Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  The role of human sacrifice in early Irish Samain worship remains unclear. According to Christian scribes, the ‘chief idol’ of early Ireland, Crom Crúaich [bloody crescent] was venerated at Mag Slécht [plain of adoration or prostrations] in Co. Cavan, near the present village of Ballymagauran. The central idol was thought to be made of gold, surrounded by twelve others made of stone. The Killycluggin Stone from Cavan, now housed at the Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, does not match the received descriptions, but has nonetheless been associated with Crom Crúaich. The Stone, badly damaged in a move from the National Museum back to Cavan, dates from the third to the second centuries BC and is one of the few La Tène incised stones in Ireland in the Waldelgesheim style. The portrayal of cruel idols demanding human sacrifices may be an echo of the scriptural accounts of Tophet and Moloch (2 Kings: 23), as Eoin MacNeill suggested (1921). Whether Crom Crúaich as described actually existed cannot be proved, but it appears to be the model for the bogus god called Samhain (always with the Modern Irish spelling), invented in anti-Hallowe’en pamphlets. Sam[h]ain is, of course, a date or by extension a festivity, but the assertion that there was once such a god has made its way into at least one American encyclopedia.

  Early Irish texts are always precise when pointing out that important action takes place at Samain. On this date the predatory Fomorians would exact their tribute of milk, grain and live children. The triple-headed monster Aillén Tréchenn would come from Co. Roscommon every Samain to wreak havoc on the entire island, especially Emain Macha and Tara, until he was eliminated by Amairgin, the first poet of Ireland. The fiery musician Aillén mac Midgna, known as ‘the burner’, came every Samain to Tara, where he would lull the inhabitants to sleep with dulcet melodies and then set fire to the place. The hero Fionn mac Cumhaill dispatched him on first meeting. Not all encounters were violent. Cúchulainn encountered a succession of otherworldly damsels at Samain, and the lovers Cáer and Angus Óg fly off in swan form on this day. It was, summarize Rees and Rees (1961), a time of confusion, the setting for voyages to the otherworld, sexual relations between mortals and others, and gender-blurring customs of cross-dressing.

  Standing between the two halves of the Celtic year, Samain seemed suspended in time, when the borders between the natural and supernatural dissolved, and the spirits of the otherworld might move freely into the realm of mortals. It was also a time to relax after the most demanding farm work was done. Country lads would visit neighbours’ houses, collecting pence and provisions for celebrations. It was a time for the building of bonfires, a custom that began very early in Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition and continues into the twenty-first century. As people might perceive more of the realm of the dead at Samain, it was a time to look for portents of the future. James Joyce commemorates one of these practices in the story ‘Clay’ in Dubliners (1914).

  Although they disappeared earlier, Welsh Hollantide celebrations were comparable, with post-harvest merrymaking, bonfire burning, divination games and ghostly visitations. The credulous reported encounters with y ladi wen [the white lady] and the hwch ddu gota [bob-tailed black sow]. On the night before Hollantide one could know if death would come in the next year by peeping through a church-door keyhole. Not all beliefs were grim. Young people sewing hemp at crossroads at night could make their future sweethearts appear.

  IMBOLC, BELTAINE, LUGHNASA

  In the pastoral and agrarian societies of ancient and medieval northern Europe, winter and spring comprised the quieter half of the year. War-making and cattle-raiding receded. The Irish historian Geoffrey Keating (c.1580–c.1645/50) reported that from Samain to Beltaine, the people of Ireland were required to house and feed the samurai-like fianna, who would offer their military service to different kings and princes in the other half of the year. In the dark months the greatest struggle was to make sure that provisions from summer and autumn lasted through the cold months without benefit of advanced food preservation technologies – not just something to eat but something approaching a balanced diet that would ensure health or at least the diminution of disease.

  The return of fresh milk at this bleak time undoubtedly occasioned great joy. Ewes in Britain and Ireland begin lactation after lambing about February, midway between Samain and Beltaine. Cows’ milk would have petered out by that time and not be available again until later in the spring. In any event, sheep’s milk is richer in fat content than cows’ milk and was greatly enjoyed in the early Irish diet. In the twelfth-century satire Aislinge Meic Con Glinne [Vision of Mac Con Glinne], a supreme delicacy is ‘fair white porridge’, made with sheep’s milk. The ewes’ lactation was a sign of lambing and the increase of the flocks. Sheep would lamb and therefore come into milk earlier than cattle at that time because of their ability to crop lower for grass and get along better than the cow on the sparse vegetation of late winter. Cows would safely be in calf by early March.

  This experience appears to be behind the etymology given in the Glossary of Cormac mac Cuilennáin (d. 908) that the feast of Imbolc or Imbolg (early Modern Irish Óimelc) on 1 February marks the sheep’s coming into milk. Despite his antiquity, modern commentators do not accept Cormac’s judgements without exception. More recently it has been suggested that the root of the word Imbolc derives from the verb folcaim [I wash] and that February was originally a purification festival like the Roman Lupercalia. The assertion has not gained widespread acceptance. Inertia favours Cormac’s explanation, despite learned scepticism.

  Based on the link between Imbolc and lambing, Nerys Patterson (1992) has suggested that the day may have important connections with the seasons of human sexuality. Marriages in early Ireland tended to be concentrated between Twelfth Night (5 January) and Shrovetide (three days before the beginning of Lent, that is, from mid-January to early March). Newly married couples would live together until 1 May, when they separated, the men going with the cattle. Many first-born babies would then appear between mid-October and 1 February. New mothers’ need for good nutrition came just as the sheep came into milk.

  From the earliest times Imbolc was associated with Brigit, the fire goddess, and after Christianization with her successor, St Brigid of Kildare. The saint is often seen as a patroness of sheep, the pastoral economy and fertility in general. It is under her name that the day is now universally known in Celtic countries. The pre-Christian associations of the day have vanished from popular tradition. February 2, sometimes called Candlemas Day, is also sacred on the Christian calendar. It commemorates the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, when Christ presented her in the Temple. The faithful may have their throats blessed on this day by having two crossed candles placed before them.

  There are also teasing echoes of Imbolc in the secular American holiday Groundhog Day, 2 February, on which a large rodent (also called a woodchuck) seeks a subtle and ironic sign of the advent of spring. If it is a sunny day and he sees his shadow, winter will last another six weeks.

  Whether in two, six or eight weeks, winter does lead to spring, and spring to summer. In pastoral societies, as those of so many of the early Celts were, the coming of warm weather meant the necessary dislocation of moving the herds to summer pasture, or transhumance. Before their departure, herdsmen would drive the cattle between two bonfires in hopes of protecting them from murrain and other ills. People would also make the passage between the two fires, hoping to invite good luck or forestall ill favour, and to cure barrenness. Cormac’s Glossary testifies to the antiquity of this practice. Usually all fires would be extinguished so that they might be begun anew on Beltaine. In most of the Celtic lands the cattle drive took place on 1 May, but in Scotland, more northerly, darker and colder, it might be 15 May. The name in early Ireland for 1 May was Beltaine (also Beltane, Beltene, Beltine, etc.; Modern Irish Bealtaine). A three-syllable word, it is pronounced roughly ‘bel-tin-ĕ’. Gaelic Scotland and the Isle of Man employ forms derived from the Old Irish, Bealltuinn and Boaldyn. An alternative name in early Ireland was Cétshamain, m
eaning roughly ‘early spring’.

  The etymology of the word Beltaine is tantalizingly uncertain. The second two syllables, -taine, appear to come from the word for fire, teine. Lore associated with the day specified the requirement for ‘need fire’, or fire begun afresh by rubbing two sticks, teine éigen. Fire was part of celebrations for the day in all the Celtic countries, on mountaintops in Scotland. In Cornwall the custom persisted until the late twentieth century. The first syllable bel- may mean ‘shining, brilliant’. The same syllable has also invited speculation of a root in the name Belenus, the Gaulish god who may be an aspect of Apollo but who was usually worshipped under this name alone at temples from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. The root of his name may be ‘bright’, like the Irish word. Nineteenth-century speculation linking Belenus with the Phoenician Baal is now rejected. Names for the day in the P-Celtic languages allude only to the time of year, not to fire or a lost god: Welsh Cyntefin, Dydd Calan Mai; Cornish Cala’Mē; Breton Kala Hañv, all of which mean either ‘beginning of summer’ or ‘first of May’.

  Apart from the fire-cleansing cattle drive, Beltaine also appears to have acquired aspects of the Roman spring festival Parilia or Palila, 21 April, a day for shepherds and herdsmen. In early Irish literature Beltaine is a good day to begin great projects. Both the Partholonians and the Milesians (see Chapter 7) invade Ireland on Beltaine, according to the pseudo-history Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions]. The association with beginnings and departure may reflect the social experience of family members departing to the booleys or summer pastures.

  A great body of oral tradition about Beltaine speaks of a continuing presence of fire, which could be put to different purposes. It might cook the Beltaine cakes or bannocks, which were very large, round and flat, usually made from oats or barley. They were large enough to be broken into several portions, one of which contained a black spot made of charcoal. The unlucky person who drew by lot the piece with the black spot could be subject to a mimed execution of being thrown into the fire or drawn and quartered.

  It was also a time of anxiety. Food stocks from the winter would be running low. This is projected in oral tradition with stories of witches, animals or fairies who steal food from hungry families. Some of the anxiety was social. Nerys Patterson describes Beltaine as the day when peasants and landless cattle-owners were required to pay part of their tribute to overlords and decide whether to enter into new arrangements. May was also the end of the marriage season, and Beltaine was thought to be a singularly unlucky day for a wedding.

  In later European history, Celtic May Day celebrations begin to merge with those of other countries, especially in the north. English peasants danced around beribboned maypoles until the Puritans, noting their unmistakable phallic symbolism, suppressed them in the mid-seventeenth century. May also being about the time many northern flowers first bloom, the day became a time to display garlands of blossoms. The pan-European May Day has roots in the Roman celebration of Floralia, 27 April-3 May, in honour of Flora, goddess of flowers, dating to at least the third century BC. A much studied phenomenon, this May Day began a month-long celebration of the oncoming of spring with the honorific ‘election’ of a May king and May queen noted as early as 1576. It was this version of May Day that was Christianized by the Roman Catholic Church when the entire month was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and a statue of her was crowned, or sometimes a young woman known to be of blameless character might be crowned as her surrogate. This practice, once common, has much diminished in recent years. Ceremonies more pertinent to Beltaine were of less concern to the Church, although it did suppress the burning of a ceremonial fire at the hill of Uisnech in Co. Westmeath, sometimes described as the centre of Ireland. Geoffrey Keating reports that the Uisnech fire was still current in the mid-seventeenth century.

  When the Irish adapted European May Day to Beltaine, they did not allow many roles for women. Sir William Wilde noted in his Irish Popular Superstitions (1852) that there was no May queen in Irish spring parades, but that the leading female figure was played by a cross-dressing man. Folklorist Kevin Danaher (1972) retrieved a description of a Mummers’ May Day parade in Wexford from 1897 in which the parts of the fool and his wife were both played by men. It may be, as Nerys Patterson has speculated, that cross-dressed men parading next to men dressed as men may indicate the hag-like female in the winter half of the year, her ritual potency now spent, while the male next to her is the summer half. Or the reason might have been male dominance and exclusion.

  The all-male May Day parades appear to have led to the day’s becoming an international holiday for labouring people. The link is found among Irish immigrants in the United States. After the Civil War, thousands of Irish-born workers joined the first American labour union, The Knights of Labor. Founded as a secret society in 1869, the Knights at first grew slowly, eventually claiming a peak membership of 700,000 in 1886. After some poorly directed strikes, its membership plummeted, losing ground to the rival American Federation of Labor. During its prime, the Irish-born members of the Knights paraded on what was in effect the first Labor Day, with men marching together on 1 May as they had in Ireland. Shortly afterwards the International Socialist Congress adopted 1 May as a day to honour the working man in 1889. Nearly four decades later the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia searched to find a holiday on which all of society might pay tribute to the contributions of labouring people. They chose the Irish-American May Day, now shorn of its religious and pastoral roots.

  The last of the four calendar feasts, Lughnasa, may be the least perceptible in industrial, secular society, but we know more about its ancient roots than any of the other three. The Coligny Calendar found near Lyon, France, cites a ‘great festal month’ at Rivros, the counterpart of Irish Lughnasa or English August. We know today that Lyon was named for the Gaulish god Lugos/Lugus, whom the Romans called Gaulish Mercury, the ancient name of the city being Lug(o) dunum. At that city a festival was celebrated on the first of Rivros (August) in honour of the emperor Augustus (d. AD 14). Lugos, as mentioned previously, is an anticipation of the Irish hero Lug Lámfhota, who gives his name to the Irish feast. According to early Irish tradition, Lug himself established the festival to honour his foster-mother Tailtiu at Brega, in modern Co. Meath. Tailtiu later became the name of one of Ireland’s greatest fairs, held at nearby Teltown. Lug began the first festivities by leading horse races and martial arts contests. Soon, Lughnasa celebrations were held in many parts of Ireland as well as Gaelic Scotland, where the day is called Lunasduinn, and the Isle of Man, where it is Laa Luanistyn.

  We prefer the unreformed Modern Irish spelling Lughnasa for the day because it was used in Máire MacNeill’s landmark 700-page study The Feast of Lughnasa (1962), but to be consistent we should use the classical Irish Lugnasad, whose suffix -nasad may mean ‘assembly, festive or commemorative gathering’. MacNeill’s spelling also appears in the title of Brian Friel’s admired drama Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), which draws thematically on festival traditions. The reformed Modern Irish spelling is Lúnasa, which is now more likely to denote the month of August than the nearly extinct festival. The August holiday has mattered much less in Wales and Cornwall, where the local names carry no echo of Lug’s name, viz. Calan Awst [first of August] and Morvah, site of distinctive megaliths.

  Lughnasa is a harvest festival of the first crops to ripen, wheat and barley. Once they became plentiful, it also marked the maturing of potatoes. Celebrants enjoyed climbing hills, both to pray and to gather bilberries that matured at this time. Six months after Imbolc, it was the time ewes’ lactation ended the maternal phase of the flocks, and mating might begin again. Following nature’s example, it was also a time of increased human sexual activity.

  Surprisingly, Lughnasa has no mythological connection with the harvest in early Irish literature. Neither is it the date of many important events, only the invasion of Ireland by the Fir Bolg in the Lebor Gabála. The Fir Bolg would have a connectio
n with the feast of Tailtiu, as it is named for one of their queens.

  The date of Lughnasa was less securely fixed than those of the other calendar feasts. It might include many days, especially Sundays, from 15 July to 15 August. As the Christian Church often substituted the archangel Michael for Lug, the festival was transformed into St Michael’s Day or Michaelmas and moved to 29 September. Meanwhile 1 August in Scotland and England became Lammas Day, from an Anglo-Saxon word hlafmaesse [loaf-mass], unrelated to Lughnasa despite the coincident initials. In a second move to Christianize the festival it was made a commemoration of St Patrick’s victory over Crom Dubh [black crescent], renamed Domhnach Chrom Dubh and celebrated on the last Sunday in July or the first Sunday in August. In English these two days are known in Galway and Mayo as Garland Sunday, or its by-form Garlic Sunday.

  MacNeill’s study traces the transmutation and transmogrification of Lughnasa over the centuries, through open-air assemblies and pilgrimages at lakes, rivers and wells, and folk medicines, such as cures for insanity. Widespread practices through the insular Celtic countries as well as portions of England and France speak for the antiquity of the calendar feast as well as the importance it once had in the lives of most people. Perhaps there was no way for Lughnasa to survive in a society that has insulated us from the significance of natural processes, where people think of late summer as a time for escape from the routine of work and compulsory schooling. August has become a time for leisure activities, for holidays and vacations, not for shadowy commemorations of forgotten deities.

  6

  Otherworlds

  THIS WORLD AND THE ‘OTHER’

  The 26-year-old William Butler Yeats framed the issue when he wrote of ‘The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland’ (1891), set in Leitrim and Sligo in the rural northwest. The dreamy, spiritual Celts, it appeared, could perceive a world beyond the senses, an otherworld, imperceptible to their powerful, rational, practical neighbours, like the English. Not only does such a Celtic otherworld exist simultaneously with the empirical world of consciousness, but it is preferable to it, a gossamer ideal that contrasts with the grubby here and now.