The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  It became clear, as I have argued in Celt and Saxon: The Struggle for Britain AD 410–937, that after the defeat of the historical Arthur by the Anglo-Saxons, the British Celts would gather around their storytellers and these storytellers would tell sagas of the hero. Over the centuries, the historical deeds were lost in the mists of the storytelling. Searching for new themes to enliven their sagas, the bards borrowed freely from many of the Irish tales associated with the popular Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his legendary warriors, the Fianna. Even Sir Gawain and the Green Knight borrowed from the Cúchulainn saga. The story with the same motif appears in the Feast of Bricriu in which Cúchulainn plays the role later assigned to Gawain.

  Arthur and his knights actually appear in one of the Irish myths in which he steals the hound of Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Arthurian tales had a vogue in medieval Irish literature, but he never replaced the popularity of Fionn Mac Cumhaill as the chief hero. However, at least twenty-five Arthurian tales in Irish have been identified from this period.

  In Welsh mythology, Culhwch and Olwen is the earliest known fully-fledged Arthurian tale, which linguists claim dates several centuries before it was first written down, in the eleventh century. There are three other later Arthurian tales in the Mabinogi: The Lady of the Fountain, Peredur, Son of Efrawg and Gereint, Son of Erbin. Arthur also appears as a character in a tenth-century poem called The Spoils of Annwn which is a prototype for the Holy Grail legend.

  It is fascinating that Arthur has now become part of a world folklore, but is no longer seen through Celtic eyes as a great champion fighting against the ancestors of the English. Indeed, Arthur has become an archetypal English king, with the additions of European medieval chivalry, courtly love and a whole host of appendages that did not appear in the original stories.

  Similarly, the romance of Tristan and Iseult has also left its Celtic homeland to become part of a wider European cultural myth. Tristan was the nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and Iseult the daughter of an Irish King of Munster. The origins now matter little, as the story has been recorded in hundreds of different versions in practically every European language – the earliest, outside of the Celtic orbit, being in French, German and English. Joseph Bédier (Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, Paris, 1902) maintained that all the known Tristan stories could be traced back to one extant manuscript written by Beroul, about whom nothing is known, in the middle of the twelfth century. Bédier argues that Beroul, writing in French, was translating from a Breton source who probably derived it from a Cornish source.

  The saga is, of course, one of the world’s greatest love stories. The central motif is the traditional Celtic elopement tale, known in Irish as aithedha, of which there are many famous examples, such as the story of Deirdre and that of Gráinne. In the Tristan and Iseult case, the elopement is of the king’s new wife with her lover, the king’s nephew. Many of the essential characteristics of the tale are to be found in other Celtic elopement tales.

  Interestingly, we find that there was a real King Mark and a real Tristan in Cornwall. Castle Dore, Mark’s “castle”, is two miles north of Fowey; it is an earthwork fortification dating back to the second century BC and was inhabited in the sixth century. A mile or so from Fowey, towards Par and near the disused entrance to Menabilly House, there is an engraved stone dated to the mid-sixth century. The accepted reading of the Latin inscription is Drustaus (or Drustanus) hic iacit Cunomori filius – here lies Drustanus, son of Cunomorus.

  Philologically, the name Drustanus equates with Tristan. King Mark’s full name in the records is given as “Marcus Cunomorus”. The name Mark does not come from the Roman praenomen “Marcus” but from the Celtic word for horse: in Cornish Margh, in Breton Marc’h and in Welsh March. Cunomorus means “hound of the sea”. The Life of St Pol de Léon, written about AD 880 by Urmonek, a monk of Landévennec in Brittany, not only refers to the king as having “ears like a horse” but explains that Marc’h was also called “Cunomorus”.

  Returning to the important fact given in the inscription at Fowey – how much more poignant this elopement tale would be if Tristan, indeed, had eloped with his stepmother!

  The first complete Celtic language version of the Tristan and Iseult story only survives from the sixteenth century. This is in Welsh.

  In the current collection of retellings, I have chosen to introduce the tales with a recreation of the Celtic “creation myth” – The Ever-Living Ones – and attempted to delete the Christian glosses added to it when it was first written down. I have incorporated into this the elements from Cath Maige Tuired (The Battle of Mag Tuired), arguably the most important tale in the “Mythological Cycle”, in which the gods and goddesses of Danu fight with evil Fomorii (Under-Sea Dwellers). There are two early versions of this, one surviving in a sixteenth century copy, while the second version survives in a manuscript c. 1650.

  The stories given in the Leabhar Gábhala (The Book of Invasions, often given in the old form Lebor Gabála Erenn), which is found in the Leabhar Laignech of the twelfth century, is the nearest to the Celtic origin myth that we have. The Leabhar Gábhala tells of the mythical invasions of Ireland, including that of the “Ever-Living Ones”, the Children of Danu or “The Tuatha Dé Danaan”.

  In the Irish creation myth, the Christian writers made Cesair the granddaughter of the biblical Noah. Her parents are Bith and Birren and they set out in three ships to find a place which would escape the Deluge. Only one ship survives and lands at Corca Dhuibhne, on the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry. There are fifty women and three men. As well as Bith, there is Ladra the pilot and Fionntan. When Bith and Ladra die, Fionntan, left alone with the women, feels inadequate and flees. He and the women eventually perish. Among the variants of this tale is the story that one of the women had a magic cask which, when opened, flowed for so long that water covered the earth and drowned them.

  The Welsh Christian creation myth is found in the medieval Trioedd Ynys Prydain, a collection of triads which served as a mnemonic device for cataloguing a variety of facts and precepts. It speaks of Llyon-Llion, the Lake of the Waves, which overflows due to Addanc, a monster who lives in the lake. He is finally disposed of by being hauled from his lair by the oxen of Hu Gadarn. In some versions, he is killed by Peredur. However, he creates the overflow and thereby the Deluge. Indeed, he seems to be cognate with Griva who has a similar role in Hindu Deluge myth. Nefyed Naf Nefion then builds a ship, in which Dwyvan and his wife Dwyvach escape. Nefyed is cognate to the Irish Nemed, who is said to have arrived in Ireland after the Deluge.

  While there are hints of a pre-Christian origin, especially with the story of Addanc, other sources compare more with The Churning of the Ocean in which many comparative figures to Celt myth also appear, such as Dhanu; Surabhi, the divine cow; the Tree of Knowledge; Dhanvantari – the equivalent of the Irish Dian Cécht, the physician of the gods; and others.

  In many ways, the Leabhar Gábhala is the equivalent of the Hindu Mahabharata. It was necessary, therefore, to check other references, make comparisons with similar origin myths in the Vedas and in other Indo-European myths, in order to clarify points which have been lost in the bowdlerisation by the Christian scribes. Thus, it was my intention to return the story to its original pre-Christian Celtic vibrancy.

  The pre-Christian themes certainly are in evidence in the Leabhar Gábhala and also in the Dindsenchas, a collection of sagas which explain the meaning of place-names, the oldest version being found in the Leabhar Laignech from texts first recorded from the ninth to twelfth centuries. In fact, there are three versions of the Dindsenchas, surviving in over forty manuscripts.

  Each one of the six surviving Celtic peoples is represented here by six stories. I have prefaced each section and given some essential sources for the tales of that country. Some of them will be familiar to some ardent followers of Celtic myth and legend but others, I hope, will not be so familiar. I have tried to seek out some new tales and new versions.

  It should be noted that seven of the
stories included in this collection were first published in The Giant Book of Myths and Legends, edited by Mike Ashley, Magpie Books, London, 1995. These stories appeared there under my fiction-writing pseudonym of Peter Tremayne and were: The Ever-Living Ones; The Sons of Tuireann; Island of the Ocean God; The Shadowy One; Bran and Branwen; Tewdrig, Tyrant of Treheyl and The Destruction of Ker-Ys. My thanks to Mike Ashley and Nick Robinson of Magpie Books, for allowing them to be reprinted in the current volume.

  In Celtic mythology and legend, one enters a fascinating world of fantasy, which is remote from the world of Greek and Latin myths, but which holds a strange resonance with Hindu myths. Even though the insular Celts have spent at least three millennia in their north-west homelands, separated from their Indo-European parent, it is curious that there is a warmth and lightness rather than the brooding bleakness that permeates the sagas of the Germanic and Nordic cultures. It is hard to believe, at times, that we are considering a north-west European culture. A bright, happy spirit pervades even the tragedies. There is a spirit of eternal optimism. Even in the tragedy of The Children of Lir there is nothing final about the end.

  Death is never the conqueror and we are reminded that the ancient Celts were one of the first cultures to evolve a sophisticated doctrine of the immortality of the soul, in a form of reincarnation. Their teaching was of such interest to the Classical world that scholars of the Greek Alexandrian school are divided as to whether Pythagoras, via his Thracian servant Zalmoxis, borrowed the concept or whether Zalmoxis had taught it to the Celts. However, on examination, the Celtic theory of immortality and reincarnation was unlike the theory expounded by Pythagoras.

  The Celts taught that death is only a change of place and that life goes on, with all its forms and goods, in the Other-world. When a soul dies in this world, it is reborn in the Otherworld and when a soul dies in the Otherworld, it is reborn in this one. Thus birth was greeted with mourning and death with exaltation and celebration. These customs were regarded with some surprise by the Greeks and Latins. And from such ancient customs there survived until modern times the Irish funereal celebrations of the wake.

  It is important to remember that, for the ancient Celts, the soul reposed in the head. Thus the cult of “head collecting” was used by the Romans to denigrate the Celts. The ancient Celts would take and keep the heads of those people they respected, embalming them with cedar oil, and thus paying reverence to great souls. They were not, as some have claimed, head hunters. Only the heads of those already slain in battle, friend or foe, were taken as trophies: and always people worthy of respect. Sometimes the heads were placed in sanctuaries or, more often, were placed in the sacred Celtic rivers as votive offerings.

  Even in London, signs of this Celtic practice have been found. Countless skulls from the Celtic period were found in the River Thames and in Walbrook, a brook running into the Thames. Scholars have argued whether Tacitus, who first records the Latin form of the name Londinium was recording this from the Celtic Lugdunum (fortress of Lug) or from another Celtic word, a word still surviving in the Irish root, londo – the wild place. London, as a Celtic trading town of the Trinovantes, stood on the north bank of the Thames, or Tamesis, as it was recorded. Tamesis means “the dark river”, cognate with the Sanskrit Tamesa, meaning exactly the same. Now the River Tamesa is a tributary of the Ganges, a sacred river of the Hindus, in which votive offerings were placed.

  Is it any surprise, therefore, that we find many rich votive offerings and skulls placed in the Thames by the ancient Celts? Celtic coins, weapons such as swords and shields, exquisite jewellery and other objects were thrown into the Thames and indeed the Walbrook. Whatever the origin of London’s Celtic name, we have many other Celtic names associated with the city, not least the names of some of its ancient gates, such as Ludgate.

  More important, to the argument of the river’s site for votive offerings, is Billingsgate on the River Thames. The Saxons, when they arrived, recorded it as Bilesgata, the gate of Bíle. The Celts originally regarded Bíle as the sacred oak, Danu’s consort, and he, in time, became the god who took the souls on their journey from this world to the Otherworld.

  Celts often deposited their dead in the sacred river, as do the Hindus in the Ganges, and would escort the dead on their journey to the Otherworld through Bíle’s gate into the “dark river” at the end of which was their rebirth. Death always came before rebirth, hence darkness before light, in both Celtic and Hindu religions. Hence the Celts counted time by the night followed by the day, and their new year was at the Samhain (approximating to the night of October 31 and day of November 1). So the new year started with the dark period.

  Among the votive pieces in the Walbrook, there was found a pipe-clay statuette of a female Celtic goddess. Could this have been of Danu, “the divine waters”, herself?

  How did Walbrook receive its name from the Anglo-Saxons, and does it have anything to do with that point of the river as the place where most votive offerings have been found? The original Celtic inhabitants of London were obviously loath to leave this sacred spot and clung there even after the Anglo-Saxon conquest. They remained long enough for the Anglo-Saxons to designate the brook as Weala-broc, the brook of the foreigners – i.e. Welisc (Welsh), or foreigners, that being the name the Anglo-Saxons gave to the indigenous Britons.

  Celtic mythology is essentially a heroic one but while the Irish stories belong to a more ancient “Heroic Age”, the Welsh stories have received the gloss of a more medieval courtly quality. The deities in Celtic myth tend to be the ancestors of the people rather than their creators, a point that Julius Caesar observed and commented on; these deities, as well as the human heroes and heroines, are no mere physical beauties with empty heads. Their intellectual attributes have to equal their physical capabilities. They are all totally human and subject to all the natural virtues and vices. No sin is exempt from practice by the gods or humans.

  In the later folklore, when the deities were being relegated into fairies or evil Otherworld folk, as Christianity grew more dictatorial in its judgment of ancient customs and beliefs, the heroes and heroines had to pit their wits more often than their brawn against the “evil magic” of such creatures. Often, when trying to escape a prophesied fate, they would simply bring that fate upon themselves.

  Sometimes, impossible quests were fulfilled in the most impossible ways. The natural and the possible is often discarded for the supernatural and the impossible. The elements of fantasy, cosmic horror and the supernatural form an indispensable ingredient in the earliest folklore of the Celts. This has ever been a strong tradition, even among more modern generations of Celtic writers, who seem to have inherited the old ability to present breaks in natural laws as vivid and realistic.

  However, when all the analysis is written and pondered over, when all the background is considered and digested, it is to the stories that we must turn and we should never forget that they were told for entertainment: that they were meant to be enjoyed as well as learnt from. Above all, we should not forget that a sense of mischievous fun is never far from the surface.

  Before the beginning . . .

  1 The Ever-Living Ones

  It was the time of primal chaos: a time when the Earth was new and undefined. Arid deserts and black bubbling volcanoes, covered by swirling clouds of gases, scarred the grim visage of the newborn world. It was, as yet, the time of the great void.

  Then into that oblivion, from the dull, dark heavens, there came a trickle of water. First one drop, then another and another, until finally there gushed a mighty torrent down upon the earth. The divine waters from heaven flooded downwards and soaked into the arid dirt, cooled the volcanoes which turned into grey, granite mountains, and life began to spring forth across the Earth. The dark, reddened skies grew light and blue.

  From the darkened soil there grew a tree, tall and strong. Danu, the divine waters from heaven, nurtured and cherished this great tree which became the sacred oak named Bíle. Of the conjugati
on of Danu and Bíle, there dropped two giant acorns. The first acorn was male. From it sprang The Dagda, “The Good God”. The second seed was female. From it there emerged Brigantu, or Brigid, “The Exalted One”. And The Dagda and Brigid gazed upon one another in wonder, for it was their task to wrest order from the primal chaos and to people the Earth with the Children of Danu, the Mother Goddess, whose divine waters had given them life.

  So there, by the divine waters of Danu, from where those waters rose and flooded through the now fertile green valleys of the Earth, eastwards towards a distant sea, The Dagda and Brigid settled. And they called the great course of eastward rushing water after the Mother Goddess, which is Danuvius, whose children still know it as the mighty Danube. And four great bright cities they built there on its broad banks, in which the Children of Danu would live and thrive.

  The four cities were Falias, Gorias, Finias and Murias.

  The Dagda became their father; thus humankind call him “The Father of the Gods”. And Brigid became the wise one, exalted in learning and much did she imbibe from the mighty Danu and from Bíle, the sacred oak. She was hailed as the mother of healing, of craftsmanship and of poetry; indeed, she excelled in all knowledge. She showed her children that true wisdom was only to be garnered from the feet of Danu, the Mother Goddess, and so only to be found at the water’s edge.

  Those who gathered such knowledge also paid deference to Bíle, the sacred oak. Because they were not allowed to speak his holy name, they called the oak draoi and those learned in such knowledge were said to possess oak (dru) knowledge (vid) and thus were known as Druids.