Celtic Lore & Legend (7 page)

“Thou must”, said Black Arcan, “broil the trout on the further side of the river, and the fire on this side of it, before thou gettest a bit of it to eat, and thou shalt not have leave to set a stick that is in the wood to broil it”. He did not know what he should do. The thing that he fell in with was a mound of sawdust and he set it on fore beyond the river. A wave of the flame came over and it burned a spot on the trout, the thing that was on the crook. [
Editor’s Note
: Campbell points out in his notes on the text that the word that is used here in the original Gallic is the same that is used for a shepherd’s crook or a bishop’s crozier—bachall, generally the staff of a holy man. This may be a later addition to the tale, as the traditional way of roasting fish was probably on some sort of spit.] Then he put his finger on the black spot that came on the trout and it burnt him, and then he put it into his mouth. Then he got knowledge that it was Black Arcan who had slain his father, and unless he should slay Black Arcan in his sleep, that Black Arcan would slay him when he should wake. [
Editor’s Note
: This appears to be a version of the Irish legend of the Salmon
of Knowledge. Fionn catches the fish and cooks it but burns himself by touching its back and by sucking his finger, grains all the knowledge of the world, making him a formidable hero.] The thing that happened was that he killed the carle (Black Arcan), and then he got a glaive (a polearm, or sword/knife with a long curving blade) and a hound, and the name of the hound was Bran MacBuidheig.

Then he thought that he would not stay any longer in Eirinn, but that he would come to Alba to get the soldiers of his father. He came to the shore in Fairbaine. There he found a great clump of giants, men of stature. He understood that these were the soldiers that his father had and that they were as poor captives by the Lochlaners hunting for them and not getting aught but the remnants of the land’s increase for themselves. The Lochlaners took from the arms (had taken their weapons) when war or anything should come, for fear they should rise with the foes. They had one special man for taking their arms, whose name was Ullamh Lamh fhada (Pronounced: oolav lav ada—Oolav Long Hand). He gathered the arms and he took them with him altogether, and it fell out that the sword of Fionn was amongst them. Fionn went after him, asking for his own sword. When they came within sight of the armies of Lochlann, he said:

“
Blood on man and man bloodless,
Wind over hosts, ‘tis pity without the son of Luin
”

[
Editor’s Note
: In this version of the tale, Fionn’s sword seems to have been given a name—common in some Irish mythological tales. The name which he give it is MacLuan—son of Luan. In the couplet, Fionn is therefore referring to his weapon.]

“To what might belong?” said Ulamh lamh fhada.

“It is to a little bit of a knife of a sword that I had” said Fionn. “You took it with you among the rest, and I am the worse for wanting it and you are no better for having it”

“What is the best exploit, thou wouldst do if thou hadst it?”

“I wouldst quell the third part of the hosts that I see before me.”

Oolav Longhand laid his hand on the arms. The most likely sword and the best that he found, he gave it to him. He seized it and he shook it, and he cast it out of the wooden handle, and said he—

“
It is one of the black-edged glaives,
It was not Mac Luan, my blade;
It was no hurt to draw it from sheath,
It would not take the head of a lamb
”

Then he said the second time, the same words. He said for the third time:

“
Blood on man and bloodless man,
Wind on the people, ‘tis pity without the son of Luan.
”

“
What wouldst thou do with it if thou shouldst get it?
”
“
I would do this, that I would quell utterly all I see.
”

He threw down the arms altogether on the ground. Then Fionn got his sword and said he then:

“
This is the one of thy right hand.
”

Then he returned to the people he had left. He got the Ord Fiannta of the Finn [
Editor’s Note
: This was said to be a great war horn of the Irish Fianna, described as being “a mighty cylinder of brass,” which called the Knights to battle. It now seems to have been transposed into Scottish legend. There are however representations of an ancient horn carved into stones in the West of Scotland and it is possible that there were several such horns, both in Scotland and in Ireland.] and he sounded it.

There gathered all that were in the southern end of Alba of the Faiantaichain, to where he was. [
Editor’s Note
: The name “Faintaichain” may refer to a group of Dalriadans who may have been in the southwestern area of Scotland. Dalriada was an ancient Celtic maritime kingdom, which stretched from County Antrim in the North of Ireland into the Mull of Kintyre and possibly Argyll as well. The kingdom was comprised mostly of Irish settlers who spread out through Kintyre, Lorn, and the Western Isles. The Irish sector of the kingdom collapsed in the sixth century, mainly, it is thought, due to internal divisions within the country, but the Scottish section continued until the early ninth century. The great Scottish king Cineach MacAlpin (Kenneth MacAlpin) was believed to be descended from a Dalriadan Irish father. Fionn, therefore, might be seen as an Irish leader of nominally Scottish warriors.] He went with these men and they went to attack the Lochlann, and those which he did not kill, he swept them out of Alba.

From earliest times, Men and the fairy kind seem to have existed side by side. Ancient myths and legends tell how, as the Sidhe (the People of the Mounds), they influenced and aided great heroes in their efforts or else worked against them on behalf of their enemies. Initially, they were probably no more than the embodiment of the elemental forces, which the Celts believed to be in the landscape all around them. Latterly, however, they were considered to be another race—not human—and were known under a variety of names. For example, as the Tuatha de Danaan (the People of Danu), they were known throughout ancient Ireland as great healers but also were feared as powerful magicians. According to the “Book of Invasions” (a monkish text probably written around the 12th century), they arrived “from the East” (Greece?) in a “golden mist” and partly drove out those who already occupied Ireland. As the slightly more hostile Sluagh in Scotland, they were responsible for creating fierce winds and for hurling stone and rocks at the humans whom they despised

They often appeared, when they allowed the Sons of Adam to see them, as humanoid creatures, sometimes in old legends as beautiful men and girls, golden-skinned and with noble features. Their society, according to tradition, was loosely modeled on Celtic society itself so that the mortals whom they captured could make the transition between the two spheres of existence quite easily.

But where had the fairy kind—the Sidhe, the Sluagh, or whatever local Celts chose to call them—come from? Had they, as some sources suggest, come from the East? Were they all that remained of the ancient gods and goddesses who had once been worshipped throughout the Celtic lands before the coming of Christianity? Or were they really angels who had been banished from Heaven? Were they friendly or utterly and implacably hostile towards Humankind? Down through the centuries, from very ancient to relatively recent times, there have been many explanations for their origin.

One of those who considered the problem from a learned perspective and with regard to the Welsh Tylwth Teg (as the Sidhe were named in Wales) was the folklorist and Classicist Elias Owen, Vicar of Llanyblodwel. Turning his not inconsiderable knowledge to the matter, he began to speculate on the origins of these supernatural beings from earliest, mythological antiquity. His “Notes on Y Tylwyth Teg” (1895–6) set the Celtic fairies within a wider Classical and mythological context, as the following excerpt shows.

by Elias Owen

The Fairy tales that abound in the Principality (of Wales) have much in common with like legends in other countries.
This points to a common origin of all such tales. There is a real and unreal, a mythical and material aspect to Fairy Folk-lore. The prevalence, the obscurity and the different versions of the same Fairy tale shows that their origin dates from remote antiquity. The supernatural and the material are strangely blended together in these legends, and this also points to their great age, and intimates that these wild and imaginative Fairy narratives had some historical foundation. If carefully sifted, these legends will yield a fruitful harvest of ancient thoughts and facts connected with a history of a people which, as a race is, perhaps, now extinct, but which has to a certain extent been merged into a stronger and more robust race, by whom they were conquered and dispossessed of much of their land. The conquerors of the Fair Tribe have transmitted to us tales of their timid, unwarlike, but truthful predecessors of the soil, and these tales shew that for a time, both races were the inhabitants of the land, and to a certain extent, by stealth, intermarried.

Fairy tales, much alike in character, are to be heard in many countries, peopled by peoples of the Aryan race [
Editor’s Note
: With whom the Celts were believed to have strong connections], and consequently these stories in outline were most probably in existence before the emigration of the families belonging to that race. It is not improbable that the emigrants would carry with them, into all countries whithersoever they went, their ancestral legends, and they would have no difficulty in supplying these interesting stories with a home in their new country. If that supposition be correct, we must look for the origin of Fairy Mythology in the cradle of the Ayrian people, and not in any part of the world inhabited by the descendants of that great race.

But it is not improbable that incidents in the process of colonisation would repeat themselves, or under special circumstances, vary, and thus we should have similar and different variations of the same historical event in all countries once
inhabited by a diminutive race, which was overcome by a more powerful people.

In Wales, Fairy legends have such peculiarities that they seem to be historical fragments of by-gone days. And apparently, they refer to a race which immediately preceded the Celt in the occupation of the country, and with which the Celt, to a limited degree, amalgamated.

The Fairies have, in Wales, at least three common and distinctive names, as well as others that are not nowadays used.

The first and most general name given to the Fairies is “
Y Tylwyth Teg
” or the Fair Tribe, as an expressive and descriptive term. They are spoken of as people, and not as myths or goblins, and they are said to be a fair or handsome race.

Another common name for the Fairies is
Bendyth y Mamau
or “A Mother’s Blessing”. In Doctor Owen Pughe’s Dictionary, they are called “
Benditth eu Mamau
” or, “
Their
Mother’s Blessing”. The first is the more common expression, at least in North Wales. It is a singularly strange expression, and difficult to explain. Perhaps it hints at Fairy origin on the mother’s side of certain fortunate people.

The third name given to the Fairies is “
Ellyll
”, an elf, a demon, a goblin. This conveys these beings to the land of spirits, and makes them resemble the oriental Genii, and Shakespeare’s sportive elves. It agrees, likewise, with the modern popular creed respecting goblins and their doings.

Davydd ab Gwilym in a description of a mountain mist in which he was once enveloped says:

“
Yr ydoedd ym mbob gobant
Ellyllon mingeimiou gant
”

“There were in every hollow,

A hundred wrymouthed elves.”
The Cambro-Britian v. I.p. 348

In Prembrokeshire, the Fairies are called
Dynon Bach Teg
or the Small Fair People.

Another name applied to the Fairies is
Plant Annwfn
or
Plant Annwn
. This, however, is not an appellation in common use. The term is applied to the Fairies in the third paragraph of a Welsh prose poem called
Bard Cuag
, thus:

“
Y bwriodd y Tylwyth Teg fi…oni baify nyfod; mawn pryd i’th achub o’ gigweinau Plant Annwfn.
”

“Where the
Tylwyth Teg
threw me……If I had not come in time to rescue thee from the clutches of
Plant Annwfn
”

Annwn
or
Annwfn
is defined in Canon Silvan Evans’s Dictionary as an abyss, Hades etc. Plant Annwfn, therefore, means the children of the lower regions. It is a name derived from the supposed place of abode—the bowels of the earth—of the Fairies.
Guragedd Annwn
, the dames of Elfin land, is a name applied to Fairy ladies.

Ellis Wynne, the author of
Bard Cuag
, was born in 1671, and the probability that the words
Plant Annwfn
formed in his days part of the vocabulary of the people. He was born in Merionethshire.

Gwyll
, according to Richards and Dr. Owen Pughe is a Fairy, a goblin etc. The plural of
Gwyll
would be
Gwylliaid
or
Gwyllion
but this latter word Dr. Pughe defines as ghosts, hobgoblins etc. Formerly there was, in Merionethshire, a redhaired family of robbers called
Y Gwylliaid Cochion
or the Red Fairies, of whom I shall speak hereafter.

Coblynau
or Knockers have been described as a species of Fairies whose abode was within the rocks, and whose province it was to indicate to the miners by the process of knocking etc., the presence of rich lodes of lead and other metals in this or that direction of the mine.

That the words
Tylwyth Teg
and
Ellyll
are convertible terms appears from the following stanza, which is taken from the
Cumbrian Magazine
vol ii
p. 58
.

“
Pan dramwych ffrid yr Ywan,
Lle mae Tylwyth Teg rhodien,
Dos yamlaen, a pbaid a sefyll,
Gwillia’th droed—rhag dawnsva’r Ellyll
”