Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  The people who first memorized and later transcribed the early tales had other means of categorizing them. One was by using an identifying first word in the title. A story whose title begins with the word Cath… is about a battle. There were at least seventeen such classifications. A title beginning Fis… includes a vision, Imram… a voyage, Tochmarc… an elopement, and so on. While the national epic, Táin Bó Cuailnge [The Cattle Raid of Cooley] is often referred to in English as ‘The Táin’, there are several other stories of cattle raids beginning with the word Táin. We also have categories for which few examples have survived, such as a title beginning Úath… indicating stories whose incidents are set in caves.

  Early storytellers were also burdened by meeting performance criteria modern readers pretty much ignore. In an oft-cited passage from the Book of Leinster [Lebor Laignech] (after 1150), poets are advised on the recitation of potentially 350 stories, of which 250 are ‘prime’ and the remaining 100 are ‘secondary’. Prime stories deal with destructions, cattle-raids, courtships, battles, caves, voyages, violent deaths, feasts, sieges, adventures, elopements and slaughters. The same source actually cites only 200 prime stories and none of the secondary. The uncited stories may simply be missing or, in the case of the secondary, they may be segments of longer primary stories. Which story was performed may well have been determined by the occasion, such as departure on a voyage, the anticipation of a marriage or an appearance at a court of law. The storyteller’s choice at such a moment would have nothing to do with our attribution of a cycle of stories on related characters.

  Central to the action of the Mythological Cycle are the divinely derived Tuatha Dé Danann, especially the hero Lug Lámfhota, whose links to pre-Christian gods came to light early. The narrower definitions of ‘mythology’ current in the mid-nineteenth century laid more stake on narrative roots in religion, and through religion to explanations of the origin of the cosmos. No Celtic cosmology survives, as mentioned before, but the story of how the Tuatha Dé Danann and later the mortal Gaels had come to Ireland as told in the Lebor Gabála did present a narrative of social origins, at the least. Subsequent decades would uncover divine origins for other heroic figures outside this cycle, such as Cúchulainn, Fionn and the Mórrígan. Further, close examination of non-Western traditions, as well as revolutionary movements in psychology and philosophy, pushed out the limits of what could and could not be considered a ‘myth’. In short, if we had done the sorting out of four different categories of stories today we would have given those in this cycle a different label.

  Many of the stories in the Mythological Cycle appear to be taking place at an earlier time than the other three. Texts for the cycle appear in some of the oldest codices from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while episodes within them find correlatives in the twelfth-century Dindshenchas or lore of places, implying they were widely known before the arrival of the Normans. This does not mean, however, that the creative energy for this cycle was all spent at an early date. The story from the cycle most popular with today’s readers, Oidheadh Chlainne Lir [The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir], contains language suggesting it was composed well after great works from other cycles, such as Táin Bó Cuailnge; the manuscript dates from about 1500.

  The narrative point of view in the Mythological Cycle is more accepting of wizardry and magical transformations. Étaín in Tochmarc Étaíne [The Wooing of Étaín] is turned into a butterfly; the Children of Lir become swans for 900 years, as do Angus Óg and his lover, but for a shorter period. These are distinct from the otherworldly intrusions found in all the cycles or the lure of the sídh so common in the Fenian.

  The Lebor Gabála Érenn, discussed in the previous chapter, is not only the longest document of the Mythological Cycle, but is also a prelude and frame for most of the cycle’s other stories. Most prominently Cath Maige Tuired [The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], the most profound and most commented-upon in the cycle, portrays action interpolated in the Lebor Gabála, which is why it was discussed in the previous chapter (pp. 140–44).

  CHILDREN OF TUIREANN

  In action peripheral to the clash between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians at Mag Tuired, the three sons of Tuireann – Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba – come to their unhappy ends. Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann [The Tragic Story of the Children of Tuireann] is a tale of animal shapeshifting, magic and revenge in which the three men run afoul of the mighty Lug Lámfhota.

  The personage known as Tuireann plays little role in the story, once it is established that he has illustrious lineage (Dian Cécht the physician and possibly the goddess Brigit) and has fathered the three boys upon Ana. Brian and his brothers have reached maturity when the battle of Mag Tuired looms and they find themselves among the Tuatha Dé Danann gearing up for war. After two physicians speculate about healing the wounded king Nuadu, we meet Lug and his father Cian. While travelling north to the plain of Mag Muirtheimne, Cian becomes apprehensive about the approach of three armed men from a family gripped in an unexplained enmity with his own; they are Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba. Seeing himself outnumbered, Cian uses a golden wand to transform himself into a pig and begins rooting in the earth with a nearby herd. Brian knows that Cian is among the herd and thinks of him now as the druidical pig; even if they were to slaughter the herd, such a pig might escape and so Brian transforms his brothers into hounds who indeed separate their quarry from the rest. Once they have returned to human form, Iuchair and Iucharba ask to spare Cian, but Brian will hear none of it and instead demands that his brothers join him in stoning the druidical pig. Cian asks to be returned to his human form as well, and instantly tells the brothers he has tricked them. If they had killed him as a pig, there would be only a small fine to pay. Slain under his own form, his death will demand the far greater honour price or éiric demanded for a nobleman. He adds, ‘My son Lug will know by the marks of your weapons who has slain me.’ Brian then hurls a heavy stone at Cian’s head and leads his brothers in pelting him until they reduce the champion to an insignificant, crushed mass. They struggle seven different times to bury the body as the earth rejects it on six occasions.

  Lug Lámfhota, meanwhile, has led his armies to victory in battle, after which he asks the whereabouts of his father. When his men find the spot where Cian is buried, Lug travels there and learns from the earth itself the manner of the killing. He digs up the body and examines it, bringing waves of grief and anger upon himself. After chanting a mourning lay, he reburies the body, marks it with an ogham-inscribed monument, and holds funeral games. Lug then proceeds to Tara, where, after encountering Tuireann’s three sons, he calls out to the assembly to name what penalty a man should ask of those who have murdered his father. Seeing the initial puzzlement, Lug announces that Cian is dead and that his murderers are present. The unnamed king of the assembly acknowledges that Lug could justly ask for the murderers’ own death, but if he were the accused he would ask to pay the éiric. At this Brian stands up and confesses that he and his brothers dispatched Cian. Lug agrees to accept a fine instead of taking the brothers’ lives.

  The honour price requires the brothers to retrieve magical treasurers and to perform dangerous feats. The treasures to be brought back to Ireland are: (i) the three apples of the Garden of the Hesperides; (ii) the skin of the pig of King Tuis ‘of Greece’ that will cure all diseased and wounded people and will turn water into wine; (iii) the superb poisoned spear in the hands of Pisear, ‘king of Persia’, that will come to be known as Gáe Assail; (iv) two steeds belonging to Dobar ‘king of Sicily’; (v) the magical seven pigs of Assal (sometimes Easal), king of the Golden Pillars, that, eaten at night, will reappear in the morning; (vi) the whelp or puppy Failinis of King Iruad (or Ioruaidh); (vii) the cooking-spit of the women of Inis Fionnchuire (or Findchuire), between Britain and Ireland; and, most enigmatically, (viii) three shouts on the hill of Miodhchaoin (or Midchaín) in Lochlainn, the realm of dangerous invaders. At first the three brothers are surprised by the apparent modesty
of the penalty, fearing that each is a trick. After they swear their agreement before the king, Lug explains the necessity and exacting difficulty of each task. The apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, for example, will cure the diseases and wounds of anyone who eats them. Further, the person throwing such an apple will hit anything he wishes without losing the cast apple. Lug does not add, however, what the modern reader knows: that the apples originate in classical mythology and that retrieving them is also the eleventh of Heracles’ twelve labours.

  After departing from Ireland in silent dismay, Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba build on inexhaustible daring and intelligent resources to overcome the first seven of Lug’s assigned tasks, but the eighth journey, to Lochlainn, almost breaks them. Miodhchaoin and his three sons, Áed, Conn and Corc, take the initiative in running their spears through the three sons of Tuireann. The men of Lochlainn are eventually killed, but Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba lie mortally wounded. Stricken though he is, Brian lifts his brothers’ heads so that all three might make feeble calls, fulfilling Lug’s éiric. Iuchair and Iucharba die soon after, and the weakened Brian returns their bodies to their father. Throwing himself on Lug’s mercy, Tuireann begs for his son’s life, which the hero can save with King Tuis’ healing pigskin. But Lug refuses, still angry at the way his father has been cruelly slaughtered. The father then buries his sons in a single grave and dies himself soon after. Lug, however, values the treasures brought by the sons of Tuireann. He chooses to make Gáe Assail his favourite weapon and Failinis his lapdog.

  Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann is often classed as one of the ‘Three Sorrows of Storytelling’, along with the Deirdre story, Chapter 4, pp. 80–83, and Oidheadh Chlainne Lir [The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir], pp. 163–5 below.

  MIDIR AND ÉTAÍN

  Dating from perhaps the eighth or ninth centuries, Tochmarc Étaíne [The Wooing of Étaín] survives in mutilated, disconnected fragments, parts of which were found only in the 1930s. At the centre are the lovers Midir – described as a Tuatha Dé Danann lord of the sídh in the Lebor Gabála – and the immortal girl Étaín, a ravishing paragon of beauty. While elements of the story appear rooted in inexplicable mystery, it has the feel of a happy-ending fairy-tale for grown-ups, what Myles Dillon called ‘a comedy in three acts’.

  I

  The story of how Midir and Étaín first meet lies under a narrative tangle of marital intrigue among the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Dagda tricks the magician Elcmar, lord of Brug na Bóinne (Newgrange and more than forty nearby tombs), so that he might sleep with his wife Boand, the river goddess. This produces Angus Óg, god of poetry in his maturity, who is given in fosterage to Midir at the sídh of Brí Léith (near Ardagh, Co. Longford). When the boy is grown, Midir goes to visit Angus Óg, now resident at Brug na Bóinne. While there, Midir claims to have suffered an injury for which he must be compensated with the fairest maiden in all Ireland, Étaín, daughter of Ailill (another of that name, not Medb’s husband). Angus must first win her through the Heraclean task of clearing twelve plains, causing twelve rivers to flow, and delivering the equivalent of Étaín’s weight in gold, which he does with Dagda’s help.

  When Midir returns home with lovely Étaín, his wife Fuamnach is understandably jealous. Taking a magical rod made from the rowan tree given to her by the druid Bresal Etarláim, Fuamnach strikes Étaín, turning her into a pool of water. As it evaporates, the water turns first into a worm and then into a butterfly (or in some translations, an exquisite, bejewelled dragonfly); its wonderful size and beauty fill the air with sweet music and fragrance. Even transformed, Étaín stays by Midir, and he knows it is she. Recognizing this, Fuamnach conjures up a wind to drive the butterfly out to the rocks and waves of the sea. After seven years of this misery, Étaín one day alights upon the breast of Angus Óg. For some time after, he carries Étaín-as-butterfly in a sunlit crystal cage. When Fuamnach learns of this, she drives Étaín in this form far to the north until she lands on a rooftop in Ulster. There she falls into a drinking cup of king Étar’s wife, who immediately swallows the small creature. Nine months later Étaín is reborn as the daughter of king Étar. Although she has no sense of it, Étaín is now 1,012 years older than when she first began life as Ailill’s daughter.

  II

  In the second story Étaín is now seen to be married to the mortal ard rí [high king] of Ireland, Eochaid Airem, whom she almost betrays accidentally through her own kindness. Her long-ago lover Midir makes a mysterious and unexpected appearance.

  Another 1,000 years have passed, the Tuatha Dé Danann have retired to their fairy mounds, and the mortal Milesians or Gaels rule the land. After Eochaid Airem became high king, his subjects refused to pay him tribute because he had no queen. So Eochaid sent emissaries throughout the island in search of a suitable bride. When they found Étaín they were sure she was the right choice and notified Eochaid. When he came to claim her he found her washing her hair, surrounded by gold, silver and gems, beside a bright, bubbling spring at Brí Léith (Midir’s residence, though he is not named). Enchanted by the sight of her bare white arms seen through a lush purple cloak, Eochaid immediately falls in love with Étaín. Everything about her seemed perfect: her long tapering fingers, slender ankles and even her delicate narrow feet. Her cheeks were like wild foxgloves, her skin white as newly fallen snow, making her lips seem even redder. Hers would be the standard of beauty against which others would be found wanting. Eochaid and Étaín are soon married.

  The bride’s almost otherworldly attractiveness becomes a burden for her. Eochaid’s brother Ailill Anglonnach is so smitten with her that he becomes frenzied with desire, but he is shamed to speak of it and is thus without chance of a cure. Eochaid’s chief physician, Fachtna, diagnoses Ailill’s malady and knows that only Étaín’s love can remedy it. When Eochaid departs on a royal circuit as part of his kingly duties, Étaín is left in charge of the afflicted Ailill, thought to be dying. The king’s instructions are that Ailill’s grave be dug, lamentations be made for him, and his cattle be slaughtered upon his death. As soon as they face each other, Ailill Anglonnach confesses the cause of his sickness to Étaín. Seeing his need, Étaín promises to help in the healing by giving herself to him but not in her husband’s residence; rather the tryst should take place on a nearby hilltop. At the time of their appointed meeting, Ailill Anglonnach is overcome by a magical drowsiness, and an impostor in his likeness creeps into bed with Étaín. After three nights of lovemaking, Étaín senses that her bed partner is not Ailill, much as he might look like him. When she protests that she wished only to heal Ailill, her phantom lover reveals himself to be Midir of Brí Léith, her immortal husband from 1,000 years earlier. Midir explains that he paid a great bride-price for Étaín but that Fuamnach’s jealousy had parted them. His filling of Ailill Anglonnach with deep longing for Étaín was but a ploy so that their meeting might be arranged. When he then begs Étaín to go away with him, she says she cannot without the consent of her current husband, Eochaid Airem. Upon her return to the king’s stronghold there is great rejoicing that Étaín’s honour has not been spoiled by sleeping with her husband’s brother.

  III

  The third story follows immediately upon the second and portrays Midir’s final attempts to have Étaín with him always.

  Driven with unfulfilled desire for Étaín, Midir devises trickery to get around her husband Eochaid Airem. One lovely summer day Eochaid looks down from his ramparts at Tara to see a handsome warrior approaching, wearing purple and with long golden hair. Although Eochaid does not know the stranger, he extends hospitality to him. Saying that he knows the identity of his host, the stranger reveals himself to be Midir of Brí Léith and immediately challenges Eochaid to the chess-like game of fidchell, with golden pieces on a silver board. In gamblers’ terms, Midir hustles the king, allowing him to win three successive matches, exacting rich prizes from the challenger. When Eochaid allows that the winner of the fourth match can name his own, Midir is, of course, victori
ous, and he asks to put his arms around Étaín and to kiss her on the mouth. Eochaid baulks at first but then agrees to Midir’s request as long as it is in a month’s time. Appearing handsomer than ever, Midir arrives on the appointed day only to find that Eochaid has surrounded Tara with armed men and secured the doors. Undeterred, Midir announces that Eochaid has given Étaín’s very self to him, causing her to blush with shame. Sternly, the husband reminds Midir of the limits of their agreement and bids him to get on with the embrace and the kiss. Suddenly then, with his weapons tucked under his left arm and Étaín clasped in his right, Midir rises up through the smoke-hole in the ceiling and flies away. Guards stationed outside report seeing two swans, linked together by chains of gold about their necks, disappear in the distance.

  Suitably enraged, Eochaid and his men upturn every sídh in Ireland, arriving at last at Midir’s residence of Brí Léith in the very centre of the island. Hearing the demand that Étaín be returned, Midir responds by producing fifty women (in some accounts sixty) all resembling her so that no one can tell who is the true queen. Eochaid proclaims that his wife’s skill and grace at pouring drinks will identify her, selects one of the multitude and returns to married life with her. He has chosen wrongly, however. Midir now tells Eochaid that the true Étaín was already pregnant from intercourse within marriage when she flew out of Tara with Midir. Worse, the simulation of Étaín Eochaid chose from the multitude was his own daughter; by sleeping with her Eochaid has unwittingly fathered a daughter upon his daughter. Horrified to be deceived, Eochaid Airem flattens Brí Léith, retrieves the true Étaín, his wife, and returns to Tara. Thus Midir loses his beloved Étaín for a second time.