Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (16 page)

MacNeill’s study traces the transmutation and transmogrification of Lughnasa over the centuries, through open-air assemblies and pilgrimages at lakes, rivers and wells, and folk medicines, such as cures for insanity. Widespread practices through the insular Celtic countries as well as portions of England and France speak for the antiquity of the calendar feast as well as the importance it once had in the lives of most people. Perhaps there was no way for Lughnasa to survive in a society that has insulated us from the significance of natural processes, where people think of late summer as a time for escape from the routine of work and compulsory schooling. August has become a time for leisure activities, for holidays and vacations, not for shadowy commemorations of forgotten deities.

The 26-year-old William Butler Yeats framed the issue when he wrote of ‘The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland’ (1891), set in Leitrim and Sligo in the rural northwest. The dreamy, spiritual Celts, it appeared, could perceive a world beyond the senses, an otherworld, imperceptible to their powerful, rational, practical neighbours, like the English. Not only does such a Celtic otherworld exist simultaneously with the empirical world of consciousness, but it is preferable to it, a gossamer ideal that contrasts with the grubby here and now.

The notion contributes to the burden of cliché. Play a word-association game with the ‘Celt’ and you can expect to hear such modifiers as ‘intemperate’, ‘exuberant’ and ‘otherworldly’. None of these implies flattery when uttered by most non-Celts. The smile of condescension is implicit, as it was in the 1999 world press accounts of Co. Clare storyteller Eddie Lenihan’s efforts to stop highway construction that would destroy a hawthorn bush where the fairies meet. Could the fairies find such a champion in contemporary Sussex or Kansas?

Additionally, post-classical Celtic peoples, like other Europeans, long embraced the teachings of the Christian Church, which has defined visions of otherworldly realms of reward and punishment. The certitude of spending eternity in either heaven or hell tends to push aside older visions of a life beyond the physical, inherited from pre-literate civilizations. Additionally, Christian vocabulary portrays an absolute dichotomy between
this world
and
the other world
that influences the connotations and nuances of our own English words in trying to speak about the subject.

Regardless of how much ‘paganism’ survives in Irish, Welsh and Breton traditions, the Christian faith of later scribes, ecclesiastical and secular, appears to have shaped the portrayal of worlds beyond the senses. The scribal vocabulary implies no shared belief, no single vision of a realm where the non-physical part of the self, the soul or psyche, might reside.

Among the earliest narratives in Irish are those dealing with fabulous journeys, perhaps a projection of the intrepid travel undertaken by Irish monks in Dark-Age Europe, 600–1100
AD
. These are categorized into two types by the first words in their titles. In
Echtrae
, a term meaning ‘adventure’, the distant regions visited are inhabited by men, even if they are shrouded by mist, beyond the sea or in the middle of the earth.
Imram
or
Immram
, meaning ‘rowing about’, denotes a sea voyage to one or more islands, often beyond the world inhabited by human beings. Put another way, while both the
Echtrae
and the
Imram
take the reader beyond the mundane, it is the latter that goes beyond the human to the otherworld. At the same time the current scholarly consensus holds that the
Imram
is a monastic genre and that later more vernacular versions of such fabulous voyages are probably secularizations. From the hands of the monks we try to piece together some of the oldest Irish portrayals of the otherworld.

While strolling about his fort one day, Bran hears music behind him, which follows and haunts him until he falls asleep from its sweetness. Awakening, he finds beside him a silver branch with blossoms he is unable to identify. When he takes the branch into the palace with him, a woman from ‘The Land of Wonders’ in strange attire appears and recites a poem to him. No one can explain where the woman has come from as all the entrances and ramparts are closed. The assembled kings both hear and see her.

Her poem begins with a description of the wondrous apple tree of
Emain
, whose twigs of white silver bear crystal leaves in blossom. This
Emain
appears to be identical with Emain Ablach, the realm of Manannán mac Lir, the sea god, and may be glossed as the ‘Fortress of Apples’ or the ‘Land of Promise’. She describes the far-off island of Emain, held up by four pillars, just south of the plains of White Silver and Silver Cloud and near to the Silvery Land, the Gentle Land and the Plains of the Sea and of Sport.

In a quick transition, a host is seen rowing in a coracle or curragh, a small leather boat, across a clear sea to land with a large conspicuous stone, from which arise a hundred melodies. Here are many thousands of women clad in various colours, encircled by the clear sea. A very white rock on the edge of the sea receives its heat from the sun. On the nearby Plain of Sports people expect neither decay nor death.

The tone then shifts abruptly to Christian didacticism with a prophecy of the birth of Christ and a short description of the nature and extent of his kingdom. Bran, as the chosen from all the people of the world, is admonished not to be slothful and to cast off his drunkenness. He is about to begin his voyage to the Land of the Women.

Bran’s perceptions are not Manannán’s. What Bran sees as a flowery plain is for Manannán the Plain of Sports or the Plain of Delights. Bran, it turns out, is really rowing over a beautiful fruitful wood. Manannán describes a gentle land where the inhabitants play a gentle game under a bush without any transgressions. They are ageless and do not expect decay, for the sin of Adam has not reached them.

The fall of Adam is then described, along with implications of gluttony and greed. Cautions are uttered against the sin of pride that leads to the destruction of the soul through deceit. This is followed by the prophecy of the coming of Christ and the introduction of a just law.

Manannán again predicts his procreation of Mongán and describes the son’s life, death and ascension into Heaven. The prophecy that a divinely conceived child might achieve the realm of the gods is no doubt an echo of Christ’s story in the Gospels, as more than one commentator has observed.

Leaving Manannán, Bran expects to reach Emain by sunset. He and his men row around the Island of Joy, whose people gape and jeer at them. Bran sends ashore one of his men, who immediately begins to act like the islanders and so is left behind. Arriving at the Land of Women [
Tír na mBan
], Bran does not dare to leave the coracle. The leader of the women calls out to Bran, ‘Come here on the land, oh Bran son of Febal. Your coming is welcome.’ When the woman throws a ball of thread to Bran, it clings to his palm but is sufficiently secure to allow the woman to pull the entire coracle into the harbour. They proceed to a large house where there is a couch for each of the men to share with a paired woman. Sumptuous food appears on dishes, more than the men can eat.