Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  The second ceremony at Tara by which the high king (that is, of all Ireland) might be chosen was the tarbfheis or bull-feast, which began with the slaughter of the innocent animal. To select a candidate for kingship a man taken at random first ate his fill of the bull’s flesh, drank a broth made from the bull’s blood and then lay down to sleep in the bull’s hide. Four druids would then chant an incantation over him, during which time he must see in his sleep the right person to be king. The word feis is usually translated as ‘feast’, but it originated as the verbal noun fo-aid, meaning ‘to spend the night with’ or ‘to sleep with’. King Conaire participates in such a tarbfheis in the eleventh-century narrative Togail Bruidne Da Derga [Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel], a story of the innocent Conaire’s struggle with relentless fate. The bull, additionally, was used in divination rites elsewhere in the Celtic world. In early Scotland a man seeking the answer to an important question might spend the night inside the still-steaming carcass of a newly killed bull.

  A burial site as early as the third millennium BC, Tara had long been a centre of religious ceremony. It had once been sacred to Medb of Connacht, later an important figure in the Ulster Cycle and the Táin Bó Cuailnge, while she was still considered to be a goddess; her double, Medb Lethderg, ruled the hilltop. The Uí Néill, whose first homeland was in the north, seized Tara from the Leinstermen of the east in the fifth century, before Christianization. The first kings of Tara were important local rulers whose prestige was enhanced by their initiation on such hallowed ground. With the coming of the high king, Tara became the generator of its own myth. In dozens of early Irish narratives it became the royal residence of a succession of dominating rulers. In the stories of legendary king Conaire Mór, Tara appears to be a magical kingdom. It is to the court at Tara of Arthur-like Cormac mac Airt that the youthful hero Fionn mac Cumhaill proves himself by slaying the fiery Aillén mac Midgna, who had been preying upon the ‘palace’ every year on the eve of Samain (1 November).

  Even after Tara was abandoned as a place for religious ritual and became overgrown with weeds and bushes, it remained the site of one of the largest fairs held in medieval times and was the scene of an engagement by the United Irishmen in the rebellion of 1798. As late as 1843, the patriot and parliamentarian Daniel O’Connell held ‘monster rallies’ at Tara, urging thousands of his impoverished countrymen to demand their rights.

  It was not only the Uí Néill who wished to create their own history to enhance Tara. Christian ecclesiastics invented the story of Saint Rúadán, supposed to have lived in the sixth century, who put a curse upon Tara because king Diarmait mac Cerbaill insulted him in a Church/state dispute. In the greatest pseudo-history of Ireland, the Lebor Gabála, much of it compiled by ecclesiastics of later centuries, the victorious Milesians (that is, real mortals or the Gaels themselves) named the hilltop Temair after their queen, Téa. Temair is, in fact, one of several Irish spellings for the site; the anglicized Tara derives from its genitive form, Teamhrach. Its etymological root is not clear, perhaps ‘dark one’, ‘spectacle’, ‘elevated place’ or ‘assembly hall’.

  INITIATION OF KINGS

  Bad press dies hard. A slander uttered once can have the permanence of granite. A hundred truthful corrections frequently cannot erase the lasting effects of one defamation, especially if it is inflammatory. In early Ireland there was no more antagonistic reporter than the well-born Welsh cleric Gerald de Berri (c. 1146–1223), usually known as Giraldus Cambrensis or Gerald of Wales, who supported the disdainful view the Anglo-Normans held of the native Irish. Gerald first visited Ireland in 1183 and later returned in the entourage of Henry II. His detailed, mostly first-hand observations of the Ireland he visited are found in two texts, the earlier Expugnatio Hibernica [The Conquest of Ireland] and the more informative Topographia Hibernica [Topography of Ireland] (c.1185). Useful observations not found elsewhere abound in Topographia, but they are often interleaved with heated diatribes against what the author perceives to be the unspeakable savagery of the natives. Late in his account is the horrified description of the confirming of a new king that has echoed down eight centuries and remains in print in inexpensive paperback editions in our own time. Giraldus begins the passage with an apology, allowing that ‘… the austere discipline of history spares neither truth nor modesty’.

  There is in the northern and farther part of Ulster, namely in Kenelcunill [i.e. Cenél Conaill, Tyrconnell, Co. Donegal], a certain people which is accustomed to appoint its king with a rite altogether outlandish and abominable. When the whole people of that land has been gathered together in one place, a white mare is brought forward into the middle of the assembly. He who is to be inaugurated, not as chief, but as beast, not as king, but as an outlaw, has bestial intercourse with her before all, professing himself to be a beast also. The mare is then killed immediately, cut up into pieces, and boiled in water. He sits in the bath surrounded by all his people, and all, he and they, eat of the meat of the mare which is brought to them. He quaffs and drinks of the broth in which he is bathed, not in any cup, or using his hand, but just dipping his mouth into it round him. When this unrighteous rite has been carried out, his kingdom and dominion have been conferred.

  (Cambrensis, 1984: 110)

  The experienced reader of modern propaganda will notice tell-tale signals undermining Giraldus’s credibility. He does not speak from personal observation, as he does elsewhere in the Topographia, and he places the outrage in the remotest part of the island where the invaders had yet to set foot. More tellingly, Giraldus was an interested observer: he and members of his family were part of the body of conquistadors who were sworn to bring the barbarous and semi-pagan Irish back into the embrace of the holy mother Church in Rome. Yet this is not to say that Giraldus wilfully invented the entire episode out of thin air. Informed commentators on early Ireland have admitted that the horse is often sacrificed as part of kingship rituals among many Indo-European peoples. F. J. Byrne points out that there are obvious parallels, from distant ancient India and from pre-medieval Norway, where the king and his people were obliged to eat horse flesh together; even an early Christian king such as Haakon the Good (c.914–961) submitted to the apparently pagan rite.

  Giraldus’s portrayal of the bath of broth is certainly precedented in early Irish heroic narrative. One common motif portrays a wounded hero cured and restored in a broth containing pieces of meat. Fráech, a mortal hero, son of an otherworldly mother, in the eighth-century Táin Bó Fraích [Cattle Raid of Fráech], is resuscitated in a broth-bath after having been treacherously induced to enter a pool and attacked by a water monster. This story is linked to the explanation of the place name of the historic mound Carn Froích (Carnfree, Co. Roscommon), where the Ó Conchobhairs (O’Connors) were inaugurated as late as the fifteenth century, and Carn Froích is but three miles from Cruachain, fabled home of Queen Medb, where the kings of Connacht were crowned. Following this, F. J. Byrne has asserted that there is a confused tradition connecting the broth-bath with a royal inauguration site. Further, it is reasonable to suppose that Giraldus picked up from the Irish or Norse of the southeast of Ireland a more primitive account of an obsolete pagan rite, which he then libellously asserted to be still in force among an unvisited tribe in remote Donegal.

  As for the implication that the new king must perform an act of coitus as a part of his initiation, the early Irish record is rife with sexual metaphors. The sacral king is the spouse of his tuath, and his initiation until the time of Diarmait mac Cerbaill (d. 565) was called the banais ríghe, or, literally, ‘the wedding feast of kingship’. Banais, the normal Irish word for marriage, incorporates as a prefix the word ban, meaning ‘woman’. We have no first-person accounts of the banais ríghe, but we can deduce that the ceremony comprised two elements: (a) a libation or ceremonial drink offered by the ‘bride’, and (b) the sexual intercourse between the new king and the sovereignty of Ireland. Alas, no document survives to tell us how this ‘bride’ was portrayed –
an actual person playing a role, an icon of some kind or a decorated simulacrum meant to signify a person. Recent commentators have shown that the motif of sexual union between king and goddess persisted until the later Middle Ages in literature and possibly also in ritual. At Tara the ceremony was known as feis Temrach or feis Temro, employing a different word for the sex act, feis, as considered above. The great Geoffrey Keating, the father of Irish historiography in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (1629–31), describes the feis Temrach as an annual event in which the high king reaffirms his legitimacy. A more recent examination of the evidence suggests that the feis Temrach was held only intermittently and at ‘seed time’ rather than at Beltaine (May Day) because it was the supreme fertility ritual, designed to secure that man and beast and earth shall be fruitful throughout the king’s dominions. Although any explanation of the banais ríghe would no doubt have further disgusted Giraldus Cambrensis and might also raise the eyebrows of contemporary readers, the concept of the king ‘marrying’ his kingdom is by no means uniquely Irish or Celtic. Parallel examples may be found as far afield as the early cultures of India and the Semitic peoples of the Middle East.

  SOVEREIGNTY

  Kingship is male; sovereignty is female. Specifics of early Irish kingship can be documented in space and time. Our knowledge of sovereignty figures comes from traditional narratives, some of which we today call ‘myths’. Although the notion leaves scant legacy in the modern imagination, the early Irish were by no means the first people to envision a female embodiment of power and authority. Further, this creature, sometimes enticing, sometimes loathsome, must be won sexually by an aspiring king. The Greek word for the king’s intimate union with the embodiment of sovereignty is hierogamy, for sacred [hieros] marriage [gamos], although the concept is certainly much older than the heydays of Cnossos and Mycenae. In the Sumerian myths of the Tigris–Euphrates valley (second millennium BC), the aspiring king must mate with Inanna, queen of heaven and goddess of love and fertility, on New Year’s Day in her residence. The king is portrayed in a hymn as an incarnation of Dumuzi, a shepherd-king and husband of Inanna, who appears in a rite of hierogamy which culminates in their ecstatic sexual union. This may have been acted out in life with one of Inanna’s temple prostitutes. Early Indo-European tradition evidences correlatives and echoes of a kind of spiritual and/ or physical sexual union between the male king and divine female sovereignty figure, even as far away as the instances of Vishnu and Sri-Lakshmi in India.

  Sovereignty figures – perhaps goddesses – in early Ireland may wear different faces. Not only are her identities fluid, but she may veer from being an alluring young beauty of promiscuous appetite to being a frightful, demanding crone. This pattern contrasts with the iconography of early Gaul and pre-Roman Britain where representations of divine couples usually show the female half as a personification of plenty and the earth’s abundance. Rosmerta, to take but one example, was worshipped from what is today Germany, across France and the Low Countries to Britain; she was frequently seen as the cult partner of Gaulish Mercury. We not only know her name but we know how she was propitiated. In Ireland, there are no clearly identifiable icons, only shadowy, sometimes nameless figures from early narratives. Sovereignty may be a goddess of the land or a personification of Ireland itself, who blesses fertility, fortunes and prosperity. In the earliest narratives, the goddess of sovereignty has primacy that a mortal king must approach with timidity; in later tradition the king has a primacy that the sovereignty may threaten to disrupt.

  One of several early sovereignty goddesses is Mór Muman, whose name means literally ‘Great of Munster’, the southernmost of Ireland’s five ancient provinces. Originally a goddess of the Érainn people who migrated to Ireland in late prehistoric times, Mór had associations with the powers of the sun and eventually came to be worshipped all across southern Ireland or Munster. She was thought so beautiful that every woman in Ireland was compared with her. In an attempt to historicize her, medieval scribes assigned extraordinary powers to her such as exaltation and frenzy and the ability to fly; nevertheless, she was thought to have wandered Ireland for two years in rags. She was also ascribed sexual intimacies with known historical figures, such as Fíngein mac Áeda (d. 613) of Cashel, Co. Tipperary. She conceived a son by him but, hearing voices, fled before the child, Sechnesach, was born. Fíngein died soon after. Her name survives in more than a dozen place names, notably Tígh Mhóire [the House of Mór] in the parish of Dunquin, Co. Kerry. Aspects of her persona drifted into other figures, such as Medb, the warrior queen of Connacht, Mórrígan, the goddess of war fury, and the Cailleach Bhéirre or Hag of Beare, the mythic frightful old woman of the Beare Peninsula between the Kenmare estuary and Bantry Bay (see Chapter 4).

  The three most frequently cited sovereignty deities, Banba, Fódla and Ériu, appear in the pages of the pseudo-history Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions], which is discussed at greater length in Chapter 7. Their entrance comes shortly after the arrival of the last of the invaders, the Milesians, equivalent both of mortal human beings and the Gaels of early Ireland themselves. At first all three oppose the invaders and only change their minds when they can demand favours. Banba meets the Milesians at a mountain called Slieve Mish on the Dingle Peninsula of Co. Kerry, where she asks that they take her name for all of Ireland. Although she is ascribed a father named Cian and a husband named Mac Cuill, her name appears to have once applied to south Leinster, Ireland’s easternmost province, or the plain in Co. Meath that contains Tara. Fódla appears before the Milesians at Slieve Felim in Co. Limerick, and she too asks that her name be given to the whole of Ireland. Personifying the power of the land, Fódla is also ascribed a family, and echoes of her name are found in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic place names. The Milesians allow the three names to be used for Ireland, but Amairgin rules that Ériu’s will be the chief name, while the others persist as poetic alternatives. Of more lasting effect is the meeting with Ériu at the hill of Uisnech in what is today Co. Westmeath, often cited as the centre or omphalos [navel], of Ireland. She is portrayed wearing circlets and rings, prompting some commentators to suggest that she has an identification with the powers of the sun. After Ériu tells the Milesians that Ireland is the fairest of all lands under the sun and that the Milesians are the most perfect race the world has ever seen, the poet Amairgin promises her that the country will bear her name. Indeed, the Modern Irish name for the Republic of Ireland, Éire, is derived from Ériu, as is the anglicization Erin. An annual fair at Uisnech that continued into early modern times was attributed to Ériu.

  Ériu appears to be portrayed in stories with conscious political motivation, such as the pre-eleventh-century Baile in Scáil [Ir. The Phantom’s Frenzy]. In this the shadowy king of pre-history Conn Cétchathach [Ir. of the Hundred Battles] and his men set out from Tara and are enveloped in mist so that they lose their way. A horseman invites them to a house 30 feet (9 m) long with a ridgepole of white gold. In a room full of gold, they find a damsel seated on a chair of crystal and wearing a crown of gold. Upon a throne they see a Phantom, whose like had not been known at Tara. He reveals himself as the godly Lug Lámfhota, and the damsel as Sovereignty of Ireland, Lug’s wife, who then serves Conn with enormous portions of meat. Though she is not identified in the text, commentators identify the ‘wife’ with Ériu. Next to her are a silver vat, a gold vessel and a gold cup. She asks to whom she should serve the red ale therein contained. The Irish for red ale, derg-fhlaith, contains a pun on laith [ale, liquor] and flaith [sovereignty]. Lug answers by naming every prince from the time of Conn onward, although none of these names appears in historical records. Lug and the house disappear, but the gold cup and other vessels remain with Conn. The offering of a reddish drink signifying sovereignty, with unmistakable sexual connotations, also appears in other early Irish stories.

  In addition to being described as sovereignty figures, Banba, Fódla and Ériu are also described as tutelary goddesses, meaning they are patronesses or guardians o
f the land. Many Celtic deities have the power of shaping, taking different forms, a capacity shared by the Greek divinities as described by Homer in the Iliad. Among the shapes they could take was that of an ugly old woman, but one still seeking sexual favours. There are two views on why sovereignty should sometimes be seen as physically repulsive. One is that the sovereignty figure can also be a bringer of death or the deliverer of a curse. The second is allegorical, on the perceptions of a young prince reaching maturity: that the responsibilities of sovereignty are ugly and frightening until they are embraced.

  A model of this motif is found in the eleventh-century Echtra Mac nEchach Muigmedóin [The Adventure of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedón], a story that promotes the authority of the Uí Néill, that powerful dynasty of early Ireland. The key figure is Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], the possibly historical fifth-century founder of the Uí Néill dynasty. Before he has reached his maturity, Niall and his four brothers go hunting, stopping in a forest to cook a meal. One, Fergus, while looking for water, finds a horrible hag, black as coal, with hair like the tail of a wild horse, smoky eyes, a crooked nose, green teeth that can cut oak and green nails; worse, she is covered with pustules. She wants a kiss; otherwise, no water. Three brothers refuse, and one, Fiachra, gives her a small kiss, allowing him to see Tara and later to found a royal line in another part of Ireland. Niall agrees to kiss the loathly lady, volunteers to lie with her, and then throws himself upon her, giving her a most passionate kiss. At this the hag is transformed into a wondrous beauty, clad all in royal purple, with bronze slippers on her white feet. She reveals herself as Flaithius, the sovereignty of Ireland, and grants Niall the water, kingship and domination over the country for succeeding generations. She also advises Niall to refuse to give water to his brothers until they grant him seniority over them and agree that he might raise his weapon a hand’s breadth above theirs.