Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (9 page)
Neither Julius Caesar nor other Roman commentators speak of a Gaulish Vulcan, and references to Vulcan in Roman-occupied territories are rare, existing only on silver plaques found at Barkway, Hertfordshire. It is archaeological evidence alone that points to the cult of a smith god among the ancient Celts, with most remains in the north of Roman Britain. Among the complete survivals is a second-century
AD
earthenware vessel found at Corbridge, Northumberland, depicting a bearded figure dressed in a smith’s costume: a conical cap
and a belted tunic leaving the left shoulder uncovered. He stands over an anvil clasping an ingot in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other. Appliqués of conventional smith’s tools, anvils, hammers and tongs, appear on rough, grey ceramic potsherds found in Durham, North Yorkshire and Northumberland. A bronze figure of a smith has been found in Lyon, France, very similar to one in Sunderland. Collectively, these examples do not prove a Celtic counterpart to Vulcan – no lameness, for example – but they do imply a native divinity parallel in many respects to the Roman god.
Smiths and other craftsmen enjoy a high regard, a reverence, even a sense of awe for their apparently magical powers, in many pre-technological societies. For the observer without a knowledge of elementary physics, the sight of a man who can yield a stream of brilliant liquid metal from the firing of a certain rough rock evokes a practical wizardry. In early Gaelic Scotland a smith need only hold his hammer over the sick or infirm in order to drive away illness.
Not surprisingly, then, early Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man provide us with more than half a dozen divine or superhuman smiths, of which the most memorable are the Irish Goibniu and his popular counterparts, the Gobbán Saor and the Welsh Gofannon and Glwyddyn Saer. All four of these names relate to a word meaning ‘smith’, Old Irish
gobae
and Welsh
gof,
gofan
, and indeed all four personae may have derived from the same divinity. Goibniu was the smith of the divine family, Tuatha Dé Danann, and part of the triad of craft gods,
na trí dé dána
, along with Credne, the bronze artificer, and Luchta, the carpenter or wright. Goibniu is a tireless armourer in
Cath Maige Tuired
[The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], where he fashions for the hero Lug Lámfhota the spear that penetrates Balor’s eye. His keen arrow and spear tips are always lethal. He might also be a fighter himself, as when he slays the spy Rúadán who had impaled the smith with one of his own spears. Like so many Celtic divinities, Goibniu could be a healer: an Old Irish charm cites his name to aid removal of a thorn. More pertinently, he hosts the otherworldly feast
Fled Goibnenn
[Goibniu’s feast], where guests imbibe great quantities of an intoxicating drink, now thought to be ale. Instead of merely getting drunk, guests are protected from old age and decay. His delivery of splendid drinks points to a link with Hephaestus, Greek counterpart
to Vulcan, who provides a comparable service to the gods in the
Iliad
.
The folk figure Gobbán Saor [Ir.
saor
: smith, wright], known in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic traditions, clearly derives from Goibniu, although many storytellers thought he was historical. He was credited with assisting workmen in the construction of early monasteries and round towers. Both Goibniu and Gobbán appear to have contributed to the shadowy Welsh figure Glwyddyn Saer, perhaps derived from the many Irish incursions and settlements in Wales. Standing much taller in myth is the Welsh divine smith Gofannon, one of the children of Dôn, who also appears in the celebrated eleventh-century story
Culhwch and Olwen
. For this third task, Culhwch was asked to get Gofannon to sharpen the plough of Amaethon, the divine ploughman and magician. Gofannon’s murder of his nephew Dylan signals to many commentators a parallel with Goibniu’s slaying of Rúadán.
The early Celts, like other Indo-Europeans, attached symbolic significance to most frequently used numbers, but gave the greatest to the number three. Artistic expression dating from all periods of Celtic history underscores this penchant. A shorn skull with three separate faces, dating from the early Iron Age, was found at Corleck, Co. Cavan, Ireland. A curly-haired, curly-bearded, three-faced personage peers out from a terracotta vase found at Bavay, France. Other three-headed or tricephalic figures survive at Reims, France, in Germany, the Channel Islands, Scotland, and elsewhere in Ireland. Swirling La Tène art often resolves in figures with three cusps. Gaulish Mercury, as cited earlier, displays three faces and three phalluses. The traditional symbol of the Isle of Man is the three-legged triskele just as Brittany is represented by the trefoil.
No explanation of the power of three is given in any Celtic-language text, even though traditional learning was often formulated into the triad in both Ireland and Wales. The extensive Welsh Triads,
Trioedd Ynys Prydain
, brought together in the twelfth century, deal with such diverse matters as native learning, poetry, law and medicine. But other commentators have had much to say about the power of three in the
larger European context. Pythagoras (sixth century
BC
) cites three as the perfect number, signalling beginning, middle and end. The stool of the pythia or soothsaying priestess at the oracle of Delphi always had three legs, a tripod; it was stable and would not rock. In many religions three may represent life: male, female and progeny. Three may also represent the visible world: sky, earth and underground; or space: before, after and right here, or above, below and this world, one explanation of the universal cross. The influential myth theorist Georges Dumézil argued that three became such a significant number on analogy with the tripartite division of early European society: farmers, warriors and clergy.
Writing in 1952, Joseph Vendryes pointed out that triune figures often have one dominant personality and two lesser ones, which are virtual ciphers. It may be, he argued, that there was initially only one dominating figure who was then doubled twice. Early Irish dynastic records support this contention as when they cite important figures’ names in triplicate. A prime example of his thesis in narrative literature appears in the Deirdre story (see
Chapter 4
). The tragic princess flees with her lover Noise, who has a developed dramatic personality, and the fugitive couple are accompanied by his two brothers Ardan and Ainnle, who are distinguished only by the sounds of their voices. At the same time, other early Irish texts also offer a refutation of Vendryes’ thesis. Of the trio of war-goddesses known as Mórrígna [Ir. great queens], Badb, the Mórrígan and Macha, each has a distinctive personality and takes a different role in an assortment of narratives; see
Chapter 4
. Badb, the crow goddess, visits places of battle both before and after conflict. The ferocious Mórrígan does not take part in battle but can stampede whole armies with her frightful appearance. Macha, one of three queens with this name, is the eponymous founder of Emain Macha, the eighteen-acre hillfort in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland.
Triple divinities are easy enough to find elsewhere in European tradition, but often there is but one divine trio prominent in a single culture. For the Greeks the ‘triple goddess’ consists of Selene (above the earth), Hecate (below the earth) and Artemis (open places, hunting, athletic competition). Among the Celts there are dozens, more than we have names to assign to them. In both Gaul and Britain we find
remains of triple mother-figures, cited earlier as the Matres. Distinctive hooded figures, the Genii Cucullati [L. hooded guardian spirits], are depicted in outdoor garments, and found as far apart as contemporary Austria and Britain. In Britain they appear as three dwarfs and are found in clusters near Hadrian’s Wall in the north and in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. The hooded figures anticipate the appearance of Christian monks, with important exceptions; one ancient figure appears with an extended phallus, perhaps intended as a candle-holder. The spring sacred to the territorial goddess Coventina, herself a single persona, is presided over by figures of three goddesses. And, as mentioned before, Lucan (first century
AD
) cites the Gaulish gods Teutates, Taranis and Esus in close proximity to one another, implying a triad.
Continuity is unmistakable in insular tradition. There are three personifications of Ireland, Ériu, Banba and Fódla. Three gods patronize the crafts: Goibniu, Credne and Luchta. According to the tenth-century
Sanas Cormaic
[Cormac’s Glossary], there are three Brigits, the pre-Christian fire-goddess and two lesser Brigits about whom details are not provided. The sorceress Tlachtga was raped by the three sons of Simon Magus and gave birth to triplets on a hill in Co. Meath, where a festival was long celebrated in her honour. Finn Emna, also known as the Three Finns of Emain Macha, were the triplet sons attributed to king Eochaid Feidliech who joined their mother in a rebellion against their father. The three Fothads do field battle with Fionn mac Cumhaill and his men. The Three Collas, Colla Uais, Colla Menn and Colla Fo Chríth, eliminate Emain Macha as a centre of power and establish the kingdom of Airgialla in what are today Counties Armagh, Monaghan and parts of Louth and Tyrone. In Wales there are Three Exalted Prisoners and Three Generous Men of the Isle of Britain. Branwen of the
Mabinogi
is one of three matriarchs.
From the ancient sources, written and material, we have gathered only shards of what was once a great edifice. Anthropomorphized gods and goddesses, as well as cults, heroes and heroines once existed among the peoples we call Celts. Comparable elements among the Sumerians,
Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans gave rise to those stories in which some characters are gods that we call ‘mythology’ in English. Tantalizing wisps of narrative, like the portrait of Ogmios pulling a band of men with chains strung from the tip of his tongue, lead us to imagine that a larger body of narrative once existed, defining relationships between deities and heroes, attributing dramatic personalities to names we know only from survivals.
The continuity of the Celtic languages from continental Europe to the British Isles does not imply an ethnic continuum from Hallstatt to the Hebrides and the Aran Islands, as we have said. By analogy, Castilian aristocrats and Bolivian tin-miners might both speak Spanish, but they are not the same people. A shared language, however, even a shared family of languages, means a continuity of concept. If the sun and the sky are named in comparable words, they may be conceived in comparable ways, and so with birds, animals and fish. The druid of ancient tradition stands comparison with the druid of insular tradition. The magic accorded the number three, hardly unique to the Celtic peoples, certainly appears to be a conceptual continuity. The nearly obscured names of Gaulish gods, such as Lugus/Lugos, show up in heroes from Irish and Welsh tradition, Lug and Lieu. For these and other reasons we benefit from examining the ancient survivals side by side with the greater body of tradition arising among the insular Celts centuries after the end of ancient learning.
Sacred Kingship in Early Ireland
Early Ireland was not a kingdom, but it had many kings. It follows, then, that the boast of many Irish persons that they are descended from ancient kings is not entirely groundless. F. J. Byrne (2001) estimates that there were never fewer than 150 kings in Ireland from the fifth to the twelfth centuries, when the population was under half a million. Such a ‘king’ is not the counterpart of the chief executives of early modern nation states, like Henry VIII or Louis XIV. In one sense the terms ‘petty king’ or ‘chieftain’ might seem more accurate to describe the office. Yet the Old Irish word for king,
rí
(later
ríg
,
rígh
), appears in early texts as a translation of the Latin
rex
. Scribes who write of the
rí
appeared to be implying a king as he would have been understood in classical culture. These same early scribes write of the
rí
as the embodiment of the luck and prosperity of his people. His initiation called for profound and mysterious ritual that signalled a spiritual and physical intimacy with sovereignty. He was sacred because he could perform functions denied to ordinary mortals as well as to such elevated figures as druids and poets. Several formidable figures designated as
rí
loom large in early Irish narrative, such as Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] and Brian Bórama (Boru), often dominating epochs rather than mere households or precincts. These are grounds for using the English ‘king’ for
rí
without prefix or qualifier.
Few generally educated readers know very much about Ireland from the fifth to twelfth centuries, in part because things Irish are rarely taught in English-speaking schools. Paradoxically, there is an enormous
amount to know. From genealogies alone we can cite the names of more than 12,000 persons living in Ireland from before
AD
1100, compared to a few hundred names from early Anglo-Saxon records and even fewer from the Germanic kingdoms of the continent. Beginners may find the names onomastically intimidating, like Fiachu ba hAiccid or Tipraite mac Taide, which do not appear to have ready counterparts in English or other European languages. Beyond this lies a society whose concepts of family, property and law are radically different from what we know from modern culture or even Europe of the high Middle Ages. There is not the space here to address this lack, but some salient observations are essential in reading this and later chapters.
The Romans visited Ireland but did not conquer it. This brush with Roman civilization introduced Christianity and written records to the island but not Roman law. The Irish maintained their own legal system, the Brehon Laws, until they were displaced at the end of the twelfth century. Early Ireland was dominated by warring dynasties, of which the most important was the Uí Néill, initially based in the north but eventually extending over much of the land, dividing into different factions. Norsemen or ‘Vikings’ raided monastic centres, established the first cities such as Dublin and Limerick, settled into the population but found their power curtailed after their defeat at the Battle of Clontarf, 1014. Writing was the franchise of clerics we today call Irish monks, to distinguish them from the great continental orders, the Benedictines, Augustinians and Cistercians. The Christianity they practised we call ‘Celtic Christianity’ because it differed in discipline and artistic expression from the Roman (or Rome-based) Church. The native religious tradition came to an end in 1169–70, when Henry II of England, sanctioned by Pope Adrian IV, brought Ireland closer to Roman discipline. In Henry II’s time and after came the Anglo-Normans, French-speaking nobles from Britain who displaced many native landowners and made French the language of privilege and law. In time, these families, sometimes referred to as the ‘Old English’ (as opposed to post-Elizabethan settlers), integrated into the rest of the population and were described as more Irish than the Irish themselves, in effect Hiberno-Normans.
In chronological summary:
| 432 | Traditional, perhaps contrived date for the arrival of St Patrick and the beginnings of Christian Ireland. |
| 516 | Uí Néill extend power to Leinster in eastern Ireland. |
| 593/597 | Death of St Colum Cille, member of Uí Néill, who had participated in first Christian initiation of an Irish king. |
| 794 | Vikings begin raids on the British Isles. |
| 804 | Founding of monastery at Kells, home of The Book of Kells , masterpiece of Celtic Christian art, probably created at Iona in the Hebrides. |
| 837 | First Viking fleets on Irish inland waterways. |
| 849 | Danes begin to settle in Ireland. |
| 1014 | Irish defeat Norseman; Irish king Brian Bórama killed. |
| 1169 | Arrival of Anglo-Normans in Ireland |
| 1198 | Death of Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor), the last ard rí (high king). |
The early Irish did not practise primogeniture, the ruthlessly clear rule that mandates passage of a title from an older male to his firstborn son, regardless of that son’s fitness or favour with his father. The new Irish king did not necessarily come from an old king’s
fine
[family or kindred] but rather his
derbfhine
[certain kin], the descendants of a common great-grandfather over four generations. According to an old law tract,
Cóic Conairi Fuigill
[The Five Paths of Judgement], a prospective king must be the son of a king and the grandson of a king. He should be physically unblemished, a man of property, of good legal standing and not guilty of theft. Other requirements underscore how differently the family was conceived in early Ireland as compared with later Christian times. The would-be king should be the son of a principal wife (
cétmuinter
) when possible, or, failing that, the son of a legitimate second wife. If that were not possible he might be the son of a concubine, or, in a worst case, the son from a list of other female partners. An oldest son might expect to succeed his father, but a younger son might also rise to power.
To be more specific about the names for different steps in the process is to enter scholarly contention. The dominant informed view of the last century was formulated by one of the first great modern Celticists, Eoin MacNeill, in his
Celtic Ireland
(1921). In his analysis, a person
eligible to succeed to a kingship (
rígdomna
) should belong to the same
derbfhine
as the king who has already reigned. An election, test or contest then determined the succession from the full four generations of potential candidates. Put another way, any male descendant of a kingly paternal great-grandfather could at least be considered for succession to kingship, even though the king immediately before him might only have been his second cousin. This was not a system that encouraged domestic tranquillity.
According to the seventh-century
Audacht Morainn
[Testament of Morann], advice given by the legendary Morann to a young king, a true and good ruler will have
fir flathemon
[truth of the ruler], meaning that he will be righteous, will enjoy a character above reproach, will descend from high ancestry and will be capable of heroic action. He should ensure peace and justice, security of his
tuath
’s borders and all the prosperity of bountiful harvests and rivers teeming with fish.
Complicating our vision of kingly succession is the concept of the ‘tanist’, a word which has made an unlikely migration from early Ireland to modern intellectual discourse in entirely different contexts, changing definitions along the way. The Old Irish words
tánaise, tánaiste
, according to the
Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of the Irish Language or DIL
(1913–83), mean ‘second’, ‘next’, or ‘second in rank or dignity, heir apparent’. This older definition continues in the Modern Irish word used for the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Ireland,
Tánaiste
. Under the influence of Sir James Frazer of
Golden Bough
fame, of the ‘Cambridge School’ of early twentieth-century mythology interpretation, and especially of theoretical maverick Robert Graves (1895–1985), the Irish-derived English word ‘tanist’ came to mean something entirely new. Surrounding this definition is the theory that ancient sacred kings in the Mediterranean and elsewhere were ritually slaughtered in imitation of the vegetation cycle, or ‘harvested’ before they began to decline. The tanist here is the presumptive heir apparent to the reigning sacred king who replaces the older man after his sacrifice. Always seen as younger than the sacrificial king, this tanist may be seen as a rival to the older king, and he may also serve as executioner in the death ritual. Central to this conception is the certainty of the tanist that he is going to succeed the sacred king before the sacrifice and then his actual later assumption of the role.
Early Irish records do not testify that any such transaction ever took place, neither ritual slaughter nor transfer of power to the slayer. There is, however, a familiar phrase in the annals,
a suis
[killed by his own] that testifies to much internecine conflict, but nothing that prescribes ritual murder for the
tánaise ríg
’s ascension to power. In
Celtic Ireland
Eoin MacNeill argues that there is no evidence the Irish had a preliminary selection of a king’s successor before the office was vacant until after the coming of the Anglo-Normans and feudalism (1169–70). In pre-Norman times the usual term for a person eligible to succeed to the kingship,
rígdomna
, and
tánaise
or
tánaise ríg
, existed side by side and were mutually exclusive. As Dáibhí Ó Cróinín points out in
Early Medieval Ireland
(1995), the term
tánaise rig
appears in the annals earlier,
AD
848, but in reference to a Viking leader, whereas
rígdomna
would not first appear for another nineteen years, in
AD
867. Both of these dates are relatively late, compared to other terms pertaining to kingship. The distinction was that the entire tribe looked forward to the
tánaise rig
becoming king without facing dispute. In the general run of things the
tánaise rig
did succeed, whereas the
rígdomna
did not in every instance. Two routes to kingship could have existed side by side, although neither is the one asserted by Sir James Frazer and Robert Graves.