Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (23 page)

A figure of youth (literal translation of Óg), beauty and poetry, Angus has the best claim to be the god of love among the Tuatha Dé Danann. Introduced in the
Lebor Gabála
(
Chapter 7
) he remained popular with storytellers in different cycles over the centuries. Stories of his conception and birth are extraordinarily complex and vary from text to text, as alluded to at the beginning of the account of Midir and Étaín (above). The most usual is that his father is the Dagda, ‘the good god’, who slept with Boand (the Boyne River) while she was still married to Nechtan. The Dagda had sent the cuckold Nechtan on a journey while the poor man was under a spell that took away his sense of time and hunger. When he returns in nine months he is deluded into thinking he had been away only a day. The parents of the newborn Angus ask Elcmar to be the child’s foster-father as a means of hiding their infidelity. In rival versions, the Dagda is known by the name Eochaid Ollathair when he is seduced by the wife of Elcmar, one Eithne, probably an alternative name for Boand. In any case, Angus Óg displaces either Dagda or Elcmar to assume his usual residence, Brug na Bóinne [house, hostel of the Boyne]. The Irish phrase denotes the passage-graves at the bend of the Boyne River, Co. Meath: Dowth, Knowth and most famously Newgrange. People composing and recording early Irish narrative had no access to knowledge of the great antiquity (
c
.3200
BC
) and functions of these monuments (e.g. the shaft of sunlight on the winter solstice), which is widespread today. At Brug na Bóinne, whichever monument was implied, trees are always in fruit, and a cooked pig is on the spit, always ready for eating. Angus Óg is given credit for bringing the first cows from India to Ireland, a feat attributed elsewhere to Manannán mac Lir. So blessed is Angus that four swans circle over his head when he travels, and while at home he drinks the ale of immortality. A protector of many male lovers, most prominently Diarmait Ua Duibne of the Fenian Cycle, Angus may intervene by interposing his cloak of invisibility; one wave of the cloak and the protected one cannot be seen by enemies.

Despite the efficacy of his help to other lovers, the torment of Angus’s
own love is hard to remedy. He is smitten by the beauty of a young girl he sees in a dream, a girl he has never met and cannot identify. The longing for her afflicts him with an ailment that demands he find her. He searches for her one full year. With the help of Bodb Derg, Angus learns that her name is Cáer, and that she is the daughter of Ethal Anbúail, the prince of a
sídh
in Connacht. Her nickname Ibormeith [yew berry] implies something of the nature of her character. The long-living evergreen yew is commonly a symbol of immortality in European tradition and is still often seen in Christian cemeteries. Wood from the tree is hard to burn and was the favoured material in druids’ wands.

The wellspring of history at the root of the Ulster Saga concerns a powerful prehistoric people of the north of Ireland known as the Ulaid. With a traditional seat at the 18-acre Bronze Age hillfort of Emain Macha, now called Navan Fort, two miles west of the town of Armagh, the Ulaid dominated much of the northeastern quadrant of Ireland. At
times their hegemony spread from the mouth of the Boyne River to as far west as Leitrim. The nine-county province of Ulster is named for them, ‘Ulster’ being a later coinage employing the Norse suffix -
ster
. The now archaic Ultonia, from the Latin for Ulster, also derives from the Ulaid. Six counties are still a part of the United Kingdom – Antrim, Down, Armagh, (London-) Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh, while three are in the Republic of Ireland: Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan. All Irish counties were carved out and named by English occupiers in the seventeenth century and thus are not cited in early narratives, except as a means of interpreting archaic place names. Archaeological investigation at Emain Macha from the mid-twentieth century on has yielded extensive information about the wealth and power of the Ulaid, but it no more proves the historicity of the Ulster stories than excavation of the true Troy demonstrates that the
Iliad
is a historical document. Imagined Irish narratives, like Greek and also Welsh stories, exist with real-world references. Most of them, including most of the action of the
Táin Bó Cuailnge
, can be plotted on the map.

Ulster struggles with mortal not supernatural enemies, the men and women of the five-county province of Connacht, west of the Shannon, comprising what today are Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon and Galway. Steeliest of these foes is Queen Medb, whose fortress at Cruachain lies near Tulsk, Co. Roscommon. Leading the Ulstermen against Connacht are three heroes. Cúchulainn, the most prominent,
is the focus of the next chapter. The other two command much attention on their own.

Lusty Fergus mac Róich is a tutor and foster-father of Cúchulainn and had a prior claim to the throne at Emain Macha before Ness’s machinations gave it to Conchobar. Tall as a giant, Fergus has something of the supernatural in him. He boasts the strength of 700 men and can consume at one sitting seven deer, seven pigs, seven cows and seven vats of liquor. His magical sword, Caladbolg, is as long as a rainbow. His sexual energy is implicit in his name.
Fergus
means man-strength or semen in Irish; his earliest patronymic
Roach
may derive from
ro-ech
[great horse]. He has huge genitalia, requiring seven women to satisfy him. The phallus-like upright stone at the hill of Tara, often known as Lia Fáil, was called
Bod Fhearghais
[Fergus’s penis]
^*
in the nineteenth century. In the
Táin Βó Cuailnge
Fergus goes into exile with the enemy Queen Medb but remains in touch with the Ulster champions. As cited in
Chapter 4
, Fergus encourages Deirdre and Noise to return to Ireland, where they suffer Conchobar’s treachery. Some commentators believe the Deirdre episodes may have become attached to the
Táin
as a means of explaining Fergus’s sojourn with Medb. Six centuries after the action, his spirit is recalled from the afterlife to recount the story of the
Táin
to the poet Senchán Torpéist, to whom the writing of the epic is attributed.

Like Fergus, Conall Cernach embodies many supernatural elements. His names mean ‘wolfish’ and ‘of the victories’. Conall too has a tremendous appetite, once consuming an entire boar, a beast so large it required sixty oxen to pull it. He has a distinguished lineage: Amairgin of the Milesians, the first poet in Ireland, lies with Findchóem, foster-mother of Cúchulainn, to become Conall’s father. A guardian of boundaries, Conall appears to be an ancestor deity. He is a foster-brother and virtual twin of Cúchulainn, his partner in many adventures, whose death he will avenge. Like the classical Perseus and the Christian St George, he can be a dragon slayer. His aggression against the Connachtmen is relentless, but Medb asks Conall to kill her husband
Ailill when he is caught in an act of infidelity. In
Chapter 8
p. 162
, Conall is an ally of Conaire Mór in
Togail Bruidne Da Derga
[The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel], a story sometimes included with the Ulster Cycle.

Stories in the Ulster Cycle probably started in oral tradition and began to be transcribed as early as the seventh century. Surviving written texts are most numerous from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and they continued to flourish in the oral traditions of Ireland, Gaelic Scotland and the Isle of Man through the eighteenth century, with some survivals in small communities as late as the twentieth century. Emain Macha, seat of the Ulaid, was founded sometime in the first millennium
BC
, and appears to be noted in Ptolemy’s
Geography
(second century
AD
). It was destroyed or abandoned before the advent of Christian evangelization in the fifth century. Medieval ecclesiastical redactors of the stories contrived a pseudo-history in which Emain Macha was created in the seventh century BC and many Ulster events synchronize with episodes in the Bible. In such a reckoning the death of Conchobar mac Nessa occurs at the very moment of Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary. This timetable is still found in popular memory.

As with the other four cycles, the Ulster stories do not form a continuous narrative whole, except as modern readers have imposed an order upon them. The narratives in the present chapter are disconnected, although the first dealing with the unique debility of the Ulstermen is usually seen as a
remscél
or foretale of the
Táin Βó Cuailnge
and bound with it. Another
remscél
of the
Táin
is
Longas mac nUislenn
[Exile of the Sons of Uisnech], which is recounted in
Chapter 4
along with another Deirdre story,
Oided Mac nUisnig
[Death of the Sons of Uisnech]. Cúchulainn, principal hero of the cycle, does not appear in the first two stories in this chapter but provides dynamic presence in the second two. He dominates the action of the next chapter.

The question of how the Ulstermen came to suffer debilitating pain at the time of their greatest difficulty, equal to that of a woman in the pangs of labour, is usually thought to precede the action of the
Táin
. Implications of Macha’s fatal footrace, however, are implicit in many Ulster stories. The Irish title for this vignette is
Noínden Ulad
, an abbreviation of
Ces Noínden Ulad
or The Nine Days’ Debility of the Ulstermen.

A rich landlord named Crunniuc mac Agnomain lives in a lonely place in the mountains of Ulster with his four sons. He is a widower without female companionship. While he is alone in the house a refined and elegant woman comes to him, and immediately settles in, taking on the domestic chores as if she were familiar with the house and used to the routines there. At evening she puts everything in order without being asked, all without speaking. Then she climbs into bed and lays her hand on his side, signalling that she wishes to be his wife. Together they prosper, Crunniuc much aided by his still unnamed wife’s efforts. Good food and fine clothing abound. She delights in her husband’s handsomeness, and soon she conceives their first child.

The announcement of a fair in Ulster attracts crowds of men and women, boys and girls. Crunniuc, dressed in his best finery, makes clear his desire to join the crowds. Darkly cautious, the wife warns her husband not to go. ‘You will talk about us at the gathering, and that will bring us danger. Our happy union together will continue only if you do not speak of me at all.’

‘I won’t utter a word,’ Crunniuc promises.

The brilliant festival turns out to be all that Crunniuc had wished for, with bright costumes and plenty of processions, games, combats, tournaments and races. At the ninth hour the chariot races begin, and the royal horses carry the day. Crowds praise the king (who is never named as Conchobar mac Nessa) and queen, repeating the poems of the bards. A retainer cries out, ‘Never before have two such horses been seen to match these. They are the swiftest in all of Ireland!’

‘My wife is faster,’ boasts Crunniuc impetuously, forgetting his pledge.

‘Seize that man,’ thunders the king. ‘And lock him up until his wife can be brought here to compete in the races.’

The king’s messengers are quickly sent to Crunniuc’s residence, where his wife greets them graciously, but asks why they have come. They explain that they have come so that she might release her husband because he has bragged that her speed is greater than that of the royal horses, news that fills her with dismay.

‘He has spoken unwisely,’ she murmurs. ‘It was not fitting for him to say that. As you can see, I cannot come. I am about to deliver our child.’

‘If you don’t come,’ the messengers remind her, ‘he’ll be a dead man.’

So she agrees to go with the king’s messengers to the festival. Once there her advanced pregnancy draws unwanted attention, causing her to grumble, ‘It is not becoming that I should be stared at because of my condition.’ And then she cries out to them: ‘A mother bore each one of you! Help me! At least wait until I have delivered my child!’

When the crowd is unresponsive, her tone changes. ‘Because you have taken no pity on me, a long-lasting evil will come out of this and it will descend on all the Ulstermen.’

‘What is your name?’ asks the king.

‘My name, and the name of my offspring will be attached to this place,’ she answers. ‘I am Macha, the daughter of Sainrith mac Imaith.’

In all of early Irish tradition there are three Machas, each a discrete personality, although each is a daughter of the same mother, Ernmass. One, a prophetess, is the wife of Nemed in the
Lebor Gabála
. The second, a warrior, also called Mong Ruadh [red-haired], is an Ulster queen who marries her rival, Cimbáeth, and dominates him. The Macha of this story is the daughter of a king whose name means ‘Strange, son of ocean’.

The king’s horses are brought forward, and the race begins. There is little suspense as Crunniuc’s boast turns out to be well justified. Macha is ahead all around the track, and as she crosses the finish line she gives out a cry of pain. Her time has come. Having just won the race she falls to the ground and delivers not one but two children, a son and a daughter. As she gives birth, she cries out in her agony that all who hear her will suffer the same pangs for five days and four
nights in their times of greatest difficulty. And this debility will be upon them for nine generations.