Lady Augusta Gregory
Page 56
romances, whether in prose or verse, we find that, although the
history is professedly the same as that of the Annals, firstly, we are
NOTES
43 1
transported to a world entirely romantic, in which divine and
semi-divine beings, ungainly monsters and giants, play a prominent part, in which men and women change shapes with animals, in which the lives of the heroes are miraculously prolonged-in
short, we find ourselves in a land of Faery; secondly, we find that
the historic conditions in which the heroes are represented as living do not, for the most part, answer to anything we know or can surmise of the third century. For Finn and his warriors are perpetually on the watch to guard Ireland against the attacks of over-sea raiders, styled Lochlannac by the narrators, and by them undoubtedly thought of as Norsemen. But the latter, as is well known, only came to Ireland at the close of the eighth century,
and the heroic period of their invasions extended for about a century, from 825 to 925; to be followed by a period of comparative settlement during the tenth century, until at the opening of the
eleventh century the battle of Clontarf, fought by Brian, the great
South Irish chieftain, marked the break-up of the separate Teutonic organisations and the absorption of the Teutons into the fabric of Irish life. In these pages then we may disregard the otherwise interesting question of historic credibility in the Ossianic romances: firstly, because they have their being in a land unaffected by fact; secondly, because if they ever did reflect the history of the third century the reflection was distorted in after-times, and
a pseudo-history based upon events of the ninth and tenth centuries was substituted for it. What the historian seeks for in legend is far more a picture of the society in which it took rise
than a record of the events which it commemorates. "
In a later part o f the pamphlet Mr Nutt discusses such questions as whether we may look for examples of third-century customs in the stories, what part of the stories first found their
way into writing, whether the Oisin and Patrick dialogues were
written under the influence of actual Pagan feeling persisting from
Pagan times, or whether "a change came over the feeling of Gaeldom during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," when the Oisin and Patrick dialogues in their present form began to be
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written. His final summing-up is that "well-nigh the same stories
that were told of Finn and his warrior braves by the Gael of the
eleventh century are told in well-nigh the same way by his descendant to-day. " Mr Nutt does not enquire how long the stories may have been told before the first story was written down. Larminie,
however, whose early death was the first great loss of our intellectual movement, pushes them backward for untold ages in the introduction to his West Irish Folk Tales and Romances. He builds
up a detailed and careful argument, for which I must refer readers
to his book, to prove that the Scottish Highlands and Ireland have
received their folk-lore both from "Aryan and Non-Aryan sources,"
and that in the Highlands there is more non-Aryan influence and
more non-Aryan blood than in Ireland. He argues that nothing is
more improbable than that all folk-tales are Aryan, as has sometimes been supposed, and sums up as follows:-
"They bear the stamp of the genius of more than one race. The
pure and placid but often cold imagination of the Aryan has been
at work on some. In others we trace the more picturesque fancy,
the fierceness and sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance
belonging to races whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional
faults of hardness and coarseness, has, on the whole, left behind
him. But as the greatest results in the realm of the highest art have
always been achieved in the case of certain blends of Aryan with
other blood, I should hardly deem it extravagant if it were asserted that in the humbler regions of the folk-tale we might trace the working of the same law. The process which has gone on may
in part have been as follows:-Every race which has acquired very
definite characteristics must have been for a long time isolated.
The Aryans during their period of isolation probably developed
many of their folk-germs into their larger myths, owing to the
greater constructiveness of their imagination, and thus, in a way,
they used up part of their material. Afterwards, when they became
blended with other races less advanced, they acquired fresh material to work on. We have in Ireland an instance to hand, of which a brief discussion may help to illustrate the whole race theory.
NOTES
4 3 3
"The larger Irish legendary literature divides itself into three
cycles-the divine, the heroic, the Fenian. Of these three the
last is so well-known orally in Scotland that it has been a matter
of dispute to which country it really belongs. It belongs, in fact,
to both. Here, however, comes in a strange contrast with the
other cycles. The first is, so far as I am aware, wholly unknown in
Scotland , the second comparatively unknown . What is the
explanation? Professor Zimmer not having established his latehistorical view as regards Finn, and the general opinion among scholars having tended of recent years towards the mythical view,
we want to know why there is so much more community in one
case than in the other. Mr O'Grady long since seeing this difficulty, and then believing Finn to be historical, was induced to place the latter in point of time before Cuchulain and his compeers. But this view is of course inadmissible when Finn is seen not to be historical at all. There remains but one explanation. The
various bodies of legend in question are, so far as Ireland is concerned, only earlier or later, as they came into the island with the various races to which they belonged. The wider prevalence ,
then, of the Finn Saga would indicate that it belonged to an early
race occupying both Ireland and Scotland. Then entered the
Aryan Gael, and for him henceforth, as the ruler of the island, his
own gods and heroes were sung by his own bards. His legends
became the subject of what I may call the court poetry, the aristocratic literature. When he conquered Scotland, he took with him his own gods and heroes; but in the latter country the bardic system never became established, and hence we find but feeble echoes of the heroic cycle among the mountains of the North.
That this is the explanation is shown by what took place in
Ireland. Here the heroic cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its essentially aristocratic
character is shown by the fact that the people have all but forgoiten it, if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the conquered
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peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike, forcing
its way in the latter country even into the written literature, and
so securing a twofold lease of existence . . . . The Fenian cycle, in
a word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan
treatment. "
The whole problem is extremely complex, and several other
writers have written upon it. Mr Borlase, for instance, has argued
in his big book on the Dolmens that the cromlechs, and presumably the Diarmuid and Grania legend, is connected with old religious rites of an erotic nature coming down from a very primitive state of society.
I have come to my own conclusion not so much because of
any weight of argument, as because I found it impossible to
arrange the stories in a coherent form so long as I considered
them a part of history. I tried to work on the foundation of the
Annalists, and fit the Fianna into a definite historical epoch, but
the whole story seemed trivial and incoherent until I began to
think of them as almost contemporaneous with the battle of
Magh Tuireadh, which even the Annalists put back into mythical
ages. In this I have only followed some of the story-tellers, who
have made the mother of Lugh of the Long Hand the grandmother of Finn, and given him a shield soaked with the blood of Balor. I cannot think of any of the stories as having had a modem
origin, or that the century in which each was written down gives
any evidence as to its age. "How Diarmuid got his Love-Spot," for
instance, which was taken down only a few years ago from some
old man's recitation by Dr Hyde, may well be as old as "Finn and
the Phantoms," which is in one of the earliest manuscripts. It
seems to me that one cannot choose any definite period either
from the vast living mass of folk-lore in the country or from the
written text, and that there is as good evidence of Finn being of
the blood of the gods as of his being, as some of the people tell
me, "the son of an O'Shaughnessy who lived at Kiltartan Cross."
Dr Douglas Hyde, although he placed the Fenian after the
NOTES
4 3 5
Cuchulain cycle in his History of Irish Literature, has allowed me
to print this note:-
"While believing in the real objective existence of the Fenians
as a body of Janissaries who actually lived, ruled, and hunted in
King Cormac's time, I think it equally certain that hundreds of
stories, traits, and legends far older and more primitive than any
to which they themselves could have given rise, have clustered
about them. There is probably as large a bulk of primitive mythology to be found in the Finn legend as in that of the Red Branch itself. The story of the Fenians was a kind of nucleus to which a
vast amount of the flotsam and jetsam of a far older period attached itself, and has thus been preserved. "
As I found it impossible to give that historical date to the stories, I, while not adding in anything to support my theory, left out such names as those of Cormac and Art, and such more or less
historical personages, substituting "the High King. " And in the
"Battle of the White Strand," I left out the name of Caelur, Tadg's
wife, because I had already followed another chronicler in giving
him Ethlinn for a wife. In the earlier part I have given back to
Angus Og the name of "The Disturber," which had, as I believe,
strayed from him to the Saint of the same name.
Ill. THE AUTHORITIES
The following is a list of the authorities I have been chiefly helped
by in putting these stories together and in translation of the text.
But I cannot make it quite accurate, for I have sometimes transferred a mere phrase, sometimes a whole passage from one story to another, where it seemed to fit better. I have sometimes, in the
second part of the book, used stories preserved in the Scottish
Gaelic, as will be seen by my references. I am obliged to write
these notes away from libraries, and cannot verify them, but I
think they are fairly correct.
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IRISH MYTHS AND LEGENDS
PART ONE. BOOKS ONE, TWO, AND THREE
THE COMING OF THE TUATHA DE DANAAN, AND LUGH OF THE LoNG
HAND, AND THE COMING OF THE GAEL.-O'Curry, Manners
and Customs of the Ancient Irish; MMS. Materials; Atlantis;
De Jubainville, Cycle Mythologique; Hennessy, Chronicum
Scotorum; Atkinson, Book of Leinster; Annals of the Four
Masters; Nennius, Hist. Brit. (Irish Version) ; Zimmer, Glossae Hibernacae; Whitley Stokes , Three Irish Glossaries; Revue Celtique and Irische Texte; Gaedelica; Nutt, Voyage of
Bran; Proceedings Ossianic Society; O'Beime Crowe, Amra
Calumcille; Dean of Lismore's Book; Windisch, Irische Texte;
Hennessy and others in Revue Celtique; Kilkenny Archceological journal; Kentinge's History; Ogyia; Curtin's Folk Tales; Proceedings Royal Irish Academy, MSS. Series; Dr.
Sigerson, Bards of Gael and Gall; Miscellanies, Celtic Society.
BOOK FOUR.
THE EVER-LMNG LMNG ONES
I have used many of the above, and for separate stories, I may
give these authorities:-
MIDHIR AND ETAIN .-O'Curry, Manners and Customs; Whitley
Stokes, Dinnsenchus; Muller, Revue Celtique; Nutt, Voyage of
B ran; De jubainville, Epopee Celtique; Standish Hayes
O'Grady, MS. lent me by him.
MANANNAN AT PlAY.-S. Hayes O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica.
HIS CALL TO BRAN.-Professor Kuno Meyer in Nutt's Voyage of
Bran; S. Hayes O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica; De Jubainville,
Cycle Mythologique.
HIS THREE CALLS TO CoRMAc.-Whitley Stokes, Irische Texte.
CuoDNA's WAVE.-S. Hayes O'Grady, Si lva Gaedelica; Whitley
Stokes, Dinnsenchus.
NOTES
437
His CALL TO CoNNIA.---O'Beime Crowe, Kilkenny Arch. journal;
Windisch, Irische Texte.
TADG IN THE ISIANDS.-5. Hayes O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica.
LAEGAIRE IN THE HAPPY PIAIN.-5. H. O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica;
Kun Meyer in Nutt's Voyage of Bran.
FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR.---O'Curry, Atlantis.
PART TWO. THE FIANNA
THE COMING OF FIN N ' AND FINN'S HOUSEHOLD .-Proceedings
Ossianic Society; Kuno Meyer, Four Songs of Summer and
Winter; Revue Celtique; S. Hayes O'Grady, Silva Gaedelica;
Curtin's Folk Tales.
BIRTH OF BRAN.-Proc. Ossianic Society.
01s1N's MoTHER.-Kennedy, Legendary Fictions Irish Celts; Mac
Innis; Leabhar na Feinne.
BEST MEN OF THE FIANNA.-Dean of Lismore's Book; Silva Gaedelica; Leabhar na Feinne.
LAD OF THE SKINS.-Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition; Larrninie's
Folk Tales; Curtin's Tales.
THE HOUND.-Silva Gaedelica; Whitley Stokes, Dinnsenchus.
RED RIDGE.-Silva Gaedelica.
BATTLE OF THE WHITE STRAND.-Kuno Meyer, Anec. Oxonienses;
Hanmer's Chronicle; Dean of Lismore; Curtin's Tales; Silva
Gaedelica.
KING OF BRITAIN'S SoN.-Silva Gaedelica.
THE CAVE OF CEISCORAN.-Silva Gaedelica.
DONN, SoN OF MIDHIR.-Silva Gaedelica.
HOSPITALITY OF CUANNAS HOUSE.-Proc. Ossianic Society.
CAT-HEADS AND DOG-HEADS.-Dean of Lismore; Leabhar na Feinne;
Campbell's Popular Tales of the Western Highlands.
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IRISH MYTHS AND LEGENDS
LOMNA's HEAD.---O'Curry, Ore. Treith, O'Donovan, ed. Stokes.
ILBREC OF Ess RUADH.-Silva Gaedelica.
CAVE OF CRUACHAN.-Stokes, Irische Texte.
WEDDING AT CEANN SuEVE.-Proc. Ossianic Society.
THE SHADOWY ONE.---O'Curry.
FINN'S MA.DNESS.-Silva Gaedelica.
THE RED WoMAN.-Hyde, Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach.
FINN AND THE PHANTOMS.-Kuno Meyer' Revue Celtique.
THE PIGS OF ANGUS.-Proc. Ossianic Society.
HUNT OF SuEVE CuILINN .-Proc. Ossianic Society.
OISIN's CHILDREN.---O'Curry; L£abhar na Feinne; Campbells Popular
Tales of the Western Highlands; Stokes, Irisch
e Texte; Dean of
Lismore; Celtic Magazine; Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition.
BIRTH OF DIARMUID .-Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grania (Society
for Preservation of the Irish Language) ; Campbell's Popular
Tales.
How DIARMUID GOT HIS LoVE-SPOT.-Hyde, Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach.
DAUGHTER OF KING UNDER-WAVE.-Campbell's Popular Tales.
THE HARD SERVANT.-Silva Gaedelica.
HOUSE OF THE QUICKEN TREES.-MSS. in Royal Irish Academy, and
in Dr. Hyde's possession.
DIARMUID AND GRANIA.-Text Published by S. Hayes O'Grady, Proc.
Ossianic Society, and re-edited by N. O'Duffey for Society for
Preservation of the Irish Language; Kuno Meyer, Revue Celtique, and Four Songs; L£abhar na Feinne; Campbells Popular Tales; Kilkenny Arch. journal; Folk Lore, vol. vii. , 1896; Dean
of Lismore; Nutt, Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition.
CNOC-AN-AIR, ETC.-Proc. Ossianic Society.
WEARING AWAY OF THE FIANNA.-Silva Gaedelica; Dean of Lismore;
Leabhar na Feinne; Campbell's Popular Tales; Proc. Ossianic
NOTES
Society; O'Curry; Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition; Stokes,
Irische Texte.
THE END OF THE FIANNA.-Hyde , Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach; Proc.
Ossianic Society; Silva Gaedelica; Miss Brooke's Reliques;
Annals of the Four Masters; Celtic Magazine.
OISIN AND PATRICK, AND OISIN's LAMENTS.-Proc. Ossianic Society,
Dean of Lismore; Kilkenny Arch. journal; Curtin's Tales.
I have taken Grania's sleepy song, and the description of Finn's
shield and of Cumhal's treasure-bag, and the fact of Finn's descent
from Ethlinn, from Duanaire Finn, now being edited for the Irish
Texts Society by Mr john MacNeill, the proofs of which I have
been kindly allowed to see. And I have used sometimes parts of
stories, or comments on them gathered directly from the people,
who have kept these heroes so much in mind. The story of
Caoilte coming to the help of the King of Ireland in a dark wood
is the only one I have given without either a literary or a folk
ancestry. It was heard or read by Mr Yeats, he cannot remember
where, but he had, with it in his mind, written of "Caoilte's burning hair" in one of his poems.