Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  3

  Sacred Kingship in Early Ireland

  WHO COULD BE KING

  Early Ireland was not a kingdom, but it had many kings. It follows, then, that the boast of many Irish persons that they are descended from ancient kings is not entirely groundless. F. J. Byrne (2001) estimates that there were never fewer than 150 kings in Ireland from the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when the population was under half a million. Such a ‘king’ is not the counterpart of the chief executives of early modern nation states, like Henry VIII or Louis XIV. In one sense the terms ‘petty king’ or ‘chieftain’ might seem more accurate to describe the office. Yet the Old Irish word for king, rí (later ríg, rígh), appears in early texts as a translation of the Latin rex. Scribes who write of the rí appeared to be implying a king as he would have been understood in classical culture. These same early scribes write of the rí as the embodiment of the luck and prosperity of his people. His initiation called for profound and mysterious ritual that signalled a spiritual and physical intimacy with sovereignty. He was sacred because he could perform functions denied to ordinary mortals as well as to such elevated figures as druids and poets. Several formidable figures designated as rí loom large in early Irish narrative, such as Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] and Brian Bórama (Boru), often dominating epochs rather than mere households or precincts. These are grounds for using the English ‘king’ for rí without prefix or qualifier.

  Few generally educated readers know very much about Ireland from the fifth to twelfth centuries, in part because things Irish are rarely taught in English-speaking schools. Paradoxically, there is an enormous amount to know. From genealogies alone we can cite the names of more than 12,000 persons living in Ireland from before AD 1100, compared to a few hundred names from early Anglo-Saxon records and even fewer from the Germanic kingdoms of the continent. Beginners may find the names onomastically intimidating, like Fiachu ba hAiccid or Tipraite mac Taide, which do not appear to have ready counterparts in English or other European languages. Beyond this lies a society whose concepts of family, property and law are radically different from what we know from modern culture or even Europe of the high Middle Ages. There is not the space here to address this lack, but some salient observations are essential in reading this and later chapters.

  The Romans visited Ireland but did not conquer it. This brush with Roman civilization introduced Christianity and written records to the island but not Roman law. The Irish maintained their own legal system, the Brehon Laws, until they were displaced at the end of the twelfth century. Early Ireland was dominated by warring dynasties, of which the most important was the Uí Néill, initially based in the north but eventually extending over much of the land, dividing into different factions. Norsemen or ‘Vikings’ raided monastic centres, established the first cities such as Dublin and Limerick, settled into the population but found their power curtailed after their defeat at the Battle of Clontarf, 1014. Writing was the franchise of clerics we today call Irish monks, to distinguish them from the great continental orders, the Benedictines, Augustinians and Cistercians. The Christianity they practised we call ‘Celtic Christianity’ because it differed in discipline and artistic expression from the Roman (or Rome-based) Church. The native religious tradition came to an end in 1169–70, when Henry II of England, sanctioned by Pope Adrian IV, brought Ireland closer to Roman discipline. In Henry II’s time and after came the Anglo-Normans, French-speaking nobles from Britain who displaced many native landowners and made French the language of privilege and law. In time, these families, sometimes referred to as the ‘Old English’ (as opposed to post-Elizabethan settlers), integrated into the rest of the population and were described as more Irish than the Irish themselves, in effect Hiberno-Normans.

  In chronological summary:

  432 Traditional, perhaps contrived date for the arrival of St Patrick and the beginnings of Christian Ireland.

  516 Uí Néill extend power to Leinster in eastern Ireland.

  593/597 Death of St Colum Cille, member of Uí Néill, who had participated in first Christian initiation of an Irish king.

  794 Vikings begin raids on the British Isles.

  804 Founding of monastery at Kells, home of The Book of Kells, masterpiece of Celtic Christian art, probably created at Iona in the Hebrides.

  837 First Viking fleets on Irish inland waterways.

  849 Danes begin to settle in Ireland.

  1014 Irish defeat Norseman; Irish king Brian Bórama killed.

  1169 Arrival of Anglo-Normans in Ireland

  1198 Death of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor), the last ard rí (high king).

  The early Irish did not practise primogeniture, the ruthlessly clear rule that mandates passage of a title from an older male to his firstborn son, regardless of that son’s fitness or favour with his father. The new Irish king did not necessarily come from an old king’s fine [family or kindred] but rather his derbfhine [certain kin], the descendants of a common great-grandfather over four generations. According to an old law tract, Cóic Conairi Fuigill [The Five Paths of Judgement], a prospective king must be the son of a king and the grandson of a king. He should be physically unblemished, a man of property, of good legal standing and not guilty of theft. Other requirements underscore how differently the family was conceived in early Ireland as compared with later Christian times. The would-be king should be the son of a principal wife (cétmuinter) when possible, or, failing that, the son of a legitimate second wife. If that were not possible he might be the son of a concubine, or, in a worst case, the son from a list of other female partners. An oldest son might expect to succeed his father, but a younger son might also rise to power.

  To be more specific about the names for different steps in the process is to enter scholarly contention. The dominant informed view of the last century was formulated by one of the first great modern Celticists, Eoin MacNeill, in his Celtic Ireland (1921). In his analysis, a person eligible to succeed to a kingship (rígdomna) should belong to the same derbfhine as the king who has already reigned. An election, test or contest then determined the succession from the full four generations of potential candidates. Put another way, any male descendant of a kingly paternal great-grandfather could at least be considered for succession to kingship, even though the king immediately before him might only have been his second cousin. This was not a system that encouraged domestic tranquillity.

  According to the seventh-century Audacht Morainn [Testament of Morann], advice given by the legendary Morann to a young king, a true and good ruler will have fir flathemon [truth of the ruler], meaning that he will be righteous, will enjoy a character above reproach, will descend from high ancestry and will be capable of heroic action. He should ensure peace and justice, security of his tuath’s borders and all the prosperity of bountiful harvests and rivers teeming with fish.

  Complicating our vision of kingly succession is the concept of the ‘tanist’, a word which has made an unlikely migration from early Ireland to modern intellectual discourse in entirely different contexts, changing definitions along the way. The Old Irish words tánaise, tánaiste, according to the Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of the Irish Language or DIL (1913–83), mean ‘second’, ‘next’, or ‘second in rank or dignity, heir apparent’. This older definition continues in the Modern Irish word used for the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, Tánaiste. Under the influence of Sir James Frazer of Golden Bough fame, of the ‘Cambridge School’ of early twentieth-century mythology interpretation, and especially of theoretical maverick Robert Graves (1895–1985), the Irish-derived English word ‘tanist’ came to mean something entirely new. Surrounding this definition is the theory that ancient sacred kings in the Mediterranean and elsewhere were ritually slaughtered in imitation of the vegetation cycle, or ‘harvested’ before they began to decline. The tanist here is the presumptive heir apparent to the reigning sacred king who replaces the older man afte
r his sacrifice. Always seen as younger than the sacrificial king, this tanist may be seen as a rival to the older king, and he may also serve as executioner in the death ritual. Central to this conception is the certainty of the tanist that he is going to succeed the sacred king before the sacrifice and then his actual later assumption of the role.

  Early Irish records do not testify that any such transaction ever took place, neither ritual slaughter nor transfer of power to the slayer. There is, however, a familiar phrase in the annals, a suis [killed by his own] that testifies to much internecine conflict, but nothing that prescribes ritual murder for the tánaise ríg’s ascension to power. In Celtic Ireland Eoin MacNeill argues that there is no evidence the Irish had a preliminary selection of a king’s successor before the office was vacant until after the coming of the Anglo-Normans and feudalism (1169–70). In pre-Norman times the usual term for a person eligible to succeed to the kingship, rígdomna, and tánaise or tánaise ríg, existed side by side and were mutually exclusive. As Dáibhí Ó Cróinín points out in Early Medieval Ireland (1995), the term tánaise rig appears in the annals earlier, AD 848, but in reference to a Viking leader, whereas rígdomna would not first appear for another nineteen years, in AD 867. Both of these dates are relatively late, compared to other terms pertaining to kingship. The distinction was that the entire tribe looked forward to the tánaise rig becoming king without facing dispute. In the general run of things the tánaise rig did succeed, whereas the rígdomna did not in every instance. Two routes to kingship could have existed side by side, although neither is the one asserted by Sir James Frazer and Robert Graves.

  HIGH KINGS AND TARA

  Having become a popular woman’s given name, Tara is one of the few place names from early Ireland that most readers will recognize easily. The idea that Ireland once had a high king or ard rí is so familiar and resonant that the terms appear in the titles of popular novels, even as the names of gift shops. Characteristic of the romantic and imaginative reshaping of the distant past is Thomas Moore’s heroic poem ‘The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls’ in his Irish Melodies (1808), widely anthologized over the next century. Admittedly, Tara appears as the seat of a kingship in early Irish heroic narratives from the Ulster Cycle, but the nineteenth-century imagination aspired to see Tara as a magnificent palace, a Hibernian Windsor or Fontainebleau, if smaller. Margaret Mitchell’s naming of the O’Hara mansion Tara in her American Civil War epic Gone with the Wind (1936, filmed 1939) put the notion into everyday speech in the English-speaking world.

  A tourist’s visit to the hill of Tara (507 ft, 155 m) in Co. Meath, six miles southeast of Navan, sharpens perspective. From a distance there appears to be no hill at all, only a slightly rising gradient on the approaching road. Arriving at the designated site, one can see for a great distance, rumoured to be more than a third of all of Ireland, a prospect that surely delighted ancient visitors. Undulating mounds and earthworks, easier to perceive from aerial photographs, bear grandiose names – the Banqueting Hall, the Rath of the Synods, the Mound of the Hostages, etc. There is also a phallic shaft of weathered granite known as Lia Fáil [stone of destiny], put up in modern times to commemorate the martyrs of the 1798 rebellion and to remind visitors of the original stone. There is no evidence to support the contention that this is the original site, nor is there any against. Nonetheless, continuous archaeological investigation of the site reveals that the ancient Tara was the favoured venue of extraordinary activity over many centuries. The famous Tara Brooch, much copied, was not found on the site, however; its exalted craftsmanship led observers to assume it was made for a high king, even though it was found on the beach at Bettystown near Drogheda, Co. Louth. A king initiated at Tara would have distinctions to raise him apart from the 150 or so other contemporary kings.

  The realm of the rí was the tuath. An early Irish law text decrees that ‘there is no tuath which has no clerical scholar, no church, no poets, no king to extend contracts and treaties to other tuatha’ (pl.). A king of the tuath, or rí tuaithe (gen.), had no army, only a bodyguard of mercenaries, a retinue of noble clients and a steward to collect revenues. The definition of tuath would change over the centuries, but it did not always have territorial specifications. The entity was bound together by intimate relations that prevented it from evolving into a state.

  The political structure of early Ireland was based in large part on what we would call today ‘clientship’. Ordinary people living in the realm of the king were not citizens in the modern sense, nor were they subjects as people were in the days of powerful kings of nation states, or as they would have been in early modern times. Instead, the ordinary person had an agreement or pledge with a king as the king might have with kings more powerful than he was. In Eoin MacNeill’s depiction of the well-ordered tuath, a king was a war leader and president of his assembly. D. A. Binchy (1970) argued that in earliest times the king had been a priest and a judge as well as a war leader. Although commentators often use the word brehon (breithem) to denote what we would call a judge in something approaching the modern concept of judge as an interpreter of state-written codes, an early Irish king might rule with the counsel of a brehon on land disputes.

  A king could be classed in several kinds of hierarchies. The old tract titled Críth Gablach, probably the most widely known we have, gave fanciful names for three grades of king: (i) rí benn [king of peaks or ‘horns’] because of the high demand of his honour; (ii) rí buiden [king of bands] for his prowess in leading men and taking hostages; or (iii) rí bunaid cach cinn [ultimate king of every individual] for his ability to extend his control and coercive authority. Clusters of local kings [rí tuaithe] might be dominated by a greater king who ruled through his personal or dynastic connections, or perhaps by his commanding physical presence. Such an over-king might be called simply ruirí [great or over-king] if he dominated as few as four local kings, fuiríg [sub-king]; or he might be called rí cóicid [provincial king], or most exalted of all, rí ruirech [king of over-kings]. He was not, however, called the ard rí [high king] in earlier texts.

  From a very early date a king might acquire the title rí Temro or Temrach, literally ‘king of Tara’, which implied dominance over other kings, as Edel Bhreathnach and Conor Newman (1995) point out, but it did not necessarily imply a territorial claim over the whole island. Successive rulers crowned at Tara would enlarge the expectations of the office.

  The title ard rí, as F. J. Byrne has pointed out, is not very old, nor is it found in legal texts. It lacks precise significance and does not necessarily imply sovereignty over Ireland. The DIL does not contain an entry for ard rí, implying at the very least that its usage was not widespread in any early texts. At its first appearance it denoted an important king of a region or province, such as Ulster, ard rí Ulad, and in poetry it could be used figuratively for any over-king, a gesture of flattery. Much of what we read about in later Irish literature, including the Ulster Cycle, was quite simply invented and then accepted as fact. The polite name we have for such a document is pseudo-history, as it was given more credence than those narratives we call legend.

  A cynic could charge that much of what we call history is really pseudo-history, especially when history is edited to flatter powerful conquerors. Indeed, much of record-keeping in early Ireland is patently arranged to flatter the most powerful family, actually a federation of dynasties, the Uí Néill. But the most celebrated of Irish pseudo-histories, the Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions] (see Chapter 7) appears to have been a sincere if misguided attempt to harmonize irreconcilable sources.

  The first documented claimant to the status of high king was Máel Sechnaill (d. 862), later romantically known as ‘Malachy I’. The creation of his title was, as F. J. Byrne argues, political propaganda by the Uí Néill on behalf of the Tara dynasty, which it controlled. Some kind of sacral kingship, however, may have existed at Tara from much earlier times. From the mid-800s perspective, the pseudo-history claimed that high kingship had begun c
enturies earlier and had included Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565), the last important pre-Christian monarch. Once established, the high kingship continued for another 300 years. Although the title of high king might link a ruler to Tara, his actual seat of power, the one that allowed him to be eligible for the honour, might be far distant. The last high king was Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair [Rory O’Connor] of Connacht, who remained in power up to the time of the Anglo-Norman conquest, 1169.

  Two unique tests determined the suitability of a candidate to be high king at Tara, the first employing stones and instruments, the second the ritual killing of a bull. In the first he would be asked to ride in a royal chariot, and if it rejected him he was clearly unworthy. He would try to put on a royal mantle that was too big for the unworthy. He was asked to drive his chariot between two stones, only a hand’s breadth apart, to see if they would move apart to accommodate his wheels. And last he would be asked to come into contact with the Lia Fáil [stone of destiny], the stone penis, which would cry out at the touch of the right man. Fál (gen. Fáil) by itself is also a poetic name for Ireland, which also may be known as Inis Fáil [island of destiny]. Semantically, this suggests that the high king at Tara was a king of all Ireland, as the Uí Néill no doubt wished to imply, but such a role is not supported in law texts.