Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (21 page)

The notion that Old Irish narratives should fall into four cycles, Mythological, Ulster, Fenian and Kings, would have sounded strange to medieval storytellers and scribes. It was instead those great classifiers of data, nineteenth-century German academics, who sorted out these categories for us. They founded philology, the rigorous, systemized study of language. These were the same people who recovered the Old Irish language and compiled its first grammars and dictionaries. Their perception that the internal associations of characters, themes and places could link stories has persisted for more than a century and a half and is now standard. This is so even though the names for the cycles are sometimes troublesome; for example, how can we have a ‘Mythological Cycle’ when so much of early Irish literature may be subsumed in what is now often called Celtic Mythology? Additionally, the Ulster Cycle was once referred to as the Red Branch Cycle, the Fenian Cycle has been called the Finn or the Ossianic Cycle, and the Cycles of Kings, or the largest portion of them, are sometimes known as the Historical Cycle. Neither is the categorization tidy; some stories such as
Togail Bruidne Da Derga
[The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel] might fit in more than one cycle while voyage tales such as
Imram Brain
[The Voyage of Bran] might not belong in any (see
Chapter 6
).

When strung together, the stories from a single cycle do not form a continuous, unbroken narrative or even a continuous timeline, although those dealing with Cúchulainn (
Chapter 10
) come closest. In some cases the episodes in one cycle appear to echo those of another, as the childhood deeds of Fionn (
Chapter 11
) are partially modelled
on those of Cúchulainn. The love story of Diarmait and Gráinne (
Chapter 11
) makes several parallels with that of Deirdre and Noise (
Chapter 4
), while coming to a dramatically different conclusion. Some characters, such as the legendary king Cormac mac Airt, may appear in more than one cycle. Lug Lámfhota, the principal hero of the Mythological Cycle, makes a significant appearance in the Ulster Cycle, and Manannán mac Lir the sea god may drive his chariot across whichever barriers he pleases.

The people who first memorized and later transcribed the early tales had other means of categorizing them. One was by using an identifying first word in the title. A story whose title begins with the word
Cath
… is about a battle. There were at least seventeen such classifications. A title beginning
Fis
… includes a vision,
Imram
… a voyage,
Tochmarc
… an elopement, and so on. While the national epic,
Táin Bó Cuailnge
[The Cattle Raid of Cooley] is often referred to in English as ‘The
Táin
’, there are several other stories of cattle raids beginning with the word
Táin
. We also have categories for which few examples have survived, such as a title beginning
Úath
… indicating stories whose incidents are set in caves.

Early storytellers were also burdened by meeting performance criteria modern readers pretty much ignore. In an oft-cited passage from the Book of Leinster [
Lebor Laignech
] (after 1150), poets are advised on the recitation of potentially 350 stories, of which 250 are ‘prime’ and the remaining 100 are ‘secondary’. Prime stories deal with destructions, cattle-raids, courtships, battles, caves, voyages, violent deaths, feasts, sieges, adventures, elopements and slaughters. The same source actually cites only 200 prime stories and none of the secondary. The uncited stories may simply be missing or, in the case of the secondary, they may be segments of longer primary stories. Which story was performed may well have been determined by the occasion, such as departure on a voyage, the anticipation of a marriage or an appearance at a court of law. The storyteller’s choice at such a moment would have nothing to do with our attribution of a cycle of stories on related characters.

Central to the action of the Mythological Cycle are the divinely derived Tuatha Dé Danann, especially the hero Lug Lámfhota, whose links to pre-Christian gods came to light early. The narrower definitions of ‘mythology’ current in the mid-nineteenth century laid more
stake on narrative roots in religion, and through religion to explanations of the origin of the cosmos. No Celtic cosmology survives, as mentioned before, but the story of how the Tuatha Dé Danann and later the mortal Gaels had come to Ireland as told in the
Lebor Gabála
did present a narrative of social origins, at the least. Subsequent decades would uncover divine origins for other heroic figures outside this cycle, such as Cúchulainn, Fionn and the Mórrígan. Further, close examination of non-Western traditions, as well as revolutionary movements in psychology and philosophy, pushed out the limits of what could and could not be considered a ‘myth’. In short, if we had done the sorting out of four different categories of stories today we would have given those in this cycle a different label.

The
Lebor Gabála Érenn
, discussed in the previous chapter, is not only the longest document of the Mythological Cycle, but is also a prelude and frame for most of the cycle’s other stories. Most prominently
Cath Maige Tuired
[The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], the most profound and most commented-upon in the cycle, portrays action interpolated in the
Lebor Gabála
, which is why it was discussed in the previous chapter (
pp. 140–44
).

In action peripheral to the clash between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians at Mag Tuired, the three sons of Tuireann – Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba – come to their unhappy ends.
Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Tuireann] is a tale of animal shapeshifting, magic and revenge in which the three men run afoul of the mighty Lug Lámfhota.

The personage known as Tuireann plays little role in the story, once it is established that he has illustrious lineage (Dian Cécht the physician and possibly the goddess Brigit) and has fathered the three boys upon Ana. Brian and his brothers have reached maturity when the battle of Mag Tuired looms and they find themselves among the Tuatha Dé Danann gearing up for war. After two physicians speculate about healing the wounded king Nuadu, we meet Lug and his father Cian. While travelling north to the plain of Mag Muirtheimne, Cian becomes apprehensive about the approach of three armed men from a family gripped in an unexplained enmity with his own; they are Brian, Iuchair and Iucharba. Seeing himself outnumbered, Cian uses a golden wand to transform himself into a pig and begins rooting in the earth with a nearby herd. Brian knows that Cian is among the herd and thinks of him now as the druidical pig; even if they were to slaughter the herd, such a pig might escape and so Brian transforms his brothers into hounds who indeed separate their quarry from the rest. Once they have returned to human form, Iuchair and Iucharba ask to spare Cian, but Brian will hear none of it and instead demands that his brothers join him in stoning the druidical pig. Cian asks to be returned to his human form as well, and instantly tells the brothers he has tricked them. If they had killed him as a pig, there would be only a small fine to pay. Slain under his own form, his death will demand the far greater honour price or
éiric
demanded for a nobleman. He adds, ‘My son Lug will know by the marks of your weapons who has slain me.’ Brian then hurls a heavy stone at Cian’s head and leads his brothers in pelting him until they reduce the champion to an insignificant, crushed mass. They struggle seven different times to bury the body as the earth rejects it on six occasions.

Lug Lámfhota, meanwhile, has led his armies to victory in battle, after which he asks the whereabouts of his father. When his men find the spot where Cian is buried, Lug travels there and learns from the earth itself the manner of the killing. He digs up the body and examines it, bringing waves of grief and anger upon himself. After chanting a mourning lay, he reburies the body, marks it with an ogham-inscribed monument, and holds funeral games. Lug then proceeds to Tara, where, after encountering Tuireann’s three sons, he calls out to the assembly to name what penalty a man should ask of those who have murdered his father. Seeing the initial puzzlement, Lug announces that Cian is dead and that his murderers are present. The unnamed king of the assembly acknowledges that Lug could justly ask for the murderers’ own death, but if he were the accused he would ask to pay the
éiric
. At this Brian stands up and confesses that he and his brothers dispatched Cian. Lug agrees to accept a fine instead of taking the brothers’ lives.

The honour price requires the brothers to retrieve magical treasurers and to perform dangerous feats. The treasures to be brought back to Ireland are: (i) the three apples of the Garden of the Hesperides; (ii) the skin of the pig of King Tuis ‘of Greece’ that will cure all diseased and wounded people and will turn water into wine; (iii) the superb poisoned spear in the hands of Pisear, ‘king of Persia’, that will come to be known as Gáe Assail; (iv) two steeds belonging to Dobar ‘king of Sicily’; (v) the magical seven pigs of Assal (sometimes Easal), king of the Golden Pillars, that, eaten at night, will reappear in the morning; (vi) the whelp or puppy Failinis of King Iruad (or Ioruaidh); (vii) the cooking-spit of the women of Inis Fionnchuire (or Findchuire), between Britain and Ireland; and, most enigmatically, (viii) three shouts on the hill of Miodhchaoin (or Midchaín) in Lochlainn, the realm of dangerous invaders. At first the three brothers are surprised by the apparent modesty of the penalty, fearing that each is a trick. After they swear their agreement before the king, Lug explains the necessity and exacting difficulty of each task. The apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, for example, will cure the diseases and wounds of anyone who eats them. Further, the person throwing such an apple will hit anything he wishes without losing the cast apple. Lug does not add, however, what the modern reader knows: that the apples
originate in classical mythology and that retrieving them is also the eleventh of Heracles’ twelve labours.

Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann
is often classed as one of the ‘Three Sorrows of Storytelling’, along with the Deirdre story,
Chapter 4
,
pp. 80–83
, and
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir],
pp. 163–5 below
.

Dating from perhaps the eighth or ninth centuries,
Tochmarc Étaíne
[The Wooing of Étaín] survives in mutilated, disconnected fragments, parts of which were found only in the 1930s. At the centre are the lovers Midir – described as a Tuatha Dé Danann lord of the
sídh
in the
Lebor Gabála
– and the immortal girl Étaín, a ravishing paragon of beauty. While elements of the story appear rooted in inexplicable mystery, it has the feel of a happy-ending fairy-tale for grown-ups, what Myles Dillon called ‘a comedy in three acts’.

The story of how Midir and Étaín first meet lies under a narrative tangle of marital intrigue among the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Dagda tricks the magician Elcmar, lord of Brug na Bóinne (Newgrange and more than forty nearby tombs), so that he might sleep with his wife Boand, the river goddess. This produces Angus Óg, god of poetry in his maturity, who is given in fosterage to Midir at the
sídh
of Brí Léith (near Ardagh, Co. Longford). When the boy is grown, Midir goes to visit Angus Óg, now resident at Brug na Bóinne. While there, Midir claims to have suffered an injury for which he must be compensated with the fairest maiden in all Ireland, Étaín, daughter of Ailill (another of that name, not Medb’s husband). Angus must first win her through the Heraclean task of clearing twelve plains, causing twelve rivers to flow, and delivering the equivalent of Étaín’s weight in gold, which he does with Dagda’s help.

When Midir returns home with lovely Étaín, his wife Fuamnach is understandably jealous. Taking a magical rod made from the rowan tree given to her by the druid Bresal Etarláim, Fuamnach strikes Étaín, turning her into a pool of water. As it evaporates, the water turns first into a worm and then into a butterfly (or in some translations, an exquisite, bejewelled dragonfly); its wonderful size and beauty fill the air with sweet music and fragrance. Even transformed, Étaín stays by Midir, and he knows it is she. Recognizing this, Fuamnach conjures up a wind to drive the butterfly out to the rocks and waves of the sea. After seven years of this misery, Étaín one day alights upon the breast of Angus Óg. For some time after, he carries Étaín-as-butterfly in a sunlit crystal cage. When Fuamnach learns of this, she drives Étaín in this form far to the north until she lands on a rooftop in Ulster. There she falls into a drinking cup of king Étar’s wife, who immediately swallows the small creature. Nine months later Étaín is reborn as the daughter of king Étar. Although she has no sense of it, Étaín is now 1,012 years older than when she first began life as Ailill’s daughter.