Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (18 page)

Unlike the
sídh
, Annwfn is a single realm that may be entered through many portals on earth and sea. This kingdom appears to be subdivided into separate sub-kingdoms dominated by a monarch who claims overlordship as the ‘king of Annwfn’. In the first branch of the
Mabinogi
(see
Chapter 13
) Hafgan is seen as ‘
a
king of Annwfn’ who challenges Arawn ‘
the
king of Annwfn’. Patrick Sims-Williams has noted that the Annwfn of
Mabinogi
seems contiguous with the earthly kingdom of Dyfed in south Wales and that the contention between
Hafgan and Arawn is a fair reflection of medieval Welsh politics. In some texts Annwfn is identified with the tiny island of Gwales (today Grassholm), off the southwest coast of Dyfed; Bendigeidfran’s head rules over feasting here in the second branch of the
Mabinogi
. In the earlier
Culhwch and Olwen
Annwfn lies beyond Scotland.

The Irish Dún Scáith [fort of shadow/fear], sometimes thought to
be on the Isle of Man, may be entered and explored. It is a kind of Hades from which the deft and quick may steal a treasure. When the hero Cúchulainn and his champions land here, they have to overcome a series of challenges. Odious serpents swarm toward the men from a pit at the centre of the fortress. Next, hideous toads with sharp beaks attack; in their charging forth they turn into dragons. But the men vanquish them and thus procure an enchanted cauldron, gold, silver, an endless supply of meat and three magical crews to pull their ship back to Ireland. Escape is not simple, however. The evil spirits who protected Dún Scáith cause the Irish ship to capsize, sending the treasure to the bottom of the sea. Cúchulainn and his men swim back to Ireland where they live to tell the tale.

In the story of Saint Brendan’s voyage, reviewed above, a lure for the quest was the hope of visiting Tír Tairngire [land of prophecy, promise]. It is presumed to be a land that can be reached by boat. Stories of Tír Tairngire depict a king and queen, Dáire (one of several to bear this name) and Rígru Rosclethan, who are called ‘sinless’ because they have intercourse only to produce their otherworldly son Ségda Sárlbraid. Half a dozen other stories tell of visitors to the land, some of whose behaviour is most earthly. The beautiful but wicked Bé
Chuma commits adultery here with Gaidiar, son of Manannán mac Lir, for which she is banished.

Another mysterious land made a lasting mark on the world’s map. Hy Brasil is known today only in its Hiberno-English spelling, but it derives from an Irish original, perhaps
Í
[island] and
bres
[beauty, worth; great, might]. An earthly paradise lying at the same latitude as Ireland, Hy Brasil clearly builds on the much older European myth of the lost Atlantis. The Irish name may have been influenced by the boat-shaped fortress Barc Bresail built in Leinster and attributed to the shadowy king Bresal. Sometimes associated with the Aran Islands, Hy Brasil is one of many retreats attributed to the Tuatha Dé Danann after their defeat by the Milesians (see
Chapter 7
). Under different spellings the name appeared on a number of medieval maps in different parts of Europe and became the subject of cartographer Angelinus Dalorto’s thesis
L’Isola Brazil
(Genoa, 1325). The Italian spelling, with a -
z
-, influenced the naming of the South American nation of Brazil, but maps continued to place the island of Brasil west of Ireland well into the seventeenth century. The notion of Hy Brasil as an island without labour, care or cynical laughter, where one might enjoy the conversation of such as Cúchulainn, persisted in oral tradition until the twentieth century. A fisherman claimed to William Butler Yeats, as cited in
The Celtic Twilight
(1893), that he had sailed out as far as Hy Brasil.

Other islands on the western horizon offer a paradise equal to that of Hy Brasil and are differentiated by names suggesting something of their inhabitants, their promise or their location. The beautiful, sexually inviting women of Tír na mBan [Land of Women] entertain many visiting heroes, beginning with Bran and Máel Dúin, as cited above. The Living of Tír na mBéo [Land of the Living] are some of the many otherworldly consolers of the defeated Tuatha Dé Danann; this is the same land where the hero Lug Lámfhota acquires his sword Frecraid. The resourceful Tuatha Dé Danann are also thought have sought refuge where no eyes could see them in Tír fo Thuinn [Land under Wave]. The fancifulness and generality of Tír fo Thuinn appear to suggest that storytellers gave it less credence than the other western Elysiums, but it is cited in a number of Fenian stories from oral tradition.

Tír na nÓg [Land of Youth], well known in English, conflates elements of many of the islands: usually in the west, a refuge for the Tuatha Dé Danann, a place of bountiful pleasure and sexual promise, where youth never expires. Oral tradition assigns Tír na nÓg to several locations, most popularly at the entrance of Lisconnor Bay, Co. Clare, south of the Cliffs of Moher. Or it may be inland, such as a cave on Knockadoon Island, Lough Gur, Co. Limerick, or in the north on Rathlin Island, off the Antrim coast. Niam[h] of the Golden Hair leads the Fenian hero Oisín to Tír na nÓg, where they sojourn for 300 years. The full nature of their doings there is never detailed. On his return to mortality, of course, Oisín, like others, finds himself ravaged by the time he does not perceive to have passed. The concept of Tír na nÓg may be traditional, but it was shaped by the literary imagination of Micheál Coimín’s 1750 Irish-language poem
Laoi Oisín i dTír na nÓg
[The Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth]. It is due not only to Coimín’s well-wrought text that the name Tír na nÓg became so widely known but even more to the poem’s dozen translations and adaptations, famously William Butler Yeats’s ‘The Wanderings of Oisín’ (1889). Not a copyrighted name, Tír na nÓg may appear in contexts far from its roots. Any children’s amusement park, like one in the resort town of Salthill, Co. Galway, may be called ‘Tír na nÓg’. It is also the name of the mysterious white horse in Mike Newell’s film
Into the West
(1993), written by Jim Sheridan.

The otherworld as distant island is less common in traditions outside Ireland. Stories of Roca Barraidh are still current on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. On rare occasions privileged fishermen might see this enchanted island on the far horizon, which combines elements of Hy Brasil and Emain Ablach. The Scottish Gaelic
roc
denotes anything that tangles a fishing-hook or the tops of seaweed that appear above the water. Similarly, the Welsh Ynys Afallon [W.
afall
, apple] is a happy island of sensual pleasure, fertility, abundant feasting and perpetual youth on the western ocean. Ynys Afallon, along with Emain Ablach, which also contains an allusion to apples, have long been thought to contribute to the conception of Avalon in Arthurian tradition.

Lastly, not all islands are at sea. Expanses of flat land, plains, are like islands in that they offer the foot-traveller respite from rough
ground. Perhaps that is why Mag Mell [pleasant plain] is sometimes portrayed at sea and sometimes on land. Bran passes it on his way to Emain Ablach in
Imram Brain
, where salmon romp like calves. At other times it is linked to the actual Mag Dá Cheó [plain of two mists], south of Medb’s fortress of Cruachain in what is today Co. Roscommon, or it may lie in the southwest of Ireland. Not only is its location variable, but it may have as many as three rulers. Usually the monarch of Mag Mell is the forthright Labraid Luathlám ar Claideb [swift hand on sword] whose beautiful wife’s name Lí Ban means ‘paragon of women’. She is her husband’s irresistible emissary to Cúchulainn in
Serglige Con Culainn
[The Sickbed of Cúchulainn] (see
Chapter 10
). Other attributed kings are Goll mac Doilb and Boadach.

Just as there is no single ruler of Mag Mell so there is no personality to lay claim to the title ‘king of the otherworld’. Eochaid Iúil is the adversary of Labraid Luathlám of Mag Mell, but it is not clear where he reigns. Tethra of the demonic Fomorians has otherworldly resonances but he presides over no named realm. Neither does Eógan Inbir rule a happy kingdom, and he is diminished when his wife Bé Chuma cuckolds him with Gaidiar, the son of Manannán mac Lir. As his name appears more often in early texts than any of his rivals’, Manannán, the otherworldly sea god, usually bests them. He appears in the four major cycles of early Irish literature and roams the Irish Sea, touching upon Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland at will.

We do not know how the Celts envisioned the beginning of their world. No cosmogony, cosmology or creation myth in a Celtic language survives to our time. There is no Celtic document to explain the origin of the universe as one finds in Hesiod’s
Theogony
among the Greeks or in the two
Eddas
from early Iceland. Classical commentators, including Julius Caesar (first century
BC
), testify that the Gauls had a cosmogony, but almost none of it can now be found. One line from the geographer Strabo (first century
AD
) speaks of the Gaulish belief in the indestructibility of the world. There is no trace of such beliefs in Irish, Welsh or Breton tradition, although John Shaw (1978) has found a story on the creation of the Milky Way Galaxy among the exiled Scottish Gaels in Nova Scotia (see
Chapter 14
). The most extensive origin story we have is Irish, and it does not address how the cosmos or humans came about but rather how different peoples, some of them fabulous, came to Ireland. This narrative, usually classed as a ‘pseudo-history’, is the
Lebor Gabála Érenn
(Modern Irish:
Leabhar Gabhála
), often translated as ‘The Book of Invasions’ or ‘The Book of Conquests’ or literally as ‘The Book of the Taking of Ireland’.

For most readers the term ‘pseudo-history’ will be unfamiliar and sound unduly flippant or insulting. The compilers of the twelfth-century text of the
Lebor Gabála
thought they were writing a reliable record of human events but because of their credulous use of frequently fantastical sources they produced something very different. Several authors over different periods purported to synchronize myths, legends and genealogies from early Ireland with the framework of Biblical
exegesis. Such stories as that of the Tower of Babel and Noah’s Flood are taken literally, and Ptolemy’s earth-centred vision of the cosmos orders the authors’ globe. Alwyn and Brinley Rees in
Celtic Heritage
(1961) describe it as a ‘laborious attempt to combine parts of native teaching with Hebrew mythology embellished with medieval legend’. Less charitably, Patrick K. Ford (1977) calls the
Lebor Gabála
a ‘masterpiece of muddled medieval miscellany’.

Inevitably, the reader of the
Lebor Gabála
must wonder if there is some tiny grain of fact at the bottom of it all or whether the entire venture is built on moonbeams. The succession of different invasions of the island, culminating with the all-too-mortal Milesians, suggests a parallel with the Four Ages of Man outlined by the Greek Hesiod in
Works and Days
(
c
. seventh century
BC
). The narrative also provides a setting for the first cycle of Old Irish literature, which we now call ‘The Mythological’. A key text of that cycle,
Cath Maige Tuired
[The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired/Moytura], extends the action of the
Lebor Gabála
and is also discussed in this chapter, below. Yet the classification ‘pseudo-history’ reminds us that the
Lebor Gabála
was once thought a reliable record. Some of the most important historians before modern times struggled to coordinate the
Lebor Gabála
history to fit with information gathered elsewhere, including Geoffrey Keating (
c
.1580–
c
.1645/50), Micheál Ó Cléirigh (1575-
c
.1645) of the
Annals of the Four Masters
, and Roderick O’Flaherty (1629–1718). Even the conscientious post-Enlightenment figure Charles O’Conor (1710–91) thought the
Lebor Gabála
narrative
could be accommodated with more trustworthy documents. In the later twentieth century John V. Kelleher of Harvard University devoted decades to solving the text’s many riddles and also encouraged two generations of graduate students to work with shorter sections by using all the resources of modern technology, scrupulously edited manuscripts and more abundant data. Their efforts support the view that certain episodes in the
Lebor Gabála
contain distant echoes of events that can be demonstrated to have occurred. The same, of course, can be said of numerous medieval legends as well as later folktales.

Human history begins with the biblical Flood, which commentators date at 2900
BC
or in the supposed ‘year of the world’ 1104 Anno Mundi (abbreviated
AM
). Dates for all events in the
Lebor Gabála
vary a great deal, as medieval authorities could not agree on the date of Creation: the Anglo-Saxon historian known as the Venerable Bede (seventh century) argued for 3952
BC
and the Septuagints, Greek-speaking Jewish scholars (third century
BC
), determined 5200
BC
, while later authorities opted for 4004
BC
. The ancestors of the Irish are known as the Scoti, a people presumed to have originated in Scythia (coextensive with modern Ukraine) who took their name from a daughter of the pharaoh of Egypt known as Scota or Scotia. In fact
Scoti
is a variant of
Scotti
, one of several names the historical Romans gave to peoples in ancient Ireland. Sixth-century historical migrations from Ulster to Argyll caused that name to be applied to what we now call Scotland. The
Lebor Gabála
portrays the Scoti as fellow exiles in Egypt with the Hebrews, whose leader Moses invites them to join the Exodus. This passage may be the source of the long-standing canard that the Irish are a lost tribe of Israel. While in Egypt the Scoti invent their own language. One Fénius Farsaid is described as being present at
the separation of languages at Babel and leaving instructions to his grandson, Goídel Glas, to forge the Irish language out of the seventy-two tongues then in existence. The name makes play on the Old Irish word for the Irish language
Goídelc
.