Celtic Gods and Heroes

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486115887
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Irlande

Noted French scholar and linguist discusses the gods of the continental Celts, the beginnings of mythology in Ireland, heroes, and the two main categories of Irish deities: mother-goddesses — local, rural spirits of fertility or of war — and chieftain-gods: national deities who are magicians, nurturers, craftsmen, and protectors of the people.

CHAPTER I

THE MYTHOLOGICAL PERIOD

A DISCUSSION of the mythological world of the Celts encounters at once a peculiar difficulty, namely, that when seeking to approach it you find that you are already within. We are accustomed to distinguish the supernatural from the natural. The barrier between the two domains is not, indeed, always impenetrable: the Homeric gods sometimes fight in the ranks of human armies, and a hero may force the gates of Hades and visit the empire of the dead. But the chasm is there nonetheless, and we are made aware of it by the feeling of wonder or horror aroused by this violation of established order. The Celts knew nothing of this, if we are entitled to judge their attitude from Irish tradition. Here there is continuity, in space and in time, between what we call our world and the other world — or worlds. Some peoples, such as the Romans, think of their myths historically; the Irish think of their history mythologically; and so, too, of their geography. Every strange feature of the soil of Ireland is the witness of a myth, and, as it were, its crystallization. The supernatural and the natural penetrate and continue each other, and constant communication between them ensures their organic unity. Hence it is easier to describe the mythological world of the Celts than to define it, for definition implies a contrast.

This omnipresence of the myth in Ireland is specially evident in two collections of stories, the Dindshenchas or ‘Tradition of Places’, which is the mythological geography of the country, and the Lebor Gabála or ‘Book of Conquests’, which is its mythological pre-history. The myths indeed involve both time and space, and the importance of remarkable places, the mystic virtues that belong to them, are closely bound up with events which happened during the period when other peoples, human or divine (one can hardly say exactly which), controlled the land now occupied by the Gaels, but which the Gaels possess only in partnership with their mysterious forerunners.

This mythological period can be defined as ‘a period when beings lived or events happened such as one no longer sees in our days’.¹³ Christian texts sometimes betray this notion of a time when other laws than those we know governed the world. ‘In that fight,’ says the author of The Battle of Mag Tured, ‘Ogma the champion found Orna the sword of Tethra a king of the Fomorians. Ogma unsheathed the sword and cleansed it. Then the sword related whatsoever had been done by it; for it was the custom of swords at that time, when unsheathed, to set forth the deeds that had been done by them. And therefore swords are entitled to the tribute of cleansing them after they have been unsheathed. Hence also charms are preserved in swords thenceforward. Now the reason why demons used to speak from weapons at that time was because weapons were worshipped by human beings then; and the weapons were among the (legal) safeguards of that time.’¹⁴

We see that the good cleric does not think of questioning the truth of a tradition of his time which must have seemed to him as fanciful as it does to us. At most he feels the need of explaining it by supposing the intervention of the power of demons. But how is it that weapons and demons have lost the power of speech? The scribe who copied the tale of Cú Chulainn and Fann gives the reason in these closing words: ‘That is the story of the disastrous vision shown to Cú Chulainn by the fairies. For the diabolical power was great before the faith, and it was so great that devils used to fight with men in bodily form, and used to show delights and mysteries to them. And people believed that they were immortal.’¹⁵

In the same way the stone of Fál, a talisman brought to Ireland by the ancient gods, whose cry proclaimed the lawful king of Ireland, is silent to-day, ‘for it was a demon that possessed it, and the power of every idol ceased at the time of the birth of the Lord.’¹⁶

We see that Christian Ireland preserved, as a legacy from paganism, the belief in a time when the supernatural was natural, when the marvellous was normal. This belief is indeed characteristic of a mentality common to folklore (‘Once upon a time, when animals could speak,’ . . .) and to various so-called ‘primitive’ peoples. So, in defining the mythological period, we have borrowed the words used by Lévy-Bruhl to describe the epoch of the Dema, those ancestral creators who figure in the mythologies of the natives of New Guinea.

The Book of Conquests is the story of the Irish Dema, retouched, no doubt, by clerics anxious to fit the local traditions into the framework of Biblical history, while its pagan quality has not noticeably been altered. We shall therefore summarize it, according to the texts¹⁷; and if we chance to include a secondary episode, it will not matter, from our present standpoint, provided that it be a product of the same mythical imagination and suppose the same type of notion as those elements that are most clearly native.

Tradition has little to say about the first race that inhabited Ireland, before the Deluge; and we may suspect it to be a late invention, intended to make up the number of six races corresponding to the six ages of the world. One of its leaders was Ladhra, who had sixteen wives and died ‘from excess of women’. He was the first to die in Ireland. The whole race was destroyed by the Deluge.

Two hundred and sixty-eight years later (Irish annalists are never shy of exactitude) the race of Partholón landed. This name has been explained as a corruption of Bartholomeus, ¹⁸ and the legend as a product of the imagination of Christian monks. But whatever be the origin of the name, the mythical character of this personage cannot be doubted, as Van Hamel has shown.¹⁹ He regards Partholón as a god of vegetation; but, apart from the fact that the activities of Partholón extend beyond the domain of agriculture, it is important to observe that here, as throughout the pre-historic tradition, we have to do not with a single god, one mythical individual, but with a whole race, of which Partholón is merely, as it were,a nick-name. It is hard to define this race of Partholón in terms of Indo-European mythology. In the vocabulary of primitive mythology, we may identify it as the first race of those Dema, the ancestors (mythical, not human, according to Lévy-Bruhl’s useful distinction) who controlled the world, if they did not create it — the world of the Gael, of course, that is to say, Ireland.

When Partholón landed in Ireland, he found there only three lakes and nine rivers, but seven new lakes were formed in his lifetime. He cleared four plains and ‘he found no tiller of the soil before him’. He brought with him the steward Accasbél who built the first ‘guest-house’; and Brea who built the first dwelling, made the first cauldron and fought the first duel; and Malaliach who was the first surety (guarantee is an essential part of the Celtic legal system), brewed the first beer from bracken, and ordained divination, sacrifice and ritual; Bachorbladhra, who was the first foster-father (fosterage was the basis of the Irish system of education); and finally the two merchants, Biobal, who introduced gold into Ireland, and Babal, who introduced cattle.

It was in Partholón’s time that adultery was first committed in Ireland. Having left his wife alone with his servant, he found on his return that they had wronged him. He demanded his ‘honour-price’, but his wife replied that it was she who was entitled to compensation, for it was the owner’s responsibility to protect his property:

‘honey with a woman, milk with a cat,
food with one generous, meat with a child,
a wright within and an edged tool,
one with one other, it is a great risk’²⁰

And this was the first ‘judgement’ in Ireland. Hence the proverb ‘the right of Partholón’s wife against her husband.’

The race of Partholón fought the first battle of Ireland against the Fomorians. The name (Fomoire) is a compound of the preposition fo ‘under’ and a root which appears in the German Mahr, name of a female demon who lies on the breast of people while they sleep (cf. Eng. ‘nightmare’), in the name Morr

gan (‘queen of demons’), and perhaps in the name of the formidable Marats of the Veda. The Irish form means ‘inferior’ or ‘latent demons’. The myth presents the Fomorians as native powers constantly driven back to the limits of the world controlled by civilizing races, and always about to invade it and devour its produce. In Partholón’s time they had lived for two hundred years in the islands near the coast, ‘having no other food’. They fight against Partholón and his people ‘with one foot, one hand and one eye’, a monstrous form, or a ritual posture (either interpretation seems possible), which has a magic value and a demonic significance. After seven days they are defeated and driven off. But we shall soon see them return, for the Fomorians never lay down their arms. They are like the powers of Chaos, ever latent and hostile to cosmic order.

On the feast of Beltine, the First of May, the race of Partholón was destroyed by a mysterious plague; but, by this time, the crafts and institutions by which Celtic society was maintained had already been established. How did this established tradition survive the destruction of the race? How was it transmitted to later peoples? The mythology, naturally incoherent, does not explain.

The race of Nemed, whose name means ‘sacred’ (cf. Gaul νεμητoν ‘sacred place’), then occupied Ireland, after the country had lain desert for thirty years. In their time four lakes were formed, two forts were built and twelve plains were cleared. But they were unable to control the Fomorians and finally became their vassals. The land into which Partholón had brought the precious herds of cattle became ‘a land of sheep’, and every year on the Feast of Samain, the First of November, the people of Nemed had to deliver to their masters two-thirds of their corn, their milk and their children. After vain resistance and ruinous victories, they resolved to abandon Ireland.

The race of Partholón was followed by a fourth race, that of the Fir Bolg, who arrived on the Feast of Lugnasad, the First of August, the third great feast of the Celtic year. Various tribes came with them, Gaileoin and Fir Domnann, but all were ‘only one race and one power’. Unlike their predecessors, these people did not disappear, but left descendants after them. The heroic sagas often mention these elements of the population as distinct from the ruling Gaels.²¹ And here the mythology apparently preserves the memory of actual invasions of foreigners. Perhaps the Gaileoin are Gauls, the Fir Domnann the Dumnonii of Great Britain, the Fir Bolg the Belgae. Thus witnesses of a relatively recent past have come to be introduced between the fanciful Fomorians and the divine ‘Peoples of Dana’: supernatural and human are blended in the crucible of the myth.

The races of Partholón and Nemed had been clearers of the plains. With the Fir Bolg we seem to emerge from the era of agrarian culture. No plains are said to have been cleared in their time, nor any lakes to have been formed. Their contribution is proper rather to a warlike aristocracy, for they introduced into Ireland the iron spear-head and the system of monarchy. It is said of their king Eochaid mac Eirc that ‘no rain fell during his reign, but only the dew; there was not a year without harvest’. For (we add the connective on the evidence of several parallel passages) ‘falsehood was banished from Ireland in his time. He was the first to establish there the rule of justice’. Thus there appears with the establishment of the first Celtic communities in Ireland the principle of association between the king and the earth — the king’s justice being a condition of the fertility of the soil — which is the very formula of the magic of kingship.

The Fir Bolg were soon to be dispossessed by new invaders, the Tuatha Dé Danann, ‘Peoples of the Goddess Dana’, who landed on the Feast of Beltine, and defeated the Fir Bolg in the First Battle of Mag Tured. They won the battle by their ‘talent’, and this talent consisted of the power of magic (draoidheacht). In distant islands (the ‘islands of Northern Greece’) they had learned ‘magic and every sort of craft and liberal art, so that they were learned, wise, and well skilled in every branch of these arts’. From these islands they brought four talismans: the Stone of Fál, which screamed when the lawful king of Ireland placed his foot upon it; the sword of Nuada, of which the wounds were fatal; the spear of Lug which gave victory, and the Cauldron of the Dagda ‘from which none parts without being satisfied’. To these talismans and to their knowledge of magic, the Tuatha owe their supernatural power. They are ‘gods’ because they are sorcerers. Moreover, among these Tuatha only the artisans, those who share this knowledge by which the divine race enjoys its power, are ‘gods’. ‘They considered their artists to be gods (dee) and their labourers to be non-gods (andee).’ And this distinction recurs in the epic formula: ‘the blessing of gods and non-gods upon you!’ The divine race, like the human, includes, therefore, in addition to the privileged classes of warriors and initiated craftsmen, a common class which has no share in the magic hierarchy. It is characteristic that this profane element in society is the agricultural class. In this respect the race of the Tuatha Dé Danann differs from the preceding races, and in particular from that of Partholón, of which the agrarian character is so marked as to suggest a vegetation myth.

Having conquered the Fir Bolg, the Tuatha Dé Danann soon came into conflict with the Fomorians, to whom they were opposed in the Second Battle of Mag Tured. This battle, which is the subject of a long epic tale, is one of the dominant episodes of Irish mythology, and one of those most readily susceptible of varying interpretations. Some have found here a conflict between the forces of disorder and darkness and the forces of order and light, a sort of Celtic replica of the struggle of Chthónioi and Ouránioi. And this explanation does account for one aspect, and clearly the dominant aspect, of the rivalry which involved the two races. But we lose perspective by attributing this anarchical conflict of rival peoples to the essential antagonism of opposite cosmic principles; for the two parties were connected by a series of intermarriages so complex as to confuse even the native mythographers, and were forced into opposition by the same play of political events that governs the relations of human beings. In order to illustrate the conditions that govern this mythical world, we shall summarize the origins of the second Battle of Mag Tured.

In the course of a fight with the Fir Bolg, Nuada, king of the Tuatha, lost an arm. Any mut...