After Leborcham arranges a meeting between the two, Noíse remarks, ‘Fair is the heifer that goes past me.’ Deirdre responds, ‘Heifers are wont to be big where there is no bull.’ To which Noise replies, ‘You have the bull of the province, the king of Ulster.’ And then Deirdre admits, ‘I will choose between the two of you, and I will choose a young bull like you.’ Shortly thereafter Deirdre and Noise elope, fleeing first across Ireland with Conchobar in pursuit and later to Scotland. Noise’s brothers Ardan and Ainnle go with them, thus the title of the best known version in Irish, Longas (or Longes) mac nUislenn [The Exile of the Sons of Uisnech]. It is a remscél or prologue of the Táin Βó Cuailnge and is usually found with the epic. When a host king in Scotland begins to lust after Deirdre, the party flees. Soon news of pardon from Conchobar reaches them. Wanting the young people back in the Ulster capital of Emain Macha, he sends the hero Fergus mac Róich with pledges of good faith to the fugitives. The brothers are willing to accept the invitation to return, but Deirdre perceives the falsity in the offer and fears Conchobar’s treachery. Deirdre sings the verses of ‘Farewell to Alba’ [Scotland], before joining the others in the boat.
When they land in Ulster, Conchobar employs a ruse to separate Fergus from Deirdre and the brothers. The king’s men, led by Eógan mac Durthacht, then attack quickly, killing all but Deirdre. For the next year she lives subject to Conchobar, never smiling, frequently berating him for killing what was dear to her. No longer wishing to mate with her himself, Conchobar contrives to increase Deirdre’s humiliation by having her marry the hated Eógan, Noíse’s murderer, and possibly also a member of a lower social order. To exacerbate her predicament, Conchobar makes Deirdre the butt of a crude sexual joke. Deirdre then commits suicide. In the earlier of the medieval texts she does this by throwing herself against a stone and smashing her head into fragments. This occurs outside her residence but before she reaches the assembly of Emain Macha, where her treatment by Conchobar and Eógan would have invited more shame and ridicule. Like a male hero, she chooses death before dishonour. The later medieval version, Oided Mac nUisnig [Death of the Sons of Uisnech], provides details preferred in modern retellings of the story. Here she falls from the chariot into the sea, dashing her head upon a rock, her blood leaving a red streak on the foam. The last Irish language version, perhaps influenced by Christianity to be uneasy about suicide, has her falling upon her lover’s grave, overcome by grief.*
In the Fenian parallel story of Gráinne, retold in Chapter 11, the young beauty runs off with the handsome Diarmait, who is killed in a boar hunt. At the end of that tale, Gráinne is reunited with old Fionn mac Cumhaill, to whom she had been betrothed at the beginning of the action.
The Deirdre story in different texts is often classed as one of the ‘Three Sorrows of Storytelling’, along with Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann [The Tragic Story of the Children of Tuireann] (see pp. 153–5), and Oidheadh Chlainne Lir [The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir] (see pp. 163–5).
WARRIOR GODDESSES AND QUEENS
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, classical commentators such as Diodorus Siculus and Ammianus Marcellinus describe Gaulish women participating in battle alongside the men in their society. Dio Cassius speaks of the early British war goddess Andraste, the only such native goddess whose name we are sure about, who was venerated by the celebrated early female warrior Boudicca and her people, the Iceni. There certainly were others. One may have been Nemetona, shadowy Gaulish and British goddess of the sacred grove, whose name is found on inscriptions from what is now Germany to Bath in Britain. As she often paired with Mars, Roman god of war, her cult probably had martial implications. Further, her name appears to have an echo in the Irish war goddess Nemain [battle-fury, war-like frenzy]. The fullness of Nemain’s identity is not entirely clear either. She is usually cited as the consort of Néit, an Irish god of war, along with Badb, whose identity she may share. As mentioned in Chapter 1, Badb (also Baobh, anglicized Bave) is one of three Irish goddesses of war, known collectively as Mórrígna, along with Macha and Mórrígan. When the name of Nemain is substituted for either Badb or Mórrígan, commentators are inclined to see her as an aspect of those deities rather than a discrete entity in and of herself.
Of the war-goddesses known as Mórrígna, however, there is more to tell. The name in Irish means ‘great queens’, a plural form of the name of one of the trio, Mórrígan, often referred to in translation with the definite article, ‘the Mórrígan’. Some commentators have suggested that Mórrígna is identical with the Mórrígan and that Badb, Macha and Nemain are but aspects of her. Both the collective Mórrígna and the individual Mórrígan derive aspects from the territorial goddess Mór Muman, whose sometimes lusty exploits are cited in Chapter 3. Despite continuing parallels in their stories, the Mórrígan, Macha and Badb develop differing narrative personae in early Irish tradition.
Badb is often a scourge and a torment for warriors, and she delights in slaughter. Her name means hooded crow or scald crow, and she may also be known as Badb Catha, which means crow of battle, a scavenger of carrion. She may be related to the Gaulish battle-goddess whose name is reported as Bodua, Catobodua or Cauth Bova. As a haunter of battlefields, she has much in common with later figures from folklore such as the badhbh chaointe [Ir. weeping crow], the mournful scavenger, and also with the famous banshee, who foretells death, if she does not actually cause it.
Personae ascribed to the Mórrígan and Macha are much more complex because both are tri-functional, each a sovereign ruler, war-goddess and promoter of fertility. Like several unnamed sovereignty figures, both the Mórrígan and Macha demonstrate robust sexual appetites, often asserting their energies on warriors and heroes as well as other deities. In an oft-cited episode, the Mórrígan copulates with Dagda, the so-called ‘good god’, a leader of the divine race of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and one of the principal immortals of early Ireland. This occurs while the Mórrígan is straddling the river Unshin, near the village of Collooney in what is now Co. Sligo. After their lovemaking, the Mórrígan advises the Dagda that the evil Fomorians will soon be attacking in the epochal Second Battle of Mag Tuired (anglicized Moytura), described in Chapter 7. In the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, the Mórrígan takes on the guise of a lovely young girl in approaching the hero Cúchulainn, clearly wanting him to pay amorous attention to her. He crudely rebuffs her, saying he does ‘not have time for a woman’s backside’. She then approaches him under different forms, as an eel, a wolf, and a hornless red heifer, all to no avail. Later, when she sees him in combat she becomes an old milch cow; on his request for a drink she allows suckling from each of her three teats. Later she correctly predicts his death, breaks his chariot wheels and appears as a hooded crow on the shoulder of his corpse.
Macha, while a member of the Mórrígan trio, is herself a goddess with three identities. Perhaps the three are separate for purposes of storytelling. They may share a core identity: all three are born of the same mother, Ernmass. Georges Dumézil (1954) has argued that Macha provides the model for triplism in Celtic tradition. In each of her manifestations she gives her name to Emain Macha, the 18-acre hill fort in Co. Armagh, now known as Navan Fort, that is seen as the royal seat or capital of Ulster in stories of the Ulster Cycle. One of the Machas is the wife of the invader Nemed in the Lebor Gabála (see Chapter 7). The second Macha, sometimes known as Mong Ruadh [Ir. red-haired], the widow of an Ulster king, travels in disguise as a leper to the western and rival province of Connacht. While there, she comes upon the sons of her rival, Cimbáeth, roasting a pig. Luring the sons into the forest on the ruse of lying with her, she instead overpowers each one of them and drags them back to Ulster, where she sets them to building a noble fortress in her honor, Emain Macha. The best-known Macha is the wife of Crunniuc mac Agnomain, who gives birth during a horse race and brings the noínden [Ir. debility/birth pangs] to Ulster warriors. Against her wishes, Macha’s husband Crunniuc boasts that she can outrun any horse in the land. When calle
d upon to prove this claim, Macha protests that she is pregnant and pledges that perpetual evil will fall upon Ulster because of this affair. She indeed outpaces all the horses quite easily but cries out in pain as she crosses the finish line, immediately giving birth to twins, thus naming the spot Emain Macha. The word emain may mean either brooch or twins in Irish. She curses all who can hear her, and their descendants to nine times nine generations, that they suffer the pangs of childbirth for five days and four nights at the time of greatest difficulty. Small boys, women, and the hero Cúchulainn were excepted (see Chapter 9).
Like Macha, Queen Medb could outrun a horse. Like the Mórrígan, Medb appears to derive some of her persona from Mór Muman, the territorial goddess. As one of the protagonists of the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, Medb the warrior queen of Connacht is the culmination of even more forces of territory, fertility and sovereignty. In the Táin alone there is justification to argue that she is the most vibrant female personality in all of Celtic mythology, and there is further testimony to her allure and power in stories composed before the epic as well as those that came after. Her name in Irish means ‘she who intoxicates’, linguistically related to the Greek methu [wine]. Like a Gaulish mother-goddess, she is often portrayed with creatures, a bird and a squirrel, on her shoulder. She is always seen as a beautiful young woman, regardless of the chronology of the story. By literary convention she is pale, long-faced, with long flowing hair, wearing a red cloak and carrying a spear that may be flaming. The sight of her is enough to deprive men of two-thirds of their strength. Medb dominates men, both by the force of her personality and through her own sexuality. Called ‘Medb of the friendly thighs’ by translators, she claims that it takes thirty-two men to satisfy her sexually. She boasts of having any lover she wishes, ‘each man in another man’s shadow’. Many men are named as her ‘husbands’, but the lusty and potent Fergus mac Róich is her favourite lover.
The sovereignty goddess of Tara, or ‘queen’ of Leinster (eastern Ireland), known as Medb Lethderg [red-side, half-red], may be an anticipation or double of Medb of Connacht. Or Medb of Connacht may be only an emanation from Medb Lethderg as the goddess of Tara is certainly the older of the two. With her own pedigree, Medb Lethderg is thought to be the wife of nine successive kings of Ireland, including the father of the heroic Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles]. The esteemed monarch Cormac mac Airt, grandson of Conn, could not be considered king until he had slept with Medb Lethderg.
In historicizing Medb of Connacht, medieval scribes constructed a detailed biography. Her father, for example, is thought to be one of the most important pre-Patrician kings, Eochaid Feidlech. Her mother is sometimes named Cruacha, for whom the fortress of Cruachain in Co. Roscommon, Medb’s residence, is named. She has four sisters, all of whom are at one time ‘married’ to Conchobar mac Nessa, king of Emain Macha in Ulster, ultimately one of Medb’s great enemies. Medb kills her sister Clothra who is pregnant with Conchobar’s child, treachery that will later bring about her own death. The order and number of Medb’s husbands is not certain. Conchobar may have been the first, but through ‘pride of mind’ she departed from his company; he still lusts for her and later violates her while she is bathing in the Boyne River. Three later husbands become kings of Connacht. She is led to her husband of the Táin, Ailill mac Máta, by a ‘water worm’ who becomes Finnbennach, the White-horned Bull of Connacht who contends in the epic with Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Ulster. For a woman with such a demanding military and administrative career, Medb is often pregnant herself. She gives the name Maine to seven sons she bears to Ailill, under the misreading of a druid’s prophecy that a son with that name will kill Conchobar. Two of her lovechildren fathered by Fergus mac Róich give their names to the land; Ciar is the eponym of Ciarraí, or Kerry in English, and Conmac is the eponym of Conmaicne Mara, or Connemara, the region that cradles legend in west Galway.
The most coherent portrait of Medb as alluring schemer derives from four stories in the Ulster Cycle. In three of them, Fled Bricrenn [Briccriu’s Feast], Echtra Nerai [The Adventure of Nera] and Scéla mucce Meic Dathó [The Story of Mac Da Thó’s Pig], she is only a strident supporting player. In the Táin (related more fully in Chapter 10) she leads the action, beginning with her bickering pillow-talk with husband Ailill in the opening scenes over who possesses the greater wealth; he claims that ownership of Finnbennach, the White-horned Bull, gives him supremacy. Sensing that she has greater determination than her husband, she takes command of her armies and her allies so that she can seize the Donn Cuailnge, the Brown Bull of Ulster, and thus best Ailill. Her judgement is not always prudent, and she is constantly diverted by her adultery with Fergus.
The Ulster champion Cúchulainn becomes her most formidable opponent and their rivalry supplies continuing conflict in a somewhat diffuse narrative. Initially she thinks she can dismiss him but she comes to see him as a worthy adversary. Attempts to entrap him are thwarted, but her scheme to pit Cúchulainn against his friend Ferdiad leads to their duel at the ford, the single most dramatic moment in the epic. The Ulster hero triumphs, further hampering the Connacht queen. In face-to-face encounter Cúchulainn taunts and humiliates her, once shooting a pet bird from her shoulder. Later, when he comes upon her alone during her menstruation, she has to plead with him to be spared. In sneering condescension he says that he will not be a killer of women and so departs. She finds revenge by setting the horrible children of Cailitin against Cúchulainn, beginning a series of events that will lead to his downfall.
Medb’s bizarre death is related in a tale composed much later than the Táin. When Medb kills her pregnant sister Clothra, the child cut from the dying woman’s womb, Furbaide Ferbend, survives and lives on an island in Lough Ree, Co. Roscommon. Unaccountably, Medb chooses to live on the same island, where she goes bathing each morning. Learning the identity of the bather, his mother’s killer, Furbaide takes a hardened piece of cheese he has been eating, places it in his sling, and shoots it, hitting Medb squarely in the forehead and killing her. Old as this story is, it has left a trace in oral tradition. The island where Medb was slain is today known in English as Quaker’s Island, but its traditional name is Inchcleraun or, in Irish, Inis Clothrand, Clothra’s Island. The highest point on the island, known in English as Greenan Hill, derived from the Irish Grianán Meidbe or Medb’s Sun Porch.
Although Medb did not inspire a rich body of literature from oral tradition, she is sometimes described as the ‘queen of the fairies’. Her name lives on in dozens of place names, the best known of which is the cairn atop Knocknarea, Co. Sligo, a favourite locale of W. B. Yeats. It is Miscaun Maeve, or in Irish Miosgán Méabha [Medb’s Lump]. Many commentators, perhaps wishfully, assume she is an antecedent of Shakespeare’s Queen Mab (Romeo and Juliet, I, iv), the fairies’ midwife who delivers man’s brain of dreams, and who appears elsewhere in the work of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers.
TRANSIT TO SAINTHOOD
It takes more to become a saint than simply to be called one. In modern times canonization is an exacting process, in which evidence and testimonials are scrutinized closely, but it was not always so. During the slow European adaptation of the Christian worldview between the end of the Roman empire and the rise of monasticism and feudalism, countless petty deities and numinous figures received what amounted to baptism. Honoured by the faithful during pre-Christian times, they continued to be venerated and invoked after the spread and acceptance of the Gospels but came to be called saints. Many are associated with holy wells in the Celtic countries. In addition, lives of saints written centuries after the supposed death of the holy person, especially in Ireland, appear to assert the territorial and property claims of rival monasteries. The sanctity of a worthy saint might confer rights on his or her monastery. Confusing the matter further are the many saints’ legends, both popular and learned, composed during the Middle Ages, filled with astonishing and often fanciful adventures, pious counterparts to the secular roma
nces that flourished about the same time. One of the great tasks of Christian scholarship has been to winnow out the reliable data from fabulous tales, an on-going labour in Celtic countries as well as in other parts of Europe. The Roman Catholic Church signalled its concern that some early claims to sainthood were not supported by trustworthy evidence when it struck many familiar names from the official calendar in 1961. Many of the desanctified were shadowy forgotten figures, but the loss of the former saints Christopher and Philomena dismayed many of the devoted.
The lives of male saints are often characterized by heroic resistance to malign forces, whether animal or human. Many male saints may bring the light of the Gospels, usually at great danger to themselves, into the dark world of paganism. We see manly saints portrayed at birth and in childhood as well as in adulthood. The lives of female saints, however, often have a sharper focus. Elissa R. Henken has observed that the lives of Welsh saints usually turn on the women’s response to unwanted male sexual attention. One unwelcome act of aggression is enough to drive a holy woman to withdraw from society and take up the celibate life of a pious recluse. As in the secular tales of royal wives and heroic beauties, a woman’s honour is once again defined by her sexual behaviour.
Of all the Christian personages with possible Celtic pre-Christian antecedents, none has inspired more commentary than St Brigid or Brigit of Kildare, the best known of fifteen Irish saints bearing this name. The New Catholic Encyclopedia gives her vital dates as c.460–c.528, and outlines her biography:
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