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Title: The Mythology of the British Islands - An Introduction to Celtic Myth, Legend, Poetry, and Romance
Author: Squire, Charles
Language: English
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THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE
BRITISH ISLANDS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MYTHOLOGY
OF THE BRITISH
ISLANDS
AN INTRODUCTION TO
CELTIC MYTH, LEGEND
POETRY, AND ROMANCE
BY CHARLES SQUIRE
LONDON: BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
50 OLD BAILEY, E.C. GLASGOW AND
DUBLIN MCMV
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
This book is what its author believes to be the only attempt yet made to
put the English reader into possession, in clear, compact, and what it
is hoped may prove agreeable, form, of the mythical, legendary, and
poetic traditions of the earliest inhabitants of our islands who have
left us written records—the Gaelic and the British Celts. It is true
that admirable translations and paraphrases of much of Gaelic mythical
saga have been recently published, and that Lady Charlotte Guest’s
translation of the _Mabinogion_ has been placed within the reach of the
least wealthy reader. But these books not merely each cover a portion
only of the whole ground, but, in addition, contain little elucidatory
matter. Their characters stand isolated and unexplained; and the details
that would explain them must be sought for with considerable trouble in
the lectures and essays of scholars to learned societies. The reader to
whom this literature is entirely new is introduced, as it were, to
numerous people of whose antecedents he knows nothing; and the effect is
often disconcerting enough to make him lay down the volume in despair.
But here he will at last make the formal acquaintance of all the chief
characters of Celtic myth: of the Gaelic gods and the giants against
whom they struggled; of the “Champions of the Red Branch” of Ulster,
heroes of a martial epopee almost worthy to be placed beside “the tale
of Troy divine”; and of Finn and his Fenians. He will meet also with the
divine and heroic personages of the ancient Britons: with their earliest
gods, kin to the members of the Gaelic Pantheon; as well as with Arthur
and his Knights, whom he will recognize as no mortal champions, but
belonging to the same mythic company. Of all these mighty figures the
histories will be briefly recorded, from the time of their unquestioned
godhood, through their various transformations, to the last doubtful,
dying recognition of them in the present day, as “fairies”. Thus the
volume will form a kind of handbook to a subject of growing
importance—the so-called “Celtic Renaissance”, which is, after all, no
more—and, indeed, no less—than an endeavour to refresh the vitality of
English poetry at its most ancient native fount.
The book does not, of course, profess to be for Celtic scholars, to
whom, indeed, its author himself owes all that is within it. It aims
only at interesting the reader familiar with the mythologies of Greece,
Rome, and Scandinavia in another, and a nearer, source of poetry. Its
author’s wish is to offer those who have fallen, or will fall, under the
attraction of Celtic legend and romance, just such a volume as he
himself would once have welcomed, and for which he sought in vain. It is
his hope that, in choosing from the considerable, though scattered,
translations and commentaries of students of Old Gaelic and Old Welsh,
he has chosen wisely, and that his readers will be able, should they
wish, to use his book as a stepping-stone to the authorities themselves.
To that end it is wholly directed; and its marginal notes and short
bibliographical appendix follow the same plan. They do not aspire to
anything like completeness, but only to point out the chief sources from
which he himself has drawn.
To acknowledge, as far as possible, such debts is now the author’s
pleasing duty. First and foremost, he has relied upon the volumes of M.
H. d’Arbois de Jubainville’s _Cours de Littérature celtique_, and the
Hibbert Lectures for 1886 of John Rhys, Professor of Celtic in the
University of Oxford, with their sequel entitled _Studies in the
Arthurian Legend_. From the writings of Mr. Alfred Nutt he has also
obtained much help. With regard to direct translations, it seems almost
superfluous to refer to Lady Charlotte Guest’s _Mabinogion_ and Mr. W.
F. Skene’s _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, or to the work of such
well-known Gaelic scholars as Mr. Eugene O’Curry, Dr. Kuno Meyer, Dr.
Whitley Stokes, Dr. Ernest Windisch, Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady (to
mention no others), as contained in such publications as the _Revue
Celtique_, the _Atlantis_, and the _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_, in Mr. O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_, Mr. Nutt’s _Voyage of
Bran_, _Son of Febal_, and Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_. But space is
lacking to do justice to all. The reader is referred to the marginal
notes and the Appendix for the works of these and other authors, who
will no doubt pardon the use made of their researches to one whose sole
object has been to gain a larger audience for the studies they have most
at heart.
Finally, perhaps, a word should be said upon that vexed question, the
transliteration of Gaelic. As yet there is no universal or consistent
method of spelling. The author has therefore chosen the forms which
seemed most familiar to himself, hoping in that way to best serve the
uses of others.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAP. Page
I. THE INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE OF CELTIC
MYTHOLOGY 1
II. THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY 8
III. WHO WERE THE “ANCIENT BRITONS”? 18
IV. THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS AND
DRUIDISM 31
THE GAELIC GODS AND THEIR STORIES
V. THE GODS OF THE GAELS 47
VI. THE GODS ARRIVE 65
VII. THE RISE OF THE SUN-GOD 78
VIII. THE GAELIC ARGONAUTS 89
IX. THE WAR WITH THE GIANTS 107
X. THE CONQUEST OF THE GODS BY MORTALS 119
XI. THE GODS IN EXILE 132
XII. THE IRISH ILIAD 153
XIII. SOME GAELIC LOVE-STORIES 184
XIV. FINN AND THE FENIANS 201
XV. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GODS 227
THE BRITISH GODS AND THEIR STORIES
XVI. THE GODS OF THE BRITONS 251
XVII. THE ADVENTURES OF THE GODS OF HADES 278
XVIII. THE WOOING OF BRANWEN AND THE BEHEADING
OF BRÂN 289
XIX. THE WAR OF ENCHANTMENTS 298
XX. THE VICTORIES OF LIGHT OVER DARKNESS 305
XXI. THE MYTHOLOGICAL “COMING OF ARTHUR” 312
XXII. THE TREASURES OF BRITAIN 336
XXIII. THE GODS AS KING ARTHUR’S KNIGHTS 354
XXIV. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GODS 371
SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC PAGANISM
XXV. SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC PAGANISM INTO
MODERN TIMES 399
APPENDIX 419
INDEX 425
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE
BRITISH ISLANDS
CHAPTER I
THE INTEREST AND IMPORTANCE OF CELTIC
MYTHOLOGY
It should hardly be necessary to remind the reader of what profound
interest and value to every nation are its earliest legendary and
poetical records. The beautiful myths of Greece form a sufficing
example. In threefold manner, they have influenced the destiny of the
people that created them, and of the country of which they were the
imagined theatre. First, in the ages in which they were still fresh,
belief and pride in them were powerful enough to bring scattered tribes
into confederation. Secondly, they gave the inspiration to sculptor and
poet of an art and literature unsurpassed, if not unequalled, by any
other age or race. Lastly, when “the glory that was Greece” had faded,
and her people had, by dint of successive invasions, perhaps even ceased
to have any right to call themselves Hellenes, they have passed over
into the literatures of the modern world, and so given to Greece herself
a poetic interest that still makes a petty kingdom of greater account in
the eyes of its compeers than many others far superior to it in extent
and resources.
This permeating influence of the Greek poetical mythology, apparent in
all civilized countries, has acted especially upon our own. From almost
the very dawn of English literature, the Greek stories of gods and
heroes have formed a large part of the stock-in-trade of English poets.
The inhabitants of Olympus occupy, under their better-known Latin names,
almost as great a space in English poetry as they did in that of the
countries to which they were native. From Chaucer downwards, they have
captivated the imagination alike of the poets and their hearers. The
magic cauldron of classic myth fed, like the Celtic “Grail”, all who
came to it for sustenance.
At last, however, its potency became somewhat exhausted. Alien and
exotic to English soil, it degenerated slowly into a convention. In the
shallow hands of the poetasters of the eighteenth century, its figures
became mere puppets. With every wood a “grove”, and every rustic maid a
“nymph”, one could only expect to find Venus armed with patch and
powder-puff, Mars shouldering a musket, and Apollo inspiring the
versifier’s own trivial strains. The affectation killed—and fortunately
killed—a mode of expression which had become obsolete. Smothered by just
ridicule, and abandoned to the commonplace vocabulary of the inferior
hack-writer, classic myth became a subject which only the greatest poets
could afford to handle.
But mythology is of such vital need to literature that, deprived of the
store of legend native to southern Europe, imaginative writers looked
for a fresh impulse. They turned their eyes to the North. Inspiration
was sought, not from Olympus, but from Asgard. Moreover, it was believed
that the fount of primeval poetry issuing from Scandinavian and Teutonic
myth was truly our own, and that we were rightful heirs of it by reason
of the Anglo-Saxon in our blood. And so, indeed, we are; but it is not
our sole heritage. There must also run much Celtic—that is, truly
British—blood in our veins.[1] And Matthew Arnold was probably right in
asserting that, while we owe to the Anglo-Saxon the more practical
qualities that have built up the British Empire, we have inherited from
the Celtic side that poetic vision which has made English literature the
most brilliant since the Greek.[2]
We have the right, therefore, to enter upon a new spiritual possession.
And a splendid one it is! The Celtic mythology has little of the heavy
crudeness that repels one in Teutonic and Scandinavian story. It is as
beautiful and graceful as the Greek; and, unlike the Greek, which is the
reflection of a clime and soil which few of us will ever see, it is our
own. Divinities should, surely, seem the inevitable outgrowth of the
land they move in! How strange Apollo would appear, naked among
icebergs, or fur-clad Thor striding under groves of palms! But the
Celtic gods and heroes are the natural inhabitants of a British
landscape, not seeming foreign and out-of-place in a scene where there
is no vine or olive, but “shading in with” our homely oak and bracken,
gorse and heath.
Thus we gain an altogether fresh interest in the beautiful spots of our
own islands, especially those of the wilder and more mountainous west,
where the older inhabitants of the land lingered longest. Saxon conquest
obliterated much in Eastern Britain, and changed more; but in the West
of England, in Wales, in Scotland, and especially in legend-haunted
Ireland, the hills and dales still keep memories of the ancient gods of
the ancient race. Here and there in South Wales and the West of England
are regions—once mysterious and still romantic—which the British Celts
held to be the homes of gods or outposts of the Other World. In Ireland,
not only is there scarcely a place that is not connected in some way
with the traditionary exploits of the “Red Branch Champions”, or of Finn
and his mighty men, but the old deities are still remembered, dwarfed
into fairies, but keeping the same attributes and the same names as of
yore. Wordsworth’s complaint[3] that, while Pelion and Ossa, Olympus and
Parnassus are “in immortal books enrolled”, not one English mountain,
“though round our sea-girt shore they rise in crowds”, had been “by the
Celestial Muses glorified” doubtless seemed true to his own generation.
Thanks to the scholars who have unveiled the ancient Gaelic and British
mythologies, it need not be so for ours. On Ludgate Hill, as well as on
many less famous eminences, once stood the temple of the British Zeus. A
mountain not far from Bettws-y-Coed was the British Olympus, the court
and palace of our ancient gods.
It may well be doubted, however, whether Wordsworth’s contemporaries
would have welcomed the mythology which was their own by right of birth
as a substitute for that of Greece and Rome. The inspiration of classic
culture, which Wordsworth was one of the first to break with, was still
powerful. How some of its professors would have held their sides and
roared at the very notion of a British mythology! Yet, all the time, it
had long been secretly leavening English ideas and ideals, none the less
potently because disguised under forms which could be readily
appreciated. Popular fancy had rehabilitated the old gods, long banned
by the priests’ bell, book, and candle, under various disguises. They
still lived on in legend as kings of ancient Britain reigning in a
fabulous past anterior to Julius Caesar—such were King Lud, founder of
London; King Lear, whose legend was immortalized by Shakespeare; King
Brennius, who conquered Rome; as well as many others who will be found
filling parts in old drama. They still lived on as long-dead saints of
the early churches of Ireland and Britain, whose wonderful attributes
and adventures are, in many cases, only those of their original
namesakes, the old gods, told afresh. And they still lived on in
another, and a yet more potent, way. Myths of Arthur and his cycle of
gods passed into the hands of the Norman story-tellers, to reappear as
romances of King Arthur and his Knights of the Table Round. Thus spread
over civilized Europe, their influence was immense. Their primal poetic
impulse is still resonant in our literature; we need only instance
Tennyson and Swinburne as minds that have come under its sway.
This diverse influence of Celtic mythology upon English poetry and
romance has been eloquently set forth by Mr. Elton in his _Origins of
English History_. “The religion of the British tribes”, he writes, “has
exercised an important influence upon literature. The mediæval romances
and the legends which stood for history are full of the ‘fair
humanities’ and figures of its bright mythology. The elemental powers of
earth and fire, and the spirits which haunted the waves and streams
appear again as kings in the Irish Annals, or as saints and hermits in
Wales. The Knights of the Round Table, Sir Kay and Tristrem and the bold
Sir Bedivere, betray their mighty origin by the attributes they retained
as heroes of romance. It was a goddess, ‘_Dea quaedam phantastica_’, who
bore the wounded Arthur to the peaceful valley. ‘There was little
sunlight on its woods and streams, and the nights were dark and gloomy
for want of the moon and stars.’ This is the country of Oberon and of
Sir Huon of Bordeaux. It is the dreamy forest of Arden. In an older
mythology, it was the realm of a King of Shadows, the country of Gwyn ap
Nudd, who rode as Sir Guyon in the ‘Fairie Queene’—
‘And knighthood took of good Sir Huon’s hand,
When with King Oberon he came to Fairyland’.”[4]
To trace Welsh and Irish kings and saints and hermits back to “the
elemental powers of earth and fire, and the spirits that haunted the
woods and streams” of Celtic imagination, and to disclose primitive
pagan deities under the mediæval and Christian trappings of “King
Arthur’s Knights” will necessarily fall within the scope of this volume.
But meanwhile the reader will probably be asking what evidence there is
that apocryphal British kings like Lear and Lud, and questionable Irish
saints like Bridget are really disguised Celtic divinities, or that the
Morte D’Arthur, with its love of Launcelot and the queen, and its quest
of the Holy Grail, was ever anything more than an invention of the
Norman romance-writers. He will demand to know what facts we really
possess about this supposed Celtic mythology alleged to have furnished
their prototypes, and of what real antiquity and value are our
authorities upon it.
The answer to his question will be found in the next chapter.
-----
Footnote 1:
“There is good ground to believe”, writes Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson,
M.A., the librarian of the Bodleian Library, in the preface to his
recently-published _Keltic Researches_, “that Lancashire, West
Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire,
Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part
of Sussex, are as Keltic as Perthshire and North Munster; that
Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire,
Devon, Dorset, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire are
more so—and equal to North Wales and Leinster; while Buckinghamshire
and Hertfordshire exceed even this degree and are on a level with
South Wales and Ulster. Cornwall, of course, is more Keltic than any
other English county, and as much so as Argyll, Inverness-shire, or
Connaught.”
Footnote 2:
_The Study of Celtic Literature._
Footnote 3:
In a sonnet written in 1801.
Footnote 4:
Elton: _Origins of English History_, chap. X.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
We may begin by asserting with confidence that Mr. Elton has touched
upon a part only of the material on which we may draw, to reconstruct
the ancient British mythology. Luckily, we are not wholly dependent upon
the difficult tasks of resolving the fabled deeds of apocryphal Irish
and British kings who reigned earlier than St. Patrick or before Julius
Caesar into their original form of Celtic myths, of sifting the
attributes and miracles of doubtfully historical saints, or of
separating the primitive pagan elements in the legends of Arthur and his
Knights from the embellishments added by the romance-writers. We have,
in addition to these—which we may for the present put upon one side as
secondary—sources, a mass of genuine early writings which, though
post-Christian in the form in which they now exist, none the less
descend from the preceding pagan age. These are contained in vellum and
parchment manuscripts long preserved from destruction in mansions and
monasteries in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and only during the last
century brought to light, copied, and translated by the patient labours
of scholars who have grappled with the long-obsolete dialects in which
they were transcribed.
Many of these volumes are curious miscellanies. Usually the one book of
a great house or monastic community, everything was copied into it that
the scholar of the family or brotherhood thought to be best worth
preserving. Hence they contain matter of the most diverse kind. There
are translations of portions of the Bible and of the classics, and of
such then popular books as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s and Nennius’ Histories
of Britain; lives of famous saints, together with works attributed to
them; poems and romances of which, under a thin disguise, the old Gaelic
and British gods are the heroes; together with treatises on all the
subjects then studied—grammar, prosody, law, history, geography,
chronology, and the genealogies of important chiefs.
The majority of these documents were put together during a period which,
roughly speaking, lasted from the beginning of the twelfth century to
the end of the sixteenth. In Ireland, in Wales, and, apparently, also in
Scotland, it was a time of literary revival after the turmoils of the
previous epoch. In Ireland, the Norsemen, after long ravaging, had
settled peacefully down, while in Wales, the Norman Conquest had
rendered the country for the first time comparatively quiet. The
scattered remains of history, lay and ecclesiastical, of science, and of
legend were gathered together.
Of the Irish manuscripts, the earliest, and, for our purposes, the most
important, on account of the great store of ancient Gaelic mythology
which, in spite of its dilapidated condition, it still contains, is in
the possession of the Royal Irish Academy. Unluckily, it is reduced to a
fragment of one hundred and thirty-eight pages, but this remnant
preserves a large number of romances relating to the old gods and heroes
of Ireland. Among other things, it contains a complete account of the
epical saga called the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_, the “Raiding of the Cattle
of Cooley”, in which the hero, Cuchulainn, performed his greatest feats.
This manuscript is called the Book of the Dun Cow, from the tradition
that it was copied from an earlier book written upon the skin of a
favourite animal belonging to Saint Ciaran, who lived in the seventh
century. An entry upon one of its pages reveals the name of its scribe,
one Maelmuiri, whom we know to have been killed by robbers in the church
of Clonmacnois in the year 1106.
Far more voluminous, and but little less ancient, is the Book of
Leinster, said to have been compiled in the early part of the twelfth
century by Finn mac Gorman, Bishop of Kildare. This also contains an
account of Cuchulainn’s mighty deeds which supplements the older version
in the Book of the Dun Cow. Of somewhat less importance from the point
of view of the student of Gaelic mythology come the Book of Ballymote
and the Yellow Book of Lecan, belonging to the end of the fourteenth
century, and the Books of Lecan and of Lismore, both attributed to the
fifteenth. Besides these six great collections, there survive many other
manuscripts which also contain ancient mythical lore. In one of these,
dating from the fifteenth century, is to be found the story of the
Battle of Moytura, fought between the gods of Ireland and their enemies,
the Fomors, or demons of the deep sea.
The Scottish manuscripts, preserved in the Advocates’ Library at
Edinburgh, date back in some cases as far as the fourteenth century,
though the majority of them belong to the fifteenth and sixteenth. They
corroborate the Irish documents, add to the Cuchulainn saga, and make a
more special subject of the other heroic cycle, that which relates the
not less wonderful deeds of Finn, Ossian, and the Fenians. They also
contain stories of other characters, who, more ancient than either Finn
or Cuchulainn, are the Tuatha Dé Danann, the god-tribe of the ancient
Gaels.
The Welsh documents cover about the same period as the Irish and the
Scottish. Four of these stand out from the rest, as most important. The
oldest is the Black Book of Caermarthen, which dates from the third
quarter of the twelfth century; the Book of Aneurin, which was written
late in the thirteenth; the Book of Taliesin, assigned to the
fourteenth; and the Red Book of Hergest, compiled by various persons
during that century and the one following it. The first three of these
“Four Ancient Books of Wales” are small in size, and contain poems
attributed to the great traditional bards of the sixth century, Myrddin,
Taliesin, and Aneurin. The last—the Red Book of Hergest—is far larger.
In it are to be found Welsh translations of the British Chronicles; the
oft-mentioned Triads, verses celebrating famous traditionary persons or
things; ancient poems attributed to Llywarch Hên; and, of priceless
value to any study of our subject, the so-called Mabinogion, stories in
which large portions of the old British mythology are worked up into
romantic form.
The whole bulk, therefore, of the native literature bearing upon the
mythology of the British Islands may be attributed to a period which
lasted from the beginning of the twelfth century to the end of the
sixteenth. But even the commencement of this era will no doubt seem far
too late a day to allow authenticity to matter which ought to have
vastly preceded it. The date, however, merely marks the final redaction
of the contents of the manuscripts into the form in which they now
exist, without bearing at all upon the time of their authorship.
Avowedly copies of ancient poems and tales from much older manuscripts,
the present books no more fix the period of the original composition of
their contents than the presence of a portion of the _Canterbury Tales_
in a modern anthology of English poetry would assign Chaucer to the
present year of grace.
This may be proved both directly and inferentially.[5] In some
instances—as in that of an elegy upon Saint Columba in the Book of the
Dun Cow—the dates of authorship are actually given. In others, we may
depend upon evidence which, if not quite so absolute, is nearly as
convincing. Even where the writer does not state that he is copying from
older manuscripts, it is obvious that this must have been the case, from
the glosses in his version. The scribes of the earlier Gaelic
manuscripts very often found, in the documents from which they
themselves were copying, words so archaic as to be unintelligible to the
readers of their own period. To render them comprehensible, they were
obliged to insert marginal notes which explained these obsolete words by
reference to other manuscripts more ancient still. Often the mediæval
copyists have ignorantly moved these notes from the margin into the
text, where they remain, like philological fossils, to give evidence of
previous forms of life. The documents from which they were taken have
perished, leaving the mediæval copies as their sole record. In the Welsh
Mabinogion the same process is apparent. Peculiarities in the existing
manuscripts show plainly enough that they must have been copied from
some more archaic text. Besides this, they are, as they at present
stand, obviously made up of earlier tales pieced together. Almost as
clearly as the Gaelic manuscripts, the Welsh point us back to older and
more primitive forms.
The ancient legends of the Gael and the Briton are thus shown to have
been no mere inventions of scholarly monks in the Middle Ages. We have
now to trace, if possible, the date, not necessarily of their first
appearance on men’s lips, but of their first redaction into writing in
approximately the form in which we have them now.
Circumstantial evidence can be adduced to prove that the most important
portions both of Gaelic and British early literature can be safely
relegated to a period of several centuries prior to their now-existing
record. Our earliest version of the episode of the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_,
which is the nucleus and centre of the ancient Gaelic heroic cycle of
which Cuchulainn, _fortissimus heros Scotorum_, is the principal figure,
is found in the twelfth-century Book of the Dun Cow. But legend tells us
that at the beginning of the seventh century the Saga had not only been
composed, but had actually become so obsolete as to have been forgotten
by the bards. Their leader, one Senchan Torpeist, a historical
character, and chief bard of Ireland at that time, obtained permission
from the Saints to call Fergus, Cuchulainn’s contemporary, and a chief
actor in the “Raid”, from the dead, and received from the resurrected
hero a true and full version. This tradition, dealing with a real
personage, surely shows that the story of the _Táin_ was known before
the time of Senchan, and probably preserves the fact, either that his
version of Cuchulainn’s famous deeds became the accepted one, or that he
was the first to reduce it to writing. An equally suggestive
consideration approximately fixes for us the earliest redaction of the
Welsh mythological prose tales called the “Mabinogion”, or, more
correctly speaking, the “Four Branches of the Mabinogi”.[6] In none of
these is there the slightest mention, or apparently the least knowledge,
of Arthur, around whom and whose supposed contemporaries centres the
mass of British legend as it was transmitted by the Welsh to the
Normans. These mysterious mythological records must in all probability,
therefore, antedate the Arthurian cycle of myth, which was already being
put into form in the sixth century. On the other hand, the characters of
the “Four Branches” are mentioned without comment—as though they were
personages with whom no one could fail to be familiar—in the supposed
sixth-century poems contained in those “Four Ancient Books of Wales” in
which are found the first meagre references to the British hero.
Such considerations as these throw back, with reasonable certainty, the
existence of the Irish and Welsh poems and prose tales, in something
like their present shape, to a period antedating the seventh century.
But this, again, means only that the myths, traditions, and legends were
current at that to us early, but to them, in their actual substance,
late date, in literary form. A mythology must always be far older than
the oldest verses and stories that celebrate it. Elaborate poems and
sagas are not made in a day, or in a year. The legends of the Gaelic and
British gods and heroes could not have sprung, like Athena from the head
of Zeus, full-born out of some poet’s brain. The bard who first put them
into artistic shape was setting down the primitive traditions of his
race. We may therefore venture to describe them as not of the twelfth
century or of the seventh, but as of a prehistoric and immemorial
antiquity.
Internal evidence bears this out. An examination of both the Gaelic and
British legendary romances shows, under embellishing details added by
later hands, an inner core of primeval thought which brings them into
line with the similar ideas of other races in the earliest stage of
culture. Their “local colour” may be that of their last “editor”, but
their “plots” are pre-mediæval, pre-Christian, pre-historic. The
characters of early Gaelic legend belong to the same stamp of
imagination that created Olympian and Titan, Æsir and Jötun. We must go
far to the back of civilized thought to find parallels to such a story
as that in which the British sun-god, struck by a rival in love with a
poisoned spear, is turned into an eagle, from whose wound great pieces
of carrion are continually failing.[7]
This aspect of the Celtic literary records was clearly seen, and
eloquently expressed, by Matthew Arnold in his _Study of Celtic
Literature_.[8] He was referring to the Welsh side, but his image holds
good equally for the Gaelic. “The first thing that strikes one”, he
says, “in reading the _Mabinogion_ is how evidently the mediæval
story-teller is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully
possess the secret: he is like a peasant building his hut on the site of
Halicarnassus or Ephesus; he builds, but what he builds is full of
materials of which he knows not the history, or knows by a glimmering
tradition merely: stones ‘not of this building’, but of an older
architecture, greater, cunninger, more majestical.” His heroes “are no
mediæval personages: they belong to an older, pagan, mythological
world”. So, too, with the figures, however euhemerized, of the three
great Gaelic cycles: that of the Tuatha Dé Danann, of the Heroes of
Ulster, of Finn and the Fenians. Their divinity outshines their
humanity; through their masks may be seen the faces of gods.
Yet, gods as they are, they had taken on the semblance of mortality by
the time their histories were fixed in the form in which we have them
now. Their earliest records, if those could be restored to us, would
doubtless show them eternal and undying, changing their shapes at will,
but not passing away. But the post-Christian copyists, whether Irish or
Welsh, would not countenance this. Hence we have the singular paradox of
the deaths of Immortals. There is hardly one of the figures of either
the Gaelic or the British Pantheon whose demise is not somewhere
recorded. Usually they fell in the unceasing battles between the
divinities of darkness and of light. Their deaths in earlier cycles of
myth, however, do not preclude their appearance in later ones. Only,
indeed, with the closing of the lips of the last mortal who preserved
his tradition can the life of a god be truly said to end.
-----
Footnote 5:
Satisfactory summaries of the evidence for the dates of both the
Gaelic and Welsh legendary material will be found in pamphlets No. 8
and 11 of Mr. Nutt’s _Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and
Folklore_.
Footnote 6:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, chap. I.
Footnote 7:
See chap. XVI of this book—“The Gods of the Britons”.
Footnote 8:
Lecture II.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
WHO WERE THE “ANCIENT BRITONS”?
But, before proceeding to recount the myths of the “Ancient Britons”, it
will be well to decide what people, exactly, we mean by that loose but
convenient phrase. We have, all of us, vague ideas of Ancient Britons,
recollected, doubtless, from our school-books. There we saw their
pictures as, painted with woad, they paddled coracles, or drove scythed
chariots through legions of astonished Romans. Their Druids,
white-bearded and wearing long, white robes, cut the mistletoe with a
golden sickle at the time of the full moon, or, less innocently
employed, made bonfires of human beings shut up in gigantic figures of
wicker-work.
Such picturesque details were little short of the sum-total, not only of
our own knowledge of the subject, but also of that of our teachers.
Practically all their information concerning the ancient inhabitants of
Britain was taken from the Commentaries of Julius Caesar. So far as it
went, it was no doubt correct; but it did not go far. Caesar’s interest
in our British ancestors was that of a general who was his own
war-correspondent rather than that of an exhaustive and painstaking
scientist. It has been reserved for modern archæologists, philologists,
and ethnologists to give us a fuller account of the Ancient Britons.
The inhabitants of our islands previous to the Roman invasion are
generally described as “Celts”. But they must have been largely a mixed
race; and the people with whom they mingled must have modified to
some—and perhaps to a large—extent their physique, their customs, and
their language.
Speculation has run somewhat wild over the question of the composition
of the Early Britons. But out of the clash of rival theories there
emerges one—and one only—which may be considered as scientifically
established. We have certain proof of two distinct human stocks in the
British Islands at the time of the Roman Conquest; and so great an
authority as Professor Huxley has given his opinion that there is no
evidence of any others.[9]
The earliest of these two races would seem to have inhabited our islands
from the most ancient times, and may, for our purpose, be described as
aboriginal. It was the people that built the “long barrows”; and which
is variously called by ethnologists the Iberian, Mediterranean, Berber,
Basque, Silurian, or Euskarian race. In physique it was short, swarthy,
dark-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled; its language belonged to the
class called “Hamitic”, the surviving types of which are found among the
Gallas, Abyssinians, Berbers, and other North African tribes; and it
seems to have come originally from some part either of Eastern,
Northern, or Central Africa. Spreading thence, it was probably the first
people to inhabit the Valley of the Nile, and it sent offshoots into
Syria and Asia Minor. The earliest Hellenes found it in Greece under the
name of “Pelasgoi”; the earliest Latins in Italy, as the “Etruscans”;
and the Hebrews in Palestine, as the “Hittites”. It spread northward
through Europe as far as the Baltic, and westward, along the Atlas
chain, to Spain, France, and our own islands.[10] In many countries it
reached a comparatively high level of civilization, but in Britain its
development must have been early checked. We can discern it as an
agricultural rather than a pastoral people, still in the Stone Age,
dwelling in totemistic tribes on hills whose summits it fortified
elaborately, and whose slopes it cultivated on what is called the
“terrace system”, and having a primitive culture which ethnologists
think to have much resembled that of the present hill-tribes of Southern
India.[11] It held our islands till the coming of the Celts, who fought
with the aborigines, dispossessed them of the more fertile parts,
subjugated them, even amalgamated with them, but certainly never
extirpated them. In the time of the Romans they were still practically
independent in South Wales. In Ireland they were long unconquered, and
are found as allies rather than serfs of the Gaels, ruling their own
provinces, and preserving their own customs and religion. Nor, in spite
of all the successive invasions of Great Britain and Ireland, are they
yet extinct, or so merged as to have lost their type, which is still the
predominant one in many parts of the west both of Britain and Ireland,
and is believed by some ethnologists to be generally upon the increase
all over England.
The second of the two races was the exact opposite to the first. It was
the tall, fair, light-haired, blue- or gray-eyed, broad-headed people
called, popularly, the “Celts”, who belonged in speech to the “Aryan”
family, their language finding its affinities in Latin, Greek, Teutonic,
Slavic, the Zend of Ancient Persia, and the Sanscrit of Ancient India.
Its original home was probably somewhere in Central Europe, along the
course of the upper Danube, or in the region of the Alps. The “round
barrows” in which it buried its dead, or deposited their burnt ashes,
differ in shape from the “long barrows” of the earlier race. It was in a
higher stage of culture than the “Iberians”, and introduced into Britain
bronze and silver, and, perhaps, some of the more lately domesticated
animals.
Both Iberians and Celts were divided into numerous tribes, but there is
nothing to show that there was any great diversity among the former. It
is otherwise with the Celts, who were separated into two main branches
which came over at different times. The earliest were the Goidels, or
Gaels; the second, the Brythons, or Britons. Between these two branches
there was not only a dialectical, but probably, also, a considerable
physical difference. Some anthropologists even postulate a different
shape of skull. Without necessarily admitting this, there is reason to
suppose a difference of build and of colour of hair. With regard to
this, we have the evidence of Latin writers—of Tacitus,[12] who tells us
that the “Caledonians” of the North differed from the Southern Britons
in being larger-limbed and redder-haired, and of Strabo,[13] who
described the tribes in the interior of Britain as taller than the
Gaulish colonists on the coast, with hair less yellow and limbs more
loosely knit. Equally do the classic authorities agree in recognizing
the “Silures” of South Wales as an entirely different race from any
other in Britain. The dark complexions and curly hair of these Iberians
seemed to Tacitus to prove them immigrants from Spain.[14]
Professor Rhys also puts forward evidence to show that the Goidels and
the Brythons had already separated before they first left Gaul for our
islands.[15] He finds them as two distinct peoples there. We do not
expect so much nowadays from “the merest school-boy” as we did in
Macaulay’s time, but even the modern descendant of that paragon could
probably tell us that all Gaul was divided into three parts, one of
which was inhabited by the Belgae, another by the Aquitani, and the
third by those who called themselves Celtae, but were termed Galli by
the Romans; and that they all differed from one another in language,
customs, and laws.[16] Of these, Professor Rhys identifies the Belgae
with the Brythons, and the Celtae with the Goidels, the third people,
the Aquitani, being non-Celtic and non-Aryan, part of the great
Hamitic-speaking Iberian stock.[17] The Celtae, with their Goidelic
dialect of Celtic, which survives to-day in the Gaelic languages of
Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, were the first to come over to
Britain, pushed forward, probably, by the Belgae, who, Caesar tells us,
were the bravest of the Gauls.[18] Here they conquered the native
Iberians, driving them out of the fertile parts into the rugged
districts of the north and west. Later came the Belgae themselves,
compelled by press of population; and they, bringing better weapons and
a higher civilization, treated the Goidels as those had treated the
Iberians. Thus harried, the Goidels probably combined with the Iberians
against what was now the common foe, and became to a large degree
amalgamated with them. The result was that during the Roman domination
the British Islands were roughly divided with regard to race as follows:
The Brythons, or second Celtic race, held all Britain south of the
Tweed, with the exception of the extreme west, while the first Celtic
race, the Goidelic, had most of Ireland, as well as the Isle of Man,
Cumberland, the West Highlands, Cornwall, Devon, and North Wales. North
of the Grampians lived the Picts, who were probably more or less
Goidelicized Iberians, the aboriginal race also holding out, unmixed, in
South Wales and parts of Ireland.
It is now time to decide what, for the purposes of this book, it will be
best to call the two different branches of the Celts, and their
languages. With such familiar terms as “Gael” and “Briton”, “Gaelic” and
“British”, ready to our hands, it seems pedantic to insist upon the more
technical “Goidel” and “Brython”, “Goidelic” and “Brythonic”. The
difficulty is that the words “Gael” and “Gaelic” have been so long
popularly used to designate only the modern “Goidels” of Scotland and
their language, that they may create confusion when also applied to the
people and languages of Ireland and the Isle of Man. Similarly, the
words “Briton” and “British” have come to mean, at the present day, the
people of the whole of the British Islands, though they at first only
signified the inhabitants of England, Central Wales, the Lowlands of
Scotland, and the Brythonic colony in Brittany. However, the words
“Goidel” and “Brython”, with their derivatives, are so clumsy that it
will probably prove best to use the neater terms. In this volume,
therefore, the “Goidels” of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man are
our “Gaels” and the “Brythons” of England and Wales are our “Britons”.
We get the earliest accounts of the life of the inhabitants of the
British Islands from two sources. The first is a foreign one, that of
the Latin writers. But the Romans only really knew the Southern Britons,
whom they describe as similar in physique and customs to the Continental
Gauls, with whom, indeed, they considered them to be identical.[19] At
the time they wrote, colonies of Belgae were still settling upon the
coasts of Britain opposite to Gaul.[20] Roman information grew scantier
as it approached the Wall, and of the Northern tribes they seem to have
had only such knowledge as they gathered through occasional warfare with
them. They describe them as entirely barbarous, naked and tattooed,
living by the chase alone, without towns, houses, or fields, without
government or family life, and regarding iron as an ornament of value,
as other, more civilized peoples regarded gold.[21] As for Ireland, it
never came under their direct observation, and we are entirely dependent
upon its native writers for information as to the manners and customs of
the Gaels. It may be considered convincing proof of the authenticity of
the descriptions of life contained in the ancient Gaelic manuscripts
that they corroborate so completely the observations of the Latin
writers upon the Britons and Gauls. Reading the two side by side, we may
largely reconstruct the common civilization of the Celts.
Roughly speaking, one may compare it with the civilization of the
Greeks, as described by Homer.[22] Both peoples were in the tribal and
pastoral stage of culture, in which the chiefs are the great
cattle-owners round whom their less wealthy fellows gather. Both wear
much the same attire, use the same kind of weapons, and fight in the
same manner—from the war-chariot, a vehicle already obsolete even in
Ireland by the first century of the Christian era. Battles are fought
single-handed between chiefs, the ill-armed common people contributing
little to their result, and less to their history. Such chiefs are said
to be divinely descended—sons, even, of the immortal gods. Their
tremendous feats are sung by the bards, who, like the Homeric poets,
were privileged persons, inferior only to the war-lord. Ancient Greek
and Ancient Celt had very much the same conceptions of life, both as
regards this world and the next.
We may gather much detailed information of the early inhabitants of the
British Islands from our various authorities.[23] Their clothes, which
consisted, according to the Latin writers, of a blouse with sleeves,
trousers fitting closely round the ankles, and a shawl or cloak,
fastened at the shoulder with a brooch, were made either of thick felt
or of woven cloth dyed with various brilliant colours. The writer
Diodorus tells us that they were crossed with little squares and lines,
“as though they had been sprinkled with flowers”. They were, in fact,
like “tartans”, and we may believe Varro, who tells us that they “made a
gaudy show”. The men alone seem to have worn hats, which were of soft
felt, the women’s hair being uncovered, and tied in a knot behind. In
time of battle, the men also dispensed with any head-covering, brushing
their abundant hair forward into a thick mass, and dyeing it red with a
soap made of goat’s fat and beech ashes, until they looked (says
Cicero’s tutor Posidonius, who visited Britain about 110 B.C.) less like
human beings than wild men of the woods. Both sexes were fond of
ornaments, which took the form of gold bracelets, rings, pins, and
brooches, and of beads of amber, glass, and jet. Their knives, daggers,
spear-heads, axes, and swords were made of bronze or iron; their shields
were the same round target used by the Highlanders at the battle of
Culloden; and they seem also to have had a kind of lasso to which a
hammer-shaped ball was attached, and which they used as the Gauchos of
South America use their _bola_. Their war-chariots were made of wicker,
the wooden wheels being armed with sickles of bronze. These were drawn
either by two or four horses, and were large enough to hold several
persons in each. Standing in these, they rushed along the enemy’s lines,
hurling darts, and driving the scythes against all who came within
reach. The Romans were much impressed by the skill of the drivers, who
“could check their horses at full speed on a steep incline, and turn
them in an instant, and could run along the pole, and stand on the yoke,
and then get back into their chariots again without a moment’s
delay”.[24]
With these accounts of the Roman writers we may compare the picture of
the Gaelic hero, Cuchulainn, as the ancient Irish writers describe him
dressed and armed for battle. Glorified by the bard, he yet wears
essentially the same costume and equipment which the classic historians
and geographers described more soberly. “His gorgeous raiment that he
wore in great conventions” consisted of “a fair crimson tunic of five
plies and fringed, with a long pin of white silver, gold-enchased and
patterned, shining as if it had been a luminous torch which for its
blazing property and brilliance men might not endure to see. Next his
skin, a body-vest of silk, bordered and fringed all round with gold,
with silver, and with white bronze, which vest came as far as the upper
edge of his russet-coloured kilt.... About his neck were a hundred
linklets of red gold that flashed again, with pendants hanging from
them. His head-gear was adorned with a hundred mixed carbuncle jewels,
strung.” He carried “a trusty special shield, in hue dark crimson, and
in its circumference armed with a pure white silver rim. At his left
side a long and golden-hilted sword. Beside him, in the chariot, a
lengthy spear; together with a keen, aggression-boding javelin, fitted
with hurling thong, with rivets of white bronze.”[25] Another passage of
Gaelic saga describes his chariot. It was made of fine wood, with
wicker-work, moving on wheels of white bronze. It had a high rounded
frame of creaking copper, a strong curved yoke of gold, and a pole of
white silver, with mountings of white bronze. The yellow reins were
plaited, and the shafts were as hard and straight as sword-blades.[26]
In like manner the ancient Irish writers have made glorious the halls
and fortresses of their mythical kings. Like the palaces of Priam, of
Menelaus, and of Odysseus, they gleam with gold and gems. Conchobar,[27]
the legendary King of Ulster in its golden age, had three such “houses”
at Emain Macha. Of the one called the “Red Branch”, we are told that it
contained nine compartments of red yew, partitioned by walls of bronze,
all grouped around the king’s private chamber, which had a ceiling of
silver, and bronze pillars adorned with gold and carbuncles.[28] But the
far less magnificent accounts of the Latin writers have, no doubt, more
truth in them than such lavish pictures. They described the Britons they
knew as living in villages of bee-hive huts, roofed with fern or thatch,
from which, at the approach of an enemy, they retired to the local
_dún_. This, so far from being elaborate, merely consisted of a round or
oval space fenced in with palisades and earthworks, and situated either
upon the top of a hill or in the midst of a not easily traversable
morass.[29] We may see the remains of such strongholds in many parts of
England—notable ones are the “castles” of Amesbury, Avebury, and Old
Sarum in Wiltshire, Saint Catherine’s Hill, near Winchester, and Saint
George’s Hill, in Surrey—and it is probable that, in spite of the Celtic
praisers of past days, the “palaces” of Emain Macha and of Tara were
very like them.
The Celtic customs were, like the Homeric, those of the primitive world.
All land (though it may have theoretically belonged to the chief) was
cultivated in common. This community of possessions is stated by
Caesar[30] to have extended to their wives; but the imputation cannot be
said to have been proved. On the contrary, in the stories of both
branches of the Celtic race, women seem to have taken a higher place in
men’s estimation, and to have enjoyed far more personal liberty, than
among the Homeric Greeks. The idea may have arisen from a
misunderstanding of some of the curious Celtic customs. Descent seems to
have been traced through the maternal rather than through the paternal
line, a very un-Aryan procedure which some believe to have been borrowed
from another race. The parental relation was still further lessened by
the custom of sending children to be brought up outside the family in
which they were born, so that they had foster-parents to whom they were
as much, or even more, attached than to their natural ones.
Their political state, mirroring their family life, was not less
primitive. There was no central tribunal. Disputes were settled within
the families in which they occurred, while, in the case of graver
injuries, the injured party or his nearest relation could kill the
culprit or exact a fine from him. As families increased in number, they
became petty tribes, often at war with one another. A defeated tribe had
to recognize the sovereignty of the head man of the conquering tribe,
and a succession of such victories exalted him into the position of a
chief of his district. But even then, though his decision was the whole
of the law, he was little more than the mouthpiece of public opinion.
-----
Footnote 9:
Huxley: _On Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology_. 1871.
Footnote 10:
Sergi: _The Mediterranean Race_.
Footnote 11:
Gomme: _The Village Community_. Chap. IV—“The non-Aryan Elements in
the English Village Community”.
Footnote 12:
Tacitus: _Agricola_, chap. XI.
Footnote 13:
Strabo: _Geographica_, Book IV, chap. V.
Footnote 14:
Tacitus, _op. cit._
Footnote 15:
Rhys: _The Early Ethnology of the British Islands_. _Scottish Review._
April, 1890.
Footnote 16:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book I, chap. I.
Footnote 17:
Rhys: _Scottish Review_. April, 1890.
Footnote 18:
Op. Caesar, _op. cit._
Footnote 19:
Tacitus: _Agricola_, chap. XI.
Footnote 20:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book V, chap. XII.
Footnote 21:
Elton: _Origins of English History_, chap. VII.
Footnote 22:
See “_La Civilisation des Celtes et celle de l’Épopée Homérique_”, by
M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, _Cours de Littérature Celtique_, Vol. VI.
Footnote 23:
See Elton: _Origins of English History_, chap. VII.
Footnote 24:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book IV, chap. XXXIII.
Footnote 25:
From the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_. The translator is Mr. Standish Hayes
O’Grady.
Footnote 26:
_Tochmarc Emire_—the _Wooing of Emer_—an old Irish romance.
Footnote 27:
Sometimes spelt “Conachar”, and pronounced _Conhower_ or _Connor_.
Footnote 28:
The _Wooing of Emer_.
Footnote 29:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book V, chap. XXI, and various passages in
Book VII.
Footnote 30:
_Ibid._, chap. XIV.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS AND
DRUIDISM
The ancient inhabitants of Britain—the Gaelic and British Celts—have
been already described as forming a branch of what are roughly called
the “Aryans”. This name has, however, little reference to race, and
really signifies the speakers of a group of languages which can be all
shown to be connected, and to descend remotely from a single source—a
hypothetical mother-tongue spoken by a hypothetical people which we term
“Aryan”, or, more correctly, “Indo-European”. This primeval speech,
evolved, probably, upon some part of the great plain which stretches
from the mountains of Central Europe to the mountains of Central Asia,
has spread, superseding, or amalgamating with the tongues of other
races, until branches of it are spoken over almost the whole of Europe
and a great portion of Asia. All the various Latin, Greek, Slavic,
Teutonic, and Celtic languages are “Aryan”, as well as Persian and other
Asiatic dialects derived from the ancient “Zend”, and the numerous
Indian languages which trace their origin to Sanscrit.
Not very long ago, it was supposed that this common descent of language
involved a common descent of blood. A real brotherhood was
enthusiastically claimed for all the principal European nations, who
were also invited to recognize Hindus and Persians as their long-lost
cousins. Since then, it has been conceded that, while the Aryan speech
survived, though greatly modified, the Aryan blood might well have
disappeared, diluted beyond recognition by crossing with the other races
whom the Aryans conquered, or among whom they more or less peacefully
settled. As a matter of fact, there are no European nations—perhaps no
people at all except a few remote savage tribes—which are not made up of
the most diverse elements. Aryan and non-Aryan long ago blended
inextricably, to form by their fusion new peoples.
But, just as the Aryan speech influenced the new languages, and the
Aryan customs the new civilizations, so we can still discern in the
religions of the Aryan-speaking nations similar ideas and expressions
pointing to an original source of mythological conceptions. Hence,
whether we investigate the mythology of the Hindus, the Greeks, the
Teutons, or the Celts, we find the same mythological groundwork. In
each, we see the powers of nature personified, and endowed with human
form and attributes, though bearing, with few exceptions, different
names. Like the Vedic brahmans, the Greek and Latin poets, and the Norse
scalds, the Celtic bards—whether Gaels or Britons—imagined the sky, the
sun, the moon, the earth, the sea, and the dark underworld, as well as
the mountains, the streams and the woods, to be ruled by beings like
their own chiefs, but infinitely more powerful; every passion, as War
and Love, and every art, as Poetry and Smithcraft, had its divine
founder, teacher, and exponent; and of all these deities and their
imagined children, they wove the poetical and allegorical romances which
form the subject of the present volume.
Like other nations, too, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, the Celts had,
besides their mythology, a religion. It is not enough to tell tales of
shadowy gods; they must be made visible by sculpture, housed in groves
or temples, served with ritual, and propitiated with sacrifices, if one
is to hope for their favours. Every cult must have its priests living by
the altar.
The priests of the Celts are well-known to us by name as the “Druids”—a
word derived from a root DR which signifies a tree, and especially the
oak, in several Aryan languages.[31] This is generally—though not by all
scholars—taken as proving that they paid an especial veneration to the
king of trees. It is true that the mistletoe—that strange parasite upon
the oak—was prominent among their “herbs of power”, and played a part in
their ritual;[32] but this is equally true of other Aryan nations. By
the Norse it was held sacred to the god Balder, while the Romans
believed it to be the “golden bough” that gave access to Hades.[33]
The accounts both of the Latin and Gaelic writers give us a fairly
complete idea of the nature of the Druids, and especially of the high
estimation in which they were held. They were at once the priests, the
physicians, the wizards, the diviners, the theologians, the scientists,
and the historians of their tribes. All spiritual power and all human
knowledge were vested in them, and they ranked second only to the kings
and chiefs. They were freed from all contribution to the State, whether
by tribute or service in war, so that they might the better apply
themselves to their divine offices. Their decisions were absolutely
final, and those who disobeyed them were laid under a terrible
excommunication or “boycott”.[34] Classic writers tell us how they
lorded it in Gaul, where, no doubt, they borrowed splendour by imitating
their more civilized neighbours. Men of the highest rank were proud to
cast aside the insignia of mere mortal honour to join the company of
those who claimed to be the direct mediators with the sky-god and the
thunder-god, and who must have resembled the ecclesiastics of mediæval
Europe in the days of their greatest power, combining, like them,
spiritual and temporal dignities, and possessing the highest culture of
their age. Yet it was not among these Druids of Gaul, with their
splendid temples and vestments and their elaborate rituals, that the
metropolis of Druidism was to be sought. We learn from Caesar that the
Gallic Druids believed their religion to have come to them, originally,
from Britain, and that it was their practice to send their “theological
students” across the Channel to learn its doctrines at their purest
source.[35] To trace a cult backwards is often to take a retrograde
course in culture, and it was no doubt in Britain—which Pliny the Elder
tells us “might have taught magic to Persia”[36]—that the sufficiently
primitive and savage rites of the Druids of Gaul were preserved in their
still more savage and primitive forms. It is curious corroboration of
this alleged British origin of Druidism that the ancient Irish also
believed their Druidism to have come from the sister island. Their
heroes and seers are described as only gaining the highest knowledge by
travelling to Alba.[37] However this may be, we may take it as certain
that this Druidism was the accepted religion of the Celtic race.
Certain scholars look deeper for its origin, holding its dark
superstitions and savage rites to bear the stamp of lower minds than
those of the poetic and manly Celts. Professor Rhys inclines to see
three forms of religion in the British Islands at the time of the Roman
invasion: the “Druidism” of the Iberian aborigines; the pure polytheism
of the Brythons, who, having come later into the country, had mixed but
little with the natives; and the mingled Aryan and non-Aryan cults of
the Goidels, who were already largely amalgamated with them.[38] But
many authorities dissent from this view, and, indeed, we are not obliged
to postulate borrowing from tribes in a lower state of culture, to
explain primitive and savage features underlying a higher religion. The
“Aryan” nations must have passed, equally with all others, through a
state of pure savagery; and we know that the religion of the Greeks, in
many respects so lofty, sheltered features and legends as barbarous as
any that can be attributed to the Celts.[39]
Of the famous teaching of the Druids we know little, owing to their
habit of never allowing their doctrines to be put into writing. Caesar,
however, roughly records its scope. “As one of their leading dogmas”, he
says, “they inculcate this: that souls are not annihilated, but pass
after death from one body to another, and they hold that by this
teaching men are much encouraged to valour, through disregarding the
fear of death. They also discuss and impart to the young many things
concerning the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the
world and of our earth, natural science, and of the influence and power
of the immortal gods.”[40] The Romans seem to have held their wisdom in
some awe, though it is not unlikely that the Druids themselves borrowed
whatever knowledge they may have had of science and philosophy from the
classical culture. That their creed of transmigration was not, however,
merely taken over from the Greeks seems certain from its appearance in
the ancient Gaelic myths. Not only the “shape-shifting” common to the
magic stories of all nations, but actual reincarnation was in the power
of privileged beings. The hero Cuchulainn was urged by the men of Ulster
to marry, because they knew “that his rebirth would be of himself”,[41]
and they did not wish so great a warrior to be lost to their tribe.
Another legend tells how the famous Finn mac Coul was reborn, after two
hundred years, as an Ulster king called Mongan.[42]
Such ideas, however, belonged to the metaphysical side of Druidism. Far
more important to the practical primitive mind are ritual and sacrifice,
by the due performance of which the gods are persuaded or compelled to
grant earth’s increase and length of days to men. Among the Druids, this
humouring of the divinities took the shape of human sacrifice, and that
upon a scale which would seem to have been unsurpassed in horror even by
the most savage tribes of West Africa or Polynesia. “The whole Gaulish
nation”, says Caesar, “is to a great degree devoted to superstitious
rites; and on this account those who are afflicted with severe diseases,
or who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice human beings
for victims, or vow that they will immolate themselves, and these employ
the Druids as ministers for such sacrifices, because they think that,
unless the life of man be repaid for the life of man, the will of the
immortal gods cannot be appeased. They also ordain national offerings of
the same kind. Others make wicker-work images of vast size, the limbs of
which they fill with living men and set on fire.”[43]
We find evidence of similarly awful customs in pagan Ireland. Among the
oldest Gaelic records are tracts called _Dinnsenchus_, in which famous
places are enumerated, together with the legends relating to them. Such
topographies are found in several of the great Irish mediæval
manuscripts, and therefore, of course, received their final
transcription at the hands of Christian monks. But these ecclesiastics
rarely tampered with compositions in elaborate verse. Nor can it be
imagined that any monastic scribe could have invented such a legend as
this one which describes the practice of human sacrifice among the
ancient Irish. The poem (which is found in the Books of Leinster, of
Ballymote, of Lecan, and in a document called the Rennes MS.)[44]
records the reason why a spot near the present village of Ballymagauran,
in County Cavan, received the name of Mag Slecht, the “Plain of
Adoration”.
“Here used to be
A high idol with many fights,
Which was named the Cromm Cruaich;
It made every tribe to be without peace.
“’Twas a sad evil!
Brave Gaels used to worship it.
From it they would not without tribute ask
To be satisfied as to their portion of the hard world.
“He was their god,
The withered Cromm with many mists,
The people whom he shook over every host,
The everlasting kingdom they shall not have.
“To him without glory
They would kill their piteous, wretched offspring
With much wailing and peril,
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
“Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue:
Great was the horror and the scare of him.
“To him
Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves,
From the worship of him, with many manslaughters,
The plain is called “Mag Slecht”.
* * * * * * * * * *
“They did evil,
They beat their palms, they pounded their bodies,
Wailing to the demon who enslaved them,
They shed falling showers of tears.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Around Cromm Cruaich
There the hosts would prostrate themselves;
Though he put them under deadly disgrace,
Their name clings to the noble plain.
“In their ranks (stood)
Four times three stone idols;
To bitterly beguile the hosts,
The figure of the Cromm was made of gold.
“Since the rule
Of Herimon[45], the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha.
“A sledge-hammer to the Cromm
He applied from crown to sole,
He destroyed without lack of valour
The feeble idol which was there.”
Such, we gather from a tradition which we may deem authentic, was human
sacrifice in early Ireland. According to the quoted verse, one third of
the healthy children were slaughtered, presumably every year, to wrest
from the powers of nature the grain and grass upon which the tribes and
their cattle subsisted. In a prose _dinnsenchus_ preserved in the Rennes
MS.,[46] there is a slight variant. “’Tis there”, (at Mag Slecht), it
runs, “was the king idol of Erin, namely the Crom Croich, and around him
were twelve idols made of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick’s
advent he was the god of every folk that colonized Ireland. To him they
used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of
every clan.” The same authority also tells us that these sacrifices were
made at “Hallowe’en”, which took the place, in the Christian calendar,
of the heathen _Samhain_—“Summer’s End”—when the sun’s power waned, and
the strength of the gods of darkness, winter, and the underworld grew
great.
Who, then, was this bloodthirsty deity? His name, _Cromm Cruaich_, means
the “Bowed One of the Mound”, and was evidently applied to him only
after his fall from godhead. It relates to the tradition that, at the
approach of the all-conquering Saint Patrick, the “demon” fled from his
golden image, which thereupon sank forward in the earth in homage to the
power that had come to supersede it.[47] But from another source we
glean that the word _cromm_ was a kind of pun upon _cenn_, and that the
real title of the “king idol of Erin” was _Cenn Cruaich_, “Head” or
“Lord” of the Mound. Professor Rhys, in his _Celtic Heathendom_,[48]
suggests that he was probably the Gaelic heaven-god, worshipped, like
the Hellenic Zeus, upon “high places”, natural or artificial. At any
rate, we may see in him the god most revered by the Gaels, surrounded by
the other twelve chief members of their Pantheon.
It would appear probable that the Celtic State worship was what is
called “solar”. All its chief festivals related to points in the sun’s
progress, the equinoxes having been considered more important than the
solstices. It was at the spring equinox (called by the Celts
“Beltaine”[49]) in every nineteenth year that, we learn from Diodorus
the Sicilian, a writer contemporary with Julius Caesar, Apollo himself
appeared to his worshippers, and was seen harping and dancing in the sky
until the rising of the Pleiades.[50] The other corresponding festival
was “Samhain”[51], the autumn equinox. As Beltaine marked the beginning
of summer, so Samhain recorded its end. The summer solstice was also a
great Celtic feast. It was held at the beginning of August in honour of
the god called Lugus by the Gauls, Lugh by the Gaels, and Lleu by the
Britons—the pan-Celtic Apollo, and, probably, when the cult of the
war-god had fallen from its early prominence, the chief figure of the
common Pantheon.
It was doubtless at Stonehenge that the British Apollo was thus seen
harping and dancing. That marvellous structure well corresponds to
Diodorus’s description of a “magnificent temple of Apollo” which he
locates “in the centre of Britain”. “It is a circular enclosure,” he
says, “adorned with votive offerings and tablets with Greek inscriptions
suspended by travellers upon the walls. The rulers of the temple and
city are called ‘Boreadæ’[52], and they take up the government from each
other according to the order of their tribes. The citizens are given up
to music, harping and chanting in honour of the sun.”[53] Stonehenge,
therefore, was a sacred religious centre, equally revered by and equally
belonging to all the British tribes—a Rome or Jerusalem of our ancient
paganism.
The same great gods were, no doubt, adored by all the Celts, not only of
Great Britain and Ireland, but of Continental Gaul as well. Sometimes
they can be traced by name right across the ancient Celtic world. In
other cases, what is obviously the same personified power of nature is
found in various places with the same attributes, but with a different
title. Besides these, there must have been a multitude of lesser gods,
worshipped by certain tribes alone, to whom they stood as ancestors and
guardians. “I swear by the gods of my people”, was the ordinary oath of
a hero in the ancient Gaelic sagas. The aboriginal tribes must also have
had their gods, whether it be true or not that their religion influenced
the Celtic Druidism. Professor Rhys inclines to see in the _genii
locorum_, the almost nameless spirits of well and river, mountain and
wood—shadowy remnants of whose cults survive to-day,—members of a
swarming Pantheon of the older Iberians.[54] These local beings would in
no way conflict with the great Celtic nature-gods, and the two worships
could exist side by side, both even claiming the same votary. It needs
the stern faith of monotheism to deny the existence of the gods of
others. Polytheistic nations have seldom or never risen to such a
height. In their dealings with a conquered people, the conquerors
naturally held their own gods to be the stronger. Still, it could not be
denied that the gods of the conquered were upon their own ground; they
knew, so to speak, the country, and might have unguessed powers of doing
evil! What if, to avenge their worshippers and themselves, they were to
make the land barren and useless to the conquerors? So that conquering
pagan nations have usually been quite ready to stretch out the hand of
welcome to the deities of their new subjects, to propitiate them by
sacrifice, and even to admit them within the pale of their own Pantheon.
This raises the question of the exact nationality of the gods whose
stories we are about to tell. Were they all Aryan, or did any of the
greater aboriginal deities climb up to take their place among the Gaelic
tribe of the goddess Danu, or the British children of the goddess Dôn?
Some of the Celtic gods have seemed to scholars to bear signs of a
non-Aryan origin.[55] The point, however, is at present very obscure.
Neither does it much concern us. Just as the diverse deities of the
Greeks—some Aryan and Hellenic, some pre-Aryan and Pelasgian, some
imported and Semitic—were all gathered into one great divine family, so
we may consider as members of one national Olympus all these gods whose
legends make up “The Mythology of the British Islands”.
-----
Footnote 31:
See Schrader: _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, pp. 138,
272.
Footnote 32:
A description of the Druidical cult of the mistletoe is given by
Pliny: _Natural History_, XVI, chap. XCV.
Footnote 33:
See Frazer: _The Golden Bough_, chap. IV.
Footnote 34:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chaps. XIII, XIV. But for a full
exposition of what is known of the Druids the reader is referred to M.
d’Arbois de Jubainville’s _Introduction à l’Étude de la Littérature
Celtique_, Vol. I of his _Cours de Littérature Celtique_.
Footnote 35:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chap. XIII.
Footnote 36:
Pliny: _Natural History_, XXX.
Footnote 37:
See chap. XII, _The Irish Iliad_.
Footnote 38:
Rhys: _Celtic Britain_, chap. II. See also Gomme: _Ethnology in
Folk-lore_, pp. 58-62; _Village Community_, p. 104.
Footnote 39:
Abundant evidence of this is contained in Pausanias’ _Description of
Greece_.
Footnote 40:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chap. XIV.
Footnote 41:
The _Wooing of Emer_.
Footnote 42:
It is contained in the Book of the Dun Cow, and has been translated or
commented upon by Eugene O’Curry (_Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Irish_), De Jubainville (_Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_), and Nutt
(_Voyage of Bran_).
Footnote 43:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chap. XVI.
Footnote 44:
The following translation was made by Dr. Kuno Meyer, and appears as
Appendix B to Nutt’s _Voyage of Bran_. Three verses, here omitted,
will be found later as a note to chap. XII—“The Irish Iliad”.
Footnote 45:
The first King of the Milesians. The name is more usually spelt
Eremon.
Footnote 46:
The Rennes _Dinnsenchus_ has been translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in
Vol. XVI of the _Revue Celtique_.
Footnote 47:
Told in the Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, a fifteenth-century
combination of three very ancient Gaelic MSS.
Footnote 48:
The _Hibbert Lectures_ for 1886. Lecture II—“The Zeus of the Insular
Celts”.
Footnote 49:
Pronounced _Baltinna_.
Footnote 50:
_Diodorus Siculus_: Book II, chap. III.
Footnote 51:
Pronounced _Sowin_.
Footnote 52:
It has been suggested that this title is an attempt to reproduce the
ancient British word for “bards”.
Footnote 53:
_Diodorus Siculus_: Book II, chap. III.
Footnote 54:
_Hibbert Lectures_, 1886. Lecture I—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
Footnote 55:
See Rhys: _Lectures on Welsh Philology_, pp. 426, 552, 653.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GAELIC GODS AND THEIR
STORIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
THE GODS OF THE GAELS
Of the two Celtic races that settled in our islands, it is the earlier,
the Gaels, that has best preserved its old mythology. It is true that we
have in few cases such detailed account of the Gaelic gods as we gain of
the Hellenic deities from the Greek poets, of the Indian Devas from the
Rig Veda, or of the Norse Æsir from the Eddas. Yet none the less may we
draw from the ancient Irish manuscripts quite enough information to
enable us to set forth their figures with some clearness. We find them,
as might have been anticipated, very much like the divine hierarchies of
other Aryan peoples.
We also find them separated into two opposing camps, a division common
to all the Aryan religions. Just as the Olympians struggled with the
Giants, the Æsir fought the Jötuns, and the Devas the Asuras, so there
is warfare in the Gaelic spiritual world between two superhuman hosts.
On one side are ranged the gods of day, light, life, fertility, wisdom,
and good; on the other, the demons of night, darkness, death,
barrenness, and evil. The first were the great spirits symbolizing the
beneficial aspects of nature and the arts and intelligence of man; the
second were the hostile powers thought to be behind such baneful
manifestations as storm and fog, drought and disease. The first are
ranged as a divine family round a goddess called Danu, from whom they
took their well-known name of _Tuatha Dé Danann_,[56] “Tribe” or “Folk
of the Goddess Danu”. The second owned allegiance to a female divinity
called Domnu; their king, Indech, is described as her son, and they are
all called “Domnu’s gods”. The word “Domnu” appears to have signified
the abyss or the deep sea,[57] and the same idea is also expressed in
their better-known name of “Fomors”, derived from two Gaelic words
meaning “under sea”.[58] The waste of water seems to have always
impressed the Celts with the sense of primeval ancientness; it was
connected in their minds with vastness, darkness, and monstrous
births—the very antithesis of all that was symbolized by the earth, the
sky, and the sun.
Therefore the Fomors were held to be more ancient than the gods, before
whom they were, however, destined to fall in the end. Offspring of
“Chaos and Old Night”, they were, for the most part, huge and deformed.
Some had but one arm and one leg apiece, while others had the heads of
goats, horses, or bulls.[59] The most famous, and perhaps the most
terrible of them all was Balor, whose father is said to have been one
Buarainech, that is, the “cow-faced”,[60] and who combined in himself
the two classical rôles of the Cyclops and the Medusa. Though he had two
eyes, one was always kept shut, for it was so venomous that it slew
anyone on whom its look fell. This malignant quality of Balor’s eye was
not natural to him, but was the result of an accident. Urged by
curiosity, he once looked in at the window of a house where his father’s
sorcerers were preparing a magic potion, and the poisonous smoke from
the cauldron reached his eye, infecting it with so much of its own
deadly nature as to make it disastrous to others. Neither god nor giant
seems to have been exempt from its dangers; so that Balor was only
allowed to live on condition that he kept his terrible eye shut. On days
of battle he was placed opposite to the enemy, the lid of the destroying
eye was lifted up with a hook, and its gaze withered all who stood
before it. The memory of Balor and his eye still lingers in Ireland: the
“eye of Balor” is the name for what the peasantry of other countries
call the “evil eye”; stories are still told of _Balar Beimann_, or
“Balor of the Mighty Blows”; and “Balor’s Castle” is the name of a
curious cliff on Tory Island. This island, off the coast of Donegal, was
the Fomorian outpost upon earth, their real abode being in the cold
depths of the sea.
This rule, however, as to the hideousness of the Fomors had its
exceptions. Elathan, one of their chiefs, is described in an old
manuscript as of magnificent presence—a Miltonic prince of darkness. “A
man of fairest form,” it says, “with golden hair down to his shoulders.
He wore a mantle of gold braid over a shirt interwoven with threads of
gold. Five golden necklaces were round his neck, and a brooch of gold
with a shining precious stone thereon was on his breast. He carried two
silver spears with rivets of bronze, and his sword was golden-hilted and
golden-studded.”[61] Nor was his son less handsome. His name was Bress,
which means “beautiful”, and we are told that every beautiful thing in
Ireland, “whether plain, or fortress, or ale, or torch, or woman, or
man”, was compared with him, so that men said of them, “that is a
Bress”.[62]
Balor, Bress, and Elathan are the three Fomorian personages whose
figures, seen through the mists of antiquity, show clearest to us. But
they are only a few out of many, nor are they the oldest. We can learn,
however, nothing but a few names of any ancestors of the Gaelic giants.
This is equally true of the Gaelic gods. Those we know are evidently not
without parentage, but the names of their fathers are no more than
shadows following into oblivion the figures they designated. The most
ancient divinity of whom we have any knowledge is Danu herself, the
goddess from whom the whole hierarchy of gods received its name of
Tuatha Dé Danann. She was also called Anu or Ana, and her name still
clings to two well-known mountains near Killarney, which, though now
called simply “The Paps”, were known formerly as the “Paps of Ana”.[63]
She was the universal mother; “well she used to cherish the gods”, says
the commentator of a ninth-century Irish glossary.[64] Her husband is
never mentioned by name, but one may assume him, from British analogies,
to have been Bilé, known to Gaelic tradition as a god of Hades, a kind
of Celtic Dis Pater from whom sprang the first men. Danu herself
probably represented the earth and its fruitfulness, and one might
compare her with the Greek Demeter. All the other gods are, at least by
title, her children. The greatest of these would seem to have been
Nuada, called _Argetlám_, or “He of the Silver Hand”. He was at once the
Gaelic Zeus, or Jupiter, and their war-god; for among primitive nations,
to whom success in war is all-important, the god of battles is the
supreme god.[65] Among the Gauls, Camulus, whose name meant
“Heaven”,[66] was identified by the Romans with Mars; and other such
instances come readily to the mind. He was possessed of an invincible
sword, one of the four chief treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, over
whom he was twice king; and there is little doubt that he was one of the
most important gods of both the Gaels and the Britons, for his name is
spread over the whole of the British Isles, which we may surmise the
Celts conquered under his auspices. We may picture him as a more savage
Mars, delighting in battle and slaughter, and worshipped, like his
Gaulish affinities, Teutates and Hesus, of whom the Latin poet Lucan
tells us, with human sacrifices, shared in by his female consorts, who,
we may imagine, were not more merciful than himself, or than that
Gaulish Taranis whose cult was “no gentler than that of the Scythian
Diana”, and who completes Lucan’s triad as a fit companion to the
“pitiless Teutates” and the “horrible Hesus”.[67] Of these warlike
goddesses there were five—Fea, the “Hateful”, Nemon, the “Venomous”,
Badb, the “Fury”, Macha, a personification of “battle”, and, over all of
them, the Morrígú, or “Great Queen”. This supreme war-goddess of the
Gaels, who resembles a fiercer Herê, perhaps symbolized the moon, deemed
by early races to have preceded the sun, and worshipped with magical and
cruel rites. She is represented as going fully armed, and carrying two
spears in her hand. As with Arês[68] and Poseidon[69] in the “Iliad”,
her battle-cry was as loud as that of ten thousand men. Wherever there
was war, either among gods or men, she, the great queen, was present,
either in her own shape or in her favourite disguise, that of a “hoodie”
or carrion crow. An old poem shows her inciting a warrior:
“Over his head is shrieking
A lean hag, quickly hopping
Over the points of the weapons and shields;
She is the gray-haired Morrígú”.[70]
With her, Fea and Nemon, Badb and Macha also hovered over the fighters,
inspiring them with the madness of battle. All of these were sometimes
called by the name of “Badb”[71]. An account of the Battle of Clontarf,
fought by Brian Boru, in 1014, against the Norsemen, gives a gruesome
picture of what the Gaels believed to happen in the spiritual world when
battle lowered and men’s blood was aflame. “There arose a wild,
impetuous, precipitate, mad, inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating,
merciless, combative, contentious _badb_, which was shrieking and
fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and
sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches and goblins and
owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac
phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle
with them.” When the fight was over, they revelled among the bodies of
the slain; the heads cut off as barbaric trophies were called “Macha’s
acorn crop”. These grim creations of the savage mind had immense
vitality. While Nuada, the supreme war-god, vanished early out of the
Pantheon—killed by the Fomors in the great battle fought between them
and the gods—Badb and the Morrígú lived on as late as any of the Gaelic
deities. Indeed, they may be said to still survive in the superstitious
dislike and suspicion shown in all Celtic-speaking countries for their
_avatar_, the hoodie-crow.[72]
After Nuada, the greatest of the gods was the Dagda, whose name seems to
have meant the “Good God”.[73] The old Irish tract called “The Choice of
Names” tells us that he was a god of the earth; he had a cauldron called
“The Undry”, in which everyone found food in proportion to his merits,
and from which none went away unsatisfied. He also had a living harp; as
he played upon it, the seasons came in their order—spring following
winter, and summer succeeding spring, autumn coming after summer, and,
in its turn, giving place to winter. He is represented as of venerable
aspect and of simple mind and tastes, very fond of porridge, and a
valiant consumer of it. In an ancient tale we have a description of his
dress. He wore a brown, low-necked tunic which only reached down to his
hips, and, over this, a hooded cape which barely covered his shoulders.
On his feet and legs were horse-hide boots, the hairy side outwards. He
carried, or, rather, drew after him on a wheel, an eight-pronged
war-club, so huge that eight men would have been needed to carry it; and
the wheel, as he towed the whole weapon along, made a track like a
territorial boundary.[74] Ancient and gray-headed as he was, and sturdy
porridge-eater, it will be seen from this that he was a formidable
fighter. He did great deeds in the battle between the gods and the
Fomors, and, on one occasion, is even said to have captured
single-handed a hundred-legged and four-headed monster called Mata,
dragged him to the “Stone of Benn”, near the Boyne, and killed him
there.
The Dagda’s wife was called Boann. She was connected in legend with the
River Boyne, to which she gave its name, and, indeed, its very
existence.[75] Formerly there was only a well[76], shaded by nine magic
hazel-trees. These trees bore crimson nuts, and it was the property of
the nuts that whoever ate of them immediately became possessed of the
knowledge of everything that was in the world. The story is, in fact, a
Gaelic version of the Hebrew myth of “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil”. One class of creatures alone had this privilege—divine salmon
who lived in the well, and swallowed the nuts as they dropped from the
trees into the water, and thus knew all things, and appear in legend as
the “Salmons of Knowledge”. All others, even the highest gods, were
forbidden to approach the place. Only Boann, with the proverbial woman’s
curiosity, dared to disobey this fixed law. She came towards the sacred
well, but, as she did so, its waters rose up at her, and drove her away
before them in a mighty, rushing flood. She escaped; but the waters
never returned. They made the Boyne; and as for the all-knowing
inhabitants of the well, they wandered disconsolately through the depths
of the river, looking in vain for their lost nuts. One of these salmon
was afterwards eaten by the famous Finn mac Coul, upon whom all its
omniscience descended.[77] This way of accounting for the existence of a
river is a favourite one in Irish legend. It is told also of the
Shannon, which burst, like the Boyne, from an inviolable well, to pursue
another presumptuous nymph called Sinann, a granddaughter of the sea-god
Lêr.[78]
The Dagda had several children, the most important of whom are Brigit,
Angus, Mider, Ogma, and Bodb the Red. Of these, Brigit will be already
familiar to English readers who know nothing of Celtic myth. Originally
she was a goddess of fire and the hearth, as well as of poetry, which
the Gaels deemed an immaterial, supersensual form of flame. But the
early Christianizers of Ireland adopted the pagan goddess into their
roll of saintship, and, thus canonized, she obtained immense popularity
as Saint Bridget, or Bride.[79]
Angus was called _Mac Oc_, which means the “Son of the Young”, or,
perhaps, the “Young God”. This most charming of the creations of the
Celtic mythology is represented as a Gaelic Eros, an eternally youthful
exponent of love and beauty. Like his father, he had a harp, but it was
of gold, not oak, as the Dagda’s was, and so sweet was its music that no
one could hear and not follow it. His kisses became birds which hovered
invisibly over the young men and maidens of Erin, whispering thoughts of
love into their ears. He is chiefly connected with the banks of the
Boyne, where he had a “brugh”, or fairy palace; and many stories are
told of his exploits and adventures.
Mider, also the hero of legends, would seem to have been a god of the
underworld, a Gaelic Pluto. As such, he was connected with the Isle of
Falga—a name for what was otherwise, and still is, called the Isle of
Man—where he had a stronghold in which he kept three wonderful cows and
a magic cauldron. He was also the owner of the “Three Cranes of Denial
and Churlishness”, which might be described flippantly as personified
“gentle hints”. They stood beside his door, and when anyone approached
to ask for hospitality, the first one said: “Do not come! do not come!”
and the second added: “Get away! get away!” while the third chimed in
with: “Go past the house! go past the house!”[80] These three birds
were, however, stolen from Mider by Aitherne, an avaricious poet, to
whom they would seem to have been more appropriate than to their owner,
who does not otherwise appear as a churlish and illiberal deity.[81] On
the contrary, he is represented as the victim of others, who plundered
him freely. The god Angus took away his wife Etain,[82] while his cows,
his cauldron, and his beautiful daughter Blathnat were carried off as
spoil by the heroes or demi-gods who surrounded King Conchobar in the
golden age of Ulster.
Ogma, who appears to have been also called Cermait, that is, the
“honey-mouthed”, was the god of literature and eloquence. He married
Etan, the daughter of Diancecht, the god of medicine, and had several
children, who play parts more or less prominent in the mythology of the
Gaelic Celts. One of them was called Tuirenn, whose three sons murdered
the father of the sun-god, and were compelled, as expiation, to pay the
greatest fine ever heard of—nothing less than the chief treasures of the
world.[83] Another son, Cairpré, became the professional bard of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, while three others reigned for a short time over the
divine race. As patron of literature, Ogma was naturally credited with
having been the inventor of the famous _Ogam_ alphabet. This was an
indigenous script of Ireland, which spread afterwards to Great Britain,
inscriptions in ogmic characters having been found in Scotland, the Isle
of Man, South Wales, Devonshire, and at Silchester in Hampshire, the
Roman city of Calleva Attrebatum. It was originally intended for
inscriptions upon upright pillar-stones or upon wands, the equivalents
for letters being notches cut across, or strokes made upon one of the
faces of the angle, the alphabet running as follows:
[Illustration]
When afterwards written in manuscript, the strokes were placed over,
under, or through a horizontal line, in the manner above; and the vowels
were represented by short lines instead of notches, as:
[Illustration]
A good example of an ogmic inscription is given in Professor Rhys’s
_Hibbert Lectures_. It comes from a pillar on a small promontory near
Dunmore Head, in the west of Kerry, and, read horizontally, reads:
[Illustration: ERC, THE SON OF THE SON OF ERCA (DESCENDANT OF)
MODOVINIA.[84]]
The origin of this alphabet is obscure. Some authorities consider it of
great antiquity, while others believe it entirely post-Christian. It
seems, at any rate, to have been based upon, and consequently to
presuppose a knowledge of, the Roman alphabet.
Ogma, besides being the patron of literature, was the champion, or
professional strong man of the Tuatha Dé Danann. His epithet is
_Grianainech_, that is, the “Sunny-faced”, from his radiant and shining
countenance.
The last of the Dagda’s more important children is Bodb[85] the Red, who
plays a greater part in later than in earlier legend. He succeeded his
father as king of the gods. He is chiefly connected with the south of
Ireland, especially with the Galtee Mountains, and with Lough Dearg,
where he had a famous _sídh_, or underground palace.
The Poseidon of the Tuatha Dé Danann Pantheon was called Lêr, but we
hear little of him in comparison with his famous son, Manannán, the
greatest and most popular of his many children. Manannán mac Lir[86] was
the special patron of sailors, who invoked him as “God of Headlands”,
and of merchants, who claimed him as the first of their guild. His
favourite haunts were the Isle of Man, to which he gave his name, and
the Isle of Arran, in the Firth of Clyde, where he had a palace called
“Emhain of the Apple-Trees”. He had many famous weapons—two spears
called “Yellow Shaft” and “Red Javelin”, a sword called “The
Retaliator”, which never failed to slay, as well as two others known as
the “Great Fury” and the “Little Fury”. He had a boat called
“Wave-sweeper”, which propelled and guided itself wherever its owner
wished, and a horse called “Splendid Mane”, which was swifter than the
spring wind, and travelled equally fast on land or over the waves of the
sea. No weapon could hurt him through his magic mail and breast-plate,
and on his helmet there shone two magic jewels bright as the sun. He
endowed the gods with the mantle which made them invisible at will, and
he fed them from his pigs, which, like the boar Sæhrimnir, in the Norse
Valhalla, renewed themselves as soon as they had been eaten. Of these,
no doubt, he made his “Feast of Age”, the banquet at which those who ate
never grew old. Thus the people of the goddess Danu preserved their
immortal youth, while the ale of Goibniu the Smith-God bestowed
invulnerability upon them. It is fitting that Manannán himself should
have been blessed beyond all the other gods with inexhaustible life; up
to the latest days of Irish heroic literature his luminous figure shines
prominent, nor is it even yet wholly forgotten.
Goibniu, the Gaelic Hephaestus, who made the people of the goddess Danu
invulnerable with his magic drink, was also the forger of their weapons.
It was he who, helped by Luchtainé, the divine carpenter, and Credné,
the divine bronze-worker, made the armoury with which the Tuatha Dé
Danann conquered the Fomors. Equally useful to them was Diancecht, the
god of medicine.[87] It was he who once saved Ireland, and was
indirectly the cause of the name of the River Barrow. The Morrígú, the
heaven-god’s fierce wife, had borne a son of such terrible aspect that
the physician of the gods, foreseeing danger, counselled that he should
be destroyed in his infancy. This was done; and Diancecht opened the
infant’s heart, and found within it three serpents, capable, when they
grew to full size, of depopulating Ireland. He lost no time in
destroying these serpents also, and burning them into ashes, to avoid
the evil which even their dead bodies might do. More than this, he flung
the ashes into the nearest river, for he feared that there might be
danger even in them; and, indeed, so venomous were they that the river
boiled up and slew every living creature in it, and therefore has been
called “Barrow” (boiling) ever since.[88]
Diancecht had several children, of whom two followed their father’s
profession. These were Miach and his sister Airmid. There were also
another daughter, Etan, who married Cermait (or Ogma), and three other
sons called Cian, Cethé, and Cu. Cian married Ethniu, the daughter of
Balor the Fomor, and they had a son who was the crowning glory of the
Gaelic Pantheon—its Apollo, the Sun-God,—Lugh[89], called
_Lamhfada_[90], which means the “Long-handed”, or the “Far-shooter”. It
was not, however, with the bow, like the Apollo of the Greeks, but with
the rod-sling that Lugh performed his feats; his worshippers sometimes
saw the terrible weapon in the sky as a rainbow, and the Milky Way was
called “Lugh’s Chain”. He also had a magic spear, which, unlike the
rod-sling, he had no need to wield, himself; for it was alive, and
thirsted so for blood that only by steeping its head in a
sleeping-draught of pounded poppy leaves could it be kept at rest. When
battle was near, it was drawn out; then it roared, and struggled against
its thongs; fire flashed from it; and, once slipped from the leash, it
tore through and through the ranks of the enemy, never tired of slaying.
Another of his possessions was a magic hound which an ancient poem,[91]
attributed to the Fenian hero, Caoilte, calls—
“That hound of mightiest deeds,
Which was irresistible in hardness of combat,
Was better than wealth ever known,
A ball of fire every night.
“Other virtues had that beautiful hound
(Better this property than any other property),
Mead or wine would grow of it,
Should it bathe in spring water.”
This marvellous hound, as well as the marvellous spear, and the
indestructible pigs of Manannán were obtained for Lugh by the sons of
Tuirenn as part of the blood-fine he exacted from them for the murder of
his father Cian.[92] A hardly less curious story is that which tells how
Lugh got his name of the _Ioldanach_, or the “Master of All Arts”.[93]
These are, of course, only the greater deities of the Gaelic Pantheon,
their divinities which answered to such Hellenic figures as Demeter,
Zeus, Herê, Cronos, Athena, Eros, Hades, Hermes, Hephaestus,
Aesculapius, and Apollo. All of them had many descendants, some of whom
play prominent parts in the heroic cycles of the “Red Branch of Ulster”
and of the “Fenians”. In addition to these, there must have been a
multitude of lesser gods who stood in much the same relation to the
great gods as the rank and file of tribesmen did to their chiefs. Most
of these were probably local deities of the various clans—the gods their
heroes swore by. But it is also possible that some may have been
divinities of the aboriginal race. Professor Rhys thinks that he can
still trace a few of such Iberian gods by name, as Nêt, Ri or Roi, Corb,
and Beth.[94] But they play no recognizable part in the stories of the
Gaelic gods.
-----
Footnote 56:
Pronounced _Tooăha dae donnann_.
Footnote 57:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1886. Lecture VI—“Gods, Demons, and Heroes”.
Footnote 58:
_Ibid._
Footnote 59:
De Jubainville: _Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, chap. V.
Footnote 60:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, chap. IX.
Footnote 61:
From the fifteenth-century Harleian MS. in the British Museum,
numbered 5280, and called the _Second Battle of Moytura_.
Footnote 62:
Harleian MS. 5280.
Footnote 63:
“In Munster was worshipped the goddess of prosperity, whose name was
Ana, and from her are named the Two Paps of Ana over Luachair Degad.”
From _Coir Anmann_, the _Choice of Names_, a sixteenth-century tract,
published by Dr. Whitley Stokes in _Irische Texte_.
Footnote 64:
Attributed to Cormac, King-Bishop of Cashel.
Footnote 65:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1886—“The Zeus of the Insular Celts”.
Footnote 66:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1886—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
Footnote 67:
_Pharsalia_, Book I, l. 444, &c.:
“Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diro
Teutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus;
Et Taranis Scythicae non mitior ara Dianae”.
Footnote 68:
_Iliad_, Book V.
Footnote 69:
_Op. cit._, Book XIV.
Footnote 70:
It commemorates the battle of Magh Rath.
Footnote 71:
The word is approximately pronounced _Bive_ or _Bibe_.
Footnote 72:
For a full account of these beings see a paper by Mr. W. M. Hennessey
in Vol. I of the _Revue Celtique_, entitled “The Ancient Irish Goddess
of War”.
Footnote 73:
De Jubainville: _Le Cycle Mythologique_. Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p.
154. The _Coir Anmann_, however, translates it “Fire of God”.
Footnote 74:
_The Second Battle of Moytura._ Harleian MS. 5280.
Footnote 75:
The story is told in the Book of Leinster.
Footnote 76:
Now called “Trinity Well”.
Footnote 77:
See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.
Footnote 78:
Book of Leinster. A paraphrase of the story will be found in O’Curry’s
_Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, Vol. II, p. 143.
Footnote 79:
See chap. XV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
Footnote 80:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 331.
Footnote 81:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 331.
Footnote 82:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 83:
See chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
Footnote 84:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 524.
Footnote 85:
Pronounced _Bove_.
Footnote 86:
Lêr—genitive Lir.
Footnote 87:
Pronounced _Dianket_. His name is explained, both in the _Choice of
Names_ and in Cormac’s _Glossary_, as meaning “God of Health”.
Footnote 88:
Standish O’Grady: _The Story of Ireland_, p. 17.
Footnote 89:
Pronounced _Luga_ or _Loo_.
Footnote 90:
Pronounced _Lavāda_.
Footnote 91:
Translated by O’Curry in _Atlantis_, Vol. III, from the Book of
Lismore.
Footnote 92:
Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
Footnote 93:
Chap. VII—“The Rise of the Sun-God”.
Footnote 94:
Rhys: _Celtic Britain_, chap. VII.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
THE GODS ARRIVE
The people of the goddess Danu were not the first divine inhabitants of
Ireland. Others had been before them, dwellers in “the dark backward and
abysm of time”. In this the Celtic mythology resembles those of other
nations, in almost all of which we find an old, dim realm of gods
standing behind the reigning Pantheon. Such were Cronos and the Titans,
dispossessed by the Zeus who seemed, even to Hesiod, something of a
_parvenu_ deity. Gaelic tradition recognizes two divine dynasties
anterior to the Tuatha Dé Danann. The first of these was called “The
Race of Partholon”. Its head and leader came—as all gods and men came,
according to Celtic ideas—from the Other World, and landed in Ireland
with a retinue of twenty-four males and twenty-four females upon the
first of May, the day called “Beltaine”, sacred to Bilé, the god of
death. At this remote time, Ireland consisted of only one treeless,
grassless plain, watered by three lakes and nine rivers. But, as the
race of Partholon increased, the land stretched, or widened, under
them—some said miraculously, and others, by the labours of Partholon’s
people. At any rate, during the three hundred years they dwelt there, it
grew from one plain to four, and acquired seven new lakes; which was
fortunate, for the race of Partholon increased from forty-eight members
to five thousand, in spite of battles with the Fomors.
These would seem to have been inevitable. Whatever gods ruled, they
found themselves in eternal opposition to the not-gods—the powers of
darkness, winter, evil, and death. The race of Partholon warred against
them with success. At the Plain of Ith, Partholon defeated their leader,
a gigantic demon called Cichol the Footless, and dispersed his deformed
and monstrous host. After this there was quiet for three hundred years.
Then—upon the same fatal first of May—there began a mysterious epidemic,
which lasted a week, and destroyed them all. In premonition of their
end, they foregathered upon the original, first-created plain—then
called _Sen Mag_, or the “Old Plain”,—so that those who survived might
the more easily bury those that died. Their funeral-place is still
marked by a mound near Dublin, called “Tallaght” in the maps, but
formerly known as _Tamlecht Muintre Partholain_, the “Plague-grave of
Partholon’s People”. This would seem to have been a development of the
very oldest form of the legend—which knew nothing of a plague, but
merely represented the people of Partholon as having returned, after
their sojourn in Ireland, to the other world, whence they came—and is
probably due to the gradual euhemerization of the ancient gods into
ancient men.
Following the race of Partholon, came the race of Nemed, which carried
on the work and traditions of its forerunner. During its time, Ireland
again enlarged herself, to the extent of twelve new plains and four more
lakes. Like the people of Partholon, the race of Nemed struggled with
the Fomors, and defeated them in four consecutive battles. Then Nemed
died, with two thousand of his people, from an epidemic, and the
remnant, left without their leader, were terribly oppressed by the
Fomors. Two Fomorian kings—Morc, son of Dela, and Conann, son of
Febar—had built a tower of glass upon Tory Island, always their chief
stronghold, and where stories of them still linger, and from this
vantage-point they dictated a tax which recalls that paid, in Greek
story, to the Cretan Minotaur. Two-thirds of the children born to the
race of Nemed during the year were to be delivered up on each day of
Samhain. Goaded by this to a last desperate effort, the survivors of
Nemed’s people attacked the tower, and took it, Conann perishing in the
struggle. But their triumph was short. Morc, the other king, collected
his forces, and inflicted such a slaughter upon the people of Nemed
that, out of the sixteen thousand who had assembled for the storming of
the tower, only thirty survived. And these returned whence they came, or
died—the two acts being, mythologically speaking, the same.[95]
One cannot help seeing a good deal of similarity between the stories of
these two mythical invasions of Ireland. Especially noticeable is the
account of the epidemic which destroyed all Partholon’s people and
nearly all of Nemed’s. Hence it has been held that the two legends are
duplicates, and that there was at first only one, which has been adapted
somewhat differently by two races, the Iberians and the Gaels. Professor
Rhys considers[96] the account of Nemed to have been the original Celtic
one, and the Partholon story, the version of it which the native races
made to please themselves. The name “Partholon”, with its initial _p_,
is entirely foreign to the genius of Gaelic speech. Moreover, Partholon
himself is given, by the early chroniclers, ancestors whose decidedly
non-Aryan names reappear afterwards as the names of Fir Bolg chiefs.
Nemed was later than Partholon in Ireland, as the Gaels, or “Milesians”,
were later than the Iberians, or “Fir Bolgs”.
These “Fir Bolgs” are found in myth as the next colonizers of Ireland.
Varying traditions say that they came from Greece, or from “Spain”—which
was a post-Christian euphemism for the Celtic Hades.[97] They consisted
of three tribes, called the “Fir Domnann” or “Men of Domnu”, the “Fir
Gaillion” or “Men of Gaillion”, and the “Fir Bolg” or “Men of Bolg”;
but, in spite of the fact that the first-named tribe was the most
important, they are usually called collectively after the last. Curious
stories are told of their life in Greece, and how they came to Ireland;
but these are somewhat factitious, and obviously do not belong to the
earliest tradition.
In the time of their domination they had, we are told, partitioned
Ireland among them: the Fir Bolg held Ulster; the Fir Domnann, divided
into three kingdoms, occupied North Munster, South Munster, and
Connaught; while the Fir Gaillion owned Leinster. These five provinces
met at a hill then called “Balor’s Hill”, but afterwards the “Hill of
Uisnech”. It is near Rathconrath, in the county of West Meath, and was
believed, in early times, to mark the exact centre of Ireland. They held
the country from the departure of the people of Nemed to the coming of
the people of the goddess Danu, and during this period they had nine
supreme kings. At the time of the arrival of the gods, their king’s name
was Eochaid[98] son of Erc, surnamed “The Proud”.
We have practically no other details regarding their life in Ireland. It
is obvious, however, that they were not really gods, but the pre-Aryan
race which the Gaels, when they landed in Ireland, found already in
occupation. There are many instances of peoples at a certain stage of
culture regarding tribes in a somewhat lower one as semi-divine, or,
rather, half-diabolical.[99] The suspicion and fear with which the early
Celts must have regarded the savage aborigines made them seem “larger
than human”. They feared them for the weird magical rites which they
practised in their inaccessible forts among the hills, amid storms and
mountain mists. The Gaels, who held themselves to be the children of
light, deemed these “dark Iberians” children of the dark. Their tribal
names seem to have been, in several instances, founded upon this idea.
There were the _Corca-Oidce_ (“People of Darkness”) and the
_Corca-Duibhne_ (“People of the Night”). The territory of the western
tribe of the _Hi Dorchaide_ (“Sons of Dark”) was called the “Night
Country”.[100] The Celts, who held their own gods to have preceded them
into Ireland, would not believe that even the Tuatha Dé Danann could
have wrested the land from these magic-skilled Iberians without battle.
They seem also to have been considered as in some way connected with the
Fomors. Just as the largest Iberian tribe was called the “Men of Domnu”,
so the Fomors were called the “Gods of Domnu”, and Indech, one of their
kings, is a “son of Domnu”. Thus eternal battle between the gods,
children of Danu, and the giants, children of Domnu, would reflect, in
the supernatural world, the perpetual warfare between invading Celt and
resisting Iberian. It is shadowed, too, in the later heroic cycle. The
champions of Ulster, Aryans and Gaels _par excellence_, have no such
bitter enemies as the Fir Domnann of Munster and the Fir Gaillion of
Leinster. A few scholars would even see in the later death-struggle
between the High King of Ireland and his rebellious Fenians the last
historic or mythological adumbration of racial war.[101]
The enemies alike of Fir Bolg and Fomor, the Tuatha Dé Danann, gods of
the Gaels, were the next to arrive. What is probably the earliest
account tells us that they came from the sky. Later versions, however,
give them a habitation upon earth—some say in the north, others in the
“southern isles of the world”. They had dwelt in four mythical cities
called Findias, Gorias, Murias, and Falias, where they had learned
poetry and magic—to the primitive mind two not very dissimilar
things—and whence they had brought to Ireland their four chief
treasures. From Findias came Nuada’s sword, from whose stroke no one
ever escaped or recovered; from Gorias, Lugh’s terrible lance; from
Murias, the Dagda’s cauldron; and from Falias, the Stone of Fál, better
known as the “Stone of Destiny”, which afterwards fell into the hands of
the early kings of Ireland. According to legend, it had the magic
property of uttering a human cry when touched by the rightful King of
Erin. Some have recognized in this marvellous stone the same rude block
which Edward I brought from Scone in the year 1300, and placed in
Westminster Abbey, where it now forms part of the Coronation Chair. It
is a curious fact that, while Scottish legend asserts this stone to have
come to Scotland from Ireland, Irish legend should also declare that it
was taken from Ireland to Scotland. This would sound like conclusive
evidence, but it is none the less held by leading modern
archæologists—including Dr. W. F. Skene, who has published a monograph
on the subject[102]—that the Stone of Scone and the Stone of Tara were
never the same. Dr. Petrie identifies the real _Lia Fáil_ with a stone
which has always remained in Ireland, and which was removed from its
original position on Tara Hill, in 1798, to mark the tomb of the rebels
buried close by under a mound now known as “the Croppies’ grave”.[103]
Whether the Tuatha Dé Danann came from earth or heaven, they landed in a
dense cloud upon the coast of Ireland on the mystic first of May without
having been opposed, or even noticed by the people whom it will be
convenient to follow the manuscript authorities in calling the “Fir
Bolgs”.[104] That those might still be ignorant of their coming, the
Morrígú, helped by Badb and Macha, made use of the magic they had
learned in Findias, Gorias, Murias, and Falias. They spread
“druidically-formed showers and fog-sustaining shower-clouds” over the
country, and caused the air to pour down fire and blood upon the Fir
Bolgs, so that they were obliged to shelter themselves for three days
and three nights. But the Fir Bolgs had druids of their own, and, in the
end, they put a stop to these enchantments by counter-spells, and the
air grew clear again.
The Tuatha Dé Danann, advancing westward, had reached a place called the
“Plain of the Sea”, in Leinster, when the two armies met. Each sent out
a warrior to parley. The two adversaries approached each other
cautiously, their eyes peeping over the tops of their shields. Then,
coming gradually nearer, they spoke to one another, and the desire to
examine each other’s weapons made them almost friends.
The envoy of the Fir Bolgs looked with wonder at the
“beautifully-shaped, thin, slender, long, sharp-pointed spears” of the
warrior of the Tuatha Dé Danann, while the ambassador of the tribe of
the goddess Danu was not less impressed by the lances of the Fir Bolgs,
which were “heavy, thick, pointless, but sharply-rounded”. They agreed
to exchange weapons, so that each side might, by an examination of them,
be able to come to some opinion as to its opponent’s strength. Before
parting, the envoy of the Tuatha Dé Danann offered the Fir Bolgs,
through their representative, peace, with a division of the country into
two equal halves.
The Fir Bolg envoy advised his people to accept this offer. But their
king, Eochaid, son of Erc, would not. “If we once give these people
half,” he said, “they will soon have the whole.”
The people of the goddess Danu were, on the other hand, very much
impressed by the sight of the Fir Bolgs’ weapons. They decided to secure
a more advantageous position, and, retreating farther west into
Connaught, to a plain then called Nia, but now Moytura, near the present
village of Cong, they drew up their line at its extreme end, in front of
the pass of Balgatan[105], which offered a retreat in case of defeat.
The Fir Bolgs followed them, and encamped on the nearer side of the
plain. Then Nuada, King of the Tuatha Dé Danann, sent an ambassador
offering the same terms as before. Again the Fir Bolgs declined them.
“Then when”, asked the envoy, “do you intend to give battle?”
“We must have a truce,” they said, “for we want time to repair our
armour, burnish our helmets, and sharpen our swords. Besides, we must
have spears like yours made for us, and you must have spears like ours
made for you.”
The result of this chivalrous, but, to modern ideas, amazing, parley was
that a truce of one hundred and five days was agreed upon.
It was on Midsummer Day that the opposing armies at last met. The people
of the goddess Danu appeared in “a flaming line”, wielding their
“red-bordered, speckled, and firm shields”. Opposite to them were ranged
the Fir Bolgs, “sparkling, brilliant, and flaming, with their swords,
spears, blades, and trowel-spears”. The proceedings began with a kind of
deadly hurley-match, in which thrice nine of the Tuatha Dé Danann played
the same number of the Fir Bolgs, and were defeated and killed. Then
followed another parley, to decide how the battle should be carried on,
whether there should be fighting every day or only on every second day.
Moreover, Nuada obtained from Eochaid an assurance that the battles
should always be fought with equal numbers, although this was, we are
told, “very disagreeable to the Fir Bolg king, because he had largely
the advantage in the numbers of his army”. Then warfare recommenced with
a series of single combats, like those of the Greeks and Trojans in the
“Iliad”. At the end of each day the conquerors on both sides went back
to their camps, and were refreshed by being bathed in healing baths of
medicinal herbs.
So the fight went on for four days, with terrible slaughter upon each
side. A Fir Bolg champion called Sreng fought in single combat with
Nuada, the King of the Gods, and shore off his hand and half his shield
with one terrific blow. Eochaid, the King of the Fir Bolgs, was even
less fortunate than Nuada; for he lost his life. Suffering terribly from
thirst, he went, with a hundred of his men, to look for water, and was
followed, and pursued as far as the strand of Ballysadare, in Sligo.
Here he turned to bay, but was killed, his grave being still marked by a
tumulus. The Fir Bolgs, reduced at last to three hundred men, demanded
single combat until all upon one side were slain. But, sooner than
consent to this, the Tuatha Dé Danann offered them a fifth part of
Ireland, whichever province they might choose. They agreed, and chose
Connaught, ever afterwards their especial home, and where, until the
middle of the seventeenth century, men were still found tracing their
descent from Sreng.
The whole story has a singularly historical, curiously unmythological
air about it, which contrasts strangely with the account of the other
battle of the same name which the Tuatha Dé Danann waged afterwards with
the Fomors. The neighbourhood of Cong still preserves both relics and
traditions of the fight. Upon the plain of “Southern Moytura” (as it is
called, to distinguish it from the “Northern Moytura” of the second
battle) are many circles and tumuli. These circles are especially
numerous near the village itself; and it is said that there were
formerly others, which have been used for making walls and dykes. Large
cairns of stones, too, are scattered over what was certainly once the
scene of a great battle.[106] These various prehistoric monuments each
have their still-told story; and Sir William Wilde, as he relates in his
_Lough Corrib_,[107] was so impressed by the unexpected agreement
between the details of the legendary battle, as he read them in the
ancient manuscript, and the traditions still attaching to the mounds,
circles, and cairns, that he tells us he could not help coming to the
conclusion that the account was absolutely historical. Certainly the
coincidences are curious. His opinion was that the “Fir Bolgs” were a
colony of Belgæ, and that the “Tuatha Dé Danann” were Danes. But the
people of the goddess Danu are too obviously mythical to make it worth
while to seek any standing-ground for them in the world of reality. In
their superhuman attributes, they are quite different from the Fir
Bolgs. In the epical cycle it is made as clear that the Tuatha Dé Danann
are divine beings as it is that the Fir Bolg, the Fir Domnann, and the
Fir Gaillion stand on exactly the same footing as the men of Ulster.
Later history records by what Milesian kings and on what terms of
rack-rent the three tribes were allowed settlements in other parts of
Ireland than their native Connaught. They appear in ancient, mediæval,
and almost modern chronicles as the old race of the land. The truth
seems to be that the whole story of the war between the gods and the Fir
Bolgs is an invention of comparatively late times. In the earliest
documents there is only one battle of Moytura, fought between the people
of the goddess Danu and the Fomors. The idea of doubling it seems to
date from after the eleventh century;[108] and its inventor may very
well have used the legends concerning this battle-field, where two
unknown armies had fought in days gone by, in compiling his story. It
never belonged to the same genuine mythological stratum as the legend of
the original battle fought by the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods of the
Gaels, against the Fomors, the gods of the Iberians.
-----
Footnote 95:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_, chap. V.
Footnote 96:
Rhys: “The Mythographical Treatment of Celtic Ethnology”, _Scottish
Review_, Oct. 1890.
Footnote 97:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_, chap. V. Rhys: _Hibbert
Lectures_, pp. 90, 91.
Footnote 98:
Pronounced _Ecca_ or _Eohee_.
Footnote 99:
Gomme: _Ethnology in Folklore_, chap. III—“The Mythic Influence of a
Conquered Race”.
Footnote 100:
Elton: _Origins of English History_, note to p. 136.
Footnote 101:
It has been contended that the Fenians were originally the gods or
heroes of an aboriginal people in Ireland, the myths about them
representing the pre-Celtic and pre-Aryan ideal, as the sagas of the
Red Branch of Ulster embodied that of the Celtic Aryans. The question,
however, is as yet far from being satisfactorily solved.
Footnote 102:
_The Coronation Stone_, by William Forbes Skene.
Footnote 103:
See _History and Antiquities of Tara Hill_.
Footnote 104:
Our authorities for the details of this war between the Tuatha Dé
Danann and the Fir Bolgs are the opening verses of the Harleian MS.
5280, as translated by Stokes and De Jubainville, and Eugene O’Curry’s
translations, in his _MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History_ and his
_Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, from a manuscript
preserved at Trinity College, Dublin.
Footnote 105:
Now called Benlevi.
Footnote 106:
See Dr. James Fergusson: _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 177-180.
Footnote 107:
_Lough Corrib, Its Shores and Islands_, by Sir William R. Wilde, chap.
VIII.
Footnote 108:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, p. 156.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
THE RISE OF THE SUN-GOD[109]
It was as a result of the loss of his hand in this battle with the Fir
Bolgs that Nuada got his name of _Argetlám_, that is, the “Silver
Handed”. For Diancecht, the physician of the Tuatha Dé Danann, made him
an artificial hand of silver, so skilfully that it moved in all its
joints, and was as strong and supple as a real one. But, good as it was
of its sort, it was a blemish; and, according to Celtic custom, no
maimed person could sit upon the throne. Nuada was deposed; and the
Tuatha Dé Danann went into council to appoint a new king.
They agreed that it would be a politic thing for them to conciliate the
Fomors, the giants of the sea, and make an alliance with them. So they
sent a message to Bress, the son of the Fomorian king, Elathan, asking
him to come and rule over them. Bress accepted this offer; and they made
a marriage between him and Brigit, the daughter of the Dagda. At the
same time, Cian[110], the son of Diancecht, the physician of the Tuatha
Dé Danann, married Ethniu, the daughter of the Fomor, Balor. Then Bress
was made king, and endowed with lands and a palace; and he, on his part,
gave hostages that he would abdicate if his rule ever became unpleasing
to those who had elected him.
But, in spite of all his fair promises, Bress, who belonged in heart to
his own fierce people, began to oppress his subjects with excessive
taxes. He put a tax upon every hearth, upon every kneading-trough, and
upon every quern, as well as a poll-tax of an ounce of gold upon every
member of the Tuatha Dé Danann. By a crafty trick, too, he obtained the
milk of all their cattle. He asked at first only for the produce of any
cows which happened to be brown and hairless, and the people of the
goddess Danu granted him this cheerfully. But Bress passed all the
cattle in Ireland between two fires, so that their hair was singed off,
and thus obtained the monopoly of the main source of food. To earn a
livelihood, all the gods, even the greatest, were now forced to labour
for him. Ogma, their champion, was sent out to collect firewood, while
the Dagda was put to work building forts and castles.
One day, when the Dagda was at his task, his son, Angus, came to him.
“You have nearly finished that castle,” he said. “What reward do you
intend to ask from Bress when it is done?” The Dagda replied that he had
not yet thought of it. “Let me give you some advice,” said Angus. “Ask
Bress to have all the cattle in Ireland gathered together upon a plain,
so that you can pick out one for yourself. He will consent to that. Then
choose the black-maned heifer called ‘Ocean’.”
The Dagda finished building the fort, and then went to Bress for his
reward. “What will you have?” asked Bress. “I want all the cattle in
Ireland gathered together upon a plain, so that I may choose one of them
for myself.” Bress did this; and the Dagda took the black-maned heifer
Angus had told him of. The king, who had expected to be asked very much
more, laughed at what he thought was the Dagda’s simplicity. But Angus
had been wise; as will be seen hereafter.
Meanwhile Bress was infuriating the people of the goddess Danu by adding
avarice to tyranny. It was for kings to be liberal to all-comers, but at
the court of Bress no one ever greased his knife with fat, or made his
breath smell of ale. Nor were there ever any poets or musicians or
jugglers or jesters there to give pleasure to the people; for Bress
would distribute no largess. Next, he cut down the very subsistence of
the gods. So scanty was his allowance of food that they began to grow
weak with famine. Ogma, through feebleness, could only carry one-third
of the wood needed for fuel; so that they suffered from cold as well as
from hunger.
It was at this crisis that two physicians, Miach, the son, and Airmid,
the daughter, of Diancecht, the god of medicine, came to the castle
where the dispossessed King Nuada lived. Nuada’s porter, blemished, like
himself (for he had lost an eye), was sitting at the gate, and on his
lap was a cat curled up asleep. The porter asked the strangers who they
were. “We are good doctors,” they said. “If that is so,” he replied,
“perhaps you can give me a new eye.” “Certainly,” they said, “we could
take one of the eyes of that cat, and put it in the place where your
lost eye used to be.” “I should be very pleased if you would do that,”
answered the porter, So Miach and Airmid removed one of the cat’s eyes,
and put it in the hollow where the man’s eye had been.
The story goes on to say that this was not wholly a benefit to him; for
the eye retained its cat’s nature, and, when the man wished to sleep at
nights, the cat’s eye was always looking out for mice, while it could
hardly be kept awake during the day. Nevertheless, he was pleased at the
time, and went and told Nuada, who commanded that the doctors who had
performed this marvellous cure should be brought to him.
As they came in, they heard the king groaning, for Nuada’s wrist had
festered where the silver hand joined the arm of flesh. Miach asked
where Nuada’s own hand was, and they told him that it had been buried
long ago. But he dug it up, and placed it to Nuada’s stump; he uttered
an incantation over it, saying: “Sinew to sinew, and nerve to nerve be
joined!” and in three days and nights the hand had renewed itself and
fixed itself to the arm, so that Nuada was whole again.
When Diancecht, Miach’s father, heard of this, he was very angry to
think that his son should have excelled him in the art of medicine. He
sent for him, and struck him upon the head with a sword, cutting the
skin, but not wounding the flesh. Miach easily healed this. So Diancecht
hit him again, this time to the bone. Again Miach cured himself. The
third time his father smote him, the sword went right through the skull
to the membrane of the brain, but even this wound Miach was able to
leech. At the fourth stroke, however, Diancecht cut the brain in two,
and Miach could do nothing for that. He died, and Diancecht buried him.
And upon his grave there grew up three hundred and sixty-five stalks of
grass, each one a cure for any illness of each of the three hundred and
sixty-five nerves in a man’s body. Airmid, Miach’s sister, plucked all
these very carefully, and arranged them on her mantle according to their
properties. But her angry and jealous father overturned the cloak, and
hopelessly confused them. If it had not been for that act, says the
early writer, men would know how to cure every illness, and would so be
immortal.
The healing of Nuada’s blemish happened just at the time when all the
people of the goddess Danu had at last agreed that the exactions and
tyranny of Bress could no longer be borne. It was the insult he put upon
Cairpré, son of Ogma the god of literature, that caused things to come
to this head. Poets were always held by the Celts in great honour; and
when Cairpré, the bard of the Tuatha Dé Danann, went to visit Bress, he
expected to be treated with much consideration, and fed at the king’s
own table. But, instead of doing so, Bress lodged him in a small, dark
room where there was no fire, no bed, and no furniture except a mean
table on which small cakes of dry bread were put on a little dish for
his food. The next morning, Cairpré rose early and left the palace
without having spoken to Bress. It was the custom of poets when they
left a king’s court to utter a panegyric on their host, but Cairpré
treated Bress instead to a magical satire. It was the first satire ever
made in Ireland, and seems to us to bear upon it all the marks of an
early effort. Roughly rendered, it said:
“No meat on the plates,
No milk of the cows;
No shelter for the belated;
No money for the minstrels:
May Bress’s cheer be what he gives to others!”
This satire of Cairpré’s was, we are assured, so virulent that it caused
great red blotches to break out all over Bress’s face. This in itself
constituted a blemish such as should not be upon a king, and the Tuatha
Dé Danann called upon Bress to abdicate and let Nuada take the throne
again.
Bress was obliged to do so. He went back to the country of the Fomors,
underneath the sea, and complained to his father Elathan, its king,
asking him to gather an army to reconquer his throne. The Fomors
assembled in council—Elathan, Tethra, Balor, Indech, and all the other
warriors and chiefs—and they decided to come with a great host, and take
Ireland away, and put it under the sea where the people of the goddess
Danu would never be able to find it again.
At the same time, another assembly was also being held at Tara, the
capital of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Nuada was celebrating his return to the
throne by a feast to his people. While it was at its height, a stranger
clothed like a king came to the palace gate. The porter asked him his
name and errand.
“I am called Lugh,” he said. “I am the grandson of Diancecht by Cian, my
father, and the grandson of Balor by Ethniu, my mother.”
“But what is your profession?” asked the porter; “for no one is admitted
here unless he is a master of some craft.”
“I am a carpenter,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of a carpenter. We already have a very good one; his
name is Luchtainé.”
“I am an excellent smith,” said Lugh.
“We do not want a smith. We have a very good one; his name is Goibniu.”
“I am a professional warrior,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of one. Ogma is our champion.”
“I am a harpist,” said Lugh.
“We have an excellent harpist already.”
“I am a warrior renowned for skilfulness rather than for mere strength.”
“We already have a man like that.”
“I am a poet and tale-teller,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of such. We have a most accomplished poet and
tale-teller.”
“I am a sorcerer,” said Lugh.
“We do not want one. We have numberless sorcerers and druids.”
“I am a physician,” said Lugh.
“Diancecht is our physician.”
“I am a cup-bearer,” said Lugh.
“We already have nine of them.”
“I am a worker in bronze.”
“We have no need of you. We already have a worker in bronze. His name is
Credné.”
“Then ask the king,” said Lugh, “if he has with him a man who is master
of all these crafts at once, for, if he has, there is no need for me to
come to Tara.”
So the door-keeper went inside, and told the king that a man had come
who called himself Lugh the _Ioldanach_[111], or the “Master of all
Arts”, and that he claimed to know everything.
The king sent out his best chess-player to play against the stranger.
Lugh won, inventing a new move called “Lugh’s enclosure”.
Then Nuada invited him in. Lugh entered, and sat down upon the chair
called the “sage’s seat”, kept for the wisest man.
Ogma, the champion, was showing off his strength. Upon the floor was a
flagstone so large that fourscore yokes of oxen would have been needed
to move it. Ogma pushed it before him along the hall, and out at the
door. Then Lugh rose from his chair, and pushed it back again. But this
stone, huge as it was, was only a portion broken from a still greater
rock outside the palace. Lugh picked it up, and put it back into its
place.
The Tuatha Dé Danann asked him to play the harp to them. So he played
the “sleep-tune”, and the king and all his court fell asleep, and did
not wake until the same hour of the following day. Next he played a
plaintive air, and they all wept. Lastly, he played a measure which sent
them into transports of joy.
When Nuada had seen all these numerous talents of Lugh, he began to
wonder whether one so gifted would not be of great help against the
Fomors. He took counsel with the others, and, by their advice, lent his
throne to Lugh for thirteen days, taking the “sage’s seat” at his side.
Lugh summoned all the Tuatha Dé Danann to a council.
“The Fomors are certainly going to make war on us,” he said. “What can
each of you do to help?”
Diancecht the Physician said: “I will completely cure everyone who is
wounded, provided his head is not cut off, or his brain or spinal marrow
hurt.”
“I,” said Goibniu the Smith, “will replace every broken lance and sword
with a new one, even though the war last seven years. And I will make
the lances so well that they shall never miss their mark, or fail to
kill. Dulb, the smith of the Fomors, cannot do as much as that. The fate
of the fighting will be decided by my lances.”
“And I,” said Credné the Bronze-worker, “will furnish all the rivets for
the lances, the hilts for the swords, and the rims and bosses for the
shields.”
“And I,” said Luchtainé the Carpenter, “will provide all the shields and
lance-shafts.”
Ogma the Champion promised to kill the King of the Fomors, with thrice
nine of his followers, and to capture one-third of his army.
“And you, O Dagda,” said Lugh, “what will you do?”
“I will fight,” said the Dagda, “both with force and craft. Wherever the
two armies meet, I will crush the bones of the Fomors with my club, till
they are like hailstones under a horse’s feet.”
“And you, O Morrígú?” said Lugh.
“I will pursue them when they flee,” she replied. “And I always catch
what I chase.”
“And you, O Cairpré, son of Etan?” said Lugh to the poet, “what can you
do?”
“I will pronounce an immediately-effective curse upon them; by one of my
satires I will take away all their honour, and, enchanted by me, they
shall not be able to stand against our warriors.”
“And ye, O sorcerers, what will ye do?”
“We will hurl by our magic arts,” replied Mathgan, the head sorcerer,
“the twelve mountains of Ireland at the Fomors. These mountains will be
Slieve League, Denna Ulad, the Mourne Mountains, Bri Ruri, Slieve Bloom,
Slieve Snechta, Slemish, Blai-Sliab, Nephin, Sliab Maccu Belgodon,
Segais[112], and Cruachan Aigle[113]”.
Then Lugh asked the cup-bearers what they would do.
“We will hide away by magic,” they said, “the twelve chief lakes and the
twelve chief rivers of Ireland from the Fomors, so that they shall not
be able to find any water, however thirsty they may be; those waters
will conceal themselves from the Fomors so that they shall not get a
drop, while they will give drink to the people of the goddess Danu as
long as the war lasts, even if it last seven years.” And they told Lugh
that the twelve chief lakes were Lough Derg, Lough Luimnigh[114], Lough
Corrib, Lough Ree, Lough Mask, Strangford Lough, Lough Læig, Lough
Neagh, Lough Foyle, Lough Gara, Lough Reagh, and Márloch, and that the
twelve chief rivers were the Bush, the Boyne, the Bann, the Nem, the
Lee, the Shannon, the Moy, the Sligo, the Erne, the Finn, the Liffey,
and the Suir.
Finally, the Druid, Figol, son of Mamos, said: “I will send three
streams of fire into the faces of the Fomors, and I will take away
two-thirds of their valour and strength, but every breath drawn by the
people of the goddess Danu will only make them more valorous and strong,
so that even if the fighting lasts seven years, they will not be weary
of it.”
All decided to make ready for a war, and to give the direction of it to
Lugh.
-----
Footnote 109:
The principal sources of information for this chapter are the Harleian
MS. 5280 entitled _The Second Battle of Moytura_, of which
translations have been made by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the _Revue
Celtique_ and M. de Jubainville in his _L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande_,
and Eugene O’Curry’s translation in Vol. IV. of _Atlantis_ of the
_Fate of the Children of Tuirenn_.
Footnote 110:
Pronounced _Kian_.
Footnote 111:
Pronounced _Ildāna_.
Footnote 112:
The Curlieu Hills, between Roscommon and Sligo.
Footnote 113:
Croagh Patrick.
Footnote 114:
The estuary of the Shannon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
THE GAELIC ARGONAUTS
The preparations for this war are said to have lasted seven years. It
was during the interval that there befel an episode which might almost
be called the “Argonautica” of the Gaelic mythology.[115]
In spite of the dethronement of Bress, the Fomors still claimed their
annual tribute from the tribe of the goddess Danu, and sent their
tax-gatherers, nine times nine in number, to “Balor’s Hill” to collect
it. But, while they waited for the gods to come to tender their
submission and their subsidy, they saw a young man approaching them. He
was riding upon “Splendid Mane”, the horse of Manannán son of Lêr, and
was dressed in Manannán’s breastplate and helmet, through which no
weapon could wound their wearer, and he was armed with sword and shield
and poisoned darts. “Like to the setting sun”, says the story, “was the
splendour of his countenance and his forehead, and they were not able to
look in his face for the greatness of his splendour.” And no wonder! for
he was Lugh the Far-shooter, the new-come sun-god of the Gaels. He fell
upon the Fomorian tax-gatherers, killing all but nine of them, and these
he only spared that they might go back to their kinsmen and tell how the
gods had received them.
There was consternation in the under-sea country. “Who can this terrible
warrior be?” asked Balor. “I know,” said Balor’s wife; “he must be the
son of our daughter Ethniu; and I foretell that, since he has cast in
his lot with his father’s people, we shall never bear rule in Erin
again.”
The chiefs of the Fomors saw that this slaughter of their tax-gatherers
signified that the Tuatha Dé Danann meant fighting. They held a council
to debate on it. There came to it Elathan and Tethra and Indech, kings
of the Fomors; Bress himself, and Balor of the stout blows; Cethlenn the
crooked tooth, Balor’s wife; Balor’s twelve white-mouthed sons; and all
the chief Fomorian warriors and druids.
Meanwhile, upon earth, Lugh was sending messengers all over Erin to
assemble the Tuatha Dé Danann. Upon this errand went Lugh’s father Cian,
who seems to have been a kind of lesser solar deity,[116] son of
Diancecht, the god of medicine. As Cian was going over the plain of
Muirthemne,[117] he saw three armed warriors approaching him, and, when
they got nearer, he recognized them as the three sons of Tuirenn, son of
Ogma, whose names were Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. Between these three
and Cian, with his brothers Cethé and Cu, there was, for some reason, a
private enmity. Cian saw that he was now at a disadvantage. “If my
brothers were with me,” he said to himself, “what a fight we would make;
but, as I am alone, it will be best for me to conceal myself.” Looking
round, he saw a herd of pigs feeding on the plain. Like all the gods, he
had the faculty of shape-shifting; so, striking himself with a magic
wand, he changed himself into a pig, joined the herd, and began feeding
with them.
But he had been seen by the sons of Tuirenn. “What has become of the
warrior who was walking on the plain a moment ago?” said Brian to his
brothers. “We saw him then,” they replied, “but we do not know where he
is now.” “Then you have not used the proper vigilance which is needed in
time of war,” said the elder brother. “However, I know what has become
of him. He has struck himself with a druidical wand, and changed himself
into a pig, and there he is, in that herd, rooting up the ground, just
like all the other pigs. I can also tell you who he is. His name is
Cian, and you know that he is no friend of ours.”
“It is a pity that he has taken refuge among the pigs,” they replied,
“for they belong to some one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and, even if we
were to kill them all, Cian might still escape us.”
Again Brian reproached his brothers. “You are very ignorant,” he said,
“if you cannot distinguish a magical beast from a natural beast.
However, I will show you.” And thereupon he struck his two brothers with
his own wand of shape-changing, and turned them into two swift, slender
hounds, and set them upon the pigs.
The magic hounds soon found the magic pig, and drove it out of the herd
on to the open plain. Then Brian threw his spear, and hit it. The
wounded pig came to a stop. “It was an evil deed of yours, casting that
spear,” it cried, in a human voice, “for I am not a pig, but Cian, son
of Diancecht. So give me quarter.”
Iuchar and Iucharba would have granted it, and let him go; but their
fiercer brother swore that Cian should be put an end to, even if he came
back to life seven times. So Cian tried a fresh ruse. “Give me leave”,
he asked, “only to return to my own shape before you slay me.” “Gladly,”
replied Brian, “for I would much rather kill a man than a pig.”
So Cian spoke the befitting spell, cast off his pig’s disguise, and
stood before them in his own shape. “You will be obliged to spare my
life now,” he said. “We will not,” replied Brian. “Then it will be the
worst day’s work for all of you that you ever did in your lives,” he
answered; “for, if you had killed me in the shape of a pig, you would
only have had to pay the value of a pig, but if you kill me now, I tell
you that there never has been, and there never will be, anyone killed in
this world for whose death a greater blood-fine will be exacted than for
mine.”
But the sons of Tuirenn would not listen to him. They slew him, and
pounded his body with stones until it was a crushed mass. Six times they
tried to bury him, and the earth cast him back in horror; but, the
seventh time, the mould held him, and they put stones upon him to keep
him down. They left him buried there, and went to Tara.
Meanwhile Lugh had been expecting his father’s return. As he did not
come, he determined to go and look for him. He traced him to the Plain
of Muirthemne, and there he was at fault. But the indignant earth
itself, which had witnessed the murder, spoke to Lugh, and told him
everything. So Lugh dug up his father’s corpse, and made certain how he
had come to his death; then he mourned over him, and laid him back in
the earth, and heaped a barrow over him, and set up a pillar with his
name on it in “ogam”.[118]
He went back to Tara, and entered the great hall. It was filled with the
people of the goddess Danu, and among them Lugh saw the three sons of
Tuirenn. So he shook the “chiefs’ chain”, with which the Gaels used to
ask for a hearing in an assembly, and when all were silent, he said:
“People of the goddess Danu, I ask you a question. What would be the
vengeance that any of you would take upon one who had murdered his
father?”
A great astonishment fell upon them, and Nuada, their king, said:
“Surely it is not your father that has been murdered?”
“It is,” replied Lugh. “And I am looking at those who murdered him; and
they know how they did it better than I do.”
Then Nuada declared that nothing short of hewing the murderer of his
father limb from limb would satisfy him, and all the others said the
same, including the sons of Tuirenn.
“The very ones who did the deed say that,” cried Lugh. “Then let them
not leave the hall till they have settled with me about the blood-fine
to be paid for it.”
“If it was I who had killed your father,” said the king, “I should think
myself lucky if you were willing to accept a fine instead of vengeance.”
The sons of Tuirenn took counsel together in whispers. Iuchar and
Iucharba were in favour of admitting their guilt, but Brian was afraid
that, if they confessed, Lugh would withdraw his offer to accept a fine,
and would demand their deaths. So he stood out, and said that, though it
was not they who had killed Cian, yet, sooner than remain under Lugh’s
anger, as he suspected them, they would pay the same fine as if they
had.
“Certainly you shall pay the fine,” said Lugh, “and I will tell you what
it shall be. It is this: three apples; and a pig’s-skin; and a spear;
and two horses and a chariot; and seven pigs; and a hound-whelp; and a
cooking-spit; and three shouts on a hill: that is the fine, and, if you
think it is too much, I will remit some of it, but, if you do not think
it is too much, then pay it.”
“If it were a hundred times that,” replied Brian, “we should not think
it too much. Indeed, it seems so little that I fear there must be some
treachery concealed in it.”
“I do not think it too little,” replied Lugh. “Give me your pledge
before the people of the goddess Danu that you will pay it faithfully,
and I will give you mine that I will ask no more.”
So the sons of Tuirenn bound themselves before the Tuatha Dé Danann to
pay the fine to Lugh.
When they had sworn, and given sureties, Lugh turned to them again. “I
will now”, he said, “explain to you the nature of the fine you have
pledged yourselves to pay me, so that you may know whether it is too
little or not.” And, with foreboding hearts, the sons of Tuirenn set
themselves to listen.
“The three apples that I have demanded,” he began, “are three apples
from the Garden of the Hesperides, in the east of the world. You will
know them by three signs. They are the size of the head of a month-old
child, they are of the colour of burnished gold, and they taste of
honey. Wounds are healed and diseases cured by eating them, and they do
not diminish in any way by being eaten. Whoever casts one of them hits
anything he wishes, and then it comes back into his hand. I will accept
no other apples instead of these. Their owners keep them perpetually
guarded because of a prophecy that three young warriors from the west of
the world will come to take them by force, and, brave as you may be, I
do not think that you will ever get them.
“The pig’s-skin that I have demanded is the pig’s-skin of Tuis, King of
Greece. It has two virtues: its touch perfectly cures all wounded or
sick persons if only there is any life still left in them; and every
stream of water through which it passes is turned into wine for nine
days. I do not think that you will get it from the King of Greece,
either with his consent or without it.
“And can you guess what spear it is that I have demanded?” asked Lugh.
“We cannot,” they said. “It is the poisoned spear of Pisear[119], King
of Persia; it is irresistible in battle; it is so fiery that its blade
must always be held under water, lest it destroy the city in which it is
kept. You will find it very difficult to obtain.
“And the two horses and the chariot are the two wonderful horses of
Dobhar[120], King of Sicily, which run equally well over land and sea;
there are no other horses in the world like them, and no other vehicle
equal to the chariot.
“And the seven pigs are the pigs of Easal[121], King of the Golden
Pillars; though they may be killed every night, they are found alive
again the next day, and every person that eats part of them can never be
afflicted with any disease.
“And the hound-whelp I claim is the hound-whelp of the King of
Ioruaidhe[122]; her name is Failinis; every wild beast she sees she
catches at once. It will not be easy for you to secure her.
“The cooking-spit which you must get for me is one of the cooking-spits
of the women of the Island of Fianchuivé[123], which is at the bottom of
the sea, between Erin and Alba.
“You have also pledged yourselves to give three shouts upon a hill. The
hill upon which they must be given is the hill called Cnoc
Miodhchaoin[124], in the north of Lochlann[125]. Miodhchaoin and his
sons do not allow shouts to be given on that hill; besides this, it was
they who gave my father his military education, and, even if I were to
forgive you, they would not; so that, though you achieve all the other
adventures, I think that you will fail in this one.
“Now you know what sort of a fine it is that you have bargained to pay
me,” said Lugh.
And fear and astonishment fell upon the sons of Tuirenn.
This tale is evidently the work of some ancient Irish story-teller who
wished to compile from various sources a more or less complete account
of how the Gaelic gods obtained their legendary possessions. The spear
of Pisear, King of Persia, is obviously the same weapon as the lance of
Lugh, which another tradition describes as having been brought by the
Tuatha Dé Danann from their original home in the city of Gorias;[126]
Failinis, the whelp of the King of Ioruaidhe, is Lugh’s “hound of
mightiest deeds”, which was irresistible in battle, and which turned any
running water it bathed in into wine,[127] a property here transferred
to the magic pig’s-skin of King Tuis: the seven swine of the King of the
Golden Pillars must be the same undying porkers from whose flesh
Manannán mac Lir made the “Feast of Age” which preserved the eternal
youth of the gods;[128] it was with horses and chariot that ran along
the surface of the sea that Manannán used to journey to and fro between
Erin and the Celtic Elysium in the West;[129] the apples that grew in
the Garden of the Hesperides were surely of the same celestial growth as
those that fed the inhabitants of that immortal country;[130] while the
cooking-spit reminds us of three such implements at Tara, made by
Goibniu and associated with the names of the Dagda and the Morrígú.[131]
The burden of collecting all these treasures was placed upon the
shoulders of the three sons of Tuirenn.
They consulted together, and agreed that they could never hope to
succeed unless they had Manannán’s magic horse, “Splendid Mane”, and
Manannán’s magic coracle, “Wave-sweeper”. But both these had been lent
by Manannán to Lugh himself. So the sons of Tuirenn were obliged to
humble themselves to beg them from Lugh. The sun-god would not lend them
the horse, for fear of making their task too easy, but he let them have
the boat, because he knew how much the spear of Pisear and the horses of
Dobhar would be needed in the coming war with the Fomors. They bade
farewell to their father, and went down to the shore and put out to sea,
taking their sister with them.
“Which portion of the fine shall we seek first?” said the others to
Brian. “We will seek them in the order in which they were demanded,” he
replied. So they directed the magic boat to sail to the Garden of the
Hesperides, and presently they arrived there.
They landed at a harbour, and held a council of war. It was decided that
their best chance of obtaining three of the apples would be by taking
the shapes of hawks. Thus they would have strength enough in their claws
to carry the apples away, together with sufficient quickness upon the
wing to hope to escape the arrows, darts, and sling-stones which would
be shot and hurled at them by the warders of the garden.
They swooped down upon the orchard from above. It was done so swiftly
that they carried off the three apples, unhit either by shaft or stone.
But their difficulties were not yet over. The king of the country had
three daughters who were well skilled in witchcraft. By sorcery they
changed themselves into three ospreys, and pursued the three hawks. But
the sons of Tuirenn reached the shore first, and, changing themselves
into swans, dived into the sea. They came up close to their coracle, and
got into it, and sailed swiftly away with the spoil.
Thus their first quest was finished, and they voyaged on to Greece, to
seek the pig’s-skin of King Tuis. No one could go without some excuse
into a king’s court, so they decided to disguise themselves as poets,
and to tell the door-keeper that they were professional bards from Erin,
seeking largess at the hands of kings. The porter let them into the
great hall, where the poets of Greece were singing before the king.
When those had all finished, Brian rose, and asked permission to show
his art. This was accorded; and he sang:
“O Tuis, we conceal not thy fame.
We praise thee as the oak above the kings;
The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness!
This is the reward which I ask for it.
“A stormy host and raging sea
Are a dangerous power, should one oppose it.
The skin of a pig, bounty without hardness!
This is the reward I ask, O Tuis.”
“That is a good poem,” said the king, “only I do not understand it.”
“I will explain it,” said Brian. “‘_We praise thee as the oak above the
kings_’; this means that, as the oak excels all other trees, so do you
excel all other kings in nobility and generosity. ‘_The skin of a pig,
bounty without hardness_’; that is a pig’s-skin which you have, O Tuis,
and which I should like to receive as the reward of my poem. ‘_A stormy
host and raging sea are a dangerous power, should one oppose it_’; this
means to say, that we are not used to going without anything on which we
have set our hearts, O Tuis.”
“I should have liked your poem better,” replied the king, “if my
pig’s-skin had not been mentioned in it. It was not a wise thing for you
to have done, O poet. But I will measure three fills of red gold out of
the skin, and you shall have those.”
“May all good be thine, O King!” answered Brian. “I knew that I should
get a noble reward.”
So the king sent for the pig’s-skin to measure out the gold with. But,
as soon as Brian saw it, he seized it with his left hand, and slew the
man who was holding it, and Iuchar and Iucharba also hacked about them;
and they cut their way down to the boat, leaving the King of Greece
among the dead behind them.
“And now we will go and get King Pisear’s spear,” said Brian. So,
leaving Greece, they sailed in their coracle to Persia.
Their plan of disguising themselves as poets had served them so well
that they decided to make use of it again. So they went into the King of
Persia’s hall in the same way as they had entered that of the King of
Greece. Brian first listened to the poets of Persia singing; then he
sang his own song:
“Small the esteem of any spear with Pisear;
The battles of foes are broken;
No oppression to Pisear;
Everyone whom he wounds.
“A yew-tree, the finest of the wood,
It is called King without opposition.
May that splendid shaft drive on
Yon crowd into their wounds of death.”
“That is a good poem, O man of Erin,” said the king, “but why is my
spear mentioned in it?”
“The meaning is this,” replied Brian: “I should like to receive that
spear as a reward for my poem.”
“You make a rash request,” said the king. “If I spare your life after
having heard it, it will be a sufficient reward for your poem.”
Brian had one of the magic apples in his hand, and he remembered its
boomerang-like quality. He hurled it full in the King of Persia’s face,
dashing out his brains. The Persians flew to arms, but the three sons of
Tuirenn conquered them, and made them yield up the spear.
They had now to travel to Sicily, to obtain the horses and chariot of
King Dobhar. But they were afraid to go as poets this time, for fear the
fame of their deeds might have got abroad. They therefore decided to
pretend to be mercenary soldiers from Erin, and offer the King of Sicily
their service. This, they thought, would be the easiest way of finding
out where the horses and the chariot were kept. So they went and stood
on the green before the royal court.
When the King of Sicily heard that there had come mercenaries from Erin,
seeking wages from the kings of the world, he invited them to take
service with him. They agreed; but, though they stayed with him a
fortnight and a month, they never saw the horses, or even found out
where they were kept. So they went to the king, and announced that they
wished to leave him.
“Why?” he asked, for he did not want them to go.
“We will tell you, O King!” replied Brian. “It is because we have not
been honoured with your confidence, as we have been accustomed with
other kings. You have two horses and a chariot, the best in the world,
and we have not even been allowed to see them.”
“I would have shown them to you on the first day if you had asked me,”
said the king; “and you shall see them at once, for I have seldom had
warriors with me so good as you are, and I do not wish you to leave me.”
So he sent for the steeds, and had them yoked to the chariot, and the
sons of Tuirenn were witnesses of their marvellous speed, and how they
could run equally well over land or water.
Brian made a sign to his brothers, and they watched their opportunity
carefully, and, as the chariot passed close beside them, Brian leaped
into it, hurling its driver over the side. Then, turning the horses, he
struck King Dobhar with Pisear’s spear, and killed him. He took his two
brothers up into the chariot and they drove away.
By the time the sons of Tuirenn reached the country of Easal, King of
the Pillars of Gold, rumour had gone before them. The king came down to
the harbour to meet them, and asked them if it were really true that so
many kings had fallen at their hands. They replied that it was true, but
that they had no quarrel with any of them; only they must obtain at all
costs the fine demanded by Lugh. Then Easal asked them why they had come
to his land, and they told him that they needed his seven pigs to add to
the tribute. So Easal thought it better to give them up, and to make
friends with the three sons of Tuirenn, than to fight with such
warriors. The sons of Tuirenn were very glad at this, for they were
growing weary of battles.
It happened that the King of Ioruaidhe, who had the hound-whelp that
Lugh had demanded, was the husband of King Easal’s daughter. Therefore
King Easal did not wish that there should be fighting between him and
the three sons of Tuirenn. He proposed to Brian and his brothers that he
should sail with them to Ioruaidhe, and try to persuade the king of the
country to give up the hound-whelp peacefully. They consented, and all
set foot safely on the “delightful, wonderful shores of Ioruaidhe”,[132]
as the manuscript calls them. But King Easal’s son-in-law would not
listen to reason. He assembled his warriors, and fought; but the sons of
Tuirenn defeated them, and compelled their king to yield up the
hound-whelp as the ransom for his life.
All these quests had been upon the earth, but the next was harder. No
coracle, not even Manannán’s “Wave-sweeper”, could penetrate to the
Island of Fianchuivé, in the depths of the sea that severs Erin from
Alba. So Brian left his brothers, and put on his “water-dress, with his
transparency of glass upon his head”—evidently an ancient Irish
anticipation of the modern diver’s dress. Thus equipped, he explored the
bottom of the sea for fourteen days before he found the island. But when
at last he reached it, and entered the hall of its queen, she and her
sea-maidens were so amazed at Brian’s hardihood in having penetrated to
their kingdom that they presented him with the cooking-spit, and sent
him back safe.
By this time, Lugh had found out by his magic arts that the sons of
Tuirenn had obtained all the treasures he had demanded as the
blood-fine. He desired to get them safely into his own custody before
his victims went to give their three shouts upon Miodhchaoin’s Hill. He
therefore wove a druidical spell round them, so that they forgot the
rest of their task altogether, and sailed back to Erin. They searched
for Lugh, to give him the things, but he had gone away, leaving word
that they were to be handed over to Nuada, the Tuatha Dé Danann king. As
soon as they were in safe-keeping, Lugh came back to Tara and found the
sons of Tuirenn there. And he said to them:
“Do you not know that it is unlawful to keep back any part of a
blood-fine? So have you given those three shouts upon Miodhchaoin’s
Hill?”
Then the magic mist of forgetfulness fell from them, and they
remembered. Sorrowfully they went back to complete their task.
Miodhchaoin[133] himself was watching for them, and, when he saw them
land, he came down to the beach. Brian attacked him, and they fought
with the swiftness of two bears and the ferocity of two lions until
Miodhchaoin fell.
Then Miodhchaoin’s three sons—Corc, Conn, and Aedh—came out to avenge
their father, and they drove their spears through the bodies of the
three sons of Tuirenn. But the three sons of Tuirenn also drove their
spears through the bodies of the three sons of Miodhchaoin.
The three sons of Miodhchaoin were killed, and the three sons of Tuirenn
were so sorely wounded that birds might have flown through their bodies
from one side to the other. Nevertheless Brian was still able to stand
upright, and he held his two brothers, one in each hand, and kept them
on their feet, and, all together, they gave three faint, feeble shouts.
Their coracle bore them, still living, to Erin. They sent their father
Tuirenn as a suppliant to Lugh, begging him to lend them the magic
pig’s-skin to heal their wounds.
But Lugh would not, for he had counted upon their fight with the sons of
Miodhchaoin to avenge his father Cian’s death. So the children of
Tuirenn resigned themselves to die, and their father made a farewell
song over them and over himself, and died with them.
Thus ends that famous tale—“The Fate of the Sons of Tuirenn”, known as
one of the “Three Sorrowful Stories of Erin”.[134]
-----
Footnote 115:
This story of the _Fate of the Children of Tuirenn_ is mentioned in
the ninth-century “Cormac’s Glossary”. It is found in various Irish
and Scottish MSS., including the Book of Lecan. The present re-telling
is from Eugene O’Curry’s translation, published in _Atlantis_, Vol.
IV.
Footnote 116:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 390-396.
Footnote 117:
A part of County Louth, between the Boyne and Dundalk. The heroic
cycle connects it especially with Cuchulainn. Pronounced _Mŭrthemna_
or _Mŭrhevna_.
Footnote 118:
There is known to have been a hill called Ard Chein (Cian’s Mound) in
the district of Muirthemne, and O’Curry identifies it tentatively with
one now called Dromslian.
Footnote 119:
Pronounced _Pēzar_.
Footnote 120:
Pronounced _Dobar_.
Footnote 121:
Pronounced _Asal_.
Footnote 122:
Pronounced _Irōda_.
Footnote 123:
Pronounced _Fincāra_.
Footnote 124:
The _Hill_ (cnoc) _of Midkēna_.
Footnote 125:
A mythical country inhabited by Fomors.
Footnote 126:
See chap. VI—“The Gods Arrive”.
Footnote 127:
_Ibid._
Footnote 128:
See chap. VI—“The Gods Arrive”.
Footnote 129:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 130:
_Ibid._
Footnote 131:
Petrie: _Hist. and Antiq. of Tara Hill_.
Footnote 132:
The country seems to have been identified with Norway or Iceland.
Footnote 133:
Pronounced _Midkēna_.
Footnote 134:
The other two are “The Fate of the Children of Lêr”, told in chap. XI,
and “The Fate of the Sons of Usnach”, an episode of the Heroic Cycle,
related in chap. XIII.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX
THE WAR WITH THE GIANTS[135]
By this time the seven years of preparation had come to an end. A week
before the Day of Samhain, the Morrígú discovered that the Fomors had
landed upon Erin. She at once sent a messenger to tell the Dagda, who
ordered his druids and sorcerers to go to the ford of the River Unius,
in Sligo, and utter incantations against them.
The people of the goddess Danu, however, were not yet quite ready for
battle. So the Dagda decided to visit the Fomorian camp as an
ambassador, and, by parleying with them, to gain a little more time. The
Fomors received him with apparent courtesy, and, to celebrate his
coming, prepared him a feast of porridge; for it was well-known how fond
he was of such food. They poured into their king’s cauldron, which was
as deep as five giant’s fists, fourscore gallons of new milk, with meal
and bacon in proportion. To this they added the whole carcasses of
goats, sheep, and pigs; they boiled the mixture together, and poured it
into a hole in the ground. “Now,” said they, “if you do not eat it all,
we shall put you to death, for we will not have you go back to your own
people and say that the Fomors are inhospitable.” But they did not
succeed in frightening the Dagda. He took his spoon, which was so large
that two persons of our puny size might have reclined comfortably in the
middle of it, dipped it into the porridge, and fished up halves of
salted pork and quarters of bacon.
“If it tastes as good as it smells,” he said, “it is good fare.” And so
it proved; for he ate it all, and scraped up even what remained at the
bottom of the hole. Then he went away to sleep it off, followed by the
laughter of the Fomors; for his stomach was so swollen with food that he
could hardly walk. It was larger than the biggest cauldron in a large
house, and stood out like a sail before the wind.
But the Fomors’ little practical joke upon the Dagda had given the
Tuatha Dé Danann time to collect their forces. It was on the eve of
Samhain that the two armies came face to face. Even then the Fomors
could not believe that the people of the goddess Danu would offer them
much resistance.
“Do you think they will really dare to give us battle?” said Bress to
Indech, the son of Domnu. “If they do not pay their tribute, we will
pound their bones for them,” he replied.
The war of gods and giants naturally mirrored the warfare of the Gaels,
in whose battles, as in those of most semi-barbarous people, single
combat figured largely. The main armies stood still, while, every day,
duels took place between ambitious combatants. But no great warriors
either of the Tuatha Dé Danann or of the Fomors took part in them.
Sometimes a god, sometimes a giant would be the victor; but there was a
difference in the net results that astonished the Fomors. If their own
swords and lances were broken, they were of no more use, and if their
own champions were killed, they never came back to life again; but it
was quite otherwise with the people of the goddess Danu. Weapons
shattered on one day re-appeared upon the next in as good condition as
though they had never been used, and warriors slain on one day came back
upon the morrow unhurt, and ready, if necessary, to be killed again.
The Fomors decided to send someone to discover the secret of these
prodigies. The spy they chose was Ruadan, the son of Bress and of
Brigit, daughter of the Dagda, and therefore half-giant and half-god. He
disguised himself as a Tuatha Dé Danann warrior, and went to look for
Goibniu. He found him at his forge, together with Luchtainé, the
carpenter, and Credné, the bronze-worker. He saw how Goibniu forged
lance-heads with three blows of his hammer, while Luchtainé cut shafts
for them with three blows of his axe, and Credné fixed the two parts
together so adroitly that his bronze nails needed no hammering in. He
went back and told the Fomors, who sent him again, this time to try and
kill Goibniu.
He reappeared at the forge, and asked for a javelin. Without suspicion,
Goibniu gave him one, and, as soon as he got it into his hand, he thrust
it through the smith’s body. But Goibniu plucked it out, and, hurling it
back at his assailant, mortally wounded him. Ruadan went home to die,
and his father Bress and his mother Brigit mourned for him, inventing
for the purpose the Irish “keening”. Goibniu, on the other hand, took no
harm. He went to the physician Diancecht, who, with his daughter Airmid,
was always on duty at a miraculous well called the “spring of health”.
Whenever one of the Tuatha Dé Danann was killed or wounded, he was
brought to the two doctors, who plunged him into the wonder-working
water, and brought him back to life and health again.
The mystic spring was not long, however, allowed to help the people of
the goddess. A young Fomorian chief, Octriallach son of Indech, found it
out. He and a number of his companions went to it by night, each
carrying a large stone from the bed of the River Drowes. These they
dropped into the spring, until they had filled it, dispersed the healing
water, and formed a cairn above it. Legend has identified this place by
the name of the “Cairn of Octriallach”.
This success determined the Fomors to fight a pitched battle. They drew
out their army in line. There was not a warrior in it who had not a coat
of mail and a helmet, a stout spear, a strong buckler, and a heavy
sword. “Fighting the Fomors on that day”, says the old author, “could
only be compared to one of three things—beating one’s head against a
rock, or plunging it into a fire, or putting one’s hand into a serpent’s
nest.”
All the great fighters of the Tuatha Dé Danann were drawn out opposite
to them, except Lugh. A council of the gods had decided that his varied
accomplishments made his life too valuable to be risked in battle. They
had, therefore, left him behind, guarded by nine warriors. But, at the
last moment, Lugh escaped from his warders, and appeared in his chariot
before the army. He made them a patriotic speech. “Fight bravely,” he
said, “that your servitude may last no longer; it is better to face
death than to live in vassalage and pay tribute.” With these encouraging
words, he drove round the ranks, standing on tiptoe, so that all the
Tuatha Dé Danann might see him.
The Fomors saw him too, and marvelled. “It seems wonderful to me,”[136]
said Bress to his druids, “that the sun should rise in the west to-day
and in the east every other day.” “It would be better for us if it were
so,” replied the druids. “What else can it be, then?” asked Bress. “It
is the radiance of the face of Lugh of the Long Arms,” said they.
Then the two armies charged each other with a great shout. Spears and
lances smote against shields, and so great was the shouting of the
fighters, the shattering of shields, the clattering of swords, the
rattling of quivers, and the whistling of darts and javelins that it
seemed as if thunder rolled everywhere.
They fought so closely that the heads, hands, and feet of those on one
side were touching the heads, hands, and feet of those on the other
side; they shed so much blood on to the ground that it became hard to
stand on it without slipping; and the river of Unsenn was filled with
dead bodies, so hard and swift and bloody and cruel was the battle.
Many great chiefs fell on each side. Ogma, the champion of the Tuatha Dé
Danann, killed Indech, the son of the goddess Domnu. But, meanwhile,
Balor of the Mighty Blows raged among the gods, slaying their king,
Nuada of the Silver Hand, as well as Macha, one of his warlike wives. At
last he met with Lugh. The sun-god shouted a challenge to his
grandfather in the Fomorian speech. Balor heard it, and prepared to use
his death-dealing eye.
“Lift up my eyelid,” he said to his henchmen, “that I may see this
chatterer who talks to me.”
The attendants lifted Balor’s eye with a hook, and if the glance of the
eye beneath had rested upon Lugh, he would certainly have perished. But,
when it was half opened, Lugh flung a magic stone which struck Balor’s
eye out through the back of his head. The eye fell on the ground behind
Balor, and destroyed a whole rank of thrice nine Fomors who were unlucky
enough to be within sight of it.
An ancient poem has handed down the secret of this magic stone. It is
there called a _tathlum_, meaning a “concrete ball” such as the ancient
Irish warriors used sometimes to make out of the brains of dead enemies
hardened with lime.
“A tathlum, heavy, fiery, firm,
Which the Tuatha Dé Danann had with them,
It was that broke the fierce Balor’s eye,
Of old, in the battle of the great armies.
“The blood of toads and furious bears,
And the blood of the noble lion,
The blood of vipers and of Osmuinn’s trunks;—
It was of these the tathlum was composed.
“The sand of the swift Armorian sea,
And the sand of the teeming Red Sea;—
All these, being first purified, were used
In the composition of the tathlum.
“Briun, the son of Bethar, no mean warrior,
Who on the ocean’s eastern border reigned;—
It was he that fused, and smoothly formed,
It was he that fashioned the tathlum.
“To the hero Lugh was given
This concrete ball,—no soft missile;—
In Mag Tuireadh of shrieking wails,
From his hand he threw the tathlum.”[137]
This blinding of the terrible Balor turned the fortunes of the fight;
for the Fomors wavered, and the Morrígú came and encouraged the people
of the goddess Danu with a song, beginning “Kings arise to the battle”,
so that they took fresh heart, and drove the Fomors headlong back to
their country underneath the sea.
Such was the battle which is called in Irish _Mag Tuireadh na
b-Fomorach_, that is to say, the “Plain of the Towers of the Fomors”,
and, more popularly, the “Battle of Moytura the Northern”, to
distinguish it from the other Battle of Moytura fought by the Tuatha Dé
Danann against the Fir Bolgs farther to the south. More of the Fomors
were killed in it, says the ancient manuscript, than there are stars in
the sky, grains of sand on the sea-shore, snow-flakes in winter, drops
of dew upon the meadows in spring-time, hailstones during a storm,
blades of grass trodden under horses’ feet, or Manannán son of Lêr’s
white horses, the waves of the sea, when a tempest breaks. The “towers”
or pillars said to mark the graves of the combatants still stand upon
the plain of Carrowmore, near Sligo, and form, in the opinion of Dr.
Petrie, the finest collection of prehistoric monuments in the world,
with the sole exception of Carnac, in Brittany.[138] Megalithic
structures of almost every kind are found among them—stone cairns with
dolmens in their interiors, dolmens standing open and alone, dolmens
surrounded by one, two, or three circles of stones, and circles without
dolmens—to the number of over a hundred. Sixty-four of such prehistoric
remains stand together upon an elevated plateau not more than a mile
across, and make the battle-field of Moytura, though the least known,
perhaps the most impressive of all primeval ruins. What they really
commemorated we may never know, but, in all probability, the place was
the scene of some important and decisive early battle, the monuments
marking the graves of the chieftains who were interred as the result of
it. Those which have been examined were found to contain burnt wood and
the half-burnt bones of men and horses, as well as implements of flint
and bone. The actors, therefore, were still in the Neolithic Age.
Whether the horses were domesticated ones buried with their riders, or
wild ones eaten at the funeral feasts, it would be hard to decide. The
history of the real event must have been long lost even at the early
date when its relics were pointed out as the records of a battle between
the gods and the giants of Gaelic myth.
The Tuatha Dé Danann, following the routed Fomors, overtook and captured
Bress. He begged Lugh to spare his life.
“What ransom will you pay for it?” asked Lugh.
“I will guarantee that the cows of Ireland shall always be in milk,”
promised Bress.
But, before accepting, Lugh took counsel with his druids.
“What good will that be,” they decided, “if Bress does not also lengthen
the lives of the cows?”
This was beyond the power of Bress to do; so he made another offer.
“Tell your people,” he said to Lugh, “that, if they will spare my life,
they shall have a good wheat harvest every year.”
But they said: “We already have the spring to plough and sow in, the
summer to ripen the crops, the autumn for reaping, and the winter in
which to eat the bread; and that is all we want.”
Lugh told this to Bress. But he also said: “You shall have your life in
return for a much less service to us than that.”
“What is it?” asked Bress.
“Tell us when we ought to plough, when we ought to sow, and when we
ought to harvest.”
Bress replied: “You should plough on a Tuesday, sow on a Tuesday, and
harvest on a Tuesday.”
And this lying maxim (says the story) saved Bress’s life.
Lugh, the Dagda, and Ogma still pursued the Fomors, who had carried off
in their flight the Dagda’s harp. They followed them into the submarine
palace where Bress and Elathan lived, and there they saw the harp
hanging on the wall. This harp of the Dagda’s would not play without its
owner’s leave. The Dagda sang to it:
“Come, oak of the two cries!
Come, hand of fourfold music!
Come, summer! Come, winter!
Voice of harps, bellows[139], and flutes!”
For the Dagda’s harp had these two names; it was called “Oak of the two
cries” and “Hand of fourfold music”.
It leaped down from the wall, killing nine of the Fomors as it passed,
and came into the Dagda’s hand. The Dagda played to the Fomors the three
tunes known to all clever harpists—the weeping-tune, the laughing-tune,
and the sleeping-tune. While he played the weeping-tune, they were bowed
with weeping; while he played the laughing-tune, they rocked with
laughter; and when he played the sleeping-tune, they all fell asleep.
And while they slept, Lugh, the Dagda, and Ogma got away safely.
Next, the Dagda brought the black-maned heifer which he had, by the
advice of Angus son of the Young, obtained from Bress. The wisdom of
Angus had been shown in this advice, for it was this very heifer that
the cattle of the people of the goddess Danu were accustomed to follow,
whenever it lowed. Now, when it lowed, all the cattle which the Fomors
had taken away from the Tuatha Dé Danann came back again.
Yet the power of the Fomors was not wholly broken. Four of them still
carried on a desultory warfare by spoiling the corn, fruit, and milk of
their conquerors. But the Morrígú and Badb and Mider and Angus pursued
them, and drove them out of Ireland for ever.[140]
Last of all, the Morrígú and Badb went up on to the summits of all the
high mountains of Ireland, and proclaimed the victory. All the lesser
gods who had not been in the battle came round and heard the news. And
Badb sang a song which began:
“Peace mounts to the heavens,
The heavens descend to earth,
Earth lies under the heavens,
Everyone is strong ...”,
but the rest of it has been lost and forgotten.
Then she added a prophecy in which she foretold the approaching end of
the divine age, and the beginning of a new one in which summers would be
flowerless and cows milkless and women shameless and men strengthless,
in which there would be trees without fruit and seas without fish, when
old men would give false judgments and legislators make unjust laws,
when warriors would betray one another, and men would be thieves, and
there would be no more virtue left in the world.
-----
Footnote 135:
This chapter is, with slight interpolations, based upon the Harleian
MS. in the British Museum numbered 5280, and called the _Second Battle
of Moytura_, or rather from translations made of it by Dr. Whitley
Stokes, published in the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XII, and by M. de
Jubainville in his _L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande_.
Footnote 136:
I have interpolated this picturesque passage from the account of a
fight between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors in the “Fate of the
Children of Tuirenn”. O’Curry’s translation in _Atlantis_, Vol. IV.
Footnote 137:
This translation was made by Eugene O’Curry from an ancient vellum MS.
formerly belonging to Mr. W. Monck Mason, but since sold by auction in
London. See his _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, Lecture
XII, p. 252.
Footnote 138:
See Fergusson: _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 180, &c.
Footnote 139:
? Bagpipes.
Footnote 140:
_Book of Fermoy._ See _Revue Celtique_, Vol. I.—“The Ancient Irish
Goddess of War”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X
THE CONQUEST OF THE GODS BY MORTALS
Of what Badb had in mind when she uttered this prophecy we have no
record. But it was true. The twilight of the Irish gods was at hand. A
new race was coming across the sea to dispute the ownership of Ireland
with the people of the goddess Danu. And these new-comers were not
divinities like themselves, but men like ourselves, ancestors of the
Gaels.
This story of the conquest of the gods by mortals—which seems such a
strange one to us—is typically Celtic. The Gaelic mythology is the only
one which has preserved it in any detail; but the doctrine would seem to
have been common at one time to all the Celts. It was, however, of less
shame to the gods than would otherwise have been; for men were of as
divine descent as themselves. The dogma of the Celts was that men were
descended from the god of death, and first came from the Land of the
Dead to take possession of the present world.[141] Caesar tells us, in
his too short account of the Gauls, that they believed themselves to be
sprung from Dis Pater, the god of the underworld.[142] In the Gaelic
mythology Dis Pater was called Bilé, a name which has for root the
syllable _bel_, meaning “to die”. The god Beli in British mythology was
no doubt the same person, while the same idea is expressed by the same
root in the name of Balor, the terrible Fomor whose glance was
death.[143]
The post-Christian Irish chroniclers, seeking to reconcile Christian
teachings with the still vital pagan mythology by changing the gods into
ancient kings and incorporating them into the annals of the country,
with appropriate dates, also disposed of the genuine early doctrine by
substituting Spain for Hades, and giving a highly-fanciful account of
the origin and wanderings of their ancestors. To use a Hibernicism,
appropriate in this connection, the first Irishman was a Scythian called
Fenius Farsa. Deprived of his own throne, he had settled in Egypt, where
his son Niul married a daughter of the reigning Pharaoh. Her name was
Scôta, and she had a son called Goidel, whose great-grandson was named
Eber Scot, the whole genealogy being probably invented to explain the
origin of the three names by which the Gaels called themselves—Finn,
Scot, and Goidel. Fenius and his family and clan were turned out of
Egypt for refusing to join in the persecution of the children of Israel,
and sojourned in Africa for forty-two years. Their wanderings took them
to “the altars of the Philistines, by the Lake of Osiers”; then, passing
between Rusicada and the hilly country of Syria, they travelled through
Mauretania as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and thence landed in
Spain, where they lived many years, greatly increasing and multiplying.
The same route is given by the twelfth-century British historian,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, as that taken by Brutus and the Trojans when they
came to colonize Britain.[144] Its only connection with any kind of fact
is that it corresponds fairly well with what ethnologists consider must
have been the westward line of migration taken, not, curiously enough,
by the Aryan Celts, but by the pre-Aryan Iberians.
It is sufficient for us to find the first men in Spain, remembering that
“Spain” stood for the Celtic Hades, or Elysium. In this country Bregon,
the father of two sons, Bilé and Ith, had built a watch-tower, from
which, one winter’s evening, Ith saw, far off over the seas, a land he
had never noticed before. “It is on winter evenings, when the air is
pure, that man’s eyesight reaches farthest”, remarks the old tract
called the “Book of Invasions”,[145] gravely accounting for the fact
that Ith saw Ireland from Spain.
Wishing to examine it nearer, he set sail with thrice thirty warriors,
and landed without mishap at the mouth of the River Scêné.[146] The
country seemed to him to be uninhabited, and he marched with his men
towards the north. At last he reached Aileach, near the present town of
Londonderry.
Here he found the three reigning kings of the people of the goddess
Danu, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Greiné, the sons of Ogma, and
grandsons of the Dagda. These had succeeded Nuada the Silver-handed,
killed in the battle with the Fomors; and had met, after burying their
predecessor in a tumulus called Grianan Aileach, which still stands on
the base of the Inishowen Peninsula, between Lough Swilly and Lough
Foyle, to divide his kingdom among them. Unable to arrive at any
partition satisfactory to all, they appealed to the new-comer to
arbitrate.
The advice of Ith was moral rather than practical. “Act according to the
laws of justice” was all that he would say to the claimants; and then he
was indiscreet enough to burst into enthusiastic praises of Ireland for
its temperate climate and its richness in fruit, honey, wheat, and fish.
Such sentiments from a foreigner seemed to the Tuatha Dé Danann
suggestive of a desire to take the country from them. They conspired
together and treacherously killed Ith at a place since called “Ith’s
Plain”. They, however, spared his followers, who returned to “Spain”,
taking their dead leader’s body with them. The indignation there was
great, and Milé, Bilé’s son and Ith’s nephew, determined to go to
Ireland and get revenge.
Milé therefore sailed with his eight sons and their wives. Thirty-six
chiefs, each with his shipful of warriors, accompanied him. By the magic
arts of their druid, Amergin of the Fair Knee, they discovered the exact
place at which Ith had landed before them, and put in to shore there.
Two alone failed to reach it alive. The wife of Amergin died during the
voyage, and Aranon, a son of Milé, on approaching the land, climbed to
the top of the mast to obtain a better view, and, falling off, was
drowned. The rest disembarked safely upon the first of May.
Amergin was the first to land. Planting his right foot on Irish soil, he
burst into a poem preserved in both the Book of Lecan and the Book of
Ballymote.[147] It is a good example of the pantheistic philosophy of
the Celtic races, and a very close parallel to it is contained in an
early Welsh poem, called the “Battle of the Trees”, and attributed to
the famous bard Taliesin.[148] “I am the wind that blows upon the sea,”
sang Amergin; “I am the ocean wave; I am the murmur of the surges; I am
seven battalions; I am a strong bull; I am an eagle on a rock; I am a
ray of the sun; I am the most beautiful of herbs; I am a courageous wild
boar; I am a salmon in the water; I am a lake upon a plain; I am a
cunning artist; I am a gigantic, sword-wielding champion; I can shift my
shape like a god. In what direction shall we go? Shall we hold our
council in the valley or on the mountain-top? Where shall we make our
home? What land is better than this island of the setting sun? Where
shall we walk to and fro in peace and safety? Who can find you clear
springs of water as I can? Who can tell you the age of the moon but I?
Who can call the fish from the depths of the sea as I can? Who can cause
them to come near the shore as I can? Who can change the shapes of the
hills and headlands as I can? I am a bard who is called upon by
seafarers to prophesy. Javelins shall be wielded to avenge our wrongs. I
prophesy victory. I end my song by prophesying all other good
things.”[149]
The Welsh bard Taliesin sings in the same strain as the druid Amergin
his unity with, and therefore his power over, all nature, animate and
inanimate. “I have been in many shapes”, he says, “before I attained a
congenial form. I have been a narrow blade of a sword; I have been a
drop in the air; I have been a shining star; I have been a word in a
book; I have been a book in the beginning; I have been a light in a
lantern a year and a half; I have been a bridge for passing over
threescore rivers; I have journeyed as an eagle; I have been a boat on
the sea; I have been a director in battle; I have been a sword in the
hand; I have been a shield in fight; I have been the string of a harp; I
have been enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There is nothing in
which I have not been.” It is strange to find Gael and Briton combining
to voice almost in the same words this doctrine of the mystical Celts,
who, while still in a state of semi-barbarism, saw, with some of the
greatest of ancient and modern philosophers, the One in the Many, and a
single Essence in all the manifold forms of life.
The Milesians (for so, following the Irish annalists, it will be
convenient to call the first Gaelic settlers in Ireland) began their
march on Tara, which was the capital of the Tuatha Dé Danann, as it had
been in earlier days the chief fortress of the Fir Bolgs, and would in
later days be the dwelling of the high kings of Ireland. On their way
they met with a goddess called Banba, the wife of Mac Cuill. She greeted
Amergin. “If you have come to conquer Ireland,” she said, “your cause is
no just one.” “Certainly it is to conquer it we have come,” replied
Amergin, without condescending to argue upon the abstract morality of
the matter. “Then at least grant me one thing,” she asked. “What is
that?” replied Amergin. “That this island shall be called by my name.”
“It shall be,” replied Amergin.
A little farther on, they met a second goddess, Fotla, the wife of Mac
Cecht, who made the same request, and received the same answer from
Amergin.
Last of all, at Uisnech, the centre of Ireland, they came upon the third
of the queens, Eriu, the wife of Mac Greiné. “Welcome, warriors,” she
cried. “To you who have come from afar this island shall henceforth
belong, and from the setting to the rising sun there is no better land.
And your race will be the most perfect the world has ever seen.” “These
are fair words and a good prophecy,” said Amergin. “It will be no thanks
to you,” broke in Donn, Milé’s eldest son. “Whatever success we have we
shall owe to our own strength.” “That which I prophesy has no concern
with you,” retorted the goddess, “and neither you nor your descendants
will live to enjoy this island.” Then, turning to Amergin, she, too,
asked that Ireland might be called after her. “It shall be its principal
name,” Amergin promised.
And so it has happened. Of the three ancient names of Ireland—Banba,
Fotla, and Eriu—the last, in its genitive form of “Erinn”, is the one
that has survived.
The invaders came to Tara, then called Drumcain, that is, the “Beautiful
Hill”. Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Greiné met them, with all the host
of the Gaelic gods. As was usual, they held a parley. The people of the
goddess Danu complained that they had been taken by surprise, and the
Milesians admitted that to invade a country without having first warned
its inhabitants was not strictly according to the courtesies of
chivalrous warfare. The Tuatha Dé Danann proposed to the invaders that
they should leave the island for three days, during which they
themselves would decide whether to fight for their kingdom or to
surrender it; but the Milesians did not care for this, for they knew
that, as soon as they were out of the island, the Tuatha Dé Danann would
oppose them with druidical enchantments, so that they would not be able
to make a fresh landing. In the end, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac
Greiné offered to submit the matter to the arbitration of Amergin, the
Milesians’ own lawgiver, with the express stipulation that, if he gave
an obviously partial judgment, he was to suffer death at their hands.
Donn asked his druid if he were prepared to accept this very delicate
duty. Amergin replied that he was, and at once delivered the first
judgment pronounced by the Milesians in Ireland.
“The men whom we found dwelling in the land, to them is possession due
by right.
It is therefore your duty to set out to sea over nine green waves;
And if you shall be able to effect a landing again in spite of them,
You are to engage them in battle, and I adjudge to you the land in
which you found them living.
I adjudge to you the land wherein you found them dwelling, by the right
of battle.
But although you may desire the land which these people possess, yet
yours is the duty to show them justice.
I forbid you from injustice to those you have found in the land,
however you may desire to obtain it.”[150]
This judgment was considered fair by both parties. The Milesians retired
to their ships, and waited at a distance of nine waves’ length from the
land until the signal was given to attack, while the Tuatha Dé Danann,
drawn up upon the beach, were ready with their druidical spells to
oppose them.
The signal was given, and the Milesians bent to their oars. But they had
hardly started before they discovered that a strong wind was blowing
straight towards them from the shore, so that they could make no
progress. At first they thought it might be a natural breeze, but Donn
smelt magic in it. He sent a man to climb the mast of his ship, and see
if the wind blew as strong at that height as it did at the level of the
sea. The man returned, reporting that the air was quite still “up
aloft”. Evidently it was a druidical wind. But Amergin soon coped with
it. Lifting up his voice, he invoked the Land of Ireland itself, a power
higher than the gods it sheltered.
“I invoke the land of Eriu!
The shining, shining sea!
The fertile, fertile hill!
The wooded vale!
The river abundant, abundant in water!
The fishful, fishful lake!”
In such strain runs the original incantation, one of those magic
formulas whose power was held by ancient, and still is held by savage,
races to reside in their exact consecrated wording rather than in their
meaning. To us it sounds nonsense, and so no doubt it did to those who
put the old Irish mythical traditions into literary shape; for a later
version expands and explains it as follows:[151]—
“I implore that we may regain the land of Erin,
We who have come over the lofty waves,
This land whose mountains are great and extensive,
Whose streams are clear and numerous,
Whose woods abound with various fruit,
Its rivers and waterfalls are large and beautiful,
Its lakes are broad and widely spread,
It abounds with fountains on elevated grounds!
May we gain power and dominion over its tribes!
May we have kings of our own ruling at Tara!
May Tara be the regal residence of our many succeeding kings!
May the Milesians be the conquerors of its people!
May our ships anchor in its harbours!
May they trade along the coast of Erin!
May Eremon be its first ruling monarch!
May the descendants of Ir and Eber be mighty kings!
I implore that we may regain the land of Erin,
I implore!”
The incantation proved effectual. The Land of Ireland was pleased to be
propitious, and the druidical wind dropped down.
But success was not quite so easy as they had hoped. Manannán, son of
the sea and lord of headlands, shook his magic mantle at them, and
hurled a fresh tempest out over the deep. The galleys of the Milesians
were tossed helplessly on the waves; many sank with their crews. Donn
was among the lost, thus fulfilling Eriu’s prophecy, and three other
sons of Milé also perished. In the end, a broken remnant, after long
beating about the coasts, came to shore at the mouth of the River Boyne.
They landed; and Amergin, from the shore, invoked the aid of the sea as
he had already done that of the land.
“Sea full of fish!
Fertile land!
Fish swarming up!
Fish there!
Under-wave bird!
Great fish!
Crab’s hole!
Fish swarming up!
Sea full of fish!”
which, being interpreted like the preceding charm, seems to have meant:
“May the fishes of the sea crowd in shoals to the land for our use!
May the waves of the sea drive forth to the shore abundance of fish!
May the salmon swim abundantly into our nets!
May all kinds of fish come plentifully to us from the sea!
May its flat-fishes also come in abundance!
This poem I compose at the sea-shore that fishes may swim in shoals to
our coast.”
Then, gathering their forces, they marched on the people of the goddess
Danu.
Two battles were fought, the first in Glenn Faisi, a valley of the
Slieve Mish Mountains, south of Tralee, and the second at Tailtiu, now
called Telltown. In both, the gods were beaten. Their three kings were
killed by the three surviving sons of Milé—Mac Cuill by Eber, Mac Cecht
by Eremon, and Mac Greiné by the druid Amergin. Defeated and
disheartened, they gave in, and, retiring beneath the earth, left the
surface of the land to their conquerors.
From this day begins the history of Ireland according to the annalists.
Milé’s eldest son, Donn, having perished, the kingdom fell by right to
the second, Eremon. But Eber, the third son, backed by his followers,
insisted upon a partition, and Ireland was divided into two equal parts.
At the end of a year, however, war broke out between the brothers; Eber
was killed in battle, and Eremon took the sole rule.
-----
Footnote 141:
It may be noted that, according to Welsh legend, the ancestors of the
Cymri came from Gwlâd yr Hâv, the “Land of Summer”, _i.e._ the Celtic
Other World.
Footnote 142:
_De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 143:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_, chap. X. Rhys: _Hibbert
Lectures_—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
Footnote 144:
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _Historia Britonum_, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 145:
Contained in the _Book of Leinster_ and other ancient manuscripts.
Footnote 146:
Now called the Kenmare River.
Footnote 147:
This poem and the three following ones, all attributed to Amergin, are
said to be the oldest Irish literary records.
Footnote 148:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem VIII, in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales,
Vol. I, p. 276.
Footnote 149:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_. See also the _Transactions of
the Ossianic Society_, Vol. V.
Footnote 150:
Translated by Professor Owen Connellan in Vol. V of the _Transactions
of the Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 151:
The original versions of this and the following charm are from De
Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, the later from Professor
Owen Connellan’s translations in Vol. V of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_. “Some of these poems”, explains the Professor,
“have been glossed by writers or commentators of the Middle Ages,
without which it would be almost impossible now for any Irish scholar
to interpret them; and it is proper to remark that the translation
accompanying them is more in accordance with this gloss than with the
original text.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI
THE GODS IN EXILE
But though mortals had conquered gods upon a scale unparalleled in
mythology, they had by no means entirely subdued them. Beaten in battle,
the people of the goddess Danu had yet not lost their divine attributes,
and could use them either to help or hurt. “Great was the power of the
Dagda”, says a tract preserved in the Book of Leinster, “over the sons
of Milé, even after the conquest of Ireland; for his subjects destroyed
their corn and milk, so that they must needs make a treaty of peace with
the Dagda. Not until then, and thanks to his good-will, were they able
to harvest corn and drink the milk of their cows.”[152] The basis of
this lost treaty seems to have been that the Tuatha Dé Danann, though
driven from the soil, should receive homage and offerings from their
successors. We are told in the verse _dinnsenchus_ of Mag Slecht, that—
“Since the rule
Of Eremon, the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha”.[153]
Dispossessed of upper earth, the gods had, however, to seek for new
homes. A council was convened, but its members were divided between two
opinions. One section of them chose to shake the dust of Ireland off its
disinherited feet, and seek refuge in a paradise over-seas, situate in
some unknown, and, except for favoured mortals, unknowable island of the
west, the counterpart in Gaelic myth of the British
... “island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea”[154]
—a land of perpetual pleasure and feasting, described variously as the
“Land of Promise” (_Tir Tairngiré_), the “Plain of Happiness” (_Mag
Mell_), the “Land of the Living” (_Tir-nam-beo_), the “Land of the
Young” (_Tir-nan-ōg_), and “Breasal’s Island” (_Hy-Breasail_). Celtic
mythology is full of the beauties and wonders of this mystic country,
and the tradition of it has never died out. Hy-Breasail has been set
down on old maps as a reality again and again;[155] some pioneers in the
Spanish seas thought they had discovered it, and called the land they
found “Brazil”; and it is still said, by lovers of old lore, that a
patient watcher, after long gazing westward from the westernmost shores
of Ireland or Scotland, may sometimes be lucky enough to catch a glimpse
against the sunset of its—
“summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea”.
Of these divine emigrants the principal was Manannán son of Lêr. But,
though he had cast in his lot beyond the seas, he did not cease to visit
Ireland. An old Irish king, Bran, the son of Febal, met him, according
to a seventh-century poem, as Bran journeyed to, and Manannán from, the
earthly paradise. Bran was in his boat, and Manannán was driving a
chariot over the tops of the waves, and he sang:[156]
“Bran deems it a marvellous beauty
In his coracle across the clear sea:
While to me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain on which he rides about.
“What is a clear sea
For the prowed skiff in which Bran is,
That is a happy plain with profusion of flowers
To me from the chariot of two wheels.
“Bran sees
The number of waves beating across the clear sea:
I myself see in Mag Mon[157]
Red-headed flowers without fault.
“Sea-horses glisten in summer
As far as Bran has stretched his glance:
Rivers pour forth a stream of honey
In the land of Manannán son of Lêr.
“The sheen of the main, on which thou art,
The white hue of the sea, on which thou rowest about,
Yellow and azure are spread out,
It is land, and is not rough.
“Speckled salmon leap from the womb
Of the white sea, on which thou lookest:
They are calves, they are coloured lambs
With friendliness, without mutual slaughter.
“Though but one chariot-rider is seen
In Mag Mell[158] of many flowers,
There are many steeds on its surface,
Though them thou seest not.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Along the top of a wood has swum
Thy coracle across ridges,
There is a wood of beautiful fruit
Under the prow of thy little skiff.
“A wood with blossom and fruit,
On which is the vine’s veritable fragrance;
A wood without decay, without defect,
On which are leaves of a golden hue.”
And, after this singularly poetical enunciation of the philosophical and
mystical doctrine that all things are, under their diverse forms,
essentially the same, he goes on to describe to Bran the beauties and
pleasures of the Celtic Elysium.
But there were others—indeed, the most part—of the gods who refused to
expatriate themselves. For these residences had to be found, and the
Dagda, their new king, proceeded to assign to each of those who stayed
in Ireland a _sídh_. These _sídhe_ were barrows, or hillocks, each being
the door to an underground realm of inexhaustible splendour and delight,
according to the somewhat primitive ideas of the Celts. A description is
given of one which the Dagda kept for himself, and out of which his son
Angus cheated him, which will serve as a fair example of all. There were
apple-trees there always in fruit, and one pig alive and another ready
roasted, and the supply of ale never failed. One may still visit in
Ireland the _sídhe_ of many of the gods, for the spots are known, and
the traditions have not died out. To Lêr was given _Sídh
Fionnachaidh_,[159] now known as the “Hill of the White Field”, on the
top of Slieve Fuad, near Newtown Hamilton, in County Armagh. Bodb Derg
received a _sídh_ called by his own name, _Sídh Bodb_[160], just to the
south of Portumna, in Galway. Mider was given the _sídh_ of _Bri Leith_,
now called Slieve Golry, near Ardagh, in County Longford. Ogma’s _sídh_
was called _Airceltrai_; to Lugh was assigned _Rodrubân_; Manannán’s
son, Ilbhreach, received _Sídh Eas Aedha Ruaidh_[161], now the Mound of
Mullachshee, near Ballyshannon, in Donegal; Fionnbharr[162] had _Sídh
Meadha_, now “Knockma”, about five miles west of Tuam, where, as present
king of the fairies, he is said to live to-day; while the abodes of
other gods of lesser fame are also recorded. For himself the Dagda
retained two, both near the River Boyne, in Meath, the best of them
being the famous Brugh-na-Boyne. None of the members of the Tuatha Dé
Danann were left unprovided for, save one.
It was from this time that the Gaelic gods received the name by which
the peasantry know them to-day—_Aes Sídhe_, the “People of the Hills”,
or, more shortly, the _Sídhe_. Every god, or fairy, is a
_Fer-Sídhe_[163], a “Man of the Hill”; and every goddess a _Bean-Sídhe_,
a “Woman of the Hill”, the _banshee_ of popular legend.[164]
The most famous of such fairy hills are about five miles from
Drogheda.[165] They are still connected with the names of the Tuatha Dé
Danann, though they are now not called their dwelling-places, but their
tombs. On the northern bank of the Boyne stand seventeen barrows, three
of which—Knowth, Dowth, and New Grange—are of great size. The last
named, largest, and best preserved, is over 300 feet in diameter, and 70
feet high, while its top makes a platform 120 feet across. It has been
explored, and Roman coins, gold torques, copper pins, and iron rings and
knives have been found in it; but what else it may have once contained
will never be known, for, like Knowth and Dowth, it was thoroughly
ransacked by Danish spoilers in the ninth century. It is entered by a
square doorway, the rims of which are elaborately ornamented with a kind
of spiral pattern. This entrance leads to a stone passage, more than 60
feet long, which gradually widens and rises, until it opens into a
chamber with a conical dome 20 feet high. On each side of this central
chamber is a recess, with a shallow oval stone basin in it. The huge
slabs of which the whole is built are decorated upon both the outer and
the inner faces with the same spiral pattern as the doorway.
The origin of these astonishing prehistoric monuments is unknown, but
they are generally attributed to the race that inhabited Ireland before
the Celts. Gazing at marvellous New Grange, one might very well echo the
words of the old Irish poet Mac Nia, in the Book of Ballymote:
“Behold the _Sídh_ before your eyes,
It is manifest to you that it is a king’s mansion,
Which was built by the firm Dagda,
It was a wonder, a court, an admirable hill.”[166]
It is not, however, with New Grange, or even with Knowth or Dowth, that
the Dagda’s name is now associated. It is a smaller barrow, nearer to
the Boyne, which is known as the “Tomb of the Dagda”. It has never been
opened, and Dr. James Fergusson, the author of _Rude Stone Monuments_,
who holds the Tuatha Dé Danann to have been a real people, thinks that
“the bones and armour of the great Dagda may still be found in his
honoured grave”.[167] Other Celtic scholars might not be so sanguine,
though verses as old as the eleventh century assert that the Tuatha Dé
Danann used the brughs for burial. It was about this period that the
mythology of Ireland was being rewoven into spurious history. The poem,
which is called the “Chronicles of the Tombs”, not only mentions the
“Monument of the Dagda” and the “Monument of the Morrígú”, but also
records the last resting-places of Ogma, Etain, Cairpré, Lugh, Boann,
and Angus.
We have for the present, however, to consider Angus in a far less
sepulchral light. He is, indeed, very much alive in the story to be
related. The “Son of the Young” was absent when the distribution of the
_sídhe_ was made. When he returned, he came to his father, the Dagda,
and demanded one. The Dagda pointed out to him that they had all been
given away. Angus protested, but what could be done? By fair means,
evidently nothing; but by craft, a great deal. The wily Angus appeared
to reconcile himself to fate, and only begged his father to allow him to
stay at the _sídh_ of Brugh-na-Boyne (New Grange) for a day and a night.
The Dagda agreed to this, no doubt congratulating himself on having got
out of the difficulty so easily. But when he came to Angus to remind him
that the time was up, Angus refused to go. He had been granted, he
claimed, day and night, and it is of days and nights that time and
eternity are composed; therefore there was no limit to his tenure of the
_sídh_. The logic does not seem very convincing to our modern minds, but
the Dagda is said to have been satisfied with it. He abandoned the best
of his two palaces to his son, who took peaceable possession of it. Thus
it got a second name, that of the _Sídh_ or _Brugh_ of the “Son of the
Young”.[168]
The Dagda does not, after this, play much active part in the history of
the people of the goddess Danu. We next hear of a council of gods to
elect a fresh ruler. There were five candidates for the vacant
throne—Bodb the Red, Mider, Ilbhreach[169] son of Manannán, Lêr, and
Angus himself, though the last-named, we are told, had little real
desire to rule, as he preferred a life of freedom to the dignities of
kingship. The Tuatha Dé Danann went into consultation, and the result of
their deliberation was that their choice fell upon Bodb the Red, for
three reasons—firstly, for his own sake; secondly, for his father, the
Dagda’s sake; and thirdly, because he was the Dagda’s eldest son. The
other competitors approved this choice, except two. Mider refused to
give hostages, as was the custom, to Bodb Derg, and fled with his
followers to “a desert country round Mount Leinster”, in County Carlow,
while Lêr retired in great anger to Sídh Fionnachaidh, declining to
recognize or obey the new king.
Why Lêr and Mider should have so taken the matter to heart is difficult
to understand, unless it was because they were both among the oldest of
the gods. The indifference of Angus is easier to explain. He was the
Gaelic Eros, and was busy living up to his character. At this time, the
object of his love was a maiden who had visited him one night in a
dream, only to vanish when he put out his arms to embrace her. All the
next day, we are told, Angus took no food. Upon the following night, the
unsubstantial lady again appeared, and played and sang to him. That
following day, he also fasted. So things went on for a year, while Angus
pined and wasted for love. At last the physicians of the Tuatha Dé
Danann guessed his complaint, and told him how fatal it might be to him.
Angus asked that his mother Boann might be sent for, and, when she came,
he told her his trouble, and implored her help. She went to the Dagda
and begged him, if he did not wish to see his son die of unrequited
love, a disease that all Diancecht’s medicine and Goibniu’s magic could
not heal, to find the dream-maiden. The Dagda could do nothing himself,
but he sent to Bodb the Red, and the new king of the gods sent in turn
to the lesser deities of Ireland, ordering all of them to search for
her. For a year she could not be found, but at last the disconsolate
lover received a message, charging him to come and see if he could
recognize the lady of his dreams. Angus came, and knew her at once, even
though she was surrounded by thrice fifty attendant nymphs. Her name was
Caer, and she was the daughter of Etal Ambuel, who had a _sídh_ at
Uaman, in Connaught. Bodb the Red demanded her for Angus in marriage,
but her father declared that he had no control over her. She was a
swan-maiden, he said; and every year, as soon as summer was over, she
went with her companions to a lake called “Dragon-Mouth”, and there all
of them became swans. But, refusing to be thus put off, Angus waited in
patience until the day of the magical change, and then went down to the
shore of the lake. There, surrounded by thrice fifty swans, he saw Caer,
herself a swan surpassing all the rest in beauty and whiteness. He
called to her, proclaiming his passion and his name, and she promised to
be his bride, if he too would become a swan. He agreed, and with a word
she changed him into swan-shape, and thus they flew side by side to
Angus’s _sídh_, where they retook the human form, and, no doubt, lived
happily as long as could be expected of such changeable immortals as
pagan deities.[170]
Meanwhile, the people of the goddess Danu were justly incensed against
both Lêr and Mider. Bodb the Red made a yearly war upon Mider in his
_sídh_, and many of the divine race were killed on either side. But
against Lêr, the new king of the gods refused to move, for there had
been a great affection between them. Many times Bodb Derg tried to
regain Lêr’s friendship by presents and compliments, but for a long time
without success.
At last Lêr’s wife died, to the sea-god’s great sorrow. When Bodb the
Red heard the news, he sent a messenger to Lêr, offering him one of his
own foster-daughters, Aebh[171], Aeife[172], and Ailbhe[173], the
children of Ailioll of Arran. Lêr, touched by this, came to visit Bodb
the Red at his _sídh_, and chose Aebh for his wife. “She is the eldest,
so she must be the noblest of them,” he said. They were married, and a
great feast made; and Lêr took her back with him to Sídh Fionnachaidh.
Aebh bore four children to Lêr. The eldest was a daughter called Finola,
the second was a son called Aed; the two others were twin boys called
Fiachra and Conn, but in giving birth to those Aebh died.
Bodb the Red then offered Lêr another of his foster-children, and he
chose the second, Aeife. Every year Lêr and Aeife and the four children
used to go to Manannán’s “Feast of Age”, which was held at each of the
_sídhe_ in turn. The four children grew up to be great favourites among
the people of the goddess Danu.
But Aeife was childless, and she became jealous of Lêr’s children; for
she feared that he would love them more than he did her. She brooded
over this until she began, first to hope for, and then to plot their
deaths. She tried to persuade her servants to murder them, but they
would not. So she took the four children to Lake Darvra (now called
Lough Derravargh in West Meath), and sent them into the water to bathe.
Then she made an incantation over them, and touched them, each in turn,
with a druidical wand, and changed them into swans.
But, though she had magic enough to alter their shapes, she had not the
power to take away their human speech and minds. Finola turned, and
threatened her with the anger of Lêr and of Bodb the Red when they came
to hear of it. She, however, hardened her heart, and refused to undo
what she had done. The children of Lêr, finding their case a hopeless
one, asked her how long she intended to keep them in that condition.
“You would be easier in mind,” she said, “if you had not asked the
question; but I will tell you. You shall be three hundred years here, on
Lake Darvra; and three hundred years upon the Sea of Moyle[174], which
is between Erin and Alba; and three hundred years more at Irros
Domnann[175] and the Isle of Glora in Erris[176]. Yet you shall have two
consolations in your troubles; you shall keep your human minds, and yet
suffer no grief at knowing that you have been changed into swans, and
you shall be able to sing the softest and sweetest songs that were ever
heard in the world.”
Then Aeife went away and left them. She returned to Lêr, and told him
that the children had fallen by accident into Lake Darvra, and were
drowned.
But Lêr was not satisfied that she spoke the truth, and went in haste to
the lake, to see if he could find traces of them. He saw four swans
close to the shore, and heard them talking to one another with human
voices. As he approached, they came out of the water to meet him. They
told him what Aeife had done, and begged him to change them back into
their own shapes. But Lêr’s magic was not so powerful as his wife’s, and
he could not.
Nor even could Bodb the Red—to whom Lêr went for help,—for all that he
was king of the gods. What Aeife had done could not be undone. But she
could be punished for it! Bodb ordered his foster-daughter to appear
before him, and, when she came, he put an oath on her to tell him truly
“what shape of all others, on the earth, or above the earth, or beneath
the earth, she most abhorred, and into which she most dreaded to be
transformed”. Aeife was obliged to answer that she most feared to become
a demon of the air. So Bodb the Red struck her with his wand, and she
fled from them, a shrieking demon.
All the Tuatha Dé Danann went to Lake Darvra to visit the four swans.
The Milesians heard of it, and also went; for it was not till long after
this that gods and mortals ceased to associate. The visit became a
yearly feast. But, at the end of three hundred years, the children of
Lêr were compelled to leave Lake Darvra, and go to the Sea of Moyle, to
fulfil the second period of their exile.
They bade farewell to gods and men, and went. And, for fear lest they
might be hurt by anyone, the Milesians made it law in Ireland that no
man should harm a swan, from that time forth for ever.
The children of Lêr suffered much from tempest and cold on the stormy
Sea of Moyle, and they were very lonely. Once only during that long
three hundred years did they see any of their friends. An embassy of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, led by two sons of Bodb the Red, came to look for
them, and told them all that had happened in Erin during their exile.
At last that long penance came to an end, and they went to Irros Domnann
and Innis Glora for their third stage. And while it was wearily dragging
through, Saint Patrick came to Ireland, and put an end to the power of
the gods for ever. They had been banned and banished when the children
of Lêr found themselves free to return to their old home. Sídh
Fionnechaidh was empty and deserted, for Lêr had been killed by Caoilté,
the cousin of Finn mac Coul.[177]
So, after long, vain searching for their lost relatives, they gave up
hope, and returned to the Isle of Glora. They had a friend there, the
Lonely Crane of Inniskea[178], which has lived upon that island ever
since the beginning of the world, and will be still sitting there on the
day of judgment. They saw no one else until, one day, a man came to the
island. He told them that he was Saint Caemhoc[179], and that he had
heard their story. He brought them to his church, and preached the new
faith to them, and they believed on Christ, and consented to be
baptised. This broke the pagan spell, and, as soon as the holy water was
sprinkled over them, they returned to human shape. But they were very
old and bowed—three aged men and an ancient woman. They did not live
long after this, and Saint Caemhoc, who had baptised them, buried them
all together in one grave.[180]
But, in telling this story, we have leaped nine hundred years—a great
space in the history even of gods. We must retrace our steps, if not
quite to the days of Eremon and Eber, sons of Milé, and first kings of
Ireland, at any rate to the beginning of the Christian era.
At this time Eochaid Airem was high king of Ireland, and reigned at
Tara; while, under him, as vassal monarchs, Conchobar mac Nessa ruled
over the Red Branch Champions of Ulster; Curoi son of Daire[181], was
king of Munster; Mesgegra was king of Leinster; and Ailell, with his
famous queen, Medb, governed Connaught.
Shortly before, among the gods, Angus Son of the Young, had stolen away
Etain, the wife of Mider. He kept her imprisoned in a bower of glass,
which he carried everywhere with him, never allowing her to leave it,
for fear Mider might recapture her. The Gaelic Pluto, however, found out
where she was, and was laying plans to rescue her, when a rival of
Etain’s herself decoyed Angus away from before the pleasant
prison-house, and set his captive free. But, instead of returning her to
Mider, she changed the luckless goddess into a fly, and threw her into
the air, where she was tossed about in great wretchedness at the mercy
of every wind.
At the end of seven years, a gust blew her on to the roof of the house
of Etair, one of the vassals of Conchobar, who was celebrating a feast.
The unhappy fly, who was Etain, was blown down the chimney into the room
below, and fell, exhausted, into a golden cup full of beer, which the
wife of the master of the house was just going to drink. And the woman
drank Etain with the beer.
But, of course, this was not the end of her—for the gods cannot really
die,—but only the beginning of a new life. Etain was reborn as the
daughter of Etair’s wife, no one knowing that she was not of mortal
lineage. She grew up to be the most beautiful woman in Ireland.
When she was twenty years old, her fame reached the high king, who sent
messengers to see if she was as fair as men reported. They saw her, and
returned to the king full of her praises. So Eochaid himself went to pay
her a visit. He chose her to be his queen, and gave her a splendid
dowry.
It was not till then that Mider heard of her. He came to her in the
shape of a young man, beautifully dressed, and told her who she really
was, and how she had been his wife among the people of the goddess Danu.
He begged her to leave the king, and come with him to his _sídh_ at Bri
Leith. But Etain refused with scorn.
“Do you think,” she said, “that I would give up the high king of Ireland
for a person whose name and kindred I do not know, except from his own
lips?”
The god retired, baffled for the time. But one day, as King Eochaid sat
in his hall, a stranger entered. He was dressed in a purple tunic, his
hair was like gold, and his eyes shone like candles.
The king welcomed him.
“But who are you?” he asked; “for I do not know you.”
“Yet I have known you a long time,” returned the stranger.
“Then what is your name?”
“Not a very famous one. I am Mider of Bri Leith.”
“Why have you come here?”
“To challenge you to a game of chess.”
“I am a good chess-player,” replied the king, who was reputed to be the
best in Ireland.
“I think I can beat you,” answered Mider.
“But the chess-board is in the queen’s room, and she is asleep,”
objected Eochaid.
“It does not matter,” replied Mider. “I have brought a board with me
which can be in no way worse than yours.”
He showed it to the king, who admitted that the boast was true. The
chess-board was made of silver set in precious stones, and the pieces
were of gold.
“Play!” said Mider to the king.
“I never play without a wager,” replied Eochaid.
“What shall be the stake?” asked Mider.
“I do not care,” replied Eochaid.
“Good!” returned Mider. “Let it be that the loser pays whatever the
winner demands.”
“That is a wager fit for a king,” said Eochaid.
They played, and Mider lost. The stake that Eochaid claimed from him was
that Mider and his subjects should make a road through Ireland. Eochaid
watched the road being made, and noticed how Mider’s followers yoked
their oxen, not by the horns, as the Gaels did, but at the shoulders,
which was better. He adopted the practice, and thus got his nickname,
Airem, that is, “The Ploughman”.
After a year, Mider returned and challenged the king again, the terms to
be the same as before. Eochaid agreed with joy; but, this time, he lost.
“I could have beaten you before, if I had wished,” said Mider, “and now
the stake I demand is Etain, your queen.”
The astonished king, who could not for shame go back upon his word,
asked for a year’s delay. Mider agreed to return upon that day year to
claim Etain. Eochaid consulted with his warriors, and they decided to
keep watch through the whole of the day fixed by Mider, and let no one
pass in or out of the royal palace till sunset. For Eochaid held that if
the fairy king could not get Etain upon that one day, his promise would
be no longer binding on him.
So, when the day came, they barred the door and guarded it, but suddenly
they saw Mider among them in the hall. He stood beside Etain, and sang
this song to her, setting out the pleasures of the homes of the gods
under the enchanted hills.
“O fair lady! will you come with me
To a wonderful country which is mine,
Where the people’s hair is of golden hue,
And their bodies the colour of virgin snow?
“There no grief or care is known;
White are their teeth, black their eyelashes;
Delight of the eye is the rank of our hosts,
With the hue of the fox-glove on every cheek.
“Crimson are the flowers of every mead,
Gracefully speckled as the blackbird’s egg;
Though beautiful to see be the plains of Inisfail[182]
They are but commons compared to our great plains.
“Though intoxicating to you be the ale-drink of Inisfail,
More intoxicating the ales of the great country;
The only land to praise is the land of which I speak,
Where no one ever dies of decrepit age.
“Soft sweet streams traverse the land;
The choicest of mead and of wine;
Beautiful people without any blemish;
Love without sin, without wickedness.
“We can see the people upon all sides,
But by no one can we be seen;
The cloud of Adam’s transgression it is
That prevents them from seeing us.
“O lady, should you come to my brave land,
It is golden hair that will be on your head;
Fresh pork, beer, new milk, and ale,
You there with me shall have, O fair lady!”[183]
Then Mider greeted Eochaid, and told him that he had come to take away
Etain, according to the king’s wager. And, while the king and his
warriors looked on helplessly, he placed one arm round the now willing
woman, and they both vanished. This broke the spell that hung over
everyone in the hall; they rushed to the door, but all they could see
were two swans flying away.
The king would not, however, yield to the god. He sent to every part of
Ireland for news of Etain, but his messengers all came back without
having been able to find her. At last, a druid named Dalân learned, by
means of ogams carved upon wands of yew, that she was hidden under
Mider’s _sídh_ of Bri Leith. So Eochaid marched there with an army, and
began to dig deep into the abode of the gods of which the “fairy hill”
was the portal. Mider, as terrified as was the Greek god Hades when it
seemed likely that the earth would be rent open,[184] and his domains
laid bare to the sight, sent out fifty fairy maidens to Eochaid, every
one of them having the appearance of Etain. But the king would only be
content with the real Etain, so that Mider, to save his _sídh_, was at
last obliged to give her up. And she lived with the King of Ireland
after that until the death of both of them.
But Mider never forgave the insult. He bided his time for three
generations, until Eochaid and Etain had a male descendant. For they had
no son, but only a daughter called Etain, like her mother, and this
second Etain had a daughter called Messbuachallo, who had a son called
Conairé, surnamed “the Great”. Mider and the gods wove the web of fate
round Conairé, so that he and all his men died violent deaths.[185]
-----
Footnote 152:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, p. 269.
Footnote 153:
See chap. IV—“The Religion of the Ancient Britons and Druidism”.
Footnote 154:
Tennyson: _Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur_.
Footnote 155:
See Wood-Martin: _Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland_, Vol I, pp.
213-215.
Footnote 156:
The following verses are taken from Dr. Kuno Meyer’s translation of
the romance entitled _The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, published in
Mr. Nutt’s Grimm Library, Vol. IV.
Footnote 157:
The Plain of Sports.
Footnote 158:
The Happy Plain.
Footnote 159:
Pronounced _Shee Finneha_.
Footnote 160:
Pronounced _Shee Bove_.
Footnote 161:
Pronounced _Shee Assaroe_.
Footnote 162:
Pronounced _Finnvar_.
Footnote 163:
Pronounced _Far-shee_.
Footnote 164:
O’Curry: _Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History_,
Appendix, p. 505.
Footnote 165:
See Fergusson: _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 200-213.
Footnote 166:
O’Curry: _MS. Materials_, p. 505.
Footnote 167:
Fergusson: _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 209.
Footnote 168:
This story is contained in the Book of Leinster.
Footnote 169:
Pronounced _Ilbrec_.
Footnote 170:
This story, called the _Dream of Angus_, will be found translated into
English by Dr. Edward Müller in Vol. III. of the _Revue Celtique_,
from an eighteenth-century MS. in the British Museum.
Footnote 171:
Pronounced _Aive_.
Footnote 172:
Pronounced _Aiva_.
Footnote 173:
Pronounced _Alva_.
Footnote 174:
Now called “North Channel”.
Footnote 175:
The Peninsula of Erris, in Mayo.
Footnote 176:
A small island off Benmullet.
Footnote 177:
See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.
Footnote 178:
An island off the coast of Mayo. Its lonely crane was one of the
“Wonders of Ireland”, and is still an object of folk-belief.
Footnote 179:
Pronounced _Kemoc_.
Footnote 180:
This famous story of the _Fate of the Children of Lêr_ is not found in
any MS. earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. A
translation of it has been published by Eugene O’Curry in _Atlantis_,
Vol. IV, from which the present abridgment is made.
Footnote 181:
Pronounced _Dara_.
Footnote 182:
A poetical name for Ireland.
Footnote 183:
Translated by O’Curry, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_,
Lecture IX, p. 192, 193.
Footnote 184:
_Iliad_, Book XX.
Footnote 185:
The story of Mider’s revenge and Conairé’s death is told in the
romance _Bruidhen Dá Derga_, “The Destruction of Da Derga’s Fort”,
translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes, Eugene O’Curry, and Professor Zimmer
from the original text.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
THE IRISH ILIAD
With Eber and Eremon, sons of Milé, and conquerors of the gods, begins a
fresh series of characters in Gaelic tradition—the early “Milesian”
kings of Ireland. Though monkish chroniclers have striven to find
history in the legends handed down concerning them, they are none the
less almost as mythical as the Tuatha Dé Danann. The first of them who
has the least appearance of reality is Tigernmas, who is recorded to
have reigned a hundred years after the coming of the Milesians. He seems
to have been what is sometimes called a “Culture-king”, bearing much the
same kind of relation to Ireland as Theseus bore to Athens or Minos to
Crete. During his reign, nine new lakes and three new rivers broke forth
from beneath the earth to give their waters to Erin. Under his auspices,
gold was first smelted, ornaments of gold and silver were first made,
and clothes first dyed. He is said to have perished mysteriously[186]
with three-fourths of the men of Erin while worshipping Cromm Cruaich on
the field of Mag Slecht. In him Mr. Nutt sees, no doubt rightly, the
great mythical king who, in almost all national histories, closes the
strictly mythological age, and inaugurates a new era of less obviously
divine, if hardly less apocryphal characters.[187]
In spite, however, of the worship of the Tuatha Dé Danann instituted by
Eremon, we find the early kings and heroes of Ireland walking very
familiarly with their gods. Eochaid Airem, high king of Ireland, was
apparently reckoned a perfectly fit suitor for the goddess Etain, and
proved a far from unsuccessful rival of Mider, the Gaelic Pluto.[188]
And adventures of love or war were carried quite as cheerfully among the
_sídh_ dwellers by Eochaid’s contemporaries—Conchobar son of Nessa, King
of Ulster, Curoi son of Daire, King of Munster, Mesgegra, King of
Leinster, and Ailell and Medb[189], King and Queen of Connaught.
All these figures of the second Gaelic cycle (that of the heroes of
Ulster, and especially of their great champion, Cuchulainn) lived,
according to Irish tradition, at about the beginning of the Christian
era. Conchobar, indeed, is said to have expired in a fit of rage on
hearing of the death of Christ.[190]
But this is a very transparent monkish interpolation into the original
story. A quite different view is taken by most modern scholars, who
would see gods and not men in all the legendary characters of the Celtic
heroic cycles. Upon such a subject, however, one may legitimately take
sides. Were King Conchobar and his Ultonian champions, Finn and his
Fenians, Arthur and his Knights once living men round whom the
attributes of gods have gathered, or were they ancient deities renamed
and stripped of some of their divinity to make them more akin to their
human worshippers? History or mythology? A mingling, perhaps, of both.
Cuchulainn[191] may have been the name of a real Gaelic warrior, however
suspiciously he may now resemble the sun-god, who is said to have been
his father. King Conchobar may have been the real chief of a tribe of
Irish Celts before he became an adumbration of the Gaelic sky-god. It is
the same problem that confronts us in dealing with the heroic legends of
Greece and Rome. Were Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Paris, Æneas gods,
demi-gods, or men? Let us call them all alike—whether they be Greek or
Trojan heroes, Red Branch Champions, or followers of the Gaelic Finn or
the British Arthur—demi-gods. Even so, they stand definitely apart from
the older gods who were greater than they were.
We are stretching no point in calling them demi-gods, for they were
god-descended.[192] Cuchulainn, the greatest hero of the Ulster cycle,
was doubly so; for on his mother’s side he was the grandson of the
Dagda, while Lugh of the Long Hand is said to have been his father. His
mother, Dechtiré, daughter of Maga, the daughter of Angus “Son of the
Young”, was half-sister to King Conchobar, and all the other principal
heroes were of hardly less lofty descent. It is small wonder that they
are described in ancient manuscripts[193] as terrestrial gods and
goddesses.
“Terrestrial” they may have been in form, but their acts were
superhuman. Indeed, compared with the more modest exploits of the heroes
of the “Iliad”, they were those of giants. Where Greek warriors slew
their tens, these Ultonians despatched their hundreds. They came home
after such exploits so heated that their cold baths boiled over. When
they sat down to meat, they devoured whole oxen, and drank their mead
from vats. With one stroke of their favourite swords they beheaded hills
for sport. The gods themselves hardly did more, and it is easy to
understand that in those old days not only might the sons of gods look
upon the daughters of men and find them fair, but immortal women also
need not be too proud to form passing alliances with mortal men.
Some of the older deities seem to have already passed out of memory at
the time of the compilation of the Ulster cycle. At any rate, they make
no appearance in it. Dead Nuada rests in the _grianan_ of Aileach; Ogma
lies low in _sídh_ Airceltrai; while the Dagda, thrust into the
background by his son Angus, mixes himself very little in the affairs of
Erin.[194] But the Morrígú is no less eager in encouraging human or
semi-divine heroes to war than she was when she revived the fainting
spirits of the folk of the goddess Danu at the Battle of Moytura. The
gods who appear most often in the cycle of the Red Branch of Ulster are
the same that have lived on throughout with the most persistent
vitality. Lugh the Long-handed, Angus of the Brugh, Mider, Bodb the Red,
and Manannán son of Lêr, are the principal deities that move in the
background of the stage where the chief parts are now played by mortals.
But, to make up for the loss of some of the greater divine figures, the
ranks of the gods are being recruited from below. All manner of inferior
divinities claim to be members of the tribe of the goddess Danu. The
goblins and sprites and demons of the air who shrieked around battles
are described collectively as Tuatha Dé Danann.[195]
As for the Fomors, they have lost their distinctive names, though they
are still recognized as dwellers beneath the deep, who at times raid
upon the coast, and do battle with the heroes over whom Conchobar ruled
at Emain Macha.
This seat of his government, the traditionary site of which is still
marked by an extensive prehistoric entrenchment called Navan Fort[196],
near Armagh, was the centre of an Ulster that stretched southwards as
far as the Boyne, and round its ruler gathered such a galaxy of warriors
as Ireland had never seen before, or will again. They called themselves
the “Champions of the Red Branch”; there was not one of them who was not
a hero; but they are all dwarfed by one splendid figure—Cuchulainn,
whose name means “Culann’s Hound”. Mr. Alfred Nutt calls him “the Irish
Achilles”[197], while Professor Rhys would rather see in him a Heracles
of the Gaels.[198] Like Achilles, he was the chosen hero of his people,
invincible in battle, and yet “at once to early death and sorrows doomed
beyond the lot of man”, while, like Heracles, his life was a series of
wonderful exploits and labours. It matters little enough; for the lives
of all such mythical heroes must be of necessity somewhat alike.
If Achilles and Heracles were, as some think, personifications of the
sun, Cuchulainn is not less so. Most of his attributes, as the old
stories record them, are obviously solar symbols. He seemed generally
small and insignificant, yet, when he was at his full strength, no one
could look him in the face without blinking, while the heat of his
constitution melted snow for thirty feet all round him. He turned red
and hissed as he dipped his body into its bath—the sea. Terrible was his
transformation when sorely oppressed by his enemies, as the sun is by
mist, storm, or eclipse. At such times “among the aërial clouds over his
head were visible the virulent pouring showers and sparks of ruddy fire
which the seething of his savage wrath caused to mount up above him. His
hair became tangled about his head, as it had been branches of a red
thorn-bush stuffed into a strongly-fenced gap.... Taller, thicker, more
rigid, longer than mast of a great ship was the perpendicular jet of
dusky blood which out of his scalp’s very central point shot upwards and
then was scattered to the four cardinal points; whereby was formed a
magic mist of gloom resembling the smoky pall that drapes a regal
dwelling, what time a king at nightfall of a winter’s day draws near to
it.”[199]
So marvellous a being[200] was, of course, of marvellous birth. His
mother, Dechtiré, was on the point of being married to an Ulster
chieftain called Sualtam, and was sitting at the wedding-feast, when a
may-fly flew into her cup of wine and was unwittingly swallowed by her.
That same afternoon she fell into a deep sleep, and in her dream the
sun-god Lugh appeared to her, and told her that it was he whom she had
swallowed, and bore within her. He ordered her and her fifty attendant
maidens to come with him at once, and he put upon them the shapes of
birds, so that they were not seen to go. Nothing was heard of them
again. But one day, months later, a flock of beautiful birds appeared
before Emain Macha, and drew out its warriors in their chariots to hunt
them.
They followed the birds till nightfall, when they found themselves at
the Brugh on the Boyne, where the great gods had their homes. As they
looked everywhere for shelter, they suddenly saw a splendid palace. A
tall and handsome man, richly dressed, came out and welcomed them and
led them in. Within the hall were a beautiful and noble-faced woman and
fifty maidens, and on the tables were the richest meats and wines, and
everything fit for the needs of warriors. So they rested there the
night, and, during the night, they heard the cry of a new-born child.
The next morning, the man told them who he was, and that the woman was
Conchobar’s half-sister Dechtiré, and he ordered them to take the child,
and bring it up among the warriors of Ulster. So they brought him back,
together with his mother and the maidens, and Dechtiré married Sualtam,
and all the chiefs, champions, druids, poets, and lawgivers of Ulster
vied with one another in bringing up the mysterious infant.
At first they called him Setanta; and this is how he came to change his
name. While still a child, he was the strongest of the boys of Emain
Macha, and the champion in their sports. One day he was playing hurley
single-handed against all the others, and beating them, when Conchobar
the King rode by with his nobles on the way to a banquet given by
Culann, the chief smith of the Ultonians. Conchobar called to the boy,
inviting him to go with them, and he replied that, when the game was
finished, he would follow. As soon as the Ulster champions were in
Culann’s hall, the smith asked the king’s leave to unloose his terrible
watch-dog, which was as strong and fierce as a hundred hounds; and
Conchobar, forgetting that the boy was to follow them, gave his
permission. Immediately the hound saw Setanta coming, it rushed at him,
open-mouthed. But the boy flung his playing-ball into its mouth, and
then, seizing it by the hind-legs, dashed it against a rock till he had
killed it.
The smith Culann was very angry at the death of his dog; for there was
no other hound in the world like him for guarding a house and flocks. So
Setanta promised to find and train up another one, not less good, for
Culann, and, until it was trained, to guard the smith’s house as though
he were a dog himself. This is why he was called Cuchulainn, that is,
“Culann’s Hound”; and Cathbad the Druid prophesied that the time would
come when the name would be in every man’s mouth.
Not long after this, Cuchulainn overheard Cathbad giving druidical
instruction, and one of his pupils asking him what that day would be
propitious for. Cathbad replied that, if any young man first took arms
on that day, his name would be greater than that of any other hero’s,
but his life would be short. At once, the boy went to King Conchobar,
and demanded arms and a chariot. Conchobar asked him who had put such a
thought into his head; and he answered that it was Cathbad the Druid. So
Conchobar gave him arms and armour, and sent him out with a charioteer.
That evening, Cuchulainn brought back the heads of three champions who
had killed many of the warriors of Ulster. He was then only seven years
old.
The women of Ulster so loved Cuchulainn after this that the warriors
grew jealous, and insisted that a wife should be found for him. But
Cuchulainn was very hard to please. He would have only one, Emer[201],
the daughter of Forgall the Wily, the best maiden in Ireland for the six
gifts—the gift of beauty, the gift of voice, the gift of sweet speech,
the gift of needlework, the gift of wisdom, and the gift of chastity. So
he went to woo her, but she laughed at him for a boy. Then Cuchulainn
swore by the gods of his people that he would make his name known
wherever the deeds of heroes were spoken of, and Emer promised to marry
him if he could take her from her warlike kindred.
When Forgall, her father, came to know of this betrothal, he devised a
plan to put an end to it. He went to visit King Conchobar at Emain
Macha. There he pretended to have heard of Cuchulainn for the first
time, and he saw him do all his feats. He said, loud enough to be
overheard by all, that if so promising a youth dared to go to the Island
of Scathach the Amazon, in the east of Alba,[202] and learn all her
warrior-craft, no living man would be able to stand before him. It was
hard to reach Scathach’s Isle, and still harder to return from it, and
Forgall felt certain that, if Cuchulainn went, he would get his death
there.
Of course, nothing would now satisfy Cuchulainn but going. His two
friends, Laegaire the Battle-winner and Conall the Victorious, said that
they would go with him. But, before they had gone far, they lost heart
and turned back. Cuchulainn went on alone, crossing the Plain of
Ill-Luck, where men’s feet stuck fast, while sharp grasses sprang up and
cut them, and through the Perilous Glens, full of devouring wild beasts,
until he came to the Bridge of the Cliff, which rose on end, till it
stood straight up like a ship’s mast, as soon as anyone put foot on it.
Three times Cuchulainn tried to cross it, and thrice he failed. Then
anger came into his heart, and a magic halo shone round his head, and he
did his famous feat of the “hero’s salmon leap”, and landed, in one
jump, on the middle of the bridge, and then slid down it as it rose up
on end.
Scathach was in the _dún_, with her two sons. Cuchulainn went to her,
and put his sword to her breast, and threatened to kill her if she would
not teach him all her own skill in arms. So he became her pupil, and she
taught him all her war-craft. In return, Cuchulainn helped her against a
rival queen of the Amazons, called Aoife[203]. He conquered Aoife, and
compelled her to make peace with Scathach.
Then he returned to Ireland, and went in a scythed chariot to Forgall’s
palace. He leaped over its triple walls, and slew everyone who came near
him. Forgall met his death in trying to escape Cuchulainn’s rage. He
found Emer, and placed her in his chariot, and drove away; and, every
time that Forgall’s warriors came up to them, he turned, and slew a
hundred, and put the rest to flight. He reached Emain Macha in safety,
and he and Emer were married there.
And so great, after this, were the fame of Cuchulainn’s prowess and
Emer’s beauty that the men and women of Ulster yielded them
precedence—him among the warriors and her among the women—in every feast
and banquet at Emain Macha.
But all that Cuchulainn had done up to this time was as nothing to the
deeds he did in the great war which all the rest of Ireland, headed by
Ailill and Medb, King and Queen of Connaught, made upon Ulster, to get
the Brown Bull of Cualgne.[204] This Bull was one of two, of fairy
descent. They had originally been the swineherds of two of the gods,
Bodb, King of the Sídhe of Munster, and Ochall Ochne, King of the Sídhe
of Connaught. As swineherds they were in perpetual rivalry; then, the
better to carry on their quarrel, they changed themselves into two
ravens, and fought for a year; next they turned into water-monsters,
which tore one another for a year in the Suir and a year in the Shannon;
then they became human again and fought as champions; and ended by
changing into eels. One of these eels went into the River Cruind, in
Cualgne[205], in Ulster, where it was swallowed by a cow belonging to
Daire of Cualgne, and the other into the spring of Uaran Garad, in
Connaught, where it passed into the belly of a cow of Queen Medb’s. Thus
were born those two famous beasts, the Brown Bull of Ulster and the
White-horned Bull of Connaught.
Now the White-horned was of such proud mind that he scorned to belong to
a woman, and he went out of Medb’s herds into those of her husband
Ailill. So that when Ailill and Medb one day, in their idleness, counted
up their possessions, to set them off one against the other, although
they were equal in every other thing, in jewels and clothes and
household vessels, in sheep and horses and swine and cattle, Medb had no
one bull that was worthy to be set beside Ailill’s White-horned.
Refusing to be less in anything than her husband, the proud queen sent
heralds, with gifts and compliments, to Daire, asking him to lend her
the Brown Bull for a year. Daire would have done so gladly had not one
of Medb’s messengers been heard boasting in his cups that, if Daire had
not lent the Brown Bull of his own free-will, Medb would have taken it.
This was reported to Daire, who at once swore that she should never have
it. Medb’s messenger returned; and the Queen of Connaught, furious at
his refusal, vowed that she would take it by force.
She assembled the armies of all the rest of Ireland to go against
Ulster, and made Fergus son of Roy, an Ulster champion who had
quarrelled with King Conchobar, its leader. They expected to have an
easy victory, for the warriors of Ulster were at that time lying under a
magic weakness which fell upon them for many days in each year, as the
result of a curse laid upon them, long before, by a goddess who had been
insulted by one of Conchobar’s ancestors. Medb called up a prophetess of
her people to foretell victory. “How do you see our hosts?” asked the
queen of the seeress. “I see crimson on them; I see red,” she replied.
“But the warriors of Ulster are lying in their sickness. Nay, how do you
see our men?” “I see them all crimson; I see them all red,” she
repeated. And then she added to the astonished queen, who had expected a
quite different foretelling: “For I see a small man doing deeds of arms,
though there are many wounds on his smooth skin; the hero-light shines
round his head, and there is victory on his forehead; he is richly
clothed, and young and beautiful and modest, but he is a dragon in
battle. His appearance and his valour are those of Cuchulainn of
Muirthemne; who that ‘Culann’s hound’ from Muirthemne may be, I do not
know; but I know this, that all our army will be reddened by him. He is
setting out for battle; he will hew down your hosts; the slaughter he
shall make will be long remembered; there will be many women crying over
the bodies mangled by the Hound of the Forge whom I see before me
now.”[206] For Cuchulainn was, for some reason unknown to us, the only
man in Ulster who was not subject to the magic weakness, and therefore
it fell upon him to defend Ulster single-handed against the whole of
Medb’s army.
In spite of the injury done him by King Conchobar, Fergus still kept a
love for his own country. He had not the heart to march upon the
Ultonians without first secretly sending a messenger to warn them. So
that, though all the other champions of the Red Branch were helpless,
Cuchulainn was watching the marches when the army came.
Now begins the story of the _aristeia_ of the Gaelic hero. It is, after
the manner of epics, the record of a series of single combats, in each
of which Cuchulainn slays his adversary. Man after man comes against
him, and not one goes back. In the intervals between these duels,
Cuchulainn harasses the army with his sling, slaying a hundred men a
day. He kills Medb’s pet dog, bird, and squirrel, and creates such
terror that no one dares to stir out of the camp. Medb herself has a
narrow escape; for one of her serving-women, who puts on her mistress’s
golden head-dress, is killed by a stone flung from Cuchulainn’s sling.
The great queen determines to see with her own eyes this marvellous hero
who is holding all her warriors at bay. She sends an envoy, asking him
to come and parley with her. Cuchulainn agrees, and, at the meeting,
Medb is amazed at his boyish look. She finds it hard to believe that it
is this beardless stripling of seventeen who is killing her champions,
until the whole army seems as though it were melting away. She offers
him her own friendship and great honours and possessions in Connaught if
he will forsake Conchobar. He refuses; but she offers it again and
again. At last Cuchulainn indignantly declares that the next man who
comes with such a message will do so at his peril. One bargain, however,
he will make. He is willing to fight one of the men of Ireland every
day, and, while the duel lasts, the main army may march on; but, as soon
as Cuchulainn has killed his man, it must halt until the next day. Medb
agrees to this, thinking it better to lose one man a day than a hundred.
Medb makes the same offer to every famous warrior, to induce him to go
against Cuchulainn. The reward for the head of the champion will be the
hand of her daughter, Findabair[207]. In spite of this, not one of the
aspirants to the princess can stand before Cuchulainn. All perish; and
Findabair, when she finds out how she is being promised to a fresh
suitor every day, dies of shame. But, while Cuchulainn is engaged in
these combats, Medb sends men who scour Ulster for the brown bull, and
find him, and drive him, with fifty heifers, into her camp.
Meanwhile the Æs Sídhe, the fairy god-clan, are watching the
half-divine, half-mortal hero, amazed at his achievements. His exploits
kindle love in the fierce heart of the Morrígú, the great war-goddess.
Cuchulainn is awakened from sleep by a terrible shout from the north. He
orders his driver, Laeg, to yoke the horses to his chariot, so that he
may find out who raised it. They go in the direction from which the
sound had come, and meet with a woman in a chariot drawn by a red horse.
She has red eyebrows, and a red dress, and a long, red cloak, and she
carries a great, gray spear. He asks her who she is, and she tells him
that she is a king’s daughter, and that she has fallen in love with him
through hearing of his exploits. Cuchulainn says that he has other
things to think of than love. She replies that she has been giving him
her help in his battles, and will still do so; and Cuchulainn answers
that he does not need any woman’s help. “Then,” says she, “if you will
not have my love and help, you shall have my hatred and enmity. When you
are fighting with a warrior as good as yourself, I will come against you
in various shapes and hinder you, so that he shall have the advantage.”
Cuchulainn draws his sword, but all he sees is a hoodie crow sitting on
a branch. He knows from this that the red woman in the chariot was the
great queen of the gods.
The next day, a warrior named Loch went to meet Cuchulainn. At first he
refused to fight one who was beardless; so Cuchulainn smeared his chin
with blackberry juice, until it looked as though he had a beard. While
Cuchulainn was fighting Loch, the Morrígú came against him three
times—first as a heifer which tried to overthrow him, and next as an eel
which got beneath his feet as he stood in running water, and then as a
wolf which seized hold of his right arm. But Cuchulainn broke the
heifer’s leg, and trampled upon the eel, and put out one of the wolf’s
eyes, though, every one of these three times, Loch wounded him. In the
end, Cuchulainn slew Loch with his invincible spear, the _gae
bolg_[208], made of a sea-monster’s bones. The Morrígú came back to
Cuchulainn, disguised as an old woman, to have her wounds healed by him,
for no one could cure them but he who had made them. She became his
friend after this, and helped him.
But the fighting was so continuous that Cuchulainn got no sleep, except
just for a while, from time to time, when he might rest a little, with
his head on his hand and his hand on his spear and his spear on his
knee. So that his father, Lugh the Long-handed, took pity on him and
came to him in the semblance of a tall, handsome man in a green cloak
and a gold-embroidered silk shirt, and carrying a black shield and a
five-pronged spear. He put him into a sleep of three days and three
nights, and, while he rested, he laid druidical herbs on to all his
wounds, so that, in the end, he rose up again completely healed and as
strong as at the very beginning of the war. While he was asleep, the
boy-troop of Emain Macha, Cuchulainn’s old companions, came and fought
instead of him, and slew three times their own number, but were all
killed.
It was at this time that Medb asked Fergus to go and fight with
Cuchulainn. Fergus answered that he would never fight against his own
foster-son. Medb asked him again and again, and at last he went, but
without his famous sword. “Fergus, my guardian,” said Cuchulainn, “it is
not safe for you to come out against me without your sword.” “If I had
the sword,” replied Fergus, “I would not use it on you.” Then Fergus
asked Cuchulainn, for the sake of all he had done for him in his
boy-hood, to pretend to fight with him, and then give way before him and
run away. Cuchulainn answered that he was very loth to be seen running
from any man. But Fergus promised Cuchulainn that, if Cuchulainn would
run away from Fergus then, Fergus would run away from Cuchulainn at some
future time, whenever Cuchulainn wished. Cuchulainn agreed to this, for
he knew that it would be for the profit of Ulster. So they fought a
little, and then Cuchulainn turned and fled in the sight of all Medb’s
army. Fergus went back; and Medb could not reproach him any more.
But she cast about to find some other way of vanquishing Cuchulainn. The
agreement made had been that only one man a day should be sent against
him. But now Medb sent the wizard Calatin with his twenty-seven sons and
his grandson all at once, for she said “they are really only one, for
they are all from Calatin’s body”. They never missed a throw with their
poisoned spears, and every man they hit died, either on the spot or
within the week. When Fergus heard of this, he was in great grief, and
he sent a man called Fiacha, an exile, like himself, from Ulster, to
watch the fight and report how it went. Now Fiacha did not mean to join
in it, but when he saw Cuchulainn assailed by twenty-nine at a time, and
overpowered, he could not restrain himself. So he drew his sword and
helped Cuchulainn, and, between them, they killed Calatin and his whole
family.
As a last resource, now, Medb sent for Ferdiad, who was the great
champion of the Iberian “Men of Domnu”, who had thrown in their lot with
Medb in the war for the Brown Bull. Ferdiad had been a companion and
fellow-pupil of Cuchulainn with Scathach, and he did not wish to fight
with him. But Medb told him that, if he refused, her satirists should
make such lampoons on him that he would die of shame, and his name would
be a reproach for ever. She also offered him great rewards and honours,
and bound herself in six sureties to keep her promises. At last,
reluctantly, he went.
Cuchulainn saw him coming, and went out to welcome him; but Ferdiad said
that he had not come as a friend, but to fight. Now Cuchulainn had been
Ferdiad’s junior and serving-boy in Scathach’s Island, and he begged him
by the memory of those old times to go back; but Ferdiad said he could
not. They fought all day, and neither had gained any advantage by
sunset. So they kissed one another, and each went back to his camp.
Ferdiad sent half his food and drink to Cuchulainn, and Cuchulainn sent
half his healing herbs and medicines to Ferdiad, and their horses were
put in the same stable, and their charioteers slept by the same fire.
And so it happened on the second day. But at the end of the third day
they parted gloomily, knowing that on the morrow one of them must fall;
and their horses were not put in the same stall that night, neither did
their charioteers sleep at the same fire. On the fourth day, Cuchulainn
succeeded in killing Ferdiad, by casting the _gae bolg_ at him from
underneath. But when he saw that he was dying, the battle-fury passed
away, and he took his old companion up in his arms, and carried him
across the river on whose banks they had fought, so that he might be
with the men of Ulster in his death, and not with the men of Ireland.
And he wept over him, and said: “It was all a game and a sport until
Ferdiad came; Oh, Ferdiad! your death will hang over me like a cloud for
ever. Yesterday he was greater than a mountain; to-day he is less than a
shadow.”
By this time, Cuchulainn was so covered with wounds that he could not
bear his clothes to touch his skin, but had to hold them off with
hazel-sticks, and fill the spaces in between with grass. There was not a
place on him the size of a needle-point that had not a wound on it,
except his left hand, which held the shield.
But Sualtam, Cuchulainn’s reputed father, had learned what a sore plight
his son was in. “Do I hear the heaven bursting, or the sea running away,
or the earth breaking open,” he cried, “or is it my son’s groaning that
I hear?” He came to look for him, and found him covered with wounds and
blood. But Cuchulainn would not let his father either weep for him or
try to avenge him. “Go, rather,” he said to him, “to Emain Macha, and
tell Conchobar that I can no longer defend Ulster against all the four
provinces of Erin without help. Tell him that there is no part of my
body on which there is not a wound, and that, if he wishes to save his
kingdom, he must make no delay.”
Sualtam mounted Cuchulainn’s war-horse, the “Gray of Battle”, and
galloped to Emain Macha. Three times he shouted: “Men are being killed,
women carried off, and cattle lifted in Ulster”. Twice he met with no
response. The third time, Cathbad the Druid roused himself from his
lethargy to denounce the man who was disturbing the king’s sleep. In his
indignation Sualtam turned away so sharply that the gray steed reared,
and struck its rider’s shield against his neck with such force that he
was decapitated. The startled horse then turned back into Conchobar’s
stronghold, and dashed through it, Sualtam’s severed head continuing to
cry out: “Men are being killed, women carried off, and cattle lifted in
Ulster.” Such a portent was enough to rouse the most drowsy. Conchobar,
himself again, swore a great oath. “The heavens are over us, the earth
is beneath us, and the sea circles us round, and, unless the heavens
fall, with all their stars, or the earth gives way beneath us, or the
sea bursts over the land, I will restore every cow to her stable, and
every woman to her home.”
He sent messengers to rally Ulster, and they gathered, and marched on
the men of Erin. And then was fought such a battle as had never been
before in Ireland. First one side, then the other, gave way and rallied
again, until Cuchulainn heard the noise of the fight, and rose up, in
spite of all his wounds, and came to it.
He called out to Fergus, reminding him how he had bound himself with an
oath to run from him when called upon to do so. So Fergus ran before
Cuchulainn, and when Medb’s army saw their leader running they broke and
fled like one man.
But the Brown Bull of Cualgne went with the army into Connaught, and
there he met Ailill’s bull, the White-horned. And he fought the
White-horned, and tore him limb from limb, and carried off pieces of him
on his horns, dropping the loins at Athlone and the liver at Trim. Then
he went back to Cualgne, and turned mad, killing all who crossed his
path, until his heart burst with bellowing, and he fell dead.
This was the end of the great war called _Táin Bó Chuailgné_, the
“Driving of the Cattle of Cooley”.
Yet, wondrous as it was, it was not the most marvellous of Cuchulainn’s
exploits. Like all the solar gods and heroes of Celtic myth, he carried
his conquests into the dark region of Hades. On this occasion the
mysterious realm is an island called _Dún Scaith_, that is, the “Shadowy
Town”, and though its king is not mentioned by name, it seems likely
that he was Mider, and that Dún Scaith is another name for the Isle of
Falga, or Man. The story, as a poem[209] relates it, is curiously
suggestive of a raid which the powers of light, and especially the
sun-gods, are represented as having made upon Hades in kindred British
myth.[210] The same loathsome combatants issue out of the underworld to
repel its assailants. There was a pit in the centre of Dún Scaith, out
of which swarmed a vast throng of serpents. No sooner had Cuchulainn and
the heroes of Ulster disposed of these than “a house full of toads” was
loosed upon them—“sharp, beaked monsters” (says the poem), which caught
them by the noses, and these were in turn replaced by fierce dragons.
Yet the heroes prevailed and carried off the spoil—three cows of magic
qualities and a marvellous cauldron in which was always found an
inexhaustible supply of meat, with treasure of silver and gold to boot.
They started back for Ireland in a coracle, the three cows being towed
behind, with the treasure in bags around their necks. But the gods of
Hades raised a storm which wrecked their ship, and they had to swim
home. Here Cuchulainn’s more than mortal prowess came in useful. We are
told that he floated nine men to shore on each of his hands, and thirty
on his head, while eight more, clinging to his sides, used him as a kind
of life-belt.
After this, came the tragedy of Cuchulainn’s career, the unhappy duel in
which he killed his only son, not knowing who he was. The story is one
common, apparently, to the Aryan nations, for it is found not only in
the Gaelic, but in the Teutonic and Persian mythic traditions. It will
be remembered that Cuchulainn defeated a rival of Scathach the Amazon,
named Aoife, and compelled her to render submission. The hero had also a
son by Aoife, and he asked that the boy should be called Conlaoch[211],
and that, when he was of age to travel, he should be sent to Ireland to
find his father. Aoife promised this, but, a little later, news came to
her that Cuchulainn had married Emer. Mad with jealousy, she determined
to make the son avenge her slight upon the father. She taught him the
craft of arms until there was no more that he could learn, and sent him
to Ireland. Before he started, she laid three _geasa_[212] upon him. The
first was that he was not to turn back, the second that he was never to
refuse a challenge, and the third that he was never to tell his name.
He arrived at Dundealgan[213], Cuchulainn’s home, and the warrior Conall
came down to meet him, and asked him his name and lineage. He refused to
tell them, and this led to a duel, in which Conall was disarmed and
humiliated. Cuchulainn next approached him, asked the same question, and
received the same answer. “Yet if I was not under a command,” said
Conlaoch, who did not know he was speaking to his father, “there is no
man in the world to whom I would sooner tell it than to yourself, for I
love your face.” Even this compliment could not stave off the fight, for
Cuchulainn felt it his duty to punish the insolence of this stripling
who refused to declare who he was. The fight was a fierce one, and the
invincible Cuchulainn found himself so pressed that the “hero-light”
shone round him and transfigured his face. When Conlaoch saw this, he
knew who his antagonist must be, and purposely flung his spear slantways
that it might not hit his father. But before Cuchulainn understood, he
had thrown the terrible _gae bolg_. Conlaoch, dying, declared his name;
and so passionate was Cuchulainn’s grief that the men of Ulster were
afraid that in his madness he might wreak his wrath upon them. They,
therefore, called upon Cathbad the Druid to put him under a glamour.
Cathbad turned the waves of the sea into the appearance of armed men,
and Cuchulainn smote them with his sword until he fell prone from
weariness.
It would take too long to relate all the other adventures and exploits
of Cuchulainn. Enough has been done if any reader of this chapter should
be persuaded by it to study the wonderful saga of ancient Ireland for
himself. We must pass on quickly to its tragical close—the hero’s death.
Medb, Queen of Connaught, had never forgiven him for keeping back her
army from raiding Ulster, and for slaying so many of her friends and
allies. So she went secretly to all those whose relations Cuchulainn had
killed (and they were many), and stirred them up to revenge.
Besides this, she had sent the three daughters of Calatin the Wizard,
born after their father’s death at the hands of Cuchulainn, to Alba and
to Babylon to learn witchcraft. When they came back they were mistresses
of every kind of sorcery, and could make the illusion of battle with an
incantation.
And, lest she might fail even then, she waited with patience until the
Ultonians were again in their magic weakness, and there was no one to
help Cuchulainn but himself.
Lugaid[214], son of the Curoi, King of Munster whom Cuchulainn had
killed for the sake of Blathnat, Mider’s daughter, gathered the Munster
men; Erc, whose father had also fallen at Cuchulainn’s hands, called the
men of Meath; the King of Leinster brought out his army; and, with
Ailill and Medb and all Connaught, they marched into Ulster again, and
began to ravage it.
Conchobar called his warriors and druids into council, to see if they
could find some means of putting off war until they were ready to meet
it. He did not wish Cuchulainn to go out single-handed a second time
against all the rest of Ireland, for he knew that, if the champion
perished, the prosperity of Ulster would fall with him for ever. So,
when Cuchulainn came to Emain Macha, the king set all the ladies,
singers, and poets of the court to keep his thoughts from war until the
men of Ulster had recovered from their weakness.
But while they sat feasting and talking in the “sunny house”, the three
daughters of Calatin came fluttering down on to the lawn before it, and
began gathering grass and thistles and puff-balls and withered leaves,
and turning them into the semblance of armies. And, by the same magic,
they caused shouts and shrieks and trumpet-blasts and the clattering of
arms to be heard all round the house, as though a battle were being
fought.
Cuchulainn leaped up, red with shame to think that fighting should be
going on without his help, and seized his sword. But Cathbad’s son
caught him by the arms. All the druids explained to him that what he saw
was only an enchantment raised by the children of Calatin to draw him
out to his death. But it was as much as all of them could do to keep him
quiet while he saw the phantom armies and heard the magic sounds.
So they decided that it would be well to remove Cuchulainn from Emain
Macha to _Glean-na-Bodhar_[215], the “Deaf Valley”, until all the
enchantments of the daughters of Calatin were spent. It was the quality
of this valley that, if all the men of Ireland were to shout round it at
once, no one within it would hear a sound.
But the daughters of Calatin went there too, and again they took
thistles and puff-balls and withered leaves, and put on them the
appearance of armed men; so that there seemed to be no place outside the
whole valley that was not filled with shouting battalions. And they made
the illusion of fires all around and the sound of women shrieking.
Everyone who heard that outcry was frightened at it, not only the men
and women, but even the dogs.
Though the women and the druids shouted back with all the strength of
their voices, to drown it, they could not keep Cuchulainn from hearing.
“Alas!” he cried, “I hear the men of Ireland shouting as they ravage the
province. My triumph is at an end; my fame is gone; Ulster lies low for
ever.” “Let it pass,” said Cathbad; “it is only the idle magic noises
made by the children of Calatin, who want to draw you out, to put an end
to you. Stay here with us, and take no heed of them.”
Cuchulainn obeyed; and the daughters of Calatin went on for a long time
filling the air with noises of battle. But they grew tired of it at
last; for they saw that the druids and women had outwitted them.
They did not succeed until one of them took the form of a leman of
Cuchulainn’s, and came to him, crying out that Dundealgan was burnt, and
Muirthemne ruined, and the whole province of Ulster ravaged. Then, at
last, he was deceived, and took his arms and armour, and, in spite of
all that was said to him, he ordered Laeg to yoke his chariot.
Signs and portents now began to gather as thickly round the doomed hero
as they did round the wooers in the hall of Odysseus. His famous
war-horse, the Gray of Macha, refused to be bridled, and shed large
tears of blood. His mother, Dechtiré, brought him a goblet full of wine,
and thrice the wine turned into blood as he put it to his lips. At the
first ford he crossed, he saw a maiden of the _sídhe_ washing clothes
and armour, and she told him that it was the clothes and arms of
Cuchulainn, who was soon to be dead. He met three ancient hags cooking a
hound on spits of rowan, and they invited him to partake of it. He
refused, for it was taboo to him to eat the flesh of his namesake; but
they shamed him into doing so by telling him that he ate at rich men’s
tables and refused the hospitality of the poor. The forbidden meat
paralysed half his body. Then he saw his enemies coming up against him
in their chariots.
Cuchulainn had three spears, of which it was prophesied that each should
kill a king. Three druids were charged in turn to ask for these spears;
for it was not thought lucky to refuse anything to a druid. The first
one came up to where Cuchulainn was making the plain red with slaughter.
“Give me one of those spears,” he said, “or I will lampoon you.” “Take
it,” replied Cuchulainn, “I have never yet been lampooned for refusing
anyone a gift.” And he threw the spear at the druid, and killed him. But
Lugaid, son of Curoi, got the spear, and killed Laeg with it. Laeg was
the king of all chariot-drivers.
“Give me one of your spears, Cuchulainn,” said the second druid. “I need
it myself,” he replied. “I will lampoon the province of Ulster because
of you, if you refuse.” “I am not obliged to give more than one gift in
a day,” said Cuchulainn, “but Ulster shall never be lampooned because of
me.” He threw the spear at the druid, and it went through his head. But
Erc, King of Leinster, got it, and mortally wounded the Gray of Macha,
the king of all horses.
“Give me your spear,” said the third druid. “I have paid all that is due
from myself and Ulster,” replied Cuchulainn. “I will satirize your
kindred if you do not,” said the druid. “I shall never go home, but I
will be the cause of no lampoons there,” answered Cuchulainn, and he
threw the spear at the asker, and killed him. But Lugaid threw it back,
and it went through Cuchulainn’s body, and wounded him to the death.
Then, in his agony, he greatly desired to drink. He asked his enemies to
let him go to a lake that lay close by, and quench his thirst, and then
come back again. “If I cannot come back to you, come to fetch me,” he
said; and they let him go.
Cuchulainn drank, and bathed, and came out of the water. But he found
that he could not walk; so he called to his enemies to come to him.
There was a pillar-stone near; and he bound himself to it with his belt,
so that he might die standing up, and not lying down. His dying horse,
the Gray of Macha, came back to fight for him, and killed fifty men with
his teeth and thirty with each of his hoofs. But the “hero-light” had
died out of Cuchulainn’s face, leaving it as pale as “a one-night’s
snow”, and a crow came and perched upon his shoulder.
“Truly it was not upon that pillar that birds used to sit,” said Erc.
Now that they were certain that Cuchulainn was dead, they all gathered
round him, and Lugaid cut off his head to take it to Medb. But vengeance
came quickly, for Conall the Victorious was in pursuit, and he made a
terrible slaughter of Cuchulainn’s enemies.
Thus perished the great hero of the Gaels in the twenty-seventh year of
his age. And with him fell the prosperity of Emain Macha and of the Red
Branch of Ulster.
-----
Footnote 186:
“There came
Tigernmas, the prince of Tara yonder,
On Hallowe’en with many hosts,
A cause of grief to them was the deed.
“Dead were the men
Of Banba’s host, without happy strength,
Around Tigernmas, the destructive man in the North,
From the worship of Cromm Cruaich—’twas no luck for them.
“For I have learnt,
Except one-fourth of the keen Gaels
Not a man alive—lasting the snare!
Escaped without death in his mouth.”
—Dr. Kuno Meyer’s translation of the _Dinnsenchus of Mag Slecht_.
Footnote 187:
Nutt: _Voyage of Bran_, p. 164.
Footnote 188:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 189:
Pronounced _Maive_.
Footnote 190:
The story of the _Tragical Death of King Conchobar_, translated by
Eugene O’Curry from the Book of Leinster, will be found in the
appendix to his _MS. Materials of Irish History_, and (more
accessible) in Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_.
Footnote 191:
The name is best pronounced _Cŭhoolin_ or _Cuchullin_ (_ch_ as in
German).
Footnote 192:
The descent of the principal Red Branch Heroes from the Tuatha Dé
Danann is given in a table in Miss Hull’s Introduction to her
_Cuchullin Saga_.
Footnote 193:
Conchobar is called a terrestrial god of the Ultonians in the Book of
the Dun Cow, and Dechtiré is termed a goddess in the Book of Leinster.
Footnote 194:
He is last heard of as chief cook to Conairé the Great, a mythical
king of Ireland.
Footnote 195:
In the Book of Leinster.
Footnote 196:
For a description of Navan Fort see a paper by M. de Jubainville in
the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XVI.
Footnote 197:
_Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles._ By Alfred Nutt. Popular Studies in
Mythology, Romance, and Folklore, No. 8.
Footnote 198:
See a series of interesting parallels between Cuchulainn and Heracles
in _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, chap. IX and X.
Footnote 199:
The _Táin Bó Chuailgné_. Translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady.
Footnote 200:
The Irish romances relating to Cuchulainn and his cycle, nearly a
hundred in number, need hardly be referred to severally in this
chapter. Of many of the tales, too, there exist several
slightly-varying versions. Many of them have been translated by
different scholars. The reader desiring a more complete survey of the
Cuchulainn legend is referred to Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_ or to
Lady Gregory’s _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_.
Footnote 201:
Pronounced _Avair_.
Footnote 202:
Usually identified, however, with the Isle of Skye.
Footnote 203:
Pronounced _Eefa_.
Footnote 204:
A literal translation by Miss Winifred Faraday of the _Táin Bo
Chuailgné_ from the Book of the Dun Cow and the Yellow Book of Lecan
has been published by Mr. Nutt—Grimm Library, No. 16.
Footnote 205:
Pronounced _Cooley_.
Footnote 206:
This prophecy (here much abridged) is, in the original, in verse.
Footnote 207:
Finnavár.
Footnote 208:
“Bellows-dart”, apparently a kind of harpoon. It had thirty barbs.
Footnote 209:
It is contained in the Book of the Dun Cow story called the “Phantom
Chariot”.
Footnote 210:
See chap. XX—“The Victories of Light over Darkness”.
Footnote 211:
Pronounced _Conla_.
Footnote 212:
A kind of mystic prohibition or taboo; singular, _geis_.
Footnote 213:
Now called Dundalk.
Footnote 214:
Pronounced _Lewy_.
Footnote 215:
Pronounced _Glen na Mower_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII
SOME GAELIC LOVE-STORIES
The heroic age of Ireland was not, however, the mere orgy of battle
which one might assume from the previous chapter. It had room for its
Helen and its Andromache as well as for its Achilles and its Hector. Its
champions could find time to make love as well as war. More than this,
the legends of their courtships often have a romantic beauty found in no
other early literature. The women have free scope of choice, and claim
the respect of their wooers. Indeed, it has been pointed out that the
mythical stories of the Celts must have created the chivalrous romances
of mediæval Europe. In them, and in no other previous literature, do we
find such knightly treatment of an enemy as we see in the story of
Cuchulainn and Ferdiad, or such poetic delicacy towards a woman as is
displayed in the wooing of Emer.[216] The talk between man and maid when
Cuchulainn comes in his chariot to pay his suit to Emer at Forgall’s
_dún_ might, save for its strangeness, almost have come out of some
quite modern romance.
“Emer lifted up her lovely face and recognised Cuchulainn, and she said,
‘May God make smooth the path before you!’
“‘And you,’ he said, ‘may you be safe from every harm.’”
She asks him whence he has come, and he tells her. Then he questions her
about herself.
“I am a Tara of women,” she replies, “the whitest of maidens, one who is
gazed at but who gazes not back, a rush too far to be reached, an
untrodden way.... I was brought up in ancient virtues, in lawful
behaviour, in the keeping of chastity, in rank equal to a queen, in
stateliness of form, so that to me is attributed every noble grace among
the hosts of Erin’s women.” In more boastful strain Cuchulainn tells of
his own birth and deeds. Not like the son of a peasant had he been
reared at Conchobar’s court, but among heroes and champions, jesters and
druids. When he is weakest his strength is that of twenty; alone he will
fight against forty; a hundred men would feel safe under his protection.
One can imagine Emer’s smile as she listens to these braggings. “Truly,”
she says, “they are goodly feats for a tender boy, but they are not yet
those of chariot-chiefs.” Very modern, too, is the way in which she
coyly reminds her wooer that she has an elder sister as yet unwed. But,
when at last he drives her to the point, she answers him with gentle,
but proud decision. Not by words, but by deeds is she to be won. The man
she will marry must have his name mentioned wherever the exploits of
heroes are spoken of.
“Even as thou hast commanded, so shall all by me be done,” said
Cuchulainn.
“And by me your offer is accepted, it is taken, it is granted,” replied
Emer.
It seems a pity that, after so fine a wooing, Cuchulainn could not have
kept faithful to the bride he won. Yet such is not the way of heroes
whom goddesses as well as mortal women conspire to tempt from their
loyalty. Fand, the wife of Manannán son of Lêr, deserted by the sea-god,
sent her sister Liban to Cuchulainn as an ambassador of love. At first
he refused to visit her, but ordered Laeg, his charioteer, to go with
Liban to the “Happy Plain” to spy out the land. Laeg returned
enraptured. “If all Ireland were mine,” he assured his master, “with
supreme rule over its fair inhabitants, I would give it up without
regret to go and live in the place that I have seen.”
So Cuchulainn himself went and stayed a month in the Celtic Paradise
with Fand, the fairest woman of the Sídhe. Returning to the land of
mortals, he made a tryst with the goddess to meet him again in his own
country by the yew-tree at the head of Baile’s strand.
But Emer came to hear of it, and went to the meeting-place herself, with
fifty of her maidens, each armed with a knife to kill her rival. There
she found Cuchulainn, Laeg, and Fand.
“What has led you, Cuchulainn,” said Emer, “to shame me before the women
of Erin and all honourable people? I came under your shelter, trusting
in your faithfulness, and now you seek a cause of quarrel with me.”
But Cuchulainn, hero-like, could not understand why his wife should not
be content to take her turn with this other woman—surely no unworthy
rival, for she was beautiful, and came of the lofty race of gods. We see
Emer yield at last, with queenly pathos.
“I will not refuse this woman to you, if you long for her,” she said,
“for I know that everything that is new seems fair, and everything that
is common seems bitter, and everything we have not seems desirable to
us, and everything we have we think little of. And yet, Cuchulainn, I
was once pleasing to you, and I would wish to be so again.”
Her grief touched him. “By my word,” he said, “you are pleasing to me,
and will be as long as I live.”
“Then let me be given up,” said Fand. “It is better that I should be,”
replied Emer. “No,” said Fand; “it is I who must be given up in the end.
“It is I who will go, though I go with great sorrow. I would rather stay
with Cuchulainn than live in the sunny home of the gods.
“O Emer, he is yours, and you are worthy of him! What my hand cannot
have, my heart may yet wish well to.
“A sorrowful thing it is to love without return. Better to renounce than
not to receive a love equal to one’s own.
“It was not well of you, O fair-haired Emer, to come to kill Fand in her
misery.”
It was while the goddess and the human woman were contending with one
another in self-sacrifice that Manannán, Son of the Sea, heard of Fand’s
trouble, and was sorry that he had forsaken her. So he came, invisible
to all but her alone. He asked her pardon, and she herself could not
forget that she had once been happy with the “horseman of the crested
waves”, and still might be happy with him again. The god asked her to
make her choice between them, and, when she went to him, he shook his
mantle between her and Cuchulainn. It was one of the magic properties of
Manannán’s mantle that those between whom it was shaken could never meet
again. Then Fand returned with her divine husband to the country of the
immortals; and the druids of Emain Macha gave Cuchulainn and Emer each a
drink of oblivion, so that Cuchulainn forgot his love and Emer her
jealousy.[217]
The scene of this story takes its name from another, and hardly less
beautiful love-tale. The “yew-tree at the head of Baile’s strand” had
grown out of the grave of Baile of the Honeyed Speech, and it bore the
appearance of Baile’s love, Ailinn. This Gaelic Romeo and Juliet were of
royal birth: Baile was heir to Ulster, and Ailinn was daughter of the
King of Leinster’s son. Not by any feud of Montague and Capulet were
they parted, however, but by the craft of a ghostly enemy. They had
appointed to meet one another at Dundealgan, and Baile, who arrived
there first, was greeted by a stranger. “What news do you bring?” asked
Baile. “None,” replied the stranger, “except that Ailinn of Leinster was
setting out to meet her lover, but the men of Leinster kept her back,
and her heart broke then and there from grief.” When Baile heard this,
his own heart broke, and he fell dead on the strand, while the messenger
went on the wings of the wind to the home of Ailinn, who had not yet
started. “Whence come you?” she asked him. “From Ulster, by the shore of
Dundealgan, where I saw men raising a stone over one who had just died,
and on the stone I read the name of Baile. He had come to meet some
woman he was in love with, but it was destined that they should never
see one another again in life.” At this news Ailinn, too, fell dead, and
was buried; and we are told that an apple-tree grew out of her grave,
the apples of which bore the likeness of the face of Baile, while a
yew-tree sprung from Baile’s grave, and took the appearance of Ailinn.
This legend, which is probably a part of the common heritage of the
Aryans, is found in folk-lore over an area which stretches from Ireland
to India. The Gaelic version has, however, an ending unknown to the
others. The two trees, it relates, were cut down, and made into wands
upon which the poets of Ulster and of Leinster cut the songs of the
love-tragedies of their two provinces, in _ogam_. But even these mute
memorials of Baile and Ailinn were destined not to be divided. After two
hundred years, Art the “Lonely”, High-King of Ireland, ordered them to
be brought to the hall of Tara, and, as soon as the wands found
themselves under the same roof, they all sprang together, and no force
or skill could part them again. So the king commanded them to be “kept,
like any other jewel, in the treasury of Tara.”[218]
Neither of these stories, however, has as yet attained the fame of one
now to be retold.[219] To many, no doubt, Gaelic romance is summed up in
the one word Deirdre. It is the legend of this Gaelic Helen that the
poets of the modern Celtic school most love to elaborate, while old men
still tell it round the peat-fires of Ireland and the Highlands. Scholar
and peasant alike combine to preserve a tradition no one knows how many
hundred years old, for it was written down in the twelfth-century Book
of Leinster as one of the “prime stories” which every bard was bound to
be able to recite. It takes rank with the “Fate of the Sons of Tuirenn”,
and with the “Fate of the Children of Lêr”, as one of the “Three
Sorrowful Stories of Erin”.
So favourite a tale has naturally been much altered and added to in its
passage down the generations. But its essential story is as follows:—
King Conchobar of Ulster was holding festival in the house of one of his
bards, called Fedlimid, when Fedlimid’s wife gave birth to a daughter,
concerning whom Cathbad the Druid uttered a prophecy. He foretold that
the new-born child would grow up to be the most lovely woman the world
had ever seen, but that her beauty would bring death to many heroes, and
much peril and sorrow to Ulster. On hearing this, the Red Branch
warriors demanded that she should be killed, but Conchobar refused, and
gave the infant to a trusted serving-woman, to be hidden in a secret
place in the solitude of the mountains, until she was of an age to be
his own wife.
So Deirdre (as Cathbad named her) was taken away to a hut so remote from
the paths of men that none knew of it save Conchobar. Here she was
brought up by a nurse, a fosterer, and a teacher, and saw no other
living creatures save the beasts and birds of the hills. Nevertheless,
woman-like, she aspired to be loved.
One day, her fosterer was killing a calf for their food, and its blood
ran out upon the snowy ground, which brought a black raven swooping to
the spot. “If there were a man,” said Deirdre, “who had hair of the
blackness of that raven, skin of the whiteness of the snow, and cheeks
as red as the calf’s blood, that is the man whom I would wish to marry
me.”
“Indeed there is such a man,” replied her teacher thoughtlessly.
“Naoise[220], one of the sons of Usnach[221], heroes of the same race as
Conchobar the King.”
The curious Deirdre prevailed upon her teacher to bring Naoise to speak
with her. When they met she made good use of her time, for she offered
Naoise her love, and begged him to take her away from King Conchobar.
Naoise, bewitched by her beauty, consented. Accompanied by his two
brothers, Ardan and Ainle, and their followers, he fled with Deirdre to
Alba, where they made alliance with one of its kings, and wandered over
the land, living by following the deer, and by helping the king in his
battles.
The revengeful Conchobar bided his time. One day, as the heroes of the
Red Branch feasted together at Emain Macha, he asked them if they had
ever heard of a nobler company than their own. They replied that the
world could not hold such another. “Yet”, said the king, “we lack our
full tale. The three sons of Usnach could defend the province of Ulster
against any other province of Ireland by themselves, and it is a pity
that they should still be exiles, for the sake of any woman in the
world. Gladly would I welcome them back!”
“We ourselves,” replied the Ultonians, “would have counselled this long
ago had we dared, O King!”
“Then I will send one of my three best champions to fetch them,” said
Conchobar. “Either Conall the Victorious, or Cuchulainn, the son of
Sualtam, or Fergus, the son of Roy; and I will find out which of those
three loves me best.”
First he called Conall to him secretly.
“What would you do, O Conall,” he asked, “if you were sent to fetch the
sons of Usnach, and they were killed here, in spite of your
safe-conduct?”
“There is not a man in Ulster,” answered Conall, “who had hand in it
that would escape his own death from me.”
“I see that I am not dearest of all men to you,” replied Conchobar, and,
dismissing Conall, he called Cuchulainn, and put the same question to
him.
“By my sworn word,” replied Cuchulainn, “if such a thing happened with
your consent, no bribe or blood-fine would I accept in lieu of your own
head, O Conchobar.”
“Truly,” said the king, “it is not you I will send.”
The king then asked Fergus, and he replied that, if the sons of Usnach
were slain while under his protection, he would revenge the deed upon
anyone who was party to it, save only the king himself.
“Then it is you who shall go,” said Conchobar. “Set forth to-morrow, and
rest not by the way, and when you put foot again in Ireland at the _Dún_
of Borrach, whatever may happen to you yourself, send the sons of Usnach
forward without delay.”
The next morning, Fergus, with his two sons, Illann the Fair and Buinne
the Ruthless Red, set out for Alba in their galley, and reached Loch
Etive, by whose shores the sons of Usnach were then living. Naoise,
Ainle, and Ardan were sitting at chess when they heard Fergus’s shout.
“That is the cry of a man of Erin,” said Naoise.
“Nay,” replied Deirdre, who had forebodings of trouble. “Do not heed it;
it is only the shout of a man of Alba.” But the sons of Usnach knew
better, and sent Ardan down to the sea-shore, where he found Fergus and
his sons, and gave them greeting, and heard their message, and brought
them back with him.
That night Fergus persuaded the sons of Usnach to return with him to
Emain Macha. Deirdre, with her “second sight”, implored them to remain
in Alba. But the exiles were weary for the sight of their own country,
and did not share their companion’s fears. As they put out to sea,
Deirdre uttered her beautiful “Farewell to Alba”, that land she was
never to behold again.
“A lovable land is yon eastern land,
Alba, with its marvels.
I would not have come hither out of it,
Had I not come with Naoise.
“Lovable are Dún-fidga and Dún-finn,
Lovable the fortress over them;
Dear to the heart Inis Draigende,
And very dear is Dún Suibni.
“Caill Cuan!
Unto which Ainle would wend, alas!
Short the time seemed to me,
With Naoise in the region of Alba.
“Glenn Láid!
Often I slept there under the cliff;
Fish and venison and the fat of the badger
Was my portion in Glenn Láid.
“Glenn Masáin!
Its garlic was tall, its branches white;
We slept a rocking sleep,
Over the grassy estuary of Masáin.
“Glenn Etive!
Where my first house I raised;
Beauteous its wood:—upon rising
A cattle-fold for the sun was Glenn Etive.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Glenn Dá-Rúad!
My love to every man who hath it as an heritage!
Sweet the cuckoos’ note on bending bough,
On the peak over Glenn Dá-Rúad.
“Beloved is Draigen,
Dear the white sand beneath its waves;
I would not have come from it, from the East,
Had I not come with my beloved.”
They crossed the sea, and arrived at the _Dún_ of Borrach, who bade them
welcome to Ireland. Now King Conchobar had sent Borrach a secret
command, that he should offer a feast to Fergus on his landing. Strange
taboos called _geasa_ are laid upon the various heroes of ancient
Ireland in the stories; there are certain things that each one of them
may not do without forfeiting life or honour; and it was a _geis_ upon
Fergus to refuse a feast.
Fergus, we are told, “reddened with anger from crown to sole” at the
invitation. Yet he could not avoid the feast. He asked Naoise what he
should do, and Deirdre broke in with: “Do what is asked of you if you
prefer to forsake the sons of Usnach for a feast. Yet forsaking them is
a good price to pay for it.”
Fergus, however, perceived a possible compromise. Though he himself
could not refuse to stop to partake of Borrach’s hospitality, he could
send Deirdre and the sons of Usnach on to Emain Macha at once, under the
safeguard of his two sons, Illann the Fair and Buinne the Ruthless Red.
So this was done, albeit to the annoyance of the sons of Usnach and the
terror of Deirdre. Visions came to the sorrowful woman; she saw the
three sons of Usnach and Illann, the son of Fergus, without their heads;
she saw a cloud of blood always hanging over them. She begged them to
wait in some safe place until Fergus had finished the feast. But Naoise,
Ainle, and Ardan laughed at her fears. They arrived at Emain Macha, and
Conchobar ordered the “Red Branch” palace to be placed at their
disposal.
In the evening Conchobar called Levarcham, Deirdre’s old teacher, to
him. “Go”, he said, “to the ‘Red Branch’, and see Deirdre, and bring me
back news of her appearance, whether she still keeps her former beauty,
or whether it has left her.”
So Levarcham came to the “Red Branch”, and kissed Deirdre and the three
sons of Usnach, and warned them that Conchobar was preparing treachery.
Then she went back to the king, and reported to him that Deirdre’s hard
life upon the mountains of Alba had ruined her form and face, so that
she was no longer worthy of his regard.
At this, Conchobar’s jealousy was partly allayed, and he began to doubt
whether it would be wise to attack the sons of Usnach. But later on,
when he had drunk well of wine, he sent a second messenger to see if
what Levarcham had reported about Deirdre was truth.
The messenger, this time a man, went and looked in through a window.
Deirdre saw him and pointed him out to Naoise, who flung a chessman at
the peering face, and put out one of its eyes. But the man went back to
Conchobar, and told him that, though one of his eyes had been struck
out, he would gladly have stayed looking with the other, so great was
Deirdre’s loveliness.
Then Conchobar, in his wrath, ordered the men of Ulster to set fire to
the Red Branch House and slay all within it except Deirdre. They flung
fire-brands upon it, but Buinne the Ruthless Red came out and quenched
them, and drove the assailants back with slaughter. But Conchobar called
to him to parley, and offered him a “hundred” of land and his friendship
to desert the sons of Usnach. Buinne was tempted, and fell; but the land
given him turned barren that very night in indignation at being owned by
such a traitor.
The other of Fergus’s sons was of different make. He charged out, torch
in hand, and cut down the Ultonians, so that they hesitated to come near
the house again. Conchobar dared not offer him a bribe. But he armed his
own son, Fiacha, with his own magic weapons, including his shield, the
“Moaner”, which roared when its owner was in danger, and sent him to
fight Illann.
The duel was a fierce one, and Illann got the better of Fiacha, so that
the son of Conchobar had to crouch down beneath his shield, which roared
for help. Conall the Victorious heard the roar from far off, and thought
that his king must be in peril. He came to the place, and, without
asking questions, thrust his spear “Blue-green” through Illann. The
dying son of Fergus explained the situation to Conall, who, by way of
making some amends, at once killed Fiacha as well.
After this, the sons of Usnach held their fort till dawn against all
Conchobar’s host. But, with day, they saw that they must either escape
or resign themselves to perish. Putting Deirdre in their centre,
protected by their shields, they opened the door suddenly and fled out.
They would have broken through and escaped, had not Conchobar asked
Cathbad the Druid to put a spell upon them, promising to spare their
lives. So Cathbad raised the illusion of a stormy sea before and all
around the sons of Usnach. Naoise lifted Deirdre upon his shoulder, but
the magic waves rose higher, until they were all obliged to fling away
their weapons and swim.
Then was seen the strange sight of men swimming upon dry land. And,
before the glamour passed away, the sons of Usnach were seized from
behind, and brought to Conchobar.
In spite of his promise to the druid, the king condemned them to death.
None of the men of Ulster would, however, deal the blow. In the end, a
foreigner from Norway, whose father Naoise had slain, offered to behead
them. Each of the brothers begged to die first, that he might not
witness the deaths of the others. But Naoise ended this noble rivalry by
lending their executioner the sword called “The Retaliator”, which had
been given him by Manannán son of Lêr. They knelt down side by side, and
one blow of the sword of the god shore off all their heads.
As for Deirdre, there are varying stories of her death, but most of them
agree that she did not survive the sons of Usnach many hours. But,
before she died, she made an elegy over them. That it is of a singular
pathos and beauty the few verses which there is space to give will
show.[222]
“Long the day without Usnach’s children!
It was not mournful to be in their company!
Sons of a king by whom sojourners were entertained,
Three lions from the Hill of the Cave.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Three darlings of the women of Britain,
Three hawks of Slieve Gullion,
Sons of a king whom valour served,
To whom soldiers used to give homage!
* * * * * * * * * *
“That I should remain after Naoise
Let no one in the world suppose:
After Ardan and Ainle
My time would not be long.
“Ulster’s over-king, my first husband,
I forsook for Naoise’s love.
Short my life after them:
I will perform their funeral game.
“After them I shall not be alive—
Three that would go into every conflict,
Three who liked to endure hardships,
Three heroes who refused not combats.
* * * * * * * * * *
“O man, that diggest the tomb
And puttest my darling from me,
Make not the grave too narrow:
I shall be beside the noble ones.”
It was a poor triumph for Conchobar. Deirdre in all her beauty had
escaped him by death. His own chief followers never forgave it. Fergus,
when he returned from Borrach’s feast, and found out what had been done,
gathered his own people, slew Conchobar’s son and many of his warriors,
and fled to Ulster’s bitterest enemies, Ailill and Medb of Connaught.
And Cathbad the Druid cursed both king and kingdom, praying that none of
Conchobar’s race might ever reign in Emain Macha again.
So it came to pass. The capital of Ulster was only kept from ruin by
Cuchulainn’s prowess. When he perished, it also fell, and soon became
what it is now—a grassy hill.
-----
Footnote 216:
The romance of the _Wooing of Emer_, a fragment of which is contained
in the Book of the Dun Cow, has been translated by Dr. Kuno Meyer, and
published by him in the _Archæological Review_, Vol. I, 1888. Miss
Hull has included this translation in her _Cuchullin Saga_. Another
version of it from a Bodleian MS., translated by the same scholar,
will be found in the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XI.
Footnote 217:
This story, known as the _Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn_, translated into
French by M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, will be found in his _L’Épopée
Celtique en Irlande_, the fifth volume of _Cour de Littérature
Celtique_. Another translation, into English, by Eugene O’Curry is in
_Atlantis_, Vols. I and II.
Footnote 218:
For the full story of Baile and Ailinn see Dr. Kuno Meyer’s
translation in Vol. XIII of the _Revue Celtique_.
Footnote 219:
There are not only numerous translations of this romance, but also
many Gaelic versions. The oldest of the latter is in the Book of
Leinster, while the fullest are in two MSS. in the Advocates’ Library
at Edinburgh. The version followed here is from one of these, the
so-called Glenn Masáin MS., translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes, and
contained in Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_.
Footnote 220:
Pronounced _Naisi_.
Footnote 221:
Pronounced _Usna_.
Footnote 222:
It will be found in full in Miss Hull’s _Cuchullin Saga_. The version
there given was first translated into French by M. Ponsinet from the
Book of Leinster.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
FINN AND THE FENIANS[223]
The epoch of Emain Macha is followed in the annals of ancient Ireland by
a succession of monarchs who, though doubtless as mythical as King
Conchobar and his court, seem to grow gradually more human. Their line
lasts for about two centuries, culminating in a dynasty with which
legend has occupied itself more than with its immediate predecessors.
This is the one which began, according to the annalists, in A.D. 177,
with the famous Conn “the Hundred-Fighter”, and, passing down to the
reign of his even more famous grandson, Cormac “the Magnificent”, is
connected with the third Gaelic cycle—that which relates the exploits of
Finn and the Fenians. All these kings had their dealings with the
national gods. A story contained in a fifteenth-century Irish
manuscript, and called “The Champion’s Prophecy”,[224] tells how Lugh
appeared to Conn, enveloped him in a magic mist, led him away to an
enchanted palace, and there prophesied to him the number of his
descendants, the length of their reigns, and the manner of their deaths.
Another tradition relates how Conn’s son, Connla, was wooed by a goddess
and borne away, like the British Arthur, in a boat of glass to the
Earthly Paradise beyond the sea.[225] Yet another relates Conn’s own
marriage with Becuma of the Fair Skin, wife of that same Labraid of the
Quick Hand on Sword who, in another legend, married Liban, the sister of
Fand, Cuchulainn’s fairy love. Becuma had been discovered in an intrigue
with Gaiar, a son of Manannán, and, banished from the “Land of Promise”,
crossed the sea that sunders mortals and immortals to offer her hand to
Conn. The Irish king wedded her, but evil came of the marriage. She grew
jealous of Conn’s other son, Art, and insisted upon his banishment; but
they agreed to play chess to decide which should go, and Art won. Art,
called “the Lonely” because he had lost his brother Connla, was king
after Conn, but he is chiefly known to legend as the father of Cormac.
Many Irish stories occupy themselves with the fame of Cormac, who is
pictured as a great legislator—a Gaelic Solomon. Certain traditions
credit him with having been the first to believe in a purer doctrine
than the Celtic polytheism, and even with having attempted to put down
druidism, in revenge for which a druid called Maelcen sent an evil
spirit who placed a salmon-bone crossways in the king’s throat, as he
sat at meat, and so compassed his death. Another class of stories,
however, make him an especial favourite with those same heathen deities.
Manannán son of Lêr, was so anxious for his friendship that he decoyed
him into fairyland, and gave him a magic branch. It was of silver, and
bore golden apples, and, when it was shaken, it made such sweet music
that the wounded, the sick, and the sorrowful forgot their pains, and
were lulled into deep sleep. Cormac kept this treasure all his life;
but, at his death, it returned into the hands of the gods.[226]
King Cormac was a contemporary of Finn mac Coul[227], whom he appointed
head of the _Fianna[228] Eirinn_, more generally known as the “Fenians”.
Around Finn and his men have gathered a cycle of legends which were
equally popular with the Gaels of both Scotland and Ireland. We read of
their exploits in stories and poems preserved in the earliest Irish
manuscripts, while among the peasantry both of Ireland and of the West
Highlands their names and the stories connected with them are still
current lore. Upon some of these floating traditions, as preserved in
folk ballads, MacPherson founded his factitious _Ossian_, and the
collection of them from the lips of living men still affords plenty of
employment to Gaelic students.
How far Finn and his followers may have been historical personages it is
impossible to say. The Irish people themselves have always held that the
Fenians were a kind of native militia, and that Finn was their general.
The early historical writers of Ireland supported this view. The
chronicler Tighernach, who died in 1088, believed in him, and the
“Annals of the Four Masters”, compiled between the years 1632 and 1636
from older chronicles, while they ignore King Conchobar and his Red
Branch Champions as unworthy of the serious consideration of historians,
treat Finn as a real person whose death took place in 283 A.D. Even so
great a modern scholar as Eugene O’Curry declared in the clearest
language that Finn, so far from being “a merely imaginary or mythical
character”, was “an undoubtedly historical personage; and that he
existed about the time at which his appearance is recorded in the Annals
is as certain as that Julius Caesar lived and ruled at the time stated
on the authority of the Roman historians”.[229]
The opinion of more recent Celtic scholars, however, is opposed to this
view. Finn’s pedigree, preserved in the Book of Leinster, may seem at
first to give some support to the theory of his real existence, but, on
more careful examination of it, his own name and that of his father
equally bewray him. Finn or Fionn, meaning “fair”, is the name of one of
the mythical ancestors of the Gaels, while his father’s name,
Cumhal[230], signifies the “sky”, and is the same word as _Camulus_, the
Gaulish heaven-god identified by the Romans with Mars. His followers are
as doubtfully human as himself. One may compare them with Cuchulainn and
the rest of the heroes of Emain Macha. Their deeds are not less
marvellous. Like the Ultonian warriors, they move, too, on equal terms
with the gods. “The Fianna of Erin”, says a tract called “The Dialogue
of the Elders”,[231] contained in thirteenth and fourteenth century
manuscripts, “had not more frequent and free intercourse with the men of
settled habitation than with the Tuatha Dé Danann”.[232] Angus, Mider,
Lêr, Manannán, and Bodb the Red, with their countless sons and
daughters, loom as large in the Fenian, or so-called “Ossianic” stories
as do the Fenians themselves. They fight for them, or against them; they
marry them, and are given to them in marriage.
A luminous suggestion of Professor Rhys also hints that the Fenians
inherited the conduct of that ancient war formerly waged between the
Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors. The most common antagonists of Finn and
his heroes are tribes of invaders from oversea, called in the stories
the _Lochlannach_. These “Men of Lochlann” are usually identified, by
those who look for history in the stories of the Fenian cycle, with the
invading bands of Norsemen who harried the Irish coasts in the ninth
century. But the nucleus of the Fenian tales antedates these
Scandinavian raids, and mortal foes have probably merely stepped into
the place of those immortal enemies of the gods whose “Lochlann” was a
country, not over the sea—but under it.[233]
The earlier historians of Ireland were as ready with their dates and
facts regarding the Fenian band as an institution as with the
personality of Finn. It was said to have been first organized by a king
called Fiachadh, in 300 B.C., and abolished, or rather, exterminated, by
Cairbré, the son of Cormac mac Art, in 284 _A.D._ We are told that it
consisted of three regiments modelled on the Roman legion; each of these
bodies contained, on a peace footing, three thousand men, but in time of
war could be indefinitely strengthened. Its object was to defend the
coasts of Ireland and the country generally, throwing its weight upon
the side of any prince who happened to be assailed by foreign foes.
During the six months of winter, its members were quartered upon the
population, but during the summer they had to forage for themselves,
which they did by hunting and fishing. Thus they lived in the woods and
on the open moors, hardening themselves for battle by their adventurous
life. The sites of their enormous camp-fires were long pointed out under
the name of the “Fenians’ cooking-places”.
It was not easy to become a member of this famous band. A candidate had
to be not only an expert warrior, but a poet and a man of culture as
well. He had practically to renounce his tribe; at any rate he made oath
that he would neither avenge any of his relatives nor be avenged by
them. He put himself under bonds never to refuse hospitality to anyone
who asked, never to turn his back in battle, never to insult any woman,
and not to accept a dowry with his wife. In addition to all this, he had
to pass successfully through the most stringent physical tests. Indeed,
as these have come down to us, magnified by the perfervid Celtic
imagination, they are of an altogether marvellous and impossible
character. An aspirant to the _Fianna Eirinn_, we are told, had first to
stand up to his knees in a pit dug for him, his only arms being his
shield and a hazel wand, while nine warriors, each with a spear,
standing within the distance of nine ridges of land, all hurled their
weapons at him at once; if he failed to ward them all off, he was
rejected. Should he succeed in this first test, he was given the
distance of one tree-length’s start, and chased through a forest by
armed men; if any of them came up to him and wounded him, he could not
belong to the Fenians. If he escaped unhurt, but had unloosed a single
lock of his braided hair, or had broken a single branch in his flight,
or if, at the end of the run, his weapons trembled in his hands, he was
refused. As, besides these tests, he was obliged to jump over a branch
as high as his forehead, and stoop under one as low as his knee, while
running at full speed, and to pluck a thorn out of his heel without
hindrance to his flight, it is clear that even the rank and file of the
Fenians must have been quite exceptional athletes.[234]
But it is time to pass on to a more detailed description of these
champions.[235] They are a goodly company, not less heroic than the
mighty men of Ulster. First comes Finn himself, not the strongest in
body of the Fenians, but the truest, wisest, and kindest, gentle to
women, generous to men, and trusted by all. If he could help it, he
would never let anyone be in trouble or poverty. “If the dead leaves of
the forest had been gold, and the white foam of the water silver, Finn
would have given it all away.”
Finn had two sons, Fergus and his more famous brother Ossian[236].
Fergus of the sweet speech was the Fenian’s bard, and, also, because of
his honeyed words, their diplomatist and ambassador. Yet, by the irony
of fate, it is to Ossian, who is not mentioned as a poet in the earliest
texts, that the poems concerning the Fenians which are current in
Scotland under the name of “Ossianic Ballads” are attributed. Ossian’s
mother was Sadb, a daughter of Bodb the Red. A rival goddess changed her
into a deer—which explains how Ossian got his name, which means “fawn”.
With such advantages of birth, naturally he was speedy enough to run
down a red deer hind and catch her by the ear, though far less
swift-footed than his cousin Caoilte[237], the “Thin Man”. Neither was
he so strong as his own son Oscar, the mightiest of all the Fenians,
yet, in his youth, so clumsy that the rest of the band refused to take
him with them on their warlike expeditions. They changed their minds,
however, when, one day, he followed them unawares, found them giving way
before an enemy, and, rushing to their help, armed only with a great log
of wood which lay handy on the ground, turned the fortunes of the fight.
After this, Oscar was hailed the best warrior of all the Fianna; he was
given command of a battalion, and its banner, called the “Terrible
Broom”, was regarded as the centre of every battle, for it was never
known to retreat a foot. Other prominent Fenians were Goll[238], son of
Morna, at first Finn’s enemy but afterwards his follower, a man skilled
alike in war and learning. Even though he was one-eyed, we are told that
he was much loved by women, but not so much as Finn’s cousin, Diarmait
O’Duibhne[239], whose fatal beauty ensnared even Finn’s betrothed bride,
Grainne[240]. Their comic character was Conan, who is represented as an
old, bald, vain, irritable man, as great a braggart as ancient Pistol
and as foul-mouthed as Thersites, and yet, after he had once been shamed
into activity, a true man of his hands. These are the prime Fenian
heroes, the chief actors in its stories.
The Fenian epic begins, before the birth of its hero, with the struggle
of two rival clans, each of whom claimed to be the real and only Fianna
Eirinn. They were called the Clann Morna, of which Goll mac Morna was
head, and the Clann Baoisgne[241], commanded by Finn’s father, Cumhal. A
battle was fought at Cnucha[242], in which Goll killed Cumhal, and the
Clann Baoisgne was scattered. Cumhal’s wife, however, bore a posthumous
son, who was brought up among the Slieve Bloom Mountains secretly, for
fear his father’s enemies should find and kill him. The boy, who was at
first called Deimne[243], grew up to be an expert hurler, swimmer,
runner, and hunter. Later, like Cuchulainn, and indeed many modern
savages, he took a second, more personal name. Those who saw him asked
who was the “fair” youth. He accepted the omen, and called himself
Deimne Finn.
At length, he wandered to the banks of the Boyne, where he found a
soothsayer called Finn the Seer living beside a deep pool near Slane,
named “Fec’s Pool”, in hope of catching one of the “salmons of
knowledge”, and, by eating it, obtaining universal wisdom. He had been
there seven years without result, though success had been prophesied to
one named “Finn”. When the wandering son of Cumhal appeared, Finn the
Seer engaged him as his servant. Shortly afterwards, he caught the
coveted fish, and handed it over to our Finn to cook, warning him to eat
no portion of it. “Have you eaten any of it?” he asked the boy, as he
brought it up ready boiled. “No indeed,” replied Finn; “but, while I was
cooking it, a blister rose upon the skin, and, laying my thumb down upon
the blister, I scalded it, and so I put it into my mouth to ease the
pain.” The man was perplexed. “You told me your name was Deimne,” he
said; “but have you any other name?” “Yes, I am also called Finn.” “It
is enough,” replied his disappointed master. “Eat the salmon yourself,
for you must be the one of whom the prophecy told.” Finn ate the “salmon
of knowledge”, and thereafter he had only to put his thumb under his
tooth, as he had done when he scalded it, to receive fore-knowledge and
magic counsel.[244]
Thus armed, Finn was more than a match for the Clann Morna. Curious
legends tell how he discovered himself to his father’s old followers,
confounded his enemies with his magic, and turned them into faithful
servants.[245] Even Goll of the Blows had to submit to his sway.
Gradually he welded the two opposing clans into one Fianna, over which
he ruled, taking tribute from the kings of Ireland, warring against the
Fomorian “Lochlannach”, destroying every kind of giant, serpent, or
monster that infested the land, and at last carrying his mythical
conquests over all Europe.
Out of the numberless stories of the Fenian exploits it is hard to
choose examples. All are heroic, romantic, wild, fantastic. In many of
them the Tuatha Dé Danann play prominent parts. One such story connects
itself with an earlier mythological episode already related. The reader
will remember[246] how, when the Dagda gave up the kingship of the
immortals, five aspirants appeared to claim it; how of these five—Angus,
Mider, Lêr, Ilbhreach son of Manannán, and Bodb the Red—the latter was
chosen; how Lêr refused to acknowledge him, but was reconciled later;
how Mider, equally rebellious, fled to “desert country round Mount
Leinster” in County Carlow; and how a yearly war was waged upon him and
his people by the rest of the gods to bring them to subjection. This war
was still raging in the time of Finn, and Mider was not too proud to
seek his help. One day that Finn was hunting in Donegal, with Ossian,
Oscar, Caoilte, and Diarmait, their hounds roused a beautiful fawn,
which, although at every moment apparently nearly overtaken, led them in
full chase as far as Mount Leinster. Here it suddenly disappeared into a
cleft in the hillside. Heavy snow, “making the forest’s branches as it
were a withe-twist”, now fell, forcing the Fenians to seek for some
shelter, and they therefore explored the place into which the fawn had
vanished. It led to a splendid _sídh_ in the hollow of the hill.
Entering it, they were greeted by a beautiful goddess-maiden, who told
them that it was she, Mider’s daughter, who had been the fawn, and that
she had taken that shape purposely to lead them there, in the hope of
getting their help against the army that was coming to attack the
_sídh_. Finn asked who the assailants would be, and was told that they
were Bodb the Red with his seven sons, Angus “Son of the Young” with his
seven sons, Lêr of Sídh Fionnechaidh with his twenty-seven sons, and
Fionnbharr of Sídh Meadha with his seventeen sons, as well as numberless
gods of lesser fame drawn from _sídhe_ not only over all Ireland, but
from Scotland and the islands as well. Finn promised his aid, and, with
the twilight of that same day, the attacking forces appeared, and made
their annual assault. They were beaten off, after a battle that lasted
all night, with the loss of “ten men, ten score, and ten hundred”. Finn,
Oscar, and Diarmait, as well as most of Mider’s many sons, were sorely
wounded, but the leech Labhra healed all their wounds.[247]
Sooth to say, the Fenians did not always require the excuse of fairy
alliance to start them making war on the race of the hills. One of the
so-called “Ossianic ballads” is entitled “The Chase of the Enchanted
Pigs of Angus of the Brugh[248]”. This Angus is, of course, the “Son of
the Young”, and the Brugh that famous _sídh_ beside the Boyne out of
which he cheated his father, the Dagda. After the friendly manner of
gods towards heroes, he invited Finn and a picked thousand of his
followers to a banquet at the Brugh. They came to it in their finest
clothes, “goblets went from hand to hand, and waiters were kept in
motion”. At last conversation fell upon the comparative merits of the
pleasures of the table and of the chase, Angus stoutly contending that
“the gods’ life of perpetual feasting” was better than all the Fenian
huntings, and Finn as stoutly denying it. Finn boasted of his hounds,
and Angus said that the best of them could not kill one of his pigs.
Finn angrily replied that his two hounds, Bran[249] and Sgeolan[250],
would kill any pig that trod on dry land. Angus answered that he could
show Finn a pig that none of his hounds or huntsmen could catch or kill.
Here were the makings of a pretty quarrel among such inflammable
creatures as gods and heroes, but the steward of the feast interposed
and sent everyone to bed. The next morning, Finn left the Brugh, for he
did not want to fight all Angus’s fairies with his handful of a thousand
men. A year passed before he heard more of it; then came a messenger
from Angus, reminding Finn of his promise to pit his men and hounds
against Angus’s pigs. The Fenians seated themselves on the tops of the
hills, each with his favourite hound in leash, and they had not been
there long before there appeared on the eastern plain a hundred and one
such pigs as no Fenian had ever seen before. Each was as tall as a deer,
and blacker than a smith’s coals, having hair like a thicket and
bristles like ships’ masts. Yet such was the prowess of the Fenians that
they killed them all, though each of the pigs slew ten men and many
hounds. Then Angus complained that the Fenians had murdered his son and
many others of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, indeed, were none other than
the pigs whose forms they had taken. There were mighty recriminations on
both sides, and, in the end, the enraged Fenians prepared to attack the
Brugh on the Boyne. Then only did Angus begin to yield, and, by the
advice of Ossian, Finn made peace with him and his fairy folk.
Such are specimens of the tales which go to make up the Fenian cycle of
sagas. Hunting is the most prominent feature of them, for the Fenians
were essentially a race of mighty hunters. But the creatures of their
chase were not always flesh and blood. Enchanters who wished the Fenians
ill could always lure them into danger by taking the shape of boar or
deer, and many a story begins with an innocent chase and ends with a
murderous battle. But out of such struggles the Fenians always emerge
successfully, as Ossian is represented proudly boasting, “through
truthfulness and the might of their hands”.
The most famous chase of all is, however, not that of deer or boar, but
of a woman and a man, Finn’s betrothed wife and his nephew
Diarmait.[251] Ever fortunate in war, the Fenian leader found disaster
in his love. Wishing for a wife in his old age, he sent to seek Grainne,
the daughter of Cormac, the High-King of Ireland. Both King Cormac and
his daughter consented, and Finn’s ambassadors returned with an
invitation to the suitor to come in a fortnight’s time to claim his
bride. He arrived with his picked band, and was received in state in the
great banqueting-hall of Tara. There they feasted, and there Grainne,
the king’s daughter, casting her eyes over the assembled Fenian heroes,
saw Diarmait O’Duibhne.
This Fenian Adonis had a beauty-spot upon his cheek which no woman could
see without falling instantly in love with him. Grainne, for all her
royal birth, was no exception to this rule. She asked a druid to point
her out the principal guests. The druid told her all their names and
exploits. Then she called for a jewelled drinking-horn, and, filling it
with a drugged wine, sent it round to each in turn, except to Diarmait.
None could be so discourteous as to refuse wine from the hand of a
princess. All drank, and fell into deep sleep.
Then, rising, she came to Diarmait, told him her passion for him, and
asked for its return. “I will not love the betrothed of my chief,” he
replied, “and, even if I wished, I dare not.” And he praised Finn’s
virtues, and decried his own fame. But Grainne merely answered that she
put him under _geasa_ (bonds which no hero could refuse to redeem) to
flee with her; and at once went back to her chair before the rest of the
company awoke from their slumber.
After the feast, Diarmait went round to his comrades, one by one, and
told them of Grainne’s love for him, and of the _geasa_ she had placed
upon him to take her from Tara. He asked each of them what he ought to
do. All answered that no hero could break a _geis_ put upon him by a
woman. He even asked Finn, concealing Grainne’s name, and Finn gave him
the same counsel as the others. That night, the lovers fled from Tara to
the ford of the Shannon at Athlone, crossed it, and came to a place
called the “Wood of the Two Tents”, where Diarmait wove a hut of
branches for Grainne to shelter in.
Meanwhile Finn had discovered their flight, and his rage knew no bounds.
He sent his trackers, the Clann Neamhuain[252], to follow them. They
tracked them to the wood, and one of them climbed a tree, and, looking
down, saw the hut, with a strong seven-doored fence built round it, and
Diarmait and Grainne inside. When the news came to the Fenians, they
were sorry, for their sympathies were with Diarmait and not with Finn.
They tried to warn him, but he took no heed; for he had determined to
fight and not to flee. Indeed, when Finn himself came to the fence, and
called over it to Diarmait, asking if he and Grainne were within, he
replied that they were, but that none should enter unless he gave
permission.
So Diarmait, like Cuchulainn in the war of Ulster against Ireland, found
himself matched single-handed against a host. But, also like Cuchulainn,
he had a divine helper. The favourite of the Tuatha Dé Danann, he had
been the pupil of Manannán son of Lêr in the “Land of Promise”, and had
been fostered by Angus of the Brugh. Manannán had given him his two
spears, the “Red Javelin” and the “Yellow Javelin”, and his two swords,
the “Great Fury” and the “Little Fury”. And now Angus came to look for
his foster-son, and brought with him the magic mantle of invisibility
used by the gods. He advised Diarmait and Grainne to come out wrapped in
the cloak, and thus rendered invisible. Diarmait still refused to flee,
but asked Angus to protect Grainne. Wrapping the magic mantle round her,
the god led the princess away unseen by any of the Fenians.
By this time, Finn had posted men outside all the seven doors in the
fence. Diarmait went to each of them in turn. At the first, were Ossian
and Oscar with the Clann Baoisgne. They offered him their protection. At
the second, were Caoilte and the Clann Ronan, who said they would fight
to the death for him. At the third, were Conan and the Clann Morna, also
his friends. At the fourth, stood Cuan with the Fenians of Munster,
Diarmait’s native province. At the fifth, were the Ulster Fenians, who
also promised him protection against Finn. But at the sixth, were the
Clann Neamhuain, who hated him; and at the seventh, was Finn himself.
“It is by your door that I will pass out, O Finn,” cried Diarmait. Finn
charged his men to surround Diarmait as he came out, and kill him. But
he leaped the fence, passing clean over their heads, and fled away so
swiftly that they could not follow him. He never halted till he reached
the place to which he knew Angus had taken Grainne. The friendly god
left them with a little sage advice: never to hide in a tree with only
one trunk; never to rest in a cave with only one entrance; never to land
on an island with only one channel of approach; not to eat their supper
where they had cooked it, nor to sleep where they had supped, and, where
they had slept once, never to sleep again. With these Red-Indian-like
tactics, it was some time before Finn discovered them.
However, he found out at last where they were, and sent champions with
venomous hounds to take or kill them. But Diarmait conquered all who
were sent against him.
Yet still Finn pursued, until Diarmait, as a last hope of escape, took
refuge under a magic quicken-tree[253], which bore scarlet fruit, the
ambrosia of the gods. It had grown from a single berry dropped by one of
the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, when they found that they had carelessly
endowed mortals with celestial and immortal food, had sent a huge,
one-eyed Fomor called Sharvan the Surly to guard it, so that no man
might eat of its fruit. All day, this Fomor sat at the foot of the tree,
and, all night, he slept among its branches, and so terrible was his
appearance that neither the Fenians nor any other people dared to come
within several miles of him.
But Diarmait was willing to brave the Fomor in the hope of getting a
safe hiding-place for Grainne. He came boldly up to him, and asked leave
to camp and hunt in his neighbourhood. The Fomor told him surlily that
he might camp and hunt where he pleased, so long as he refrained from
taking any of the scarlet berries. So Diarmait built a hut near a
spring; and he and Grainne lived there, killing the wild animals for
food.
But, unhappily, Grainne conceived so strong a desire to eat the quicken
berries that she felt that she must die unless her wish could be
gratified. At first she tried to hide this longing, but in the end she
was forced to tell her companion. Diarmait had no desire to quarrel with
the Fomor; so he went to him and told the plight that Grainne was in,
and asked for a handful of the berries as a gift.
But the Fomor merely answered: “I swear to you that if nothing would
save the princess and her unborn child except my berries, and if she
were the last woman upon the earth, she should not have any of them.”
Whereupon Diarmait fought the Fomor, and, after much trouble, killed
him.
It was reported to Finn that the guardian of the magic quicken-tree
lived no longer, and he guessed that Diarmait must have killed him; so
he came down to the place with seven battalions of the Fenians to look
for him. By this time, Diarmait had abandoned his own hut and taken
possession of that built by the Fomor among the branches of the magic
quicken. He was sitting in it with Grainne when Finn and his men came
and camped at the foot of the tree, to wait till the heat of noon had
passed before beginning their search.
To beguile the time, Finn called for his chess-board and challenged his
son Ossian to a game. They played until Ossian had only one more move.
“One move would make you a winner,” said Finn to him, “but I challenge
you and all the Fenians to guess it.”
Only Diarmait, who had been looking down through the branches upon the
players, knew the move. He could not resist dropping a berry on to the
board, so deftly that it hit the very chess-man which Ossian ought to
move in order to win. Ossian took the hint, moved it, and won. A second
and a third game were played; and in each case the same thing happened.
Then Finn felt sure that the berries that had prompted Ossian must have
been thrown by Diarmait.
He called out, asking Diarmait if he were there, and the Fenian hero,
who never spoke an untruth, answered that he was. So the quicken-tree
was surrounded by armed men, just as the fenced hut in the woods had
been. But, again, things happened in the same way; for Angus of the
Brugh took away Grainne wrapped in the invisible magic cloak, while
Diarmait, walking to the end of a thick branch, cleared the circle of
Fenians at a bound, and escaped untouched.
This was the end of the famous “Pursuit”; for Angus came as ambassador
to Finn, urging him to become reconciled to the fugitives, and all the
best of the Fenians begged Finn to consent. So Diarmait and Grainne were
allowed to return in peace.
But Finn never really forgave, and, soon after, he urged Diarmait to go
out to the chase of the wild boar of Benn Gulban[254]. Diarmait killed
the boar without getting any hurt; for, like the Greek Achilles, he was
invulnerable, save in his heel alone. Finn, who knew this, told him to
measure out the length of the skin with his bare feet. Diarmait did so.
Then Finn, declaring that he had measured it wrongly, ordered him to
tread it again in the opposite direction. This was against the lie of
the bristles; and one of them pierced Diarmait’s heel, and inflicted a
poisoned and mortal wound.
This “Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne”, which has been told at such
length, marks in some degree the climax of the Fenian power, after which
it began to decline towards its end. The friends of Diarmait never
forgave the treachery with which Finn had compassed his death. The
ever-slumbering rivalry between Goll and his Clann Morna and Finn and
his Clann Baoisgne began to show itself as open enmity. Quarrels arose,
too, between the Fenians and the High-Kings of Ireland, which culminated
at last in the annihilation of the Fianna at the battle of Gabhra[255].
This is said to have been fought in A.D. 284. Finn himself had perished
a year before it, in a skirmish with rebellious Fenians at the Ford of
Brea on the Boyne. King Cormac the Magnificent, Grainne’s father, was
also dead. It was between Finn’s grandson Oscar and Cormac’s son Cairbré
that war broke out. This mythical battle was as fiercely waged as that
of Arthur’s last fight at Camlan. Oscar slew Cairbré, and was slain by
him. Almost all the Fenians fell, as well as all Cairbré’s forces.
Only two of the greater Fenian figures survived. One was Caoilte, whose
swiftness of foot saved him at the end when all was lost. The famous
story, called the “Dialogue of the Elders”, represents him discoursing
to St. Patrick, centuries after, of the Fenians’ wonderful deeds. Having
lost his friends of the heroic age, he is said to have cast in his lot
with the Tuatha Dé Danann. He fought in a battle, with Ilbhreach son of
Manannán, against Lêr himself, and killed the ancient sea-god with his
own hand.[256] The tale represents him taking possession of Lêr’s fairy
palace of Sídh Fionnechaidh, after which we know no more of him, except
that he has taken rank in the minds of the Irish peasantry as one of,
and a ruler among, the Sídhe.
The other was Ossian, who did not fight at Gabhra, for, long before, he
had taken the great journey which most heroes of mythology take, to that
bourne from which no ordinary mortal ever returns. Like Cuchulainn, it
was upon the invitation of a goddess that he went. The Fenians were
hunting near Lake Killarney when a lady of more than human beauty came
to them, and told them that her name was Niamh[257], daughter of the Son
of the Sea. The Gaelic poet, Michael Comyn, who, in the eighteenth
century, rewove the ancient story into his own words,[258] describes her
in just the same way as one of the old bards would have done:
“A royal crown was on her head;
And a brown mantle of precious silk,
Spangled with stars of red gold,
Covering her shoes down to the grass.
“A gold ring was hanging down
From each yellow curl of her golden hair;
Her eyes, blue, clear, and cloudless,
Like a dew-drop on the top of the grass.
“Redder were her cheeks than the rose,
Fairer was her visage than the swan upon the wave,
And more sweet was the taste of her balsam lips
Than honey mingled thro’ red wine.
“A garment, wide, long, and smooth
Covered the white steed,
There was a comely saddle of red gold,
And her right hand held a bridle with a golden bit.
“Four shoes well-shaped were under him,
Of the yellow gold of the purest quality;
A silver wreath was on the back of his head,
And there was not in the world a steed better.”
Such was Niamh of the Golden Hair, Manannán’s daughter; and it is small
wonder that, when she chose Ossian from among the sons of men to be her
lover, all Finn’s supplications could not keep him. He mounted behind
her on her fairy horse, and they rode across the land to the sea-shore,
and then over the tops of the waves. As they went, she described the
country of the gods to him in just the same terms as Manannán himself
had pictured it to Bran, son of Febal, as Mider had painted it to Etain,
and as everyone that went there limned it to those that stayed at home
on earth.
“It is the most delightful country to be found
Of greatest repute under the sun;
Trees drooping with fruit and blossom,
And foliage growing on the tops of boughs.
“Abundant, there, are honey and wine,
And everything that eye has beheld,
There will not come decline on thee with lapse of time.
Death or decay thou wilt not see.”
As they went they saw wonders. Fairy palaces with bright sun-bowers and
lime-white walls appeared on the surface of the sea. At one of these
they halted, and Ossian, at Niamh’s request, attacked a fierce Fomor who
lived there, and set free a damsel of the Tuatha Dé Danann whom he kept
imprisoned. He saw a hornless fawn leap from wave to wave, chased by one
of those strange hounds of Celtic myth which are pure white, with red
ears. At last they reached the “Land of the Young”, and there Ossian
dwelt with Niamh for three hundred years before he remembered Erin and
the Fenians. Then a great wish came upon him to see his own country and
his own people again, and Niamh gave him leave to go, and mounted him
upon a fairy steed for the journey. One thing alone she made him
swear—not to let his feet touch earthly soil. Ossian promised, and
reached Ireland on the wings of the wind. But, like the children of Lêr
at the end of their penance, he found all changed. He asked for Finn and
the Fenians, and was told that they were the names of people who had
lived long ago, and whose deeds were written of in old books. The Battle
of Gabhra had been fought, and St. Patrick had come to Ireland, and made
all things new. The very forms of men had altered; they seemed dwarfs
compared with the giants of his day. Seeing three hundred of them trying
in vain to raise a marble slab, he rode up to them in contemptuous
kindness, and lifted it with one hand. But, as he did so, the golden
saddle-girth broke with the strain, and he touched the earth with his
feet. The fairy horse vanished, and Ossian rose from the ground, no
longer divinely young and fair and strong, but a blind, gray-haired,
withered old man.
A number of spirited ballads[259] tell how Ossian, stranded in his old
age upon earthly soil, unable to help himself or find his own food, is
taken by St. Patrick into his house to be converted. The saint paints to
him in the brightest colours the heaven which may be his own if he will
but repent, and in the darkest the hell in which he tells him his old
comrades now lie in anguish. Ossian replies to the saint’s arguments,
entreaties, and threats in language which is extraordinarily frank. He
will not believe that heaven could be closed to the Fenians if they
wished to enter it, or that God himself would not be proud to claim
friendship with Finn. And if it be not so, what is the use to him of
eternal life where there is no hunting, or wooing fair women, or
listening to the songs and tales of bards? No, he will go to the
Fenians, whether they sit at the feast or in the fire; and so he dies as
he had lived.
-----
Footnote 223:
The translations of Fenian stories are numerous. The reader will find
many of them popularly retold in Lady Gregory’s _Gods and Fighting
Men_. Thence he may pass on to Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady’s _Silva
Gadelica_; the _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_, especially Vol.
IV; Mr. J. G. Campbell’s _The Fians_; as well as the volumes of the
_Revue Celtique_ and the _Transactions of the Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 224:
See O’Curry’s translation in Appendix CXXVIII to his _MS. Materials_.
Footnote 225:
The story, found in the Book of the Dun Cow, appears in French in De
Jubainville’s _Épopée Celtique_.
Footnote 226:
This famous story is told in several MSS. of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. For translations see Dr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische
Texte_, and Standish Hayes O’Grady, _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_, Vol. III.
Footnote 227:
In Gaelic spelling, Fionn mac Cumhail.
Footnote 228:
Pronounced _Fēna_.
Footnote 229:
O’Curry: _MS. Materials_, Lecture XIV, p. 303.
Footnote 230:
Pronounced _Coul_ or _Cooal_.
Footnote 231:
_Agalamh na Senórach._ Under the title _The Colloquy of the Ancients_,
there is an excellent translation of it, from the Book of Lismore, in
Standish Hayes O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 232:
O’Grady: _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 233:
_Hibbert Lectures_, p. 355.
Footnote 234:
See _The Enumeration of Finn’s Household_, translated by O’Grady in
_Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 235:
For a good account, see J. G. Campbell’s _The Fians_, pp. 10-80.
Footnote 236:
In more correct spelling, _Oisin_, and pronounced _Usheen_ or
_Isheen_.
Footnote 237:
Pronounced _Kylta_ or _Cweeltia_.
Footnote 238:
Pronounced _Gaul_.
Footnote 239:
Pronounced _Dermat O’Dyna_.
Footnote 240:
Pronounced _Grania_.
Footnote 241:
Pronounced _Baskin_.
Footnote 242:
Now Castleknock, near Dublin.
Footnote 243:
Pronounced _Demna_.
Footnote 244:
This and other “boy-exploits” of Finn mac Cumhail are contained in a
little tract written upon a fragment of the ninth century Psalter of
Cashel. It is translated in Vol. IV of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 245:
Campbell’s _Fians_, p. 22.
Footnote 246:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 247:
From the _Colloquy of the Ancients_ in O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 248:
It is translated in Vol. VI of the _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_.
Footnote 249:
Pronounced _Brăn_, not _Brān_.
Footnote 250:
Pronounced _Skōlaun_ or _Scolaing_.
Footnote 251:
A fine translation of the _Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne_ has been
published by S. H. O’Grady in Vol. III of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 252:
Pronounced _Navin_ or _Nowin_.
Footnote 253:
The mountain-ash, or rowan.
Footnote 254:
Now called Benbulben. It is near Sligo.
Footnote 255:
Pronounced _Gavra_.
Footnote 256:
See O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 257:
Pronounced _Nee-av_.
Footnote 258:
_The Lay of Oisin in the Land of Youth_, translated by Brian O’Looney
for the Ossianic Society—_Transactions_, Vol. IV. A fine modern poem
on the same subject is W. B. Yeats’ _Wanderings of Oisin_.
Footnote 259:
See the _Transactions of the Ossianic Society_. They are generally
called the _Dialogues of Oisin and Patrick_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GODS
In spite, however, of the wide-spread popularity of the ballads that
took the form of dialogues between Ossian and Patrick, certain
traditions say that the saint succeeded in converting the hero. Caoilté,
the other great surviving Fenian, was also represented as having gladly
exchanged his pagan lore for the faith and salvation offered him. We may
see the same influence on foot in the later legends concerning the Red
Branch Champions. It was the policy of the first Christianizers of
Ireland to describe the loved heroes of their still half-heathen flocks
as having handed in their submission to the new creed. The tales about
Conchobar and Cuchulainn were amended, to prove that those very pagan
personages had been miraculously brought to accept the gospel at the
last. An entirely new story told how the latter hero was raised from the
dead by Saint Patrick that he might bear witness of the truth of
Christianity to Laogaire the Second, King of Ireland, which he did with
such fervour and eloquence that the sceptical monarch was
convinced.[260]
Daring attempts were also made to change the Tuatha Dé Danann from pagan
gods into Christian saints, but these were by no means so profitable as
the policy pursued towards the more human-seeming heroes. With one of
them alone, was success immediate and brilliant. Brigit, the goddess of
fire, poetry, and the hearth, is famous to-day as Saint Bridget, or
Bride. Most popular of all the Irish saints, she can still be easily
recognized as the daughter of the Dagda. Her Christian attributes,
almost all connected with fire, attest her pagan origin.[261] She was
born at sunrise; a house in which she dwelt blazed into a flame which
reached to heaven; a pillar of fire rose from her head when she took the
veil; and her breath gave new life to the dead. As with the British
goddess Sul, worshipped at Bath, who—the first century Latin writer
Solinus[262] tells us—“ruled over the boiling springs, and at her altar
there flamed a perpetual fire which never whitened into ashes, but
hardened into a stony mass”, the sacred flame on her shrine at Kildare
was never allowed to go out. It was extinguished once, in the thirteenth
century, but was relighted, and burnt with undying glow until the
suppression of the monasteries by Henry the Eighth. This sacred fire
might not be breathed on by the impure human breath. For nineteen nights
it was tended by her nuns, but on the twentieth night it was left
untouched, and kept itself alight miraculously. With so little of her
essential character and ritual changed, it is small wonder that the
half-pagan, half-Christian Irish gladly accepted the new saint in the
stead of the old goddess.
Doubtless a careful examination of Irish hagiology would result in the
discovery of many other saints whose names and attributes might render
them suspect of previous careers as pagan gods. But their acceptation
was not sufficiently general to do away with the need of other means of
counteracting the still living influence of the Gaelic Pantheon.
Therefore a fresh school of euhemerists arose to prove that the gods
were never even saints, but merely worldly men who had once lived and
ruled in Erin. Learned monks worked hard to construct a history of
Ireland from the Flood downwards. Mr. Eugene O’Curry has compiled from
the various pedigrees they elaborated, and inserted into the books of
Ballymote, Lecan, and Leinster an amazing genealogy which shows how, not
merely the Tuatha Dé Danann, but also the Fir Bolgs, the Fomors, the
Milesians, and the races of Partholon and Nemed were descended from
Noah. Japhet, the patriarch’s son, was the father of Magog, from whom
came two lines, the first being the Milesians, while the second branched
out into all the other races.[263]
Having once worked the gods, first into universal history, and then into
the history of Ireland, it was an easy matter to supply them with dates
of birth and death, local habitations, and places of burial. We are told
with precision exactly how long Nuada, the Dagda, Lugh, and the others
reigned at Tara. The barrows by the Boyne provided them with comfortable
tombs. Their enemies, the Fomors, became real invaders who were beaten
in real battles. Thus it was thought to make plain prose of their
divinities.
It is only fair, however, to these early euhemerists to say that they
have their modern disciples. There are many writers, of recognized
authority upon their subjects, who, in dealing with the history of
Ireland or the composition of the British race, claim to find real
peoples in the tribes mentioned in Gaelic myth. Unfortunately, the only
point they agree upon is the accepted one—that the “Milesians” were
Aryan Celts. They are divided upon the question of the “Fir Bolgs”, in
whom some see the pre-Aryan tribes, while others, led astray by the
name, regard them as Belgic Gauls; and over the really mythological
races they run wild. In the Tuatha Dé Danann are variously found Gaels,
Picts, Danes, Scandinavians, Ligurians, and Finns, while the Fomors rest
under the suspicion of having been Iberians, Moors, Romans, Finns,
Goths, or Teutons. As for the people of Partholon and Nemed, they have
even been explained as men of the Palæolithic Age. This chaos of opinion
was fortunately avoided by the native annalists, who had no particular
views upon the question of race, except that everybody came from
“Spain”.
Of course there were dissenters from this prevailing mania for
euhemerization. As late as the tenth century, a poet called Eochaid
O’Flynn, writing of the Tuatha Dé Danann, at first seems to hesitate
whether to ascribe humanity or divinity to them, and at last frankly
avows their godhead. In his poem, preserved in the Book of
Ballymote,[264] he says:—
“Though they came to learned Erinn
Without buoyant, adventurous ships,
No man in creation knew
Whether they were of the earth or of the sky.
“If they were diabolical demons,
They came from that woeful expulsion;[265]
If they were of a race of tribes and nations,
If they were human, they were of the race of Beothach.”
Then he enumerates them in due succession, and ends by declaring:—
“Though I have treated of these deities in their order,
Yet I have not adored them”.
One may surmise with probability that the common people agreed rather
with the poet than with the monk. Pious men in monasteries might write
what they liked, but mere laymen would not be easily persuaded that
their cherished gods had never been anything more than men like
themselves. Probably they said little, but acted in secret according to
their inherited ideas. Let it be granted, for the sake of peace, that
Goibniu was only a man; none the less, his name was known to be
uncommonly effective in an incantation. This applied equally to
Diancecht, and invocations to both of them are contained in some verses
which an eighth-century Irish monk wrote on the margin of a manuscript
still preserved at St. Gall, in Switzerland. Some prescriptions of
Diancecht’s have come down to us, but it must be admitted that they
hardly differ from those current among ordinary mediæval physicians.
Perhaps, after that unfortunate spilling of the herbs that grew out of
Miach’s body, he had to fall back upon empirical research. He invented a
porridge for “the relief of ailments of the body, as cold, phlegm,
throat cats, and the presence of living things in the body, as worms”;
it was compounded of hazel buds, dandelion, chickweed, sorrel, and
oatmeal; and was to be taken every morning and evening. He also
prescribed against the effects of witchcraft and the fourteen diseases
of the stomach.
Goibniu, in addition to his original character as the divine smith and
sorcerer, gained a third reputation among the Irish as a great builder
and bridge-maker. As such he is known as the Gobhan Saer, that is,
Goibniu the Architect, and marvellous tales, current all over Ireland
attest his prowess.
“Men call’d him Gobhan Saer, and many a tale
Yet lingers in the by-ways of the land
Of how he cleft the rock, or down the vale
Led the bright river, child-like, in his hand:
Of how on giant ships he spread great sail,
And many marvels else by him first plann’d”,
writes a poet of modern Ireland.[266] Especially were the “round towers”
attributed to him, and the Christian clerics appropriated his popularity
by describing him as having been the designer of their churches. He
used, according to legend, to wander over the country, clad, like the
Greek Hephaestus, whom he resembles, in working dress, seeking
commissions and adventures. His works remain in the cathedrals and
churches of Ireland; and, with regard to his adventures, many strange
legends are still, or were until very recently, current upon the lips of
old people in remote parts of Ireland.
Some of these are, as might have been expected, nothing more than
half-understood recollections of the ancient mythology. In them appear
as characters others of the old, yet not quite forgotten gods—Lugh,
Manannán, and Balor—names still remembered as those of long-past druids,
heroes, and kings of Ireland in the misty olden time.
One or two of them are worth re-telling. Mr. William Larminie,
collecting folk-tales in Achill Island, took one from the lips of an
aged peasant, which tells in its confused way what might almost be
called the central incident of Gaelic mythology, the mysterious birth of
the sun-god from demoniac parentage, and his eventual slaying of his
grandfather when he came to full age.[267]
Gobhan the Architect and his son, young Gobhan, runs the tale, were sent
for by Balor of the Blows to build him a palace. They built it so well
that Balor decided never to let them leave his kingdom alive, for fear
they should build another one equally good for someone else. He
therefore had all the scaffolding removed from round the palace while
they were still on the top, with the intention of leaving them up there
to die of hunger. But, when they discovered this, they began to destroy
the roof, so that Balor was obliged to let them come down.
He, none the less, refused to allow them to return to Ireland. The
crafty Gobhan, however, had his plan ready. He told Balor that the
injury that had been done to the palace roof could not be repaired
without special tools, which he had left behind him at home. Balor
declined to let either old Gobhan or young Gobhan go back to fetch them;
but he offered to send his own son. Gobhan gave Balor’s son directions
for the journey. He was to travel until he came to a house with a stack
of corn at the door. Entering it, he would find a woman with one hand
and a child with one eye.
Balor’s son found the house, and asked the woman for the tools. She
expected him; for it had been arranged between Gobhan and his wife what
should be done, if Balor refused to let him return. She took Balor’s son
to a huge chest, and told him that the tools were at the bottom of it,
so far down that she could not reach them, and that he must get into the
chest, and pick them up himself. But, as soon as he was safely inside,
she shut the lid on him, telling him that he would have to stay there
until his father allowed old Gobhan and young Gobhan to come home with
their pay. And she sent the same message to Balor himself.
There was an exchange of prisoners, Balor giving the two Gobhans their
pay and a ship to take them home, and Gobhan’s wife releasing Balor’s
son. But, before the two builders went, Balor asked them whom he should
now employ to repair his palace. Old Gobhan told him that, next to
himself, there was no workman in Ireland better than one Gavidjeen Go.
When Gobhan got back to Ireland, he sent Gavidjeen Go to Balor. But he
gave him a piece of advice—to accept as pay only one thing: Balor’s gray
cow, which would fill twenty barrels at one milking. Balor agreed to
this, but, when he gave the cow to Gavidjeen Go to take back with him to
Ireland, he omitted to include her byre-rope, which was the only thing
that would keep her from returning to her original owner.
The gray cow gave so much trouble to Gavidjeen Go by her straying, that
he was obliged to hire military champions to watch her during the day
and bring her safely home at night. The bargain made was that Gavidjeen
Go should forge the champion a sword for his pay, but that, if he lost
the cow, his life was to be forfeited.
At last, a certain warrior called Cian was unlucky enough to let the cow
escape. He followed her tracks down to the sea-shore and right to the
edge of the waves, and there he lost them altogether. He was tearing his
hair in his perplexity, when he saw a man rowing a coracle. The man, who
was no other than Manannán son of Lêr, came in close to the shore, and
asked what was the matter.
Cian told him.
“What would you give to anyone who would take you to the place where the
gray cow is?” asked Manannán.
“I have nothing to give,” replied Cian.
“All I ask,” said Manannán, “is half of whatever you gain before you
come back.”
Cian agreed to that willingly enough, and Manannán told him to get into
the coracle. In the wink of an eye, he had landed him in Balor’s
kingdom, the realm of the cold, where they roast no meat, but eat their
food raw. Cian was not used to this diet, so he lit himself a fire, and
began to cook some food. Balor saw the fire, and came down to it, and he
was so pleased that he appointed Cian to be his fire-maker and cook.
Now Balor had a daughter, of whom a druid had prophesied that she would,
some day, bear a son who would kill his grandfather. Therefore, like
Acrisius, in Greek legend, he shut her up in a tower, guarded by women,
and allowed her to see no man but himself. One day, Cian saw Balor go to
the tower. He waited until he had come back, and then went to explore.
He had the gift of opening locked doors and shutting them again after
him. When he got inside, he lit a fire, and this novelty so delighted
Balor’s daughter that she invited him to visit her again. After this—in
the Achill islander’s quaint phrase—“he was ever coming there, until a
child happened to her.” Balor’s daughter gave the baby to Cian to take
away. She also gave him the byre-rope which belonged to the gray cow.
Cian was in great danger now, for Balor had found out about the child.
He led the gray cow away with the rope to the sea-shore, and waited for
Manannán. The Son of Lêr had told Cian that, when he was in any
difficulty, he was to think of him, and he would at once appear. Cian
thought of him now, and, in a moment, Manannán appeared with his
coracle. Cian got into the boat, with the baby and the gray cow, just as
Balor, in hot pursuit, came down to the beach.
Balor, by his incantations, raised a great storm to drown them; but
Manannán, whose druidism was greater, stilled it. Then Balor turned the
sea into fire, to burn them; but Manannán put it out with a stone.
When they were safe back in Ireland, Manannán asked Cian for his
promised reward.
“I have gained nothing but the boy, and I cannot cut him in two, so I
will give him to you whole,” he replied.
“That is what I was wanting all the time,” said Manannán; “when he grows
up, there will be no champion equal to him.”
So Manannán baptized the boy, calling him “the Dul-Dauna”. This name,
meaning “Blind-Stubborn”, is certainly a curious corruption of the
original _Ioldanach_[268] “Master of all Knowledge”. When the boy had
grown up, he went one day to the sea-shore. A ship came past, in which
was a man. The traditions of Donnybrook Fair are evidently prehistoric,
for the boy, without troubling to ask who the stranger was, took a dart
“out of his pocket”, hurled it, and hit him. The man in the boat
happened to be Balor. Thus, in accordance with the prophecy, he was
slain by his grandson, who, though the folktale does not name him, was
obviously Lugh.
Another version of the same legend, collected by the Irish scholar
O’Donovan on the coast of Donegal, opposite Balor s favourite haunt,
Tory Island, is interesting as completing the one just narrated.[269] In
this folk-tale, Goibniu is called Gavida, and is made one of three
brothers, the other two being called Mac Kineely and Mac Samthainn. They
were chiefs of Donegal, smiths and farmers, while Balor was a robber who
harassed the mainland from his stronghold on Tory Island. The gray cow
belonged to Mac Kineely, and Balor stole it. Its owner determined to be
revenged, and, knowing the prediction concerning Balor’s death at the
hands of an as yet unborn grandson, he persuaded a kindly fairy to
spirit him in female disguise to Tor Mor, where Balor’s daughter, who
was called Ethnea, was kept imprisoned. The result of this expedition
was not merely the one son necessary to fulfil the prophecy, but three.
This apparent superfluity was fortunate; for Balor drowned two of them,
the other being picked out of the sea by the same fairy who had been
incidentally responsible for his birth, and handed over to his father,
Mac Kineely, to be brought up. Shortly after this, Balor managed to
capture Mac Kineely, and, in retaliation for the wrong done him, chopped
off his head upon a large white stone, still known locally as the “Stone
of Kineely”. Satisfied with this, and quite unaware that one of his
daughter’s children had been saved from death, and was now being brought
up as a smith by Gavida, Balor went on with his career of robbery,
varying it by visits to the forge to purchase arms. One day, being there
during Gavida’s absence, he began boasting to the young assistant of how
he had compassed Mac Kineely’s death. He never finished the story, for
Lugh—which was the boy’s name—snatched a red-hot iron from the fire, and
thrust it into Balor’s eye, and through his head.
Thus, in these two folk-tales,[270] gathered in different parts of
Ireland, at different times, by different persons, survives quite a mass
of mythological detail only to be found otherwise in ancient manuscripts
containing still more ancient matter. Crystallized in them may be found
the names of six members of the old Gaelic Pantheon, each filling the
same part as of old. Goibniu has not lost his mastery of smithcraft;
Balor is still the Fomorian king of the cold regions of the sea; his
daughter Ethniu becomes, by Cian, the mother of the sun-god; Lugh, who
still bears his old title of _Ioldanach_, though it is strangely
corrupted into a name meaning almost the exact opposite, is still
fostered by Manannán, Son of the Sea, and in the end grows up to destroy
his grandfather by a blow in the one vulnerable place, his death-dealing
eye. Perhaps, too, we may claim to see a genuine, though jumbled
tradition, in the Fomor-like deformities of Gobhan’s wife and child, and
in the story of the gray cow and her byre-rope, which recalls that of
the Dagda’s black-maned heifer, Ocean.
The memories of the peasantry still hold many stories of Lugh, as well
as of Angus, and others of the old gods. But, next to the Gobhan Saer,
the one whose fame is still greatest is that ever-potent and
ever-popular figure, the great Manannán.
The last, perhaps, to receive open adoration, he is represented by
kindly tradition as having been still content to help and watch over the
people who had rejected and ceased to worship him. Up to the time of St.
Columba, he was the special guardian of Irishmen in foreign parts,
assisting them in their dangers and bringing them home safe. For the
peasantry, too, he caused favourable weather and good crops. His fairy
subjects tilled the ground while men slept. But this is said to have
come to an end at last. Saint Columba, having broken his golden chalice,
gave it to a servant to get repaired. On his way, the servant was met by
a stranger, who asked him where he was going. The man told him, and
showed him the chalice. The stranger breathed upon it, and, at once, the
broken parts reunited. Then he begged him to return to his master, give
him the chalice, and tell him that Manannán son of Lêr, who had mended
it, desired to know in very truth whether he would ever attain paradise.
“Alas,” said the ungrateful saint, “there is no forgiveness for a man
who does such works as this!” The servant went back with the answer, and
Manannán, when he heard it, broke out into indignant lament. “Woe is me,
Manannán mac Lêr! for years I’ve helped the Catholics of Ireland, but
I’ll do it no more, till they’re as weak as water. I’ll go to the gray
waves in the Highlands of Scotland.”[271]
And there he remained. For, unless the charming stories of Miss Fiona
Macleod are mere beautiful imaginings and nothing more, he is not
unknown even to-day among the solitary shepherds and fishers of “the
farthest Hebrides”. In the _Contemporary Review_ for October, 1902,[272]
she tells how an old man of fourscore years would often be visited in
his shieling by a tall, beautiful stranger, with a crest on his head,
“like white canna blowing in the wind, but with a blueness in it”, and
“a bright, cold, curling flame under the soles of his feet”. The man
told him many things, and prophesied to him the time of his death.
Generally, the stranger’s hands were hidden in the folds of the white
cloak he wore, but, once, he moved to touch the shepherd, who saw then
that his flesh was like water, with sea-weed floating among the bones.
So that Murdo MacIan knew that he could be speaking with none other than
the Son of the Sea.
Nor is he yet quite forgotten in his own Island of Man, of which local
tradition says he was the first inhabitant. He is also described as its
king, who kept it from invasion by his magic. He would cause mists to
rise at any moment and conceal the island, and by the same glamour he
could make one man seem like a hundred, and little chips of wood which
he threw into the water to appear like ships of war. It is no wonder
that he held his kingdom against all-comers, until his sway was ended,
like that of the other Gaelic gods, by the arrival of Saint Patrick.
After this, he seems to have declined into a traditionary giant who used
to leap from Peel Castle to Contrary Head for exercise, or hurl huge
rocks, upon which the mark of his hand can still be seen. It is said
that he took no tribute from his subjects, or worshippers except bundles
of green rushes, which were placed every Midsummer Eve upon two mountain
peaks, one called Warrefield in olden days, but now South Barrule, and
the other called Man, and not now to be identified. His grave, which is
thirty yards long, is pointed out, close to Peel Castle. The most
curious legend connected with him, however, tells us that he had three
legs, on which he used to travel at a great pace. How this was done may
be seen from the arms of the island, on which are pictured his three
limbs, joined together, and spread out like the spokes of a wheel.[273]
An Irish tradition tells us that, when Manannán left Ireland for
Scotland, the vacant kingship of the gods or fairies was taken by one
Mac Moineanta, to the great grief of those who had known Manannán.[274]
Perhaps this great grief led to Mac Moineanta’s being deposed, for the
present king of the Irish fairies is Finvarra, the same Fionnbharr to
whom the Dagda allotted the _sídh_ of Meadha after the conquest of the
Tuatha Dé Danann by the Milesians, and who takes a prominent part in the
Fenian stories. So great is the persistence of tradition in Ireland that
this hill of Meadha, now spelt Knockma, is still considered to be the
abode of him and his queen, Onagh. Numberless stories are told about
Finvarra, including, of course, that very favourite Celtic tale of the
stolen bride, and her recapture from the fairies by the siege and
digging up of the _sídh_ in which she was held prisoner. Finvarra, like
Mider of Bri Leith, carried away a human Etain—the wife, not of a high
king, but of an Irish lord. The modern Eochaid Airem, having heard an
invisible voice tell him where he was to look for his lost bride,
gathered all his workmen and labourers and proceeded to demolish
Knockma. Every day they almost dug it up, but every night the breach was
found to have been repaired by fairy workmen of Finvarra’s. This went on
for three days, when the Irish lord thought of the well-known device of
sanctifying the work of excavation by sprinkling the turned-up earth
with salt. Needless to say, it succeeded. Finvarra gave back the bride,
still in the trance into which he had thrown her; and the deep cut into
the fairy hill still remains to furnish proof to the incredulous.[275]
Finvarra does not always appear, however, in such unfriendly guise. He
was popularly reputed to have under his special care the family of the
Kirwans of Castle Hacket, on the northern slope of Knockma. Owing to his
benevolent influence, the castle cellars never went dry, nor did the
quality of the wine deteriorate. Besides the wine-cellar, Finvarra
looked after the stables, and it was owing to the exercise that he and
his fairy followers gave the horses by night that Mr. John Kirwan’s
racers were so often successful on the Curragh. That such stories could
have passed current as fact, which they undoubtedly did, is excellent
proof of how late and how completely a mythology may survive among the
uncultured.[276]
Finvarra rules to-day over a wide realm of fairy folk. Many of these,
again, have their own vassal chieftains, forming a tribal hierarchy such
as must have existed in the Celtic days of Ireland. Finvarra and Onagh
are high king and queen, but, under them, Cliodna[277] is tributary
queen of Munster, and rules from a _sídh_ near Mallow in County Cork,
while, under her again, are Aoibhinn[278], queen of the fairies of North
Munster, and Ainé, queen of the fairies of South Munster. These names
form but a single instance. A map of fairy Ireland could without much
difficulty be drawn, showing, with almost political exactness, the
various kingdoms of the Sídhe.
Far less easy, however, would be the task of ascertaining the origin and
lineage of these fabled beings. Some of them can still be traced as
older gods and goddesses. In the eastern parts of Ireland, Badb and her
sisters have become “banshees” who wail over deaths not necessarily
found in battle. Aynia, deemed the most powerful fairy in Ulster, and
Ainé, queen of South Munster, are perhaps the same person, the
mysterious and awful goddess once adored as Anu, or Danu. Of the two, it
is Ainé who especially seems to carry on the traditions of the older
Anu, worshipped, according to the “Choice of Names”, in Munster as a
goddess of prosperity and abundance. Within living memory, she was
propitiated by a magical ritual upon every Saint John’s Eve, to ensure
fertility during the coming year. The villagers round her _sídh_ of Cnoc
Ainé (Knockainy) carried burning bunches of hay or straw upon poles to
the top of the hill, and thence dispersed among the fields, waving these
torches over the crops and cattle. This fairy, or goddess was held to be
friendly, and, indeed, more than friendly, to men. Whether or not she
were the mother of the gods, she is claimed as first ancestress by half
a dozen famous Irish families.
Among her children was the famous Earl Gerald, offspring of her alliance
with the fourth Earl of Desmond, known as “The Magician”. As in the
well-known story of the Swan-maidens, the magician-earl is said to have
stolen Ainé’s cloak while she was bathing, and refused to return it
unless she became his bride. But, in the end, he lost her. Ainé had
warned her husband never to show surprise at anything done by their son;
but a wonderful feat which he performed made the earl break this
condition, and Ainé was obliged, by fairy law, to leave him. But, though
she had lost her husband, she was not separated from her son, who was
received into the fairy world after his death, and now lives under the
surface of Lough Gur, in County Limerick, waiting, like the British
Arthur, for the hour to strike in which he shall lead forth his warriors
to drive the foreigners from Ireland. But this will not be until, by
riding round the lake once in every seventh year, he shall have worn his
horse’s silver shoes as thin as a cat’s ear.[279]
Not only the tribe of Danu, but heroes of the other mythical cycles
swell the fairy host to-day. Donn, son of Milé, who was drowned before
ever he set foot on Irish soil, lives at “Donn’s House”, a line of
sand-hills in the Dingle Peninsula of Kerry, and, as late as the
eighteenth century, we find him invoked by a local poet, half in jest,
no doubt, but still, perhaps also a little in earnest.[280] The heroes
of Ulster have no part in fairyland; but their enemy, Medb, is credited
with queenly rule among the Sídhe, and is held by some to have been the
original of “Queen Mab”. Caoilté, last of the Fenians, was, in spite of
his leanings towards Christianity, enrolled among the Tuatha Dé Danann,
but none of his kin are known there, neither Ossian, nor Oscar, nor even
Finn himself. Yet not even to merely historical mortals are the gates of
the gods necessarily closed. The Barry, chief of the barony of
Barrymore, is said to inhabit an enchanted palace in Knockthierna, one
of the Nagles Hills. The not less traditionally famous O’Donaghue, whose
domain was near Killarney, now dwells beneath the waters of that lake,
and may still be seen, it is said, upon May Day.[281]
But besides these figures, which can be traced in mythology or history,
and others who, though all written record of them has perished, are
obviously of the same character, there are numerous beings who suggest a
different origin from that of the Aryan-seeming fairies. They correspond
to the elves and trolls of Scandinavian, or the silenoi and satyrs of
Greek myth. Such is the Leprechaun, who makes shoes for the fairies, and
knows where hidden treasures are; the Gan Ceanach, or “love-talker”, who
fills the ears of idle girls with pleasant fancies when, to merely
mortal ideas, they should be busy with their work; the Pooka, who leads
travellers astray, or, taking the shape of an ass or mule, beguiles them
to mount upon his back to their discomfiture; the Dulachan, who rides
without a head; and other friendly or malicious sprites. Whence come
they? A possible answer suggests itself. Preceding the Aryans, and
surviving the Aryan conquest all over Europe, was a large non-Aryan
population, which must have had its own gods, who would retain their
worship, be revered by successive generations, and remain rooted to the
soil. May not these uncouth and half-developed Irish Leprechauns,
Pookas, and Dulachans, together with the Scotch Cluricanes, Brownies,
and their kin, be no “creations of popular fancy”, but the dwindling
figures of those darker gods of “the dark Iberians”?
-----
Footnote 260:
The story, contained in the Book of the Dun Cow, is called _The
Phantom Chariot_. It has been translated by Mr. O’Beirne Crowe, and is
included in Miss Hull’s _Cuchulinn Saga_.
Footnote 261:
See Elton, _Origins of English History_, pp. 269-271.
Footnote 262:
Caius Julius Solinus, known as Polyhistor, chap. XXIV.
Footnote 263:
It is appended to his translation of the tale of the _Exile of the
Children of Usnach_ in _Atlantis_, Vol. III.
Footnote 264:
See Cusack’s _History of Ireland_, pp. 160-162.
Footnote 265:
_I.e._ from Heaven.
Footnote 266:
Thomas D’Arcy M‘Gee: _Poems_, p. 78, “The Gobhan Saer”.
Footnote 267:
Larminie: _West Irish Folk-Tales_, pp. 1-9.
Footnote 268:
Pronounced _Ildāna_.
Footnote 269:
It is told in Rhys’s _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 314-317.
Footnote 270:
For still other folk-tale versions of this same myth see Curtin’s
_Hero Tales of Ireland_.
Footnote 271:
A Donegal story, collected by Mr. David Fitzgerald and published in
the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. IV, p. 177.
Footnote 272:
The paper is called “Sea-Magic and Running Water”.
Footnote 273:
Moore: _Folklore of the Isle of Man_.
Footnote 274:
See an article in the _Dublin University Magazine_ for June, 1864
Footnote 275:
The story is among those told by Lady Wilde in her _Ancient Legends of
Ireland_, Vol. I, pp. 77-82.
Footnote 276:
_Dublin University Magazine_, June, 1864.
Footnote 277:
Pronounced _Cleena_.
Footnote 278:
Pronounced _Evin_.
Footnote 279:
See Fitzgerald, _Popular Tales of Ireland_, in Vol. IV of the _Revue
Celtique_.
Footnote 280:
_Dublin University Magazine_, June, 1864.
Footnote 281:
For stories of these two Norman-Irish heroes, see Crofton Croker’s
_Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BRITISH GODS AND THEIR
STORIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI
THE GODS OF THE BRITONS
The descriptions and the stories of the British gods have hardly come
down to us in so ample or so compact a form as those of the deities of
the Gaels, as they are preserved in the Irish and Scottish manuscripts.
They have also suffered far more from the sophistications of the
euhemerist. Only in the “Four Branches of the Mabinogi” do the gods of
the Britons appear in anything like their real character of supernatural
beings, masters of magic, and untrammelled by the limitations which
hedge in mortals. Apart from those four fragments of mythology, and from
a very few scattered references in the early Welsh poems, one must
search for them under strange disguises. Some masquerade as kings in
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s more than apocryphal _Historia Britonum_. Others
have received an undeserved canonization, which must be stripped from
them before they can be seen in their true colours. Others, again, were
adopted by the Norman-French romancers, and turned into the champions of
chivalry now known as Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. But, however
disguised, their real nature can still be discerned. The Gaels and the
Britons were but two branches of one race—the Celtic. In many of the
gods of the Britons we shall recognize, with names alike and attributes
the same, the familiar features of the Gaelic Tuatha Dé Danann.
The British gods are sometimes described as divided into three
families—the “Children of Dôn”, the “Children of Nudd”, and the
“Children of Llyr”. But these three families are really only two; for
Nudd, or Lludd, as he is variously called, is himself described as a son
of Beli, who was the husband of the goddess Dôn. There can be no doubt
that Dôn herself is the same divine personage as Danu, the mother of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, and that Beli is the British equivalent of the Gaelic
Bilé, the universal Dis Pater who sent out the first Gaels from Hades to
take possession of Ireland. With the other family, the “Children of
Llyr”, we are equally on familiar ground; for the British Llyr can be
none other than the Gaelic sea-god Lêr. These two families or tribes are
usually regarded as in opposition, and their struggles seem to symbolize
in British myth that same conflict between the powers of heaven, light,
and life and of the sea, darkness, and death which are shadowed in
Gaelic mythology in the battles between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the
Fomors.
For the children of Dôn were certainly gods of the sky. Their names are
writ large in heaven. The glittering W which we call “Cassiopeia’s
Chair” was to our British ancestors _Llys Dôn_, or “Dôn’s Court”; our
“Northern Crown” was _Caer Arianrod_, the “Castle of Arianrod”, Dôn’s
daughter; while the “Milky Way” was the “Castle of Gwydion”, Dôn’s
son.[282] More than this, the greatest of her children, the Nudd or
Lludd whom some make the head of a dynasty of his own, was the Zeus
alike of the Britons and of the Gaels. His epithet of _Llaw Ereint_,
that is, “of the Hand of Silver”, proves him the same personage as Nuada
the “Silver-Handed”. The legend which must have existed to explain this
peculiarity has been lost on British ground, but it was doubtless the
same as that told of the Irish god. With it, and, no doubt, much else,
has disappeared any direct account of battles fought by him as sky-god
against Fomor-like enemies. But, under the faint disguise of a king of
Britain, an ancient Welsh tale[283] records how he put an end to three
supernatural “plagues” which oppressed his country. In addition to this,
we find him under his name of Nudd described in a Welsh Triad as one of
“the three generous heroes of the Isle of Britain”, while another makes
him the owner of twenty-one thousand milch cows—an expression which
must, to the primitive mind, have implied inexhaustible wealth. Both
help us to the conception of a god of heaven and battle, triumphant, and
therefore rich and liberal.[284]
More tangible evidence is, however, not lacking to prove the wide-spread
nature of his worship. A temple dedicated to him in Roman times under
the name of Nodens, or Nudens, has been discovered at Lydney, on the
banks of the Severn. The god is pictured on a plaque of bronze as a
youthful deity, haloed like the sun, and driving a four-horsed chariot.
Flying spirits, typifying the winds, accompany him; while his power over
the sea is symbolized by attendant Tritons.[285] This was in the west of
Britain, while, in the east, there is good reason to believe that he had
a shrine overlooking the Thames. Tradition declares that St. Paul’s
Cathedral occupies the site of an ancient pagan temple; while the spot
on which it stands was called, we know from Geoffrey of Monmouth, “Parth
Lludd” by the Britons, and “Ludes Geat” by the Saxons.[286]
Great, however, as he probably was, Lludd, or Nudd occupies less space
in Welsh story, as we have it now, than his son. Gwyn ap Nudd has
outlived in tradition almost all his supernatural kin. Professor Rhys is
tempted to see in him the British equivalent of the Gaelic Finn mac
Cumhail.[287] The name of both alike means “white”; both are sons of the
heaven-god; both are famed as hunters. Gwyn, however, is more than that;
for his game is man. In the early Welsh poems, he is a god of battle and
of the dead, and, as such, fills the part of a _psychopompos_,
conducting the slain into Hades, and there ruling over them. In later,
semi-Christianized story he is described as “Gwyn, son of Nudd, whom God
has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy
the present race[288]”. Later again, as paganism still further
degenerated, he came to be considered as king of the _Tylwyth Teg_, the
Welsh fairies,[289] and his name as such has hardly yet died out of his
last haunt, the romantic vale of Neath. He is the wild huntsman of Wales
and the West of England, and it is his pack which is sometimes heard at
chase in waste places by night.
In his earliest guise, as a god of war and death, he is the subject of a
poem in dialogue contained in the Black Book of Caermarthen.[290]
Obscure, like most of the ancient Welsh poems,[291] it is yet a spirited
production, and may be quoted here as a favourable specimen of the
poetry of the early Cymri. In it we shall see mirrored perhaps the
clearest figure of the British Pantheon, the “mighty hunter”, not of
deer, but of men’s souls, riding his demon horse, and cheering on his
demon hound to the fearful chase. He knows when and where all the great
warriors fell, for he gathered their souls upon the field of battle, and
now rules over them in Hades, or upon some “misty mountain-top”.[292] It
describes a mythical prince, named Gwyddneu Garanhir, known to Welsh
legend as the ruler of a lost country now covered by the waters of
Cardigan Bay, asking protection of the god, who accords it, and then
relates the story of his exploits:
_Gwyddneu._
A bull of conflict was he, active in dispersing an arrayed army,
The ruler of hosts, indisposed to anger,
Blameless and pure his conduct in protecting life.
_Gwyn._
Against a hero stout was his advance,
The ruler of hosts, disposer of wrath,
There will be protection for thee since thou askest it.
_Gwyddneu._
For thou hast given me protection
How warmly wert thou welcomed!
The hero of hosts, from what region thou comest?
_Gwyn._
I come from battle and conflict
With a shield in my hand;
Broken is the helmet by the pushing of spears.
_Gwyddneu._
I will address thee, exalted man,
With his shield in distress.
Brave man, what is thy descent?
_Gwyn._
Round-hoofed is my horse, the torment of battle,
Fairy am I called, Gwyn the son of Nudd,[293]
The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd.
_Gwyddneu._
Since it is thou, Gwyn, an upright man,
From thee there is no concealing:
I am Gwyddneu Garanhir.
_Gwyn._
Hasten to my ridge, the Tawë abode;
Not the nearest Tawë name I to thee,
But that Tawë which is the farthest.[294]
Polished is my ring, golden my saddle and bright:
To my sadness
I saw a conflict before Caer Vandwy.[295]
Before Caer Vandwy a host I saw,
Shields were shattered and ribs broken;
Renowned and splendid was he who made the assault.
_Gwyddneu._
Gwyn, son of Nudd, the hope of armies,
Quicker would legions fall before the hoofs
Of thy horse than broken rushes to the ground.
_Gwyn._
Handsome my dog, and round-bodied,
And truly the best of dogs;
Dormarth[296] was he, which belonged to Maelgwyn.
_Gwyddneu._
Dormarth with the ruddy nose! what a gazer
Thou art upon me because I notice
Thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd.[297]
_Gwyn._
I have been in the place where was killed Gwendoleu,
The son of Ceidaw, the pillar of songs,
When the ravens screamed over blood.
I have been in the place where Brân was killed,
The son of Iweridd, of far extending fame,
When the ravens of the battle-field screamed.
I have been where Llacheu was slain,
The son of Arthur, extolled in songs,
When the ravens screamed over blood.
I have been where Meurig was killed,
The son of Carreian, of honourable fame,
When the ravens screamed over flesh.
I have been where Gwallawg was killed,
The son of Goholeth, the accomplished,
The resister of Lloegyr, the son of Lleynawg.
I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain,
From the east to the north:
I am the escort of the grave.[298]
I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain,
From the east to the south:
I am alive, they in death!
A line in this poem allows us to see Gwyn in another and less sinister
rôle. “The lover of Creurdilad, the daughter of Lludd,” he calls
himself; and an episode in the mythical romance of “Kulhwch and Olwen”,
preserved in the Red Book of Hergest, gives the details of his
courtship. Gwyn had as rival a deity called Gwyrthur ap Greidawl, that
is “Victor, son of Scorcher”.[299] These two waged perpetual war for
Creurdilad, or Creudylad, each in turn stealing her from the other,
until the matter was referred to Arthur, who decided that Creudylad
should be sent back to her father, and that Gwyn and Gwyrthur “should
fight for her every first of May, from henceforth until the day of doom,
and that whichever of them should then be conqueror should have the
maiden”. What satisfaction this would be to the survivor of what might
be somewhat flippantly described as, in two senses, the longest
engagement on record, is not very clear; but its mythological
interpretation appears fairly obvious. In Gwyn, god of death and the
underworld, and in the solar deity, Gwyrthur, we may see the powers of
darkness and sunshine, of winter and summer, in contest,[300] each
alternately winning and losing a bride who would seem to represent the
spring with its grain and flowers. Creudylad, whom the story of “Kulhwch
and Olwen” calls “the most splendid maiden in the three islands of the
mighty and in the three islands adjacent”, is, in fact, the British
Persephoné. As the daughter of Lludd, she is child of the shining sky.
But a different tradition must have made her a daughter of Llyr, the
sea-god; for her name as such passed, through Geoffrey of Monmouth, to
Shakespeare, in whose hands she became that pathetic figure, Cordelia in
“King Lear”. It may not be altogether unworthy of notice, though perhaps
it is only a coincidence, that in some myths the Greek Persephoné is
made a daughter of Zeus and in others of Poseidon.[301]
Turning from the sky-god and his son, we find others of Dôn’s children
to have been the exponents of those arts of life which early races held
to have been taught directly by the gods to men. Dôn herself had a
brother, Mâth, son of a mysterious Mâthonwy, and recognizable as a
benevolent ruler of the underworld akin to Beli, or perhaps that god
himself under another title, for the name Mâth, which means “coin,
money, treasure”,[302] recalls that of Plouton, the Greek god of Hades,
in his guise of possessor and giver of metals. It was a belief common to
the Aryan races that wisdom, as well as wealth, came originally from the
underworld; and we find Mâth represented, in the Mabinogi bearing his
name, as handing on his magical lore to his nephew and pupil Gwydion,
who, there is good reason to believe, was the same divine personage whom
the Teutonic tribes worshipped as “Woden” and “Odin”. Thus equipped,
Gwydion son of Dôn became the druid of the gods, the “master of illusion
and phantasy”, and, not only that, but the teacher of all that is useful
and good, the friend and helper of mankind, and the perpetual fighter
against niggardly underworld powers for the good gifts which they
refused to allow out of their keeping. Shoulder to shoulder with him in
this “holy war” of culture against ignorance, and light against
darkness, stood his brothers Amaethon, god of agriculture, and Govannan,
a god of smithcraft identical with the Gaelic Giobniu. He had also a
sister called Arianrod, or “Silver Circle”, who, as is common in
mythologies, was not only his sister, but also his wife. So Zeus wedded
Heré; and, indeed, it is difficult to say where otherwise the partners
of gods are to come from. Of this connection two sons were born at one
birth—Dylan and Lleu, who are considered as representing the twin powers
of darkness and light. With darkness the sea was inseparably connected
by the Celts, and, as soon as the dark twin was born and named, he
plunged headlong into his native element. “And immediately when he was
in the sea,” says the Mabinogi of Mâth, son of Mâthonwy, “he took its
nature, and swam as well as the best fish that was therein. And for that
reason was he called Dylan, the Son of the Wave. Beneath him no wave
ever broke.” He was killed with a spear at last by his uncle, Govannan,
and, according to the bard Taliesin, the waves of Britain, Ireland,
Scotland, and the Isle of Man wept for him.[303] Beautiful legends grew
up around his death. The clamour of the waves dashing upon the beach is
the expression of their longing to avenge their son. The sound of the
sea rushing up the mouth of the River Conway is still known as “Dylan’s
death-groan”[304]. A small promontory on the Carnarvonshire side of the
Menai Straits, called _Pwynt Maen Tylen_, or _Pwynt Maen Dulan_,
preserves his name.[305]
The other child of Gwydion and Arianrod grew up to become the British
sun-god, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, the exact counterpart of the Gaelic Lugh
Lamhfada, “Light the Long-handed”. Like all solar deities, his growth
was rapid. When he was a year old, he seemed to be two years; at the age
of two, he travelled by himself; and when he was four years old, he was
as tall as a boy of eight, and was his father’s constant companion.
One day, Gwydion took him to the castle of Arianrod—not her castle in
the sky, but her abode on earth, the still-remembered site of which is
marked by a patch of rocks in the Menai Straits, accessible without a
boat only during the lowest spring and autumn tides. Arianrod had
disowned her son, and did not recognize him when she saw him with
Gwydion. She asked who he was, and was much displeased when told. She
demanded to know his name, and, when Gwydion replied that he had as yet
received none, she “laid a destiny upon” him, after the fashion of the
Celts, that he should be without a name until she chose to bestow one on
him herself.
To be without a name was a very serious thing to the ancient Britons,
who seem to have held the primitive theory that the name and the soul
are the same. So Gwydion cast about to think by what craft he might
extort from Arianrod some remark from which he could name their son. The
next day, he went down to the sea-shore with the boy, both of them
disguised as cordwainers. He made a boat out of sea-weed by magic, and
some beautifully-coloured leather out of some dry sticks and sedges.
Then they sailed the boat to the port of Arianrod’s castle, and,
anchoring it where it could be seen, began ostentatiously to stitch away
at the leather. Naturally, they were soon noticed, and Arianrod sent
someone out to see who they were and what they were doing. When she
found that they were shoemakers, she remembered that she wanted some
shoes. Gwydion, though he had her measure, purposely made them, first
too large, and then too small. This brought Arianrod herself down to the
boat to be fitted.
While Gwydion was measuring Arianrod’s foot for the shoes, a wren came
and stood upon the deck. The boy took his bow and arrow, and hit the
wren in the leg—a favourite shot of Celtic “crack” archers, at any rate
in romance. The goddess was pleased to be amiable and complimentary.
“Truly,” said she, “the lion aimed at it with a steady hand.” It is from
such incidents that primitive people take their names, all the world
over. The boy had got his. “It is no thanks to you,” said Gwydion to
Arianrod, “but now he has a name. And a good name it is. He shall be
called Llew Llaw Gyffes[306].”
This name of the sun-god is a good example of how obsolete the ancient
pagan tradition had become before it was put into writing. The old word
_Lleu_, meaning “light”, had passed out of use, and the scribe
substituted for a name that was unintelligible to him one like it which
he knew, namely _Llew_, meaning “lion”. The word _Gyffes_ seems also to
have suffered change, and to have meant originally not “steady”, but
“long”[307].
At any rate, Arianrod was defeated in her design to keep her son
nameless. Neither did she even get her shoes; for, as soon as he had
gained his object, Gwydion allowed the boat to change back into
sea-weed, and the leather to return to sedge and sticks. So, in her
anger, she put a fresh destiny on the boy, that he should not take arms
till she herself gave them him.
Gwydion, however, took Lleu to Dinas Dinllev, his castle, which still
stands at the edge of the Menai Straits, and brought him up as a
warrior. As soon as he thought him old enough to have arms, he took him
with him again to Caer Arianrod. This time, they were disguised as
bards. Arianrod received them gladly, heard Gwydion’s songs and tales,
feasted them, and prepared a room for them to sleep in.
The next morning, Gwydion got up very early, and prepared his most
powerful incantations. By his druidical arts he made it seem as if the
whole country rang with the shouts and trumpets of an army, and he put a
glamour over everyone, so that they saw the bay filled with ships.
Arianrod came to him in terror, asking what could be done to protect the
castle. “Give us arms,” he replied, “and we will do the best we can.” So
Arianrod’s maidens armed Gwydion, while Arianrod herself put arms on
Lleu. By the time she had finished, all the noises had ceased, and the
ships had vanished. “Let us take our arms off again,” said Gwydion; “we
shall not need them now.” “But the army is all round the castle!” cried
Arianrod. “There was no army,” answered Gwydion; “it was only an
illusion of mine to cause you to break your prophecy and give our son
arms. And now he has got them, without thanks to you.” “Then I will lay
a worse destiny on him,” cried the infuriated goddess. “He shall never
have a wife of the people of this earth.” “He shall have a wife in spite
of you,” said Gwydion.
So Gwydion went to Mâth, his uncle and tutor in magic, and between them
they made a woman out of flowers by charms and illusion. “They took the
blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of
the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most
graceful that man ever saw.” They called her Blodeuwedd (Flower-face),
and gave her to Lleu as his wife. And they gave Lleu a palace called Mur
y Castell, near Bala Lake.
All went well until, one day, Gronw Pebyr, one of the gods of darkness,
came by, hunting, and killed the stag at nightfall near Lleu’s castle.
The sun-god was away upon a visit to Mâth, but Blodeuwedd asked the
stranger to take shelter with her. That night they fell in love with one
another, and conspired together how Lleu might be put away. When Lleu
came back from Mâth’s court, Blodeuwedd, like a Celtic Dalilah, wormed
out of him the secret of how his life was preserved. He told her that he
could only die in one way; he could not be killed either inside or
outside a house, either on horseback or on foot, but that if a spear
that had been a year in the making, and which was never worked upon
except during the sacrifice on Sunday, were to be cast at him as he
stood beneath a roof of thatch, after having just bathed, with one foot
upon the edge of the bath and the other upon a buck goat’s back, it
would cause his death. Blodeuwedd piously thanked Heaven that he was so
well protected, and sent a messenger to her paramour, telling him what
she had learned. Gronw set to work on the spear; and in a year it was
ready. When she knew this, Blodeuwedd asked Lleu to show her exactly how
it was he could be killed.
Lleu agreed; and Blodeuwedd prepared the bath under the thatched roof,
and tethered the goat by it. Lleu bathed, and then stood with one foot
upon the edge of the bath, and the other upon the goat’s back. At this
moment, Gronw, from an ambush, flung the spear, and hit Lleu, who, with
a terrible cry, changed into an eagle, and flew away. He never came
back; and Gronw took possession of both his wife and his palace.
But Gwydion set out to search everywhere for his son. At last, one day,
he came to a house in North Wales where the man was in great anxiety
about his sow; for as soon as the sty was opened, every morning, she
rushed out, and did not return again till late in the evening. Gwydion
offered to follow her, and, at dawn, the man took him to the sty, and
opened the door. The sow leaped forth, and ran, and Gwydion ran after
her. He tracked her to a brook between Snowdon and the sea, still called
Nant y Llew, and saw her feeding underneath an oak. Upon the top of the
tree there was an eagle, and, every time it shook itself, there fell off
it lumps of putrid meat, which the sow ate greedily. Gwydion suspected
that the eagle must be Lleu. So he sang this verse:
“Oak that grows between the two banks;
Darkened is the sky and hill!
Shall I not tell him by his wounds,
That this is Lleu?”
The eagle, on hearing this, came half-way down the tree. So Gwydion
sang:
“Oak that grows in upland ground,
Is it not wetted by the rain? Has it not been drenched
By nine score tempests?
It bears in its branches Lleu Llaw Gyffes.”
The eagle came slowly down until it was on the lowest branch. Gwydion
sang:
“Oak that grows beneath the steep;
Stately and majestic is its aspect!
Shall I not speak it?
That Lleu will come to my lap?”
Then the eagle came down, and sat on Gwydion’s knee. Gwydion struck it
with his magic wand, and it became Lleu again, wasted to skin and bone
by the poison on the spear.
Gwydion took him to Mâth to be healed, and left him there, while he went
to Mur y Castell, where Blodeuwedd was. When she heard that he was
coming, she fled. But Gwydion overtook her, and changed her into an owl,
the bird that hates the day. A still older form of this probably
extremely ancient myth of the sun-god—the savage and repulsive details
of which speak of a hoary antiquity—makes the chase of Blodeuwedd by
Gwydion to have taken place in the sky, the stars scattered over the
Milky Way being the traces of it.[308] As for her accomplice, Lleu would
accept no satisfaction short of Gronw’s submitting to stand exactly
where Lleu had stood, to be shot at in his turn. To this he was obliged
to agree; and Lleu killed him.[309]
There are two other sons of Beli and Dôn of whom so little is recorded
that it would hardly be worth while mentioning them, were it not for the
wild poetry of the legend connected with them. The tale, put into
writing at a time when all the gods were being transfigured into simple
mortals, tells us that they were two kings of Britain, brothers. One
starlight night they were walking together. “See,” said Nynniaw to
Peibaw, “what a fine, wide-spreading field I have.” “Where is it?” asked
Peibaw. “There,” replied Nynniaw; “the whole stretch of the sky, as far
as the eye reaches.” “Look then,” returned Peibaw, “what a number of
cattle I have grazing on your field.” “Where are they?” asked Nynniaw.
“All the stars that you can see,” replied Peibaw, “every one of them of
fiery-coloured gold, with the moon for a shepherd over them.” “They
shall not feed on my field,” cried Nynniaw. “They shall,” exclaimed
Peibaw. “They shall not,” cried Nynniaw, “They shall,” said Peibaw.
“They shall not,” Nynniaw answered; and so they went on, from
contradiction to quarrel, and from private quarrel to civil war, until
the armies of both of them were destroyed, and the two authors of the
evil were turned by God into oxen for their sins.[310]
Last of the children of Dôn, we find a goddess called Penardun, of whom
little is known except that she was married to the sea-god Llyr. This
incident is curious, as forming a parallel to the Gaelic story which
tells of intermarriage between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors.[311]
Brigit, the Dagda’s daughter, was married to Bress, son of Elathan,
while Cian, the son of Diancecht, wedded Ethniu, the daughter of Balor.
So, in this kindred mythology, a slender tie of relationship binds the
gods of the sky to the gods of the sea.
The name _Llyr_ is supposed, like its Irish equivalent Lêr, to have
meant “the Sea”.[312] The British sea-god is undoubtedly the same as the
Gaelic; indeed, the two facts that he is described in Welsh literature
as Llyr Llediath, that is, “Llyr of the Foreign Dialect”, and is given a
wife called Iweridd (Ireland)[313], suggest that he may have been
borrowed by the Britons from the Gaels later than any mythology common
to both. As a British god, he was the far-off original of Shakespeare’s
“King Lear”. The chief city of his worship is still called after him,
Leicester, that is, Llyr-cestre, in still earlier days, Caer Llyr.
Llyr, we have noticed, married two wives, Penardun and Iweridd. By the
daughter of Dôn he had a son called Manawyddan, who is identical with
the Gaelic Manannán mac Lir.[314] We know less of his character and
attributes than we do of the Irish god; but we find him equally a ruler
in that Hades or Elysium which the Celtic mind ever connected with the
sea. Like all the inhabitants of that other world, he is at once a
master of magic and of the useful arts, which he taught willingly to his
friends. To his enemies, however, he could show a different side of his
character. A triad tells us that—
“The achievement of Manawyddan the Wise,
After lamentation and fiery wrath,
Was the constructing of the bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth”,[315]
which is described as a prison made, in the shape of a bee-hive,
entirely of human bones mortared together, and divided into innumerable
cells, forming a kind of labyrinth. In this ghastly place he immured
those whom he found trespassing in Hades; and among his captives was no
less a person than the famous Arthur.[316]
“Ireland” bore two children to Llyr: a daughter called Branwen and a son
called Brân. The little we know of Branwen of the “Fair Bosom” shows her
as a goddess of love—child, like the Greek Aphrodité, of the sea. Brân,
on the other hand, is, even more clearly than Manawyddan, a dark deity
of Hades. He is represented as of colossal size, so huge, in fact, that
no house or ship was big enough to hold him.[317] He delighted in battle
and carnage, like the hoodie-crow or raven from which he probably took
his name,[318] but he was also the especial patron of bards, minstrels,
and musicians, and we find him in one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin
claiming to be himself a bard, a harper, a player on the crowth, and
seven-score other musicians all at once.[319] His son was called
Caradawc the Strong-armed, who, as the British mythology crumbled,
became confounded with the historical Caratacus, known popularly as
“Caractacus”.
Both Brân and Manawyddan were especially connected with the Swansea
peninsula. The bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth was placed by tradition
in Gower.[320] That Brân was equally at home there may be proved from
the Morte Darthur, in which storehouse of forgotten and misunderstood
mythology Brân of Gower survives as “King Brandegore”.[321]
Such identification of a mere mortal country with the other world seems
strange enough to us, but to our Celtic ancestors it was a quite natural
thought. All islands—and peninsulas, which, viewed from an opposite
coast, probably seemed to them islands—were deemed to be pre-eminently
homes of the dark Powers of Hades. Difficult of access, protected by the
turbulent and dangerous sea, sometimes rendered quite invisible by fogs
and mists and, at other times, looming up ghostlily on the horizon,
often held by the remnant of a hostile lower race, they gained a mystery
and a sanctity from the law of the human mind which has always held the
unknown to be the terrible. The Cornish Britons, gazing from the shore,
saw Gower and Lundy, and deemed them outposts of the over-sea Other
World. To the Britons of Wales, Ireland was no human realm, a view
reciprocated by the Gaels, who saw Hades in Britain, while the Isle of
Man was a little Hades common to them both. Nor even was the sea always
necessary to sunder the world of ghosts from that of “shadow-casting
men”. Glastonbury Tor, surrounded by almost impassable swamps, was one
of the especial haunts of Gwyn ap Nudd. The Britons of the north held
that beyond the Roman wall and the vast Caledonian wood lived ghosts and
not men. Even the Roman province of Demetia—called by the Welsh Dyfed,
and corresponding, roughly, to the modern County of Pembrokeshire—was,
as a last stronghold of the aborigines, identified with the mythic
underworld.
As such, Dyfed was ruled by a local tribe of gods, whose greatest
figures were Pwyll, “Head of Annwn” (the Welsh name for Hades), with his
wife Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi. These beings are described as
hostile to the children of Dôn, but friendly to the race of Llyr. After
Pwyll’s death or disappearance, his widow Rhiannon becomes the wife of
Manawyddan.[322] In a poem of Taliesin’s we find Manawyddan and Pryderi
joint-rulers of Hades, and warders of that magic cauldron of
inspiration[323] which the gods of light attempted to steal or capture,
and which became famous afterwards as the “Holy Grail”. Another of their
treasures were the “Three Birds of Rhiannon”, which, we are told in an
ancient book, could sing the dead to life and the living into the sleep
of death. Fortunately they sang seldom. “There are three things,” says a
Welsh triad, “which are not often heard: the song of the birds of
Rhiannon, a song of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon, and an invitation
to a feast from a miser.”
Nor is the list of British gods complete without mention of Arthur,
though most readers will be surprised to find him in such company. The
genius of Tennyson, who drew his materials mostly from the Norman-French
romances, has stereotyped the popular conception of Arthur as a king of
early Britain who fought for his fatherland and the Christian faith
against invading Saxons. Possibly there may, indeed, have been a
powerful British chieftain bearing that typically Celtic name, which is
found in Irish legend as Artur, one of the sons of Nemed who fought
against the Fomors, and on the Continent as Artaius, a Gaulish deity
whom the Romans identified with Mercury, and who seems to have been a
patron of agriculture.[324] But the original Arthur stands upon the same
ground as Cuchulainn and Finn. His deeds are mythical, because
superhuman. His companions can be shown to have been divine. Some we
know were worshipped in Gaul. Others are children of Dôn, of Llyr, and
of Pwyll, dynasties of older gods to whose head Arthur seems to have
risen, as his cult waxed and theirs waned. Stripped of their godhead,
and strangely transformed, they fill the pages of romance as Knights of
the Table Round.
These deities were the native gods of Britain. Many others are, however,
mentioned upon inscriptions found in our island, but these were almost
all exotic and imported. Imperial Rome brought men of diverse races
among her legions, and these men brought their gods. Scattered over
Britain, but especially in the north, near the Wall, we find evidence
that deities of many nations—from Germany to Africa, and from Gaul to
Persia—were sporadically worshipped.[325] Most of these foreign gods
were Roman, but a temple at Eboracum (now York) was dedicated to
Serapis, and Mithras, the Persian sun-god, was also adored there; while
at Corbridge, in Northumberland (the ancient Corspitium), there have
been found altars to the Tyrian Hercules and to Astarte. The war-god was
also invoked under many strange names—as “Cocidius” by a colony of
Dacians in Cumberland; as Toutates, Camulus, Coritiacus, Belatucador,
Alator, Loucetius, Condates, and Rigisamos by men of different
countries. A goddess of war was worshipped at Bath under the name of
Nemetona. The hot springs of the same town were under the patronage of a
divinity called Sul, identified by the Romans with Minerva, and she was
helped by a god of medicine described on a dedicatory tablet as “Sol
Apollo Anicetus”. Few of these “strange gods”, however, seem to have
taken hold of the imagination of the native Britons. Their worshippers
did not proselytize, and their general influence was probably about
equal to that of an Evangelical Church in a Turkish town. The sole
exceptions to this rule are where the foreign gods are Gaulish; but in
several instances it can be proved that they were not so much of Roman,
as of original Celtic importation. The warlike heaven-god Camulus
appears in Gaelic heroic myth as Cumhal, the father of Finn, and in
British mythical history as Coel, a duke of Caer Coelvin (known earlier
as Camulodunum, and now as Colchester), who seized the crown of Britain,
and spent his short reign in a series of battles.[326] The name of the
sun-god Maponos is found alike upon altars in Gaul and Britain, and in
Welsh literature as Mabon, a follower of Arthur; while another Gaulish
sun-god, Belinus, who had a splendid temple at Bajocassos (the modern
Bayeux), though not mentioned in the earliest British mythology, as its
scattered records have come down to us, must have been connected with
Brân, for we find in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History “King Belinus” as
brother of “King Brennius”,[327] and in the Morte Darthur “Balin” as
brother of “Balan”.[328] A second-century Greek writer gives an account
of a god of eloquence worshipped in Gaul under the name of Ogmios, and
represented as equipped like Heracles, a description which exactly
corresponds to the conception of the Gaelic Ogma, at once patron of
literature and writing and professional strong man of the Tuatha Dé
Danann. Nemetona, the war-goddess worshipped at Bath, was probably the
same as Nemon, one of Nuada’s Valkyr-wives, while a broken inscription
to _athubodva_, which probably stood, when intact, for _Cathubodva_, may
well have been addressed to the Gaulish equivalent of Badb Catha, the
“War-fury”. Lugh, or Lleu, was also widely known on the Continent as
Lugus. Three important towns—Laon, Leyden, and Lyons—were all anciently
called after him _Lugu-dunum_ (Lugus’ town), and at the last and
greatest of these a festival was still held in Roman times upon the
sun-god’s day—the first of August—which corresponded to the _Lugnassad_
(Lugh’s commemoration) held in ancient Ireland. Brigit, the Gaelic
Minerva, is also found in Britain as Brigantia, tutelary goddess of the
Brigantes, a Northern tribe, and in Eastern France as Brigindo, to whom
Iccavos, son of Oppianos, made a dedicatory offering of which there is
still record.[329]
Other, less striking agreements between the mythical divine names of the
Insular and Continental Celts might be cited. These recorded should,
however, prove sufficiently that Gaul, Gael, and Briton shared in a
common heritage of mythological names and ideas, which they separately
developed into three superficially different, but essentially similar
cults.
-----
Footnote 282:
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_, a note to _Math, the Son of Mathonwy_.
Footnote 283:
_The Story of Lludd and Llevelys._ See chap. XXIV—“The Decline and
Fall of the Gods”.
Footnote 284:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 128.
Footnote 285:
See a monograph by the Right Hon. Charles Bathurst: _Roman Antiquities
in Lydney Park, Gloucestershire_.
Footnote 286:
chap. XXIV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
Footnote 287:
_Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 178, 179.
Footnote 288:
So translated by Lady Guest. Professor Rhys, however, renders it, “in
whom God has put the instinct of the demons of Annwn”. _Arthurian
Legend_, p. 341.
Footnote 289:
Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_. Note to “Kulhwch and Olwen”.
Footnote 290:
Black Book of Caermarthen, poem XXXIII. Vol. I, p. 293, of Skene’s
_Four Ancient Books_.
Footnote 291:
I have taken the liberty of omitting a few lines whose connection with
their context is not very apparent.
Footnote 292:
Gwyn was said to specially frequent the summits of hills.
Footnote 293:
This line is Professor Rhys’s. Skene translates it: “Whilst I am
called Gwyn the son of Nudd”.
Footnote 294:
I have here preferred Rhys’s rendering: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 364.
Footnote 295:
A name for Hades, of unknown meaning.
Footnote 296:
Dormarth means “Death’s Door”. Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 156-158.
Footnote 297:
Rhys has it:
“Dormarth, red-nosed, ground-grazing—
On him we perceived the speed
Of thy wandering on Cloud Mount.”
—_Arthurian Legend_, p. 156.
Footnote 298:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 383. Skene translates: “I am alive, they
in their graves!”
Footnote 299:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 561.
Footnote 300:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 561-563.
Footnote 301:
Dyer: _Studies of the Gods in Greece_, p. 48.
Gwyn, son of Nudd, had a brother, Edeyrn, of whom so little has come
down to us that he finds his most suitable place in a foot-note.
Unmentioned in the earliest Welsh legends, he first appears as a
knight of Arthur’s court in the _Red Book_ stories of “Kulhwch and
Olwen”, the “Dream of Rhonabwy”, and “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”. He
accompanied Arthur on his expedition to Rome, and is said also to have
slain “three most atrocious giants” at Brentenol (Brent Knoll), near
Glastonbury. His name occurs in a catalogue of Welsh saints, where he
is described as a bard, and the chapel of Bodedyrn, near Holyhead,
still stands to his honour. Modern readers will know him from
Tennyson’s Idyll of “Geraint and Enid”, which follows very closely the
Welsh romance of “Geraint, the Son of Erbin”.
Footnote 302:
Rhys—who calls him “a Cambrian Pluto”: _Lectures on Welsh Philology_,
p. 414.
Footnote 303:
_Book of Taliesin_, XLIII. _The Death-song of Dylan, Son of the Wave_,
Vol. I, p. 288 of Skene.
Footnote 304:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 387.
Footnote 305:
Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, p. 210.
Footnote 306:
_i.e._ The Lion with the Steady Hand.
Footnote 307:
See Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, note to p. 237.
Footnote 308:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 240.
Footnote 309:
Retold from the Mabinogi of _Math, Son of Mathonwy_, in Lady Guest’s
_Mabinogion_.
Footnote 310:
The Iolo Manuscripts: collected by Edward Williams, the bard, at about
the beginning of the nineteenth century—_The Tale of Rhitta Gawr_.
Footnote 311:
See Chapter VII—“The Rise of the Sun-God”.
Footnote 312:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 130.
Footnote 313:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 130.
Footnote 314:
The old Irish tract called _Coir Anmann_ (the _Choice of Names_) says:
“Manannan mac Lir ... the Britons and the men of Erin deemed that he
was the god of the sea”.
Footnote 315:
_Iolo MSS._, stanza 18 of _The Stanzas of the Achievements_, composed
by the Azure Bard of the Chair.
Footnote 316:
See note to chap. XXII—“The Treasures of Britain”.
Footnote 317:
Mabinogi of _Branwen, Daughter of Llyr_.
Footnote 318:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 245.
Footnote 319:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem XLVIII, in Skene’s _Four Ancient Books of
Wales_, Vol. I, p. 297.
Footnote 320:
The _Verses of the Graves of the Warriors_, in the Black Book of
Caermarthen. See also Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 347.
Footnote 321:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 160.
Footnote 322:
Mabinogi of _Manawyddan, Son of Llyr_.
Footnote 323:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem xiv, Vol. I, p. 276, of Skene.
Footnote 324:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 48 and note.
Footnote 325:
See a paper in the _Edinburgh Review_ for July, 1851—“The Romans in
Britain”.
Footnote 326:
It is said that the “Old King Cole” of the popular ballad, who “was a
merry old soul”, represents the last faint tradition of the Celtic
god.
Footnote 327:
_Geoffrey of Monmouth_, Book III, chap. I.
Footnote 328:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. XVI.
Footnote 329:
For full account of Gaulish gods, and their Gaelic and British
affinities, see Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, I and II—“The Gaulish
Pantheon”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII
THE ADVENTURES OF THE GODS OF HADES
It is with the family of Pwyll, deities connected with the south-west
corner of Wales, called by the Romans Demetia, and by the Britons Dyfed,
and, roughly speaking, identical with the modern county of
Pembrokeshire, that the earliest consecutive accounts of the British
gods begin. The first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi tell us how
“Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”, gained the right to be called _Pen Annwn_, the
“Head of Hades”. Indeed, it almost seems as if it had been deliberately
written to explain how the same person could be at once a mere mortal
prince, however legendary, and a ruler in the mystic Other World, and so
to reconcile two conflicting traditions.[330] But to an earlier age than
that in which the legend was put into a literary shape, such forced
reconciliation would not have been needed; for the two legends would not
have been considered to conflict. When Pwyll, head of Annwn, was a
mythic person whose tradition was still alive, the unexplored, rugged,
and savage country of Dyfed, populated by the aboriginal Iberians whom
the Celt had driven into such remote districts, appeared to those who
dwelt upon the eastern side of its dividing river, the Tawë, at least a
dependency of Annwn, if not that weird realm itself. But, as men grew
bolder, the frontier was crossed, and Dyfed entered and traversed, and
found to be not so unlike other countries. Its inhabitants, if not of
Celtic race, were yet of flesh and blood. So that, though the province
still continued to bear to a late date the names of the “Land of
Illusion” and the “Realm of Glamour”,[331] it was no longer deemed to be
Hades itself. That fitful and shadowy country had folded its tents, and
departed over or under seas.
The story of “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”,[332] tells us how there was war
in Annwn between its two kings—or between two, perhaps, of its many
chieftains. Arawn (“Silver-Tongue”) and Havgan (“Summer-White”) each
coveted the dominions of the other. In the continual contests between
them, Arawn was worsted, and in despair he visited the upper earth to
seek for a mortal ally.
At this time Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, held his court at Narberth. He had,
however, left his capital upon a hunting expedition to Glyn Cûch, known
to-day as a valley upon the borders of the two counties of Pembroke and
Carmarthen. Like so many kings of European and Oriental romance, when an
adventure is at hand, he became separated from his party, and was, in
modern parlance, “thrown out”. He could, however, still hear the music
of his hounds, and was listening to them, when he also distinguished the
cry of another pack coming towards him. As he watched and listened, a
stag came into view; and the strange hounds pulled it down almost at his
feet. At first Pwyll hardly looked at the stag, he was so taken up with
gazing at the hounds, for “of all the hounds that he had seen in the
world, he had never seen any that were like unto these. For their hair
was of a brilliant shining white, and their ears were red; and as the
whiteness of their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears
glisten.” They were, indeed, though Pwyll does not seem to have known
it, of the true Hades breed—the snow-white, red-eared hounds we meet in
Gaelic legends, and which are still said to be sometimes heard and seen
scouring the hills of Wales by night. Seeing no rider with the hounds,
Pwyll drove them away from the dead stag, and called up his own pack to
it.
While he was doing this, a man “upon a large, light-gray steed, with a
hunting-horn round his neck, and clad in garments of gray woollen in the
fashion of a hunting garb” appeared, and rated Pwyll for his
unsportsmanlike conduct. “Greater discourtesy,” said he, “I never saw
than your driving away my dogs after they had killed the stag, and
calling your own to it. And though I may not be revenged upon you for
this, I swear that I will do you more damage than the value of a hundred
stags.”
Pwyll expressed his contrition, and, asking the new-comer’s name and
rank, offered to atone for his fault. The stranger told his name—Arawn,
a king of Annwn—and said that Pwyll could gain his forgiveness only in
one way, by going to Annwn instead of him, and fighting for him with
Havgan. Pwyll agreed to do this, and the King of Hades put his own
semblance upon the mortal prince, so that not a person in Annwn—not even
Arawn’s own wife—would know that he was not that king. He led him by a
secret path into Annwn, and left him before his castle, charging him to
return to the place where they had first met, at the end of a year from
that day. On the other hand, Arawn took on Pwyll’s shape, and went to
Narberth.
No one in Annwn suspected Pwyll of being anyone else than their king. He
spent the year in ruling the realm, in hunting, minstrelsy, and
feasting. Both by day and night, he had the company of Arawn’s wife, the
most beautiful woman he had ever yet seen, but he refrained from taking
advantage of the trust placed in him. At last the day came when he was
to meet Havgan in single combat. One blow settled it; for Pwyll,
Havgan’s destined conqueror, thrust his antagonist an arm’s and a
spear’s length over the crupper of his horse, breaking his shield and
armour, and mortally wounding him. Havgan was carried away to die, and
Pwyll, in the guise of Arawn, received the submission of the dead king’s
subjects, and annexed his realm. Then he went back to Glyn Cûch, to keep
his tryst with Arawn.
They retook their own shapes, and each returned to his own kingdom.
Pwyll learned that Dyfed had never been ruled so well, or been so
prosperous, as during the year just passed. As for the King of Hades, he
found his enemy gone, and his domains extended. And when he caressed his
wife, she asked him why he did so now, after the lapse of a whole year.
So he told her the truth, and they both agreed that they had indeed got
a true friend in Pwyll.
After this, the kings of Annwn and Dyfed made their friendship strong
between them. From that time forward, says the story, Pwyll was no
longer called Prince of Dyfed, but _Pen Annwn_, “the Head of Hades”.
The second mythological incident in the Mabinogi of Pwyll, Prince of
Dyfed, tells how the Head of Hades won his wife, Rhiannon, thought by
Professor Rhys to have been a goddess either of the dawn or of the
moon.[333] There was a mound outside Pwyll’s palace at Narberth which
had a magical quality. To anyone who sat upon it there happened one of
two things: either he received wounds and blows, or else he saw a
wonder. One day, it occurred to Pwyll that he would like to try the
experience of the mound. So he went and sat upon it.
No unseen blows assailed Pwyll, but he had not been sitting long upon
the mound before he saw, coming towards him, “a lady on a pure-white
horse of large size, with a garment of shining gold around her”, riding
very quietly. He sent a man on foot to ask her who she was, but, though
she seemed to be moving so slowly, the man could not come up to her. He
failed utterly to overtake her, and she passed on out of sight.
The next day, Pwyll went again to the mound. The lady appeared, and,
this time, Pwyll sent a horseman. At first, the horseman only ambled
along at about the same pace at which the lady seemed to be going; then,
failing to get near her, he urged his horse into a gallop. But, whether
he rode slow or fast, he could come no closer to the lady than before,
although she seemed to the eyes of those who watched to have been going
only at a foot’s pace.
The day after that, Pwyll determined to accost the lady himself. She
came at the same gentle walk, and Pwyll at first rode easily, and then
at his horse’s topmost speed, but with the same result, or lack of it.
At last, in despair, he called to the mysterious damsel to stop. “I will
stop gladly,” said she, “and it would have been better for your horse if
you had asked me before.” She told him that her name was Rhiannon,
daughter of Heveydd the Ancient. The nobles of her realm had determined
to give her in marriage against her will, so she had come to seek out
Pwyll, who was the man of her choice. Pwyll was delighted to hear this,
for he thought that she was the most beautiful lady he had ever seen.
Before they parted, they had plighted troth, and Pwyll had promised to
appear on that day twelvemonth at the palace of her father, Heveydd.
Then she vanished, and Pwyll returned to Narberth.
At the appointed time, Pwyll went to visit Heveydd the Ancient, with a
hundred followers. He was received with much welcome, and the
disposition of the feast put under his command, as the Celts seem to
have done to especially honoured guests. As they sat at meat, with Pwyll
between Rhiannon and her father, a tall auburn-haired youth came into
the hall, greeted Pwyll, and asked a boon of him. “Whatever boon you may
ask of me,” said Pwyll thoughtlessly, “if it is in my power, you shall
have it.” Then the suitor threw off all disguise, called the guests to
witness Pwyll’s promise, and claimed Rhiannon as his bride. Pwyll was
dumb. “Be silent as long as you will,” said the masterful Rhiannon;
“never did a man make worse use of his wits than you have done.” “Lady,”
replied the amazed Pwyll, “I knew not who he was.” “He is the man to
whom they would have given me against my will,” she answered, “Gwawl,
the son of Clûd. You must bestow me upon him now, lest shame befall
you.” “Never will I do that,” said Pwyll. “Bestow me upon him,” she
insisted, “and I will cause that I shall never be his.” So Pwyll
promised Gwawl that he would make a feast that day year, at which he
would resign Rhiannon to him.
The next year, the feast was made, and Rhiannon sat by the side of her
unwelcome bridegroom. But Pwyll was waiting outside the palace, with a
hundred men in ambush. When the banquet was at its height, he came into
the hall, dressed in coarse, ragged garments, shod with clumsy old
shoes, and carrying a leather bag. But the bag was a magic one, which
Rhiannon had given to her lover, with directions as to its use. Its
quality was that, however much was put into it, it could never be
filled. “I crave a boon,” he said to Gwawl. “What is it?” Gwawl replied.
“I am a poor man, and all I ask is to have this bag filled with meat.”
Gwawl granted what he said was “a request within reason”, and ordered
his followers to fill the bag. But the more they put into it, the more
room in it there seemed to be. Gwawl was astonished, and asked why this
was. Pwyll replied that it was a bag that could never be filled until
someone possessed of lands and riches should tread the food down with
both his feet. “Do this for the man,” said Rhiannon to Gwawl. “Gladly I
will,” replied he, and put both his feet into the bag. But no sooner had
he done so than Pwyll slipped the bag over Gwawl’s head, and tied it up
at the mouth. He blew his horn, and all his followers came in. “What
have you got in the bag?” asked each one in turn. “A badger,” replied
Pwyll. Then each, as he received Pwyll’s answer, kicked the bag, or hit
it with a stick. “Then,” says the story, “was the game of ‘Badger in the
Bag’ first played.”
Gwawl, however, fared better than we suspect that the badger usually
did; for Heveydd the Ancient interceded for him. Pwyll willingly
released him, on condition that he promised to give up all claim to
Rhiannon, and renounced all projects of revenge. Gwawl consented, and
gave sureties, and went away to his own country to have his bruises
healed.
This country of Gwawl’s was, no doubt, the sky; for he was evidently a
sun-god. His name bewrays him; for the meaning of “Gwawl” is
“light”.[334] It was one of the hours of victory for the dark powers,
such as were celebrated in the Celtic calendar by the Feast of Samhain,
or Summer End.
There was no hindrance now to the marriage of Pwyll and Rhiannon. She
became his bride, and returned with him to Dyfed.
For three years, they were without an heir, and the nobles of Dyfed
became discontented. They petitioned Pwyll to take another wife instead
of Rhiannon. He asked for a year’s delay. This was granted, and, before
the end of the year, a son was born. But, on the night of his birth, the
six women set to keep watch over Rhiannon all fell asleep at once; and
when they woke up, the boy had vanished. Fearful lest their lives should
be forfeited for their neglect, they agreed to swear that Rhiannon had
eaten her child. They killed a litter of puppies, and smeared some of
the blood on Rhiannon’s face and hands, and put some of the bones by her
side. Then they awoke her with a great outcry, and accused her. She
swore that she knew nothing of the death of her son, but the women
persisted that they had seen her devour him, and had been unable to
prevent it. The druids of that day were not sufficiently practical
anatomists to be able to tell the bones of a child from those of a dog,
so they condemned Rhiannon upon the evidence of the women. But, even
now, Pwyll would not put her away; so she was assigned a penance. For
seven years, she was to sit by a horse-block outside the gate, and offer
to carry visitors into the palace upon her back. “But it rarely
happened,” says the Mabinogi, “that any would permit her to do so.”
Exactly what had become of Rhiannon’s child seems to have been a mystery
even to the writer of the Mabinogi. It was, at any rate, in some way
connected with the equally mysterious disappearance on every night of
the first of May—Beltaine, the Celtic sun-festival—of the colts foaled
by a beautiful mare belonging to Teirnyon Twryv Vliant, one of Pwyll’s
vassals. Every May-day night, the mare foaled, but no one knew what
became of the colt. Teirnyon decided to find out. He caused the mare to
be taken into a house, and there he watched it, fully armed. Early in
the night, the colt was born. Then there was a great noise, and an arm
with claws came through the window, and gripped the colt’s mane.
Teirnyon hacked at the arm with his sword, and cut it off. Then he heard
wailing, and opened the door, and found a baby in swaddling clothes,
wrapped in a satin mantle. He took it up and brought it to his wife, and
they decided to adopt it. They called the boy Gwri Wallt Euryn, that is
“Gwri of the Golden Hair”.
The older the boy grew, the more it seemed to Teirnyon that he became
like Pwyll. Then he remembered that he had found him upon the very night
that Rhiannon lost her child. So he consulted with his wife, and they
both agreed that the baby they had so mysteriously found must be the
same that Rhiannon had so mysteriously lost. And they decided that it
would not be right for them to keep the son of another, while so good a
lady as Rhiannon was being punished wrongfully.
So, the very next day, Teirnyon set out for Narberth, taking the boy
with him. They found Rhiannon sitting, as usual, by the gate, but they
would not allow her to carry them into the palace on her back. Pwyll
welcomed them; and that evening, as they sat at supper, Teirnyon told
his hosts the story from beginning to end. And he presented her son to
Rhiannon.
As soon as everyone in the palace saw the boy, they admitted that he
must be Pwyll’s son. So they adopted him with delight; and Pendaran
Dyfed, the head druid of the kingdom, gave him a new name. He called him
“Pryderi[335]”, meaning “trouble”, from the first word that his mother
had uttered when he was restored to her. For she had said: “_Trouble_
is, indeed, at an end for me, if this be true”.
-----
Footnote 330:
Rhys: _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_, p. 282.
Footnote 331:
It is constantly so-called by the fourteenth-century Welsh poet,
Dafydd ab Gwilym, so much admired by George Borrow.
Footnote 332:
This chapter is retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogi
of _Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed_.
Footnote 333:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 678.
Footnote 334:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 123 and note. Clûd was probably the
goddess of the River Clyde. See Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 294.
Footnote 335:
Pronounced _Pridaíry_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WOOING OF BRANWEN AND THE
BEHEADING OF BRÂN[336]
In the second of the “Four Branches”, Pryderi, come to man’s estate, and
married to a wife called Kicva, appears as a guest or vassal at the
court of a greater god of Hades than himself—Brân, the son of the
sea-god Llyr. The children of Llyr—Brân, with his sister Branwen of the
“Fair Bosom” and his half-brother Manawyddan, as well as two sons of
Manawyddan’s mother, Penardun, by an earlier marriage, were holding
court at _Twr Branwen_, “Branwen’s Tower”, now called Harlech. As they
sat on a cliff, looking over the sea, they saw thirteen ships coming
from Ireland. The fleet sailed close under the land, and Brân sent
messengers to ask who they were, and why they had come. It was replied
that they were the vessels of Matholwch, King of Ireland, and that he
had come to ask Brân for his sister Branwen in marriage. Brân consented,
and they fixed upon Aberffraw, in Anglesey, as the place at which to
hold the wedding feast. Matholwch and his fleet went there by sea, and
Brân and his host by land. When they arrived, and met, they set up
pavilions; for “no house could ever hold the blessed Brân”. And there
Branwen became the King of Ireland’s bride.[337]
These relations were not long, however, allowed to be friendly. Of the
two other sons of Llyr’s wife, Penardun, the mother of Manawyddan, one
was called Nissyen, and the other, Evnissyen. Nissyen was a lover of
peace, and would always “cause his family to be friends when their wrath
was at the highest”, but Evnissyen “would cause strife between his two
brothers when they were most at peace”. Now Evnissyen was enraged
because his consent had not been asked to Branwen’s marriage. Out of
spite at this, he cut off the lips, ears, eyebrows, and tails of all
Matholwch’s horses.
When the King of Ireland found this out, he was very indignant at the
insult. But Brân sent an embassy to him twice, explaining that it had
not been done by his consent or with his knowledge. He appeased
Matholwch by giving him a sound horse in place of every one that
Evnissyen had mutilated, as well as a staff of silver as large and tall
as Matholwch himself, and a plate of gold as broad as Matholwch’s face.
To these gifts he also added a magic cauldron brought from Ireland. Its
property was that any slain man who was put into it was brought to life
again, except that he lost the use of speech. The King of Ireland
accepted this recompense for the insult done him, renewed his friendship
with the children of Llyr, and sailed away with Branwen to Ireland.
Before a year was over, Branwen bore a son. They called him Gwern, and
put him out to be foster-nursed among the best men of Ireland. But,
during the second year, news came to Ireland of the insult that
Matholwch had received in Britain. The King of Ireland’s foster-brothers
and near relations insisted that he should revenge himself upon Branwen.
So the queen was compelled to serve in the kitchen, and, every day, the
butcher gave her a box upon the ear. That this should not become known
to Brân, all traffic was forbidden between Ireland and Britain. This
went on for three years.
But, in the meantime, Branwen had reared a tame starling, and she taught
it to speak, and tied a letter of complaint to the root of its wing, and
sent it off to Britain. At last it found Brân, whom its mistress had
described to it, and settled upon his shoulder, ruffling its wings. This
exposed the letter, and Brân read it. He sent messengers to one hundred
and forty-four countries, to raise an army to go to Ireland. Leaving his
son Caradawc, with seven others, in charge of Britain, he
started—himself wading through the sea, while his men went by ship.
No one in Ireland knew that they were coming until the royal swineherds,
tending their pigs near the sea-shore, beheld a marvel. They saw a
forest on the surface of the sea—a place where certainly no forest had
been before—and, near it, a mountain with a lofty ridge on its top, and
a lake on each side of the ridge. Both the forest and the mountain were
swiftly moving towards Ireland. They informed Matholwch, who could not
understand it, and sent messengers to ask Branwen what she thought it
might be. “It is the men of the Island of the Mighty[338],” said she,
“who are coming here because they have heard of my ill-treatment. The
forest that is seen on the sea is made of the masts of ships. The
mountain is my brother Brân, wading into shoal water; the lofty ridge is
his nose, and the two lakes, one on each side of it, are his eyes.”
The men of Ireland were terrified. They fled beyond the Shannon, and
broke down the bridge over it. But Brân lay down across the river, and
his army walked over him to the opposite side.
Matholwch now sent messengers suing for peace. He offered to resign the
throne of Ireland to Gwern, Branwen’s son and Brân’s nephew. “Shall I
not have the kingdom myself?” said Brân, and would not hear of anything
else. So the counsellors of Matholwch advised him to conciliate Brân by
building him a house so large that it would be the first house that had
ever held him, and, in it, to hand over the kingdom to his will. Brân
consented to accept this, and the vast house was built.
It concealed treachery. Upon each side of the hundred pillars of the
house was hung a bag, and in the bag was an armed man, who was to cut
himself out at a given signal. But Evnissyen came into the house, and
seeing the bags there, suspected the plot. “What is in this bag?” he
said to one of the Irish, as he came up to the first one. “Meal,”
replied the Irishman. Then Evnissyen kneaded the bag in his hands, as
though it really contained meal, until he had killed the man inside; and
he treated all of them in turn in the same way.
A little later, the two hosts met in the house. The men of Ireland came
in on one side, and the men of Britain on the other, and met at the
hearth in the middle, and sat down. The Irish court did homage to Brân,
and they crowned Gwern, Branwen’s son, King of Ireland in place of
Matholwch. When the ceremonies were over, the boy went from one to
another of his uncles, to make acquaintance with them. Brân fondled and
caressed him, and so did Manawyddan, and Nissyen. But when he came to
Evnissyen, the wicked son of Penardun seized the child by the feet, and
dropped him head first into the great fire.
When Branwen saw her son killed, she tried to leap into the flames after
him, but Brân held her back. Then every man armed himself, and such a
tumult was never heard in one house before. Day after day they fought;
but the Irish had the advantage, for they had only to plunge their dead
men into the magic cauldron to bring them back to life. When Evnissyen
knew this, he saw a way of atoning for the misfortunes his evil nature
had brought upon Britain. He disguised himself as an Irishman, and lay
upon the floor as if dead, until they put him into the cauldron. Then he
stretched himself, and, with one desperate effort, burst both the
cauldron and his own heart.
Thus things were made equal again, and in the next battle the men of
Britain killed all the Irish. But of themselves there were only seven
left unhurt—Pryderi; Manawyddan; Gluneu, the son of Taran[339]; Taliesin
the Bard; Ynawc; Grudyen, the son of Muryel; and Heilyn, the son of
Gwynn the Ancient.
Brân himself was wounded in the foot with a poisoned dart, and was in
agony. So he ordered his seven surviving followers to cut off his head,
and to take it to the White Mount in London[340], and bury it there,
with the face towards France. He prophesied how they would perform the
journey. At Harlech they would be feasting seven years, the birds of
Rhiannon singing to them all the time, and Brân’s own head conversing
with them as agreeably as when it was on his body. Then they would be
fourscore years at Gwales[341]. All this while, Brân’s head would remain
uncorrupted, and would talk so pleasantly that they would forget the
flight of time. But, at the destined hour, someone would open a door
which looked towards Cornwall, and, after that, they could stay no
longer, but must hurry to London to bury the head.
So the seven beheaded Brân, and set off, taking Branwen also with them.
They landed at the mouth of the River Alaw, in Anglesey. Branwen first
looked back towards Ireland, and then forward towards Britain. “Alas,”
she cried, “that I was ever born! two islands have been destroyed
because of me.” Her heart broke with sorrow, and she died. An old Welsh
poem says, with a touch of real pathos:
“Softened were the voices in the brakes
Of the wondering birds
On seeing the fair body.
Will there not be relating again
Of that which befel the paragon
At the stream of Amlwch?”[342]
“They made her a four-sided grave,” says the Mabinogi, “and buried her
upon the banks of the Alaw.” The traditionary spot has always borne the
name of _Ynys Branwen_, and, curiously enough, an urn was found there,
in 1813, full of ashes and half-burnt bones, which certain enthusiastic
local antiquaries saw “every reason to suppose” were those of the fair
British Aphrodité herself.[343]
The seven went on towards Harlech, and, as they journeyed, they met men
and women who gave them the latest news. Caswallawn, a son of Beli, the
husband of Dôn, had destroyed the ministers left behind by Brân to take
care of Britain. He had made himself invisible by the help of a magic
veil, and thus had killed all of them except Pendaran Dyfed,
foster-father of Pryderi, who had escaped into the woods, and Caradawc
son of Brân, whose heart had broken from grief. Thus he had made himself
king of the whole island in place of Manawyddan, its rightful heir now
that Brân was dead.
However, the destiny was upon the seven that they should go on with
their leader’s head. They went to Harlech and feasted for seven years,
the three birds of Rhiannon singing them songs compared with which all
other songs seemed unmelodious. Then they spent fourscore years in the
Isle of Gwales, eating and drinking, and listening to the pleasant
conversation of Brân’s head. The “Entertaining of the Noble Head” this
eighty years’ feast was called. Brân’s head, indeed, is almost more
notable in British mythology than Brân before he was decapitated.
Taliesin and the other bards invoke it repeatedly as _Urddawl Ben_ (the
“Venerable Head”) and _Uther Ben_ (the “Wonderful Head”).
But all pleasure came to an end when Heilyn, the son of Gwynn, opened
the forbidden door, like Bluebeard’s wife, “to know if that was true
which was said concerning it”. As soon as they looked towards Cornwall,
the glamour that had kept them merry for eighty-seven years failed, and
left them as grieved about the death of their lord as though it had
happened that very day. They could not rest for sorrow, but went at once
to London, and laid the now dumb and corrupting head in its grave on
Tower Hill, with its face turned towards France, to watch that no foe
came from foreign lands to Britain. There it reposed until, ages
afterwards, Arthur, in his pride of heart, dug it up, “as he thought it
beneath his dignity to hold the island otherwise than by valour”.
Disaster, in the shape of
“the godless hosts
Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern sea”,[344]
came of this disinterment; and therefore it is called, in a triad, one
of the “Three Wicked Uncoverings of Britain”.
-----
Footnote 336:
Retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogi of _Branwen, the
Daughter of Llyr_.
Footnote 337:
Rhys—_Lectures on Welsh Philology_—compares Matholwch with Mâth, and
the story, generally, with the Greek myth of Persephoné.
Footnote 338:
A bardic name for Britain.
Footnote 339:
This personage may have been the same as the Gaulish god Taranis.
Mention, too, is made in an ancient Irish glossary of “Etirun, an idol
of the Britons”.
Footnote 340:
This spot, called by a twelfth-century Welsh poet “The White Eminence
of London, a place of splendid fame”, was probably the hill on which
the Tower of London now stands.
Footnote 341:
The island of Gresholm, off the coast of Pembrokeshire.
Footnote 342:
_The Gododin_ of Aneurin, as translated by T. Stephens. Branwen is
there called “the lady Bradwen”.
Footnote 343:
See note to _Branwen, the Daughter of Llyr_ in Lady Guest’s
_Mabinogion_.
Footnote 344:
Tennyson: _Idylls of the King_—“Guinevere”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIX
THE WAR OF ENCHANTMENTS[345]
Manawyddan was now the sole survivor of the family of Llyr. He was
homeless and landless. But Pryderi offered to give him a realm in Dyfed,
and his mother, Rhiannon, for a wife. The lady, her son explained, was
still not uncomely, and her conversation was pleasing. Manawyddan seems
to have found her attractive, while Rhiannon was not less taken with the
son of Llyr. They were wedded, and so great became the friendship of
Pryderi and Kicva, Manawyddan and Rhiannon, that the four were seldom
apart.
One day, after holding a feast at Narberth, they went up to the same
magic mound where Rhiannon had first met Pwyll. As they sat there,
thunder pealed, and immediately a thick mist sprang up, so that not one
of them could see the other. When it cleared, they found themselves
alone in an uninhabited country. Except for their own castle, the land
was desert and untilled, without sign of dwelling, man, or beast. One
touch of some unknown magic had utterly changed the face of Dyfed from a
rich realm to a wilderness.
Manawyddan and Pryderi, Rhiannon and Kicva traversed the country on all
sides, but found nothing except desolation and wild beasts. For two
years they lived in the open upon game and honey.
During the third year, they grew weary of this wild life, and decided to
go into Lloegyr[346], and support themselves by some handicraft.
Manawyddan could make saddles, and he made them so well that soon no one
in Hereford, where they had settled, would buy from any saddler but
himself. This aroused the enmity of all the other saddlers, and they
conspired to kill the strangers. So the four went to another city.
Here they made shields, and soon no one would purchase a shield unless
it had been made by Manawyddan and Pryderi. The shield-makers became
jealous, and again a move had to be made.
But they fared no better at the next town, where they practised the
craft of cordwainers, Manawyddan shaping the shoes and Pryderi stitching
them. So they went back to Dyfed again, and occupied themselves in
hunting.
One day, the hounds of Manawyddan and Pryderi roused a white wild boar.
They chased it till they came to a castle at a place where both the
huntsmen were certain that no castle had been before. Into this castle
went the boar, and the hounds after it. For some time, Manawyddan and
Pryderi waited in vain for their return. Pryderi then proposed that he
should go into the castle, and see what had become of them. Manawyddan
tried to dissuade him, declaring that whoever their enemy was who had
laid Dyfed waste had also caused the appearance of this castle. But
Pryderi insisted upon entering.
In the castle, he found neither the boar nor his hounds, nor any trace
of man or beast. There was nothing but a fountain in the centre of the
castle floor, and, on the brink of the fountain, a beautiful golden bowl
fastened to a marble slab by chains.
Pryderi was so pleased with the beauty of the bowl that he put out his
hands and took hold of it. Whereupon his hands stuck to the bowl, so
that he could not move from where he stood.
Manawyddan waited for him till the evening, and then returned to the
palace, and told Rhiannon. She, more daring than her husband, rebuked
him for cowardice, and went straight to the magic castle. In the court
she found Pryderi, his hands still glued to the bowl and his feet to the
slab. She tried to free him, but became fixed, herself, and, with a clap
of thunder and a fall of mist, the castle vanished with its two
prisoners.
Manawyddan was now left alone with Kicva, Pryderi’s wife. He calmed her
fears, and assured her of his protection. But they had lost their dogs,
and could not hunt any more, so they set out together to Lloegyr, to
practise again Manawyddan’s old trade of cordwainer. A second time, the
envious cordwainers conspired to kill them, so they were obliged to
return to Dyfed.
But Manawyddan took back a burden of wheat with him to Narberth, and
sowed three crofts, all of which sprang up abundantly.
When harvest time came, he went to look at his first croft, and found it
ripe. “I will reap this to-morrow,” he said. But in the morning he found
nothing but the bare straw. Every ear had been taken away.
So he went to the next croft, which was also ripe. But, when he came to
cut it, he found it had been stripped like the first. Then he knew that
whoever had wasted Dyfed, and carried off Rhiannon and Pryderi, was also
at work upon his wheat.
The third croft was also ripe, and over this one he determined to keep
watch. In the evening he armed himself and waited. At midnight he heard
a great tumult, and, looking out, saw a host of mice coming. Each mouse
bit off an ear of wheat and ran off with it. He rushed among them, but
could only catch one, which was more sluggish than the rest. This one he
put into his glove, and took it back, and showed it to Kicva.
“To-morrow I will hang it,” he said. “It is not a fit thing for a man of
your dignity to hang a mouse,” she replied. “Nevertheless will I do so,”
said he. “Do so then,” said Kicva.
The next morning, Manawyddan went to the magic mound, and set up two
forks on it, to make a gallows. He had just finished, when a man dressed
like a poor scholar came towards him, and greeted him.
“What are you doing, Lord?” he said.
“I am going to hang a thief,” replied Manawyddan.
“What sort of a thief? I see an animal like a mouse in your hand, but a
man of rank like yours should not touch so mean a creature. Let it go
free.”
“I caught it robbing me,” replied Manawyddan, “and it shall die a
thief’s death.”
“I do not care to see a man like you doing such a thing,” said the
scholar. “I will give you a pound to let it go.”
“I will not let it go,” replied Manawyddan, “nor will I sell it.”
“As you will, Lord. It is nothing to me,” returned the scholar. And he
went away.
Manawyddan laid a cross-bar along the forks. As he did so, another man
came by, a priest riding on a horse. He asked Manawyddan what he was
doing, and was told. “My lord,” he said, “such a reptile is worth
nothing to buy, but rather than see you degrade yourself by touching it,
I will give you three pounds to let it go.”
“I will take no money for it,” replied Manawyddan. “It shall be hanged.”
“Let it be hanged,” said the priest, and went his way.
Manawyddan put the noose round the mouse’s neck, and was just going to
draw it up, when he saw a bishop coming, with his whole retinue.
“Thy blessing, Lord Bishop,” he said.
“Heaven’s blessing upon you,” said the bishop. “What are you doing?”
“I am hanging a thief,” replied Manawyddan. “This mouse has robbed me.”
“Since I happen to have come at its doom, I will ransom it,” said the
bishop. “Here are seven pounds. Take them, and let it go.”
“I will not let it go,” replied Manawyddan.
“I will give you twenty-four pounds of ready money if you will let it
go,” said the bishop.
“I would not, for as much again,” replied Manawyddan.
“If you will not free it for that,” said the bishop, “I will give you
all my horses and their baggage to let it go.”
“I will not,” replied Manawyddan.
“Then name your own price,” said the bishop.
“That offer I accept,” replied Manawyddan. “My price is that Rhiannon
and Pryderi be set free.”
“They shall be set free,” replied the bishop.
“Still I will not let the mouse go,” said Manawyddan.
“What more do you ask?” exclaimed the bishop.
“That the charm be removed from Dyfed,” replied Manawyddan.
“It shall be removed,” promised the bishop. “So set the mouse free.”
“I will not,” said Manawyddan, “till I know who the mouse is.”
“She is my wife,” replied the bishop, “and I am called Llwyd, the son of
Kilcoed, and I cast the charm over Dyfed, and upon Rhiannon and Pryderi,
to avenge Gwawl son of Clûd for the game of ‘badger in the bag’ which
was played on him by Pwyll, Head of Annwn. It was my household that came
in the guise of mice and took away your corn. But since my wife has been
caught, I will restore Rhiannon and Pryderi and take the charm off Dyfed
if you will let her go.”
“I will not let her go,” said Manawyddan, “until you have promised that
there shall be no charm put upon Dyfed again.”
“I will promise that also,” replied Llwyd. “So let her go.”
“I will not let her go,” said Manawyddan, “unless you swear to take no
revenge for this hereafter.”
“You have done wisely to claim that,” replied Llwyd. “Much trouble would
else have come upon your head because of this. Now I swear it. So set my
wife free.”
“I will not,” said Manawyddan, “until I see Rhiannon and Pryderi.”
Then he saw them coming towards him; and they greeted one another.
“Now set my wife free,” said the bishop.
“I will, gladly,” replied Manawyddan. So he released the mouse, and
Llwyd struck her with a wand, and turned her into “a young woman, the
fairest ever seen”.
And when Manawyddan looked round him, he saw Dyfed tilled and cultivated
again, as it had formerly been.
The powers of light had, this time, the victory. Little by little, they
increased their mastery over the dominion of darkness, until we find the
survivors of the families of Llyr and Pwyll mere vassals of Arthur.
-----
Footnote 345:
Retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the Mabinogi of _Manawyddan,
the Son of Llyr_.
Footnote 346:
Saxon Britain—England.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XX
THE VICTORIES OF LIGHT OVER DARKNESS
The powers of light were, however, by no means invariably successful in
their struggles with the powers of darkness. Even Gwydion son of Dôn had
to serve his apprenticeship to misfortune. Assailing Caer
Sidi—Hades[347] under one of its many titles,—he was caught by Pwyll and
Pryderi, and endured a long imprisonment.[348] The sufferings he
underwent made him a bard—an ancient Celtic idea which one can still see
surviving in the popular tradition that whoever dares to spend a night
alone either upon the chair of the Giant Idris (the summit of Cader
Idris, in Merionethshire), or under the haunted Black Stone of Arddu,
upon the Llanberis side of Snowdon, will be found in the morning either
inspired or mad.[349] How he escaped we are not told; but the episode
does not seem to have quenched his ardour against the natural enemies of
his kind.
Helped by his brother, Amaethon, god of agriculture, and his son, Lleu,
he fought the Battle of Godeu, or “the Trees”, an exploit which is not
the least curious of Celtic myths. It is known also as the Battle of
Achren, or Ochren, a name for Hades of unknown meaning, but appearing
again in the remarkable Welsh poem which describes the “Spoiling of
Annwn” by Arthur. The King of Achren was Arawn; and he was helped by
Brân, who apparently had not then made his fatal journey to Ireland. The
war was made to secure three boons for man—the dog, the deer, and the
lapwing, all of them creatures for some reason sacred to the gods of the
nether world.
Gwydion was this time not alone, as he apparently was when he made his
first unfortunate reconnaissance of Hades. Besides his brother and his
son, he had an army which he raised for the purpose. For a leader of
Gwydion’s magical attainments there was no need of standing troops. He
could call battalions into being with a charm, and dismiss them when
they were no longer needed. The name of the battle shows what he did on
this occasion; and the bard Taliesin adds his testimony:
“I have been in the battle of Godeu, with Lleu and Gwydion,
They changed the forms of the elementary trees and sedges”.
In a poem devoted to it[350] he describes in detail what happened. The
trees and grasses, he tells us, hurried to the fight: the alders led the
van, but the willows and the quickens came late, and the birch, though
courageous, took long in arraying himself; the elm stood firm in the
centre of the battle, and would not yield a foot; heaven and earth
trembled before the advance of the oak-tree, that stout door-keeper
against an enemy; the heroic holly and the hawthorn defended themselves
with their spikes; the heather kept off the enemy on every side, and the
broom was well to the front, but the fern was plundered, and the furze
did not do well; the stout, lofty pine, the intruding pear-tree, the
gloomy ash, the bashful chestnut-tree, the prosperous beech, the
long-enduring poplar, the scarce plum-tree, the shelter-seeking privet
and woodbine, the wild, foreign laburnum; “the bean, bearing in its
shade an army of phantoms”; rose-bush, raspberry, ivy, cherry-tree, and
medlar—all took their parts.
In the ranks of Hades there were equally strange fighters. We are told
of a hundred-headed beast, carrying a formidable battalion under the
root of its tongue and another in the back of its head; there was a
gaping black toad with a hundred claws; and a crested snake of many
colours, within whose flesh a hundred souls were tormented for their
sins—in fact, it would need a Doré or a Dante to do justice to this
weird battle between the arrayed magics of heaven and hell.
It was magic that decided its fate. There was a fighter in the ranks of
Hades who could not be overcome unless his antagonist guessed his name—a
peculiarity of the terrene gods, remarks Professor Rhys,[351] which has
been preserved in our popular fairy tales. Gwydion guessed the name, and
sang these two verses:—
“Sure-hoofed is my steed impelled by the spur;
The high sprigs of alder are on thy shield;
_Brân_ art thou called, of the glittering branches!
“Sure-hoofed is my steed in the day of battle:
The high sprigs of alder are on thy hand:
_Brân_ ... by the branch thou bearest
Has Amaethon the Good prevailed!”[352]
Thus the power of the dark gods was broken, and the sons of Dôn retained
for the use of men the deer, the dog, and the lapwing, stolen from that
underworld, whence all good gifts came.
It was always to obtain some practical benefit that the gods of light
fought against the gods of darkness. The last and greatest of Gwydion’s
raids upon Hades was undertaken to procure—pork![353]
Gwydion had heard that there had come to Dyfed some strange beasts, such
as had never been seen before. They were called “pigs” or “swine”, and
Arawn, King of Annwn, had sent them as a gift to Pryderi son of Pwyll.
They were small animals, and their flesh was said to be better than the
flesh of oxen. He thought it would be a good thing to get them, either
by force or fraud, from the dark powers. Mâth son of Mâthonwy, who ruled
the children of Dôn from his Olympus of Caer Dathyl[354], gave his
consent, and Gwydion set off, with eleven others, to Pryderi’s
palace[355]. They disguised themselves as bards, so as to be received by
Pryderi, and Gwydion, who was “the best teller of tales in the world”,
entertained the Prince of Dyfed and his court more than they had ever
been entertained by any story-teller before. Then he asked Pryderi to
grant him a boon—the animals which had come from Annwn. But Pryderi had
pledged his word to Arawn that he would neither sell nor give away any
of the new creatures until they had increased to double their number,
and he told the disguised Gwydion so.
“Lord,” said Gwydion, “I can set you free from your promise. Neither
give me the swine at once, nor yet refuse them to me altogether, and
to-morrow I will show you how.”
He went to the lodging Pryderi had assigned him, and began to work his
charms and illusions. Out of fungus he made twelve gilded shields, and
twelve horses with gold harness, and twelve black greyhounds with white
breasts, each wearing a golden collar and leash. And these he showed to
Pryderi.
“Lord,” said he, “there is a release from the word you spoke last
evening concerning the swine—that you may neither give them nor sell
them. You may exchange them for something which is better. I will give
you these twelve horses with their gold harness, and these twelve
greyhounds with their gold collars and leashes, and these twelve gilded
shields for them.”
Pryderi took counsel with his men, and agreed to the bargain. So Gwydion
and his followers took the swine and went away with them, hurrying as
fast as they could, for Gwydion knew that the illusion would not last
longer than a day. The memory of their journey was long kept up; every
place where they rested between Dyfed and Caer Dathyl is remembered by a
name connecting it with pigs. There is a Mochdrev (“Swine’s Town”) in
each of the three counties of Cardiganshire, Montgomeryshire, and
Denbighshire, and a Castell y Moch (“Swine’s Castle”) near Mochnant
(“Swine’s Brook”), which runs through part of the two latter counties.
They shut up the pigs in safety, and then assembled all Mâth’s army; for
the horses and hounds and shields had returned to fungus, and Pryderi,
who guessed Gwydion’s part in it, was coming northward in hot haste.
There were two battles—one at Maenor Penardd, near Conway, and the other
at Maenor Alun, now called Coed Helen, near Caernarvon. Beaten in both,
Pryderi fell back upon Nant Call, about nine miles from Caernarvon. Here
he was again defeated with great slaughter, and sent hostages, asking
for peace and a safe retreat.
This was granted by Mâth; but, none the less, the army of the sons of
Dôn insisted on following the retreating host, and harassing it. So
Pryderi sent a complaint to Mâth, demanding that, if there must still be
war, Gwydion, who had caused all the trouble, should fight with him in
single combat.
Gwydion agreed, and the champions of light and darkness met face to
face. But Pryderi was the waning power, and he fell before the strength
and magic of Gwydion. “And at Maen Tyriawc, above Melenryd, was he
buried, and there is his grave”, says the Mabinogi, though the ancient
Welsh poem, called the “Verses of the Graves of the Warriors”[356],
assigns him a different resting-place.[357]
This decisive victory over Hades and its kings was the end of the
struggle, until it was renewed, with still more complete success, by one
greater than Gwydion—the invincible Arthur.
-----
Footnote 347:
Or the Celtic Elysium, “a mythical country beneath the waves of the
sea”.
Footnote 348:
See the _Spoiling of Annwn_, quoted in chap. XXI—“The Mythological
‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 349:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 250-251.
Footnote 350:
_Book of Taliesin VIII_, Vol. I, p. 276, of Skene. I have followed
Skene’s translation, with the especial exception of the curious line
referring to the bean, so translated in D. W. Nash’s _Taliesin_. If a
correct rendering of the Welsh original, it offers an interesting
parallel to certain superstitions of the Greeks concerning this
vegetable.
Footnote 351:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, note to p. 245.
Footnote 352:
Lady Guest’s translation in her notes to _Kulhwch and Olwen_.
Footnote 353:
The following episode is retold from Lady Guest’s translation of the
Mabinogi of _Mâth, Son of Mathonwy_.
Footnote 354:
Now called Pen y Gaer. It is on the summit of a hill half-way between
Llanrwst and Conway, and about a mile from the station of Llanbedr.
Footnote 355:
Said to have been at Rhuddlan Teivi, which is, perhaps, Glan Teivy,
near Cardigan Bridge.
Footnote 356:
Poem XIX in the _Black Book of Caermarthen_, Vol. I, p. 309, of Skene.
Footnote 357:
“In Aber Gwenoli is the grave of Pryderi,
Where the waves beat against the land.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI
THE MYTHOLOGICAL “COMING OF ARTHUR”
The “Coming of Arthur”, his sudden rise into prominence, is one of the
many problems of the Celtic mythology. He is not mentioned in any of the
Four Branches of the Mabinogi, which deal with the races of British gods
equivalent to the Gaelic Tuatha Dé Danann. The earliest references to
him in Welsh literature seem to treat him as merely a warrior-chieftain,
no better, if no worse, than several others, such as “Geraint, a
tributary prince of Devon”, immortalized both by the bards[358] and by
Tennyson. Then, following upon this, we find him lifted to the
extraordinary position of a king of gods, to whom the old divine
families of Dôn, of Llyr, and of Pwyll pay unquestioned homage. Triads
tell us that Lludd—the Zeus of the older Pantheon—was one of Arthur’s
“Three Chief War-Knights”, and Arawn, King of Hades, one of his “Three
Chief Counselling Knights”. In the story called the “Dream of Rhonabwy”,
in the Red Book of Hergest, he is shown as a leader to whom are subject
those we know to have been of divine race—sons of Nudd, of Llyr, of
Brân, of Govannan, and of Arianrod. In another “Red Book” tale, that of
“Kulhwch and Olwen”, even greater gods are his vassals. Amaethon son of
Dôn, ploughs for him, and Govannan son of Dôn, rids the iron, while two
other sons of Beli, Nynniaw and Peibaw, “turned into oxen on account of
their sins”, toil at the yoke, that a mountain may be cleared and tilled
and the harvest reaped in one day. He assembles his champions to seek
the “treasures of Britain”; and Manawyddan son of Llyr, Gwyn son of
Nudd, and Pryderi son of Pwyll rally round him at his call.
The most probable, and only adequate explanation, is given by Professor
Rhys, who considers that the fames of two separate Arthurs have been
accidentally confused, to the exceeding renown of a composite,
half-real, half-mythical personage into whom the two blended.[359] One
of these was a divine Arthur, a god more or less widely worshipped in
the Celtic world—the same, no doubt, whom an _ex voto_ inscription found
in south-eastern France calls _Mercurius Artaius_.[360] The other was a
human Arthur, who held among the Britons the post which, under Roman
domination, had been called _Comes Britanniæ_. This “Count of Britain”
was the supreme military authority; he had a roving commission to defend
the country against foreign invasion; and under his orders were two
slightly subordinate officers, the _Dux Britanniarum_ (Duke of the
Britains), who had charge of the northern wall, and the _Comes Littoris
Saxonici_ (Count of the Saxon Shore), who guarded the south-eastern
coasts. The Britons, after the departure of the Romans, long kept intact
the organization their conquerors had built up; and it seems reasonable
to believe that this post of leader in war was the same which early
Welsh literature describes as that of “emperor”, a title given to Arthur
alone among the British heroes.[361] The fame of Arthur the Emperor
blended with that of Arthur the God, so that it became conterminous with
the area over which we have traced Brythonic settlement in Great
Britain.[362] Hence the many disputes, ably, if unprofitably, conducted,
over “Arthurian localities” and the sites of such cities as Camelot, and
of Arthur’s twelve great battles. Historical elements doubtless coloured
the tales of Arthur and his companions, but they are none the less as
essentially mythic as those told of their Gaelic analogues—the Red
Branch Heroes of Ulster and the Fenians.
Of those two cycles, it is with the latter that the Arthurian legend
shows most affinity.[363] Arthur’s position as supreme war-leader of
Britain curiously parallels that of Finn’s as general of a “native Irish
militia”. His “Round Table” of warriors also reminds one of Finn’s
Fenians sworn to adventure. Both alike battle with human and superhuman
foes. Both alike harry Europe, even to the walls of Rome. The love-story
of Arthur, his wife Gwynhwyvar (Guinevere), and his nephew Medrawt
(Mordred), resembles in several ways that of Finn, his wife Grainne, and
his nephew Diarmait. In the stories of the last battles of Arthur and of
the Fenians, the essence of the kindred myth still subsists, though the
actual exponents of it slightly differ. At the fight of Camlan, it was
Arthur and Medrawt themselves who fought the final duel. But in the last
stand of the Fenians at Gabhra, the original protagonists have given
place to their descendants and representatives. Both Finn and Cormac
were already dead. It is Oscar, Finn’s grandson, and Cairbré, Cormac’s
son, who fight and slay each other. And again, just as Arthur was
thought by many not to have really died, but to have passed to “the
island valley of Avilion”, so a Scottish legend tells us how, ages after
the Fenians, a man, landing by chance upon a mysterious western island,
met and spoke with Finn mac Coul. Even the alternative legend, which
makes Arthur and his warriors wait under the earth in a magic sleep for
the return of their triumph, is also told of the Fenians.
But these parallels, though they illustrate Arthur’s pre-eminence, do
not show his real place among the gods. To determine this, we must
examine the ranks of the older dynasties carefully, to see if any are
missing whose attributes this new-comer may have inherited. We find
Lludd and Gwyn, Arawn, Pryderi, and Manawyddan side by side with him
under their own names. Among the children of Dôn are Amaethon and
Govannan. But here the list stops, with a notable omission. There is no
mention, in later myth, of Gwydion. That greatest of the sons of Dôn has
fallen out, and vanished without a sign.
Singularly enough, too, the same stories that were once told of Gwydion
are now attached to the name of Arthur. So that we may assume, with
Professor Rhys, that Arthur, the prominent god of a new Pantheon, has
taken the place of Gwydion in the old.[364] A comparison of
Gwydion-myths and Arthur-myths shows an almost exact correspondence in
everything but name.
Like Gwydion, Arthur is the exponent of culture and of arts. Therefore
we see him carrying on the same war against the underworld for wealth
and wisdom that Gwydion and the sons of Dôn waged against the sons of
Llyr, the Sea, and of Pwyll, the Head of Hades.
Like Gwydion, too, Arthur suffered early reverses. He failed, indeed,
even where his prototype had succeeded. Gwydion, we know from the
Mabinogi of Mâth, successfully stole Pryderi’s pigs, but Arthur was
utterly baffled in his attempt to capture the swine of a similar prince
of the underworld, called March son of Meirchion.[365] Also as with
Gwydion, his earliest reconnaissance of Hades was disastrous, and led to
his capture and imprisonment. Manawyddan son of Llyr, confined him in
the mysterious and gruesome bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth, and there
he languished for three days and three nights before a rescuer came in
the person of Goreu, his cousin.[366] But, in the end, he triumphed. A
Welsh poem, ascribed to the bard Taliesin, relates, under the title “The
Spoiling of Annwn”,[367] an expedition of Arthur and his followers into
the very heart of that country, from which he appears to have returned
(for the verses are somewhat obscure) with the loss of almost all his
men, but in possession of the object of his quest—the magic cauldron of
inspiration and poetry.
Taliesin tells the story as an eye-witness. He may well have done so;
for it was his boast that from the creation of the world he had allowed
himself to miss no event of importance. He was in Heaven, he tells
us,[368] when Lucifer fell, and in the Court of Dôn before Gwydion was
born; he had been among the constellations both with Mary Magdalene and
with the pagan goddess Arianrod; he carried a banner before Alexander,
and was chief director of the building of the Tower of Babel; he saw the
fall of Troy and the founding of Rome; he was with Noah in the Ark, and
he witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; and he was present
both at the Manger of Bethlehem and at the Cross of Calvary. But,
unfortunately, Taliesin, as a credible personage, rests under exactly
the same disabilities as Arthur himself. It is not denied by scholars
that there was a real Taliesin, a sixth-century bard to whom were
attributed, and who may have actually composed, some of the poems in the
Book of Taliesin.[369] But there was also another Taliesin, whom, as a
mythical poet of the British Celts, Professor Rhys is inclined to equate
with the Gaelic Ossian.[370] The traditions of the two mingled, endowing
the historic Taliesin with the god-like attributes of his predecessor,
and clothing the mythical Taliesin with some of the actuality of his
successor.[371]
It is regrettable that our bard did not at times sing a little less
incoherently, for his poem contains the fullest description that has
come down to us of the other world as the Britons conceived it.
Apparently the numerous names, all different and some now
untranslatable, refer to the same place, and they must be collated to
form a right idea of what Annwn was like. With the exception of an
obviously spurious last verse, here omitted, the poem is magnificently
pagan, and quite a storehouse of British mythology[372].
“I will praise the Sovereign, supreme Lord of the land,
Who hath extended his dominion over the shore of the world.
Stout was the prison of Gweir[373], in Caer Sidi,
Through the spite of Pwyll and Pryderi:
No one before him went into it.
The heavy blue chain firmly held the youth,
And before the spoils of Annwn woefully he sang,
And thenceforth till doom he shall remain a bard.
Thrice enough to fill Prydwen[374] we went into it;
Except seven, none returned from Caer Sidi[375].
“Am I not a candidate for fame, to be heard in song
In Caer Pedryvan[376], four times revolving?
The first word from the cauldron, when was it spoken?
By the breath of nine maidens it was gently warmed.
Is it not the cauldron of the chief of Annwn? What is its fashion?
A rim of pearls is round its edge.
It will not cook the food of a coward or one forsworn.
A sword flashing bright will be raised to him,
And left in the hand of Lleminawg.
And before the door of the gate of Uffern[377] the lamp was burning.
When we went with Arthur—a splendid labour!—
Except seven, none returned from Caer Vedwyd[378].
“Am I not a candidate for fame, to be heard in song
In Caer Pedryvan, in the Isle of the Strong Door,
Where twilight and pitchy darkness meet together,
And bright wine is the drink of the host?
Thrice enough to fill Prydwen we went on the sea.
Except seven, none returned from Caer Rigor[379].
“I will not allow much praise to the leaders of literature.
Beyond Caer Wydyr[380] they saw not the prowess of Arthur;
Three-score hundreds stood on the walls;
It was hard to converse with their watchman.
Thrice enough to fill Prydwen we went with Arthur;
Except seven, none returned from Caer Golud[381].
“I will not allow much praise to the spiritless.
They know not on what day, or who caused it,
Or in what hour of the serene day Cwy was born,
Or who caused that he should not go to the dales of Devwy.
They know not the brindled ox with the broad head-band,
Whose yoke is seven-score handbreadths.
When we went with Arthur, of mournful memory,
Except seven, none returned from Caer Vandwy[382].
“I will not allow much praise to those of drooping courage.
They know not on what day the chief arose,
Nor in what hour of the serene day the owner was born,
Nor what animal they keep, with its head of silver.
When we went with Arthur, of anxious striving,
Except seven, none returned from Caer Ochren[383]”.
Many of the allusions of this poem will perhaps never be explained. We
know no better than the “leaders of literature” whom the vainglorious
Taliesin taunted with their ignorance and lack of spirit in what hour
Cwy was born, or even who he was, much less who prevented him from going
to the dales of Devwy, wherever they may have been. We are in the dark
as much as they were with regard to the significance of the brindled ox
with the broad head-band, and of the other animal with the silver
head.[384] But the earlier portion of the poem is, fortunately, clearer,
and it gives glimpses of a grandeur of savage imagination. The
strong-doored, foursquare fortress of glass, manned by its dumb, ghostly
sentinels, spun round in never-ceasing revolution, so that few could
find its entrance; it was pitch-dark save for the twilight made by the
lamp burning before its circling gate; feasting went on there, and
revelry, and in its centre, choicest of its many riches, was the
pearl-rimmed cauldron of poetry and inspiration, kept bubbling by the
breaths of nine British pythonesses, so that it might give forth its
oracles. To this scanty information we may add a few lines, also by
Taliesin, and contained in a poem called “A Song Concerning the Sons of
Llyr ab Brochwel Powys”:—
“Perfect is my chair in Caer Sidi:
Plague and age hurt not him who’s in it—
They know, Manawyddan and Pryderi.
Three organs round a fire sing before it,
And about its points are ocean’s streams
And the abundant well above it—
Sweeter than white wine the drink in it.”[385]
Little is, however, added by it to our knowledge. It reminds us that
Annwn was surrounded by the sea—“the heavy blue chain” which held Gweir
so firmly;—it informs us that the “bright wine” which was “the drink of
the host” was kept in a well; it adds to the revelry the singing of the
three organs; it makes a point that its inhabitants were freed from age
and death; and, last of all, it shows us, as we might have expected, the
ubiquitous Taliesin as a privileged resident of this delightful region.
We have two clues as to where the country may have been situated. Lundy
Island, off the coast of Devonshire, was anciently called _Ynys Wair_,
the “Island of Gweir”, or Gwydion. The Welsh translation of the _Seint
Greal_, an Anglo-Norman romance embodying much of the old mythology,
locates its “Turning Castle”—evidently the same as Caer Sidi—in the
district around and comprising Puffin Island off the coast of
Anglesey.[386] But these are slender threads by which to tether to firm
ground a realm of the imagination.
With Gwydion, too, have disappeared the whole of the characters
connected with him in that portion of the Mabinogi of Mâth, Son of
Mathonwy, which recounts the myth of the birth of the sun-god. Neither
Mâth himself, nor Lleu Llaw Gyffes, nor Dylan, nor their mother,
Arianrod, play any more part; they have vanished as completely as
Gwydion. But the essence of the myth of which they were the figures
remains intact. Gwydion was the father by his sister Arianrod, wife of a
waning heaven-god called Nwyvre (Space), of twin sons, Lleu, a god of
light, and Dylan, a god of darkness; and we find this same story woven
into the very innermost texture of the legend of Arthur.[387] The new
Arianrod, though called “Morgawse” by Sir Thomas Malory[388], and “Anna”
by Geoffrey of Monmouth[389], is known to earlier Welsh myth as
“Gwyar”[390]. She was the sister of Arthur and the wife of the sky-god,
Lludd, and her name, which means “shed blood” or “gore”, reminds us of
the relationship of the Morrígú, the war-goddess of the Gaels, to the
heaven-god Nuada[391]. The new Lleu Llaw Gyffes is called Gwalchmei,
that is, the “Falcon of May”[392], and the new Dylan is Medrawt, at once
Arthur’s son and Gwalchmei’s brother, and the bitterest enemy of
both[393].
Besides these “old friends with new faces”, Arthur brings with him into
prominence a fresh Pantheon, most of whom also replace the older gods of
the heavens and earth and the regions under the earth. The Zeus of
Arthur’s cycle is called Myrddin, who passed into the Norman-French
romances as “Merlin”. All the myths told of him bear witness to his high
estate. The first name of Britain, before it was inhabited, was, we
learn from a triad, _Clas Myrddin_, that is, “Myrddin’s Enclosure”.[394]
He is given a wife whose attributes recall those of the consorts of
Nuada and Lludd. She is described as the only daughter of Coel—the
British name of the Gaulish _Camulus_, a god of war and the sky—and was
called Elen Lwyddawg, that is, “Elen, Leader of Hosts”. Her memory is
still preserved in Wales in connection with ancient roadways; such names
as _Ffordd Elen_ (“Elen’s Road”) and _Sarn Elen_ (“Elen’s Causeway”)
seem to show that the paths on which armies marched were ascribed or
dedicated to her.[395] As Myrddin’s wife, she is credited with having
founded the town of Carmarthen (_Caer Myrddin_), as well as the “highest
fortress in Arvon”, which must have been the site near Beddgelert still
called _Dinas Emrys_, the “Town of Emrys”, one of Myrddin’s epithets or
names.[396]
Professor Rhys is inclined to credit Myrddin, or, rather, the British
Zeus under whatever name, with having been the god especially worshipped
at Stonehenge.[397] Certainly this impressive temple, ever unroofed and
open to the sun and wind and rain of heaven, would seem peculiarly
appropriate to a British supreme god of light and sky. Neither are we
quite without documentary evidence which will allow us to connect it
with him. Geoffrey of Monmouth[398], whose historical fictions usually
conceal mythological facts, relates that the stones which compose it
were erected by Merlin. Before that, they had stood in Ireland, upon a
hill which Geoffrey calls “Mount Killaraus”, and which can be identified
as the same spot known to Irish legend as the “Hill of Uisnech”, and,
still earlier, connected with Balor. According to British tradition, the
primeval giants who first colonized Ireland had brought them from their
original home on “the farthest coast of Africa”, on account of their
miraculous virtues; for any water in which they were bathed became a
sovereign remedy either for sickness or for wounds. By the order of
Aurelius, a half-real, half-mythical king of Britain, Merlin brought
them thence to England, to be set up on Salisbury Plain as a monument to
the British chieftains treacherously slain by Hengist and his Saxons.
With this scrap of native information about Stonehenge we may compare
the only other piece we have—the account of the classic Diodorus, who
called it a temple of Apollo.[399] At first, these two statements seem
to conflict. But it is far from unlikely that the earlier Celtic
settlers in Britain made little or no religious distinction between sky
and sun. The sun-god, as a separate personage, seems to have been the
conception of a comparatively late age. Celtic mythology allows us to be
present, as it were, at the births both of the Gaelic Lugh Lamhfada and
the British Lleu Llaw Gyffes.
Even the well-known story of Myrddin’s, or Merlin’s final imprisonment
in a tomb of airy enchantment—“a tour withouten walles, or withoute eny
closure”—reads marvellously like a myth of the sun “with all his fires
and travelling glories round him”.[400] Encircled, shielded, and made
splendid by his atmosphere of living light, the Lord of Heaven moves
slowly towards the west, to disappear at last into the sea (as one local
version of the myth puts it), or on to a far-off island (as another
says), or into a dark forest (the choice of a third).[401] When the myth
became finally fixed, it was Bardsey Island, off the extreme westernmost
point of Caernarvonshire, that was selected as his last abode. Into it
he went with nine attendant bards, taking with him the “Thirteen
Treasures of Britain”, thenceforth lost to men. Bardsey Island no doubt
derives its name from this story; and what is probably an allusion to it
is found in a first-century Greek writer called Plutarch, who describes
a grammarian called Demetrius as having visited Britain, and brought
home an account of his travels. He mentioned several uninhabited and
sacred islands off our coasts which he said were named after gods and
heroes, but there was one especially in which Cronos was imprisoned with
his attendant deities, and Briareus keeping watch over him as he slept;
“for sleep was the bond forged for him”.[402] Doubtless this
disinherited deity, whom the Greek, after his fashion, called “Cronos”,
was the British heaven- and sun-god, after he had descended into the
prison of the west.
Among other new-comers is Kai, who, as Sir Kay the Seneschal, fills so
large a part in the later romances. Purged of his worst offences, and
reduced to a surly butler to Arthur, he is but a shadow of the earlier
Kai who murdered Arthur’s son Llacheu[403], and can only be acquitted,
through the obscurity of the poem that relates the incident, of having
also carried off, or having tried to carry off, Arthur’s wife,
Gwynhwyvar.[404] He is thought to have been a personification of
fire,[405] upon the strength of a description given of him in the
mythical romance of “Kulhwch and Olwen”. “Very subtle”, it says, “was
Kai. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest
tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity—so great was the heat
of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried
remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand;
and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which
to light their fire.”
Another personage who owes his prominence in the Arthurian story to his
importance in Celtic myth was March son of Meirchion, whose swine Arthur
attempted to steal, as Gwydion had done those of Pryderi. In the
romances, he has become the cowardly and treacherous Mark, king,
according to some stories, of Cornwall, but according to others, of the
whole of Britain, and known to all as the husband of the Fair Isoult,
and the uncle of Sir Tristrem. But as a deformed deity of the
underworld[406] he can be found in Gaelic as well as in British myth. He
cannot be considered as originally different from Morc, a king of the
Fomors at the time when from their Glass Castle they so fatally
oppressed the Children of Nemed.[407] The Fomors were distinguished by
their animal features, and March had the same peculiarity.[408] When Sir
Thomas Malory relates how, to please Arthur and Sir Launcelot, Sir
Dinadan made a song about Mark, “which was the worst lay that ever
harper sang with harp or any other instruments,”[409] he does not tell
us wherein the sting of the lampoon lay. It no doubt reminded King Mark
of the unpleasant fact that he had—not like his Phrygian counterpart,
ass’s but—horse’s ears. He was, in fact, a Celtic Midas, a distinction
which he shared with one of the mythical kings of early Ireland.[410]
Neither can we pass over Urien, a deity of the underworld akin to, or
perhaps the same as, Brân.[411] Like that son of Llyr, he was at once a
god of battle and of minstrelsy;[412] he was adored by the bards as
their patron;[413] his badge was the raven (_bran_, in Welsh);[414]
while, to make his identification complete, there is an extant poem
which tells how Urien, wounded, ordered his own head to be cut off by
his attendants.[415] His wife was Modron,[416] known as the mother of
Mabon, the sun-god to whom inscriptions exist as _Maponos_. Another of
the children of Urien and Modron is Owain, which was perhaps only
another name for Mabon.[417] Taliesin calls him “chief of the glittering
west”,[418] and he is as certainly a sun-god as his father Urien, “lord
of the evening”,[419] was a ruler of the dark underworld.
It is by reason of the pre-eminence of Arthur that we find gathered
round him so many gods, all probably various tribal personifications of
the same few mythological ideas. The Celts, both of the Gaelic and the
British branches, were split up into numerous petty tribes, each with
its own local deities embodying the same essential conceptions under
different names. There was the god of the underworld, gigantic in
figure, patron alike of warrior and minstrel, teacher of the arts of
eloquence and literature, and owner of boundless wealth, whom some of
the British tribes worshipped as Brân, others as Urien, others as Pwyll,
or March, or Mâth, or Arawn, or Ogyrvran. There was the lord of an
elysium—Hades in its aspect of a paradise of the departed rather than of
the primeval subterranean realm where all thing’s originated—whom the
Britons of Wales called Gwyn, or Gwynwas; the Britons of Cornwall,
Melwas; and the Britons of Somerset, Avallon, or Avallach. Under this
last title, his realm is called _Ynys Avallon_, “Avallon’s Island”, or,
as we know the word, Avilion. It was said to be in the “Land of Summer”,
which, in the earliest myth, signified Hades; and it was only in later
days that the mystic Isle of Avilion became fixed to earth as
Glastonbury, and the Elysian “Land of Summer” as Somerset.[420] There
was a mighty ruler of heaven, a “god of battles”, worshipped on high
places, in whose hands was “the stern arbitrament of war”; some knew him
as Lludd, others as Myrddin, or as Emrys. There was a gentler deity,
friendly to man, to help whom he fought or cajoled the powers of the
underworld; Gwydion he was called, and Arthur. Last, perhaps, to be
imagined in concrete shape, there was a long-armed, sharp-speared
sun-god who aided the culture-god in his work, and was known as Lleu, or
Gwalchmei, or Mabon, or Owain, or Peredur, and no doubt by many another
name; and with him is usually found a brother representing not light,
but darkness. This expression of a single idea by different names may be
also observed in Gaelic myth, though not quite so clearly. In the
hurtling of clan against clan, many such divinities perished altogether
out of memory, or survived only as names, to make up, in Ireland, the
vast, shadowy population claiming to be Tuatha Dé Danann, and, in
Britain, the long list of Arthur’s followers. Others—gods of stronger
communities—would increase their fame as their worshippers increased
their territory, until, as happened in Greece, the chief deities of many
tribes came together to form a national Pantheon.
We have already tried to explain the “Coming of Arthur” historically.
Mythologically, he came, as, according to Celtic ideas, all things came
originally, from the underworld. His father is called Uther
Pendragon.[421] But Uther Pendragon is (for the word “dragon” is not
part of the name, but a title signifying “war-leader”) _Uther Ben_, that
is, Brân, under his name of the “Wonderful Head”,[422] so that, in spite
of the legend which describes Arthur as having disinterred Brân’s head
on Tower Hill, where it watched against invasion, because he thought it
beneath his dignity to keep Britain in any other way than by
valour,[423] we must recognize the King of Hades as his father. This
being so, it would only be natural that he should take a wife from the
same eternal country, and we need not be surprised to find in
Gwynhwyvar’s father, Ogyrvran, a personage corresponding in all respects
to the Celtic conception of the ruler of the underworld. He was of
gigantic size;[424] he was the owner of a cauldron out of which three
Muses had been born;[425] and he was the patron of the bards,[426] who
deemed him to have been the originator of their art. More than this, his
very name, analysed into its original _ocur vran_, means the evil
_bran_, or raven, the bird of death.[427]
But Welsh tradition credits Arthur with three wives, each of them called
Gwynhwyvar. This peculiar arrangement is probably due to the Celtic love
of triads; and one may compare them with the three Etains who pass
through the mythico-heroic story of Eochaid Airem, Etain, and Mider. Of
these three Gwynhwyvars,[428] besides the Gwynhwyvar, daughter of
Ogyrvran, one was the daughter of Gwyrd Gwent, of whom we know nothing
but the name, and the other of Gwyrthur ap Greidawl, the same “Victor
son of Scorcher” with whom Gwyn son of Nudd, fought, in earlier myth,
perpetual battle for the possession of Creudylad, daughter of the
sky-god Lludd. This same eternal strife between the powers of light and
darkness for the possession of a symbolical damsel is waged again in the
Arthurian cycle; but it is no longer for Creudylad that Gwyn contends,
but for Gwynhwyvar, and no longer with Gwyrthur, but with Arthur. It
would seem to have been a Cornish form of the myth; for the dark god is
called “Melwas”, and not “Gwynwas”, or “Gwyn”, his name in Welsh.[429]
Melwas lay in ambush for a whole year, and finally succeeded in carrying
off Gwynhwyvar to his palace in Avilion. But Arthur pursued, and
besieged that stronghold, just as Eochaid Airem had, in the Gaelic
version of the universal story, mined and sapped at Mider’s _sídh_ of
Bri Leith.[430] Mythology, as well as history, repeats itself; and
Melwas was obliged to restore Gwynhwyvar to her rightful lord.
It is not Melwas, however, that in the best-known versions of the story
contends with Arthur for the love of Gwynhwyvar. The most widespread
early tradition makes Arthur’s rival his nephew Medrawt. Here Professor
Rhys traces a striking parallel between the British legend of Arthur,
Gwynhwyvar, and Medrawt, and the Gaelic story of Airem, Etain, and
Mider.[431] The two myths are practically counterparts; for the names of
all the three pairs agree in their essential meaning. “Airem”, like
“Arthur”, signifies the “Ploughman”, the divine institutor of
agriculture; “Etain”, the “Shining One”, is a fit parallel to
“Gwynhwyvar”, the “White Apparition”; while “Mider” and “Medrawt” both
come from the same root, a word meaning “to hit”, either literally, or
else metaphorically, with the mind, in the sense of coming to a
decision. To attempt to explain this myth is to raise the vexed question
of the meaning of mythology. Is it day and dark that strive for dawn, or
summer and winter for the lovely spring, or does it shadow forth the
rescue of the grain that makes man’s life from the devouring underworld
by the farmer’s wit? When this can be finally resolved, a multitude of
Celtic myths will be explained. Everywhere arise the same combatants for
the stolen bride; one has the attributes of light, the other is a
champion of darkness.
Even in Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the Arthurian story, taken by him
from French romances far removed from the original tradition, we find
the myth subsisting. Medrawt’s original place as the lover of Arthur’s
queen had been taken in the romances by Sir Launcelot, who, if he was
not some now undiscoverable Celtic god,[432] must have been an invention
of the Norman adapters. But the story which makes Medrawt Arthur’s rival
has been preserved in the account of how Sir Mordred would have wedded
Guinevere by force, as part of the rebellion which he made against his
king and uncle.[433] This strife was Celtic myth long before it became
part of the pseudo-history of early Britain. The triads[434] tell us how
Arthur and Medrawt raided each other’s courts during the owner’s
absence. Medrawt went to Kelli Wic, in Cornwall, ate and drank
everything he could find there, and insulted Queen Gwynhwyvar, in
revenge for which Arthur went to Medrawt’s court and killed man and
beast. Their struggle only ended with the Battle of Camlan; and that
mythical combat, which chroniclers have striven to make historical, is
full of legendary detail. Tradition tells how Arthur and his antagonist
shared their forces three times during the fight, which caused it to be
known as one of the “Three Frivolous Battles of Britain”, the idea of
doing so being one of “Britain’s Three Criminal Resolutions”. Four alone
survived the fray: one, because he was so ugly that all shrank from him,
believing him to be a devil; another, whom no one touched because he was
so beautiful that they took him for an angel; a third, whose great
strength no one could resist; and Arthur himself, who, after revenging
the death of Gwalchmei upon Medrawt, went to the island of Avilion to
heal him of his grievous wounds.
And thence—from the Elysium of the Celts—popular belief has always been
that he will some day return. But just as the gods of the Gaels are said
to dwell sometimes in the “Land of the Living”, beyond the western wave,
and sometimes in the palace of a hollow hill, so Arthur is sometimes
thought to be in Avilion, and sometimes to be sitting with his champions
in a charmed sleep in some secret place, waiting for the trumpet to be
blown that shall call him forth to reconquer Britain. The legend is
found in the Eildon Hills; in the Snowdon district; at Cadbury, in
Somerset, the best authenticated Camelot; in the Vale of Neath, in South
Wales; as well as in other places. He slumbers, but he has not died. The
ancient Welsh poem called “The Verses of the Graves of the
Warriors”[435] enumerates the last resting-places of most of the British
gods and demi-gods. “The grave of Gwydion is in the marsh of Dinlleu”,
the grave of Lieu Llaw Gyffes is “under the protection of the sea with
which he was familiar”, and “where the wave makes a sullen sound is the
grave of Dylan”; we know the graves of Pryderi, of Gwalchmei, of March,
of Mabon, even of the great Beli, but
“Not wise the thought—a grave for Arthur”.[436]
-----
Footnote 358:
A poem in praise of Geraint, “the brave man from the region of
Dyvnaint (Devon) ... the enemy of tyranny and oppression”, is
contained in both the Black Book of Caermarthen and the Red Book of
Hergest. “When Geraint was born, open were the gates of heaven”,
begins its last verse. It is translated in Vol. I of Skene, p. 267.
Footnote 359:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 8.
Footnote 360:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 40-41.
Footnote 361:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 7.
Footnote 362:
“It is worthy of remark that the fame of Arthur is widely spread; he
is claimed alike as a prince in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales,
Cumberland, and the Lowlands of Scotland; that is to say, his fame
is conterminous with the Brythonic race, and does not extend to the
Gaels”.—_Chambers’s Encyclopædia._
Footnote 363:
For Arthurian and Fenian parallels see Campbell’s _Popular Tales of
the West Highlands_.
Footnote 364:
See chap. I of Rhys’s _Arthurian Legend_—“Arthur, Historical and
Mythical”.
Footnote 365:
A triad in the Hengwrt MS. 536, translated by Skene. It was Trystan
who was watching the swine for his uncle, while the swineherd went
with a message to Essylt (Iseult), “and Arthur desired one pig by
deceit or by theft, and could not get it.”
Footnote 366:
See note to chap. XXII—“The Treasures of Britain”.
Footnote 367:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem XXX, Skene, Vol. I, p. 256.
Footnote 368:
In a probably very ancient poem embedded in the sixteenth-century
Welsh romance called _Taliesin_, included by Lady Guest in her
_Mabinogion_.
Footnote 369:
“The existence of a sixth-century bard of this name, a contemporary of
the heroic stage of British resistance to the Germanic invaders, is
well attested. A number of poems are found in mediæval Welsh MSS.,
chief among them the so-called _Book of Taliesin_, ascribed to this
sixth-century poet. Some of these are almost as old as any remains of
Welsh poetry, and may go back to the early tenth or the ninth century;
others are productions of the eleventh, twelfth, and even thirteenth
centuries.”—Nutt: Notes to his (1902) edition of Lady Guest’s
_Mabinogion_.
Footnote 370:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 551.
Footnote 371:
“There can be little doubt but that the sixth-century bard succeeded
to the form and attributes of a far older, a prehistoric, a mythic
singer.”—Nutt: Notes to _Mabinogion_.
Footnote 372:
I have been obliged to collate four different translators to obtain an
acceptable version of what Mr. T. Stephens, in his _Literature of the
Kymri_, calls “one of the least intelligible of the mythological
poems”. My authorities have been Skene, Stephens, Nash, and Rhys.
Footnote 373:
A form of the name Gwydion.
Footnote 374:
The name of Arthur’s ship.
Footnote 375:
Revolving Castle.
Footnote 376:
Four-cornered Castle.
Footnote 377:
The Cold Place.
Footnote 378:
Castle of Revelry.
Footnote 379:
Kingly Castle.
Footnote 380:
Glass Castle.
Footnote 381:
Castle of Riches.
Footnote 382:
Meaning is unknown. See chap. XVI—“The Gods of the Britons”.
Footnote 383:
Meaning is unknown. See chap. XX—“The Victories of Light over
Darkness”.
Footnote 384:
Unless they should be “the yellow and the brindled bull” mentioned in
the story of _Kulhwch and Olwen_.
Footnote 385:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem XIV. The translation is by Rhys: _Arthurian
Legend_, p. 301.
Footnote 386:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 325.
Footnote 387:
Rhys: _ibid._, chap. I.
Footnote 388:
Malory’s _Morte Darthur_, Book II, chap. II.
Footnote 389:
_Historia Britonum_, Book VIII, chap. XX.
Footnote 390:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 169.
Footnote 391:
Rhys: _ibid._, p. 169.
Footnote 392:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 13.
Footnote 393:
Rhys: _ibid._, pp. 19-23.
Footnote 394:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 168.
Footnote 395:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 167.
Footnote 396:
See Rhys’s exposition of the mythological meaning of the _Red Book_
romance of the _Dream of Maxen Wledig_, in his _Hibbert Lectures_, pp.
160-175.
Footnote 397:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 192-195.
Footnote 398:
_Historia Britonum_, Book VIII, chaps. IX-XII.
Footnote 399:
See chap. IV and Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 194.
Footnote 400:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 158, 159.
Footnote 401:
_Ibid._, p. 155.
Footnote 402:
Plutarch: _De Defectu Oraculorum_.
Footnote 403:
The _Seint Greal_, quoted by Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 61-62.
Footnote 404:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 59.
Footnote 405:
Elton: _Origins of English History_, p. 269.
Footnote 406:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 12.
Footnote 407:
_Ibid._, p. 70.
Footnote 408:
The name March means “horse”.
Footnote 409:
_Morte Darthur._ Book X, chap. XXVII.
Footnote 410:
Called Labraid Longsech.
Footnote 411:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_. See chap. XI—“Urien and his Congeners”.
Footnote 412:
_Ibid._, p. 260.
Footnote 413:
_Ibid._, p. 261.
Footnote 414:
_Ibid._, p. 256.
Footnote 415:
Red Book of Hergest, XII. Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 253-256.
Footnote 416:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 247.
Footnote 417:
_Ibid._
Footnote 418:
_The Death-song of Owain._ Taliesin, XLIV, Skene, Vol. I, p. 366.
Footnote 419:
Book of Taliesin, XXXII. Skene, however, translates the word rendered
“evening” by Rhys as “cultivated plain”.
Footnote 420:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 345.
Footnote 421:
Both by Malory and Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Footnote 422:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 256.
Footnote 423:
See chap. XVIII—“The Wooing of Branwen and the Beheading of Brân”.
Footnote 424:
He is called Ogyrvran the Giant.
Footnote 425:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 326.
Footnote 426:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 268-269.
Footnote 427:
Rhys: _Lectures on Welsh Philology_, p. 306. But the derivation is
only tentative, and an interesting alternative one is given, which
equates him with the Persian Ahriman.
Footnote 428:
The enumeration of Arthur’s three Gwynhwyvars forms one of the Welsh
triads.
Footnote 429:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 342.
Footnote 430:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 431:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, chap. II—“Arthur and Airem”.
Footnote 432:
In the mysterious Lancelot, not found in Arthurian story before the
Norman adaptations of it, Professor Rhys is inclined to see a British
sun-god, or solar hero. A number of interesting comparisons are drawn
between him and the Peredur and Owain of the later “Mabinogion” tales,
as well as with the Gaelic Cuchulainn. See _Studies in the Arthurian
Legend_.
Footnote 433:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XXI, chap. I.
Footnote 434:
The fullest list of translated triads is contained in the appendix to
Probert’s _Ancient Laws of Cambria_, 1823. Many are also given as an
appendix in Skene’s _Four Ancient Books of Wales_.
Footnote 435:
_Black Book of Caermarthen XIX_, Vol. I, pp. 309-318 in Skene.
Footnote 436:
This is Professor Rhys’s translation of the Welsh line, no doubt more
strictly correct than the famous rendering: “Unknown is the grave of
Arthur”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII
THE TREASURES OF BRITAIN
It is in keeping with the mythological character of Arthur that the
early Welsh tales recorded of him are of a different nature from those
which swell the pseudo-histories of Nennius[437] and of Geoffrey of
Monmouth. We hear nothing of that subjugation of the countries of
Western Europe which fills so large a part in the two books of the
_Historia Britonum_ which Geoffrey has devoted to him.[438] Conqueror he
is, but his conquests are not in any land known to geographers. It is
against Hades, and not against Rome, that he achieves his highest
triumphs. This is the true history of King Arthur, and we may read more
fragments and snatches of it in two prose-tales preserved in the Red
Book of Hergest. Both these tales date, in the actual form in which they
have come down to us, from the twelfth century. But, in each of them,
the writer seems to be stretching out his hands to gather in the dying
traditions of a very remote past.
When a Welsh man-at-arms named Rhonabwy lay down, one night, to sleep
upon a yellow calf-skin, the only furniture in a noisome hut, in which
he had taken shelter, that was comparatively free from vermin, he had
the vision which is related in the tale called “The Dream of
Rhonabwy”.[439] He thought that he was travelling with his companions
towards the Severn, when they heard a rushing noise behind them, and,
looking back, saw a gigantic rider upon a monstrous horse. So terrible
was the horseman’s appearance that they all started to run from him. But
their running was of no avail, for every time the horse drew in its
breath, it sucked them back to its very chest, only, however, to fling
them forward as it breathed out again. In despair they fell down and
besought their pursuer’s mercy. He granted it, asked their names, and
told them, in return, his own. He was known as Iddawc the Agitator of
Britain; for it was he who, in his love of war, had purposely
precipitated the Battle of Camlan. Arthur had sent him to reason with
Medrawt; but though Arthur had charged him with the fairest sayings he
could think of, Iddawc translated them into the harshest he could
devise. But he had done seven years’ penance, and had been forgiven, and
was now riding to Arthur’s camp. Thither he insisted upon taking
Rhonabwy and his companions.
Arthur’s army was encamped for a mile around the ford of Rhyd y Groes,
upon both sides of the road; and on a small flat island in the middle of
the river was the Emperor himself, in converse with Bedwini the Bishop
and Gwarthegyd, the son of Kaw. Like Ossian, when he came back to
Ireland after his three hundred years’ sojourn in the “Land of
Promise”,[440] Arthur marvelled at the puny size of the people whom
Iddawc had brought for him to look at. “And where, Iddawc, didst thou
find these little men?” “I found them, Lord, up yonder on the road.”
Then the Emperor smiled. “Lord,” said Iddawc, “wherefore dost thou
laugh?” “Iddawc,” replied Arthur, “I laugh not; but it pitieth me that
men of such stature as these should have this island in their keeping,
after the men that guarded it of yore.” Then he turned away, and Iddawc
told Rhonabwy and his companions to keep silent, and they would see what
they would see.
The scope of such a book as this allows no space to describe the persons
and equipments of the warriors who came riding down with their companies
to join Arthur, as he made his great march to fight the Battle of Badon,
thought by some to be historical, and located at Bath. The reader who
turns to the tale itself will see what Rhonabwy saw. Many of Arthur’s
warriors he will know by name: Caradawc the Strong-armed, who is here
called a son, not of Brân, but of Llyr; March son of Meirchion, the
underworld king; Kai, described as “the fairest horseman in all Arthur’s
court”; Gwalchmei, the son of Gwyar and of Arthur himself; Mabon, the
son of Modron; Trystan son of Tallwch, the lover of “The Fair Isoult”;
Goreu, Arthur’s cousin and his rescuer from Manawyddan’s bone-prison;
these, and many more, will pass before him, as they passed before
Rhonabwy during the three days and three nights that he slept and
dreamed upon the calf-skin.
This story of the “Dream of Rhonabwy”, elaborate as it is in all its
details, is yet, in substance, little more than a catalogue. The
intention of its unknown author seems to have been to draw a series of
pictures of what he considered to be the principal among Arthur’s
followers. The other story—that of “Kulhwch and Olwen”—also takes this
catalogue form, but the matters enumerated are of a different kind. It
is not so much a record of men as of things. Not the heroes of Britain,
but the treasures of Britain are its subject. One might compare it with
the Gaelic story of the adventures of the three sons of Tuirenn.[441]
The “Thirteen Treasures of Britain” were famous in early legend. They
belonged to gods and heroes, and were current in our island till the end
of the divine age, when Merlin, fading out of the world, took them with
him into his airy tomb, never to be seen by mortal eyes again. According
to tradition,[442] they consisted of a sword, a basket, a drinking-horn,
a chariot, a halter, a knife, a cauldron, a whetstone, a garment, a pan,
a platter, a chess-board, and a mantle, all possessed of not less
marvellous qualities than the apples, the pig-skin, the spear, the
horses and chariot, the pigs, the hound-whelp, and the cooking-spit
which the sons of Tuirenn obtained for Lugh.[443] It is these same
legendary treasures that reappear, no doubt, in the story of “Kulhwch
and Olwen”. The number tallies, for there are thirteen of them. Some are
certainly, and others probably, identical with those of the other
tradition. That there should be discrepancies need cause no surprise,
for it is not unlikely that there were several different versions of
their legend. Everyone had heard of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain.
Many, no doubt, disputed as to what they were. Others might ask whence
they came. The story of “Kulhwch and Olwen” was composed to tell them.
They were won by Arthur and his mighty men.
Kulhwch[444] is the hero of the story and Olwen is its heroine, but
only, as it were, by courtesy. The pair provide a love-interest which,
as in the tales of all primitive people, is kept in the background. The
woman, in such romances, takes the place of the gold and gems in a
modern “treasure-hunt” story; she is won by overcoming external
obstacles, and not by any difficulty in obtaining her own consent. In
this romance[445], Kulhwch was the son of a king who afterwards married
a widow with a grown-up daughter, whom his stepmother urged Kulhwch to
marry. On his modestly replying that he was not yet of an age to wed,
she laid the destiny on him that he should never have a wife at all,
unless he could win Olwen, the daughter of a terrible father called
“Hawthorn, Chief of Giants”.[446]
The “Chief of Giants” was as hostile to suitors as he was monstrous in
shape; and no wonder! for he knew that on his daughter’s marriage his
own life would come to an end. Both in this peculiarity and in the
description of his ponderous eyebrows, which fell so heavily over his
eyes that he could not see until they had been lifted up with forks, he
reminds one of the Fomor, Balor. Of his daughter, on the other hand, the
Welsh tale gives a description as beautiful as Olwen was, herself. “More
yellow was her head than the flower of the broom, and her skin was
whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her
fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the
meadow-fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the
three-mewed falcon was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy
than the breast of the white swan, her cheek was redder than the reddest
roses. Whoso beheld her was filled with her love. Four white trefoils
sprung up wherever she trod. And therefore was she called Olwen.”[447]
Kulhwch had no need to see her to fall in love with her. He blushed at
her very name, and asked his father how he could obtain her in marriage.
His father reminded him that he was Arthur’s cousin, and advised him to
claim Olwen from him as a boon.
So Kulhwch “pricked forth upon a steed with head dappled grey, of four
winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed hoofs, having a bridle of
linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. And in
the youth’s hand were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed
with steel, three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind, and
cause blood to flow, and swifter than the fall of the dewdrop from the
blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at the
heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was upon his thigh, the blade of which was
of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of
heaven; his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were two brindled
white-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about their
necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on
the left side bounded across to the right side, and the one on the right
to the left, and like two sea-swallows sported around him. And his
courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs, like four swallows in the
air, about his head, now above, now below. About him was a four-cornered
cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner, and every one
of the apples was of the value of an hundred kine. And there was
precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes, and
upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of
grass bent not beneath him, so light was his courser’s tread as he
journeyed towards the gate of Arthur’s palace.”
Nor did this bold suitor stand greatly upon ceremony. He arrived after
the portal of the palace had been closed for the night, and, contrary to
all precedent, sent to Arthur demanding instant entry. Although, too, it
was the custom for visitors to dismount at the horse-block at the gate,
he did not do so, but rode his charger into the hall. After greetings
had passed between him and Arthur, and he had announced his name, he
demanded Olwen for his bride at the hands of the Emperor and his
warriors.
Neither Arthur nor any of his court had ever heard of Olwen. However, he
promised his cousin either to find her for him, or to prove that there
was no such person. He ordered his most skilful warriors to accompany
Kulhwch; Kai, with his companion Bedwyr, the swiftest of men; Kynddelig,
who was as good a guide in a strange country as in his own; Gwrhyr, who
knew all the languages of men, as well as of all other creatures;
Gwalchmei, who never left an adventure unachieved; and Menw, who could
render himself and his companions invisible at will.
They travelled until they came to a castle on an open plain. Feeding on
the plain was a countless herd of sheep, and, on a mound close by, a
monstrous shepherd with a monstrous dog. Menw cast a spell over the dog,
and they approached the shepherd. He was called Custennin, a brother of
Hawthorn, while his wife was a sister of Kulhwch’s own mother. The evil
chief of giants had reduced his brother to servitude, and murdered all
his twenty-four sons save one, who was kept hidden in a stone chest.
Therefore he welcomed Kulhwch and the embassy from Arthur, and promised
to help them secretly, the more readily since Kai offered to take the
one surviving son under his protection. Custennin’s wife procured
Kulhwch a secret meeting with Olwen, and the damsel did not altogether
discourage her wooer’s suit.
The party started for Hawthorn’s castle. Without raising any alarm, they
slew the nine porters and the nine watch-dogs, and came unhindered into
the hall. They greeted the ponderous giant, and announced the reason of
their coming. “Where are my pages and my servants?” he said. “Raise up
the forks beneath my two eyebrows which have fallen over my eyes, so
that I may see the fashion of my son-in-law.” He glared at them, and
told them to come again upon the next day.
They turned to go, and, as they did so, Hawthorn seized a poisoned dart,
and threw it after them. But Bedwyr caught it, and cast it back,
wounding the giant’s knee. They left him grumbling, slept at the house
of Custennin, and returned, the next morning.
Again they demanded Olwen from her father, threatening him with death if
he refused. “Her four great-grandmothers, and her four great-grandsires
are yet alive,” replied Hawthorn; “it is needful that I take counsel of
them.” So they turned away, and, as they went, he flung a second dart,
which Menw caught, and hurled back, piercing the giant’s body.
The next time they came, Hawthorn warned them not to shoot at him again,
unless they desired death. Then he ordered his eyebrows to be lifted up,
and, as soon as he could see, he flung a poisoned dart straight at
Kulhwch. But the suitor himself caught it, and flung it back, so that it
pierced Hawthorn’s eyeball and came out through the back of his head.
Here again we are reminded of the myth of Lugh and Balor. Hawthorn,
however, was not killed, though he was very much discomforted. “A cursed
ungentle son-in-law, truly!” he complained. “As long as I remain alive,
my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind, my eyes
will water; and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a
giddiness every new moon. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged!
Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron.”
It was now the turn of Kulhwch and his party to warn the giant that
there must be no more dart-throwing. He appeared, indeed, more amenable
to reason, and allowed himself to be placed opposite to Kulhwch, in a
chair, to discuss the amount of his daughter’s bride-price.
Its terms, as he gradually unfolded them, were terrific. The blood-fine
paid for Cian to Lugh seems, indeed, a trifle beside it. To obtain
grain, for food and liquor at his daughter’s wedding, a vast hill which
he showed to Kulhwch must be rooted up, levelled, ploughed, sown, and
harvested in one day. No one could do this except Amaethon son of Dôn,
the divine husbandman, and Govannan son of Dôn, the divine smith, and
they must have the service of three pairs of magic oxen. He must also
have returned to him the same nine bushels of flax which he had sown in
his youth, and which had never come up; for only out of this very flax
should be made the white wimple for Olwen’s head. For mead, too, he must
have honey “nine times sweeter than the honey of the virgin swarm”.
Then followed the enumeration of the thirteen treasures to be paid to
him as dowry. Such a list of wedding presents was surely never known! No
pot could hold such honey as he demanded but the magic vessel of Llwyr,
the son of Llwyryon. There would not be enough food for all the
wedding-guests, unless he had the basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir, from
which all the men in the world could be fed, thrice nine at a time. No
cauldron could cook the meat, except that of Diwrnach the Gael. The
mystic drinking-horn of Gwlgawd Gododin must be there, to give them
drink. The harp of Teirtu, which, like the Dagda’s, played of itself,
must make music for them. The giant father-in-law’s hair could only be
shorn with one instrument—the tusk of White-tooth, King of the Boars,
and not even by that unless it was plucked alive out of its owner’s
mouth. Also, before the hair could be cut, it must be spread out, and
this could not be done until it had been first softened with the blood
of the perfectly black sorceress, daughter of the perfectly white
sorceress, from the Source of the Stream of Sorrow, on the borders of
hell. Nor could the sorceress’s blood be kept warm enough unless it was
placed in the bottles of Gwyddolwyn Gorr, which preserved the heat of
any liquor put into them, though it was carried from the east of the
world to the west. Another set of bottles he must also have to keep milk
for his guests in—those bottles of Rhinnon Rhin Barnawd in which no
drink ever turned sour. For himself, he required the sword of Gwrnach
the Giant, which that personage would never allow out of his own
keeping, because it was destined that he himself should fall by it. Last
of all, he must be given the comb, the razor, and the scissors which lay
between the ears of Twrch Trwyth, a king changed into the most terrible
of wild boars.
It is the chase of this boar which gives the story of “Kulhwch and
Olwen” its alternative title—“The Twrch Trwyth”. The task was one worthy
of gods and demi-gods. Its contemplation might well have appalled
Kulhwch, who, however, was not so easily frightened. To every fresh
demand, every new obstacle put in his way, he gave the same answer:
“It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that
it will not be easy”.
Whether it was easy or not will be seen from the conditions under which
alone the hunt could be brought to a successful end. No ordinary hounds
or huntsmen would avail. The chief of the pack must be Drudwyn, the
whelp of Greid the son of Eri, led in the one leash that would hold him,
fastened, by the one chain strong enough, to the one collar that would
contain his neck. No huntsman could hunt with this dog except Mabon son
of Modron; and he had, ages before, been taken from between his mother
and the wall when he was three nights old, and it was not known where he
was, or even whether he were living or dead. There was only one steed
that could carry Mabon, namely Gwynn Mygdwn, the horse of Gweddw. Two
other marvellous hounds, the cubs of Gast Rhymhi, must also be obtained;
they must be held in the only leash they would not break, for it would
be made out of the beard of the giant Dissull, plucked from him while he
was still alive. Even with this, no huntsman could lead them except
Kynedyr Wyllt, who was himself nine times more wild than the wildest
beast upon the mountains. All Arthur’s mighty men must come to help,
even Gwyn son of Nudd, upon his black horse; and how could he be spared
from his terrible duty of restraining the devils in hell from breaking
loose and destroying the world?
Here is material for romance indeed! But, unhappily, we shall never know
the full story of how all these magic treasures were obtained, all these
magic hounds captured and compelled to hunt, all these magic huntsmen
brought to help. The story—which Mr. Nutt[448] considers to be, “saving
the finest tales of the ‘Arabian Nights’, the greatest romantic fairy
tale the world has ever known”—is not, as we have it now, complete. It
reads fully enough; but, on casting backwards and forwards, between the
list of feats to be performed and the body of the tale which is supposed
to relate them all, we find many of them wanting. “The host of Arthur”,
we are told, “dispersed themselves into parties of one and two”, each
party intent upon some separate quest. The adventures of some of them
have come down, but those of others have not. We are told how Kai slew
Gwrnach the Giant with his own sword; how Gwyrthur son of Greidawl,
Gwyn’s rival for the love of Creudylad, saved an anthill from fire, and
how the grateful ants searched for and found the very flax-seeds sown by
Hawthorn in his youth; how Arthur’s host surrounded and took Gast
Rhymhi’s cubs, and how Kai and Bedwyr overcame Dissull, and plucked out
his beard with wooden tweezers, to make a leash for them. We learn how
Arthur went to Ireland, and brought back the cauldron of Diwrnach the
Gael, full of Irish money; how White-tusk the Boar-king was chased and
killed; and how Arthur condescended to slay the perfectly black
sorceress with his own hand. That others of the treasures were acquired
is hinted rather than said. Most important of all (for so much depended
on him), we find out where the stolen Mabon was, and learn how he was
rescued.
So many ages had elapsed since Mabon had disappeared that there seemed
little hope of ever finding news of him. Nevertheless Gwrhyr, who spoke
the languages of all creatures, went to enquire of that ancient bird,
the Ousel of Cilgwri. But the Ousel, though in her time she had pecked a
smith’s anvil down to the size of a nut, was yet too young to have heard
of Mabon. She sent Gwrhyr to a creature formed before her, the Stag of
Redynvre. But though the Stag had lived to see an oak-sapling slowly
grow to be a tree with a thousand branches, and as slowly decay again
till it was a withered stump, he had never heard of Mabon.
Therefore he sent him on to a creature still older than himself—the Owl
of Cwm Cawlwyd. The wood she lived in had been thrice rooted up, and had
thrice re-sown itself, and yet, in all that immense time, she had never
heard of Mabon. There was but one who might have, she told Gwrhyr, and
he was the Eagle of Gwern Abwy.
Here, at last, they struck Mabon’s trail. “The Eagle said: ‘I have been
here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither there was a
rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the stars every evening;
and now it is not so much as a span high. From that day to this I have
been here, and I have never heard of the man for whom you inquire,
except once when I went in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when
I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve
me as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was
scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole
kindred to attack him, and to try to destroy him, but he sent
messengers, and made peace with me; and came and besought me to take
fifty fish spears out of his back. Unless he know something of him whom
you seek, I cannot tell who may. However, I will guide you to the place
where he is.’”
It happened that the Salmon did know. With every tide he went up the
Severn as far as the walls of Gloucester, and there, he said, he had
found such wrong as he had never found anywhere else. So he took Kai and
Gwrhyr upon his shoulders and carried them to the wall of the prison
where a captive was heard lamenting. This was Mabon son of Modron, who
was suffering such imprisonment as not even Lludd of the Silver Hand or
Greid, the son of Eri,[449] the other two of the “Three Paramount
Prisoners of Britain”, had endured before him. But it came to an end
now; for Kai sent to Arthur, and he and his warriors stormed Gloucester,
and brought Mabon away.
All was at last ready for the final achievement—the hunting of Twrch
Trwyth, who was now, with his seven young pigs, in Ireland. Before he
was roused, it was thought wise to send the wizard Menw to find out by
ocular inspection whether the comb, the scissors, and the razor were
still between his ears. Menw took the form of a bird, and settled upon
the Boar’s head. He saw the coveted treasures, and tried to take one of
them, but Twrch Trwyth shook himself so violently that some of the venom
from his bristles spurted over Menw, who was never quite well again from
that day.
Then the hunt was up, the men surrounded him, and the dogs were loosed
at him from every side. On the first day, the Irish attacked him. On the
second day, Arthur’s household encountered him and were worsted. Then
Arthur himself fought with him for nine days and nine nights without
even killing one of the little pigs.
A truce was now called, so that Gwrhyr, who spoke all languages, might
go and parley with him. Gwrhyr begged him to give up in peace the comb,
the scissors, and the razor, which were all that Arthur wanted. But the
Boar Trwyth, indignant of having been so annoyed, would not. On the
contrary, he promised to go on the morrow into Arthur’s country, and do
all the harm he could there.
So Twrch Trwyth with his seven pigs crossed the sea into Wales, and
Arthur followed with his warriors in the ship “Prydwen”. Here the story
becomes wonderfully realistic and circumstantial. We are told of every
place they passed through on the long chase through South Wales, and can
trace the course of the hunt over the map.[450] We know of every check
the huntsmen had, and what happened every time the boars turned to bay.
The “casualty-list” of Arthur’s men is completely given; and we can also
follow the shrinking of Twrch Trwyth’s herd, as his little pigs fell one
by one. None were left but Trwyth himself by the time the Severn estuary
was reached, at the mouth of the Wye.
Here the hunt came up with him, and drove him into the water, and in
this unfamiliar element he was outmatched. Osla Big-Knife[451],
Manawyddan son of Llyr, Kacmwri, the servant of Arthur, and Gwyngelli
caught him by his four feet and plunged his head under water, while the
two chief huntsmen, Mabon son of Modron, and Kyledyr Willt, came, one on
each side of him, and took the scissors and the razor. Before they could
get the comb, however, he shook himself free, and struck out for
Cornwall, leaving Osla and Kacmwri half-drowned in the Severn.
And all this trouble, we are told, was mere play compared with the
trouble they had with him in Cornwall before they could get the comb.
But, at last, they secured it, and drove the boar out over the deep sea.
He passed out of sight, with two of the magic hounds in pursuit of him,
and none of them have ever been heard of since.
The sight of these treasures, paraded before Hawthorn, chief of giants,
was, of course, his death-warrant. All who wished him ill came to gloat
over his downfall. But they should have been put to shame by the giant,
whose end had, at least, a certain dignity. “My daughter”, he said to
Kulhwch, “is yours, but you need not thank me for it, but Arthur, who
has accomplished all this. By my free will you should never have had
her, for with her I lose my life.”
Thereupon they cut off his head, and put it upon a pole; and that night
the undutiful Olwen became Kulhwch’s bride.
-----
Footnote 437:
“History of the Britons”, § 50.
Footnote 438:
Geoffrey of Monmouth. Books IX and X, and chaps. I and II of XI.
Footnote 439:
Translated by Lady Guest in her _Mabinogion_.
Footnote 440:
See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.
Footnote 441:
Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
Footnote 442:
The list will be found, translated from an old Welsh MS., in the notes
to _Kulhwch and Olwen_, in Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_.
Footnote 443:
Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
Footnote 444:
Pronounced _Keelhookh_.
Footnote 445:
The following pages sketch out the main incidents of the story as
translated by Lady Guest in her _Mabinogion_.
Footnote 446:
In Welsh, _Yspaddaden Penkawr_.
Footnote 447:
_I.e._ She of the White Track. The beauty of Olwen was proverbial in
mediæval Welsh poetry.
Footnote 448:
In his notes to his edition of Lady Guest’s _Mabinogion_. Published
1902.
Footnote 449:
So says the text. But a triad quoted by Lady Guest in her notes gives
the “Three Paramount Prisoners of Britain” differently. “The three
supreme prisoners of the Island of Britain, Llyr Llediath in the
prison of Euroswydd Wledig, and Madoc, or Mabon, and Gweir, son of
Gweiryoth; and one more exalted than the three, and that was Arthur,
who was for three nights in the Castle of Oeth and Anoeth, and three
nights in the prison of Wen Pendragon, and three nights in the dark
prison under the stone. And one youth released him from these three
prisons; that youth was Goreu the son of Custennin, his cousin.”
Footnote 450:
See Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, chap. X—“Place-name Stories”.
Footnote 451:
The “big knife” was, we are told in the story, “a short broad dagger.
When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek for a
narrow place where they might pass the water, and would lay the
sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would form a bridge
sufficient for the armies of the three islands of Britain, and of the
three islands adjacent, with their spoil.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GODS AS KING ARTHUR’S KNIGHTS
It is not, however, by such fragments of legend that Arthur is best
known to English readers. Not Arthur the god, but Arthur the “blameless
king”, who founded the Table Round, from which he sent forth his knights
“to ride abroad redressing human wrongs”,[452] is the figure which the
name conjures up. Nor is it even from Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
that this conception comes to most of us, but from Tennyson’s _Idylls of
the King_. But Tennyson has so modernized the ancient tradition that it
retains little of the old Arthur but the name. He tells us himself that
his poem had but very slight relation to—
... “that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain-peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s ...”;[453]
but that he merely used the legend to give a substantial form to his
ideal figure of the perfect English gentleman—a title to which the
original Arthur could scarcely have laid claim. Still less does there
remain in it the least trace of anything that could suggest mythology.
As much as this, however, might be said of Malory’s book. We may be
fairly certain that the good Sir Thomas had no idea that the personages
of whom he wrote had ever been anything different from the Christian
knights which they had become in the late French romances from which he
compiled his own fifteenth-century work. The old gods had been, from
time to time, very completely euhemerized. The characters of the “Four
Branches of the Mabinogi” are still recognizable as divine beings. In
the later Welsh stories, however, their divinity merely hangs about them
in shreds and tatters, and the first Norman adapters of these stories
made them still more definitely human. By the time Malory came to build
up his Morte Darthur from the foreign romances, they had altered so much
that the shapes and deeds of gods could only be recognized under their
mediæval knightly disguises by those who had known them in their ancient
forms.
We have chosen Malory’s Morte Darthur, as almost the sole representative
of Arthurian literature later than the Welsh poems and prose stories,
for three reasons. Firstly, because it is the English Arthurian romance
_par excellence_ from which all later English authors, including
Tennyson, have drawn their material. Secondly, because the mass of
foreign literature dealing with the subject of Arthur is in itself a
life-study, and could not by any possibility be compressed within the
limits of a chapter. Thirdly, because Malory’s fine judgment caused him
to choose the best and most typical foreign tales to weave into his own
romance; and hence it is that we find most of our old British gods—both
those of the earlier cycle and those of the system connected with
Arthur—striding disguised through his pages.
Curiously enough, Sir Edward Strachey, in his preface to the “Globe”
edition of Caxton’s Morte Darthur, uses almost the same image to
describe Malory’s prose-poem that Matthew Arnold handled with such
effect, in his _Study of Celtic Literature_, to point out the real
nature of the Mabinogion. “Malory”, he says, “has built a great,
rambling, mediæval castle, the walls of which enclose rude and even
ruinous work of earlier times.” How rude and how ruinous these relics
were Malory doubtless had not the least idea, for he has completely
jumbled the ancient mythology. Not only do gods of the older and newer
order appear together, but the same deities, under very often only
slightly varying names, come up again and again as totally different
characters.
Take, for example, the ancient deity of death and Hades. As King
Brandegore, or Brandegoris (Brân of Gower), he brings five thousand
mounted men to oppose King Arthur;[454] but, as Sir Brandel, or
Brandiles (Brân of Gwales[455]), he is a valiant Knight of the Round
Table, who dies fighting in Arthur’s service.[456] Again, under his name
of Uther Pendragon (Uther Ben), he is Arthur’s father;[457] though as
King Ban of Benwyk (the “Square Enclosure”, doubtless the same as
Taliesin’s _Caer Pedryvan_ and Malory’s _Carbonek_), he is a foreign
monarch, who is Arthur’s ally.[458] Yet again, as the father of
Guinevere, Ogyrvran has become Leodegrance.[459] As King Uriens, or
Urience, of Gore (Gower), he marries one of Arthur’s sisters,[460]
fights against him, but finally tenders his submission, and is enrolled
among his knights.[461] Urien may also be identified in the Morte
Darthur as King Rience, or Ryons, of North Wales,[462] and as King
Nentres of Garloth;[463] while, to crown the varied disguises of this
Proteus of British gods, he appears in an isolated episode as Balan, who
fights with his brother Balin until they kill one another.[464]
One may generally tell the divinities of the underworld in these
romances by their connection, not with the settled and civilized parts
of England, but with the wild and remote north and west, and the still
wilder and remoter islands. Just as Brân and Urien are kings of Gower,
so Arawn, under the corruptions of his name into “Anguish” and
“Anguissance”, is made King of Scotland or Ireland, both countries
having been probably confounded, as the same land of the Scotti, or
Gaels.[465] Pwyll, Head of Annwn, we likewise discover under two
disguises. As Pelles, “King of the Foreign Country”[466] and Keeper of
the Holy Grail, he is a personage of great mythological significance,
albeit the real nature of him and his surroundings has been overlaid
with a Christian veneer as foreign to the original of Pelles as his own
kingdom was to Arthur’s knights. The Chief of Hades figures as a “cousin
nigh unto Joseph of Arimathie”,[467] who, “while he might ride supported
much Christendom, and holy church”.[468] He is represented as the father
of Elayne (Elen[469]), whom he gives in marriage to Sir Launcelot,
bestowing upon the couple a residence called “Castle Bliant”,[470] the
name of which, there is good evidence to show, is connected with that of
Pwyll’s vassal called Teirnyon Twryf Vliant in the first of the
Mabinogi.[471] Under his other name of “Sir Pelleas”—the hero of
Tennyson’s Idyll of _Pelleas and Ettarre_—the primitive myth of Pwyll is
touched at a different point. After his unfortunate love-passage with
Ettarre (or Ettard, as Malory calls her), Pelleas is represented as
marrying Nimue,[472] whose original name, which was Rhiannon, reached
this form, as well as that of “Vivien”, through a series of miscopyings
of successive scribes.[473]
With Pelles, or Pelleas, is associated a King Pellean, or Pellam, his
son, and, equally with him, the Keeper of the Grail, who can be no other
than Pryderi.[474] Like that deity in the Mabinogi of Mâth, he is
defeated by one of the gods of light. The dealer of the blow, however,
is not Arthur, as successor to Gwydion, but Balin, the Gallo-British
sun-god Belinus.[475]
Another dark deity, Gwyn son of Nudd, we discover under all of his three
titles. Called variously “Sir Gwinas”,[476] “Sir Guynas”,[477] and “Sir
Gwenbaus”[478] by Malory, the Welsh Gwynwas (or Gwyn) is altogether on
Arthur’s side. The Cornish Melwas, split into two different knights,
divides his allegiance. As Sir Melias,[479] or Meleaus,[480] de Lile
(“of the Isle”), he is a Knight of the Round Table, though, on the
quarrel between Arthur and Launcelot, he sides with the knight against
the king. But as Sir Meliagraunce, or Meliagaunce, it is he who, as in
the older myth, captures Queen Guinevere and carries her off to his
castle.[481] Under his Somerset name of Avallon, or Avallach, he is
connected with the episode of the Grail. King Evelake[482] is a Saracen
ruler who was converted by Joseph of Arimathea, and brought by him to
Britain. In his convert’s enthusiasm, he attempted the quest of the holy
vessel, but was not allowed to succeed.[483] As a consolation, however,
it was divinely promised him that he should not die until he had seen a
knight of his blood in the ninth degree who should achieve it. This was
done by Sir Percivale, King Evelake being then three hundred years
old.[484]
Turning from deities of darkness to deities of light, we find the
sky-god figuring largely in the Morte Darthur. The Lludd of the earlier
mythology is Malory’s King Loth, or Lot, of Orkney,[485] through an
intrigue with whose wife Arthur becomes the father of Sir Mordred. Lot’s
wife was the mother also of Sir Gawain, whose birth Malory does not,
however, attribute to Arthur, though such must have been the original
form of the myth.[486] Sir Gawain, of the Arthurian legend, is the
Gwalchmei of the Welsh stories, the successor of the still earlier Lleu
Llaw Gyffes, just as Sir Mordred—the Welsh Medrawt—corresponds to Lleu’s
brother Dylan. As Sir Mordred retains the dark character of Medrawt, so
Sir Gawain, even in Malory,[487] shows the attributes of a solar deity.
We are told that his strength increased gradually from dawn till high
noon, and then as gradually decreased again—a piece of pagan symbolism
which forms a good example of the appositeness of Sir Edward Strachey’s
figure; for it stands out of the mediæval narrative like an ancient
brick in some more modern building.
The Zeus of the later cycle, Emrys or Myrddin, appears in the Morte
Darthur under both his names. The word “Emrys” becomes “Bors”, and King
Bors of Gaul is made a brother of King Ban of Benwyck[488]—that is, Brân
of the Square Enclosure, the ubiquitous underworld god. Myrddin we meet
under no such disguise. The ever-popular Merlin still retains intact the
attributes of the sky-god. He remains above, and apart from all the
knights, higher even in some respects than King Arthur, to whom he
stands in much the same position as Mâth does to Gwydion in the
Mabinogi.[489] Like Mâth, he is an enchanter, and, like Mâth, too, who
could hear everything said in the world, in however low a tone, if only
the wind met it, he is practically omniscient. The account of his final
disappearance, as told in the Morte Darthur, is only a re-embellishment
of the original story, the nature-myth giving place to what novelists
call “a feminine interest”. Everyone knows how the great magician fell
into a dotage upon the “lady of the lake” whom Malory calls “Nimue”, and
Tennyson “Vivien”—both names being that of “Rhiannon” in disguise.
“Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her ...
and she was ever passing weary of him, and fain would have been
delivered of him, for she was afeard of him because he was a devil’s
son, and she could not put him away by no means. And so on a time it
happed that Merlin showed to her in a rock whereas was a great wonder,
and wrought by enchantment, that went under a great stone. So, by her
subtle working, she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of
the marvels there, but she wrought so there for him that he never came
out for all the craft that he could do. And so she departed and left
Merlin.”[490]
Merlin’s living grave is still to be seen at the end of the _Val des
Fées_, in the forest of Brécilien, in Brittany. The tomb of stone is
certainly but a prosaic equivalent for the tower of woven air in which
the heaven-god went to his rest. Still, it is not quite so unpoetic as
the leather sack in which Rhiannon, the original of Nimue, caught and
imprisoned Gwawl, the earlier Merlin, like a badger in a bag.[491]
Elen, Myrddin’s consort, appears in Malory as five different “Elaines”.
Two of them are wives of the dark god, under his names of “King
Ban”[492] and “King Nentres”.[493] A third is called the daughter of
King Pellinore, a character of uncertain origin.[494] But the two most
famous are the ladies who loved Sir Launcelot—“Elaine the Fair, Elaine
the lovable, Elaine the lily maid of Astolat”,[495] and the luckier and
less scrupulous Elaine, daughter of King Pelles, and mother of Sir
Launcelot’s son, Galahad.[496]
But it is time, now that the most important figures of British mythology
have been shown under their knightly disguises, and their place in
Arthurian legend indicated, to pass on to some account of the real
subject-matter of Sir Thomas Malory’s romance. Externally, it is the
history of an Arthur, King of Britain, whom most people of Malory’s time
considered as eminently a historical character. Around this central
narrative of Arthur’s reign and deeds are grouped, in the form of
episodes, the personal exploits of the knights believed to have
supported him by forming a kind of household guard. But, with the
exception of a little magnified and distorted legendary history, the
whole cycle of romance may be ultimately resolved into a few myths, not
only retold, but recombined in several forms by their various tellers.
The Norman adapters of the _Matière de Bretagne_ found the British
mythology already in process of transformation, some of the gods having
dwindled into human warriors, and others into hardly less human druids
and magicians. Under their hands the British warriors became Norman
knights, who did their deeds of prowess in the tilt-yard, and found
their inspiration in the fantastic chivalry popularized by the
Trouveres, while the druids put off their still somewhat barbaric
druidism for the more conventional magic of the Latin races. More than
this, as soon as the real sequence and _raison d’être_ of the tales had
been lost sight of, their adapters used a free hand in reweaving them.
Most of the romancers had their favourite characters whom they made the
central figure in their stories. Sir Gawain, Sir Percival, Sir Tristrem,
and Sir Owain (all of them probably once local British sun-gods) appear
as the most important personages of the romances called after their
names, stories of the doughty deeds of christened knights who had little
left about them either of Briton or of pagan.
It is only the labours of the modern scholar that can bring back to us,
at this late date, things long forgotten when Malory’s book was issued
from Caxton’s press. But oblivion is not annihilation, and Professor
Rhys points out to us the old myths lying embedded in their later
setting with almost the same certainty with which the geologist can show
us the fossils in the rock.[497] Thus treated, they resolve themselves
into three principal _motifs_, prominent everywhere in Celtic mythology:
the birth of the sun-god; the struggle between light and darkness; and
the raiding of the underworld by friendly gods for the good of man.
The first has been already dealt with.[498] It is the retelling of the
story of the origin of the sun-god in the Mabinogi of Mâth, son of
Mâthonwy. For Gwydion we now have Arthur; instead of Arianrod, the wife
of the superannuated sky-god Nwyvre, we find the wife of King Lot, the
superannuated sky-god Lludd; Lleu Llaw Gyffes rises again as Sir Gawain
(Gwalchmei), and Dylan as Sir Mordred (Medrawt); while the wise Merlin,
the Jupiter of the new system, takes the place of his wise prototype,
Mâth. Connected with this first myth is the second—the struggle between
light and darkness, of which there are several versions in the Morte
Darthur. The leading one is the rebellion of the evilly-disposed Sir
Mordred against Arthur and Sir Gawain; while, on other stages, Balan—the
dark god Brân—fights with Balin—the sun-god Belinus; and the same Balin,
or Belinus, gives an almost mortal stroke to Pellam, the Pryderi of the
older mythology.
The same myth has also a wider form, in which the battle is waged for
possession of a maiden. Thus (to seek no other instances) Gwynhwyvar was
contended for by Arthur and Medrawt, or, in an earlier form of the myth,
by Arthur and Gwyn. In the Morte Darthur, Gwyn, under the corruption of
his Cornish name Melwas into “Sir Meliagraunce”, still captures
Guinevere, but it is no longer Arthur who rescues her. That task, or
privilege, has fallen to a new champion. It is Sir Launcelot who follows
Sir Meliagraunce, defeats and slays him, and rescues the fair
captive.[499] But Sir Launcelot, it must be stated—probably to the
surprise of those to whom the Arthurian story without Launcelot and
Queen Guinevere must seem almost like the play of “Hamlet with Hamlet
left out”,—is unknown to the original tradition. Welsh song and story
are silent with regard to him, and he is not improbably a creation of
some Norman romancer who calmly appropriated to his hero’s credit deeds
earlier told of other “knights”.
But the romantic treatment of these two myths by the adapters of the
_Matière de Bretagne_ are of smaller interest to us at the present day
than that of the third. The attraction of the Arthurian story lies less
in the battles of Arthur or the loves of Guinevere than in the legend
that has given it its lasting popularity—the Christian romance of the
Quest of the Holy Grail. So great and various has been the inspiration
of this legend to noble works both of art and literature that it seems
almost a kind of sacrilege to trace it back, like all the rest of
Arthur’s story, to a paganism which could not have even understood, much
less created, its mystical beauty. None the less is the whole story
directly evolved from primitive pagan myths concerning a miraculous
cauldron of fertility and inspiration.
In the later romances, the Holy Grail is a Christian relic of marvellous
potency. It had held the Paschal lamb eaten at the Last Supper;[500]
and, after the death of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea had filled it with
the Saviour’s blood.[501] But before it received this colouring, it had
been the magic cauldron of all the Celtic mythologies—the Dagda’s
“Undry” which fed all who came to it, and from which none went away
unsatisfied;[502] Brân’s cauldron of Renovation, which brought the dead
back to life;[503] the cauldron of Ogyrvran the Giant, from which the
Muses ascended;[504] the cauldrons captured by Cuchulainn from the King
of the Shadowy City,[505] and by Arthur from the chief of Hades;[506] as
well as several other mythic vessels of less note.
In its transition from pagan to Christian form, hardly one of the
features of the ancient myth has been really obscured. We may recount
the chief attributes, as Taliesin tells them in his “Spoiling of Annwn”,
of the cauldron captured by Arthur. It was the property of Pwyll, and of
his son Pryderi, who lived in a kingdom of the other world called, among
other titles, the “Revolving Castle”, the “Four-cornered Castle”, the
“Castle of Revelry”, the “Kingly Castle”, the “Glass Castle”, and the
“Castle of Riches”. This place was surrounded by the sea, and in other
ways made difficult of access; there was no lack of wine there, and its
happy inhabitants spent with music and feasting an existence which
neither disease nor old age could assail. As for the cauldron, it had a
rim of pearls around its edge; the fire beneath it was kept fanned by
the breaths of nine maidens; it spoke, doubtless in words of prophetic
wisdom; and it would not cook the food of a perjurer or coward.[507]
Here we have considerable data on which to base a parallel between the
pagan cauldron and the Christian Grail.
Nor have we far to go in search of correspondences, for they are nearly
all preserved in Malory’s romance. The mystic vessel was kept by King
Pelles, who is Pwyll, in a castle called “Carbonek”, a name which
resolves itself, in the hands of the philologist, into _Caer bannawg_,
the “square” or “four-cornered castle”—in other words, the _Caer
Pedryvan_ of Taliesin’s poem.[508] Of the character of the place as a
“Castle of Riches” and a “Castle of Revelry”, where “bright wine was the
drink of the host”, we have more than a hint in the account, twice
given,[509] of how, upon the appearance of the Grail—borne, it should be
noticed, by a maiden or angel—the hall was filled with good odours, and
every knight found on the table all the kinds of meat and drink he could
imagine as most desirable. It could not be seen by sinners,[510] a
Christian refinement of the savage idea of a pot that would not cook a
coward’s food; but the sight of it alone would cure of wounds and
sickness those who approached it faithfully and humbly,[511] and in its
presence neither old age nor sickness could oppress them.[512] And,
though in Malory we find no reference either to the spot having been
surrounded by water, or to the castle as a “revolving” one, we have only
to turn from the Morte Darthur to the romance entitled the _Seint Greal_
to discover both. Gwalchmei, going to the castle of King Peleur
(Pryderi), finds it encircled by a great water, while Peredur,
approaching the same place, sees it turning with greater speed than the
swiftest wind. Moreover, archers on the walls shoot so vigorously that
no armour can resist their shafts, which explains how it happened that,
of those that went with Arthur, “except seven, none returned from Caer
Sidi”.[513]
It is noticeable that Arthur himself never attempts the quest of the
Grail, though it was he who had achieved its pagan original. We find in
Malory four competitors for the mantle of Arthur—Sir Pelleas,[514] Sir
Bors, Sir Percivale, and Sir Galahad.[515] The first of these may be put
out of court at once, Sir Pelleas, who, being himself Pelles, or Pwyll,
the keeper of it, could have had no reason for such exertions. At the
second we may look doubtfully; for Sir Bors is no other than Emrys, or
Myrddin,[516] and, casting back to the earlier British mythology, we do
not find the sky-god personally active in securing boons by force or
craft from the underworld. The other two have better claims—Sir
Percivale and Sir Galahad. “Sir Percivale” is the Norman-French name for
Peredur,[517] the hero of a story in the Red Book of Hergest[518] which
gives the oldest form of a Grail quest we have. It is anterior to the
Norman romances, and forms almost a connecting-link between tales of
mythology and of chivalry. Peredur, or Sir Percivale, therefore, is the
oldest, most primitive, of Grail seekers. On the other hand, Sir Galahad
is the latest and youngest. But there is reason to believe that Galahad,
in Welsh “Gwalchaved”, the “Falcon of Summer”, is the same solar hero as
Gawain, in Welsh “Gwalchmei”, the “Falcon of May”.[519] Both are made,
in the story of “Kulhwch and Olwen”, sons of the same mother, Gwyar. Sir
Gawain himself is, in one Arthurian romance, the achiever of the
Grail.[520] It is needless to attempt to choose between these two. Both
have the attributes of sun-gods. Gwalchmei, the successor of Lleu Llaw
Gyffes, and Peredur Paladrhir, that is to say, the “Spearman with the
Long Shaft”,[521] may be allowed to claim equal honours. What is
important is that the quest of the Grail, once the chief treasure of
Hades, is still accomplished by one who takes in later legend the place
of Lieu Llaw Gyffes and Lugh Lamhfada in the earlier British and Gaelic
myths as a long-armed solar deity victorious in his strife against the
Powers of Darkness.
-----
Footnote 452:
Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_; _Guinevere_.
Footnote 453:
_Ibid._ To the Queen.
Footnote 454:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. X.
Footnote 455:
Gresholm Island, the scene of “The Entertaining of the Noble Head”.
Footnote 456:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XX, chap. VIII.
Footnote 457:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. III.
Footnote 458:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. VIII.
Footnote 459:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XVI.
Footnote 460:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 461:
_Ibid._, Book IV, chap. IV.
Footnote 462:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XXIV.
Footnote 463:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 464:
_Ibid._, Book II, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 465:
_Ibid._, Book V, chap. II; Book VIII, chap. IV; Book XIX, chap. XI.
Footnote 466:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 467:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 468:
_Ibid._, Book XVII, chap. V.
Footnote 469:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 470:
_Ibid._, Book XII, chap. V.
Footnote 471:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 283.
Footnote 472:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XXIII.
Footnote 473:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 284 and note.
Footnote 474:
The subject is treated at length by Professor Rhys in his _Arthurian
Legend_, chap. XII—“Pwyll and Pelles”.
Footnote 475:
_Morte Darthur_, Book II, chap. XV.
Footnote 476:
_Morte Darthur_, Book I, chap. XII.
Footnote 477:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. XV.
Footnote 478:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. IX.
Footnote 479:
_Ibid._, Book XIII, chap. XII.
Footnote 480:
_Ibid._, Book XIX, chap. XI.
Footnote 481:
_Ibid._, Book XIX, chap. II.
Footnote 482:
_Ibid._, Book XIII, chap. X.
Footnote 483:
_Ibid._, Book XIV, chap. IV.
Footnote 484:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XIV, chap. IV.
Footnote 485:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 11.
Footnote 486:
_Op. cit._, pp. 21-22.
Footnote 487:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 488:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. VIII.
Footnote 489:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 23.
Footnote 490:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. I.
Footnote 491:
See chap. XVII—“The Adventures of the Gods of Hades”.
Footnote 492:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. I.
Footnote 493:
_Ibid._, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 494:
_Ibid._, Book III, chap. XV.
Footnote 495:
Whose story is told by Tennyson in the _Idylls_, and by Malory in Book
XVIII of the _Morte Darthur_.
Footnote 496:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chaps. II and III.
Footnote 497:
See his _Studies in the Arthurian Legend_.
Footnote 498:
See chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 499:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XIX, chaps. I-IX.
Footnote 500:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XVII, chap. XX.
Footnote 501:
_Ibid._, Book II, chap. XVI; Book XI, chap. XIV.
Footnote 502:
See chap. V—“The Gods of the Gaels”.
Footnote 503:
See chap. XVIII—“The Wooing of Branwen and the Beheading of Brân”.
Footnote 504:
See chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 505:
See chap. XII—“The Irish Iliad”.
Footnote 506:
Chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 507:
Chap. XXI—“The Mythological ‘Coming of Arthur’”.
Footnote 508:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 305.
Footnote 509:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XI, chaps. II and IV.
Footnote 510:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XVI, chap. V.
Footnote 511:
_Ibid._, Book XI, chap. XIV; Book XII, chap. IV; Book XIII, chap.
XVIII.
Footnote 512:
Not mentioned by Malory, but stated in the romance called _Seint
Greal_.
Footnote 513:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 276-277; 302.
Footnote 514:
_Morte Darthur_, Book IV, chap. XXIX.
Footnote 515:
_Ibid._, Book XVII, chap. XX, in which Sir Bors, Sir Percivale, and
Sir Galahad are all fed from the Sangreal.
Footnote 516:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 162.
Footnote 517:
_Ibid._, p. 133.
Footnote 518:
Translated by Lady Guest in her _Mabinogion_, under the title of
_Peredur, the Son of Evrawc_.
Footnote 519:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 169. But see whole of chap. VIII—“Galahad
and Gwalchaved”.
Footnote 520:
The German romance _Diu Krône_, by Heinrich von dem Tûrlin.
Footnote 521:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, p. 71.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE GODS
If there be love of fame in celestial minds, those gods might count
themselves fortunate who shared in the transformation of Arthur. Their
divinity had fallen from them, but in their new rôles, as heroes of
romance, they entered upon vivid reincarnations. The names of Arthur’s
Knights might almost be described as “household words”, while the gods
who had no portion in the Table Round are known only to those who busy
themselves with antiquarian lore. It is true that a few folk-tales still
survive in the remoter parts of Wales, in which the names of such
ancient British deities as Gwydion, Gwyn, Arianrod, and Dylan appear,
but it is in such a chaos of jumbled and distorted legend that one finds
it hard to pick out even the slenderest thread of story. They have none
of the definite coherence of the contemporary Gaelic folk-tales quoted
in a previous chapter as still preserving the myths about Goibniu, Lugh,
Cian, Manannán, Ethniu, and Balor. Indeed, they have reached such a
stage of disintegration that they can hardly now survive another
generation.[522]
There have been, however, other paths by which the fame of a god might
descend to a posterity which would no longer credit his divinity. The
rolls of early British history were open to welcome any number of
mythical personages, provided that their legends were attractive.
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous _Historia Britonum_ is, under its grave
pretence of exact history, as mythological as the Morte Darthur, or even
the Mabinogion. The annals of early British saintship were not less
accommodating. A god whose tradition was too potent to be ignored or
extinguished was canonized, as a matter of course, by clerics who held
as an axiom that “the toleration of the cromlech facilitated the
reception of the Gospel.[523]” Only the most irreconcilable escaped
them—such a one as Gwyn son of Nudd, who, found almost useless by
Geoffrey and intractable by the monkish writers, remains the last
survivor of the old gods—dwindled to the proportions of a fairy, but
unsubdued.
This part of resistance is perhaps the most dignified; for deities can
be sadly changed by the caprices of their euhemerizers. Dôn, whom we
knew as the mother of the heaven gods, seems strangely described as a
_king_ of Lochlin and Dublin, who led the Irish into north Wales in A.D.
267.[524] More recognizable is _his_ son Gwydion, who introduced the
knowledge of letters into the country of his adoption. The dynasty of
“King” Dôn, according to a manuscript in the collection of Mr. Edward
Williams—better known under his bardic name of Iolo Morganwg—held north
Wales for a hundred and twenty-nine years, when the North British king,
Cunedda, invaded the country, defeated the Irish in a great battle, and
drove them across sea to the Isle of Man. This battle is historical,
and, putting Dôn and Gwydion out of the question, probably represented
the last stand of the Gael, in the extreme west of Britain, against the
second and stronger wave of Celtic invasion. In the same collection of
_Iolo Manuscripts_ is found a curious, and even comic, euhemeristic
version of the strange myth of the Bone Prison of Oeth and Anoeth which
Manawyddan son of Llyr, built in Gower. The new reading makes that
ghastly abode a real building, constructed out of the bones of the
“Caesarians” (Romans) killed in battle with the Cymri. It consisted of
numerous chambers, some of large bones and some of small, some above
ground and some under. Prisoners of war were placed in the more
comfortable cells, the underground dungeons being kept for traitors to
their country. Several times the “Caesarians” demolished the prison,
but, each time, the Cymri rebuilt it stronger than before. At last,
however, the bones decayed, and, being spread upon the ground, made an
excellent manure! “From that time forth” the people of the neighbourhood
“had astonishing crops of wheat and barley and of every other grain for
many years”.[525]
It is not, however, in these, so to speak, unauthorized narratives that
we can best refind our British deities, but in the compact, coherent,
and at times almost convincing _Historia Britonum_ of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, published in the first half of the twelfth century, and for
hundreds of years gravely quoted as the leading authority on the early
history of our islands. The modern critical spirit has, of course,
relegated it to the region of fable. We can no longer accept the
pleasant tradition of the descent of the Britons from the survivors of
Troy, led westward in search of a new home by Brutus, the great-grandson
of the pious Æneas. Nor indeed does any portion of the “History”, from
Æneas to Athelstan, quite persuade the latter-day reader. Its kings
succeed one another in plausible sequence, but they themselves are too
obviously the heroes of popular legend.
A large part of Geoffrey’s chronicle—two books[526] out of twelve—is, of
course, devoted to Arthur. In it he tells the story of that paladin’s
conquests, not only in his own country, against the Saxons, the Irish,
the Scots, and the Picts, but over all western Europe. We see the
British champion, after annexing Ireland, Iceland, Gothland, and the
Orkneys, following up these minor victories by subduing Norway, Dacia
(by which Denmark seems to have been meant), Aquitaine, and Gaul. After
such triumphs there was clearly nothing left for him but the overthrow
of the Roman empire; and this he had practically achieved when the
rebellion of Mordred brought him home to his death, or rather (for even
Geoffrey does not quite lose hold of the belief in the undying Arthur)
to be carried to the island of Avallon to be healed of his wounds, the
crown of Britain falling to “his kinsman Constantine, the son of Cador,
Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and forty-second year of our
Lord’s incarnation”.[527] Upon the more personal incidents connected
with Arthur, Geoffrey openly professes to keep silence, possibly
regarding them as not falling within the province of his history, but we
are told shortly how Mordred took advantage of Arthur’s absence on the
Continent to seize the throne, marry Guanhamara (Guinevere), and ally
himself with the Saxons, only to be defeated at that fatal battle called
by Geoffrey “Cambula”, in which Mordred, Arthur, and Walgan—the “Sir
Gawain” of Malory and the Gwalchmei of the earlier legends—all met their
dooms.
We find the gods of the older generation standing in the same position
with regard to Arthur in Geoffrey’s “History” as they do in the later
Welsh triads and tales. Though rulers, they are yet his vassals. In
“three brothers of royal blood”, called Lot, Urian, and Augusel, who are
represented as having been chiefs in the north, we may discern Lludd,
Urien, and Arawn. To these three Arthur restored “the rights of their
ancestors”, handing over the semi-sovereignty of Scotland to Augusel,
giving Urian the government of Murief (Moray), and re-establishing Lot
“in the consulship of Loudonesia (Lothian), and the other provinces
belonging to him”.[528] Two other rulers subject to him are Gunvasius,
King of the Orkneys, and Malvasius, King of Iceland,[529] in whom we
recognize Gwyn, under Latinized forms of his Welsh name Gwynwas and his
Cornish name Melwas. But it is characteristic of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
loose hold upon his materials that, not content with having connected
several of these gods with Arthur’s period, he further endows them with
reigns of their own. “Urien” was Arthur’s vassal, but “Urianus” was
himself King of Britain centuries before Arthur was born.[530] Lud (that
is, Lludd) succeeded his father Beli.[531] We hear nothing of his silver
hand, but we learn that he was “famous for the building of cities, and
for rebuilding the walls of Trinovantum[532], which he also surrounded
with innumerable towers ... and though he had many other cities, yet he
loved this above them all, and resided in it the greater part of the
year; for which reason it was afterwards called Kaerlud, and by the
corruption of the word, Caerlondon; and again by change of languages, in
process of time, London; as also by foreigners who arrived here, and
reduced this country under their subjection, it was called Londres. At
last, when he was dead, his body was buried by the gate which to this
time is called in the British tongue after his name Parthlud, and in the
Saxon, Ludesgata.” He was succeeded by his brother, Cassibellawn
(Cassivelaunus), during whose reign Julius Caesar first invaded Britain.
Lludd, however, is not entirely dependent upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for
his reputation as a king of Britain. One of the old Welsh romances,[533]
translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in her Mabinogion, relates the
rebuilding of London by Lludd in almost the same words as Geoffrey. The
story which these pseudo-historical details introduce is, however, an
obviously mythological one. It tells us how, in the days of Lludd,
Britain was oppressed by three plagues. The first was the arrival of a
strange race of sorcerers called the “Coranians”,[534] who had three
qualities which made them unpopular; they paid their way in “fairy
money”, which, though apparently real, returned afterwards—like the
shields, horses, and hounds made by Gwydion son of Dôn, to deceive
Pryderi—into the fungus out of which it had been charmed by magic; they
could hear everything that was said over the whole of Britain, in
however low a tone, provided only that the wind met it; and they could
not be injured by any weapon. The second was “a shriek that came on
every May eve, over every hearth in the Island of Britain, and went
through people’s hearts and so scared them that the men lost their hue
and their strength, and the women their children, and the young men and
the maidens their senses, and all the animals and trees and the earth
and the waters were left barren”. The third was a disappearance of the
food hoarded in the king’s palace, which was so complete that a year’s
provisions vanished in a single night, and so mysterious that no one
could ever find out its cause.
By the advice of his nobles, Lludd went to France to obtain the help of
its king, his brother Llevelys, who was “a man great of counsel and
wisdom”. In order to be able to consult with his brother without being
overheard by the Coranians, Llevelys caused a long tube of brass to be
made, through which they talked to one another. The sorcerer tribe,
however, got to know of it, and, though they could not hear what was
being said inside the speaking-tube, they sent a demon into it, who
whispered insulting messages up and down it, as though from one brother
to the other. But Lludd and Llevelys knew one another too well to be
deceived by this, and they drove the demon out of the tube by flooding
it with wine. Then Llevelys told Lludd to take certain insects, which he
would give him, and pound them in water. When the water was sufficiently
permeated with their essence, he was to call both his own people and the
Coranians together, as though for a conference, and, in the midst of the
meeting, to cast it over all of them alike. The water, though harmless
to his own people, would nevertheless prove a deadly poison to the
Coranians.
As for the shriek, Llevelys explained it to be raised by a dragon. This
monster was the Red Dragon of Britain, and it raised the shriek because
it was being attacked by the White Dragon of the Saxons, which was
trying to overcome and destroy it. The French king told his brother to
measure the length and breadth of Britain, and, when he had found the
exact centre of the island, to cause a pit to be dug there. In this pit
was to be placed a vessel containing the best mead that could be made,
with a covering of satin over it to hide it. Lludd was then to watch
from some safe place. The dragons would appear and fight in the air
until they were exhausted, then they would fall together on to the top
of the satin cloth, and so draw it down with them into the vessel full
of mead. Naturally they would drink the mead, and, equally naturally,
they would then sleep. As soon as Lludd was sure that they were
helpless, he was to go to the pit, wrap the satin cloth round both of
them, and bury them together in a stone coffin in the strongest place in
Britain. If this were safely done, there would be no more heard of the
shriek.
And the disappearance of the food was caused by “a mighty man of magic”,
who put everyone to sleep by charms before he removed the king’s
provisions. Lludd was to watch for him, sitting by the side of a
cauldron full of cold water. As often as he felt the approach of
drowsiness, he was to plunge into the cauldron. Thus he would be able to
keep awake and frustrate the thief.
So Lludd came back to Britain. He pounded the insects in the water, and
then summoned both the men of Britain and the Coranians to a meeting. In
the midst of it, he sprinkled the water over everyone alike. The natives
took no harm from this mythological “beetle powder”, but the Coranians
died.
Lludd was then ready to deal with the dragons. His careful measurements
proved that the centre of the island of Britain was at Oxford, and there
he caused the pit to be dug, with the vessel of mead in it, hidden by
the satin covering. Having made everything ready, he watched, and soon
saw the dragons appear. For a long time they fought desperately in the
air; then they fell down together on to the satin cloth, and, drawing it
after them, subsided into the mead. Lludd waited till they were quite
silent, and then pulled them out, folded them carefully in the wrapping,
and took them to the district of Snowdon, where he buried them in the
strong fortress whose remains, near Beddgelert, are still called “Dinas
Emrys”. After this the terrible shriek was not heard again until Merlin
had them dug up, five hundred years later, when they recommenced
fighting, and the red dragon drove the white one out of Britain.
Last of all, Lludd prepared a great banquet in his hall, and watched
over it, armed, with the cauldron of water near him. In the middle of
the night, he heard soft, drowsy music, such as nearly put him to sleep;
but he kept awake by repeatedly dipping himself in the cold water. Just
before dawn a huge man, clad in armour, came into the hall, carrying a
basket, which he began to load with the viands on the table. Like the
bag in which Pwyll captured Gwawl, its holding capacity seemed endless.
However, the man filled it at last, and was carrying it out, when Lludd
stopped him. They fought, and Lludd conquered the man of magic, and made
him his vassal. Thus the “Three Plagues of Britain” came to an end.
Lludd, in changing from god to king, seems to have lost most of his old
mythological attributes. Even his daughter Creudylad is taken from him
and given to another of the ancient British deities. Why Lludd, the
sky-god, should have been confounded with Llyr, the sea-god, is not very
apparent, but it is certain that “Creudylad” of the early Welsh legends
and poems is the same as Geoffrey’s “Cordeilla” and Shakespeare’s
“Cordelia”. The great dramatist was ultimately indebted to the Celtic
mythology for the groundwork of the legend which he wove into the tragic
story of _King Lear_. “Leir”, as Geoffrey calls him,[535] was the son of
Bladud, who built Caer Badus (Bath), and perished, like Icarus, as the
result of an accident with a flying-machine of his own invention. Having
no sons, but three daughters, Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla, he
thought in his old age of dividing his kingdom among them. But, first of
all, he decided to make trial of their affection for him, with the idea
of giving the best portions of his realm to the most worthy. Gonorilla,
the eldest, replied to his question of how much she loved him, “that she
called heaven to witness, she loved him more than her own soul”. Regan
answered “with an oath, ‘that she could not otherwise express her
thoughts, but that she loved him above all creatures’”. But when it came
to Cordeilla’s turn, the youngest daughter, disgusted with her sisters’
hypocrisy, spoke after a quite different fashion. “‘My father,’ said
she, ‘is there any daughter that can love her father more than duty
requires? In my opinion, whoever pretends to it, must disguise her real
sentiments under the veil of flattery. I have always loved you as a
father, nor do I yet depart from my purposed duty; and if you insist to
have something more extorted from me, hear now the greatness of my
affection, which I always bear you, and take this for a short answer to
all your questions; look how much you have, so much is your value, and
so much do I love you.’” Her enraged father immediately bestowed his
kingdom upon his two other daughters, marrying them to the two highest
of his nobility, Gonorilla to Maglaunus, Duke of Albania[536], and Regan
to Henuinus, Duke of Cornwall. To Cordeilla he not only refused a share
in his realm, but even a dowry. Aganippus, King of the Franks, married
her, however, for her beauty alone.
Once in possession, Leir’s two sons-in-law rebelled against him, and
deprived him of all regal authority. The sole recompense for his lost
power was an agreement by Maglaunus to allow him maintenance, with a
body-guard of sixty soldiers. But, after two years, the Duke of Albania,
at his wife Gonorilla’s instigation, reduced them to thirty. Resenting
this, Leir left Maglaunus, and went to Henuinus, the husband of Regan.
The Duke of Cornwall at first received him honourably, but, before a
year was out, compelled him to discharge all his attendants except five.
This sent him back in a rage to his eldest daughter, who, this time,
swore that he should not stay with her, unless he would be satisfied
with one serving-man only. In despair, Leir resolved to throw himself
upon the mercy of Cordeilla, and, full of contrition for the way he had
treated her, and of misgivings as to how he might be received, took ship
for Gaul.
Arriving at Karitia[537], he sent a messenger to his daughter, telling
her of his plight and asking for her help. Cordeilla sent him money,
robes, and a retinue of forty men, and, as soon as he was fully equipped
with the state suitable to a king, he was received in pomp by Aganippus
and his ministers, who gave the government of Gaul into his hands until
his own kingdom could be restored to him. This the king of the Franks
did by raising an army and invading Britain. Maglaunus and Henuinus were
routed, and Leir replaced on the throne, after which he lived three
years. Cordeilla, succeeding to the government of Britain, “buried her
father in a certain vault, which she ordered to be made for him under
the River Sore, in Leicester (”Llyr-cestre“), and which had been built
originally under the ground to the honour of the god Janus. And here all
the workmen of the city, upon the anniversary solemnity of that
festival, used to begin their yearly labours.”
Exactly what myth is retold in this history of Leir and his three
daughters we are hardly likely ever to discover. But its mythological
nature is clear enough in the light of the description of the
underground temple dedicated to Llyr, at once the god of the subaqueous,
and therefore subterranean, world and a British Dis Pater, connected
with the origin of things, like the Roman god Janus, with whom he was
apparently identified.[538]
Ten kings or so after this (for any more exact way of measuring the
flight of time is absent from Geoffrey’s _History_) we recognize two
other British gods upon the scene. Brennius (that is, Brân) disputes the
kingdom with his brother Belinus. Clearly this is a version of the
ancient myth of the twin brothers, Darkness and Light, which we have
seen expressed in so many ways in Celtic mythology. Brân, the god of
death and the underworld, is opposed to Belinus, god of the sun and
health. In the original, lost myth, probably they alternately conquered
and were conquered—a symbol of the alternation of night and day and of
winter and summer. In Geoffrey’s _History_[539], they divided Britain,
Belinus taking “the crown of the island with the dominions of Loegria,
Kambria, and Cornwall, because, according to the Trojan constitution,
the right of inheritance would come to him as the elder”, while
Brennius, as the younger, had “Northumberland, which extended from the
River Humber to Caithness”. But flatterers persuaded Brennius to ally
himself with the King of the Norwegians, and attack Belinus. A battle
was fought, in which Belinus was conqueror, and Brennius escaped to
Gaul, where he married the daughter of the Duke of the Allobroges, and
on that ruler’s death was declared successor to the throne. Thus firmly
established with an army, he invaded Britain again. Belinus marched with
the whole strength of the kingdom to meet him, and the armies were
already drawn out opposite to one another in battle array when Conwenna,
the mother of the two kings, succeeded in reconciling them. Not having
one another to fight with, the brothers now agreed upon a joint
expedition with their armies into Gaul. The Britons and the Allobroges
conquered all the other kings of the Franks, and then entered Italy,
destroying villages and cities as they marched to Rome. Gabius and
Porsena, the Roman consuls, bought them off with large presents of gold
and silver and the promise of a yearly tribute, whereupon Brennius and
Belinus withdrew their army into Germany and began to devastate it. But
the Romans, now no longer taken by surprise and unprepared, came to the
help of the Germans. This brought Brennius and Belinus back to Rome,
which, after a long siege, they succeeded in taking. Brennius remained
in Italy, “where he exercised unheard-of tyranny over the people”; and
one may take the whole of this veracious history to be due to a
patriotic desire to make out the Brennus of “Vae Victis” fame—who
actually did sack Rome, in B.C. 390—a Briton. Belinus, the other
brother, returned to England. “He made a gate of wonderful structure in
Trinovantum, upon the bank of the Thames, which the citizens call after
his name Billingsgate to this day. Over it he built a prodigiously large
tower, and under it a haven or quay for ships.... At last, when he had
finished his days, his body was burned, and the ashes put up in a golden
urn, which they placed at Trinovantum, with wonderful art, on the top of
the tower above mentioned.” He was succeeded by Gurgiunt Brabtruc,[540]
who, as he was returning by way of the Orkneys from a raid on the Danes,
met the ships of Partholon and his people as they came from Spain to
settle in Ireland.[541]
Llyr and his children, large as they bulk in mythical history, were
hardly less illustrious as saints. The family of Llyr Llediath is always
described by the early Welsh hagiologists as the first of the “Three
chief Holy Families of the Isle of Britain”. The glory of Llyr himself,
however, is but a reflected one; for it was his son Brân “the Blesséd”
who actually introduced Christianity into Britain. Legend tells us that
he was taken captive to Rome with his son Caradawc (who was identified
for the purpose with the historical Caratacus), and the rest of his
family, and remained there seven years, during which time he became
converted to the Gospel, and spread it enthusiastically on his return.
Neither his son Caradawc nor his half-brother Manawyddan exactly
followed in his footsteps, but their descendants did. Caradawc’s sons
were all saintly, while his daughter Eigen, who married a chief called
Sarrlog, lord of Caer Sarrlog (Old Sarum), was the first female saint in
Britain. Manawyddan’s side of the family was less adaptable. His son and
his grandson were both pagans, but his great-grandson obtained Christian
fame as St. Dyfan, who was sent as a bishop to Wales by Pope
Eleutherius, and was martyred at Merthyr Dyvan. After this, the saintly
line of Llyr increases and flourishes. Singularly inappropriate persons
are found in it—Mabon, the Gallo-British Apollo, as well as Geraint and
others of King Arthur’s court.[542]
It is so quaint a conceit that Christianity should have been, like
all other things, the gift of the Celtic Hades, that it seems almost
a pity to cast doubt on it. The witness of the classical historians
sums up, however, dead in its disfavour. Tacitus carefully
enumerates the family of Caratacus, and describes how he and his
wife, daughter, and brother were separately interviewed by the
Emperor Claudius, but makes no mention at all of the chieftain’s
supposed father Brân. Moreover, Dio Cassius gives the name of
Caratacus’s father as Cunobelinus—Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”—who, he
adds, had died before the Romans first invaded Britain. The evidence
is wholly against Brân as a Christian pioneer. He remains the grim
old god of war and death, “blesséd” only to his pagan votaries, and
especially to the bards, who probably first called him _Bendigeid
Vran_, and whose stubborn adherence must have been the cause of the
not less stubborn efforts of their enemies, the Christian clerics,
to bring him over to their own side by canonization.[543]
They had an easier task with Brân’s sister, Branwen of the “Fair Bosom”.
Goddesses, indeed, seem to have stood the process better than
gods—witness “Saint” Brigit, the “Mary of the Gael”. The British
Aphrodité became, under the name of Brynwyn, or Dwynwen, a patron saint
of lovers. As late as the fourteenth century, her shrine at Llandwynwyn,
in Anglesey, was the favourite resort of the disappointed of both sexes,
who came to pray to her image for either success or forgetfulness. To
make the result the more certain, the monks of the church sold Lethean
draughts from her sacred well. The legend told of her is that, having
vowed herself to perpetual celibacy, she fell in love with a young chief
called Maelon. One night, as she was praying for guidance in her
difficulty, she had a vision in which she was offered a goblet of
delicious liquor as a draught of oblivion, and she also saw the same
sweet medicine given to Maelon, whom it at once froze into a block of
ice. She was then, for her faith, offered the granting of three boons.
The first she chose was that Maelon might be allowed to resume his
natural form and temperature; the second, that she should no longer
desire to be married; and the third, that her intercessions might be
granted for all true-hearted lovers, so that they should either wed the
objects of their affection or be cured of their passion.[544] From this
cause came the virtues of her shrine and fountain. But the modern
generation no longer flocks there, and the efficacious well is choked
with sand. None the less, she whom the Welsh bards called the “Saint of
Love”[545] still has her occasional votaries. Country girls of the
neighbourhood seek her help when all else fails. The water nearest to
the church is thought to be the best substitute for the now dry and
ruined original well.[546]
A striking contrast to this easy victory over paganism is the stubborn
resistance to Christian adoption of Gwyn son of Nudd. It is true that he
was once enrolled by some monk in the train of the “Blesséd Brân”,[547]
but it was done in so half-hearted a way that, even now, one can discern
that the writer felt almost ashamed of himself. His fame as at least a
powerful fairy was too vital to be thus tampered with. Even Spenser,
though, in his _Faerie Queene_, he calls him “the good Sir Guyon ... in
whom great rule of Temp’raunce goodly doth appeare”,[548] does not
attempt to conceal his real nature. It is no man, but
“an Elfin born, of noble state
And mickle worship in his native land”,[549]
who sets forth the beauties of that virtue for which the original Celtic
paradise, with its unfailing ale and rivers of mead and wine, would
hardly seem to have been the best possible school. Save for Spenser, all
authorities agree in making Gwyn the determined opponent of things
Christian. A curious and picturesque legend[550] is told of him in
connection with St. Collen, who was himself the great-grandson of Brân’s
son, Caradawc. The saint, desirous of still further retirement from the
world, had made himself a cell beneath a rock near Glastonbury Tor, in
Gwyn’s own “island of Avilion”. It was close to a road, and one day he
heard two men pass by talking about Gwyn son of Nudd, and declaring him
to be King of Annwn and the fairies. St. Collen put his head out of the
cell, and told them to hold their tongues, and that Gwyn and his fairies
were only demons. The two men retorted by warning the saint that he
would soon have to meet the dark ruler face to face. They passed on, and
not long afterwards St. Collen heard someone knocking at his door. On
asking who was there, he got the answer: “I am here, the messenger of
Gwyn ap Nudd, King of Hades, to bid thee come by the middle of the day
to speak with him on the top of the hill.” The saint did not go; and the
messenger came a second time with the same message. On the third visit,
he added a threat that, if St. Collen did not come now, it would be the
worse for him. So, a little disquieted, he went, but not unarmed. He
consecrated some water, and took it with him.
On other days the top of Glastonbury Tor had always been bare, but on
this occasion the saint found it crowned by a splendid castle. Men and
maidens, beautifully dressed, were going in and out. A page received him
and told him that the king was waiting for him to be his guest at
dinner. St. Collen found Gwyn sitting on a golden chair in front of a
table covered with the rarest dainties and wines. He invited him to
share them, adding that if there was anything he especially liked, it
should be brought to him with all honour. “I do not eat the leaves of
trees,” replied the saint, who knew what fairy meats and drinks were
made of. Not taken aback by this discourteous answer, the King of Annwn
genially asked the saint if he did not admire his servants’ livery,
which was a motley costume, red on one side and blue on the other.
“Their dress is good enough for its kind,” said St. Collen. “What kind
is that?” asked Gwyn. “The red shows which side is being scorched, and
the blue shows which side is being frozen,” replied the saint, and,
splashing his holy water all round him, he saw castle, serving-men, and
king vanish, leaving him alone on the bare, windy hill-top.
Gwyn, last of the gods of Annwn, has evidently by this time taken over
the functions of all the others. He has the hounds which Arawn once
had—the _Cwn Annwn_, “dogs of hell”, with the white bodies and the red
ears. We hear more of them in folklore than we do of their master,
though even their tradition is dying out with the spread of newspapers
and railways. We are not likely to find another Reverend Edmund
Jones[551] to insist upon belief in them, lest, by closing our minds to
such manifest witnesses of the supernatural world, we should become
infidels. Still, we may even now find peasants ready to swear that they
have heard them sweeping along the hill-sides upon stormy nights, as
they pursued the flying souls of unshriven men or unbaptized babes. The
tales told of them agree curiously. Their cry is like that of a pack of
foxhounds, but softer in tone. The nearer they are to a man, the less
loud their voices seem, and the farther off they are, the louder. But
they are less often seen than heard, and it has been suggested that the
sounds were the cries of migrating bean-geese, which are not unlike
those of hounds in chase. The superstition is widely spread. The _Cwn
Annwn_ of Wales are called in North Devon the “Yeth” (Heath or Heathen),
or “Yell” Hounds, and on Dartmoor, the “Wish” Hounds. In Durham and
Yorkshire they are called “Gabriel” Hounds, and they are known by
various names in Norfolk, Gloucestershire, and Cornwall. In Scotland it
is Arthur who leads the Wild Hunt, and the tradition is found over
almost the whole of western Europe.
Not many folk-tales have been preserved in which Gwyn is mentioned by
name. His memory has lingered longest and latest in the fairy-haunted
Vale of Neath, so close to his “ridge, the Tawë abode ... not the
nearest Tawë ... but that Tawë which is the farthest”. But it may be
understood whenever the king of the fairies is mentioned. As the last of
the greater gods of the old mythology, he has been endowed by popular
fancy with the rule of all the varied fairy population of Britain, so
far, at least, as it is of Celtic or pre-Celtic origin. For some of the
fairies most famous in English literature are Teutonic. King Oberon
derives his name, through the French _fabliaux_, from Elberich, the
dwarf king of the _Niebelungenlied_,[552] though his queen, Titania, was
probably named out of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_.[553] Puck, another of
Shakespeare’s fays, is merely the personification of his race, the
“pwccas” of Wales, “pookas” of Ireland, “poakes” of Worcestershire, and
“pixies” of the West of England.[554] It is Wales that at the present
time preserves the most numerous and diverse collection of fairies. Some
of them are beautiful, some hideous; some kindly, some malevolent. There
are the gentle damsels of the lakes and streams called Gwragedd Annwn,
and the fierce and cruel mountain fairies known as the Gwyllion. There
are the household sprites called Bwbachod, like the Scotch and English
“brownies”; the Coblynau, or gnomes of the mines (called “knockers” in
Cornwall); and the Ellyllon, or elves, of whom the pwccas are a
branch.[555] In the North of England the spirits belong more wholly to
the lower type. The bogles, brownies, killmoulis, redcaps, and their
like seem little akin to the higher, Aryan-seeming fairies. The Welsh
bwbach, too, is described as brown and hairy, and the coblynau as black
or copper-faced. We shall hardly do wrong in regarding such spectres as
the degraded gods of a pre-Aryan race, like the Irish leprechauns and
pookas, who have nothing in common with the still beautiful, still noble
figures of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Of these numberless and nameless subjects of Gwyn, some dwell beneath
the earth or under the surface of lakes—which seem to take, in Wales,
the place of the Gaelic “fairy hills”—and others in Avilion, a
mysterious western isle of all delights lying on or just beneath the
sea. Pembrokeshire—the ancient Dyfed—has kept the tradition most
completely. The story goes that there is a certain square yard in the
hundred of Cemmes in that county which holds the secret of the fairy
realm. If a man happens to set his feet on it by chance, his eyes are
opened, and he can see that which is hidden from other men—the fairy
country and commonwealth,—but, the moment he moves from the enchanted
spot, he loses the vision, and he can never find the same place
again.[556] That country is upon the sea, and not far from shore; like
the Irish paradise of which it is the counterpart, it may sometimes be
sighted by sailors. The “Green Meadows of Enchantment” are still an
article of faith among Pembrokeshire and Caermarthenshire sailors, and
evidently not without some reason. In 1896 a correspondent of the
_Pembroke County Guardian_ sent in a report made to him by a certain
Captain John Evans to the effect that, one summer morning, while
trending up the Channel, and passing Gresholm Island (the scene of the
entertaining of Brân’s head), in what he had always known as deep water,
he was surprised to see to windward of him a large tract of land covered
with a beautiful green meadow. It was not, however, above water, but two
or three feet below it, so that the grass waved or swam about as the
ripple floated over it, in a way that made one who watched it feel
drowsy. Captain Evans had often heard of the tradition of the fairy
island from old people, but admitted that he had never hoped to see it
with his own eyes.[557] As with the “Hounds of Annwn” one may suspect a
quite natural explanation. Mirage is at once common enough and rare
enough on our coasts to give rise to such a legend, and it must have
been some such phenomenon as the “Fata Morgana” of Sicily which has made
sober men swear so confidently to ocular evidence of the Celtic
Paradise, whether seen from the farthest western coasts of Gaelic
Ireland or Scotland, or of British Wales.
-----
Footnote 522:
See, for example, a folk-tale, pp. 117-123 in Rhys’s _Celtic
Folklore_.
Footnote 523:
Stephens’s Preliminary Dissertation to his translation of Aneurin’s
_Gododin_.
Footnote 524:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 471.
Footnote 525:
_Iolo MSS._, pp. 597-600.
Footnote 526:
_Historia Britonum_, Books IX, X, and chaps. I and II of XI.
Footnote 527:
_Historia Britonum_, Book XI, chap. II.
Footnote 528:
_Ibid._, Book IX, chap. IX.
Footnote 529:
_Ibid._, Book IX, chap. _XII_. They appear also as Guanius, King of
the Huns, and Melga, King of the Picts, in Book V, chap. XVI.
Footnote 530:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, chap. XIX.
Footnote 531:
_Ibid._, Book III, chap. XX.
Footnote 532:
_I.e._ London, under its traditionary earlier name, Troja Nova, given
it by Brutus.
Footnote 533:
_The Story of Lludd and Llevelys._
Footnote 534:
The name means “dwarfs”. Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 606.
Footnote 535:
_Historia Britonum_, Book II, chap, X-XIV.
Footnote 536:
Alba, or North Britain.
Footnote 537:
Now Calais.
Footnote 538:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 131-132.
Footnote 539:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, chaps. I-X.
Footnote 540:
The same fabulous personage, perhaps, as the original of Rabelais’
Gargantua, a popular Celtic god.
Footnote 541:
_Historia Britonum_, Book III, Chaps. XI-XII.
Footnote 542:
See the _Iolo MSS._ The genealogies and families of the saints of the
island of Britain. Copied by Iolo Morganwg in 1783 from the _Long Book
of Thomas Truman of Pantlliwydd_ in the parish of Llansanor in
Glamorgan, p. 515, &c. Also see _An Essay on the Welsh Saints_ by the
Rev. Rice Rees, Sections IV and V.
Footnote 543:
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 261-262.
Footnote 544:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 474.
Footnote 545:
“The Welsh bards call Dwynwen the goddess, or saint of love and
affection, as the poets designate Venus.” _Iolo MSS._
Footnote 546:
Wirt Sikes: _British Goblins_, p. 350.
Footnote 547:
_Iolo MSS._, p. 523.
Footnote 548:
_The Faerie Queene_, Prologue to Book II.
Footnote 549:
_Ibid._, Book II, canto I, verse 6.
Footnote 550:
Published in _Y Greal_ (London, 1805), and is to be found quoted in
Rhys: _Arthurian Legend_, pp. 338, 339; also in Sikes: _British
Goblins_, pp. 7-8.
Footnote 551:
_A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits in the County of Monmouth and
the Principality of Wales._ Published at Newport, 1813.
Footnote 552:
Thistleton Dyer: _Folklore of Shakespeare_, p. 3.
Footnote 553:
_Ibid._, p. 4.
Footnote 554:
_Ibid._, p. 5.
Footnote 555:
Wirt Sikes: _British Goblins_, p. 12.
Footnote 556:
The _Brython_, Vol. I, p. 130.
Footnote 557:
Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, pp. 171-172.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC
PAGANISM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXV
SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC PAGANISM INTO MODERN
TIMES
The fall of the Celtic state worship began earlier in Britain than in
her sister island. Neither was it Christianity that struck the first
blow, but the rough humanity and stern justice of the Romans. That
people was more tolerant, perhaps, than any the world has ever known
towards the religions of others, and gladly welcomed the Celtic gods—as
gods—into its own diverse Pantheon. A friendly Gaulish or British
divinity might at any time be granted the so-to-speak divine Roman
citizenship, and be assimilated to Jupiter, to Mars, to Apollo, or to
any other properly accredited deity whom the Romans deemed him to
resemble. It was not against the god, but against his worship at the
hands of his priests, that Roman law struck. The colossal human
sacrifices of the druids horrified even a people who were far from
squeamish about a little bloodshed. They themselves had abolished such
practices by a decree of the senate before Caesar first invaded
Britain,[558] and could not therefore permit within their empire a cult
which slaughtered men in order to draw omens from their
death-agonies.[559] Druidism was first required to be renounced by those
who claimed Roman citizenship; then it was vigorously put down among the
less civilized tribes. Tacitus tells us how the Island of Mona
(Anglesey)—the great stronghold of druidism—was attacked, its sacred
groves cut down, its altars laid level, and its priests put to the
sword.[560] Pliny, recording how the Emperor Tiberius had “suppressed
the druids”, congratulates his fellow-countrymen on having put an end,
wherever their dominion extended, to the monstrous customs inspired by
the doctrine that the gods could take pleasure in murder and
cannibalism.[561] The practice of druidism, with its attendant
barbarities, abolished in Britain wherever the long Roman arm could
reach to strike, took refuge beyond the Northern Wall, among the savage
Caledonian tribes who had not yet submitted to the invader’s yoke.
Naturally, too, it remained untouched in Ireland. But before the Romans
left Britain, it had been extirpated everywhere, except among “the Picts
and Scots”.
Christianity, following the Roman rule, completed the ruin of paganism
in Britain, so far, at least, as its public manifestations were
concerned. In the sixth century of our era, the monkish writer, Gildas,
is able to refer complacently to the ancient British religion as a dead
faith. “I shall not”, he says, “enumerate those diabolical idols of my
country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which
we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted
temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary. Nor will I
cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers,
which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an
abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid
divine honour.”[562] And with the idols fell the priests. The very word
“druid” became obsolete, and is scarcely mentioned in the earliest
British literature, though druids are prominent characters in the Irish
writings of the same period.
The secular arm had no power in Scotland and in Ireland, consequently
the battle between Paganism and Christianity was fought upon more equal
terms, and lasted longer. In the first country, Saint Columba, and in
the second, Saint Patrick are the personages who, at any rate according
to tradition, beat down the druids and their gods. Adamnan, Abbot of
Iona, who wrote his _Vita Columbæ_ in the last decade of the seventh
century, describes how, a century earlier, that saint had carried the
Gospel to the Picts. Their king, Brude, received him contemptuously, and
the royal druids left no heathen spell unuttered to thwart and annoy
him. But, as the power of Moses was greater than the power of the
magicians of Egypt, so Saint Columba’s prayers caused miracles more
wonderful and more convincing than any wrought by his adversaries. Such
stories belong to the atmosphere of myth which has always enveloped
heroic men; the essential fact is that the Picts abandoned the old
religion for the new.
A similar legend sums up the life-work of Saint Patrick in Ireland.
Before he came, Cromm Cruaich had received from time immemorial his
yearly toll of human lives. But Saint Patrick faced the gruesome idol;
as he raised his crozier, we are told, the demon fell shrieking from his
image, which, deprived of its soul, bowed forward to the ground.
It is far easier, however, to overthrow the more public manifestations
of a creed than to destroy its inner vital force. Cromm Cruaich’s idol
might fall, but his spirit would survive—a very Proteus. The sacred
places of the ancient Celtic religion might be invaded, the idols and
altars of the gods thrown down, the priests slain, scattered, or
banished, and the cult officially declared to be extinct; but, driven
from the important centres, it would yet survive outside and around
them. The more civilized Gaels and Britons would no doubt accept the
purer gospel, and abandon the gods they had once adored, but the
peasantry—the bulk of the population—would still cling to the familiar
rites and names. A nobler belief and a higher civilization come, after
all, only as surface waves upon the great ocean of human life; beneath
their agitations lies a vast slumbering abyss of half-conscious faith
and thought to which culture penetrates with difficulty and in which
changes come very slowly.
We have already shown how long and how faithfully the Gaelic and Welsh
peasants clung to their old gods, in spite of all the efforts of the
clerics to explain them as ancient kings, to transform them into
wonder-working saints, or to ban them as demons of hell. This
conservative religious instinct of the agricultural populations is not
confined to the inhabitants of the British Islands. The modern Greeks
still believe in nereids, in lamias, in sirens, and in Charon, the dark
ferryman of Hades.[563] The descendants of the Romans and Etruscans hold
that the old Etruscan gods and the Roman deities of the woods and fields
still live in the world as spirits.[564] The high altars of the “Lord of
the Mound” and his terrible kin were levelled, and their golden images
and great temples left to moulder in abandonment; but the rude rustic
shrine to the rude rustic god still received its offerings. It is this
shifting of the care of the pagan cult from chief to peasant, from court
to hovel, and, perhaps, to some extent from higher to lower race, that
serves to explain how the more primitive and uncouth gods have tended so
largely to supplant those of higher, more graceful mien. Aboriginal
deities, thrust into obscurity by the invasion of higher foreign types,
came back to their own again.
For it seems plain that we must divide the spiritual population of the
British Islands into two classes. There is little in common between the
“fairy”, strictly so-called, and the unsightly elf who appears under
various names and guises, as pooka, leprechaun, brownie, knocker, or
bogle. The one belongs to such divine tribes as the Tuatha Dé Danann of
Gaelic myth or their kin, the British gods of the Mabinogion. The other
owes his origin to a quite different, and much lower, kind of
imagination. One might fancy that neolithic man made him in his own
image.
None the less has immemorial tradition wonderfully preserved the
essential features of the Celtic nature-gods. The fairy belief of the
present day hardly differs at all from the conception which the Celts
had of their deities. The description of the Tuatha Dé Danann in the
“Dialogue of the Elders” as “sprites or fairies with corporeal or
material forms but indued with immortality” would stand as an account of
prevailing ideas as to the “good people” to-day. Nor do the Irish and
Welsh fairies of popular belief differ from one another. Both alike live
among the hills, though in Wales a lake often takes the place of the
“fairy mound”; both, though they war and marry among themselves, are
semi-immortal; both covet the children of men, and will steal them from
the cradle, leaving one of their own uncanny brood in the mortal baby’s
stead; both can lay men and women under spells; both delight in music
and the dance, and live lives of unreal and fantastic splendour and
luxury. Another point in which they resemble one another is in their
tiny size. But this would seem to be the result of the literary
convention originated by Shakespeare; in genuine folktales, both Gaelic
and British, the fairies are pictured as of at least mortal
stature.[565]
But, Aryan or Iberian, beautiful or hideous, they are fast vanishing
from belief. Every year, the secluded valleys in which men and women
might still live in the old way, and dream the old dreams, tend more and
more to be thrown open to the modern world of rapid movement and rapid
thought. The last ten years have perhaps done more in this direction
than the preceding ten generations. What lone shepherd or fisherman will
ever see again the vision of the great Manannán? Have the stable-boys of
to-day still any faith left in Finvarra? Is Gwyn ap Nudd often thought
of in his own valleys of the Tawë and the Nedd? It would be hard,
perhaps, to find a whole-hearted believer even in his local pooka or
parish bogle.
It is the ritual observances of the old Celtic faith which have better
weathered, and will longer survive, the disintegrating influences of
time. There are no hard names to be remembered. Things may still be done
for “luck” which were once done for religion. Customary observances die
very slowly, held up by an only half acknowledged fear that, unless they
are fulfilled, “something may happen”. We shall get, therefore, more
satisfactory evidence of the nature of the Celtic paganism by examining
such customs than in any other way.
We find three forms of the survival of the ancient religion into quite
recent times. The first is the celebration of the old solar or
agricultural festivals of the spring and autumn equinoxes and of the
summer and winter solstices. The second is the practice of a symbolic
human sacrifice by those who have forgotten its meaning, and only know
that they are keeping up an old custom, joined with late instances of
the actual sacrifices of animals to avert cattle-plagues or to change
bad luck. The third consists of many still-living relics of the once
universal worship of sacred waters, trees, stones, and animals.
Whatever may have been the exact meaning of the Celtic state worship,
there seems to be no doubt that it centred around the four great days in
the year which chronicle the rise, progress, and decline of the sun,
and, therefore, of the fruits of the earth. These were: Beltaine, which
fell at the beginning of May; Midsummer Day, marking the triumph of
sunshine and vegetation; the Feast of Lugh, when, in August, the
turning-point of the sun’s course had been reached; and the sad Samhain,
when he bade farewell to power, and fell again for half a year under the
sway of the evil forces of winter and darkness.
Of these great solar periods, the first and the last were, naturally,
the most important. The whole Celtic mythology seems to revolve upon
them, as upon pivots. It was on the day of Beltaine that Partholon and
his people, the discoverers, and, indeed, the makers of Ireland, arrived
there from the other world, and it was on the same day, three hundred
years later, that they returned whence they came. It was on Beltaine-day
that the Gaelic gods, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and, after them, the Gaelic
men, first set foot on Irish soil. It was on the day of Samhain that the
Fomors oppressed the people of Nemed with their terrible tax; and it was
again at Samhain that a later race of gods of light and life finally
conquered those demons at the Battle of Moytura. Only one important
mythological incident—and that was one added at a later time!—happened
upon any other than one of those two days; it was upon Midsummer Day,
one of the lesser solar points, that the people of the goddess Danu took
Ireland from its inhabitants, the Fir Bolgs.
The mythology of Britain preserves the same root-idea as that of
Ireland. If anything uncanny took place, it was sure to be on May-day.
It was on “the night of the first of May” that Rhiannon lost, and
Teirnyon Twryf Vliant found, the infant Pryderi, as told in the first of
the Mabinogion.[566] It was “on every May-eve” that the two dragons
fought and shrieked in the reign of “King” Lludd.[567] It is on “every
first of May” till the day of doom that Gwyn son of Nudd, fights with
Gwyrthur son of Greidawl, for Lludd’s fair daughter, Creudylad.[568] And
it was when she was “a-maying” in the woods and fields near Westminster
that the same Gwyn, or Melwas, under his romance-name of Sir
Meliagraunce, captured Arthur’s queen, Guinevere.[569]
The nature of the rites performed upon these days can be surmised from
their pale survivals. They are still celebrated by the descendants of
the Celts, though it is probable that few of them know—or would even
care to know—why May Day, St. John’s Day, Lammas, and Hallowe’en are
times of ceremony. The first—called “Beltaine” in Ireland, “Bealtiunn”
in Scotland, “Shenn da Boaldyn” in the Isle of Man, and “Galan-Mai” (the
Calends of May) in Wales—celebrates the waking of the earth from her
winter sleep, and the renewal of warmth, life, and vegetation. This is
the meaning of the May-pole, now rarely seen in our streets, though
Shakespeare tells us that in his time the festival was so eagerly
anticipated that no one could sleep upon its eve.[570] At midnight the
people rose, and, going to the nearest woods, tore down branches of
trees, with which the sun, when he rose, would find doors and windows
decked for him. They spent the day in dancing round the May-pole, with
rude, rustic mirth, man joining with nature to celebrate the coming of
summer. The opposite to it was the day called “Samhain” in Ireland and
Scotland, “Sauin” in Man, and “Nos Galan-gaeof” (the Night of the Winter
Calends) in Wales. This festival was a sad one: summer was over, and
winter, with its short, sunless days and long, dreary nights, was at
hand. It was the beginning, too, of the ancient Celtic year,[571] and
omens for the future might be extorted from dark powers by uncanny
rites. It was the holiday of the dead and of all the more evil
supernatural beings. “On November-eve”, says a North Cardiganshire
proverb, “there is a bogy on every stile.” The Scotch have even invented
a special bogy—the _Samhanach_ or goblin which comes out at
Samhain.[572]
The sun-god himself is said to have instituted the August festival
called “Lugnassad” (Lugh’s commemoration) in Ireland, “Lla Lluanys” in
Man, and “Gwyl Awst” (August Feast) in Wales; and it was once of hardly
less importance than Beltaine or Samhain. It is noteworthy, too, that
the first of August was a great day at Lyons—formerly called Lugudunum,
the _dún_ (town) of Lugus. The midsummer festival, on the other hand,
has largely merged its mythological significance in the Christian Feast
of St. John.
The characteristic features of these festivals give certain proof of
the original nature of the great pagan ceremonials of which they are
the survivals and travesties.[573] In all of them, bonfires are
lighted on the highest hills, and the hearth fires solemnly rekindled.
They form the excuse for much sport and jollity. But there is yet
something sinister in the air; the “fairies” are active and abroad,
and one must be careful to omit no prescribed rite, if one would avoid
kindling their anger or falling into their power. To some of these
still-half-believed-in nature-gods offerings were made down to a
comparatively late period. When Pennant wrote, in the eighteenth
century, it was the custom on Beltaine-day in many Highland villages
to offer libations and cakes not only to the “spirits” who were
believed to be beneficial to the flocks and herds, but also to
creatures like the fox, the eagle, and the hoodie-crow which so often
molested them.[574] At Hallowe’en (the Celtic Samhain) the natives of
the Hebrides used to pour libations of ale to a marine god called
Shony, imploring him to send sea-weed to the shore.[575] In honour,
also, of such beings, curious rites were performed. Maidens washed
their faces in morning dew, with prayers for beauty. They carried
sprigs of the rowan, that mystic tree whose scarlet berries were the
ambrosial food of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
In their original form, these now harmless rural holidays were
undoubtedly religious festivals of an orgiastic nature-worship such as
became so popular in Greece in connection with the cult of Dionysus. The
great “lords of life” and of the powers of nature that made and ruled
life were propitiated by maddening invocations, by riotous dances, and
by human sacrifice.
The bonfires which fill so large a part in the modern festivals have
been casually mentioned. Originally they were no mere _feux de joie_,
but had a terrible meaning, which the customs connected with them
preserve. At the Highland Beltaine, a cake was divided by lot, and
whoever drew the “burnt piece” was obliged to leap three times over the
flames. At the midsummer bonfires in Ireland all passed through the
fire; the men when the flames were highest, the women when they were
lower, and the cattle when there was nothing left but smoke. In Wales,
upon the last day of October, the old Samhain, there was a slightly
different, and still more suggestive rite. The hill-top bonfires were
watched until they were announced to be extinct. Then all would race
headlong down the hill, shouting a formula to the effect that the devil
would get the hindmost. The devil of a new belief is the god of the one
it has supplanted; in all three instances, the custom was no mere
meaningless horse-play, but a symbolical human sacrifice.
A similar observance, but of a more cruel kind, was kept up in France
upon St. John’s Day, until forbidden by law in the reign of Louis the
Fourteenth. Baskets containing living wolves, foxes, and cats were
burned upon the bonfires, under the auspices and in the presence of the
sheriffs or the mayor of the town.[576] Caesar noted the custom among
the druids of constructing huge wicker-work images, which they filled
with living men, and set on fire, and it can hardly be doubted that the
wretched wolves, foxes, and cats were ceremonial substitutes for human
beings.
An ingenious theory was invented, after the introduction of
Christianity, with the purpose of allowing such ancient rites to
continue, with a changed meaning. The passing of persons and cattle
through flame or smoke was explained as a practice which interposed a
magic protection between them and the powers of evil. This homœopathic
device of using the evil power’s own sacred fire as a means of
protection against himself somewhat suggests that seething of the kid in
its mother’s milk which was reprobated by the Levitical law; but, no
doubt, pagan “demons” were considered fair game. The explanation, of
course, is an obviously and clumsily forced one; it was the grim
druidical philosophy that—to quote Caesar—“unless the life of man was
repaid for the life of man, the will of the immortal gods could not be
appeased” that dictated both the national and the private human
sacrifices of the Celts, the shadows of which remain in the leaping
through the bonfires, and in the numerous recorded sacrifices of cattle
within quite recent times.
Mr. Laurence Gomme, in his _Ethnology in Folklore_, has collected many
modern instances of the sacrifices of cattle not only in Ireland and
Scotland, but also in Wales, Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Cornwall, and
the Isle of Man.[577] “Within twenty miles of the metropolis of Scotland
a relative of Professor Simpson offered up a live cow as a sacrifice to
the spirit of the murrain.”[578] In Wales, when cattle-sickness broke
out, a bullock was immolated by being thrown down from the top of a high
rock. Generally, however, the wretched victims were burned alive. In
1859 an Isle of Man farmer offered a heifer as a burnt offering near
Tynwald Hill, to avert the anger of the ghostly occupant of a barrow
which had been desecrated by opening. Sometimes, even, these burnt
oblations were offered to an alleged Christian saint. The registers of
the Presbytery of Dingwall for the years 1656 and 1678 contain records
of the sacrifices of cattle upon the site of an ancient temple in honour
of a being whom some called “St. Mourie”, and others, perhaps knowing
his doubtful character, “ane god Mourie”.[579] At Kirkcudbright, it was
St. Cuthbert, and at Clynnog, in Wales, it was St. Beuno, who was
thought to delight in the blood of bulls.[580]
Such sacrifices of cattle appear mainly to have been offered to stay
plague among cattle. Man for man and beast for beast, was, perhaps, the
old rule. But among all nations, human sacrifices have been gradually
commuted for those of animals. The family of the O’Herlebys in
Ballyvorney, County Cork, used in olden days to keep an idol, “an image
of wood about two feet high, carved and painted like a woman”.[581] She
was the goddess of smallpox, and to her a sheep was immolated on behalf
of anyone seized with that disease.
The third form of Celtic pagan survival is found in numerous instances
of the adoration of water, trees, stones, and animals. Like the other
“Aryan” nations, the Celts worshipped their rivers. The Dee received
divine honours as a war-goddess with the title of Aerfon, while the
Ribble, under its name of Belisama, was identified by the Romans with
Minerva.[582] Myths were told of them, as of the sacred streams of
Greece. The Dee gave oracles as to the results of the perpetual wars
between the Welsh and the English; as its stream encroached either upon
the Welsh or the English side, so one nation or the other would be
victorious.[583] The Tweed, like many of the Greek rivers, was credited
with human descendants.[584] That the rivers of Great Britain received
human sacrifices is clear from the folklore concerning many of them.
Deprived of their expected offerings, they are believed to snatch by
stealth the human lives for which they crave. “River of Dart, River of
Dart, every year thou claimest a heart,” runs the Devonshire folk-song.
The Spey, too, requires a life yearly,[585] but the Spirit of the Ribble
is satisfied with one victim at the end of every seven years.[586]
Evidence, however, of the worship of rivers is scanty compared with that
of the adoration of wells. “In the case of well-worship,” says Mr.
Gomme, “it may be asserted with some confidence that it prevails in
every county of the three kingdoms.”[587] He finds it most vital in the
Gaelic counties, somewhat less so in the British, and almost entirely
wanting in the Teutonic south-east. So numerous, indeed, are “holy
wells” that several monographs have been written solely upon them.[588]
In some cases these wells were resorted to for the cure of diseases; in
others, to obtain change of weather, or “good luck”. Offerings were made
to them, to propitiate their guardian gods or nymphs. Pennant tells us
that in olden times the rich would sacrifice one of their horses at a
well near Abergeleu, to secure a blessing upon the rest.[589] Fowls were
offered at St. Tegla’s Well, near Wrexham, by epileptic patients.[590]
But of late years the well-spirits have had to be content with much
smaller tributes—such trifles as pins, rags, coloured pebbles, and small
coins.
With sacred wells were often connected sacred trees, to whose branches
rags and small pieces of garments were suspended by their humble
votaries. Sometimes, where the ground near the well was bare of
vegetation, bushes were artificially placed beside the water. The same
people who venerated wells and trees would pay equal adoration to sacred
stones. Lord Roden, describing, in 1851, the Island of Inniskea, off the
coast of Mayo, asserts that a sacred well called “Derrivla” and a sacred
stone called “Neevougi”, which was kept carefully wrapped up in flannel
and brought out at certain periods to be publicly adored, seemed to be
the only deities known to that lone Atlantic island’s three hundred
inhabitants.[591] It sounds incredible; but there is ample evidence of
the worship of fetish stones by quite modern inhabitants of our islands.
The Clan Chattan kept such a stone in the Isle of Arran; it was
believed, like the stone of Inniskea, to be able to cure diseases, and
was kept carefully “wrapped up in fair linen cloth, and about that there
was a piece of woollen cloth”.[592] Similarly, too, the worship of wells
was connected with the worship of animals. At a well in the “Devil’s
Causeway”, between Ruckley and Acton, in Shropshire, lived, and perhaps
still live, four frogs who were, and perhaps still are, believed to be
“the devil and his imps”—that is to say, gods or demons of a proscribed
idolatry.[593] In Ireland such guardian spirits are usually fish—trout,
eels, or salmon thought to be endowed with eternal life.[594] The genius
of a well in Banffshire took the form of a fly, which was also said to
be undying, but to transmigrate from body to body. Its function was to
deliver oracles; according as it seemed active or lethargic, its
votaries drew their omens.[595] It is needless to multiply instances of
a still surviving cult of water, trees, stones, and animals. Enough to
say that it would be easy. What concerns us is that we are face to face
in Britain with living forms of the oldest, lowest, most primitive
religion in the world—one which would seem to have been once universal,
and which, crouching close to the earth, lets other creeds blow over it
without effacing it, and outlives one and all of them.
It underlies the three great world-religions, and still forms the real
belief of perhaps the majority of their titular adherents. It is
characteristic of the wisdom of the Christian Church that, knowing its
power, she sought rather to sanctify than to extirpate it. What once
were the Celtic equivalents of the Greek “fountains of the nymphs” were
consecrated as “holy wells”. The process of so adopting them began
early. St. Columba, when he went in the sixth century to convert the
Picts, found a spring which they worshipped as a god; he blessed it, and
“from that day the demon separated from the water”.[596] Indeed, he so
sanctified no less than three hundred such springs.[597] Sacred stones
were equally taken under the ægis of Christianity. Some were placed on
the altars of cathedrals, others built into consecrated walls. The
animal gods either found themselves the heroes of Christian legends, or
where, for some reason, such adoption was hopeless, were proclaimed
“witches’ animals”, and dealt with accordingly. Such happened to the
hare, a creature sacred to the ancient Britons,[598] but now in bad
odour among the superstitious. The wren, too, is hunted to death upon
St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland. Its crime is said to be that it has “a
drop of the de’il’s blood in it”, but the real reason is probably to be
found in the fact that the Irish druids used to draw auguries from its
chirpings.
* * * * *
We have made in this volume some attempt to draw a picture of the
ancient religion of our earliest ancestors, the Gaelic and the British
Celts. We have shown what can be gathered of the broken remnants of a
mythology as splendid in conception and as brilliant in colour as that
of the Greeks. We have tried to paint its divine figures, and to retell
their heroic stories. We have seen them fall from their shrines, and
yet, rising again, take on new lives as kings, or saints, or knights of
romance, and we have caught fading glimpses of them surviving to-day as
the “fairies”, their rites still cherished by worshippers who hardly
know who or why they worship. Of necessity this survey has been brief
and incomplete. Whether the great edifice of the Celtic mythology will
ever be wholly restored one can at present only speculate. Its colossal
fragments are perhaps too deeply buried and too widely scattered. But,
even as it stands ruined, it is a mighty quarry from which poets yet
unborn will hew spiritual marble for houses not made with hands.
-----
Footnote 558:
In the year 55 B.C.
Footnote 559:
_Strabo_, Book IV, chap. IV.
Footnote 560:
_Annals_, Book XIV, chap. XXX.
Footnote 561:
_Natural History_, Book XXX.
Footnote 562:
Gildas. See _Six Old English Chronicles_—Bohn’s Libraries.
Footnote 563:
Rennell Rodd: _Customs and Lore of Modern Greece_. Stuart Glennie:
_Greek Folk Songs_.
Footnote 564:
Charles Godfrey Leland: _Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition_.
Footnote 565:
Rhys: _Celtic Folklore_, p. 670; Curtin: _Tales of the Fairies and of
the Ghost World_; and Mr. Leland Duncan’s _Fairy Beliefs from County
Leitrim_ in _Folklore_, June, 1896.
Footnote 566:
The Mabinogi of _Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed_.
Footnote 567:
The story of Lludd and Llevelys.
Footnote 568:
_Kulhwch and Olwen._
Footnote 569:
_Morte Darthur_, Book XIX, chaps. I and II.
Footnote 570:
_Henry VIII_, act V, scene 3.
Footnote 571:
Rhys: _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 514.
Footnote 572:
_Ibid._, p. 516.
Footnote 573:
A good account of the Irish festivals is given by Lady Wilde in her
_Ancient Legends of Ireland_, pp. 193-221.
Footnote 574:
Pennant: _A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides_, 1772.
Footnote 575:
Martin: _Description of the Western Islands of Scotland_, 1695.
Footnote 576:
Gaidoz: _Esquisse de la Réligion des Gaulois_, p. 21.
Footnote 577:
Gomme: _Ethnology in Folklore_, pp. 136-139.
Footnote 578:
_Ibid._, p. 137.
Footnote 579:
Mitchell: _The Past in the Present_, pp. 271, 275.
Footnote 580:
Elton: _Origins of English History_, p. 284.
Footnote 581:
Gomme: _Ethnology in Folklore_, p. 140.
Footnote 582:
The word Dee probably meant “divinity”. The river was also called
Dyfridwy, _i.e._ “water of the divinity”. See Rhys: _Lectures on Welsh
Philology_, p. 307.
Footnote 583:
Rhys: _Celtic Britain_, p. 68.
Footnote 584:
Rogers: _Social Life in Scotland_, chap. III, p. 336.
Footnote 585:
_Folklore_, chap. III, p. 72.
Footnote 586:
Henderson: _Folklore of Northern Counties_, p. 265.
Footnote 587:
Gomme: _Ethnology in Folklore_, p. 78.
Footnote 588:
Hope: _Holy Wells of England_; Harvey: _Holy Wells of Ireland_.
Footnote 589:
Sikes: _British Goblins_, p. 351.
Footnote 590:
_Ibid._, p. 329.
Footnote 591:
Roden: _Progress of the Reformation in Ireland_, pp. 51-54.
Footnote 592:
Martin: _Description of the Western Islands_, pp. 166-226.
Footnote 593:
Burne: _Shropshire Folklore_, p. 416.
Footnote 594:
Gomme: _Ethnology in Folklore_, pp. 92-93.
Footnote 595:
_Ibid._, p. 102.
Footnote 596:
Adamnan’s _Vita Columbæ_.
Footnote 597:
Dr. Whitley Stokes: _Three Middle Irish Homilies_.
Footnote 598:
Caesar: _De Bello Gallico_, Book V, chap. XII.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
A FEW BOOKS UPON CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
AND LITERATURE
The object of this short list is merely to supplement the marginal notes
by pointing out to a reader desirous of going deeper into the subject
the most recent and accessible works upon it. That they should be
accessible is, in its intention, the most important thing; and therefore
only books easily and cheaply obtainable will be mentioned.
INTRODUCTORY
Matthew Arnold.—THE STUDY OF CELTIC LITERATURE. Popular Edition.
London, 1891.
Ernest Renan.—THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES (and other studies).
Translated by William G. Hutchinson. London, 1896.
_Two eloquent appreciations of Celtic literature._
Magnus Maclean, M.A., D.C.L.—THE LITERATURE OF THE CELTS. Its
History and Romance. London, 1902.
_A handy exposition of all the branches of Celtic literature._
Elizabeth A. Sharp (editor).—LYRA CELTICA. An Anthology of
Representative Celtic Poetry. Ancient Irish, Alban, Gaelic,
Breton, Cymric, and Modern Scottish and Irish Celtic Poetry.
With introduction and notes by William Sharp. Edinburgh, 1896.
Alfred Nutt.—CELTIC AND MEDIÆVAL ROMANCE. No. 1 of Mr. Nutt’s
“Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London,
1899.
_A pamphlet briefly tracing the indebtedness of mediæval
European literature to pre-mediæval Celtic sources._
HISTORICAL
H. d’Arbois de Jubainville.—LA CIVILISATION DES CELTES ET CELLE DE
L’ÉPOPÉE HOMÉRIQUE. Paris, 1899.
_Vol. VI of the author’s monumental “Cours de Littérature
celtique.”_
Patrick Weston Joyce.—A SOCIAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT IRELAND, treating
of the Government, Military System, and Law; Religion, Learning,
and Art; Trades, Industries, and Commerce; Manners, Customs, and
Domestic Life of the Ancient Irish People. 2 vols. London, 1903.
Charles I. Elton, F.S.A.—ORIGINS OF ENGLISH HISTORY. Second edition,
revised. London, 1890.
John Rhys.—CELTIC BRITAIN. “Early Britain” Series. London, 1882.
H. d’Arbois de Jubainville.—INTRODUCTION À L’ÉTUDE DE LA LITTÉRATURE
CELTIQUE. Vol. I of the “Cours de Littérature celtique”. Paris,
1883.
_Contains, among other information, the fullest and most
authentic account of the druids and druidism._
GAELIC MYTHOLOGY
H. d’Arbois de Jubainville.—LE CYCLE MYTHOLOGIQUE IRLANDAIS ET LA
MYTHOLOGIE CELTIQUE. Vol. II of the “Cours de Littérature
celtique”. Paris, 1884. Translated into English as
THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE AND CELTIC MYTHOLOGY. With notes by
R. I. Best. Dublin, 1903.
_An account of Irish mythical history and of some of the greater
Gaelic gods. With chapters on some of the more striking phases
of Celtic belief._
Alfred Nutt.—THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, SON OF FEBAL. An Irish Historic
Legend of the eighth century. Edited by Kuno Meyer. With essays
upon the Happy Otherworld in Irish Myth and upon the Celtic
Doctrine of Rebirth. Vol. I—The Happy Otherworld. Vol. II—The
Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth. Grimm Library, Vols. IV and VI.
London, 1895-1897.
_Contains, among other notable contributions to the study of
Celtic mythology, an enquiry into the nature of the Tuatha Dé
Danann, a subject briefly treated in the same author’s_
THE FAIRY MYTHOLOGY OF SHAKESPEARE. No. 6 of “Popular Studies in
Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London, 1900.
Patrick Weston Joyce.—OLD CELTIC ROMANCES. Translated from the
Gaelic. London, 1894.
_A retelling in popular modern style of some of the more
important mythological and Fenian stories._
Lady Gregory.—GODS AND FIGHTING MEN. The story of the Tuatha Dé
Danann and of the Fianna of Erin. Arranged and put into English
by Lady Gregory. With a Preface by W. B. Yeats. London, 1904.
_Covers much the same ground as Mr. Joyce’s book, but in more
literary manner._
Alfred Nutt.—OSSIAN AND THE OSSIANIC LITERATURE. No. 3 of “Popular
Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London, 1899.
_A short survey of the literature connected with the Fenians._
John Gregorson Campbell, Minister of Tiree.—THE FIANS. Stories,
poems, and traditions of Fionn and his Warrior Band,
collected entirely from oral sources. With introduction and
bibliographical notes by Alfred Nutt. Vol. IV of “Waifs and
Strays of Celtic Tradition”. London, 1891.
_An account of the Fenians from the Scottish-Gaelic side._
Alfred Nutt.—CUCHULAINN THE IRISH ACHILLES. No. 8 of “Popular
Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London, 1900.
_A brief but excellent introduction to the Cuchulainn cycle._
Lady Gregory.—CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE. The story of the Men of the
Red Branch of Ulster. Arranged and put into English by Lady
Gregory. With a Preface by W. B. Yeats. London, 1902.
_A retelling in poetic prose of the tales connected with
Cuchulainn._
Eleanor Hull.—THE CUCHULLIN SAGA IN IRISH LITERATURE. Being a
collection of stories relating to the Hero Cuchullin, translated
from the Irish by various scholars. Compiled and edited with
introduction and notes by Eleanor Hull. With Map of Ancient
Ireland. Grimm Library, Vol. VIII. London, 1898.
_A series of Cuchulainn stories from the ancient Irish
manuscripts. More literal than Lady Gregory’s adaptation._
H. d’Arbois de Jubainville.—L’ÉPOPÉE CELTIQUE EN IRLANDE. Vol. V of
the “Cours de Littérature celtique”. Paris, 1892.
_A collection, translated into French, of some of the principal
stories of the Cuchulainn cycle, with various appendices upon
Gaelic mythological subjects._
L. Winifred Faraday, M.A.—THE CATTLE RAID OF CUALGNE (Tain Bo
Cuailgne). An old Irish prose-epic translated for the first time
from the Leabhar na h-Uidhri and the Yellow Book of Lecan. Grimm
Library, Vol. XVI. London, 1904.
_A strictly literal rendering of the central episode of the
Cuchulainn cycle._
BRITISH MYTHOLOGY
Ivor B. John.—THE MABINOGION. No. 11 of “Popular Studies in
Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London, 1901.
_A pamphlet introduction to the Mabinogion literature._
Lady Charlotte Guest.—THE MABINOGION. From the Welsh of the LLYFR
COCH O HERGEST (the Red Book of Hergest) in the library of Jesus
College, Oxford. Translated, with notes, by Lady Charlotte
Guest.
First edition. Text, translation, and notes, 3 vols., 1849.
Translation and notes only, 1 vol., 1877.
The Boys’ Mabinogion, 1881.
_Cheap editions of this classic have been lately issued. One may
obtain it in Mr. Nutt’s handsome little volume; as one of Dent’s
“Temple Classics”; or in the “Welsh Library”._
J. Loth.—LES MABINOGION, traduits en entier pour la première fois en
français avec un commentaire explicatif et des notes critiques.
2 vols. Vols. III and IV of De Jubainville’s “Cours de
Littérature celtique”. Paris, 1889.
_A more exact translation than that of Lady Guest, with notes
embodying more recent scholarship._
J. A. Giles, D.C.L.—OLD ENGLISH CHRONICLES, including ... Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s British History, Gildas, Nennius ... Edited, with
illustrative notes, by J. A. Giles, D.C.L. “Bohn’s Antiquarian
Library”. London, 1901.
_The most accessible edition of Geoffrey of Monmouth._
Sir Thomas Malory.—THE MORTE DARTHUR. Edited by Dr. H. Oskar Sommer.
Vol. I—the Text. Vol. II—Glossary, Index, &c. Vol. III—Study on
the Sources. London, 1889-1891.
_Vol. I of this, the best text of the Morte Darthur, can be
obtained separately._
Jessie L. Weston.—KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS. A survey of Arthurian
romance. No. 4 of “Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and
Folklore”. London, 1899.
Alfred Nutt.—THE LEGENDS OF THE HOLY GRAIL. No. 14 of “Popular
Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore”. London, 1902.
_Useful introductions to a more special study of Arthurian
literature._
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
John Rhys.—LECTURES ON THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION AS
ILLUSTRATED BY CELTIC HEATHENDOM. “The Hibbert Lectures for
1886.” London, 1898.
John Rhys.—STUDIES IN THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. Oxford, 1901.
_These two volumes are the most important attempts yet made
towards a scientific and comprehensive study of the Celtic
mythology._
CELTIC FAIRY AND FOLK LORE
GAELIC
T. Crofton Croker.—FAIRY LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS OF THE SOUTH OF
IRELAND.
_This book is one of the earliest, and, if not the most
scientific, perhaps the most attractive of the many collections
of Irish fairy-lore. Later compilations are Mr. William
Larminie’s_
_“West Irish Folktales and Romances”, and Mr. Jeremiah Curtin’s
“Hero Tales of Ireland”, “Myths and Folklore of Ireland”, and
“Tales of the Fairies, collected in South Munster”. On the
Scotch side, notice should be particularly taken of Campbell’s
“Popular Tales of the West Highlands” and the volumes entitled
“Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition”. All these books are
either recent or recently republished, and are merely selected
out of a large list of works, valuable and otherwise, upon this
lighter side of Celtic mythology._
BRITISH
John Rhys.—CELTIC FOLKLORE, WELSH AND MANX. 2 vols. Oxford, 1901.
Wirt Sikes.—BRITISH GOBLINS: Welsh Folklore, Fairy Mythology,
Legends, and Traditions. By Wirt Sikes, United States Consul for
Wales. London, 1880.
FOLKLORE COMPARATIVELY TREATED
George Laurence Gomme.—ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. “Modern Science”
Series. London, 1892.
_An attempt to assign apparently non-Aryan beliefs and customs
in the British islands to pre-Aryan inhabitants._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
Aberffraw, marriage of Branwen at, 289.
Abergeleu, sacred well at, 415.
Achill Island, folk-tales preserved at, 233.
Achilles, the Irish, 158.
Achren, battle of, 305, 306;
castle of, 320.
Acrisius, 236.
Adamnan’s _Life of Saint Columba_, 401, 417.
Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh, 11, 190.
Aebh, wife of Lêr, 142.
Aed, son of Lêr, 143.
Aedh, son of Miodhchaoin, 105.
Aeife, wife of Lêr, 142, 143, 144.
Aerfon, a title of the river Dee, 413.
_Æs Sídhe_, the “folk of the mounds”, the gods or fairies, 137, 168.
Africa, 19, 120, 274, 324.
Aganippus, king of the Franks, 382, 383.
Agriculture god of, British, 261;
a Gaulish, 274.
Ailbhe, foster-daughter of Bodb the Red, 142.
Aileach, grave of Nuada at, 122, 157.
Ailill, king of Connaught, 147, 154, 164, 165, 175, 179, 200.
Ailinn, love-story of, 188, 189.
Ailioll of Arran, 142.
Ainé, queen of the fairies of South Munster, 244-246.
Ainle, one of the sons of Usnach, 192, 193, 196.
Airceltrai, the _sídh_ of Ogma, 136, 157.
Airem, Eochaid, high king of Ireland, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 331,
332.
_Airem_, meaning of the word, 149, 333.
Airmid, daughter of Diancecht, 80, 81, 82, 110.
Alator, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Alaw, river in Anglesey, 294, 295.
Alba, 97, 104, 163, 178, 192, 193, 196, 382;
Deirdre’s farewell to, 194-195.
Albania, a name for Alba, 382.
Ale of Goibniu, 61.
Allobroges, 384, 385.
Amaethon, son of Dôn, British god of Agriculture, 261, 305, 308, 313,
316, 345;
fights against Brân in the battle of Achren, 305-308;
assists Kulhwch to win Olwen, 345.
Amergin, druid of the Milesians, 123-130.
Amesbury, “castle” of, 29.
Amlwch, stream of, 295.
Ana, see Anu.
Ancient Britons, who were the, 18-23.
Aneurin, a sixth-century British bard, 11, 295, 372.
Aneurin, the Book of, 11.
Anglesey, island of, 289, 294, 322, 388, 400.
Anglo-Saxon, our descent not entirely, 3.
Anguish, Anguissance, king of Ireland, 357.
Angus, Gaelic god of love and beauty, 56, 79, 80, 117, 136, 139-142,
147, 156, 157, 205, 211-214, 217, 218, 221, 240;
his attributes, 56;
his wooing of Caer, 140-142;
cheats his father, the Dagda, 139;
steals Etain from Mider, 147;
helps Diarmait and Grainne, 217, 218, 221;
matches his pigs against the Fenians, 213-214.
Anicetus, Sol Apollo, a Romano-British god, 275.
Animals, sacred, 406, 416, 417;
sacrifices of, 406, 411, 412, 413.
Anna, sister of Arthur, 323.
_Annals of the Four Masters_, 204.
Annwn, the British Otherworld, 254, 273, 278-282, 303, 308, 309, 318,
319, 321, 390, 391.
_Annwn, the Spoiling of_, a poem by Taliesin, 305, 306, 317, 366.
Anu, or Ana, a Gaelic goddess of prosperity and abundance, 50;
the “Paps of Ana”, 50;
still living in folklore as Aynia and Ainé, 245.
Aoibhinn, queen of the fairies of North Munster, 244.
Aoife, an Amazon defeated by Cuchulainn, 164, 176, 177.
Aphrodité, the British, 271, 388.
Apollo, the Gaelic, 62;
the British, 262;
a temple of, in Britain, 42, 325.
Apples, of the Garden of the Hesperides, 98, 99, 102;
in the Celtic Elysium, 98, 136.
Apple-tree of Ailenn, 189.
Aquitani, 22.
Aranon, son of Milé, 123.
Arawn, king of Annwn, 279, 280, 281, 306, 308, 309, 312, 315, 329, 357,
375.
Ardan, a son of Usnach, 192, 193, 196.
Ard Chein, 93.
Arddu, Black Stone of, 305.
Arês, 52.
_Argetlám_, 49, 78.
Arianrod, a British goddess, 261-265, 313, 317, 322, 364, 371;
her place in later legend taken by Arthur’s sister, 364.
Armagh, 136, 158.
Arnold, Matthew, 3, 16, 356.
Arran, Isle of, 60, 142, 415.
Art, the “Lonely”, king of Tara, 189, 202.
Artaius, Mercurius, a Gaulish god, 274.
Arthur, 6, 8, 14, 155, 202, 222, 246, 258, 259, 271, 273, 274, 276, 296,
304, 306, 311, 312-320, 322, 323, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330-343, 348,
349, 351-360, 362, 364-366, 368, 371, 374-376, 392, 407;
the mythical and the historical, 313, 314;
assumes the attributes of Gwydion, 316;
the Spoiling of Annwn by, 319-322;
becomes head of the British Pantheon, 312-313;
wins Olwen for Kulhwch, 343-353;
in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History_, 374, 375;
leads the Wild Hunt, 392.
_Arthurian Legend, Studies in the_, Professor Rhys’s, 148, 158, 255,
257, 258, 269, 272, 274, 278, 285, 313, 314, 316, 321, 322, 323, 326,
327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 358, 359, 360, 364, 367, 368, 369,
370, 383, 387, 389.
Artur, son of Nemed, 274.
Aryans, 21, 31, 32, 247;
common traditions of the, 32, 176, 189;
Aryan languages, 21.
Astarte, worshipped at Corbridge, 275.
Astolat, 362.
Athens, 153.
Athlone, 175, 216.
Augusel, a king of Scotland, 375.
Aurelius, a British king, 325.
Avallach, see Avallon.
Avallon, a British god of the Underworld, 329, 359;
Isle of, 374, and see Avilion.
Avebury, the “castle” of, 29.
Avilion, 133, 315, 329, 332, 334, 335, 390, 394.
Aynia, a fairy queen of Ulster, 245.
Babylon, 178.
Badb, a Gaelic war-goddess, 52, 53, 72, 117, 119, 245;
the name often used generically, 53;
description of a, 53.
“Badger in the bag”, the game of, 285, 303.
Badon, battle of, 338.
Baile, love-story of, 188-189.
Baile’s Strand, 186, 188.
Bajocassus, Temple of the sun-god Belinus at, 276.
Bala lake, 265.
Balan, 276, 357, 364.
Balder, 33.
Balgatan, a mountain near Cong, 73.
Balin, 276, 357, 358, 364.
Ballymagauran, village of, 38.
Ballymote, Book of, 10, 38, 123, 138, 229, 231.
Ballysadare, 75.
Balor, a king of the Fomors, 48-49, 50, 79, 83, 84, 90, 112, 113, 120,
233-239, 269, 324, 341, 345, 371;
his evil eye, 49;
kills Nuada and Macha, 112;
is blinded by Lugh, 112;
tales of, in modern folklore, 233-239.
“Balor’s Hill”, 69, 90.
Ban, king of Benwyk, 356, 360, 362.
Banba, a goddess representing Ireland, 125;
an ancient name of Ireland, 126, 153.
_Banshee_, meaning of the word, 137.
Baoisgne, Clann, 209, 217.
Bards, 32, 42.
Bardsey Island, 326.
Barrow, river, how it got its name, 62.
Barrule, South, 242.
Barry, the, 246.
Basque race, 19.
Bath, 228, 275, 276, 338, 381.
Bathurst’s _Roman Antiquities in Lydney Park_, 254.
Battle of Achren, 305;
of Badon, 338;
of Camlan, 222, 315, 334, 337, 375, 376;
of Clontarf, 53;
of Gabhra, 222, 223, 225, 315;
of Mag Rath, 52;
of Moytura Northern, 107-117, 407;
of Moytura Southern, 72-75;
of the Trees, 123, 305-308.
Bayeux, temple of Belinus at, 276.
Bean, curious passage relating to the, 306, 307.
Becuma of the Fair Skin, 202.
Bedivere, Sir, 6.
Bedwini, Arthur’s bishop, 337.
Bedwyr, a follower of Arthur, 343, 344, 349.
Belacatudor, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Belgæ, 23, 76.
Beli, a British god, 120, 252, 260, 268, 295, 313, 335-376.
Belinus, a Celtic sun-god, 276, 358, 364;
as a king of Britain, 276, 384, 385.
Belisama, the Latin name of the Ribble, 413.
Beltaine, the Gaelic May-day, 41, 65, 287, 406, 408, 409, 410.
Berber race, 19.
Beth, an Iberian god, 64.
Bettws-y-coed, 7.
Beuno, Saint, sacrifices of cattle to, 413.
Big-Knife, Osla, 352, 353.
Bilé, father of the Gaelic gods and men, 51, 65, 120, 121, 122, 252.
Billingsgate, origin of name, 385.
Birds, of Rhiannon, the, 273, 294, 296;
Dechtiré and her maidens changed into, 160.
Black Book of Caermarthen, the, 11, 255, 311, 312, 335.
Bladud, mythical founder of Bath, 381.
Blathnat, daughter of Mider, 55, 179.
Bliant, Castle, 358.
Blodeuwedd, wife of Lleu Llaw Gyffes, 265, 266, 268.
Blood-fines among the Celts, 30;
blood-fine paid for Cian, 94-97.
Boann, wife of the Dagda, 55, 139, 141.
Boar, wild, of Bengulben, 221;
the Boar Trwyth, 347-353.
Bodb the Red, son of the Dagda, 60, 133, 140, 141-145, 157, 205, 208;
is made king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 140;
his swineherd, 164;
marries his daughter Sadb to Finn, 208.
Bogles, 393, 403, 405.
Bonfires in Celtic ritual, 409-412.
Bordeaux, Sir Huon of, 7.
_Boreadæ_, 42.
Borrach, 193, 195, 200.
Bors, king of Gaul, 360.
Bors, Sir, 368, 369.
Boyne, river, 55, 56, 129, 136, 137, 158, 210, 213, 230.
Brahmans, 32.
Bran, son of Febal, an Irish king, 134, 135, 224.
Bran, Finn’s favourite hound, 213.
Brân, British god of the Underworld, 258, 271-272, 276, 289-294, 296,
306, 308, 313, 328, 329, 331, 338, 356, 357, 360, 364, 366, 384, 386,
387, 389, 394;
fights the battle of Achren, 306;
becomes the “Wonderful Head”, 296;
in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History_, 384, 385;
in the Morte Darthur, 356, 357;
introduces Christianity into Britain, 386.
Brandegore, King, 272, 356.
Brandegoris, King, 356.
Brandel, Brandiles, Sir, 356.
Branwen, British goddess of love, 271, 289-294, 387.
Brazil, 133.
Brea, ford of, Finn killed at the, 222.
Breasal’s Island, 133.
Brécilien, Forest of, 361.
Bregon, 121.
Brennius, a mythical British king, 5, 276, 384, 385.
Brennus, 385.
Bress, son of Elathan, a Fomor, 50, 78-80, 82, 83, 90, 108-111, 115-116,
269;
his beauty, 50;
marries Brigit, and is made king over the Tuatha Dé Danann, 78;
is forced to abdicate, 83;
makes war on the Tuatha Dé Danann, 83;
is defeated and captured, 115-116.
Brian, son of Tuirenn, 90, 91, 92, 94, 99-102, 103, 105, 106.
Briareus, 326.
“Bridge of the Cliff”, the, 163.
Bridget, Saint, 7, 56, 228.
Brigantes, a North British tribe, 277.
Brigantia, a British Minerva, 277.
Brigindo, a Gaulish goddess, 277.
Brigit, Gaelic goddess of fire, poetry, and the hearth, 56, 78, 109,
110, 228, 269, 277, 387;
is married to Bress, 78;
is canonized as Saint Bridget, 228, 387.
Bri Leith, the _sídh_ of Mider, 136, 148, 152, 332.
Brindled ox, the, 320.
Britain, ancient names of, 292, 323.
_British Goblins_, Mr. Wirt Sikes’, 389, 393, 415.
Britons, ancient, who were the, 18-23.
BRITONUM, HISTORIA. See Historia, Geoffrey, Nennius.
Brittany, 24.
Briun, son of Bethar, 113.
Brownies, 248, 393, 403.
Brude, king of the Picts, 401.
Brugh-na-boyne, 136, 139, 160, 213, 214.
Brutus, 121, 374.
Brythons, 21, 22, 23, 24, 35.
Buarainech, father of Balor, 48.
Buinne, the Ruthless Red, son of Fergus, 193, 196, 197.
Bull, the Brown, of Cualgne, 164, 165, 168, 175;
the White-horned, of Connaught, 165, 175.
Bwbachod, 393.
Cadbury, the supposed site of Camelot, 335.
Cader Idris, 305.
Caemhoc, Saint, 146.
Caer, daughter of Etal Ambuel, 141.
Caer Arianrod, 252, 264.
Caer Badus, 381.
Caer Bannawg, 367.
Caer Colvin, 275.
Caer Dathyl, 308, 310.
Caer Golud, 320.
Caer Llyr, 270.
Caer London, 376.
Caer Myrddin, 324.
Caer Ochren, 320.
Caer Pedryvan, 319, 356, 367.
Caer Rigor, 319.
Caer Sarrlog, 386.
Caer Sidi, 319, 321, 322, 368.
Caer Vandwy, 257, 320.
Caer Vedwyd, 319.
Caer Wydyr, 320.
Caesar, Julius, 5, 8, 18, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 35, 38, 119, 204, 376,
399, 412, 417.
Cairbré, son of Cormac, 206, 222, 315.
Cairn of Octriallach, 110.
Cairpré, son of Ogma, bard of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 58, 82, 83, 87, 139.
Calais, 383.
Calatin the wizard, 171, 172;
daughters of Calatin, 178-181.
Caledonians, 22.
Camelot, 314, 335.
Camlan, battle of, 222, 315, 334, 337, 375, 376.
Camulodunum, the Roman name of Colchester, 276.
Camulus, a Gaulish god of war and the sky, 51, 204, 275, 323.
Caoilte, a Fenian hero, 63, 146, 208, 212, 217, 222, 227, 246.
Caractacus, Caratacus, 271, 386, 387.
Caradawc of the Strong Arms, son of Brân, 271, 291, 295, 338, 386, 389.
Carbonek, 357, 367.
Carmarthen, 324.
Carnac, 114.
Carnarvon, 310.
Carrowmore, 114.
Cassibellawn, Cassivelaunus, 376.
“Cassiopeia’s Chair”, 252.
Castell y Moch, 310.
Castle of Arianrod, 252, 264.
Castle Bliant, 358.
Castle of Gwydion, 253.
Castle Hacket, 244.
Castle of Revelry, 366, 367.
Castle of Riches, 367.
“Castles”, Celtic, 29.
Caswallawn, son of Beli, 295.
_Cath Godeu._ See the “Battle of the Trees”.
Cathbad, druid of Emain Macha, 161, 162, 174, 178, 181, 190, 198, 200.
Cathubodva, a Gaulish war-goddess, 276.
Cauldrons in Celtic mythology; the Dagda’s, 54, 71, 366;
of Ogyrvran the Giant, 366;
of Diwrnach the Gael, 346, 349;
cauldron given by Brân to Matholwch, 290, 293, 366;
cauldron stolen from Mider by Cuchulainn, 176, 366;
cauldron kept in Annwn by the chief of Hades, 273, 319, 366;
the legend of the Holy Grail founded upon Celtic myths of a cauldron
of fertility and inspiration, 365-370.
Celtæ, 22.
Celtic mythical literature the forerunner of mediæval romance, 184.
Celtic strain in modern Englishmen, 3.
Celts, the, 19, 20, 21, 25-44, 70, 119, 121, 124, 136, 138, 261, 262,
278, 283, 329, 404, 407, 412.
Cemmes, a parish in Pembrokeshire, 394.
_Cenn Cruaich_, 41.
_Cermait_, _i.e._ “Honey-mouth”, a title of Ogma, 57.
Cethé, son of Diancecht, 62, 90.
Cethlenn, wife of Balor, 90.
“Chain, Lugh’s”, 62;
“chief’s”, 93.
Champion of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 59, 276;
Champions of the Red Branch, see Red Branch;
“The Champion’s Prophecy”, 201.
Chariots, war, of the Celts, 25, 27, 28.
Charon, 403.
Chaucer, 2, 12.
Chess, Mider’s game with Eochaid Airem, 149;
Ossian’s game with Finn, 220.
Children of Dôn, Nudd, and Llyr, 252.
Christianity, introduced into Britain by Brân, 386, 387;
conquers Druidism, 400, 401;
adopts harmless heathen cults, 416, 417.
Cian, son of Diancecht, 62, 63, 78, 84, 90-94, 106, 235-237, 239, 269,
345, 371.
Ciaran, Saint, 10.
Cichol the Footless, a Fomor, 66.
Cilgwri, the Ousel of, 349.
Clann Baoisgne, 209, 217, 222:
Clan Chattan, 415.
Clann Morna, 209, 211, 218, 232.
Clann Neamhuinn, 216, 218.
Clann Ronan, 218.
_Clas Myrddin_, an old name for Britain, 323.
Claudius, Roman emperor, 387.
Cliodna, fairy queen of Munster, 244.
Clontarf, battle of, 53.
Clûd, goddess of the river Clyde, 284, 285.
Cluricanes, 248.
_Cnoc Miodhchaoin_, 97.
Cnucha, battle of, 209.
Coblynau, 393.
Cocidius, a war-god worshipped by a Dacian colony in Cumberland, 275.
Coed Helen, 310.
Coel, a mythical king of Britain, 275, 323.
_Coir Anmann_, the “Choice of Names”, an old Irish tract, 50, 54, 61,
245, 270.
Colchester, 276.
“Cole, Old King”, 276.
Collen, Saint, 389, 390, 391.
Columba, Saint, 12, 240, 401, 417.
_Comes Britanniæ_, 313.
_Comes Littoris Saxonici_, 314.
Comyn, Michael, a Gaelic poet, 223.
Conairé the Great, high king of Ireland, 152, 157.
Conall the Victorious, 163, 177, 183, 192, 193, 197, 198.
Conan, a Fenian hero, 209, 218.
Conann, son of Febar, a king of the Fomors, 67.
Conchobar, king of Ulster, 29, 147, 154-156, 158, 160-162, 166-168, 173,
174, 179, 185, 190-192, 193, 195-198, 200, 201, 204, 227;
his treachery towards the sons of Usnach, 192-200;
his tragical death, 155.
Condates, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Cong, village of, 73, 76.
Conlaoch, son of Cuchulainn, 177, 178.
Conn the Hundred Fighter, 201, 202.
Conn, son of Lêr, 143.
Conn, son of Miodhchaoin, 105.
Connaught, 73, 75, 76, 165, 168.
Connla, son of Conn the Hundred Fighter, 202.
_Contemporary Review_, the, 241.
Contrary Head, 242.
Conway, river, 262.
Cooking-places of the Fenians, 206.
Cooking-spits of the women of Fianchuivé, 96;
at Tara, 98.
Cooley, see Cualgne.
Coranians, a mythical tribe of dwarfs, 377-379.
Corb, an Iberian god, 64.
Corbridge, 275.
Corc, son of Miodhchaoin, 105.
Corca-Duibhne, 70.
Corca-Oidce, 70.
Cordeilla, daughter of Leir, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History_,
381-383.
Cordelia, daughter of Shakespeare’s _King Lear_, 259, 381.
Coritiacus, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Cormac, “the Magnificent”, 201, 202, 203, 206, 215, 222, 315.
Cornwall, 3, 23, 294, 296, 327, 334, 353, 382, 384.
Coronation Stone, the, 71.
Corrib, see Lough Corrib.
Corspitium, see Corbridge.
Corwenna, mother of Brennius and Belinus, 385.
Count of Britain, 313;
of the Saxon Shore, 314.
Court of Dôn, the, 252, 317.
Cow, Balor’s Gray, 235, 236, 237, 240;
Mider’s three cows, 57, 176.
Cow, Book of the Dun, 10, 12, 14, 37, 156, 164, 175, 184, 202, 227.
Credné, the bronze-worker of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 85, 86, 109.
Crete, 153.
Creudylad, daughter of the British sky-god Lludd, 256, 258, 259, 332,
348, 381, 407.
Criminal Resolutions of Britain, the Three, 334.
_Crom Croich_, 40.
_Cromm Cruaich_, 38, 39, 41, 154, 402.
Cronos, 63, 65, 326.
“Croppies’ Grave”, the, at Tara, 72.
Cruind, the river, 165.
Cu, son of Diancecht, 62, 90.
Cualgne, a province of Ulster, 164, 165, 175.
Cuan, head of the Munster Fenians, 218.
Cuchulainn, chief hero of the Ultonians, 10, 11, 14, 27, 154, 155, 156,
158-188, 192, 193, 202, 204, 210, 217, 223, 227, 274, 366;
is the son of Lugh, 159-160;
obvious solar character of, 158-159;
how he obtained his name, 160-161;
fights in the Táin Bó Chuailgne, 164-175;
his wooing of Emer, 184-186;
his raid upon the Other World, 175-176;
his death, 183;
is raised from the dead by Saint Patrick, 227.
Culann, chief smith of the Ultonians, 161;
“Culann’s Hound”, 161, 166.
“Culture-King”, 153.
Cumhal, father of Finn, 204, 209, 210, 275.
Cunedda, a North British king, 373.
Cunobelinus, king of Britain, 387.
Curoi, king of Munster, 147, 154, 179.
Custennin, 343, 344.
Cuthbert, Saint, bulls sacrificed to, 413.
Cwm Cawlwyd, the Owl of, 349.
_Cwm Annwn_, the “Hounds of Hell”, 391, 392.
Cwy, 320.
Cymbeline, Shakespeare’s, 387.
Cymri, 255, 373.
Dagda, the, Gaelic god of the Earth, 54, 78, 79, 87, 98, 107-109, 116,
117, 122, 132, 135, 136, 138-141, 156, 157, 211, 213, 228, 230, 240,
243, 269, 346, 366;
his dress, arms, and harp, 54;
his porridge-feast, 108;
is cheated by his son Angus, 139;
resigns the kingship of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 140;
his last appearance, 157.
Daire of Cualgne, owner of the Brown Bull, 165.
Dalân, druid of Eochaid Airem, 392.
Danes, the, 230.
Danu, the mother of the Gaelic gods, the same as Anu, _q.v._, 44, 50,
51, 70, 245, 252, 407.
Dart, river, 414.
Dartmoor, 392.
Darvha, Lake, 143-145.
Deaf Valley, the, 180.
Dechtiré, mother of Cuchulainn, 156, 159, 160, 181.
Dé Danann, see Tuatha Dé Danann.
Dee, river, 413.
Deimne, the first name of Finn, 210.
Deirdre, 190-200;
Deirdre’s Farewell to Alba, 194-195;
Deirdre’s Lament over the Sons of Usnach, 199-200.
Demetia, Roman province of, 273, 278.
Demetrius, an early traveller in Britain, 326.
“Demon of the air”, Aeife changed into a, 145.
Derivla, a sacred well in the island of Inniskea, 415.
Desmond, fourth Earl of, nicknamed “the Magician”, 245.
“Destiny, laying a”, a Celtic custom, 262-265, 340.
Devon, 312, 392.
Devwy, the dales of, 320.
_Dialogue of the Elders_, the, 205, 222, 404;
Dialogues of Patrick and Ossian, 226-227.
Diancecht, the Gaelic god of medicine, 61, 62, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85,
86, 90, 110, 141, 232, 269;
makes a silver hand for Nuada, 78;
kills his son Miach, 81-82;
presides over the “Spring of Health”, 110;
prescriptions of Diancecht, 232.
Diarmait O’Duibhne, the Fenian Adonis, 209, 212, 215-221, 315.
Dinadan, Sir, 328.
Dinas Dinllev, 264.
Dinas Emrys, 324, 381.
Dingwall, Registers of the Presbytery of, 412.
_Dinnsenchus_, 38, 40, 132, 154.
Dio Cassius, 387.
Diodorus Siculus, 41, 42, 325.
Dionysus, rites of, 410.
Dis Pater, 51, 120, 252, 383.
Dissull the Giant, 348-349.
Diwrnach the Gael, the cauldron of, 346, 349.
Dobhar, king of Sicily, 96, 98, 102, 103.
Doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 36, 37.
Domnann, Fir, _i.e._ men of Domnu. See Fir Domnann.
Domnu, a goddess, mother of the Fomors, 48, 70, 112;
meaning of the name, 48;
gods of Domnu, 48, 70;
men of Domnu, 70.
Dôn, the British equivalent of the Gaelic Danu, 44, 252, 260, 268, 269,
273, 295, 308, 310, 316;
euhemerized into a king of Dublin, 372-373.
Donn, son of Milé, 126-131, 246.
“Donn’s House”, 246.
Dormarth, the hound of Gwyn son of Nudd, 257.
Dowth, 137-138.
Dragon, Red, of Britain, 378;
White, of the Saxons, 378.
“Dragon-mouth”, a lake called, 141.
_Dream of Rhonabwy_, the, 260, 312, 337, 338.
Drogheda, 137.
Drowes, river, 110.
Drudwyn, the whelp of Greid the son of Eri, 347.
Druidism, the religion of the Celts, 35, 43;
possibly non-Aryan in origin, 36;
in Gaul, 34;
derived from Britain, 35;
suppressed by the Romans, 399, 400.
Druids, 18, 33-37, 84, 111, 115, 151, 179, 180, 182, 188, 202, 399-401,
411, 412, 417;
origin of the name, 33;
in Gaul, 34;
in Britain, 35;
human sacrifices of the druids, 37, 412;
the druids of Brude, king of the Picts, 401.
Drumcain, an old name for Tara, 126.
Dublin, 66, 372.
Duke of the Britains, the, 313.
Dulachan, 247, 248.
_Dul-dauna_, the, 237.
Dun Cow, Book of the. See Cow.
Dundalk, 177.
Dundealgan, 177, 181, 188, 189.
Dún Scaith, 175-176.
_Dux Britanniarum._ See Duke of the Britains.
Dwynwen, Saint, 388.
Dyfan, Saint, 386.
Dyfed, or Demetia, a province of South Wales, 273, 278, 279, 281, 282,
286, 298-301, 303, 304, 309, 310, 394.
Dylan, a British god, 261, 262, 322, 335, 360, 364, 371.
Eagle, of Gwern Abwy, 350;
Lleu changed into an, 266-268.
Earl Gerald, 245.
Easal, king of the Golden Pillars, 96, 103.
Eber, son of Milé, 129-131, 146, 153.
Eber Scot, 120.
Eboracum, Roman name of York, 275.
Edeyrn, son of Nudd, 260.
Edinburgh, the Advocates’ Library at, 11.
Eel, the Morrígú takes the shape of an, 169;
transformation of the rival swineherds into eels, 165.
Egypt, 120.
Eigen, the first female saint in Britain, 386.
Eildon Hills, Arthur living beneath the, 335.
Elaine, 362.
Elathan, a king of the Fomors, 49, 50, 78, 83, 90, 116, 269.
Elayne, 358.
Elberich, 392.
_Elders, Dialogue of the._ See _Dialogue_.
Elen Lwyddawg, wife of Myrddin, 323, 362.
Eleutherius, Pope, 386.
Ellylion, the Welsh elves, 393.
Elton’s _Origins of English History_, 6, 8, 25, 26, 70, 228, 327, 413.
Elves, 393.
Elysium, Celtic. See Other World, Celtic.
Emain Macha, the capital of ancient Ulster, 28, 29, 158, 160, 161, 162,
164, 173, 174, 179, 180, 183, 188, 192, 194, 196, 200, 201, 204.
Emer, wife of Cuchulainn, 162, 164, 177, 184-188.
_Emer, the Wooing of_, an old Irish saga, 28, 29, 37, 184.
Emperor, a title given in Welsh legend to Arthur, 314, 338.
Emrys, a title of Myrddin, 324, 329, 360, 369.
Englishmen, Celtic strain in, 3.
“Entertaining of the Noble Head”, the, 296.
Eochaid, son of Erc, king of the Fir Bolgs, 69, 73, 74, 75.
Eochaid Airem, see Airem.
Eochaid O’Flynn, an Irish poet, 231.
Erc, king of Tara, 179, 182, 183.
Eremon, son of Milé, and first king of Ireland, 40, 129, 130, 131, 132,
146, 153, 154.
Erin, 97, 98, 99, 102, 104, 126, 193, 225, 231;
meaning of the word, 126.
Eriu, a goddess representing Ireland, 125, 126, 128, 129.
Eros, the Gaelic, 56, 140.
See Angus.
Essyllt, wife of March, or Mark. See Iseult.
Etain, wife of Mider, 57, 139, 147-152, 154, 224, 331-333.
Etair, a vassal of King Conchobar, 147.
Etal Ambuel, father of Caer, 141.
Etan, wife of Ogma, 62, 87, 239.
Ethnea, a name of Ethniu in modern folklore, 238.
Ethniu, daughter of Balor, 62, 79, 84, 90, 269, 371.
_Ethnology in Folklore_, Mr. G. L. Gomme’s, 35, 69, 412, 413, 414, 416.
Etirun, “an idol of the Britons”, 294.
Etive, Loch, 193.
Etruscans, the, 20; Etruscan mythology in modern Italian folklore, 403.
Ettard, 358.
_Ettarre, Pelleas and_, Tennyson’s idyll of, 358.
Euhemerism of Gaelic gods, 227-230;
of British gods, 372-389.
Euskarian race, 19.
Evelake, King, 359.
Evnissyen, son of Penardun, 290, 292, 293.
Failinis, the hound of the king of Ioruaidhé, 96, 97, 104.
_Fairie Queene_, Spenser’s, 7, 389.
Fairies, the, 4, 137, 242-248, 389-393, 403, 404, 409, 418;
the old gods are remembered as “fairies”, 243-248, 389-393;
two varieties of fairy in folklore, 403;
Irish and Welsh fairies identical in nature, 404;
king of the Irish fairies, 136;
king of the Welsh fairies, 392;
size of the fairies, 404;
fairy money, 377;
fairy food, 391;
the “fairy hills”, 135-139, 394.
Fal, the stone of. See Stone of Destiny.
“Falcon of May”, 369;
“Falcon of Summer”, 369.
Falga, Isle of, 57, 175.
Falias, a city of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 71, 72.
Fand, wife of Manannán son of Lêr, 186-188, 202.
Faraday, Miss, her translation of the _Táin Bó Chuailgné_, 164.
Fata Morgana, 395.
Fate of the Children of Lêr, 142-146;
of the Sons of Tuirenn, 90-105;
of the Sons of Usnach, 190-200.
Fea, a war-goddess, wife of Nuada, 52.
“Feast of Age”, Manannán’s, 61, 98, 143.
Feast of Lugh, see Lugnassad.
Feast of St. John, 409.
Fec’s Pool, on the Boyne, 210.
Fedlimid, vassal to King Conchobar, 190.
Fenians, the, 11, 17, 155, 201, 203-209, 211-215, 217-219, 220-223, 225,
226, 314, 315;
real or mythical, 203-205;
origin of, 206;
duties of, 206;
accomplishments of, 207;
chief heroes of, 207-209;
destruction of, at the battle of Gabhra, 222;
stories of, 209-226;
the Fenian sagas possibly non-Aryan, 70.
Fenius Farsa, 120.
Ferdiad, a warrior slain by Cuchulainn, 172, 173, 184.
Fergus, son of Finn, 208.
Fergus, son of Roy, an Ulster hero, 14, 166, 167, 170, 171, 175,
192-196, 198, 200.
Fergusson, Dr. James, 76, 114, 137, 138.
Festivals, Celtic solar or agricultural, 405-412.
Ffordd Elen, 324.
Fiacha, son of Conchobar, 197, 198.
Fiachadh, king of Ireland, 206.
Fiachra, son of Lêr, 143.
Fianchuivé, submarine island of, 97, 104.
_Fianna Eirinn_, see Fenians.
Figol, son of Mamos, druid of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 90.
Findabair, daughter of Medb, 168.
Findias, a city of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 71, 72.
Finn mac Coul (Cumhail), 4, 11, 16, 37, 146, 155, 201, 203, 204, 206,
207, 208, 209, 210-218, 220-222, 224, 226, 246, 254, 274, 314, 315;
his upbringing and boy-feats, 209-210;
reorganizes the Fenians, 211;
is killed at the Ford of Brea, 222;
is reborn as Mongan, an Ulster chief, 37;
is he historical or mythical, 204;
parallels between Finn and Arthur, 314-315.
Finn mac Gorman, compiler of the Book of Leinster, 10.
Finn the Seer, 210.
Finola, daughter of Lêr, 143.
Finvarra, king of the Irish fairies, 243, 244, 405.
Fiona Macleod, Miss, 241.
Fionn, see Finn.
Fionnbharr, the _sídh_ of Meadha assigned to, 136;
his appearance in the Fenian sagas, 212;
becomes fairy king of Ireland, 243.
Fir Bolgs, an Iberian tribe, 68-70, 72-78, 114, 125, 229, 230, 407.
Fir Domnann, an Iberian tribe, 68-70, 76, 172.
Fir Gaillion, an Iberian tribe, 68-70, 76.
Fish, sacred, 416.
Fly, Etain changed into a, 147;
Lugh takes the form of a, 159;
a sacred, 416.
_Folklore, Ethnology in._ See _Ethnology_.
Folk-tales, Irish, 233-240; Welsh, 371.
Fomors, Gaelic deities of Death, Darkness, and the Sea, 11, 48-50, 67,
70, 76, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90, 98, 107-117, 120, 122, 157, 205, 225,
229, 230, 252, 269, 274, 327, 406;
meaning of the name, 48;
their war with the Tuatha Dé Danann, 107-117;
are the Lochlannach in the Fenian sagas, 205.
Forgall the Wily, father of Emer, 162, 163, 164, 184.
Fotla, a goddess representing Ireland, 125;
an ancient name of Ireland, 126.
“Four Ancient Books of Wales”, the, 11, 15.
See also Skene.
“Four Branches of the Mabinogi”, the, 14, 15, 251, 278, 289, 312, 355.
“Four-cornered castle”, the, 366.
Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, 33.
“Frivolous Battles of Britain, The Three”, 334.
Frogs, sacred, 416.
Fury, Great, and Little Fury, two swords of Manannán, 60, 217.
Gabhra, battle of, 222, 223, 225, 315.
Gabius, a Roman consul, 385.
Gabriel Hounds, the, 392.
_Gae bolg_, Cuchulainn’s spear, 170, 173, 178.
Gaels, 68, 69, 70, 71, 76, 93, 108, 119, 124, 149, 183, 203, 204, 230,
357.
Gaiar, son of Manannán, 202.
Gaillion, Fir. See Fir Gaillion.
Galahad, Sir, 362, 368, 369.
_Galan-mai_, Welsh spring festival, 408.
_Gan Ceanach_, 247.
Garden of the Hesperides, the, 95, 98, 99.
Gargantua, Rabelais’, 386.
Gast Rhymri’s cubs, 347, 349.
Gaul, 22, 274, 276, 383, 384, 385.
Gauls, the, 22, 23, 119, 230.
Gavida, 238, 239.
Gavidjeen Go, 235.
Gawain, Sir, 360, 363, 364, 369, 375.
_Geasa_, taboos among the Irish Celts, 177, 195, 216.
_Genii locorum_, 43.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 9, 121, 251, 254, 259, 276, 323, 324, 330, 336,
372, 373-376, 381, 384.
George’s Hill, Saint, 29.
Geraint, 312, 387.
Gildas, a British writer, 400.
“Glamour, the Realm of”, an old name for Dyfed, 279.
Glamour put on Cuchulainn by Cathbad, 178;
by the daughters of Calatin, 179, 180;
put on the sons of Usnach, 198;
on Arianrod, 264, 265;
on Dyfed, 298.
Glass Castle, of the Fomors, 67;
a synonym for the other world, 320, 367.
Glastonbury, 260, 329.
Glastonbury Tor, 272, 390.
Glenn Faisi, 130.
Glora, Isle of, 144, 145, 146.
Glyn Cûch, 279, 281.
Gobhan Saer, the, 232, 235, 240.
Goibniu, Gaelic god of smithcraft, 61, 84, 86, 98, 109, 110, 141, 231,
232, 238, 239, 261, 371;
forges the weapons of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 61, 109;
kills Ruadan, 110;
his ale, 61;
survives in tradition as the Gobhan Saer, _q.v._;
as a character in folk-tale, 232-240.
See Gavida and Gavidjeen Go.
Goidel, a mythical ancestor of the Irish, 120.
Goidels, the, 21, 22, 23, 24, 35.
Golden bough, the mistletoe the, 33.
Golden Pillars, king of the. See Easal.
Goll, 209, 211, 222.
Gomme, Mr. G. L., 20, 35, 69, 412, 413, 414, 416.
Gonorilla, daughter of Leir, 381, 382.
Gore, 357. See Gower.
Goreu, Arthur’s cousin, 317, 338.
Gorias, a city of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 71, 72, 97.
Govannan son of Dôn, British god of Smithcraft, 261, 313, 316, 345;
kills his nephew Dylan, 261;
assists Kulhwch, 345.
Gower regarded as part of the other world, 272, 356, 357, 373.
Grail, the Holy, 2, 7, 273, 357-359, 365-370.
Grainne, 209, 215-221, 315.
_Graves of the Warriors, the Verses of the_, 272, 311, 334.
Gray of Macha, Cuchulainn’s horse, 174, 181, 182, 183.
Greece, 1, 20, 68, 99, 100, 101, 155.
Greek mythology, ancient, 1, 2, 4;
modern, 403.
“Green Meadows of Enchantment”, the, 394.
Gregory, Lady, 159, 201.
Greid, the son of Eri, 347, 350.
Gresholm Island, 294, 356, 394.
_Grianainech_, the “sunny-faced”, an epithet of Ogma, 59.
Grianan Aileach, grave of Nuada at. See Aileach.
Gronw Pebyr, 265, 266, 268.
Guanius, Gwyn as a mythical king of the Huns, 375.
Guest, Lady Charlotte, 253, 255, 268, 278, 289, 295, 298, 308, 317, 337,
339, 340, 348, 350, 369, 377.
Guinevere, Arthur’s queen, 315, 334, 357, 359, 365, 375, 407.
Gunvasius, king of the Orkneys, 376.
Gurgiunt Brabtruc, king of Britain, 385.
Guyon, Sir, in Spenser’s _Fairie Queene_, 7, 389.
Gwalchaved, 369.
Gwalchmei, 323, 330, 334, 335, 338, 343, 360, 364, 368, 369, 375.
Gwales, island of, 294, 296, 356.
Gwarthegyd, son of Kaw, 337.
Gwawl, son of Clûd, Pwyll’s rival for Rhiannon, 284, 285, 303, 362, 380.
Gweddw, owner of a magic horse, 347.
Gweir, a form of the name Gwydion, _q.v._, 319, 321, 322.
Gwenbaus, Sir, 359.
Gwern, son of Matholwch and Branwen, 291, 292, 293.
Gwinas, Sir, 359.
Gwlgawd Gododin, the drinking-horn of, 346.
Gwragedd Annwn, 393.
Gwrhyr, a companion of Arthur, 343, 349, 350, 351.
Gwri of the Golden Hair, 287.
Gwrnach the Giant, 346, 348.
Gwyar, wife of Lludd, 323, 338, 369.
Gwyddneu Garanhir, his dialogue with Gwyn, 255-258;
his magic basket, 346.
Gwyddolwyn Gorr, the magic bottles of, 346.
Gwydion son of Dôn, the British Mercury, 260-268, 305, 306, 308-311,
316, 317, 322, 327, 330, 335, 358, 360, 364, 371, 372, 373, 377;
druid of the gods, 260;
father of the sun-god, 261;
fights the “Battle of the Trees”, 306;
is the British equivalent of the Teutonic Woden, 260;
his place taken in later myth by Arthur, 316.
_Gwyl Awst_, the Welsh August festival, 409.
Gwyllion, 393.
Gwyn son of Nudd, British god of the Other World, 7, 254-259, 272, 313,
315, 329, 332, 348, 359, 365, 371, 372, 376, 389-393, 405, 407;
attributes of, 255;
his dialogue with Gwyddneu Garanhir, 255-258;
contends with Gwyn for Lludd’s daughter Creudylad, 259;
is made warder of Hades, 254-255;
prominent in the Arthur legend, 359;
becomes king of the Welsh fairies, 392;
his interview with Saint Collen, 389-391.
Gwynas, Sir, 359.
Gwyngelli, a companion of Arthur, 352.
Gwynhwyvar, 315, 326, 331-333, 334, 364.
See Guinevere.
Gwynn Mygddwn, the horse of Gweddw, 347.
Gwynwas, a form of the name Gwyn, _q.v._, 332, 359.
Gwyrd Gwent, father of one of the three Gwynhwyvars, 331.
Gwyrthur, son of Greidawl, contends with Gwyn for Creudylad, 258, 259,
348, 407;
father of one of the three Gwynhwyvars, 331.
Hacket, Castle, 244.
Hades, the Celtic. See Other World, Celtic.
Hades, the Greek god, 152, 260.
“Hades, Head of”, a name given to Pwyll, 278, 282.
Hallowe’en, 40, 153, 407, 410.
Hamitic languages, 19.
“Happy Plain”, the, 133, 135, 186.
See Mag Mell.
Hare held sacred by the Ancient Britons, 417.
Harlech, 289, 294, 295, 296.
Harp of the Dagda, 54, 346;
of Angus, 56;
of Teirtu, 346.
Havgan, a king of Annwn, 279, 281.
Hawthorn, chief of Giants, father of Olwen, 340, 341, 343-345, 349, 353.
Heifer, a black-maned, called “Ocean”, 80, 117, 240;
the Morrígú takes the shape of a, 169-170.
Hengist, 325.
Henuinus, Duke of Cornwall, 382, 383.
Hephæstus, the Gaelic, 61, 63, 233.
Heracles, 158, 276.
Heré, 263.
Hereford, 299.
Hergest, the Red Book of, 11, 258, 260, 312, 328, 336, 369.
Herimon, 40.
See Eremon.
“Hero-light”, Cuchulainn’s, 177, 183.
“Hero’s salmon-leap”, Cuchulainn’s, 163.
Hesiod, 65.
Hesperides, garden of the. See Garden.
Hesus, a Gaulish god, 52.
Hevydd the Ancient, father of Rhiannon, 283, 285.
Hi Dorchaide, 70.
_Hibbert Lectures_ (for 1886) on _Celtic Heathendom_, Professor Rhys’s,
41, 43, 48, 51, 54, 57, 59, 90, 120, 205, 238, 253, 254, 258, 262,
264, 268, 271, 277, 282, 284, 307, 313, 318, 324, 325, 331, 377, 408.
Hill of Uisnech, 69, 324.
_Historia Britonum_ of Nennius, 9, 336;
of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 9, 251, 323, 324, 336, 372, 373, 374, 375,
376, 381, 384, 386.
Hittites, the, 20.
Holy Families of Britain, the Three Chief, 386.
Holy Grail, the. See Grail.
Holy wells, 414-415.
Homeric and Celtic civilization compared, 25, 29.
Hoodie-crow, 52, 53, 169, 271.
Horse of Manannán mac Lir, 60, 88, 98;
of Gweddw, 347;
of Gwyn son of Nudd, 255, 256, 348.
“Hound of Culann”, the, 161, 166;
hound of Lugh, 63;
of the king of Ioruaidhé, 104;
hounds of Finn mac Coul, 213;
hounds of Celtic myth, 225, 280, 391, 392.
Hull, Miss Eleanor, her _Cuchullin Saga_, 155, 156, 159, 184, 190, 199,
227.
Human sacrifices of the Druids, 37, 38;
to Cromm Cruaich, 38, 39, 40, 400;
symbolical, 405, 410, 411.
Huon of Bordeaux, Sir, 7.
Huxley, Professor, 19.
Hy-Breasail, 133.
Iberians, the, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 68, 69, 70, 76, 230, 248, 278;
their physique, 19;
language, 19;
original home, 19;
state of culture, 20;
gods, 43, 44, 64.
Iddawc, the Agitator of Britain, 337, 338.
Ilbhreach, son of Manannán, 136, 140, 211, 222.
Iliad, the, 75, 156.
Illann the Fair, son of Fergus mac Roy, 193, 196-198.
“Illusion, the Land of”, an old name for Dyfed, 279.
Indech, son of Domnu, a king of the Fomors, 48, 70, 83, 90, 108, 112.
Inniskea, the Lonely Crane of, 146;
stone worship in, 415.
_Invasions, the Book of_, 121.
_Ioldanach_, the “Master of All Arts”, a title of Lugh, 63, 85, 237,
239.
Iolo Morganwg, bardic name of Mr. Edward Williams, 372.
_Iolo MSS._, the, 269, 270, 372, 373, 387, 388, 389.
Iona, Adamnan, Abbot of, 401.
Ioruaidhe, 96, 97, 104.
Ireland, old names of, 125, 126, 150.
See also Iweridd.
Iseult, wife of King Mark, 327, 338.
Island, submarine, 97, 104.
“Island of the Mighty”, a bardic name for Britain, 292.
Islands, sacred, 326.
Ith, 121, 122;
Ith’s Plain, 66, 122.
Iuchar, son of Tuirenn, 90-106.
Iucharba, son of Tuirenn, 90-106.
Iweridd, _i.e._ “Ireland”, wife of the British sea-god Llyr, 258, 270,
271.
Janus, 383.
Javelin, Red, one of Manannán’s spears, 60, 217.
John, Feast of Saint, 245, 407, 411.
Jones, the Rev. Edward, on apparitions, 391.
Joseph of Arimathea, 358, 359, 366.
Jubainville, M. H. d’Arbois de, 25, 34, 37, 48, 54, 67, 68, 72, 77, 78,
107, 120, 124, 128, 132, 158, 188, 202.
Judgment of Amergin, the, 127.
Julius Caesar, see Caesar.
Kacmwri, the servant of Arthur, 352, 353.
Kaerlud, 376.
Kai, 326, 327, 338, 343, 348, 349, 350, 351.
Karitia, see Calais.
Kay, Sir, 6, 326.
“Keening” invented, 110.
Kelli Wic, 334.
_Keltic Researches_, Mr. Nicholson’s, 3.
Kenmare, river, 121.
Kicva, wife of Pryderi, 289-301.
Kildare, shrine of St. Bridget at, 228.
Killaraus, Mount, 324.
Killarney, Lake, 223, 247.
“Kingly Castle”, see Caer Rigor.
Kirwans of Castle Hacket, the, 244.
Knights, King Arthur’s, 6, 7, 8, 155, 251, 274, 358, 371.
Knockainy, 245.
Knockers, 393, 403.
Knockma, fairy hill of, 136, 243, 244.
Knockthierna, 247.
Knowth, 137, 138.
Kulhwch, 340, 341, 343, 344, 345, 347, 353.
_Kulhwch and Olwen_, the tale of, 258, 259, 260, 313, 321, 327, 339,
340-353, 369, 407.
Kyndellig, 343.
Kynedyr Wyllt, 348, 352.
Labhra, Mider’s leech, 213.
Labraid of the Quick Hand on Sword, 202.
Lady of the Lake, 361.
Laeg, Cuchulainn’s charioteer, 169, 181, 182, 186.
Laegaire the Battle-winner, 163.
Lakes, twelve chief, of Ireland, 88.
Lamias, 403.
Lammas, 407.
Land of Illusion, 279;
of Happiness, 119, 133;
of the Living, 133, 335;
of Promise, 133, 217, 337;
of Summer, 119, 329;
of the Young, 133, 225.
Laon, 277.
Larminie, Mr. William, 233.
Launcelot, Sir, 7, 328, 333, 358, 359, 362, 365.
_Lear, King_, Shakespeare’s, 5, 7, 259, 270, 381.
Lecan, the Book of, 10, 38, 123, 229;
the Yellow Book of, 10, 164.
Leicester, 270, 383.
Leinster, 179, 189.
Leinster, Mount, 140, 211, 212.
Leinster, the Book of, 10, 38, 55, 56, 121, 132, 139, 155, 156, 157,
190, 199, 204, 229.
Leir, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s King, 381-383.
Leodogrance, father of Guinevere, 357.
Leprechaun, 247, 248, 393, 403.
Lêr, the Gaelic sea-god, 60, 140, 142-144, 146, 205, 211, 212, 222, 252,
269;
his rebellion against Bodb the Red, 140;
their reconciliation, 142;
the fate of the children of, 142-146;
is killed by the Fenian hero Caoilté, 146, 222.
Levarcham, 196.
Leyden, 277.
_Lia Fáil_, see Stone of Destiny.
Liban, 186, 202.
Lismore, the Book of, 10.
_Lla Lluanys_, the Manx August festival, 409.
Llacheu, son of Arthur, 258, 326.
Llandwynwyn, the church of Dwynwyn (Branwen), in Anglesey, 388.
Lleminawg, 319.
Lleu (Llew) Llaw Gyffes, the British sun-god, 261-268, 276, 305, 306,
322, 323, 325, 330, 335, 360, 364, 369, 370;
his birth, 261;
and naming, 263;
takes part in the Battle of the Trees, 306;
is changed into an eagle, 266;
his place taken in later myth by Gwalchmei, 323;
and in the Arthurian legend by Sir Gawain, 360.
Llevelys, king of France, 378.
Lloegyr (Loegria), Saxon Britain, 258, 299, 300, 384.
Lludd Llaw Ereint, the British Zeus, 252, 253, 254, 259, 312, 315, 323,
329, 332, 350, 359, 364, 375-381, 407;
his wife Gwyar, 323;
puts an end to the “Three Plagues of Britain”, 377-380;
founds London, 376;
appears in the Morte Darthur as King Lot of Orkney, 359.
Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, avenges Gwawl, son of Clûd, 303, 304.
Llwyr, son of Llwyrion, the magic vessel of, 346.
Llyn Llyw, the salmon of, 350.
Llyr, the British sea-god, 252, 259, 269, 270, 271, 273, 289, 290, 304,
313, 316, 338, 381, 383, 386;
possibly borrowed from the Gaels, 270;
becomes the “King Leir” of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 381;
and the “King Lear” of Shakespeare, 270, 381;
founds a family of saints, 386;
his tomb or temple at Leicester, 383.
Llyr-cestre, 270, 283.
_Llys Dôn_, 252, 317.
Llywarch Hên, a sixth-century British poet, 11.
Loch, a warrior slain by Cuchulainn, 169-170.
Lochlann (Lochlin), 97, 205, 372;
Lochlannach, the, 205, 211.
London, 294, 296, 376, 377.
Londres, 376.
Lot or Loth, king of Orkney, 359, 364, 375.
Loucetius, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
_Lough Corrib, its Shores and Islands_, Sir William Wilde’s, 76.
Lough Gur, 246.
Lucan, the Roman poet, 52.
Luchtainé, the carpenter of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 61, 84, 86, 109.
Lud, king of Britain, 5, 7, 376-381.
Ludesgata, Ludgate, 5, 254, 376.
Lugaid, son of Curoi, 179, 182, 183.
Lugh Lamhfada, the Gaelic sun-god, 62-63, 84-90, 93-97, 103, 105, 106,
111-113, 115-117, 136, 139, 156, 157, 160, 170, 201, 230, 233,
238-240, 262, 276, 325, 339, 344, 345, 370, 371;
his spear, 63, 71, 97;
his hound, 63, 97;
his rod-sling and chain, 62;
his first appearance at Tara, 84;
gains the title of _Ioldanach_, 85;
avenges his father’s murder upon the sons of Tuirenn, 94-106;
leads the Tuatha Dé Danann against the Fomors, 111;
prophecies to Conn the Hundred Fighter, 201.
_Lugnassad_, “Lugh’s Commemoration”, 277, 409.
_Lugudunum_, “town of Lugus”, 277, 409.
Lugus, the Gaulish sun-god, 42, 276, 409.
Lundy Island, 272, 322.
Lydney, temple of Nodens at, 254;
monograph upon it, 254.
Lyons, 277, 409.
Mab, Queen, 246.
Mabinogi, the Four Branches of the, 14, 15, 355.
Mabinogion, 12, 14, 16, 356, 372, 377, 403, 407.
See also Guest, Lady Charlotte.
Mabon, a British sun-god, 276, 328, 330, 335, 338, 347, 349-352, 387.
Macaulay, 22.
Mac Cecht, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 122, 125, 126, 130.
Mac Cuill, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 122, 125, 126, 130.
Mac Gee, Thomas D’Arcy, 232.
Mac Greiné, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 122, 125, 126, 130.
Mac Kineely, 238-239.
Mac Moineanta, a king of the Irish fairies, 242.
Mac Nia, an old Irish poet, 138.
_Mac Oc_, “Son of the Young”, a title of Angus, 56, 139.
MacPherson’s _Ossian_, 203.
Mac Samthainn, 238.
Macha, a war-goddess of the Gaels, 52, 72, 112;
meaning of her name, 52;
“Macha’s acorn-crop”, 53;
is killed by Balor, 112.
Macleod, Miss Fiona, 241.
Maelmuiri, scribe of the Book of the Dun Cow, 10.
Maelon, 388.
Maenor Alun, 310;
Maenor Penarth, 310.
Maen Tyriawc, the grave of Pryderi, 311.
Maglaunus, Duke of Albania, 382, 383.
_Mag Mell_, the “Happy Plain”, a name for the Celtic Elysium, 133, 135.
_Mag Mon_, the “Plain of Sports”, a name for the Celtic Elysium, 134.
Mag Slecht, human sacrifices at, 38-40, 132, 154.
Mag Tuireadh, see Moytura.
Magog, 229.
Malory, Sir Thomas, 323, 328, 330, 333, 354-357, 359-364, 367, 368.
Malvasius, king of Iceland, 376.
Man, Isle of, 23, 24, 57, 60, 175, 241, 261, 272, 273, 408, 409.
Manannán son of Lêr, a Gaelic god, 60-61, 89, 98, 129, 134, 136, 140,
143, 157, 186, 188, 199, 202, 203, 205, 217, 224, 233, 235-237, 239,
240-242, 270, 371, 405;
his armour, 60, 88;
weapons, 60, 217;
horse, 60, 89, 98;
mantle, 61, 129, 188, 217, 221;
pigs, 61, 98;
his “Feast of Age”, 61, 143;
lord of the Celtic Paradise, 134;
his wife Fand in love with Cuchulainn, 186-188;
his friendship with Cormac, king of Ireland, 203;
his message to Saint Columba, 240-241;
his connection with the Isle of Man, 60, 241-242.
Manawyddan son of Llyr, his British analogue, 270, 271, 273, 289, 290,
293, 294, 296, 298-304, 313, 315, 317, 321, 338, 352, 373;
his attributes, 270-271;
accompanies Brân to Ireland, 289-294;
marries Rhiannon, 298;
defeats the magic of Llwyd, son of Kilcoed, 301-304;
constructs the bone-prison of Oeth and Anoeth, 270;
helps Arthur in the chase of Twrch Trwyth, 352.
Maponos, a Gallo-British sun-god, 276, 328.
March, a British god of the Under World, 316, 327, 329, 335, 338.
Mark, King, 327, 328.
Mars, 51, 204.
“Master of All Arts”, see _Ioldanach_.
Mâth, a British god, brother to Dôn, 260, 265, 266, 268, 308, 310, 322,
329, 360, 361, 364;
meaning of his name, 260;
teaches magic to Gwydion, 260;
rules from Caer Dathyl, 308;
compared with Merlin, 360, 361, 362.
Matholwch, king of Ireland, 289-293.
Mâthonwy, father of Mâth, 260, 308.
_Matière de Bretagne_, the, 363, 365.
Matthew Arnold, 3, 16, 356.
May Day, 123, 259, 287, 407.
May Eve, 377, 407.
Maypole, 408.
Meadha, the _sídh_ of, 136, 212, 243.
Meath, 179.
Medb, queen of Connaught, 147, 154, 164-168, 170, 171, 172, 175, 178,
179, 183, 200, 246;
makes war on Ulster to get the Brown Bull of Cualgne, 165-166;
becomes a fairy queen, 246;
is perhaps the original of “Queen Mab”, 246.
Mediterranean race, 19;
_Mediterranean Race, The_, Prof. Sergi’s, 20.
Medrawt, 315, 323, 332, 333, 334, 337, 360, 364.
Meleaus, or Melias, de Lile, Sir, 359.
Melga, king of the Picts, 375.
Meliagaunce, or Meliagraunce, Sir, 359, 365, 407.
Melwas, 329, 332, 359, 365, 407.
Menai Straits, the, 262, 264.
Menw, 343, 344, 351.
Mercurius Artaius, a Gallo-Roman god, 274, 313.
Mercury, 274, 313.
Merlin, 324, 325, 339, 360, 361, 364.
See Myrddin.
Mesgegra, king of Leinster, 147, 154.
Meyer, Dr. Kuno, 38, 134, 154, 184, 190.
Miach, son of Diancecht, 62, 80-82, 232.
Midas, the British, 328.
Mider, Gaelic god of the Under World, 56, 57, 117, 136, 140, 142,
147-151, 154, 157, 175, 179, 205, 211-213, 224, 243, 331-333;
rebels against Bodb the Red, 140;
gambles with Eochaid Airem for possession of Etain, 149;
is besieged in his _sídh_, and helped by the Fenians, 211-213.
Midsummer Day, 75, 406, 407.
Midsummer Eve, 242.
Milé, the ancestor of the Gaels, 122, 123, 126, 129, 130, 132, 146, 153.
Milesians, the, 76, 125-127, 129, 145, 153, 229, 230, 243.
“Milky Way”, the, 62, 253, 268.
Minerva, 275, 277, 413.
Minos, 153.
Miodhchaoin, 97, 105, 106.
Mistletoe, 18, 33.
Mithras, a Persian sun-god worshipped at York, 275.
Mochdrev, 310.
Mochnant, 310.
Modron, wife of Urien and mother of Mabon, 328, 338.
Mona, see Anglesey.
Mongan, an Ulster prince, a reincarnation of Finn mac Coul, 37.
Monmouth, Geoffrey of. See Geoffrey.
Morc, son of Dela, a king of the Fomors, 67, 327.
Mordred, Sir, 315, 334, 360, 364, 374, 375.
Morgawse, sister to Arthur, 323.
Morrígú, the, Gaelic goddess of war, 52, 53, 72, 87, 98, 107, 113, 117,
139, 157, 168-170, 323;
description of, 52;
her dealings with Cuchulainn on the Táin Bó Chuailgne, 168-170.
Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory’s, 7, 272, 276, 323, 328, 334, 354,
362, 364-368, 372, 407.
“Mound, Lord of the”, 41, 403.
Mountains of Ireland, the twelve chief, 87.
Mourie, “Saint”, 413.
Mouse, Manawyddan and the, 301-304.
Moyle, Sea of, 144, 145.
Moytura, Northern, Battle of, 11, 107-117, 157, 407;
Southern, Battle of, 72-77, 114.
Muirthemne, 90, 93, 166, 181.
Munster, 69, 164, 218, 244, 245.
Murias, a city of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 71, 72.
Mur y Castell, Lleu’s palace near Bala Lake, 265, 268.
Myrddin, a British Zeus, 323-325, 329, 360, 362, 369;
gave its first name to Britain, 323;
his wife Elen, 323;
his town Carmarthen, 324;
appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth and in the Morte Darthur as Merlin,
_q.v._
Myrddin, a sixth-century British bard, 11.
Mythology, importance of, 1;
Greek, 1, 2, 4, 403;
Scandinavian, 3;
Celtic, its influence on English literature, 6, 7;
on mediæval chivalric romance, 184.
Name, ancient British superstitions with regard to, 263.
_Names, Choice of_, The. See _Coir Anmann_.
Names, early of Britain, 292, 323;
of Ireland, 126, 150, 151.
Nant Call, 310.
Nant y Llew, 267.
Naoise, son of Usnach, 191-193, 195-198.
Narberth, 279, 281, 282, 283, 288, 298, 300.
Navan Fort, 158.
Neamhuainn, Clann, 216, 218.
Neath, Vale of, 255, 335, 392.
Nedd, river, 405.
Neevougi, a stone worshipped at Inniskea, 415.
Nemed, 67-69, 274;
the race of, 229, 230, 327, 406.
Nemetona, a war-goddess worshipped at Bath, 275, 276.
Nemon, a Gaelic war-goddess, wife of Nuada, 52, 276.
Nennius, his _History of the Britons_, 9, 336.
Nentres, King, 357, 362.
Nereids, 403.
Nêt, an Iberian god, 64.
New Grange, 137-139.
Nia, the Plain of, 73.
Niamh of the Golden Hair, daughter of Manannán, 223-225.
Nicholson’s _Keltic Researches_, 3.
_Niebelungenlied_, 393.
Nimue, 358, 361, 362.
Nissyen, son of Penardun, 290, 293.
Niul, 120.
Noah, descent of the Gaelic gods and men from, 329.
Nodens, a temple to, at Lydney, 253.
“Northern Crown”, constellation of the, 252.
_Nos galan-gaeof_, the Welsh winter festival, 408.
Nuada of the Silver Hand, a Gaelic Zeus, 51, 52, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81,
83-86, 93, 94, 105, 122, 157, 230, 253, 276, 323;
his sword, 51, 71;
his wives, 52;
his hand cut off in battle, 75;
a silver hand made for him by Diancecht, 78;
his own hand renewed by Miach and Airmid, 81;
his death at the hands of Balor, 112;
his tomb at Grianan Aileach, 122, 157.
Nudd, British god, 252, 253, 254, 313;
to be identified with Lludd, _q.v._
Nutt, Mr. Alfred, 12, 37, 38, 134, 154, 158, 164, 318, 348.
Nwyvre, 322, 364.
Nynniaw, son of Beli, 268, 269, 313.
Oak, held sacred by the Druids, 33.
Oberon, 7, 392.
“Ocean”, a black-maned heifer called, 80, 240.
Ochall Ochne, king of the Sídhe of Connaught, 164.
Ochren, battle of, 305;
Caer, 320;
see Achren.
Octriallach, son of Indech, 110;
the “Cairn of Octriallach”, 110.
O’Curry, Eugene, 37, 56, 63, 72, 78, 89, 93, 111, 113, 137, 138, 146,
151, 152, 155, 188, 201, 204.
Odin, 260.
O’Donaghue, the, 247.
O’Donovan, 238.
Oeth and Anoeth, the Bone-prison of, 270, 271, 317, 373.
O’Flynn, Eochaid, an old Irish poet, 231.
Ogam, writings in, 58, 93, 151, 189.
Ogma, Gaelic god of Literature and Eloquence, 57-60, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85,
112, 116, 117, 122, 136, 139, 157, 276;
his wife and children, 57;
his epithets of “Cermait” and “Grianainech”, 57, 59;
his great strength, 59;
kills Indech in the battle of Moytura, 112;
inventor of the ogam alphabet, 58.
Ogmios, a Gaulish god, 276.
O’Grady, Standish Hayes, Mr., 28, 159, 201, 203, 205, 207, 213, 215,
222.
Ogyrvran, a British god of the Under World, father of Gwynhwyvar,
329-331, 357, 366.
O’Herlebys, wooden idol of the, 413.
Old Plain, the, 66.
Old Sarum, 29, 386.
Olwen, 340, 341, 343, 345, 353.
Onagh, queen of the Irish fairies, 243, 244.
_Origins of English History_, Mr. Elton’s, 6, 8, 25, 26, 70, 228, 327,
413.
Orkneys, 386;
King Lot of Orkney, 359.
Oscar, son of Ossian, 208, 212, 217, 222, 246, 315.
Osla Big-Knife, 352, 353.
_Ossian_, MacPherson’s, 203.
Ossian, son of Finn mac Coul, 11, 208, 212, 214, 215, 217, 220, 223-227,
246, 318, 337.
“Ossianic ballads”, 205, 208, 213;
Ossianic Society, see _Transactions_.
Other World, the Celtic, 65, 68, 71, 98, 119, 121, 133-136, 150, 151,
175, 176, 201, 202, 203, 224, 252, 255, 270, 271, 272, 273, 278, 279,
281, 305, 307, 316, 317, 318-322, 329, 334, 336, 366, 387, 389, 395;
different names of, 133, 318-320;
descriptions of, 136, 150-151, 224;
variously imagined as upon the sea, 202, 224, 272, 394;
under the sea, 305;
under the earth, 135-136;
upon earth, 271, 272, 273, 278, 279;
original abode of men, 119;
visited by Cuchulainn, 175-176, 186;
Conn, 201;
Connla, 202;
Ossian, 224;
Pwyll, 281;
Gwydion, 305;
Arthur, 317-320.
See also Annwn, Avilion, Happy Plain, Mag Mell, Mag Mon, Land of
Happiness, of the Living, of Promise, of Summer, of the Young.
Ousel of Cilgwri, 349.
Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, 393.
Owain, son of Urien, 328, 330;
Sir Owain, 363.
Owl, of Cwm Cawlwyd, 349;
Blodeuwedd changed into an, 268.
Ox, the brindled, 320, 321;
oxen, magic, 345.
Oxford, 379.
Paradise, the Celtic.
See Other World, Celtic.
Parthludd, 254, 376.
Partholon, 65-68, 386; race of, 229, 230, 406.
Patrick, Saint, 8, 40, 41, 132, 145, 222, 225, 226, 227, 242, 401, 402.
Paul’s Cathedral, Saint, 254.
Pausanias’s _Description of Greece_, 36.
Pedigree of the gods, 229;
of Finn mac Coul, 204.
Pedryvan, Caer, 319, 356, 367.
Peel Castle, 242.
Peibaw, son of Beli, 268, 269, 313.
Pelasgoi, 20.
Peleur, King, 368.
Pellam, King, 358, 364.
Pellean, King, 358.
Pelleas, Sir, 358, 368;
_Pelleas and Ettarre_, Tennyson’s Idyll of, 358.
Pelles, King, 357, 362, 367.
Pellinore, King, 362.
_Pembroke, County Guardian_, the, 394.
Pembrokeshire, 273, 278, 394.
_Pen Annwn_, the “Head of Hades”, a title of Pwyll, 278, 282.
Penardun, daughter of Beli and wife of Llyr, 269, 270, 289, 290, 293.
Pendaran Dyfed, 288, 295.
Pendragon, meaning of the word, 330.
Pennant, 409.
Percivale, Sir, 359, 363, 368, 369.
Peredur, 330, 368, 369.
Perilous glens, the, 163.
Persephoné, the British, 259, 260.
Persia, 274;
Pisear, king of, 96, 97, 101-103.
Petrie, Dr., 72, 98, 114.
Picts, 23, 230, 401, 417.
Pigs, in the Celtic Other World, 136;
of Manannán, 61, 63;
of Easal, king of the Golden Pillars, 96, 97, 103;
of Pryderi, 308, 316, 327;
of March, 316, 327;
of Angus, 214;
Cian changed into a pig, 91.
Pigskin of King Tuis, the, 96, 99, 100.
Pillars, king of the Golden. See Easal.
Pisear, king of Persia, 96, 97, 101-103.
Pixies, 393.
Plain of Ill Luck, 163;
of the Sea, 72;
of Adoration, 38;
the Old, 66.
Pliny, 33, 35, 400.
Plutarch, 326.
Pluto, the Gaelic, 57;
the Cambrian, 260.
Poetry, the Gaelic goddess of, 56;
cauldron of inspiration and, 365-370.
Policy of the Christian Church towards objects of pagan worship, 417.
Pookas, 247, 248, 393, 403, 405.
Porsena, a Roman consul, 385.
Poseidon, 52, 260;
the Gaelic, 60;
the British, 269.
Posidonius, 26.
Prophecy of Badb, 117-118;
of Eriu, 125-126;
of the seeress to Queen Medb, 166;
of Lugh to Conn the Hundred-Fighter, 201-202;
of Cathbad concerning Cuchulainn, 161;
concerning Deirdre, 190-191.
Pryderi, son of Pwyll and Rhiannon, 273, 286-288, 289, 294, 295,
298-301, 303-305, 308, 309-311, 313, 315, 316, 319, 321, 327, 335,
358, 364, 366, 368, 377, 407;
is stolen at birth, 286;
meaning of his name, 288;
accompanies Brân to Ireland, 289-294;
is spirited away by Llwyd and recovered by Manawyddan, 300-304;
receives a present of pigs from Annwn, 308;
is killed by Gwydion, 311;
appears in Arthurian legend, 358.
Prydwen, Arthur’s ship, 319, 320, 352.
Puck, 393.
Puffin Island, 322.
_Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne, The_, 215-221.
Pwccas, 393.
Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed and “Head of Annwn”, 273, 274, 278-288, 298, 303,
304, 305, 308, 316, 319, 329, 357-358, 366, 367, 380;
changes shapes with Arawn, king of Annwn, 281;
his wooing of Rhiannon, 282-286;
is owner of a magic cauldron in Hades, 321;
and keeper of the Holy Grail in the Morte Darthur, 357-358.
Pwynt Maen Dulan, 262.
Queen Guinevere, 315, 334, 357, 359, 365, 375, 407.
“Queen Mab”, 246.
Queen of the Irish fairies, 243, 244;
of the fairies of Munster, 244;
of the fairies of North Munster, 244;
of the fairies of South Munster, 244.
_Queene, The Fairie_, Spenser’s, 7.
Quicken-tree, the magic, 219.
Races of Britain, the, 19-21.
Rathconrath, 69.
“Realm of Glamour, The”, a name for Dyfed, 279.
Re-birth of Cuchulainn, 37;
of Finn mac Coul, 37.
Red Book of Hergest, see Hergest.
Red Branch Champions of Ulster, the, 4, 147, 157, 167, 183, 191, 192,
204, 227, 314.
Red Branch House, the, 29, 196, 197.
Red Dragon of Britain, the, 378.
Redynvre, the stag of, 349.
Regan, daughter of King Leir, 381, 382.
Religion, Aryan, 32, 47.
Retaliator, the, the sword of Manannán mac Lir, 60, 198.
Revelry, the Castle of, 319, 366.
Revolving Castle, the, 319, 366.
_Revue Celtique_, 40, 53, 78, 107, 117, 142, 158, 184, 190, 201, 241,
246.
Rhiannon, a British goddess, 273, 282-288, 298, 300, 301, 303, 304, 358,
361, 362, 407;
her three magic birds, 273, 294, 296;
her name afterwards corrupted into Nimue and Vivien, 358, 361.
Rhinnon Rhin Barnawd, the magic bottles of, 346.
Rhonabwy, 336, 337, 338;
The _Dream of Rhonabwy_, 312, 337, 338.
Rhyd y Groes, a ford on the Severn, 337.
Rhys, Professor, 22, 23, 35, 41, 44, 64, 68, 158, 205, 254, 256, 262,
282, 289, 307, 313, 316, 318, 319, 324, 331, 335, 352, 363, 370, 395,
404, 413, 414.
See also _Arthurian Legend_ and _Hibbert Lectures_.
Ri, Roi, an Iberian god, 64.
Ribble, the river, 413, 414.
Riches, the Castle of, 367.
Rience, King, 357.
Rigor, Caer, 319.
Rigosamos, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Ritual, remains of Celtic, 405-412.
Rivers, the twelve chief, of Ireland, 88.
Rivers, the worship of, 413, 414.
Rodrubân, the _sídh_ of Lugh, 136.
Romans, the, 23, 24, 25, 373, 385, 386, 399, 413.
Rome, 5, 155, 274, 315, 317.
Ronan, Clann, 218.
Round Table, King Arthur’s, 6, 314.
“Round Towers”, the, attributed to Goibniu, 233.
Rowan-tree, 219, 410.
Ruadan, son of Bress and Brigit, 109-110.
_Rude Stone Monuments_, Fergusson’s, 76, 114, 137, 138.
Ryons, King, 357.
Sacred animals, 406, 416, 417;
islands, 326;
fish, 416;
frogs, 416;
stones, 406, 415, 417;
trees, 406, 415;
wells, 414-416.
Sacrifices of animals, 406, 412;
human, 18, 37-40, 399;
symbolical human sacrifices, 405, 410, 411.
Sadb, daughter of Bodb the Red, and mother of Ossian, 208.
“Sage’s seat”, the, 85, 86.
St. Catherine’s Hill, 29;
St. George’s Hill, 29.
St. Gall MS., the, 232.
Saints, transformation of Celtic gods into, 6, 228, 229, 372, 386, 389.
Salisbury Plain, 325.
Salmon of Knowledge, the, 55, 210;
of Llyn Llyw, 350.
Samhain, the Celtic winter festival, 40, 42, 67, 107, 108, 286, 406,
407, 408, 410, 411.
_Samhanach_, 408.
Sarn Elen, 324.
Sarrlog, 386;
Caer Sarrlog, 386.
Satires, magical, 83, 87, 172, 182.
Scathach the Amazon, 163, 164, 172, 173, 176.
Scêné, the river, 121.
Scot, Eber, a mythical ancestor of the Gaels, 120.
Scota, 120.
Scotti, 357.
Sea, Celtic ideas regarding the, 48, 261, 270.
_Second Battle of Moytura, The_, the Harleian MS. called, 50, 54, 72,
78, 107.
_Seint Greal_, the, 322, 326, 368.
Senchan Torpeist, 14.
_Sen Mag_, see Old Plain.
Serapis worshipped at York, 275.
Setanta, original name of Cuchulainn, 160, 161.
Severn, the river, 254, 337, 350, 352, 353.
Sgeolan, one of Finn’s hounds, 213.
“Shadowy Town, or City”, 175, 366.
Shakespeare, 5, 259, 270, 381, 393, 408.
Shannon, the river, 88, 165, 292.
“Shape-shifting”, 37.
Sharvan the Surly, 219.
Shield, Conchobar’s magic, 197.
Shony, a Hebridean sea-god, 410.
Shouts on a hill, the three, 94, 97, 105, 106.
Sicily, 96, 102.
_Sídh_ Airceltrai, 136;
Bodb, 136;
Eas Aedha Ruaidh, 136;
Fionnachaidh, 136, 140, 142, 146, 222;
Meadha, 136, 243;
Rodrubân, 136.
_Sídhe_, “fairy mounds”, 135, 136, 139, 181.
_Sídhe, The_, the Gaelic gods, or fairies, 136, 223, 244, 246.
Sidi, Caer, 319, 321, 322, 368.
Silures, tribe of the, 22.
Silurian race, the, 19.
Silver Hand, Nuada’s, 51, 78, 81, 253;
Lludd’s, 253.
Sinann, goddess of the Shannon, 56.
Skene, Dr. W. F., 71, 123, 256, 258, 311, 312, 316, 317, 319, 328, 334.
Skye, Isle of, 163.
Slecht, Mag. See Mag Slecht.
Slieve Bloom, 209;
Slieve Fuad, 136;
Slieve Mish, 130.
Smallpox, goddess of the, 413.
Snowdon, 267, 305, 335, 380.
Sol Apollo Anicetus, a sun-god worshipped at Bath, 275.
Solar festivals of the Celts, 41, 405-412.
Solinus, Caius Julius, 228.
Somerset, 329.
“Son of the Young”, see Mac Oc.
Sore, the river, 383.
_Sorrowful Stories of Erin, The Three_, 106.
Spain, 22, 121;
used as an euphemism for the Celtic Other World, 68, 120, 121, 230,
386.
Spear of Lugh, 62, 97;
of Pisear, king of Persia, 96, 97, 101, 103.
“Spearman with the Long Shaft”, 369.
Speech, Aryan, 21, 31.
Spenser, 7, 389.
Spey, the river, 414.
“Splendid Mane”, the horse of Manannán mac Lir, 60, 88, 98.
_Spoiling of Annwn, The_, a poem of Taliesin, 306, 317-321, 366.
“Spring of Health”, the, 110.
Sreng, a warrior of the Fir Bolgs, 75.
Stag of Redynvre, the, 349.
Stokes, Dr. Whitley, 40, 50, 72, 78, 107, 152, 190, 203, 417.
Stone, Black, of Arddhu, 305;
Coronation, 71;
of Destiny, 72;
of Kineely, 239.
Stones, worship of, 406, 415.
Stonehenge, 42, 324, 325.
Strabo, 22, 399.
Strachey, Sir Edward, 356.
_Study of Celtic Literature_, Matthew Arnold’s, 3, 16, 356.
Sualtam, the mortal father of Cuchulainn, 159, 160, 173, 174.
Suir, the river, 165.
Sul, a goddess worshipped at Bath, 228, 275.
“Summer, the Land of”, _i.e._ the Celtic Other World, 119, 329.
Sun, worship of the, 41, 42;
Cuchulainn a personification of the, 158-159.
Swans, Caer and Angus take the forms of, 141-142;
the children of Lêr changed into, 143;
Mider and Etain become, 151.
Sword, of Manannán, 60, 198;
of Nuada, 51;
of Gwrnach the Giant, 346, 348.
Swinburne, 6.
Swineherds, the rival, 164-165.
Table Round, the, 6, 354, 371.
Taboos, Celtic. See Destiny, _Geasa_.
Tacitus, 22, 24, 387, 400.
Tailtiu, the Gaelic gods defeated by the Milesians at, 130.
_Táin Bó Chuailgné_, 10, 14, 28, 159, 164, 175.
Taliesin, 11, 123, 124, 261, 271, 273, 294, 296, 306, 317, 318, 320,
321, 328, 356, 366, 367.
Taliesin, the Book of, 11, 123, 261, 271, 273, 306, 317, 318, 321, 328.
Tallacht, burial-place of Partholon’s people, 66.
Tara, 29, 72, 84, 93, 98, 105, 125, 126, 129, 147, 153, 189, 190, 216,
230.
Taran, 294.
Taranis, 294.
_Tathlum_, a sling-stone, 112, 113.
Tawë, a river in South Wales, sacred to Gwyn ap Nudd, 257, 279, 392,
405.
Tegla’s well, Saint, 415.
Teirnyon Twryf Vliant, 287, 288, 358, 407.
Teirtu, the harp of, 346.
Telltown, see Tailtiu.
Temple of Nodens at Lydney, 253-254;
St. Paul’s cathedral occupying the site of a, 254;
sacrifices of cattle on the site of a, 413;
ancient British temples still standing in the sixth century, 400.
Tennyson, 6, 133, 260, 274, 297, 312, 354, 355, 358, 361, 362.
“Terrace cultivation”, 20.
“Terrestrial gods and goddesses”, 156.
“Terrible Broom, The”, name of the banner of Oscar’s battalion, 209.
Tethra, a king of the Fomors, 83, 90.
Teutates, a god of the Gauls, 51, 52.
Thames, the river, 254.
Theseus, 153.
Thirteen Treasures of Britain, the, 313, 326, 339, 340.
Three Birds of Rhiannon, the, 273, 94, 296.
Three Chief Holy Families of Britain, 386.
Three Counselling Knights of Arthur, 312.
Three Cows of Mider, 57, 176.
Three Cranes of Denial and Churlishness, 57.
Three Criminal Resolutions of Britain, 334.
Three Etains, 331.
Three Frivolous Battles of Britain, 334.
Three Generous Heroes of Britain, 253.
Three Gwynhwyvars, 333.
Three Paramount Prisoners of Britain, 350-351.
Three Plagues of Britain, 253, 377-380.
Three shouts on a hill, 94, 97, 105, 106.
Three Sorrowful Stories of Erin, 106.
Three War-knights of Arthur, 312.
Three Wicked Uncoverings of Britain, 297.
Tiberius, the Emperor, 400.
Tigernmas, a mythical Irish king, 153-154.
Tighernach, an old Irish chronicler, 204.
_Tir nam beo_, see Land of the Living.
_Tir nan og_, see Land of the Young.
_Tir Tairngiré_, see Land of Promise.
Titania, 393.
Tomb of the Dagda, 138.
Tombs of the Tuatha Dé Danann, 138-139.
Torpeist, Senchan. See Senchan.
Tory Island, 49, 67, 238.
Toutates, a war-god worshipped in Britain, 275.
Tower Hill, Brân’s head buried at, 294, 296, 331.
_Transactions of the Ossianic Society_, 124, 127, 128, 201, 203, 211,
213, 215, 223, 226.
Transmigration of souls, 36;
of the swineherds, 164-165.
Treasures of Britain, the Thirteen, 313, 326, 339, 340.
Trees, the Battle of the, 123, 305-308.
Trees, worship of, 406.
Triads, 11, 253, 273, 331, 334, 350, 351.
Trim, 175.
Trinity Well, the source of the Boyne, 55.
Trinovantum, _i.e._ New Troy, a mythic name of London, 376, 385.
Tristrem, Sir, 6, 327, 363.
Trouveres, the, 363.
Troy, 374.
Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods of the ancient Gaels, 11, 17, 48, 50, 51, 58,
59, 60, 65, 70-79, 82-86, 91, 95, 97, 104, 108-112, 114, 115, 117,
123, 125, 126, 129, 132, 136-138, 140, 141, 145, 153, 154, 156, 157,
205, 211, 214, 217, 219, 222, 225, 228, 229-231, 243, 246, 252, 269,
276, 312, 330, 393, 403, 404, 406, 410;
their arrival in Ireland, 71, 72;
their battle with the Fomors, 108-117;
are conquered by the Milesians, 130;
retire into underground palaces, 135, 136;
and become the fairies of Irish belief, 137.
Tuirenn, son of Ogma, 57, 90, 106.
“Tuirenn, the Fate of the Sons of”, 90-106.
Tuis, king of Greece, 96, 98, 102.
“Turning Castle”, 322.
Tweed, the river, 23, 414.
Twr Branwen, 289.
Twrch Trwyth, the hunting of, 347-353.
_Tylwyth Teg_, the Welsh fairies, 255.
Tynwald Hill, 412.
Tyrian Hercules worshipped at Corbridge, 275.
Uaman, _sídh_ of, 141.
Uaran Garad, spring of, 165.
Uffern, the “Cold Place”, a name for Annwn, 319.
Uisnech, the hill of, 69, 324.
Ulster, 29, 57, 64, 69, 76, 158, 164, 165, 166, 171, 174, 175, 180, 183,
188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 217, 245.
“Undry”, the name of the Dagda’s cauldron, 54, 366.
Unius, the river, 107.
Unsenn, the river, 112.
_Urddawl Ben_, see Venerable Head.
Urien, an Under World king, 328, 329, 357, 376;
Uriens, Urience, King, in the Morte Darthur, 357;
Urianus, King, in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _History_, 376.
Usnach, the sons of, 191-200.
_Uther Ben_, the “Wonderful Head”, a name for Brân, 296, 330, 356.
Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father, 330, 356.
Val des Fées, in the forest of Brécilien, 361.
Vandwy, Caer, 257, 320.
Varro, 26.
Vedwyd, Caer, 319.
“Venerable Head, The”, 296.
_Verses of the Graves of the Warriors, The_, 272, 311, 334.
“Victor, son of Scorcher”. See Gwyrthur, son of Greidawl.
_Vita Columbæ_, Adamnan’s, 401, 417.
Vivien, 358, 361.
Wales, the Four Ancient Books of, 11, 15.
See Skene.
Walgan, 375.
Wall, Roman, 25, 273, 274, 400.
War-chariots, 27;
Cuchulainn’s, 28.
Warrefield, 242.
“Water-dress”, Brian’s, 104.
Waves, the Four, of Britain, 261.
“Wave-sweeper”, Manannán’s boat, 60, 98, 104.
Weapons of the Celts, 27.
Wells, worship of, 414, 415;
holy, 414.
Welsh fairies, 255, 392-394.
Westminster, 407;
Westminster Abbey, 71.
White Dragon of the Saxons, 378.
White-horned Bull of Connaught, 165, 175.
White Mount in London, see Tower Hill.
White-tusk, king of the Boars, 346, 349.
Wild Huntsman, the, 255.
Wilde, Sir William, his _Lough Corrib_, 76;
Lady Wilde’s _Ancient Legends of Ireland_, 243, 409.
Williams, Mr. Edward. See Iolo Morganwg.
Wish Hounds, the, 392.
Woden, 260.
Wolf, the Morrígú takes the shape of a, 170.
Women, position of, among the Celts, 30.
“Wonderful Head”, the, 296, 330.
“Wood of the Two Tents”, the, 216.
Wordsworth, 4, 5.
Wren, Lleu and the, 263;
a bird of augury among the druids, 417.
Wydyr, Caer, 320.
Wye, the river, 352.
Yeats’, Mr., The _Wanderings of Oisin_, 223.
Yell, or Yeth, Hounds, the, 392.
Yellow Book of Lecan, the, 10, 164.
“Yellow Shaft”, one of Manannán’s spears, 60, 217.
Ynys Avallon, 329.
See Avilion, Glastonbury.
Ynys Branwen, 295.
Ynys Wair, 322.
See Lundy Island.
York, 275.
Young, Land of the, 133, 225;
Son of the, see Mac Oc.
Yspaddaden Penkawr, see Hawthorn, Chief of Giants.
Zeus, 65, 260, 261;
the Gaelic, 41, 51, 253;
the British, 5, 324.
Zimmer, Professor, 152.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s note:
Variations in accented characters have been retained.
Format of the index has been regularised.
Page 25, ‘Bellico’ changed to ‘Bello,’ “Caesar: De Bello Gallico”
Page 34, ‘l’étude’ changed to ‘l’Étude,’ “Introduction à l’étude de la”
Page 43, full stop inserted after ‘Pantheon”,’ ““The Gaulish Pantheon”.”
Page 76, full stop inserted after ‘VIII,’ “William R. Wilde, chap.
VIII.”
Page 84, double quote inserted after ‘Luchtainé,’ “his name is
Luchtainé.””
Page 88, double quote inserted after ‘it,’ “not be weary of it.””
Page 90, ‘daugher’ changed to ‘daughter,’ “the son of our daughter
Ethniu”
Page 90, comma changed to full stop after ‘Dundalk,’ “Boyne and Dundalk.
The heroic”
Page 94, double quote struck before ‘Then,’ “Then Nuada declared that”
Page 146, ‘XIV’ changed to ‘XIV,’ “See chap. XIV”
Page 187, double quote inserted before ‘for,’ “she said, “for I know”
Page 192, double quote inserted after ‘King,’ “race as Conchobar the
King.””
Page 192, ‘”,’ changed to ‘,”,’ ““We ourselves,” replied”
Page 206, ‘happend’ changed to ‘happened,’ “who happened to be assailed”
Page 208, full stop inserted after ‘Cweeltia,’ “Pronounced Kylta or
Cweeltia.”
Page 211, ‘Mannanán’ changed to ‘Manannán,’ “Ilbhreach son of Manannán,
and”
Page 215, full stop inserted after ‘Society,’ “Transactions of the
Ossianic Society.”
Page 238, ‘capure’ changed to ‘capture,’ “managed to capture Mac
Kineely”
Page 241, ‘four-score’ changed to ‘fourscore,’ “man of fourscore years
would”
Page 262, ‘Lamh-fada’ changed to ‘Lamhfada,’ “of the Gaelic Lugh
Lamhfada”
Page 271, full stop inserted after ‘Vol,’ “of Wales, Vol. I”
Page 292, full stop inserted after ‘Britain,’ “A bardic name for
Britain.”
Page 304, double quote inserted after ‘Pryderi,’ “I see Rhiannon and
Pryderi.””
Page 316, full stop inserted after ‘it,’ “and could not get it.”
Page 323, full stop inserted after ‘p,’ “Rhys: ibid., p. 169.”
Page 366, full stop inserted after ‘Brân,’ “and the Beheading of Brân”.”
Page 366, full stop inserted after ‘Chap,’ “Chap. XXI—“The Mythological”
Page 375, full stop changed to comma after ‘Britonum,’ “Historia
Britonum, Books IX”
Page 388, full stop inserted after ‘MSS,’ “Iolo MSS., p. 474.”
Page 389, full stop inserted after ‘MSS,’ “Iolo MSS., p. 523.”
Page 415, full stop inserted after ‘St,’ “were offered at St. Tegla’s
Well”
Page 420, ‘homérique’ changed to ‘Homérique,’ “et celle de l’Épopée
Homérique”
Page 420, ‘a’ changed to ‘à,’ “Introduction à l’Étude de la”
Page 421, ‘Danaan’ changed to ‘Danann,’ “The story of the Tuatha Dé
Danann”
Page 428, ‘Danaan’ changed to ‘Danann,’ “on the Tuatha Dé Danann”
Page 430, ‘Dairé’ changed to ‘Daire,’ “Daire of Cualgne, owner of the
Brown Bull”
Page 431, ‘Aeifé’ changed to ‘Aeife,’ ““Demon of the air”, Aeife changed
into a”
Page 435, ‘226’ changed to ‘326,’ “Gwynhwyvar, 315, 326, 331-333, 334,
364.”
Page 438, ‘Lochlannoch’ changed to ‘Lochlannach,’ “Lochlannach, the,
205, 211.”
Page 442, ‘Porsenna’ changed to ‘Porsena,’ “Porsena, a Roman consul,
385.”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mythology of the British Islands - An Introduction to Celtic Myth, Legend, Poetry, and Romance" ***
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