Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  At both Newgrange and Gavrinis, mysterious incised markings decorate many standing stones, but there is some question whether Celtic populations knew of the graves’ associations with the sun. Three intertwined spirals, sometimes called the trispiral, are generally speculated to be sun symbols. The figure is widely used in contemporary Irish art, especially jewellery, and was the logo for Riverdance, the popular musical review. In early Irish literary tradition, Newgrange, under the name Brug na Bóinne [hostel of the Boyne], is a residence of Angus Óg, a god of poetry, and in oral tradition it is a prominent sídh or fairy mound. The carvings at the smaller Gavrinis are more ornate but less open to speculation. Although once a destination of Christian pilgrimage and a frequent place name in oral tradition, Gavrinis has no folkloric associations with the sun.

  Sun signs and solar imagery appear widely in early Celtic culture, but they do not necessarily support a conclusion readers might expect, that there was a single sun deity. A wheel, conventionally thought of as a sun sign, appears among the details of the Gundestrup Cauldron. Other archaeological evidence shows us that Iron Age Gauls, as well as those of the Roman occupation, cast solar-wheel models into the water as well as placing them as offerings at shrines, such as at Alésia and Lavoye in eastern France. The portrayal of a god with a wheel on a mace-head found at Willingham Fen, Cambridgeshire, implies the existence of a Romano-Celtic sun cult. Participants in some kind of sun cult wore the solar-decorated headdresses that survive at Wanborough temple in Surrey. Early Celtic coins bear sun symbols linked with horses. During Roman occupation sun symbols, such as the solar wheel, were associated with the worship of Jupiter, the Roman sky god whose cult extended to the colonies, often merging with local deities. And the sun is also implicit in the three-legged triskele so prevalent in early Celtic design, which survives, somewhat altered, as the symbol for the Isle of Man.

  The earliest text suggesting Celtic sun worship comes from the Confessio of St Patrick (fifth century), where the saint contrasts worship of the sun, rising by the command of God, with worship of the ‘Sun’ who is Christ; the former leads only to pain and damnation, the latter to eternal life. While some commentators cite this as certain evidence of sun worship in pre-Christian Ireland, and by extension among all the Celts, there is no concurrent testimony in early Irish texts or physical remains. References to the sun may only have been the saint’s rhetorical ploy to strengthen his case. The name of the Irish hero Lug Lámfhota [Old Irish, Lug: light, brightness] implies solar connections, as does that of his Welsh counterpart Lieu Llaw Gyffes, but informed commentators today reject T. F. O’Rahilly’s contention that Lug’s battle with Balor of the Evil Eye is an anthropomorphic corollary of a solar battle. The teasing etymology of the Irish hero’s name Mac Gréine [Ir. son of the sun] may be no more indicative of a cult than Louis XIV’s nickname, Le Roi Soleil [the sun king]. Thus Anne Ross concluded in Pagan Celtic Britain (1967) that there was no Celtic sun god.

  Evidence for a Celtic deity of the sky is easier to come by. The Roman poet Lucan (first century AD) speaks of three great divinities in Gaul, one of whom is Taranis, known for his bloody worship. Comparative etymology implies the root of this name is taran [thunder] and that Taranis should be ‘thunderer’. Although the figure bears no inscription, the statue of a bearded man holding a wheel in his lowered left hand and a thunderbolt in his raised right hand found at Le Châtelet in eastern France may indeed be Taranis. During Roman occupation Taranis became an epithet or cognomen of Jupiter, the Roman sky god (see pp. 38–9).

  EARTH AND WATER

  Like other polytheistic peoples, the Celts tended to perceive the spiritual (a view we call numinosity) in all parts of the accessible physical world. The surviving oral traditions of Ireland, Gaelic Scotland, Wales and Brittany place deities at countless, easily identifiable landforms such as caves, waterfalls, fords or conspicuous hills. In Roman Gaul prominent rivers and larger springs were either identified with or associated with nameable divinities, such the Marne (Dea Matrona), the Seine (Dea Sequana) or the Saône (Souconna). But shadowy though she may be, only one early deity appears to have transcended the local and particular from the continent to the British Isles.

  Her name survives in disparate forms, among them Ana, Anu and even Anna. Ana may or may not be identified with Danu, Dana, a matter of some scholarly contention, as addressed in the next paragraph. The often unreliable tenth-century Sanas Cormaic [Cormac’s Glossary] says that Ireland may be known as the ‘land of Ana’. Although she has no narrative personality, her name is cited in several early Irish stories as well as in the Kerry place name Dá Chich Anann [the Paps of Ana], for two breast-shaped hills ten miles east of Killarney. Allusions to her suggest dual characteristics: beneficent as the patroness of Munster, Ireland’s southerly province; or malevolent, contributing to the character of Áine, a deity of desire remembered at Cnoc Áine (Knockainy), near Lough Gur, a neolithic site in Co. Limerick.

  The name Danu is found only in the genitive form Danann, inviting comparison with a similarly named patron, D—, in the title of the immortal invaders of Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danann. It would make for harmonious simplicity if Ana and Danu were identical and the ancestral mother-goddess of Ireland was one and the same with the patroness of the gods, but that cannot be proven. Further parallels are tantalizing. The name for the Danube River, in whose valley Celtic culture flourished during the Iron Age, is based on a Celtic word, danuv. The root of the issue runs deep into Indo-European inheritance. A river goddess named Dānu is found in Sanskrit literature.

  A Welsh counterpart of Ana is Dôn, mother-goddess of five significant children in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi, the historic masterpiece of medieval Welsh literature.

  Epigraphic evidence points to hundreds of other shadowy minor territorial deities among the continental Gauls. Of these, Nemausus and the female Nemausicae, worshipped at Nemausus (Nîmes, southeastern France), Arausio, eponym of the town of Arausio (Orange, southern France), and Vasio, native spirit of the Roman town of Vaison-la-Romaine in the lower Rhône valley, are the best known. In the absence of a Gaulish literary tradition none of these figures is now more than a name to us.

  Quite the opposite case occurs in early Ireland, where there exists an abundance of literary materials coupled with a relative paucity of physical evidence. Mór Muman [Ir. mór: great], the territorial goddess of early southern Ireland, with solar and sovereignty associations, was thought so beautiful that every woman in Ireland was compared to her. Medieval scribes assigned extraordinary qualities to her in an attempt to historicize her. She knew frenzy or exaltation, lived for a while under enchantment, heard voices, could fly, yet wandered Ireland in rags for two years. As would befit a territorial goddess, she is thought to have enjoyed sexual intimacy with known historical figures. One such encounter is recorded as taking place at the great limestone acropolis of Cashel, in what is today Co. Tipperary. After tricking the wife of the reigning king, Fíngein mac Áeda (d. 613) to have her husband lie with her, Mór bore him a son, Sechnesach. Hearing distant, unexplained voices, Mór flees before the child is born, and Fíngein dies shortly afterwards. Her name lived on in local oral tradition, proverbs and place names. Aspects of her persona survive in the better known Mórrígan, the ‘Great Queen’, one of a triad of war-goddesses who play continuing roles in early Irish tradition.

  A personification of the power of the land appears as Fódla, one of three sister-goddesses, along with Banba and Ériu, who both embody and give their names to the entire island of Ireland. Members of the immortal Tuatha Dé Danann, Fódla and her sisters met the Milesians, invading mortals, in what is now Co. Limerick, according to the pseudo-history Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions] (see Chapter 7). In that episode Fódla asks that Ireland be named for her, and indeed her name was once a poetic national name, notably in the poetry of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn (1550–91). The root of her name survives in the Scottish place name Atholl [cf. Scottish Gaelic, Ath Fòdhla: the next Ireland]
. Atholl is at the base of the Grampian Mountains, toward the eastern edge of the cultural influence of the Gaelic-speaking invaders who came from Ireland to the Highlands about AD 500 and after. Despite her divine origins, Fódla developed something of a narrative personality in early Irish tradition and was married to the prominent warrior of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Mac Cécht.

  Perceiving that water is an enhancer of fertility and a life-giver as well as a life-taker, the early Celts had many reasons to personify and venerate it. Water can move quickly, take an infinite variety of forms and seemingly catch the sun. Wells and springs arise from deep within the unfathomable earth. Rivers may carry weighty cargoes and also nourish the fields. In awe of such power the Celts, from at least the middle Bronze Age, began to show their appreciation of water through gifts of jewellery, weapons, cauldrons, armour, coins, animal and even human sacrifices. One of the great treasures of Celtic art, the bejewelled Battersea Shield, was thrown into the River Thames near London shortly after the arrival of the Romans in the first century AD. Although votive materials may be found in all bodies of water, more are found in wells, perhaps because of a presumed link to the otherworld. The attributing of powers to wells continued through Christian times, when the severed heads of saints are thought to have been placed at certain holy sites. There are abundant examples in Ireland, especially associated with St Brigid, and also in Wales; but even St Melor of Cornwall and Brittany was thought to be a patron of holy wells.

  We read descriptions of the magical powers attributed to wells and streams in early Irish narrative. Connla’s Well (also known as the Well of Cóelrind) and the Well of Segais are both surrounded by nine hazel trees whose nuts fall into the water, where they are eaten by eager salmon. The nuts contain inspiration, knowledge and wisdom, concepts not always defined as they would be in the modern world. Knowledge here implies an esoteric, metaphysical perception, something that can only be bestowed, not gained gradually through sustained, unaided effort. Alas, the site of these wells is never clearly established, although the Well of Segais was traditionally (but inaccurately) thought to be the common source of the Shannon and Boyne Rivers. Connla’s Well may be in fabulous lands like Tír na nÓg [the land of youth], usually thought to be under the sea or more fancifully in Co. Tipperary. The identifiable pool of Linn Féic on the Boyne River in eastern Ireland or the falls of Assaroe on the Erne River in the northwest are the real-world sites where Fionn mac Cumhaill gains superior knowledge by touching the salmon with his thumb and tasting the fish when he thrusts his thumb into his mouth.

  Water deities, whether associated with wells, lakes, cataracts or rivers, tend to be female. Ritona or Pritona, a name indicating passageway, was the goddess of fords and water-crossings at Trier on the Moselle River. The ford could also have been seen as a metaphor for the passage between life and death, this world and the next. Also worshipped in Trier as well as in nearby Metz, eastern France, was Icovellauna, credited with powers of healing. No images of her survive, but her name tells us something about her function, for example: Ico-can mean ‘water’. She presides over an octagonal shrine known as Sablon, built in Romano-Celtic times. Much earlier, perhaps as early as the third century BC, is Glanis, eponym of the sacred springs at Glanum in what is today Provence, southern France. Greeks and Romans occupied the site before the coming of the Celts. Ancient cisterns near the springs indicate that pilgrims came here to bathe. Adjacent to one of the springs there is an altar to Glanis and to the Glanicae, a brood of local mother-goddesses linked to Glanis and her healing power.

  Three deities of early Britain, Brigantia, Coventina and Sulis, are better known to us from the wealth and abundance of their remains. Cults for each of the three flourished during the Roman occupation, giving the goddesses Mediterranean-influenced faces as well as Latinate names. Brigantia, probably a British counterpart of the Gaulish Brigindo, came to personify the hegemony of the powerful Brigantes confederation of warring tribes, centred in what is today West Yorkshire. The River Brent, a tributary joining the Thames at Brentford, is named for her. The Romans tended to equate her with Minerva, goddess of wisdom, but more recent commentators see links between her and Brigit, the Irish fire goddess. Coventina, in contrast, may have been represented by Graeco-Roman-influenced iconography as a nearly naked water nymph or as a triple nymph pouring water from a beaker, but was not equated with any member of the Roman pantheon. Coventina’s inscriptions range as far as Galician Spain and the Gaulish Mediterranean coast at Narbonne, but her principal shrine was at Carrawborough on Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Excavations in 1876 at her well here, called Procolitia or Brocolitia, uncovered a cache of 14,000 ancient coins. Other items may signal motivations for her worship, such as the number of brooches, ornamental clasps or fibulae apparently given by women in hopes of safe childbirth. Figures of a horse and a dog are among the statuettes dedicated to her. Her Roman epithets Augusta [august, majestic] and Sancta [holy] underscore the esteem she enjoyed. Curiously, though, the powers of healing attributed to her cannot be supported by a contemporary analysis of the waters at Carrawborough.

  The high status of Sulis or Sul can be presumed from the many altars dedicated to her in the Romano-British city of Bath, her principal shrine. Today a resort town in Avon (before 1982, Somerset), ten miles southeast of Bristol, Bath has been known for its medicinal waters since prehistoric times and is one of the oldest continually inhabited spots in Britain. The Roman city was called Aquae Sulis, enshrining the goddess, and was a destination of international pilgrims. For such a distant province, Aquae Sulis was a city rich in art, especially sculpture, architectural design and religious materials. Extensive excavation in the late twentieth century has made it one of the best known Roman settlements. During the Roman occupation Sulis became conflated with the Roman goddess of wisdom Minerva, not simply identified with her but effectively merged with her. Their names are fused, Sul-Minerva or Sulis Minerva, but as the Celtic portion is always put first we assume the native half of her persona dominated; the many surviving inscriptions encompass both Celtic and Latin forms, separately and together. Linguistically sul- is related to the Indo-European root for ‘sun’, which in turn can be linked to the heat of the natural springs. Sulis’s curative waters might be used for a range of conditions, among them the problems of mothers unable to nurse. Additionally, her name was also invoked to wreak vengeance upon enemies of petitioners. A cult statue of Sul-Minerva done as a classical goddess survives to the present, though badly mutilated. The gilded bronze head, once helmeted but now violently separated from the torso, has become one of the most photographed art objects from early Britain.

  Two Irish river goddesses, never given visual representation, play leading roles in early literary tradition. They are Boand (whose name may mean ‘she who has white cows’), a deification of the Boyne River, and Sinann of the Shannon River. Although small by continental norms, both rivers are endowed with cultural and historical resonance far greater than the volumes of water they carry. The Boyne, about 70 miles long, runs northeast across three counties, parts of Kildare and Offaly and all of Meath; it empties into the Irish Sea at Drogheda. Ancient monuments abound in its valley, of which the most famous are the passage-graves of Newgrange, Dowth and Knowth, and the Hill of Tara, where the ard rí [high king] was crowned. The 224-mile Shannon nearly divides the island vertically and was difficult for early peoples to ford, the best crossing being at Athlone. The last 70 miles of the river, southwest of Limerick, widen into an expansive estuary navigable by vessels of 1,000 tons.

  Imperious and lusty, Boand has such a developed character in early Irish narrative that she is credited with a lapdog, Dabilla. A considerable beauty, she is the sister of an even greater beauty, Bébinn, a patroness of childbirth. While married to Nechtan (whose name derives from the Latin Neptune), Boand has an affair with the Dagda, usually known as the ‘good god’, to produce Angus Óg, the god of poetry. To conceal her adultery, she asks Elcmar, a magician, to be Angus’s
foster-father. A confusing alternative version retells the story with the players under assumed names: Boand (now known as Eithne) is married to Elcmar when she succumbs to the charms of Eochaid Ollathair (another name for the Dagda), again producing Angus Óg.

  Although the daughter of Lir the sea god, Sinann appears in fewer stories. The best-known tells of her failed attempt to seek knowledge and her associations with the Shannon River, a story strikingly similar to one told of Boand. When Sinann seeks esoteric knowledge at Connla’s Well, she is denied, apparently for having violated certain protocols. In anger, the well rises up and drowns her; Sinann’s body is washed up on the banks of a river, the Shannon, which is then named for her. Boand drowns in two versions. In the first, closer to the story of Sinann, Boand defies the magical powers of the well of Segais, causing the well to rise up, mutilate and drown her. The water from the well, now a river, washes her body away to the sea. In the second, Boand violates a taboo by looking into the well of Sídh Nechtain (bearing the name of her husband), which rises up and follows her as she flees toward the sea.

  The third Irish river goddess, commemorated in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), is Anna Livia Plurabelle, the spirit of Dublin’s River Liffey. Contained in the name is an allusion to Ana/Anu, the older goddess. Joyce did not invent the figure, as is commonly supposed. He did contrive the nonce word ‘Plurabelle’ [more than one beauty] and added it to ‘Anna Livia’, a popular pseudo-Latinization of Abhainn na Life, the River of the Liffey, the plain in which Dublin is situated. As with so many names in Finnegans Wake, this one contains within it several cross-linguistic puns. During the 1990s a statue and fountain of Anna Livia Plurabelle on Dublin’s O’Connell Street met with public ridicule and was replaced with the Millennium Spire. An earlier name for the river was Ruirteach [rough, tempestuous].