Read Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) Online
Authors: James MacKillop
Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (22 page)
In the second story Étaín is now seen to be married to the mortal
ard rí
[high king] of Ireland, Eochaid Airem, whom she almost betrays accidentally through her own kindness. Her long-ago lover Midir makes a mysterious and unexpected appearance.
Another 1,000 years have passed, the Tuatha Dé Danann have retired to their fairy mounds, and the mortal Milesians or Gaels rule the land. After Eochaid Airem became high king, his subjects refused to pay him tribute because he had no queen. So Eochaid sent emissaries throughout the island in search of a suitable bride. When they found Étaín they were sure she was the right choice and notified Eochaid. When he came to claim her he found her washing her hair, surrounded by gold, silver and gems, beside a bright, bubbling spring at Brí Léith (Midir’s residence, though he is not named). Enchanted by the sight of her bare white arms seen through a lush purple cloak, Eochaid immediately falls in love with Étaín. Everything about her seemed perfect: her long tapering fingers, slender ankles and even her delicate narrow feet. Her cheeks were like wild foxgloves, her skin white as newly fallen snow, making her lips seem even redder. Hers would be the standard of beauty against which others would be found wanting. Eochaid and Étaín are soon married.
The bride’s almost otherworldly attractiveness becomes a burden for her. Eochaid’s brother Ailill Anglonnach is so smitten with her that he becomes frenzied with desire, but he is shamed to speak of it and is thus without chance of a cure. Eochaid’s chief physician, Fachtna, diagnoses Ailill’s malady and knows that only Étaín’s love can remedy it. When Eochaid departs on a royal circuit as part of his kingly duties, Étaín is left in charge of the afflicted Ailill, thought to be dying. The king’s instructions are that Ailill’s grave be dug, lamentations be made for him, and his cattle be slaughtered upon his death. As soon as they face each other, Ailill Anglonnach confesses the cause of his sickness to Étaín. Seeing his need, Étaín promises to help in the healing by giving herself to him but not in her husband’s residence; rather the tryst should take place on a nearby hilltop. At the time of their appointed meeting, Ailill Anglonnach is overcome by a magical drowsiness, and an impostor in his likeness creeps into bed with Étaín. After
three nights of lovemaking, Étaín senses that her bed partner is not Ailill, much as he might look like him. When she protests that she wished only to heal Ailill, her phantom lover reveals himself to be Midir of Brí Léith, her immortal husband from 1,000 years earlier. Midir explains that he paid a great bride-price for Étaín but that Fuamnach’s jealousy had parted them. His filling of Ailill Anglonnach with deep longing for Étaín was but a ploy so that their meeting might be arranged. When he then begs Étaín to go away with him, she says she cannot without the consent of her current husband, Eochaid Airem. Upon her return to the king’s stronghold there is great rejoicing that Étaín’s honour has not been spoiled by sleeping with her husband’s brother.
The third story follows immediately upon the second and portrays Midir’s final attempts to have Étaín with him always.
Driven with unfulfilled desire for Étaín, Midir devises trickery to get around her husband Eochaid Airem. One lovely summer day Eochaid looks down from his ramparts at Tara to see a handsome warrior approaching, wearing purple and with long golden hair. Although Eochaid does not know the stranger, he extends hospitality to him. Saying that he knows the identity of his host, the stranger reveals himself to be Midir of Brí Léith and immediately challenges Eochaid to the chess-like game of fidchell, with golden pieces on a silver board. In gamblers’ terms, Midir hustles the king, allowing him to win three successive matches, exacting rich prizes from the challenger. When Eochaid allows that the winner of the fourth match can name his own, Midir is, of course, victorious, and he asks to put his arms around Étaín and to kiss her on the mouth. Eochaid baulks at first but then agrees to Midir’s request as long as it is in a month’s time. Appearing handsomer than ever, Midir arrives on the appointed day only to find that Eochaid has surrounded Tara with armed men and secured the doors. Undeterred, Midir announces that Eochaid has given Étaín’s very self to him, causing her to blush with shame. Sternly, the husband reminds Midir of the limits of their agreement and bids him to get on
with the embrace and the kiss. Suddenly then, with his weapons tucked under his left arm and Étaín clasped in his right, Midir rises up through the smoke-hole in the ceiling and flies away. Guards stationed outside report seeing two swans, linked together by chains of gold about their necks, disappear in the distance.
Suitably enraged, Eochaid and his men upturn every
sídh
in Ireland, arriving at last at Midir’s residence of Brí Léith in the very centre of the island. Hearing the demand that Étaín be returned, Midir responds by producing fifty women (in some accounts sixty) all resembling her so that no one can tell who is the true queen. Eochaid proclaims that his wife’s skill and grace at pouring drinks will identify her, selects one of the multitude and returns to married life with her. He has chosen wrongly, however. Midir now tells Eochaid that the true Étaín was already pregnant from intercourse within marriage when she flew out of Tara with Midir. Worse, the simulation of Étaín Eochaid chose from the multitude was his own daughter; by sleeping with her Eochaid has unwittingly fathered a daughter upon his daughter. Horrified to be deceived, Eochaid Airem flattens Brí Léith, retrieves the true Étaín, his wife, and returns to Tara. Thus Midir loses his beloved Étaín for a second time.
Eochaid’s incestuously begotten daughter is put out to die, but she is rescued by a herdsman and his wife. Reaching maturity, she exudes the stateliness of her royal forebears and is renowned for her fine embroidery. Another king of Tara, Eterscél, takes her for his queen. According to the
Tochmarc Étaíne
, Eterscél and the daughter of Eochaid’s incest give birth to Conaire Mór, the young
ard rí
who meets a tragic and untimely death. This is but one of three versions of Conaire Mór’s lineage, the best known of which comes in his own narrative, as follows.
The story of beneficent high king Conaire Mór, the innocent victim of relentless fate, is a kind of sequel to the story of Midir and Étaín, though compiled by a different hand and in a different style. It is found in the eleventh-century text
Togail Bruidne Da Derga
[The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel], antecedents of which exist as early as the eighth and ninth centuries. Although the action is set in what is now Leinster, the story is often classed with the Ulster Cycle, in part because several Ulster heroes appear in it, perhaps inserted by later redactors. Étaín, lushly described, also appears, but now she is depicted as married to Eochaid Feidlech, a brother of Eochaid Airem. Their stepdaughter Mes Buachalla [cowherd’s fosterling] marries Eterscél, but as she is already pregnant, the true father of Conaire is a mysterious man who appeared to her in bird form. At the moment of conception he declared, ‘You will bear me a son, and that son may not kill birds, and Conaire shall be his name.’
Such a command is called in Irish a
geís
(pl.
gessa
), an idiosyncratic form of taboo found widely in early Irish literature. The unfortunate person receiving the
geis
may have done nothing to merit such a burden, and the person or forces applying it may appear wilful or capricious. Yet the
geis
is not to be escaped. To violate it is to risk death or catastrophe for one’s entire family. And so it is with the well-intentioned king Conaire Mór, whose just and prosperous rule is threatened by the outcome of a host of
gessa
; all but one are prohibitions. (i) Birds must always be privileged in his kingdom. (ii) He may not pass sunwise or righthandwise around Tara nor lefthandwise, withershins, around Brega, the plain between the Boyne and Liffey rivers. (iii) He may not hunt the
cláenmíla
[crooked beasts]. (iv) He may not stay away from Tara on any ninth night. (v) He may not sleep in a house from which the light of a fire is visible after sunset and into which one can see from the outside. (vi) He shall not allow three red men to go before him into a red man’s house. (vii) He must not allow plundering raiders to land during his reign. (viii) He may not allow a lone man or woman to visit his residence after sunset. And finally (ix)
he may not try to settle a conflict between two of his subjects. In the run of
Togail Bruidne Da Derga
, however, Conaire Mór will unintentionally violate every one of these
gessa
.
Trouble begins when Conaire’s three foster-brothers, Fer Gair, Fer Lí and Fer Rogain, all sons of the champion hunter-warrior Donn Désa, start to raid and plunder the countryside. Conaire banishes all of them from Ireland, as he does again with another band of brigands, the three Ruadchoin of the Cualu south of the Liffey, when they too begin to harass Conaire’s subjects. At sea these unwanted exiles meet a band of despoilers or reavers led by the one-eyed Ingcél Cáech, a Briton, and together with the banished, outlaw sons of Queen Medb of Connacht – seven men all named Maine – they pillage first Britain and then Ireland. In Britain they slaughter a local king along with Ingcél’s parents and brothers. Meanwhile, Conaire Mór is in Thomond in the south of Ireland, where he settles a dispute between two of his foster-brothers, two Corpres, an act of justice that is his first violation of the
gessa
that will lead to his own downfall. Accepting the hospitality of both foster-brothers, he stays five nights with each, breaking a second
geis
.
Ingcél Cáech and the other brigands land with 150 boats at Howth, northeast of what is now Dublin. Conaire, at the same time, is travelling south from Tara, in what is now Co. Meath, passing to the left of Tara and the right of Brega, and unwittingly hunting the forbidden
cláenmíla
of Cerna. His goal is the hostel of Da Derga, a friend on whom he has bestowed many gifts and who can be expected to welcome him. The hostel bestrides the small river Dodder to the south, which is perhaps Bohernabreena or Donnybrook in south Co. Dublin. En route Conaire meets a forbidding churl, Fer Caille, a dark man of the wood with one eye, one hand, and one foot who carries a black pig on his back. Approaching the hostel Conaire sees before him three horsemen dressed in red, and, recognizing another possible violation of a
geis
, asks his son to drive them off. The son fails, and the party enters the residence of Da Derga, which means ‘red man’.
Fearful portents do not end at the doorway. A lone female seer of breath-stopping hideousness confronts Conaire. Each of her beetle-black shins is as long as a weaver’s beam. A greyish woollen mantle does not cover her lower (i.e. pubic) hair, which reaches as far as her
knee. Her lips are on one side of her head. They do not prevent her from speaking, as she puts her shoulder against the doorpost, casting an evil eye upon the king and the youths surrounding him. She is Cailb, and she prophesies that all the defenders will be destroyed except for what the birds can take away in their claws.
Eager for both revenge and booty, the invading reavers led by Ingcél Cáech and the three foster-brothers advance inland with 5,000 men. Da Derga’s Hostel is in many ways a magical dwelling, described as having seven doorways (in some texts nine), but this does not mean it is invincible. Ingcél can spy upon the residence, describing the inhabitants to his fellow brigands. Fer Rogain, Conaire’s foster-brother, identifies the defenders from the descriptions and predicts which among them will survive.
In three assaults on the hostel the attackers set it on fire, and three times the flames are extinguished. Many in the hostel are slaughtered, the first being Lomna the fool, as he had predicted for himself. The defenders, including Conaire, counterattack, slaying the thieving bandits left and right. Then the battle turns on a matter of water. Druids with the marauders cast an exhausting thirst upon Conaire, which he cannot slake as so much of the hostel’s water has been thrown on the flames. The Dodder, flowing below, offers no help, and so the hero Mac Cécht searches Ireland for a drink for the king. (He is not identical with the Mac Cécht of the Tuatha Dé Danann; in some texts the Ulster hero Conall Cernach assists Conaire instead of Mac Cécht.) As he is returning with water from faraway Roscommon, two invaders are decapitating Conaire. Mac Cécht quickly dispatches both killers and pours the water he has brought into Conaire’s headless neck. Astonishing all, the severed head then speaks: ‘Excellent is Mac Cécht; good is Mac Cécht, who brings a drink to a king and does the work of a warrior.’
Despite the destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, Conaire’s side suffers minimal losses, while of the brigands only five escape out of 5,000.
The story of Lir’s four children magically transformed into swans could easily be mistaken for a fairy-tale until we note that father and children are all members of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The action is set during the period when the semi-divine Dé Danann are losing ground to the mortal and more prosaic Milesians. Despite this asserted link with events in the twelfth-century
Lebor Gabála
, the narrative appears to be of much later composition, the manuscript dating from about 1500. Events in
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir] were not much celebrated in oral tradition but have more recently become among the best known from early tradition through the efforts of cultural revivalists and educators. Oisín Kelly’s huge sculpture of the children changing back from swans into elderly humans is the focal point of the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin.
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
is one of the ‘Three Sorrows of Storytelling’, along with the Deirdre story (
Chapter 4
,
pp. 80–83
) and
Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann
[The Tragic Story of the Children of Tuireann] (pp.
153–5 above
).
When the Tuatha Dé Danann are defeated by the Milesians at the battle of Tailtiu, they seek out a new king so they will not be ruled by their conquerors. Two of the five candidates are Bodb Derg of Connacht and Lir of what is now Co. Armagh; he is not the Lir of Manannán’s patronymic, mac Lir. Bodb Derg’s selection disappoints Lir, who retreats to his
sídh
of Finnachad, where his unhappiness is compounded by the death of his wife. Magnanimously, Bodb offers the hands of his foster-daughters, and Lir chooses the eldest, usually named Aeb. In quick succession she bears two sets of twins, first the daughter, Finnguala, and son, Aed, and then two sons, Fiachra and Conn, after whose birth she dies. To compensate Lir for this loss, Bodb Derg offers the hand of a second daughter, Aífe, who cherishes her stepchildren, at least at first.
Proving childless in her own marriage, Aífe’s attitude toward the four children takes a dark turn. Overcome with a debilitating jealousy, she takes to her bed, pretending sickness for a year. Brusquely pronouncing herself cured, she declares she will visit her father in Killaloe
in what is now Co. Clare, taking the children with her. A wary Finnguala, who has seen evil portents in a dream, resists. On the way to the west, Aífe begins to rant against the children on patently false charges, claiming that they are depriving her of her husband’s love. She orders her servants to butcher them on the spot – Lough Derraveragh [Ir. Dairbhreach: with an oak plantation] in what is now Co. Westmeath. When the retainers refuse, Aífe shoves the children into the water and produces a druidical wand (or sword) to metamorphose the children into swans. Finnguala, who like all the children has retained the power of speech, protests their blamelessness and asks Aífe how long their unjust punishment will last. The stepmother answers: 900 years in three sentences of increasing misery – 300 years here at Lough Derraveragh; 300 years in the North Channel, the narrowest passage between Ireland and the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, sometimes called the Sea of Moyle; the last 300 years on the stormy west coast of Ireland between Erris and the small island of Inishglora, Co. Mayo. Aífe’s spell upon the children, she explains, will end when a woman from the south, Deoch daughter of Fingen, king of Munster, unites with a man of the north, Lairgnéan, son of Colmán of Connacht. Now that Finnguala has asked the terms of the curse, any power of the Tuatha Dé Danann to lift it has been nullified. Aífe does allow, however, along with their power of speech, the children as swans to retain their senses and faculties, as well as an ability to sing, supremely among mortals. Leaving the children at Lough Derraveragh, Aífe proceeds to Bodb Derg’s palace where her treachery is soon discovered and she is punished by being transformed into a demon (sometimes vulture) of the wind, condemned to wander through air until the end of time.
In the midst of their pain and sorrow, the child-swans can indeed sing and with eloquence, poetry and fine speech. People from all over Ireland flock to Lough Derraveragh to hear them. Bodb, Lir and other prominent figures attend. The original text includes many verse passages of their songs. At the end of each 300-year term, Finnguala reminds her three brothers to move on. During their second exile they encounter a party of horsemen, including two other sons of Bodb Derg, near an estuary of the River Bann. The men have been looking for the children and give them news of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Such
fleeting gestures of good will are of little avail. Eventually the people of Ireland forget about Lir’s offspring.
In their third exile the children’s songs reach the ears of a new character introduced to the story. The young man is named Aebhric and appears to be a well-born cleric living in self-sustaining isolation near Erris [Ir. Irrus Domnann, Iorras Domhnann]. Like all the others, Aebhric is entranced by the children’s singing, but he decides to write down their story so that we may read it now. Their 900-year exile complete, the children return to the
sídh
of Finnachad only to find it abandoned and desolate. Their only hope now is to wait at Inishglora [Ir.
Inis Gluaire
: island of Brightness] until Mo Cháemóc, a disciple of St Patrick, brings the Gospel of Christianity to the island. Hearing the evangelist’s bell, the swan children begin to sing with it, making themselves known to him. To help the children forget their suffering, Mo Cháemóc brings them into his household and there links them together with a silver chain.
Meanwhile, without the children’s knowing it, Aífe’s prophecy is fulfilled. South and north are united with Deoch of Munster’s marriage to Lairgnéan, and they now reign in Connacht. Once introduced to the reader, Deoch proves vain and grasping. She covets the singing swans for herself and demands that the king secure them for her. Bowing to her command, Lairgnéan tries to pull them away from Mo Cháemóc by yanking their silver chain, and in so doing unwittingly returns them to human form. That form is no longer childlike, of course. After 900 years of exile the four offspring of Lir are virtually pillars of dust. Mo Cháemóc baptizes them immediately, just in time to save their immortal souls.