Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (19 page)

The first two invasions are more contrived and less grounded than the subsequent four. A woman comes from the Middle East for the first invasion in a story mixing pious credulity and teasings of sexual fantasy. Cesair (also Cessair, Ceasair, etc.) is the daughter of Bith, a son of Noah, and Birren, who escapes to Inis Fáil [Isle of Destiny, i.e. Ireland] just before the Flood. The disgrace of being denied entry to the Ark causes her to flee her homeland. In an alternative version, she is the daughter of Banba, one of the eponymous goddesses of Ireland. Forty days before the Flood, she arrives at Dún na mBarc on Bantry Bay in County Cork with fifty women and three men. Initially the women are supposed to be divided among the men in hopes that they will populate the island. Two of the men die, leaving the task to Fintan mac Bóchra, ‘husband’ of Cesair and a patron of poets, who feels inadequate to it and flees in the form of a salmon. Left alone, Cesair dies of a broken heart. The unnamed narrator of the story explains the origin of many obscure place names by tracing them to members of Cesair’s retinue. Cold-eyed modern commentators have argued that the etymologies are invented and inserted in the narrative.

Ireland is empty for 312 years after the death of Cesair, and thus after the Flood, when the beneficent and industrious Partholonians, after seven years’ wandering, land during Beltaine at Inber Scéne, which may be in Co. Kerry in southwest Ireland or Donegal Bay in the northwest. They settle first in the northwest near the falls of Assaroe but later clear four plains, introduce agriculture and are the first to divide Ireland into four parts. Nature welcomes them when seven lakes erupt of their own accord. Among their settlements is the plain of Mag nElta (anglicized Moynalty), coextensive with modern metropolitan Dublin.

These second invaders are named for their leader Partholón, another person with a Biblical pedigree. He is a descendant of Magog, who lived in the twenty-first year of the Patriarch Abraham. Additionally, he is a ‘prince of Greece’, who murders his own parents, costing himself one eye and bringing a lifelong propensity for bad luck. He is, despite this, ‘chief of every craft’. Whether Partholón is Greek or Hebrew, his name is certainly not Irish, as the letter P was unknown in the earliest versions of the Irish language. The name is most likely borrowed from the Hebrew Apostle’s name Bartholomew, which St Jerome and Isidore of Seville incorrectly glossed as ‘son of him who stays the waters’, i.e. a survivor of the Flood.

The Partholonians flourish for 5 20 years and rise to a population of 9,000, many of whom have developed characters, such as Partholón’s three brothers, Eólas [knowledge], Fios [intelligence] and Fochmarc [inquiring]. Other specific names are attributed to the first teacher, first innkeeper and first physician. Others introduce gold, cattle-raising and jurisprudence. One Malaliach brews the first ale, later used in divination, ritual and sacrifice. Not all Partholonian innovations are so happy. Partholón’s wife Dealgnaid seduces a servant in the first instance of adultery in Irish literature. In one version Partholón flies into a rage, but in another he is placated by his wife’s verse protest that she should not have been left alone with great temptation.

Thirty years after the extinction of the Partholonians, the Nemedians arrive, people who also improve the landscape. Like their predecessors, the Nemedians take their name from a leader with a biblical pedigree; Nemed is descended from Magog and a son of Japheth but still described as a ‘Scythian’. It is from Scythia that the Nemedians depart in thirty-four ships, all but one of which is lost when the party greedily pursues a tower of gold seen at sea. The remaining ship wanders the world for a year before arriving in Ireland at a time and place not made specific.

Least remarkable and romanticized of the invaders, the Nemedians seem initially to be a shadow of the Partholonians. Four new lakes erupt during their occupation, and they advance civilization by clearing twelve plains and building two fortresses, one in Antrim, the other in Armagh. The latter is named for their queen Macha [Ir.
Ard Macha
: height of Macha], one of three important figures to bear that name. One of their druids, Mide, eponym for the kingdom of Mide, lights the first fire at Uisnech at the centre of Ireland; it blazes for seven years and lights every chief’s hearth.

Their singular distinction is in doing heroic battle against the predatory Fomorians, whom they defeat three times. A fourth encounter, however, is catastrophic, forcing the Nemedians to pay a humiliating annual tribute at Samain. Seeking vengeance, the Nemedians storm the Fomorian tower of Tor Conaind on Tory Island off Donegal. The Nemedian hero Fergus Lethderg slays the Fomorian champion Conand, but most of the rest of the brave fighters are slaughtered, only thirty surviving to be scattered around the world. The offspring of those survivors become members of later invasions, the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danann. One, Britán Máel, lives in Scotland until the arrival of the Picts, when he moves south, giving his name to Britain and the British.

The name
Fir Bolg
is usually glossed as ‘men of Builg’, a plural form in Irish. The words are also pronounced as they would be in Irish with a schwa inserted between the
I
and the
g
: ‘feer BOL-eg’. The meaning of their name has been much disputed. The earlier folk etymology glossing the name as ‘men of the bags’ [Ir.
bolg
: bag], once dismissed, has recently gained new currency. Such bags would not be the ones cited in the narrative but ones that signal bellicosity through etymological routes. Within the
Lebor Gabála
they are thought to take their name from Bolg/Bolga, an ancestor deity. Another interpretation from the mid-twentieth century suggests that
Bolg
alludes to the Belgae, early historical invaders of Ireland speaking P-Celtic languages (ancient British, Welsh, Cornish, etc.).

Although the Fir Bolg prevail for a mere thirty-seven years, their era is distinguished by the rule of a great and generous king, Eochaid mac Eirc, who establishes justice and provides that all rain will fall as dew and that every year will yield a harvest. Eochaid also initiates a festival in honour of his wife Tailtiu; the actual festival of that name continued to be celebrated in Co. Meath until the late eighteenth century and was revived briefly in the twentieth.

While not a part of the sequence of six invaders, the malevolent Fomorians exude a sulphurous presence over long stretches of narrative in the
Lebor Gabála
. They also figure prominently in the action of
Cath Maige Tuired
[The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], but portrayals are not coordinate across the two texts. Learned opinion today sees the Fomorians as euhemerized sea deities, pre-Christian divinities who came to be thought of as human, especially as demonic pirates. Earlier commentators invented lineages for them from the materials at hand. Their conception predates both the composition of the
Lebor Gabála
and the advent of Christianity. Linking them to the Bible, ecclesiastical scribes explained the Fomorians as the progeny of Ham, Noah’s least favoured son. Later they were portrayed as giants or elves, or were seen with goat-or horseheads or other misshapen features. Historical experience contributed to their vilification as they took on the behaviour of sea-raiders from the north, first from the Scottish islands and more extensively from the Norse lands. Thus they are seen as wantonly cruel bullies, cutting off the noses of those who will not pay them tribute.

In their first appearance in the
Lebor Gabála
under their rapacious leader Cichol against the beneficent Partholonians, the Fomorians are seen as monstrous and fearsome, each having only one eye, one arm and one leg. To a modern, sceptical perception, the Fomorians may have seemed at some disadvantage because of missing parts, but their disfigurement must have thrown a fright into early readers and storytellers. Centuries later two figures from oral tradition, the Irish Fer Caille and the Scottish Gaelic Fachan, were described taking the same form. Later in the text the Fomorians are more anthropomorphic.

Individual warriors and champions of the Fomorians are surreally ugsome, as one might imagine, notably the leading military menace, Balor, often known as Balor of the Evil or Baleful Eye. Even his wife Caitlín or Céthlionn of the Crooked Tooth can send the timorous running. Balor does more than strike fear; he is lethal. He never opens the eye except on the battlefield, where four men are needed to lift the eyelid. Any army looking upon the eye is rendered powerless. The deadly capability of this eye comes from the child Balor’s observation of his father’s druids brewing potions and charms. Balor, however, need only extend his gaze to strike with dreadful effect. Earlier theories, now out of fashion, explained Balor as an anthropomorphic sun deity. In size and aggression, Balor is often seen as a counterpart of the Welsh juggernaut Ysbaddaden Bencawr, whose heavy eyelids require servants with forks to lift them.

Compilers of the
Lebor Gabála
are characteristically precise in dating the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann as thirty-seven years after the Fir Bolg, whom they displace, and 297 years before the Milesians, mortal equivalents of the Irish people. Other aspects of their arrival do not imply the earthbound. Unlike the other invaders who arrive by ship, the Tuatha Dé Danann disembark from sombre clouds just before Beltaine, settling on an obscure mountain in the west, causing a three-day eclipse. An association with the west persists in their characterization. In an alternative text they do arrive by sailing over water, burning their ships on the shore, sending up a plume of dark smoke that causes an eclipse.

Dagda, usually known with the definite article as the Dagda, is a warrior, artisan, magician and omniscient ruler. Among his possessions are the celebrated cauldron and two marvellous swine (one always cooking, the other still alive), and ever-laden fruit trees. His club is so great that it has to be dragged on wheels and leaves a track so deep that it marks the boundary between provinces. In size and potency it suggests parallels with the striker of the Gaulish god Sucellus or the hammer of the Norse god Thor. The Dagda is also known by other names in some stories: Eochaid Ollathair [father of all], Ruad Rofhessa [lord of great knowledge] and Deirgderc [red eye, i.e. the sun].

Boand is the goddess of the River Boyne, an anglicization of her name. While the lover of the Dagda, she conceives and gives birth to Angus Óg, the god of poetry. Some sources bowdlerize the episode and call Boand the ‘wife’ of the Dagda, but Nechtan is her usual husband. To hide her adultery, she asks Elcmar to be the foster-father of the child. Nuadu is her usual consort, but he is neither a foster-father nor a ‘husband’ in the Christian sense. Her residence is thought to be Brug na Bóinne [hostel of Boand], the Irish-language name for the great passage-grave of Newgrange, and, by extension, the forty tombs in the area. Competing stories explain her origin, both having her violate taboos, after which a well pours forth to drown her as she flees toward the sea, following a route that is now the River Boyne. Always feminine, she is attributed a lapdog, Dabilla.

Manannán mac Lir rules a mysterious land beyond the sea, as cited in the previous chapter, and is most associated with the powers of water. He is a giver of gifts with magical properties such as the concealing mist given to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Not always listed with the Tuatha Dé, his persona predates the composition of the
Lebor Gabála
and appears most widely in early Irish literature. The folk etymology that he gave his name to the Isle of Man is false, but the reverse may be true, that his name comes from an early name for the island. His patronymic, mac Lir, once thought to mean ‘of the sea’, remains puzzling. This Lir is not identical with Lir of Sídh Finnachad, the father of the swan children, a story composed at a later date.

Angus Óg, literally ‘young Angus’, is a god of youth and beauty as well as poetry. He may also be the god of love, if one can be said to exist. His name is spelled variously, Óengus, Áengus, Aonghas, etc., or he may be known as mac Óc or mac-ind-Óg, ‘the son of youth’ or ‘young son’. Angus Óg drinks the ale of immortality and four swans circle over his head as he travels. He displaces his mother Boand at the residence of Brug na Bóinne or Newgrange. Although attributed many lovers, in his best known story he pines away for the inaccessible swan maiden Cáer. He protects himself with a cloak of invisibility but nonetheless defends many heroes, notably his fosterson, Diarmait Ua Duibne of the Fenian Cycle.

Nuadu Airgetlám [of the silver hand/arm] is a king who leads his people into Ireland but is later disqualified because of the ‘blemish’ of his severed hand, replaced with a silver prosthetic. His sword is one of the Tuatha Dé’s treasures, a testimony to his prominence. Obliged to relinquish his throne temporarily, he was reappointed before the battle with the Fomorians, in which he fell to Balor. He appears to be the cognate of the early British god Nodons, who was worshipped at Lydney Park, an archaeological site on the west bank of the Severn; he also resembles the Welsh figure Nudd, who sometimes carries the epithet Llaw Erient [silver hand]. Nuadu is a consort of Boand.

Dian Cécht, the healing god, fashioned Nuadu’s silver hand with moving fingers. In the battle with the Fomorians, Dian Cécht can restore every mortally wounded warrior except for the decapitated. For this he employs the
tipra sláine
[spring of life] to revive health and well-being. A cult of Dian Cécht predates the
Lebor Gabála
, and somewhat changed he also appears in later oral tradition; his porridge made of hazelnuts, dandelion, woodsorrel, chickweed and oatmeal can cure colds, sore throats and other ailments. His son Miach and daughter Airmid, of whom Dian Cécht is jealous, are also healing gods. The hero Lug Lámfhota is Dian Cécht’s grandson but appears to be his contemporary in many narratives.

Donn, the god of the dead and ruler of the otherworld, is often portrayed as aloof and retiring, living in isolation from the other gods at Tech Duinn [Donn’s house], a rocky islet at the extreme western end of the Beare Peninsula. He is, nonetheless, the first of the invaders to land in Ireland. Sometimes confused with the Dagda as an ancestor deity, Donn is often merged with another Donn, Donn mac Míled, from the Milesians, the next invaders. As the dead ‘live’ with him, he most resembles the Roman god Dis Pater, from whom he may derive through Gaulish intermediaries. In oral tradition he is thought to have caused shipwrecks, but in pious folklore his persona is adapted to portrayals of the devil.

Goibniu, the smith god, is one of three patrons of the crafts, along with Credne, a worker in bronze and gold, and Luchta the carpenter. He is seen most vividly in the battle with the Fomorians where he works tirelessly in forging both weapons and armour. His keen tips are always lethal. On occasion he joins the combat himself. Along with his martial skill, Goibniu is often seen as a god of healing. He is also the host of an otherworldly feast,
Fled Goibnenn
, where guests may drink all the ale they wish without getting drunk; instead, those attending are protected from decay and old age. His counterparts in Welsh tradition are Gofannon and Glwyddyn Saer.