of power as a writer within the Irish Revival.
[7] Douglas Hyde had mixed feelings about the effort at first, declaring her vernacular translation style unsuitable for ancient myth (an opinion shared by her cousin Standish James).
Lady Gregory, and Nutt as publisher, had to[citation needed] respect the legal and social realities of a country observant at that time of the Catholic theology of sexuality, and the compromises do not detract from the basic story.