Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  Lug’s final challenge is, ‘Ask the king whether he has one man who possesses all these arts; if he has I will not be able to enter Tara.’ Camel the doorkeeper then announces that a warrior named Samildánach, meaning ‘master of all the arts’, has come to help Nuadu’s people. To seal assurances of his excellence, Lug then defeats all the best court competitors at a demanding board-game known as fidchell [Ir. wooden wisdom] and comparable to chess.

  Recognizing that Lug does indeed possess the mastery he claims, Nuadu decides first to enlist the young man against Balor and his people. He cites the tyranny of their taxes, their piracy and their cruelty to captured sailors. Even though Balor is Lug’s grandfather, the resplendent young warrior quickly agrees to ally himself with Nuadu. To further the cause, Nuadu decides to give Lug the authority to rule and steps down from the throne.

  Lug rules uneventfully for thirteen days but then retreats with four other leaders, including Nuadu, to a quiet place to plan for the forthcoming battle. Three years pass. In one effort to gather intelligence, Lug dispatches Dagda to the Fomorian camp to spy and to delay the enemy until the Tuatha Dé are better prepared. Visiting their camp, Dagda asks for a truce. But they humiliate him by preying on his weakness for porridge and having him consume such an immense meal, with goats, sheep and swine for trimmings, that he is barely able to walk away. Dadga’s efforts are not lost, however, as he encounters Domnu, the Fomorian goddess, who promises to use her magic against her own people.

  The Fomorians advance to battle. As the Tuatha Dé assemble, Lug asks the many craftsmen to cite their magic powers. All comply – Goibniu, Dian Cécht, Luchta, Ogma and Credne the brazier, as does the witch-like Mórrígan so often associated with slaughter in battle. Joining also are Cairpre the satirist, assorted cupbearers, druids, witches, and Dagda himself, willing to give themselves to battle. Although Dagda flattens hordes of Fomorians, he is wounded by Caitlín, buck-toothed wife of Balor.

  Once the fighting begins, the slaughter is great on both sides. The mêlée rolls over Mag Tuired like thunder and the ground becomes slippery with blood. The Tuatha Dé gain advantage when Dian Cécht restores fallen warriors with the aid of his three children. Lug aids his own armies when he assumes the characteristic pose of the sorcerer. Balor the formidable enemy can destroy an army with his baleful gaze. The four retainers are at the ready to lift the lethal lid. He has already made short work of Nuadu when he meets Lug on the battlefield. Knowing that he cannot face his grandfather in hand-to-hand combat, Lug devises a way to assault him from afar. He thrusts a slingstone through Balor’s eye that goes crashing through the back of his skull, killing twenty-seven Fomorians. Emboldened by Lug, the Tuatha Dé rout the Fomorians and drive them out of Ireland, never to return. The cowardly Bres, who has sworn to decapitate Lug before the combat was joined, is captured and pleads to save his life by promising abundant milk and harvests in every quarter. His promises are spurned but Bres is allowed to live on so that he may advise farmers on the time for ploughing, sowing and reaping.

  Although the action of Cath Maige Tuired appears to be interpolated between the invasions charted by the Lebor Gabála, learned commentators agree that the text carries much deeper resonance in early Irish culture. At the very least it draws on more than conflicts between different early invaders. In his once influential study, Early Irish History and Mythology (1946), T. F. O’Rahilly argued that Lug’s slaying of Balor is the centre of the narrative around which the rest has accrued. In his view Lug vs. Balor is a figurative treatment of the displacement of an older deity by a younger one in some undatable era from pre-Christian Ireland. He also felt that echoes of this conflict could be found in other early Irish stories. Of more lasting prestige have been the views of French theorist Georges Dumézil (1898–1986), especially as applied to early Ireland and Wales by Alwyn and Brinley Rees in Celtic Heritage (1961). Drawing on a comparative overview of Indo-European mythology, Dumézil and the Rees brothers see the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann representing different functions of stratified early society, a parallel of the conflict between the Vanir and the Aesir in the Eddas of Norse mythology.

  MILESIANS

  The Tuatha Dé Danann are a hard act to follow. As the final invaders, the Milesians sometimes feel diminished compared with their predecessors. Although just as mortal as the readers and hearers of the Lebor Gabála, the Milesians appear in two discontinuous narratives. The first, highly contrived and fanciful, imagines their origins in far-off Scythia and in biblical lands. The second details the Milesian invasion of Ireland adorned with improbable and mysterious episodes while echoing the coming of historical Q-Celtic or Goidelic peoples to the island. Uniting these two streams is an imagined migration from northwestern Spain to Ireland, providing the name of their eponymous founder, Mil Espáine [soldier of Spain].

  Despite their origins in Scythia, the Milesians were thought to be descended from Japheth, Noah’s third son, as were the earlier invaders, the Nemedians. The first Milesian leader was Fénius Farsaid, who was conveniently present at Babel during the biblical separation of languages. Fénius’s son Niúl married a pharaoh’s daughter named Scota; her name, from the Latin for ‘Irishwoman’, appears again in a later generation. Their son, Goídel Glas, fashioned the Irish language following his grandfather’s instructions, taking the best of many languages. The Milesians were so chummy with their fellow captives, the Israelites, that Moses himself had saved the life of the infant Goídel with the mere touch of his rod. The child had been bitten by a snake, leaving him with a green mark that was the source of his epithet glas [green]. Moses pledged that Goídel and his descendants would live in a land free of serpents.

  In the generations that follow, the Milesians suffer persecutions from the Egyptians and escape to seek their freedom. They return to Scythia but also spend seven years by the Caspian Sea, migrating eventually to Spain, which they conquer and settle. Mil Espáine, for whom his people are named, joins the narrative in Egypt and leads them through a circuitous itinerary to Spain, where he dies an unexplained death. Sources outside the Lebor Gabála posit a link with the ancient city of Miletus in Asia Minor as a possible explanation of the people’s name.

  The compilers of the Lebor Gabála share a fascination with Spain that crops up often in early Ireland. It arises in a wilful confusion between [H]Iberia and Hibernia. At the centre of the fascination is the assertion that a certain strain of the Irish population must be of Spanish origin. The notion survives in the still-heard folk genealogy that the ‘black Irish’, persons of distinctively dark hair but light skin, are descended from survivors of the Spanish Armada of 1588, a mathematical impossibility. Genome studies of the twenty-first century confirm that populations from the northern Iberian Peninsula do indeed share a genetic inheritance with portions of the Irish population, although such information was unobtainable before contemporary times. It is also possible that Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula share larger portions of pre-Indo-European Neolithic populations than are found in other European countries. Even though elements of Celtic culture survive among the Galicians of northwestern Spain as well as in part of Portugal, only flimsy evidence can be summoned to argue that large bodies of people sailed from the Iberian Peninsula to settle early Ireland. Galician literary tradition complements the Irish assertion. And Iron Age settlements in Galicia, called castros, were abandoned in about 600–500 BC, roughly the time the Celtic languages came to Ireland.

  A more likely explanation is that both the Iberian Peninsula and Ireland are among the most westerly extensions of Europe and faced each other across a sea that invited early commerce. Agricola (first century AD) worried that Iberia and Hibernia might ally themselves against Roman rule in Britain. The Latin names Iberia and Hibernia make a slant rhyme. Additionally, Santiago de Compostela, capital of Galicia, was the focus of pious Christian pilgrimage from medieval times, visited by many but talked about by many more. Local tradition in Galway holds that Christopher Columbus stopped there on
his voyage to America; this was commemorated in a bronze plaque in 1992.

  Before he began his wanderings, Mil Espáine heard the prophecy of the druid Caicer that his people would live in Ireland, a country no Milesian had seen. After Mil’s death, one sight of Ireland from afar crystallizes the resolve to go there. Breogan, a Milesian leader, builds a high, defensive tower at Brigantia (an old name for La Coruña, major seaport on the northwest corner of Galicia). Breogan’s son Íth the magician climbs the tower in the cold winter twilight and sees the promised green island on the horizon. Íth then leads an advance party to Ireland, progressing to Ailech, a stone fortress in County Donegal, where he is killed by three kings of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Íth’s nine brothers and the eight sons of Mil then vow revenge that will mean an occupation of the island.

  A fleet of sixty-five vessels sails for Ireland just before Beltaine, but the crews suffer mishaps en route when two sailors, Erannán and Ír, are killed; the latter name becomes an eponym for Ireland (one of several). A fog closes round the approaching fleet so that the sailors lose their bearings and circle the island three times, frightened and helpless. The expedition at last lands at Inber Scéne in Co. Kerry (perhaps Kenmare). Amairgin the poet, a son of Mil, is the first to set foot on the island. After defeating a Tuatha Dé force at Sliab Mis (still known as Slieve Mish), the Milesians meet three goddesses, each of whom asks that Ireland be named for her: Banba, Ériu and Fódla. Each of the three is also named elsewhere in early Irish literature and assigned a complex pedigree as well as special powers. Only Ériu’s wish is granted; Erin is her anglicized form, taken from the genitive. Names for the other two are cited as poetic synonyms for Ireland in the Irish language. At Tara the Milesians meet three kings, who may be, according to some texts, the husbands of the three queens: Mac Cuill, Mac Cécht and Mac Gréine. Speaking for all the Milesians, Amairgin asks that the Tuatha Dé either give over their country peacefully for the murder of Íth or fight to keep it. Unready for battle themselves, the Tuatha Dé ask the Milesians to strike a bargain. It is that the invaders will withdraw in their ships and stay nine waves from the shore with the promise that they will withdraw if the Tuatha Dé can muster the power to prevent them from landing again. Once at sea the Milesians are beset by a storm easily perceived as the nefarious magic of the Tuatha Dé. But Amairgin invokes the spirit of Ireland and brings a calm. The Milesians then swiftly cross the nine waves, and Amairgin goes ashore proclaiming that he is the wind on the sea and the god that puts fire in the brain. Colptha is the next to go ashore, and Inber Colptha at the mouth of the Boyne River is named for him.

  Éremón, one of Mil Espáine’s four sons, leads the Milesians in a sunwise turn (i.e. clockwise) around Ireland to bring good fortune to his enterprise. After a series of skirmishes, the Milesians crush the Tuatha Dé Danann in two battles. The better known is at Tailtiu [Teltown, Co. Meath], later the site of one of the most widely attended fairs in medieval Ireland. The second and lesser confrontation is at Druim Ligen in what is now Co. Donegal. Two leading sons of Mil, Éremón and Éber, divide Ireland between themselves, and they and a third brother, the poet Amairgin, continue to contend with one another. Their mother, Scota, Mil’s widow, gives her name to the Irish people as Scoti and the island as Scotia. These were indeed some of the Latin terms for the Irish people and Ireland. Informed sources today tell us that Scoti (more often Scotti) and Scotia may have originated as a derogatory alternative for the usual Latin forms of Hibernian and Hibernia and may have meant something like raider or pirate. While Scotti first referred to the Gaels of Ireland, especially in the northeast, its denotation migrated across the Strait of Moyle to the Highlands of Scotland with the historical kingdom of Dál Riada from the sixth century on from Ulster to Argyll. Thus, Scotti first meant the Irish people and then came to mean the Scottish people when large numbers of Irish people conquered and united that land.

  Milesian hegemony spread to all corners of the island, and for a century they ruled without challenge. Eventually there was a rebellion among the subject ‘plebeian races’, the Aitheachthuatha, made up in part of surviving elements of the Fir Bolg. They launched the usurper Cairbre Cinn-Chait upon his disastrous reign. Cairbre’s son Morann, who could have maintained the ill-gotten dynasty, returned the Irish kingship to the Milesians.

  Compilers of the Lebor Gabála strove to accommodate to the Ireland that existed before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in 1170. One effort linked place-names with appropriate Milesian characters through creative pedigree-making or aetiologizing. The plain of Mag Ítha in Co. Donegal was thought to be named for Íth, the first Milesian to arrive in Ireland. The chieftain Breaga was linked to the medieval kingdom of Brega between the Liffey and Boyne rivers. The range of mountains known today as Slieve Bloom, earlier Sliab Bladma, were thought to have been named for Bladma, an otherwise insignificant figure. The Milesians do not appear in the Ulster Chronicles or in early Ulster and Connacht narratives. But the influence of the Lebor Gabála was so substantial that eventually many aristocratic families could claim a common ancestor in Mil Espáine.

  Neither the Lebor Gabála nor Cath Maige Tuired addresses the question of what happened to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Although the most attractive of the invaders, they leave no narrative footprints. Other sources, some as early as the twelfth century, assert that they went underground. By agreement, the immortal Tuatha Dé leave the upper part of the earth to the mortal Gaelic people and their progeny, while they themselves descend beneath the surface to dwell in the ancient barrows and cairns so numerous in the landscape. The main route to their realm is the sídh (see Chapter 6), the distinctive circular-topped mounds still commonly found in Ireland. Under its different spellings, sídh becomes the nickname for their otherworld. This disposal of the Tuatha Dé was attractive to the Christian clergy because it explained the perennial association of ancient monuments and the spirit world while also demoting the Tuatha Dé to near-demon status.

  Conflict between immortals and mortals causes the Tuatha Dé to deprive the living of their milk and edible grain, for which restitution is later made. Sometimes Dagda is described as not having been killed at Mag Tuired so that he may now rule under the earth. In other texts, his son Bodb Derg is the monarch. Although mortals might consider ancient ruins to be places of fear, especially during the dead of night, the subterranean Tuatha Dé are usually seen as living in an idyllic realm, some names of which were cited in the previous chapter. These include Mag Mell [Pleasant Plain], Emain Ablach [Fortress of Apples], a cognate of the Arthurian Avalon, and the best known, Tír na nÓg [the Land of Youth]. Like the classical Olympians, they may mirror human frailties in petty quarrels and intrigues, even though they enjoy beauty and agelessness. In time they become indistinguishable from the fairies, or áes sídhe, creatures widely known in European tradition. In oral tradition, the ‘king of the fairies’, Finnbheara, is depicted as having first been king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but prominent figures from the Lebor Gabála are not reduced to this status.

  A certain malevolence accruing to the underground deities may derive from Christian commentators linking the Tuatha Dé with the Fomorians. Or it may derive from their distinctive power of féth fíada, rendering them invisible, so that they may roam at will among mortals undetected. In long-standing folk belief, an old woman of the sídh can foresee misfortune in human households and will call out in the night as a warning. She is the bean [woman] sídhe [of the sídh], or banshee, whose lore is still widely known.

  8

  The Irish Mythological Cycle

  SPINNING THE CYCLES

  The notion that Old Irish narratives should fall into four cycles, Mythological, Ulster, Fenian and Kings, would have sounded strange to medieval storytellers and scribes. It was instead those great classifiers of data, nineteenth-century German academics, who sorted out these categories for us. They founded philology, the rigorous, systemized study of language. These were the same people who recovered the Old Irish language and c
ompiled its first grammars and dictionaries. Their perception that the internal associations of characters, themes and places could link stories has persisted for more than a century and a half and is now standard. This is so even though the names for the cycles are sometimes troublesome; for example, how can we have a ‘Mythological Cycle’ when so much of early Irish literature may be subsumed in what is now often called Celtic Mythology? Additionally, the Ulster Cycle was once referred to as the Red Branch Cycle, the Fenian Cycle has been called the Finn or the Ossianic Cycle, and the Cycles of Kings, or the largest portion of them, are sometimes known as the Historical Cycle. Neither is the categorization tidy; some stories such as Togail Bruidne Da Derga [The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel] might fit in more than one cycle while voyage tales such as Imram Brain [The Voyage of Bran] might not belong in any (see Chapter 6).

  When strung together, the stories from a single cycle do not form a continuous, unbroken narrative or even a continuous timeline, although those dealing with Cúchulainn (Chapter 10) come closest. In some cases the episodes in one cycle appear to echo those of another, as the childhood deeds of Fionn (Chapter 11) are partially modelled on those of Cúchulainn. The love story of Diarmait and Gráinne (Chapter 11) makes several parallels with that of Deirdre and Noise (Chapter 4), while coming to a dramatically different conclusion. Some characters, such as the legendary king Cormac mac Airt, may appear in more than one cycle. Lug Lámfhota, the principal hero of the Mythological Cycle, makes a significant appearance in the Ulster Cycle, and Manannán mac Lir the sea god may drive his chariot across whichever barriers he pleases.