Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (17 page)
Two other motifs, F373, the mortal abandons this world to live in the other, and F377, the mortal loses time in the otherworld, are also found worldwide, the latter perhaps best known in the story of Washington Irving’s
faux
folk hero, Rip Van Winkle (1819). The Irish elaboration of the motif, Nechtan’s immediate transformation into a pillar of ash at touching foot to the homeland, is repeated in dozens of later stories. After 300 years of lovemaking with the beauteous Niam of the Golden Hair in Tír na nÓg [the Land of Youth], incidentally producing three children, the Fenian hero Oisín returns to Ireland (see
Chapter 11
). Initially heeding the warning of his lover not to dismount, he nonetheless offers to help men in lifting a stone. His saddle girth breaks, and he falls to the ground. In an instant he is a withered old man. A comparable fate befalls the children of Lir in the early modern
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir], who lose their human form rather than spending time in the otherworld. After being transformed into swans, they spend three exiles of 300 years each in the waters of central, northern and western Ireland (see
Chapter 8
). When a prophecy is fulfilled, they too re-inhabit human bodies, columns of dust that hold together long enough for them to be baptized into the Christian faith.
Testimonials of Christian faith initially appear intrusive in narratives such as
Imram Brain
, especially when the stories are reviewed in summary. There is no anticipation of the Gospels in the early passages or any foreshadowing of the traveller seeking salvation. Yet the presence of Christ’s prophecies within the text changes the way the reader encounters Emain Ablach or the Land of Women. Such otherworlds, whatever their origin, are no longer absolutes but only by-ways on a traveller’s journey, not unlike those encountered by the character called Christian in
Pilgrim’s Progress
(1678), the Palace Beautiful or Vanity Fair. These do not look like the happy realms that the Hochdorf chieftain or the Reinheim matron were preparing to enter.
Then again, some readers wished those fantastic lands really existed. The desire to believe early Irish travellers’ tales no doubt led to the popularity of the narrative whose manuscript circulated most widely in medieval Europe and was extensively translated and adapted in several languages. That text was
Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis
[Voyage of the Abbot Saint Brendan], composed in the late ninth or early tenth century, the last notable Hiberno-Latin literary production. The historical St Brendan the Navigator founded two abbeys, Ardfert in Kerry and Clonfert in Galway, and died in 577
AD
, at least 300 years before the composition of the
Navigatio
. While an interest in determining whether Saint Brendan actually sailed across the Atlantic has persisted down to contemporary times, scholars still dispute whether the
Navigatio
is a Christianization of a legend based on a nearly forgotten travel tale or a saint’s story embracing secular episodes.
The impetus for the saint’s two voyages is his hearing of the Land of Promise on the western ocean. Translated from
Tír Tairngire
, ‘Land of Promise’, this is one of the familiar Irish terms for the otherworld (see
pp. 121–2
). With fourteen companions in a leather coracle, St Brendan sets sail for the west and reaches what appears to be Iceland, where he stays five years. Iceland was indeed discovered by Irish monks before the Norse settled there, and a small archipelago is still named for those early seafarers, Vestmannaejar [Irishmen’s islands]. Receiving acclaim on his return, St Brendan resolves to sail again, this time with an oaken boat and a crew of sixty. On his passage west he enters upon a sequence of fifteen adventurous landfalls and crossings: (i) an island with a large building sheltering travellers; (ii) an island of sheep bigger than cattle; (iii) an ‘island’ that turns out to be the back of the whale Jasconius [cf. Ir.
iasc
, fish], an episode paralleled in the voyages of Sinbad; (iv) the island of spirits taking bird form; (v) the island of St Ailbe, giving a detailed portrait of the lives of silent monks; (vi) the curdled sea, through which he passes without stopping; (vii) the island of Strong Men, populated by boys, young and old men, all of whom eat a purple fruit called
scaltae
; (viii) the island of the grape trees; (ix) a stream of clear water through which sailors can see to the bottom; (x) the great crystal column, possibly an iceberg; (xi) the island of Giant Smiths; (xii) a smoking and flaming
mountain, perhaps a volcano; (xiii) a rocky mass, above which rises a man-shaped cloud, thought to be Judas, reprieved from damnation on Sundays; (xiv) the Island of Paul the Hermit; (xv) the Island Promised to the Saints.
Something in the
Navigatio
has always invited credulity in certain readers despite its prominent fabulous episodes. It was on Christopher Columbus’s preparatory reading list. Despite its resemblance to such otherworldly voyages as
Imram Curaig Maíle Dúin
, not to mention the
Arabian Nights
(
c
.1450), the
Navigatio
has continued to inspire believers in its historicity. They seek to identify descriptions in the text with specific locations in Newfoundland, Florida and the Bahamas. Interest in St Brendan is allied to a wider popular fascination with purported pre-Columbian visits to North America, claims being made for different national groups, including the Irish, Scottish and Welsh. What appear to be ogham carvings have been found at many sites, from Nova Scotia to the Ohio River Valley. Genome studies of Native Americans indicate evidence of European DNA arriving on the continent well before 1000
AD
. In the late twentieth century there were three transatlantic voyages in curraghs of the kind we know early ecclesiastical travellers used. Bill Verity led the first two in 1966 and 1970, and Tim Severin commanded the best known of the three in 1976–7, and followed it with his book
The Brendan Voyage
(New York, 1978) and a widely seen television documentary.
Still further accounts of otherworldly travel intersect with historical record. One appears in the eighth-century
Annals
, perhaps an indication of popular belief that did not find expression in narrative. The
Annals
are not history in the modern sense but rather records of facts and dates about such matters as dynastic marriages, the inaugurations and deaths of kings, the founding or destruction of monasteries.
*
Until the reforms of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, their writing was a clerical franchise. Proinsias MacCana (2000) recounts the eighth-century depiction in the
Annals
of three ships sailing in the air. The entry for
AD
743 reads, ‘Ships with their crews were plainly seen in
the sky this year.’ The episode would be retold with some variations in different kinds of literature over the next three centuries. In one of the stories, set during a royal assembly at Teltown, Co. Meath, an airborne sailor in a single boat spears what he thinks is a salmon. When he comes below to retrieve the fish, he is held by the people there until he protests that he is drowning.
This word has made a bumpy passage from Irish to English usage. Most readers encounter it first in the works of William Butler Yeats, as in the title of his poem ‘The Hosting of the Sídhe’ (1899). As the great poet knew little Irish, he seemed unaware that the final -
e
was appropriate only for the genitive or plural forms, and he neglected the diacritical slash over the letter
í
. The normative Irish spelling in the early twentieth century was
sídh
, pronounced ‘shee’. When Modern Irish spelling was reformed about 1960, the word became
sí
, a form not yet widely used in English-language commentary. Classical Irish, preferred for most names in this volume, yields
síd
, which seems inappropriate here as most citations of the word are more modern.
Aos
(or
áes
)
sídhe
means ‘people of the
sídh’
.
The first denotation of the word is the man-made mound or tumulus, of which there are hundreds in the Irish countryside. Called the ‘fairy mound’ in English, it is usually circular and often flat-topped, sometimes ringed with stones. Archaeologically speaking, the phenomena denoted by the term
sídh
are not mysterious and are known by a series of semi-technical terms. They may be commemorative, such as pre-Christian passage-tombs, low round barrows or burial mounds. Or they may be defensive, such as the fortified, circular earthen dwellings known as raths, pre-Norman defensive man-made mounds, or Anglo-Norman mottes (a yet more specific kind of mound).
Of beliefs associated with the
sídh
there is more to say. Farmers avoided having their cattle graze on the
sídh
and usually shunned paths leading to and from it. The notion that any small promontory, a hill or even more likely a tumulus, is linked to the supernatural or is ‘haunted’ is probably indigenous to Europe in general, and there is
nothing uniquely Celtic about it. Implicit in the etymology of the word is the origin of its perception.
Summarizing scholarship on the word’s roots, Patrick Sims-Williams (1990) argues that the derivation of
sídh
is
sed
- [sit] and that the Irish word originally meant ‘seat, abode’, later specialized as ‘abode of divinities’. Pushed aside now are assertions that
sídh
can be traced to the Old Irish homophone
síd
[peace] or the Latin
sidus
[star], both of which would have implied something of the character of this abode of divinities.
In pre-Christian Ireland every district of importance might have its own
sídh
or hill that served as a route to the otherworld. T. F. O’Rahilly (1946) asserted that there was but one otherworld with many portals. More recent scholarship, led by Patrick Sims-Williams, finds the
sídh
to be a proliferation of independent kingdoms, much like the
tuatha
of mortal Ireland, but with friendlier relations with one another. Even the two neighbouring
sídh
between the breast-like hills known as the Paps of Ana in Co. Kerry had no subterranean communication. Each
sídh
, therefore, is local.
Early Irish scribes do not use any form of the word
sídh
as a substitution or calque for the Latin
orbe alio
. Indeed, there is no Irish calque or translation of
orbe alio
at all. Further, with the lack of a definite article,
sídh
appears to imply
an
otherworld rather than
the
otherworld. It is only our modern reading of the word, influenced by eight centuries of Christian learning, that leads us to impose the definite article
the
otherworld when it is not implied in early contexts.
Many stories survive of mortals, usually men, who enter the
sídh
. Curiously, the invitation to gain entry never seems to be the reward for virtuous or generous deeds or any kind of obeisance paid to residents. Often a perfectly ordinary male stumbles upon a rapturously beautiful maiden who beckons to him in ways he does not immediately understand. As in Bran’s voyage to Emain Ablach, the mortal who enters the
sídh
loses track of time in the quotidian world he has left and is usually transformed for the worse when and if he returns.
Neither is the
sídh
the realm of the dead, the final resting place of the wicked or the virtuous. The Irish name for that place is Tech Duinn, the ‘house’ of Donn the ruler of the dead, sometimes known as Donn Tétscorach [abounding in furious horses (?)]. The location of
this ‘house’ is not always specific, as it may lie beyond mortal geography. Often linked with Munster, it is sometimes identified with a rocky islet near Dursey Island at the extreme western end of the Beare Peninsula, west Co. Cork.
In earlier Irish literature the
sídh
is often seen as a palace or perhaps a very fine residence, much more
this
-wordly than otherworldly. Among the best known is Finnachad in Co. Armagh, the
sídh
of king Lir in
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir] (see
Chapter 7
). Many of the most celebrated are understood to be otherworldly, even though
sídh
is not a part of their names: Brí Léith in Co. Longford, the residence of Midir, lover of Étaín; Clettig on the south bank of the River Boyne, residence of Elcmar, magician foster-father of Angus Óg; Femen in Co. Tipperary, home of Bodb Derg, the son of the Dagda; and Úamain in Connacht, childhood domicile of Cáer, lover of Angus Óg. Hundreds of others are known by the name of their most powerful resident, e.g. Sídh Nechtain, dominated by Nechtan.
The Modern Irish word
sídh
denoting ‘fairy’ in the broader sense, an extension of the more specific ‘fairy mound’, lends itself to dozens of compounds. These include
ceo sídhe
[fairy mist],
ceol sídhe
[fairy music],
sídh chóra, sídh ghaoithe
and
séideán sídhe
[fairy wind],
corpán sídhe
[changeling] and
suan sídhe
[fairy sleep]. Most fearful of these is
poc sídhe
[fairy stroke], in which the body is disabled or paralysed in ways inexplicable in the centuries before the development of modern medicine. A parallel belief among English speakers is the reason that ‘stroke’ is still the colloquial term for apoplexy or cerebral haemorrhage.
Knowledge of the
sídh
is not exclusively Irish and extends to nearby Celtic lands. Among the Manx the word
shee
, spelled like the anglicization of the Irish, denotes the fairy otherworld. In Scottish Gaelic it is
síth
, which may be translated as preternatural or spiritual.
Sìthean
denotes a fairy hill, perhaps with a pointed top, but not a tumulus;
daoine sìth
[people of the
sìth
] is a name for the fairies. The Welsh phrase
caer siddi
(earlier
kaer sidi
) borrows the root of the Irish
sídh
, as Patrick Sims-Williams points out. The borrowing represents an uncommon instance of an Irish word used to express a Welsh idea. Caer Siddi is only one of a string of alternative names for the Welsh
otherworld, Annwfn (see below), but in some texts it is depicted as a fortress in an overseas land.