Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (32 page)

Fionn’s death date of 283
AD
is a fiction, of course, but a useful one. While Fenian lore was a part of a living literary tradition, both written and oral, stories about him at different stages of his life, or as a splendid hero, a clown or an oaf, might be told side by side. By barely spoken convention, all the stories about him are happening in the third century, before the advent of Christianity and literacy. The date for St Patrick’s arrival, 432
AD
, may be a pious contrivance, but the organized preaching of the Gospels can be demonstrated to have begun in Ireland in the fifth century. The actual date for the beginning of Fenian storytelling is impossible to name, but the early years of the cycle unmistakably coexisted with the rise of what we now call Celtic Christianity, forms of monastic discipline not regulated by the Bishop of Rome. At some time in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, a time of great literary flowering all over Europe, an unnamed churchman set himself toward a reconciliation between the old heroic tradition and the new learning, as well as between Fionn the warrior-hunter and Fionn the poet. The result is
Acallam na Senórach
[colloquy/dialogue of the elders/ ancients]. Inspired by the innovating tendencies of his century, the author drew heavily upon volumes of the traditional lore, especially the codified lore of places known as the
Dindshenchas
, as well as history, lyric poetry, ballad and learned poetry and Christian commentary.

The interface of Christian practice and pre-Christian or ‘pagan’ heroic lore is not the only aspect that makes the
Acallam
unusual. Although composed by a single personality, the narrative was copied extensively in different manuscripts, with additions and emendations, all the way down to the nineteenth century. In Modern Irish it is known as
Agallamh na Seanórach
. None of these manuscripts is ever complete, as they nearly always lack an end and often lack a beginning. Seemingly set in the twelfth-century present,
Acallam
gives us a 700-year-old St Patrick, very much an ‘ancient’ himself, who contends with 900-year-old warriors of a lost ethos. As for the Fenian protagonists, Caílte mac Rónáin, the runner and steward, and Oisín, they represent what Joseph Nagy (1997) calls a ‘fortuitous glitch in time’, disseminating a once lost, now recovered, lore. He adds, ‘Caílte and his companions transcend time and sequence, paralleling the innumerable anachronistic references which they and the text make…’ Among the most important of these is knowing the location of Mellifont Abbey (founded 1142), a vanguard in twelfth-century reforms. Surprising also is the author’s favouring of Caílte as the Fenian spokesman while Oisín, nominally a leading companion, sometimes disappears from the scene. Later oral tradition, of course, much prefers Oisín.

The narrative begins with a pseudo-historical paragraph describing the several catastrophic battles that nearly annihilated the fianna and left them scattered into groups and bands all over Ireland. Only two leading warriors survive, Caílte and Oisín, along with the female chief and custodian, Cáma, who had watched over Fionn from childhood until the day he died. The comrades-in-arms repair to Cáma’s residence for three days and three nights before they begin their journey, each accompanied by nine retainers. It takes them to Druim Derg, possibly Fionn’s burial mound, and the plain between the Boyne and Liffey rivers, where they encounter St Patrick, who is chanting the divine office and praising the Creator. The clerics with Patrick are initially horrified at the size of the old Fenian fighters and their hounds, but the saint calms matters by bringing out his aspergill to shake holy water on the giants, driving away the devils that had been hovering about.

The tale of Oisín’s sojourn in a pleasure-filled otherworld seems barely connected to the rest of the cycle, although always one of the most popular of Fenian narratives, a staple of Irish and Scottish Gaelic storytellers until the nineteenth century. In the earliest manuscript version, the tale is structured to look like a double of the
Acallam na Senórach
. An aged Oisín is in a dialogue with St Patrick, explaining how he has reached this state of infirmity. But Oisín the lover cannot be seen as an extrapolation of the persona he projects in most Fenian stories in general or the
Acallam
in particular. Some of the story’s popularity and free-standing independence can be explained in noting that it is a blend of two international tale types, 470 and 766, and embraces fully five folk motifs, of which D1338.7 is the extended stay in the land of youth. Along with these persistent appeals to the popular imagination, Oisín’s tale benefits by having been smoothed into a more polished format during the eighteenth century. Micheál Coimín [Michael Comyn] (1688–1760) was a member of the Protestant ascendancy with a deep regard for Irish-language tradition, unusual in his caste. His
Laoi Oisín i dTír na nÓg
[Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth] (
c
.1750) is written in Modern Irish, where the fairy lover’s name is spelled Niamh, employing the archaic, accentual metre known as
amhrán
. Coimín’s
Laoi
was not translated into English for a hundred years but inspired several elegant adaptations, such as W. B. Yeats’s first long poem, ‘The Wanderings of Oisín’ (1889).

One day a feeble, blind old man is taken to St Patrick, weakened in body but strong in spirit. He scorns the doctrines of the newcomers and sings the praises of the code of honour and way of life of the fianna. His claim to be Oisín son of Fionn mac Cumhaill looks doubtful to Patrick as more than a span of a full human life has elapsed since the old leader’s death. To convince the saint of his veracity, Oisín relates the following tale.

Silent until this point, Oisín is initially thunderstruck but then clearly pleased. He agrees to marry her, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. She wants not only marriage but for him to come away with her to Tír na nÓg, where he will never grow ill or old, and where he can never die. There he will be crowned and enjoy every imaginable pleasure, food and wine in abundance, fine silks, powerful weapons and jewellery. Tall trees bend low with fruit. Hundreds of gorgeous maidens will sing his praises, and a hundred brave warriors will follow his every command. He will still be able to hunt, accompanied by a hundred keen hunting dogs. And he will have Niam for his wife.

Tír na nÓg lies to the west. On his journey there with Niam, Oisín encounters an ugly giant carrying a load of deerskins. They struggle for three days and three nights, but, powerful and threatening as the giant is, Oisín overcomes him. Such victory ensures a triumphant welcome for Oisín in Tír na nÓg, with the award of Niam as his consort. In embrace Niam is all the lover her appearance had implied. Their union produces three children, a daughter and two sons, one of them named for the slain Oscar.

What Oisín does not quite comprehend is that while he feels he has been in Tír na nÓg only long enough to start a family, it has been 300 years in the lives of earthbound mortals. His white horse takes him to Ireland swiftly, and he arrives in high spirits. They begin to dissipate when he interviews the people he finds there. They all know stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill, more than they could begin to tell. Not only have they never seen Fionn or any Fenians up close, but they perceive Oisín to be a giant, a curiosity. He proceeds to the Hill of Allen in Leinster and finds it a bare hill, overgrown with nettles, chickweed and ragwort. The heartbreaking but unmistakable news can no longer be denied: Fionn is dead, and there is no trace of his companions to be found anywhere.

Moving on to Glenasmole in County Dublin, favourite hunting ground of the fianna, he answers the shouts of some sturdy men nearby who are trying to lift a heavy stone into a wagon. The name of the glen means ‘Valley of the Ember’, and it lies at the headwaters of the Dodder River, a modest body of water cited in many early Irish stories. As he stoops to help them, the girth around the horse’s belly snaps and Oisín falls to the ground. As Niam had predicted, he is immediately transformed into a very old man, looking all of his 300 years. The crowd of mortals watch in horror because on horseback Oisín had towered over them. Now he lies at their feet, helpless and hopeless, a spent, blind old man.

Once we spoke of only three cycles. When commentators began the disciplined study of early Irish literature after the middle of the nineteenth century, they perceived the three cycles we have already considered, the Mythological, the Ulster and the Fenian. Perhaps because the concept of a cycle – of interrelated if not continuous narratives – was imposed from modern times, many stories could not be categorized within the three rubrics. These include place-name stories, voyages and adventures to the otherworlds (such as the Voyage of Bran), saints’ legends, and many stories pertaining to persons and realms of great kings. Over the decades it appeared that some of these stories, especially popular ones such as
Buile Suibhne
[The Frenzy of Suibne/Sweeney], might constitute a fourth cycle. Inconveniently, there is no single king at the centre of the stories, like Ulster’s Conchobar mac Nessa, but rather successive kings in unrelated stories. This led Myles Dillon to coin the phrase ‘The Cycles of the Kings’ (1946), the plural implying that this fourth narrative body is made up of several sub-units. Habit and the impulse for uniformity often reduce the plural to a singular, ‘The Cycle of the Kings’. As some of the fabled kings have at least a tenuous claim to historicity, the stories may also be known as ‘The Historical Cycle’. Tom Peete Cross and Clark Harris Slover in their often-cited
Ancient Irish Tales
(1936) compromised with ‘Tales of the Traditional Kings’, a sensible alternative that never gained currency.

The presumed rooting in history changes the tone of many of the stories in this chapter. Much depends on the distinctions between myth and legend, and from that the expectations of the listener/reader. The English word ‘legend’ derives from the Old French
legende
and denotes a ‘traditional tale popularly regarded as historical’, or ‘an inauthentic story popularly regarded as true’ (
Shorter OED
, 1993). The concept is not defined in classical culture, although the story of Theseus and the Minotaur might share some features. The term might first be applied to saints’ stories, as in the thirteenth-century
Golden Legend
, fabulous tales collected by Archbishop Jacobus de Voragine. By extension we call the stories of Charlemagne and King Arthur ‘legends’, even when they share motifs with the narratives of Greek and Roman mythology. Perhaps Conn, Cormac, Niall and Brian can be put in the same box with Charlemagne and Arthur.

For all we know, the early audience of the
Táin
might have thought that Cúchulainn, Conchobar and Medb were historical figures. Certainly, the credulous listeners to oral traditions about Fionn mac Cumhaill as late as the twentieth century felt they were partaking of the heroic exploits of an actual defender of the Irish people, even when the stories portrayed enchantments and magical transformations. Whatever the certitude of the listeners, it could only be enhanced when stories depicted sovereign rulers commemorated in genealogies, local place names, and the names of powerful families. Experience outside the narrative implied that the elements in it came from life.