Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  The reputation for sometimes raucous comedy that has attached itself to Irish literature over the past two centuries finds relatively little justification in the earliest narratives. Poets and storytellers might have ranked satire highly in their artistic repertory, but when applied it tended to be poisonous, with little to be laughed at. One of the very few stories that appears to be composed solely for humorous ends is the twelfth-century anti-clerical satire Aislinge Meic Con Glinne [Vision of Mac Con Glinne], with a mock exorcism of the ‘demon of gluttony’. Elsewhere comedy, when it appears, is often a surprise. The context may imply tones of stateliness, formality or heroic endeavour. In such stories we read of reversals of expectation or deflated pomposity, not in themselves laugh-out-loud funny. Even then, we must sometimes stand back from the text to perceive the author’s intent.

  The title of the twelfth-century story Mesca Ulad [Intoxication of the Ulstermen] signals a different tone from the rest of the cycle. Excessive boozing has been a staple comic theme since the time of Aristophanes (fourth century BC). In the two best-known translations of Mesca Ulad – the twenty-four pages of T. P. Cross and C. H. Slover (1936) or the thirty-one pages of Jeffrey Gantz (1981) – most of the narrative is anything but funny. Too much is given over to lengthy passages of static description and protracted runs of obscure personal and place-names, the kinds of things that would have been the stock-in-trade of medieval storytellers. Worse, the narrator does not follow a definite plot but instead ambles about the countryside, allowing for haphazard introduction of episodes unforeseen in earlier action. Inhibiting comedy further, the text is incomplete. The better-known fragment appearing in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster [Lebor Laignech] is more refined, with greater psychological depth. The shorter fragment in the earlier Book of the Dun Cow [Lebor na hUidre] appears to complete the narrative but with personal names in somewhat different forms and the key element of the iron house missing. Even with these impediments, the storyteller’s desire to provoke smiles persists over the centuries and through translation.

  The action begins with talk of the division of land. Just as Ireland had been divided first by the Tuatha Dé Danann and later by the Milesians, putting up borders that invited discord, so now Ulster is split into three parts. Conchobar mac Nessa commands the centre from Emain Macha while his fosterlings dominate the other two, Fintan son of Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages] in the north and Cúchulainn in the east. Other accounts put Fintan many centuries later and neglect to portray Cúchulainn in dispute with Conchobar, but Mesca Ulad imposes its own chronology and logic. With the feast of Samain approaching, Conchobar sends out trusted emissaries to invite the two younger men to a feast at the capital – Leborcham (Deirdre’s nurse) to speak to Cúchulainn and wise old Sencha mac Ailella to Fintan. Cúchulainn first blusters that he will not attend, but his wife Emer interrupts and says that he will. And so both foster-sons return to the hall of their protector.

  Demands for safety and assurances from both sides are excessive. The hosts at Emain Macha ask that Cúchulainn give as hostages three prominent warriors: Conall Cernach, Conall Anglonnach and Lóegaire Búadach. In return, Cúchulainn asks that three young men from the household, all sons of prominent men including Conchobar, be held on his behalf. Meanwhile, Fintan is a harder bargainer. Whereas the hosts ask of him the guarantee of mid-level hero Celtchair mac Uithechair and two lesser figures, Fintan asks for the three sons of Uisnech, Ardan, Ainnle and Noise, the lover of Deirdre.

  At the centre of the negotiations is the request that Cúchulainn and Fintan give up their thirds of the province in a year’s time so that Conchobar might rule the whole more peaceably. Praising their foster-father as a fountain of authority, they agree but caution that if the arrangement does not work out as planned Cúchulainn and Fintan will be returned their portions.

  The guarantees for safety at Conchobar’s banquet are worthless, however. Riot soon breaks out in the ranks despite all the efforts to prevent it. So ferocious is the squabbling between the different retinues that nine men are covered with wounds, nine with blood, and nine more writhe in death agonies, an equal amount for each side.

  True to his usual role, Sencha shakes his branch of peacemaking and asks the reason for the quarrel. He reminds all that Conchobar will not be king for another year. Cúchulainn agrees to the household’s wishes as long as no one from it tries to interfere with him during the intervening year. Sencha agrees. Then, for the next three days and nights, everyone present celebrates and drinks up all of Conchobar’s bounty, before each returns to his own fortress.

  Life in Ulster goes well for the following year. When the time comes for the three divisions of the province to be joined under Conchobar’s leadership, both Cúchulainn and Fintan decide at exactly the same moment that they should hold their own feasts in honour of the occasion. Without any knowledge of what the other is doing, they somehow decide matters and take action at precisely the same instant. They prepare by assembling hundreds of vats of every kind of ale. Both swear an oath simultaneously that each will host Conchobar and the new regime on the same night. Both harness their horses and yoke their chariots at the same time. Then Cúchulainn takes an early lead by arriving first at Emain Macha and is making his case for hosting Conchobar as Fintan pulls up. The second man, true to his oath, will not yield to the first, and so violent a squabble breaks out between the two sides that Sencha does not dare to intervene in. Instead, Conchobar asks for help from his son Furbaide, who is also Cúchulainn’s foster-son, hoping he can bring peace. The young man begins a loud chant of wailing lamentation, sobbing that just as the province is to become a wellspring of prosperity, all will be destroyed in one night. His tears have an immediate effect. Sencha proposes a compromise in which the entire entourage will spend the first half of the night with Fintan and the second half with Cúchulainn.

  It is a compromise that overlooks geography. Things start well enough with the lavish entertainment during the first half of the evening at Fintan’s northerly fortress of Dún Dá Benn in contemporary Co. Derry. Láeg, Cúchulainn’s charioteer, reads the stars to determine when the middle of the night has come, but through the excruciatingly slow rules of protocol, he must delay this news. When it is heard, the party must scurry from Dún Dá Benn south and east over to Dún Delgan, coextensive with modern Dundalk, Co. Louth. The place names may sound a bit alike, but the distance between them is nearly ninety miles over rolling country. Cúchulainn instructs Láeg to begin their trek with leisurely indifference, but this pose does not last for long. Soon the previously dignified members of the court of Ulster take on a kind of Mack Sennett frenzy to drive forward. Mountains and great oaks seem to whiz by. The ensemble becomes the Keystone Kops in chariots. Forded streams and estuaries are left bone dry in their wake. Iron wheels level mountains and crags to the flattest of plains. When Conchobar observes that it does not look as though they are still in Ulster, wise Sencha answers that they are not. It appears that they are in the realm of their southern enemy Cú Roí in west Munster, 225 miles in the wrong direction, about as far from Dún Dá Benn as one could get without leaving the island. Then it starts to snow.

  The narrative scene then shifts to the residence of Munster kings at Temuir Luachra; Cú Roí’s rotating fortress in the previous story has been forgotten this time. Here he is playing host to the royal family of Connacht, also enemies of Ulster, Ailill and Medb, who has just given birth to a son. As a prelude to a possible future alliance between Munster and Connacht, Cú Roí has agreed to be foster-father to the infant.

  Two druids in Cú Roí’s household mount the fortress wall to begin a commentary on the approaching Ulstermen, about whom they are frequently mistaken. Cromm Deróil and Cromm Darail may be foster-sons of prime druid Cathbad but they often talk like a pair of vaudevillians. Cromm Deróil begins their dialogue with the words, ‘Have you seen what I just saw?… What was that?’ Cromm Darail answers, ‘Only big oak trees.’ ‘Oh…’, answers Cromm Deróil, ‘O
ak trees with chariots under them?’ After a dozen such exchanges they both become dizzy and faint, Cromm Darail falling outside the wall, Cromm Deróil falling inside.

  Reporting to the court inside the walls, Cromm Deróil and Cromm Darail recover themselves and comment further on the approaching Ulstermen, giving more detailed pictures than did Finnabair to Medb in Fled Bricrenn (see above) and also some deflating portraits. Cúchulainn comes off as a ‘little black-browed man’ but ‘greatly resplendent’. Immortals of the Tuatha Dé Danann such as Angus Óg and the Dagda are also with them but visible only to the hosts at Temuir Luachra. Conchobar’s fool, with a smooth, dark Ethiopian face, merits as much attention as the heroes do.

  Medb asks if the unexpected arrival of the Ulstermen might possibly be in fulfilment of a forgotten prophecy. The blind seer Gabalglinde replies that it is and that the same prophecy foretold of the defensive use of an iron house with two wooden houses about it and a house of earth beneath. Sensing an advantage for themselves, the hosts at Temuir Luachra invite the Ulstermen in. Sencha accepts the welcome, acknowledging that they have not come to fight or do evil but rather because they have been on a drunken spree, and it would be dishonourable to leave the territory without spending so much as a night in it.

  In accepting the invitation, one hundred Ulster champions clamour to be the first to enter the compound, but Sencha decides it should be Cúchulainn. When Cúchulainn returns with a company of minstrels and entertainers, the rest of the Ulstermen follow as though one. Cúchulainn chooses the largest house, which turns out to be made of iron, as the prophecy foretold, and is flanked by two wooden ones. Servants provide ale and provisions for the guests, as well as a huge bonfire. At night the servants steal away and lock the door, fastening it with seven chains. The trapped men quickly understand what danger they are in, and Briccriu charges Cúchulainn with having brought them into the enemy’s pen. ‘I can perform a hero’s feat,’ Cúchulainn responds, ‘that will get all the Ulstermen out.’ He plunges his sword up to the hilt through the iron wall and through two houses of boards, and then announces to his comrades what he has found. ‘This is the worst of all,’ growls Briccriu.

  At this point the fragment from the Book of Leinster ends, and we never learn the narrator’s plans to complete the story. Action in the Book of the Dun Cow begins a few steps earlier with the Ulstermen disputing over who should lead them into Temuir Luachra. In this version many minor characters have slightly different names, and there is apparently no iron house. Instead, the men are locked into a wooden house, and Cúchulainn saves the day when he kicks down the door. He urges the men to hand-to-hand combat, and they eventually plunder the stronghold.

  One defender, Crimthann Nia Náir, escapes and tries to wreak revenge on the Ulster hero through the wiles of the female satirist Richis, whose son was killed at Temuir Luachra. She strips naked in front of Cúchulainn, who turns his face downwards so that he might not see her private parts. Just as Crimthann is about to seize his opportunity against the Ulsterman, the charioteer Láeg throws a huge stone that breaks the back of the nude temptress. Recovering his strength, Cúchulainn charges forward to Crimthann and decapitates him with one blow, carrying away his head and other spoils.

  Ailill of Connacht returns to his own country and lives in peace and unity with Ulster.

  Conchobar’s kingship does not suffer another threat as long as he lives.

  Cú Roí and Cúchulainn remain adversaries in other stories. In one, Cú Roí, while allied with Ulster, gets the better of it by shaving the head of Cúchulainn and daubing his bare head with cow dung. Hair is also important in the resolution of their conflict. When Bláithíne, Cú Roí’s wife, becomes involved in an adulterous relationship with Cúchulainn, she agrees to tie her husband’s hair to a bedpost. In one of his less admirable moments, Cúchulainn murders the discommoded cuckold.

  10

  The Ulster Cycle

  Part II: Cúchulainn and the Táin

  ROOTS OF HEROIC IDENTITY

  Cúchulainn usually can be counted on to get the best of things, as his appearance in two stories from the last chapter shows. Of the three most dominant heroes of early Irish tradition, Lug Lámfhota, Cúchulainn and Fionn mac Cumhaill, he is usually ranked first. Like the other two, he appears to have roots in the earliest Celtic traditions, with links and analogues among the early continental Celts. Cúchulainn was favoured by learned storytellers for at least seven centuries, from the seventh through to the fourteenth. While his exploits greatly exaggerate human potential, several of the most important stories show him at his most human: growing to maturity, wooing a wife, and engaged in heartbreaking combat with a warrior who is his unacknowledged son. He is the most dynamic force in the Táin Βó Cuailnge, the national epic. Curiously, his adventures were barely extended in oral tradition, in contrast with those of Fionn mac Cumhaill, whose many portrayals are found in an immense body of later popular literature. For ordinary Irish people over the last 130 years, Cúchulainn’s name has more often been relearned through books than inherited from everyday discourse. When, however, the Irish state looked for a heroic figure to commemorate the scene of the first bloodshed on behalf of national independence, the Easter Rising of 1916, in the lobby of the General Post Office on what is now O’Connell Street, they chose Oliver Sheppard’s much-photographed statue of Cúchulainn.

  At the time of the first translations of early Irish literature in the nineteenth century, commentators routinely compared Cúchulainn with classical heroes such as Heracles and Aeneas. More recent opinion holds that if Cúchulainn resembles early Mediterranean figures it is because early Christian redactors of his stories, themselves informed by Latin tradition, shaped him to look that way. Recent scholarship has also tended to downplay the ‘Pagan survival’ theories of early Irish narrative, but the deep appeal of his persona means that he could not have just been invented one day by an inspired scribe. Speculative links between Cúchulainn and the Gaulish god Esus appear to be insubstantial. More significant, perhaps, are his characteristic quickness and short, dark stature, features that Julius Caesar attributed to Gaulish Mercury. Inescapable are the implications of his birth name Sétanta. Although it has been glossed as ‘god of routes and roads’ and ‘one who knows the way’, the name bears at least a superficial resemblance to Setantii, the name of a people of northwest Britain described by Ptolemy (first century AD). His usual spear or javelin, the Gáe Bulga, evokes the name of the Belgae, the prominent early Celtic people described as the most ferocious of all by Caesar. There is probably also an echo of the Gaulish people the Manapii in the cognomen of Cúchulainn’s father-in-law Forgall Manach.

  The usual domain of Cúchulainn is Mag Muirtheimne, the plain adjacent to the Irish Sea in eastern County Louth, from Drogheda at the mouth of the River Boyne north to his fortress at Dún Delgan, next to the modern city of Dundalk. The same territory provides an entry route for invaders in the Lebor Gabála. It could well have served the same function for historical peoples such as the Manapii, Belgae or Setantii, who resided directly across the Irish Sea. Whatever the reason, early storytellers habitually link Cúchulainn with Mag Muirtheimne, whereas Lug Lámfhota is not ascribed a domain. Fionn mac Cumhaill might be thought to live at the Hill of Allen in County Kildare, but his adventures take him everywhere in Ireland as well as to hundreds of locations in Gaelic Scotland.

  The translation of Cúchulainn’s name, ‘hound of Culann’, usually strikes English readers as odd. Who is Culann and why should he have a hound at all? We are not used to such favourable associations for hounds or dogs. Depictions of the domesticated canine among the Celts offer some answers. The dog is portrayed on the Gundestrup Cauldron and is associated with the Gaulish goddess Sirona. Dog bones are commonly found in early holy wells, and a dog skull was uncovered by modern archaeologists at the base of the famous royal site, Emain Macha, in Ulster. A leader of pre-Claudian Britain (first century BC) was Cunobelinus, literally, ‘the hound of Belinus’. Mo
re popularly, the cultivation of such noble breeds as the Irish wolfhound and the Irish terrier implies that many dogs in early Ireland were welcome in more esteemed places in a household than in barnyards and open fields.

  Even so, the widely known story of how Cúchulainn acquired his name after killing Culann’s dog (see next section) may have been a later invention to explain inherited practice. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin (1991) describes it as a ‘secondary invention’ and asserts that his original name meant ‘warrior of Culann’. Ó hÓgáin’s explanation for the identity of Culann lies in the archaic word cul, ‘chariot’. In the story Culann is described as the kind of artisan/tradesman who would manufacture war chariots. A corrupted genitive or a compound of cul might have been the basis for the element culann so that ‘Cúchulainn’ would have originally been translated as ‘chariot-warrior’.

  The most plausible theory of Cúchulainn’s origin, Ó hÓgáin says further, is that he symbolized a particular war-cult introduced into Ireland by a Celtic people who crossed over from Britain to the area of Muirtheimne.

  YOUTH, EDUCATION, MARRIAGE

  Like other heroes in world traditional literature, Heracles, Perseus or Siegfried, Cúchulainn is the product of an extraordinary, even miraculous conception. Actually, he has several such stories, all centring on the same mother, Deichtine, daughter of Cathbad the esteemed druid. Sometimes she is also seen as a sister or daughter of King Conchobar mac Nessa. In two stories Lug Lámfhota of the immortal Tuatha Dé Danann is Cúchulainn’s ultimate father, even though the young hero has a host of mortal foster-fathers.

  In the shortest version Deichtine is so distracted by grief for the death of a foster-son that she does not notice while drinking water that a tiny creature has passed into her mouth. That creature is Lug Lámfhota. Or she may merely be dreaming that it is Lug. Dream or reality, Deichtine is impregnated by swallowing the small creature. People in the court, hearing that Deichtine is pregnant and not knowing of a father, assume she may have been compromised by a drunken Conchobar mac Nessa. Before she can deliver the child Cúchulainn, she is married to Sualtam mac Róich, but, given her condition, she is ashamed to enter his bed. No mere cipher, Sualtam becomes a foster-father of his wife’s child and is later decapitated in defence of Ulster against the invasion of Ailill and Medb. Deichtine is ill as her confinement approaches and she suffers a miscarriage. Her virginity is restored, and she at last embraces her husband.