archibald constable - the mythology of ancient britain and ireland 1906

8/22/2019 Archibald Constable - The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland 1906

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Western eserve University Libral

9357 ;I C o l le g e f o r W o m e n

of Western ese rve Univerrity Cleve land 0

FLORENCE HARKNESS B IBL ICAL L IBRARY


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TH MYTHOLOGY OF NCIENTBRIT IN ND IREL ND


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RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND hfODERN.FooIicap 8uo Price 13. n r t p r voii~tne.ANIMISM.By E ~ w h a ~LODD,Author of The Stopy ofC~-eaiioios.PANTHEISM.By J M E S ALLANSON ICTON uthor of The Relfkioil o theUniuc~scT H E RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.By Professor GILCS.LL.D.. ProiessoroiCi~iliesrn t l ~ e niversityof Cambridxe.

ISLAM IN INDIA.By T. W. AnNorm. as is ta t~ t Librarian at file Illdia OfficeAuthor of The Prtnihittf ofIisInt z.ISLAM.By SVE MeR ALI. M.A., C.I.E., late of H.hf. s High CourtofJ~riicaturem Bengai, Author of The Sp i r i t uffrla~i2 nd TheEthiu o liinsi.MAGIC A ND FETISHISM.By Dr A. C HADDON,.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cam.bridze University.

THE RELIGIONOF ANCIENT EGYPT.By Professor W. M. FLINDERSliTnr~, .R.S.T H E RELIGI ON O F BAUYLONl.4 AND ASSPRIA.By T W E ~ P I I I L U ~. PINCIIES,ate of tile Briti~ilMuseum.BUDDHISM. 2 vois.By Professor RHYS DAY~DS,.L.D., late Secretary ol The RoyalAsiatic Socictv.HINDUISM.By Dr. L. D. BAXKBTT.f the Departmefit of Oriental PrintedBaoka and MSS., British Museum.SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.By WILLIAM. CI~AIGIE,oint Editor of the rford En*~iiid

Dictionarv.CELTIC RELIGIONBYProfesrar ARII'YL, rofessorof Welsh at University College,Aberystwyth.T H E MYTHOLOGY O F ANC IEN T BRITAIN AND IRELAND.By CAARLES QUIRE, Author of The Mylhoio~yf ofheBrifirh

l r l , , i l i ,.JUDAISM.By I S X E L AsnAanhrs, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cam-bridge University, Autllor o f Jewish ife in fhe il iddie .4ps.PRIMI TIVE OR NI CENE CIIRISTIANITY,By JOHN S UT ~ I F .RL A~ ULACK. LL.D., Joint Editor of theExduriodedirc UiJlica


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THE M Y T H O L O G Y OFNCIENT BRIT IN

ND IREL ND

BYC H R L E S S Q U I R EUTHOR O

THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS

L O N D O NR C H I B L D C O N S T B L E ? C O LTD

16 J M ES S T R E E T H Y M R K E T19 6

- 7 4 . n


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Kdinbuinix: T ndA Cosrraum Printers to Hir hiajesty


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F O R E W O R DTHIS little book does not profess in any way tosupplement the volume upon Celtic Religionalready contributed to this series. I t merely aimsat calling the attention of the general reader tothe mythology of our own country that as yetlittle-known store of Celtic tradition ~vhicheflectsthe religious conceptions of our earliest articulateancestors. Naturally its limits compel the writerto dogmatise or at most to touch but very brieflyupon disputed points to ignore many fascinatingside-issues and to refrain from putting forwardany suggestions of his own. But ho has basedhis work upon the studies of the leading Celticscholars and he believes that the reader maysafely accept i t as in lino with the latest re-search. C .


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C O N T E N T SCBIP P OE

I. THE CELTS A N D THEIRMYTHOLOOY 111. THE GODSoa THE CONTINENTALELTS . 9

111. THEGODSOF TlIE INSULAR CELTS 14IV THE MYTHICALISTORY r IRELAND 31v TIIE MYTUICALIISTORYI? BRITAIN 42

VI. THE H ERO I C YCLE F ANCIENT LSTER 54VII. THE FENIANR OSSIANICSAGIAS 61

vilr. THE A R T H U R ~ A NEGEND 68C H R ~ N ~ L O G ~ C A LYLLABUS 77SELECTEDOOKSEARING O N CELTICMYTIIOLOQY 9


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THE MYTHOLOGY O F A N C I E N TBRI I AIN AND I l tELAND

C H A P T E R ITHE ELTS A N D THEIR MYTHOLOGY

THE Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland.This title will possibly at first sight suggest totho reader who has been brought lip to considerhimself essentially an Anglo-Saxon only a fewdiin memories of Tiw, of Wdden, of Thunor(Thor), and of Frig, those Saxon deities who havebequeathed to us the names of four of the days ofour wee1r.l Yet the traces of the nglish gods arecomparatively few in Britain, and are not foundat all in Ireland, and, at any rate, they can bebetter studied in the Teutonic countries to whichthey were native than in this remote outpost oftheir influence. Preceding the Saxons in Britainby many centuries were the Celts-the AncientBritons -who themselves possessed a rich mytho-

Tiwesdseg, Wddnesdsg, hnnresdzeg later, Thurresdaeg),snd Frigedseg. Sseter n)esdseg is adapted from the Latinabmi dies

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINlogy, the tradition of which, though obscured, hasnever been quite lost. I n such familiar names asLudgate, called after a legendary good king

Lud who was once the Celtic god Lltidd; inpopular folk and fairy tales; in the stories ofArthur and his knights, some of whom are butBritish divinities in disguise; and in certain ofthe wilder legends of our early saints, we havefragments of the Celtic lnythology handed downtenaciously by Englishmen who had quite asmuch of the Celt as of the Saxon in their blood.

To what extent the formerly prevalent beliefas to the practical extinction of the Celtic in-habitants of our islands at the hands of theSaxons has been reconsidered of late years maybe judged from the dictum of one of the mostrecent students of the snhject, Mr. Nicholson, inthe preface to his Keltic Researche5 l There isgood ground to believe, he says, that Lanoashire,West Yorltshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire,Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Cambridge-shire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part of Sussex, areas Keltic as Perthshire and North Munster thatCheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Monmouth-

1 Keltic Researches: Slz~diea n the History cd Distributiono the Ancient Goidelic ay~glcage and Peoples y Edwardillisms Byron Nicholson LA. London 1904

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THE CEIJTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGYshire, Gloucestershirc, Devon, Dorset, North-amptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshireare more so-and equal to North Wales an dLeinster while Buckinghamshire and Hertford-shire exceed even this degree and are on a levelwith Sou th W ales and Ulster. Cornwall, ofcourse, is more Keltic than any other Englishcounty, and as much so as Argyll, Inverness-shire, or Connaught. f these statements arewell founded, Celt and Tenton must be veryequally woven into the fabric of th e Britishnation.But even the Celts themselves mere not thefirst inhabitants of our islands. Their earliestarrivals found men already in possession. Wemeet with their relics in th e lon g barrows, anddeduce frorn them a short, dark , long-skulled raceof slig ht physique and in a relatively low stage ofcivilisation. I t s origin is uncertain, an d so is allwe think we know of it, and , though it must havegreatly influenced Aryan-Celtic custom and myth,i t would be hard to pu t a finger definitely uponany point where th e two different cultures havemet and blended.

We know more about it s conquerors. Accord-ing to the most generally accepted theory,there were two main streams of Aryan emigra-


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINtion from the Continent into a non-Aryan Britain,both belonging to the same linguistic branch of theIndo-European stock-the Celtic-but speakingvariant dialects of thaL tongue-Goidelic, or Gaelic,and Brythonic, or British. Of these the Goidelswere the earlier, their first settlers having arrivedat some period between 1 and 5 B.c., whilethe Brythons, or Brittdnes, seem to have appearedabout the third cenlury B.c., steadily encroachingupon and ousting their forerunuers. With theBrythons must be considered the Belge, whomade, still later, an extensive invasion of SouthernBritain, but who seern to have been eventuallyassimilated to, or absorbed in, the Brythons, towhom they were, at any rate linguistically, muchakin. I n physique, as well as in language, therewas probably a direrence between Lhe Brythousand the Goidels, the latter containing some ad-mixture of the broad-headed stock of CentralEurope, and it is thought also that the Goidelsmust have become in course of time modified byadmixture with the dark, long-skulled non-Aryanrace. The Romans appear to have recognisedmore than one type in Britain, distinguishingbetween the inhabitants of the coast regions

Rh9s Celtic Britain 1904 and Rh9s and Brvnrnor.Jones'I e Il elrh People 1006


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THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGYnearest to France, who resembled the Gauls, andthe ruddy-haired, large-limbed natives of theNorth, who seemed to them more akin to theGermans. To these may he added certain peopleof West Britain, whose dark complexions andcurly hair caused Tacitus to regard thern asimmigrants from Spain, and who probably belongedeither wholly or largely to the aboriginal stock.We have no records of the clash and counter-clash of savage warfare which must, if this theorybe talren as correct, have marlred, first, the con-quest of the aborigines by the Goidels, andafterwards the displacenient of the Goidels bythe later branches of the Celts. Nor do weknow when or how the Goidels crossed fromBritain to Ireland. All Lhat we can state withapproximate certainty is that at the Lime of theRo~nan omination the Brythons were in posses-sion of all Britain south of the Tweed, with theexception of the extreme West, while the Goidelshad most of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Cumberland,North and South Wales, Cornwall, and Devon, aswell as, in the opinion of some authorities, theWest Highlands of Sc ~ t l a n d , ~he primitive dark

Tacitus Agvieola chap. xi.V t s however held by others that the Goidels of Scotlanddid not reach that oountry from Ireland before tile Christianere .


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MYTHOLOGY O F ANCIENT BRITAINrace being still found in certain portions of Irelandand of West Britain, and in Scotland north of theGrampian Hills.

t is the beliefs, traditions, and legends of theseGoidels and Brythons, and their more unmixeddescendants, the modern Gaels and Cymry, whichmake up our mythology. Nor is the stock ofthem by any means so scanty as the remotenessand obscurity of the age in which they were stillvital will probably have led the reader to expect.We can gather thc~n rom six different sources:1) Dedications to Celtic divinities upon altars

and votive tablets, large numbers of which havebeen found both on the Continent and in ourown islands; 2) Irish, Scottish, and Welsh manu-scripts which, though they date only from medi-aeval times, contain, copied from older documents,legends preserved from the pagan age; 3 ) So-called histories otably that of Geoffrey of

ionmouth, written in the twelfth century-which consist largoly of mythical matter dis-guised as a record of the ancicnt British kings;4) Early hagiology, in which the myths of gods

of the pagan Goidels and Brythons have beentaken over by the ecclesiasts and fathered uponthe patron saints of the Celtic Church; 5 ) Thegroundwork of British bsrdic tradition upon


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THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGYwhich the Welsh, Breton, and Norman minstrels,and, following them, the romance-writers of allthe more civilised European countries foundedthe Arthurian cycle; 6) And lastly, upon folktales which, although but lately reduced towriting, are probably as old, or even older, thanany of the other sources.

A few lines nlust here be spared to show thereader the nature of the mediaeval manuscriptsjust mentioned. They consist of larger or smaUervellum or parchment volumes, into which thescribe of a great family or of a monastery labori-ously copied whatever lore, godly or ~orldly,wasdeemed most worthy of perpetuation. They thuscontain very varied matter :-portions of the Biblelives of saints and works attributed to them;genealogies and learned treatises; as well as thepoems of the bards and the legends of tribalheroes who had bee11 the gods of an earlier age.The most famous of them are, in Irish, the Boolrsof tho Dun Cow, of Leinster, of Lecan, of Bally-mote, and the Yellow Book of Lecan; and inWelsh, the so-called Four Ancient Books ofWales -the Black Book of Carmarthen, theBook of Aneurin, the Book of Taliesin, and theRed Book of Hergest-together with the WhiteBook of Rhydderch. Taken as a whole, they ante


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iVIYTHOLOGY O F ANCIENT BRITAINfrom the beginning of the twelfth century to theend of the sixteenth; the oldest being the Bookof the Dun Cow the compiler of which died inthe yeas 1106. But much of their substance isfar older-can indeed be proved to ante-date theseventh century-while the mythical tales andpoems must even at this earlier age have longbeen traditional. They preserve for us in how-ever distorted a form much of the legendary loreof the Celts.

The Irish manuscripts have suffered less sophis-tication than the Welsh. In them the gods stillappear as divine and the heroes as the pagalisthey were; while their Welsh congeners pose askings or knights or even as dignitaries of theChristian Church. But the more primitive lessadulterated Irish myLhs can be brought to throwlight upon the Welsh and thus their accretionscan be stripped from them till they appear intheir true guise. In this way scholarship isgradually unveiling a mythology whose appeal isnot merely to our patriotism. In itself i t is oftenpoetic and lofty and in its disguise of Arthurianromance i t has influenced niodern art and litera-ture only less potently than that ~nightynspira-tion-the mythology of Ancient Greece.


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C H A P T E R ITH GODS O F TH CONTINENT L CELTS

BUTbefore approaching the myths of the Celts ofGreat Britain and Ireland we rnust briefly glanceat the mythology of the Celts of ContinentalEurope that Gallia from which Goidels andBrythons alike came. Frorn the point of view ofliterature the subject is barren; for whatevermythical and heroic legends the Gauls once hadhave perished. But there have been brought tolight a very large number not only of dedicatoryinscriptions to but also of statues and bas-reliefsof the ancient gods of Gaul. And to afford ussome clue amid their bewildering variety a certainamount of information is given us by classicmiters especially by Julius Caesar in his Com-mentaries on the Gallic War.

He mentions five chief divinities of the GaulsapparentIy in the order of their reputed power.First of all he says they worship Mercury asinventor of the arts and patron of travellers and


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MYTHOLOGY- O ANCIENT BRITAINmerchants. Next comes Apollo, Lhe divinehealer, and he is followed by Minerva, the teacherof useful trades, by Jupiter, who rules the sky,and by Mars, the director of battles? This doesnot, of course, mean that Caesar considered thegods of the Gauls to be exactly those of theRomans, but that imaginary beings representedas carrying out much the same functions as theRoman Mercury, Apollo, Minerva, Jupiter, andMars were worshipped by them. In practice, too,the Romans readily assimilated the deities ofconquered peoples to their olvn; hence it is thatin the inscriptions discovered in Gaul, and indeedin our own islands, we find the narnes of Celticdivinities preceded by those of the Roman godsthey were considered to resemble :-as hlercuriusArtaios, Apollo Orannos, Minerva BelisBma,Jupiter Sccellos, and Mars C miilos.Modern discoveries quite bear out Caesar'sstatement as to the importance to the Gaulishmind of the god whom he called Mercury.Numerous place-names attest t in modernFrance. Costly statues stood in his honour;one, of ir~assive ilver, was dug up in the gardensof the Luxembourg, while another, made in bronzeby a Greelr artist for the great temple of the

e Bello Callieo iv 17I


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TH E GODS O F T H E CONTINENTAL CELTSArverni upon t he sum mit of th e Puy de DBme, issaid to have stood a hundred and twenty feethigh, and to have taken t en yea rs to finish. Yetit would seem to have been rather for t he war-godth a t some a t least of th e warlike Gauls reservedthe ir chief worship. The regard i n which he washeld is proved by two of his names or titles:-Rigis mos ( Most Royal,') and AlbiCrix ('Icingo th e W orld'). Much honour, too, m us t hav ebeen paid to a Gaulish Apollo, Grannos, lordof healing waters, from whorri Aix-la-Chapelle(anciently called A quae Granni), Graux and E auxGrauimes, in the Vosges, an d Granheini, in TTiur-temburg, took their names, for we are told byDion Cassius th a t th e Roman Em peror Caracallainvolred him as the equal of the better-knownAesculapius and Serapis. Another GaulishApollo,' Toutidrix ('Lord of th e People') ha swon, however, a far ivider, if somewhat ~ ic a r io u sfame. Accidentally confounded with Theodoricthe Goth, his mythical achievements are, in allprobability, responsible for the wilder legendsconnected with th a t historical hero under his titleof Dietrich von Bern.2But th e gods of th e C ontinental Celts are being

Ixxvii. 15.Rh s, ibbert ectures or 1886 pp. 30 32.I I


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MYTFIOLOGY O F ANCIENT BRI I AINtreated in this series far more competently thanis in the power of the present writer. For hispurpose and his readers , the only Gaulish deitieswho need be noticed here are some whose namesreappear in the written myths of our own Islands.

In the oldest Irish and Welsh manuscripts werneet with personages whose names and attributesidentify them ~ i t hivinities whom we know tohave been worshipped in the Celtic world abroad.Ogma combines in Gaelic mythology the char-acters of the god of eloquence and poetry and theprofessional champion of his circle, the TuathaD4 Danann, while t second-century Greelc writercalled Lucian describes a Gaulish Ogmios, who,though he was represented as armed with the cluband lion-skin of Heracles, was yet considered theexponent of persuasive speech. He mas depicted asdrawing men after him by golden cords attachedfrom his tongue to their ears and, as the oldman eloquent, whose varied experience made hiswords worth listening to, he was shown as wrinkledand bald. Altogether (as a native assuredLucian), he taught that true power resides inwise words as much as in doughty deeds, lesson

eltic Religion 11y rofessor E. Anwyl to whom the writerhere takes the opportunity of gratefully aoknowledging his in-debtedness for value.ble help towards the making of this book.

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THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL ELTSnot yet quite forgotten by the Celt. I n theContinental Liigus, whose name still clings to thecities of Lyons, Laon, and Leyden, all ancientlycalled LGgGdunum ( LZigus s town ), we mayolairn to see that important figure of the Goideliclegends, Lug of the Long Hand. With theGaulish goddess Brigindu, of whom ~uerltion smade in a dedicatory tablet found a t Volnay,near Beaune, we may connect Brigit, the IrishMinerva or Vesta who passed down into saint-ship as Saint Bridget. The war-godz Cttnidlosis possibly found in Ireland as Cumhal (Coul),father of the famous Finn; in Belinus, an apocry-phal British Iring who reappears in romance asBalin of the Morte Davthur, we probably have theGaulish BElgnos, whom the Latin writer Ausoniusmentions as a sun-god served by Druids; whileMipdnos, identified by the Romans with Apollo,we find in the Welsh stories as Mabon son ofModron (Matrdna), a co~npanion f Arthur.

I t is by a curious irony that we must now loolrfor the stories of Celtic gods to two islands onceconsidered so remote and uncivilised as hardlyto belong to the Celtic world at all.

Rh s, ibbert Leetuves pp. 13.20.CZmillus seems to have been a moreimportant god than hisRoman equation with Mars (p. 10) sugg ests. Professor R hf scalla him a. 'Mars-Jupiter.' Cf.pp. 11,20-21, and 6 of this book


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C H A P T E R ITHE GO S OF TH INSUL R ELTS

IT would be impossible, in so srnall space as wecan afford, to mention all, or indeed any but afew, of the swmming deities of ancient Britainand Ireland, most of them, in all probability,extremely local in their nature. The best wecan do is to look for a fixed point, and this wefind in certain gods whose nan~es nd attributesare very largely common to both the Goidels andthe Brythons. I n the old Gaelic literature theyare called the Tuatha DQ Danann (Too8ha duedonunn), the Tribe of the Goddess Danu, andin the Welsh documents, the Children of D8nand the Children of Ll3r.

Danu-or Donu, as the name is ~ometimesspelt-seems to have been considered by theGoidels as the ancestress of the gods, who collec-tively took their title from her. We also findmention of another ancient female deity of some-

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THE GODS O THE INSULAR CELTSwhat similar name, Anu or Ana, worshipped inMunster as a goddess of prosperity and abun-dance, who was likewise described as the motherof the Ir ish Pantheon- W ell she used to cherishthe gods, wr0t.e a comm entator on a ninth-centuryIri sh glossary? Turning to the British mytho-logy, we find that some of the principal figuresin what seems to be its oldest stratum are calledsons or daug hte rs of D8n : Gwydion son of D8n;Govannon son of D6n; Arianrod daughter ofDan. But Arianrod is also termed th e daughterof Beli, which makes i t reasonably probable th atBeli, who otherwise appears as a mythical kingof th e Brythons, was considered to be D6n sconsort. H is Gaelic coun terpart is perhaps Bile,th e ancestor of th e Milesians, th e first Celticsettlers in Ireland, and though Bile is nowhereconnected with Danu in the scattered mythswhich have come down to us, the analogy issuggestive. Bile and Beli seem to representon Gaelic and British soil respectively the DisPater from whom Caesars tells us the Gaulsbelieved themselves to be descended, th e two

oirAnmanc. The Choice of Names. Translated y Dr.W hitley Stakes in irisehe Tez le .Cormao s Ulmaary Translated y O Donovan and editedby Stokes.De Bello Gallico vi. 18

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINshadowy pairs, Bile and Danu, Beli and D8n,standing for the divine Father and Mother alilreof gods and men.

Llgr, the head of the other family, appears inGaelic n~yths s Lar gem. Lir), both names pro-bably meaning the Sea. Though ranked amongthe Tuatha D Danann, LBr seems to descendfrom a different line, and plays little part in thestories of the earlier history of the Irish gods,though he is prominent in what are perhapsequally ancient legends concerning Finn and theFenians. On the other hand, there are detailsconcerning the British Llfr which suggest thathc may haye been borrowed by the Bryttionsfrom the Goidels. His wife is called Iwerydd(Ireland), and he himself is termed Llpr Llediaith,i e Llgr of the Half-Tongue, which is supposedto mean that his language oould be but iinper-fectly understood. He gave its name to Leicester,originally Llfr-cestre, called in Welsh Caer Lyr,while, through Geoffrey o Monmouth, he hasbecome Shalrespeare s King Lear, and is foundin hagiology s the head of the first of t heThree Chief Holy Families of the Isle ofBritain.

Both Lkr and Llgr are, however, better knownto mythology by their sons than from their own

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THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTSexploits. We find the Gaelic Bron rnac Lir andManannAn rnac Lir paralleling the British Branab LlPr and Manawyddan ab LlPr. Of the IrishBron we know nothing, except that he gave hisname to a place called ag Bron ('Bran's Plain ),but Br n is one of the most clearly outlinedfigures in the Brythonic mythology. He is repre-sented as of gigantic size-no house or ship whichwas ever made could contain him in it-and,when he laid himself down across a river, anarmy could march over him as though upon abridge. He was the patron of minstrelsy andbardism, and claimed, according to a mediaevalpoem1 put into the mouth of the sixth-centuryWelsh poet Taliesin, to be himself a bard, aharper, a player upon the crhth and seven scoreother musicians all at once. He is a king inHades with whom the sons of D8n fight'to obtainthe treasures of the Underworld, and, paradoxi-cally enough, has passed down into ecclesiasticallegend as ' the Blessed Br&n.n,' ho brought Chris-tianity from Rome to Britain.

Turning to the brothers of Bron and Bran, itis of the Irish god this time that we have thefullest account. Manannbn rnac Lir has always

Book o Taliesin, poem xluiii., in Skene s Four AncientBooks o Pi aZes, vol. i. p. 297.7


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINbeen one of the most vivid of the figures of theTuatha DQDanann. Clad in his invulnerable mail,with jewelled helmet which flashed like the sun,robed in his cloak of invisibility woven from thefleeces of the flocks of Paradise, and girt with hissword Retaliator which never failed to slay;whether riding upon his horse Splendid Mane,which went swift as the spring wind over land orsea, or voyaging in his boat Wave-Sweeper, whichneeded neither sail nor oar nor rudder, he pre-sents as striking a picture as can be found in anymythology. The especial patron of sailors, he masinvoked by them as The Lord of Headlands,while the merchants claimed that he was thefounder of their guild. He was connected especi-cally with the Isle of Man; euhemerising legendasserts that he was its first king, and his grave,which is thirty yards long, is still pointed out atPeel Castle. curious tradition credits him withthree legs, and it is these limbs, arranged like thespokes of a wheel, which appear on the arms ofthe Island. His British analogue, Manawyddan,can be seen less clearly through the mists ofmyth. On the one hand he appears as a kindof culture-hero-hunter, craftsman, and agricul-turist; while on the other he is the enemy ofthose gods who seem most beneficent to man.


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T H E GODS O F THE INSULAK CELTSOne of his achievernents was th e building, in thepeninsula of Gower, of the Fortress of Oeth a ndAnnoeth, which is described as a gruesom e prisonmade of hum an bones; and in it he is said tohave incarcerated no less a person than thefamous Arthu r.Whether or not we may take the children ofL19r to ha ve been gods of th e sea, we can hard lygo wrong in considering the children of DAn ashaving come to be regarded as deities of the sky.Constellations bore thei r names- Cassiopeia sChair was called DAn s Court LLys Ddn , theNorthern Crown, Arianrod s Castle Caer Arian-rod ,and th e Milky Way, th e Castle of GmydionCaevGw ydion). Taken as a whole, they do no tpresent such close analogies to th e Irish Tua thad Danann as do the Children of Llyr. Never-theless, there are striking parallels extending to

what would seein to have been some of thegrea test of their gods. I n Ir ish m yth we findNuada A rgetlhn~, nd in British, Niidd, or LlitddLlaw Ere int, both epithets having th e sa m e mean-ing of th e Silver Hand. W h a t i t signified wedo not know; in Irish literature there is a lamestory to account for i t (see p 35 , but if therewas a kindred British version it has been lost.B ut th e attributes of both N uad a and NRdd

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN(Llfidd) show them as th e kind of deity whomthe Romans would have equated with theirJupiter. Nuada rules over th e Tu atha DDanann, while Llfidd, or Nadd, appears as amythical British king, who changed the nameof hi s favourite city from Trinovantum (Geoffrey sNew Troy ) to Caer Ludd, which afterwards be-cam0 London. H e is said to have been buried a tLudgate, a legend which 7ve may perhaps connectwith the tradition that a temple of the Britonsformerly occupied th e si te of S t. Paul s. Howeverthis nlay be, we know that he was worshippeda t Lydney in Gloncestershire, for t he ruin s ofhis sanctuary have been discovered there, withvaried inscriptions to him as EVO NODENTI, D MNODOGTI, and DEO NUDENTE M., S well as a smallplaque of bronze, probably representing him ,which shows us youthful figure, with headsurrounded by solar rays, stand ing in four-horsechariot, and attended by two winged genii andtwo Tritons? The *I of the inscription mayhave rexd in full MAGNO, MASI~IO, or, more pro-b a b l ~ , ~IIARTI,which would be the Roman, orRornano-British, way of describing th e god as th e

A monograph on the subject entitled Rontav Antiquiliest Lydne?~ ad ClozmestererslLire y the Re -. Vr.TI Bathurst

wi a published in 1879.ProfessorRhfs follorviug Dr. Hiibner.2


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THE GODS O F THE INSULAR CELTSwarrior he appears as in Irish legend. Withhim, though no t necessarily as his consort, wemust rank a goddess of war whose nam e, M6rrigu(the Great Queen ), attests her importance,and who may have been the same as Macha( Battle ), Badb ( Ca rrion Crow ), and Nemon( Venomous ), whose name suggests comparisonwith th e B ritish NgrnBtdna, a war-goddess towhom an inscription has been found at Bnth.The wife of Llitdd, however, in Welsh myth iscalled Gwyar, but her name also implies fighting.for i t means g ~ r e . ~ he children of both theGaelic and the British god play notcworthy purtsin Celtic legend. Tadg Teayue), on of Nnnda,was the grandfa ther, upon his mother s side, ofthe famous F in n m ac Caul. Gwyn, son of Nitdd,originally a de ity of th e Underworld, has passeddown into living follr-lore as king of the Tylwytl~Teg the W elsh fairies.Another of th e sons of D8n whom we also findin the ranks of the Tuatha DQ Danann is thegod of Smith-craft, G ~ v a n n o n , ~n Irish Goibniuyen. Goibnenn). The Gaelic deity appears in

Ths t w o ssc identified by t o Branch schols*r,M. Gaidoe,but the equation is not everywhere npheld.Rhfs, tudies in t h Av l l ~ tw i nn egend p. 169.Also called in Welsh Govynion Hhn. HJn moans TheAncient.


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINmythical literature as the forger of the weaponsof his divine companions and the brewer of anale of immortality; and in folk-tales as theGobhan Saer, the fairy architect to whom popularfancy has attributed the round towers and theearly churches of Ireland. f his British analoguewe know less, hut he is found, in company withliis brother Amaethon, the god of Husbandry,engaging in a wonderful feat of agriculture a tthe bidding of Arthur.

But, greater than any of the other sons ofD611 would seem to have been Gwydion, whoappears in British myth as a Culture-Hero, theteacher of arts and giver of gifts to his fellows.His name and attributes have caused more thanone leading mythologist to conjechure whetherhe nlay not have been identical with a stillgreater figure, the Teutonic Woden, or Odin.Professor Rhfs, especially, has drawn, in his

ibbert Leetares (1886) on Celtic Heathendom,a remarkable series of parallels between the twocharacters, as they are figured respectively in Celticand Teutonic myth? Both were alike pre-eminent in war-craft and in the arts of story-telling, poetry, and magic, and both gained throughpainful experiences the lore which they placed

Pp. 282 304.


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THE GODS O THE INSULAR CELTSat the service of mankind. This is representedon the Celtic side by the poetical inspirationwhich Gwydion acquired through his sufferingswhile in the power of the gods of Hades, andin Teutonic story by two draughts of wisdom,one which Woden obtained by guile from Gund-fled, daughter of the giant Suptung, and anotherwhich he could only get by pledging one of hiseyes to its owner Sokk-mimi, the Giant of theAbyss. Each was born of a mysterious, little-known father and mother; each had a love whosename was associated with a symb-eel, whoposed as a maiden and was furiously indignant atthe birth of her children ; and each lost his sonin a curiously similar fashion, and sought forhim sorrowfully to bring him back to the world.Still more striking are the strange myths whichtell how each of them could cyeate human outof vegetable life; Woden made a man and awoman out of trees, while Gwydion enchanteda woman from blossoms as a bride for Lleu,on whom his unnatural mother had laid adestiny that he should never have a wife ofthe people of this earth. But the equation,fascinating though it is, is much discountedby the fact that the only traces we find of

ut s note 2 o following page3


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MYTH0I;OGY O ANCIENT BRITAINGwydion in Britain are a few stories connectedwith certain place-names in the Welsh countiesof Carnarvonshire and Merionethshirc. Thiswould seem to suggest that, like so many ofthe divine figures of the Celts, his fame wasmerely a local one, and that he is more likely tohave been simply the 'lord of Mona and Arvon,'as a Welsh bard calls him, than so great a deityas the Teutonic god he at first sight seems toresemble. His nearest Celtic equivalents me mayfind in the Gaulish Ogmios, figured as a Heracleswho won his way by persuasion rather than byforce, and the Gaelic Ogma, at once championof the Tuatha DQ Danann, god of Literature andEloquence, and inventor of the ogam alphabet.

I t s anothcr of the family of DBn-Arianrod,the goddess of the constellation 'Corona Borealis,'to which she sometime gave her name, whichwas popularly interpreted as Silver Wheel,who appears in connection with Gwydion asthe mother of Lleu, ar Llew, depicted as thehelper of his uncles, CTwydion2 and Arnaethon,

The form Arianrod, inearlier Welsh Armrot, mayhave beenevolved by popul r etymology under the influenoe of ri ssilver).Lleu is sometimes treated as the son of Gwydion andArianrod, thongh thcre is no direct statement to this effect inWelsh liternture, andthe point hasheel elaborated by ProfeasorRhps mainly on the analogy of similar Celtic myths. he act,

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T H E GODS O THE INSULAR CELTSin their battles against the powers of the Under-world. Llew s epith et is law Gyfes, ii. Of the(?)Firm Hand , with which we nlay compare thatof hfccrln ( Of the Long Hand ) borne by theGoidelic deity Lugh, or Lug. This tempts u sto regard the two mythical figures as identical,equating Lleu (Llew) also with the GaulishLiigus. There are, however, considerable d iE -culties in th e way. Phonologically, th e wordLleu or lew cannot be the exact equivalentof Liigus while the restricted character of theplace-names and legends connected with Lleuas a mythic figure mark him as belonging tomuch th e same circle of local tradition as Gwydion.Nor do we know enough about Lleu to be ableto m ake any large comparison between h im andthe Irish Lug. They are alike in th c meaningof their epithets, in their rapid growth after birth,and in their helping the Inore beneficent godsagainst thcir enenlies. But an y such details arewanting with regard to Lleu as those which makethe Irish god so clear-cut and picturesque afigure. Such was th e radiance of Lug s face th a tIlowever that Lleu is found in genealogies as LouhB (LouHen),eon of Guitgb (the 'Gwydyen' of the Bookof Aneurin and tlieBook of Tnliesin), seems to show thatthe idea w s not absolutelyunfamiliar to the Tl'elsh. Far another side of the question seechap. ii. of he Welslb People (Rh s &ndBrynrnor-Jones).

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINit seemed like the sun, and none could gazesteadily a t it. He was the acknowledged masterof all arts, both of war and of peace. Amonghis possessions were a magic spear which slewof itself, and a hound of most wonderful qualities.His rod-sling was seen in heaven as the rainbow,and the Milky Way was called Lug s chain.First accepted as the sun-god of the Goidels, it isnow more usual to regard him as a personificationof fire. There is, however, evidence to show thata certain amount of confusion between the twogreat sources of light and heat is a not unnaturalphenomenon o the myth-making mind.

This similarity in name, title, and attributesbetween Bile and Beli, Danu and Dan, LBr andLip Bron and Bran, Manannitn and Manawyddan,Nuada and Nhdd (or Llildd),(2) Nemon andNAmAtdna, Govannon and Goibniu, and 2) Lugand Lleu has suggested to several competentscholars that the Brythons received them fromthe other branch of the Celts, either by inherit-ance from the Goidels in Britain or by directborrowing from the Goidels of Ireland. Butsuch a case has not yet been made out con-vincingly, nor is it necessary in order to account

The Rig-Vedn, for instance, tells os that A g n i Pire) isSi lrla the Sun) in t he m olning , SRrya is Agni it1 night.26


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THE GODS OF TH INSULAR CELTSfor similar names and myths among kindredraces of the same stock. Whatever may bethe explanation of their likeness, these namesare, after all, but a few taken out of two long listsof divine characters. Naturally, too, deitieswhose attributes are alike appear under differentnames in the myths of the two branches of theCelts. Speeialised gods could have been but fewin type; while their names might vary withevery tribe. Some of these it may be interest-ing to compare briefly, as we have already donein the case of the British Gwydion and the GaelicOgma. The Irish Dagda, whose name (from anearlier Dagod vos),would seem to have meant the'good god,' whose cauldron, called the 'Undry,'fed all the races of the earth, and who playedthe seasons into being with his mystic harp, maybe compared with Ddn's brother, the wise andjust Math, who is represented as a great magicianwho teaches his lore to his nephew Gwydion.Angus, one of the Dagda's sons, whose musiccaused all who heard to follow it, and whosekisses became birds which sang of love, mouldbe, as a divinity of the tender passion, a counter-part of Dwyn, or Dwynwen: the British Venus,

D~uynn~oneans the Blessed Dwyn. h e hur h of thisgoddesa-saint is Llanddsyn in Anglesey7


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINwho was, even by th e later W elsh bards, hymned asthe sa int of love. Brigit, the Dagda s daughter,patroness of poetry, may find her analogue inth e Welsh Kerridwen, the owner of a cauldronof Inspiration and Science. Diancecht Dianket )the Goidelic god of Healing seeins to have nocertain equivalent in Brythonic m yth , bu t Mider,a deity of th e Underworld-though his namewould bring him rather into line with the BritishMedyr, who, however, appears in Welsh romanceonly as a wonderful marksman-may be hereconsidered in connection with Pwyll, the heroof a legendary cycle apparently local to Dyved(th e Roman province of Dem etia, and, roughly,south-west Wales). Pwyll, who may perhaps repre-sent th e same god as the Arawn who is connectedwith him in ~ n y th i c omance, appears as anUnderworld deity, friendly with the children ofLlyr and opposed to the sons of Dbn, an d w ithhim are grouped his wife, Rhiannon in olderCeltic Rigantdna, or G rea t Queen ) an d h isson Prydkri, who succeeds his father as kingof Annwu or Annwvn (th e B ritish Other World),jointly with Manawyddan son of L1j.r. H e isrepresented as th e antagonist of Gwydion, who iseventually his conqueror and slayer.But even th e briefest account of th e Celtic

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THE GODS OF THE INSULAR ELTSgods would be incomplete without some mentionof a second group of figures of British legend,some of whom may have owed their namesto history, with which local myths became incor-porated. These are th e characters of earlyWelsh tradition who appear afterwards as thekings and kn igh ts and ladies of m ediaeval Arthu r-ian romance. There s A rth ur himself, half god,half king, with his queen Gwenhwyvar-whosefather, Tennyson s Leodogran, the King ofCameliard, was the gian t Ogyrvan, patron andperhaps originator of bardism-and Gwalchmaiand Medrawt, who, though they are usually calledhis nephews, seem in older story to have beenconsidered his sons. greater figure in somerespects even than Arthur must have beenMyrddin, a mythical personage douhtlcss to bedistinguished from his namesake the supposedsixth-century bard to whom are attributed thepoems in th e Black Book of Carmarthen. Prom i-nen t, too, are Urien, who sometimes appears as apowerful prince in North Britain, and sonietinlesas a deity with similar attributes to those of B rin ,th e son of Llqr , and ICai, who may have been (asseems likely from a passage in the ilfabinogionstory of Rulhwch and Olwen ) personificationof fire, or the morta l chieftain with whom tradi-

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINtion has associated Caer Gai in Merionethshireand Cai Hir in Glamorganshire. Connected, too,by a loose thread with Arthur s story are thefigures of what is thought to have been theindependant mythic cycle of March (King Mark),his queen Essyllt (Isenlt), and his nephew Drystan,or Trystan, (Sir Tristrem). All thesc, and manyothers, seem to be inhabitants of an obscureborderland where vanishing myth and doubtfulhistory have mingled.

The n~emory f this cycle has passed down intoliving folk-lore among the descendants of thoseRrythons who, fleeing from the Saxon conquerors,found new homes upon the other side of theEnglish Channel. Little Britain has joined withGreat Britain in cherishing thc farne of Arthur,while Myrddin (in Breton, Marzin), described asthe master of all knowledge, owner of all wealth,and lord of Fairyland, can only be the folk-lore representative of a once great deity. Thesetwo stand out clearly; while the other charactersof the Brythonic ~nythology ave lost their indivi-dualities, to merge into the nameless hosts of thedwarfs (Korred), the fairies (Korrigm), and thewater-spirits (Morgan) of Breton popular belief.


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C H A P T E H . I VTHE MYTHIC L HISI OlLY OF IRELANII

ACCORDINGo the early rnonlcish annalists, whosought to nullify the pq an traditions againstwhich thcy fought by turning them into a pseudo-history, Ireland was first inhabited by a ladynamed Cessair and her followers, shortly after theflood. They describe her as a grand-daughter ofNoah; but it is more likely that she representeda tribal goddess or divine ancestress of thepre-Celtic people in Ireland. Whoever she mayhave been, her influence was not lasting. Sheperished, with all her race, leaving a free field toher successors.

We say field with intention for Ireland con-sisted then of only one plain, treeless and grass-less, but watered by three lakes and nine rivers.The race that succeeded Cessair, however, soonset to work to remedy this. Partholon, who

Rh s, Cdt ellicBvitain, Third edition, p. 2883


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MYTHOLOGY OF NCIENT BRITAINlanded with twenty-four males and twenty-fourfemales upon the first of May (the Celtic feast of'Beltaine'), enlarged the island to four plainswith seven new lakes. The newcomers them-selves also increased and multiplied, so that inthree centuries their original forty-eight membershad become five thousand. But, on the threehundredth anniversary of their coming, an epi-demic sprang up which annihilat,ed them. Theygathered together upon the original first-createdplain to die, and the place of their funeral is stillmarked by the mound of Tallaght, near Dublin.

Before these early colonists, Ireland had beeninhabited y a race of demons or giants, describedas monstrous in size and hideous in shape, manyof them being footless and handless, while othershad the heads of animals. Their name Fonz o r ,which means 'under wave,'l and their descentfrom a goddess named Domnu, or 'the Deep,'seem to show them as a personification of the seawaves. To the Celtic mind the sea representeddarkness and death, and the Fo on~oraehappear asthe antithesis of the beneficent gods of light andlife. Partholon and his people had to fight themfor a foothold in Ireland, and did so successfully.


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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELANDThe next immigrants were less fortunate. The

People of Nemed followed the Race of Partholon,and added twelve new plains and four more lakesto Ireland. But, after being scourged by a similarepidemic to that which had destroyed their fore-runners, they found themselves at the mercy ofthe Fomorach, who ordered them to deliver up astribute two-thirds of the children born to them inevery year. I n desperation they attacked thestronghold of the giants upon Tory Island, offthe caast of Donegal, and took it, slaying Conann,one of the Fomor Kings, with many of his followers.But Xlorc, the other king, terribly avenged thisdefeat, and thc Nemedians, reduced to a handfulof thirty, took ship and fled the country.

A new race now came into possession, and herewe seem to find ourselves upon historical ground,however uncertain. These were three tribes calledFir Domnaq~n he Men of Domnu, Fir Cfailidimthe Men of Gailioin and Fir Bolg the Men ofBolg, emigrants, according to the annalists, fromGreece. They are generally considered as havingrepresented to the Gaelic mind the pre-Celticinhabitants of Ireland, and the fact that theirprincipal tribe was called the Men of Domnusuggests that the Fomorach, who are called Godsof Domnu, may have been the divinities of their


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINworship. At any rate, we never find them in con-flict, like the other races, with the gigantic anddemoniac powers. On the contrary, they them-selves and the Fomorach alike struggle against,and are conquered by, the next people to arrive.

These are the Tuatha Q Danann, in whom allserious stndents now rocognise the gods of theCelts in Ireland, and who, as we have seen,parallel the earlier divinities of the Celts inBritain. They are variously fabled to have comefrom the sky, or else from the north or the southof the world. Wherever they came from, theylanded in Ireland upon the same mystic First ofMay, bringing with them their four chief treasures-Nuada s sword, whose blow needed no second,Lug s living lance, which required no hand towield it in battle, the Dagda s cauldron, whosesupply of food never failed, and the mysteriousStone of Destiny, ~vhichwould cry out with ahuman voice to acclaim a rightful king. Thisstone is said by some to be identical ~vith ur ownCoronation Stone at Westminster, which was

brought from Scone by Edward I., but it is moreprobable that it still stands upon the hill of Tara,where it was preserved as a kind of fetish by theearly kings of Ireland. They had not been longBee he oronation Slonc monograph by W F. Skene

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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELANDin occupation of the country before their presencewas discovered by the race in possession. Aftersome parleying and offers to partition the island,a battle, known as that of Moytura-in Irish agTuireadh Plain of the Pillars -was fought nearCoug, in Mayo, in which the Tuatha Dd Dana~lngained the victory. Handing over the provinceof Connaught to the conquered race, they tookpossession of the rest of Ireland, fixing theircapital at the historic Tara, then called Drumcain.

Their conquest, however, still left them with apowerful enemy to face, for the Fomorach werey no means ready to accept their occupation of

the soil. But the Tuatha Dit Danann thought tofind a means of conciliating those hostile powers.Their own iring, Nuada, had lost his right hand inthe battle of lfoytura, and, although i t had beenreplaced by an artifical one of silver, he had,according to the Celtic law which forbade ablemished person to sit upon the throne, beenobliged to renounce the sovereignty. They there-fore sent to Elathan, King of the Fomorach,inviting his son Bress to ally himself with them,and become their ruler. This mas agreed to; anda marriage was made between Bress and Brigitthe daughter of the Dagda, while Clan, son ofDiancecht the god of Medicine, wedded Ethniu,


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MYTHOLOGY O ANCIENT BRITAINthe daughter of a powerful prince of the Fornorachnamed Balor.But Bress soon shelved himself in his trueFolnorian colours. He put excessive taxes uponhis new subjects, and seized for himself the con-trol of all the necessities of life, so that the proudgods were forced to manual labour to obtain foodand warmth. Worse than this even-to theGaelic mind-he hoarded all he got, spendingnone of his wealth in free feasts and public enter-tainments. But at last he put a personal aerontupon Cairbrd son of Ogma, the principal bard ofthe Tuatha D6 Danann, who retorted with asatire so scathing that boils brolie out upon itsvictim s face. Thus Bress himself became blem-ished, and was obliged to abdicate, and Nuada,whose lost hand had meanwhile been replacedby the spells and medicame~lts of a son anddaughter of Diancecht, came forward again totake the Ringship. Bress returned to his under-sea home, and, a t a council of the Fomorach, i tmas decided to make war upon the Tnatha DQDanann, and drive them out of Ireland.

But now a mighty help was coming to thegods. From the marriage of Diancecht s son andBalor s daughter was born a child called Lug, whoswiftly grew proficient in every branch of skill

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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELANDand knowledge, so that he became known as theIoldknach ILcZfina), Master of all Arts.' Hethrew in his lot with his father's people, andorganised the Tuatha D Danann for a greatstruggle. Incidentally, too, he obtained, asblood-fine for the murder of his father at thehands of three grandsons of Ogma, the principalmagic treasures of the world. The story of theirquest is told in the romnnce of 'The Fate of theChildren of Tuireann,' one of the famous ThreeSorrowful Stories of Erin.

Thus, by the time the Fornorach had com-pleted their seven years of preparation, the TuathaD Danann were also ready for battle. Goibniu,the god of Smithcraft, had forged them magicweapons, while Diancecht, the god of Medicine,had made a magic well whose water healed themounded and brought the slain to life. But thiswell mas discovered by the spies of the Fomorach,and a party of them went to it secretly and filledi t with stones.

After a few desultory duels, the great fightbegan on the plain of Carrowmore, near Sligo,the site, no doubt, of some prehistoric battle, thememorials of which still form the finest collection

Translated by ngene O C urry, nd published in vol iv ofAllantis.37


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINof rude stone monum ents in th e world, with theone exception of Carnac. I t is called Moytura th eNorthern-t,o distinguish i t from the otherl wireccclh further to th e south. Great chiefs fellon eithe r side. O g ~ n a illed Iudech , th e son ofthe goddess Domnu, while Balor, the Fomorwhose eye sho t dea th, slew Nuadn, tho King ofthe Tuatha DC Danann. Bu t Lug turned thefortunes of th e fray. W ith a carefully preparedmagic sling-stone he blinded the terrible Balorand, a t the fall of their principal champion, th eFomorach lost h eart, and th e Tuatha D6 Dananndrove them back headlong to th e sea. Bresshimself was captured, and the rule of the Giantsbroken for ever.

But the power of the Tuatha DC Danann wasitself on th e wane. They would seem, indeed, tohave come to Ireland only to prepare the way formen, who were themselves issuant, according tothe universal Celtic tradition, from the same pro-genitor and country as t h e gods.

I n t he Other World dwelt Bile and It h , deitiesof t he dead. From their watch-tower they couldloolr over the earth and see its various regions.Till now they had not noticed Ireland-perhapson account of i ts slow an d gradu al growth-butFergusson Rzcde Stone Monuments, pp. 180 etc.

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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IREL NDat last Ith, on a clear winter's night, descried it.Full of curiosity, he started on a tour of inspec-tion and landed at the mouth of the KenmareRiver. Journeying northwards, he came, withhis followers, upon the Tuatha DB Danann, who\ ere in council at a spot near Londonderry stillcalled Grianan Aileach to choose a now Iring.

Three sons of Ogma were the candidates-MacCuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Grbine. Unable tocome to a decision, the Tuatha Dd Danann calledupon the stranger to arbitrate. He could not, orwould not, do so; and, indeed, his whole attitudeseemed so suspicious that the gods decided tokill him. This they did, but spared his followers,who returned to their own country, calling forvengeance.

Mil&, he son of Bilk, was not slow in answeringtheir appeal. He started for Ireland with hiseight sons and their followers, and arrived thereupon that same mysterious First of May on whichboth Partholon and the Tuatha DQDanann them-selves had first come to Ireland.

Marching through the conntry towards Tara,they met in succession three eponymous god-desses of the country, wives of Mac Cuill, MacCecht, and Mac Grbine. Their names wereBanba, Fotla, and Eriu. Each in turn demanded

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINof Amergin, the druid of the Milesians-as thesefirst legendary Irish Celts are called-chat, in theovent of their success, the island should be calledafter her. Amergin promised i t to them all, but,as Eriu asked last, it is her name (in the genitivecase of Erinn') which has survived. The legendprobably crystallizes what are said to have beenthe three first names of Ireland.Soon they came to the capital and called theTuatha QDanann to a parley. After some dis-cussion it was decided that, as the Milesians wereto blame for not having made due declaration ofwar before invading the country, their propercourse was to retire to their ships and attempta fresh landing. They anchored at 'nine greenwaves distance from the shore, and the TuathaDi. Danann, ranged upon the beach, prepareddruidical spells to prevent their approachingnearer.

ManannBn, son of the Sea, waved his magicmantle and shook an off-shore wind straight intotheir teeth. But Amergin had powerful spells ofhis own. By incantations which have come downto us, and which are said to be the oldest Irishliterary records, he propitiated both the Earthand the Sen, divinities more ancient and morepowerf~il han any anthropomorphic gods, and in

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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELANDthe end a remnant of the Milesians came safelyto shore in the estuary of the Boyne.I n two successive battles they defeated theTuatha Di Danann, whose three kings fell at thehands of the three surviving sons of Mild. Dis-heartened, the gods yielded to the hardly lessdivine ancestors of the Gaels. A treaty of peacewas, however, made with them, by which, inreturn for their surrender of tho soil, they wereto receive worship and sacrifice. Thus beganreligion in Ireland.

Driven from upper earth, they sought for newhomes. Some withdre~vo a Western Paradise-that Elysium of the Celts called Avallon bythe Briton, and by many poetic names by theGael. Others found safe seclusion in under-ground dwellings marked by barrows or hilloclrs.From these sidl~e, s they are called, they took anew name, that of Aes Siclhe, Race of the FairyMounds, and it is by this Litle, sometimesshortened to The Sidhe Slice), that the Irishpeasantry of to-day call the fairies. The bansheeof popular story is none other than the bean-stdhe the fairy woman, the dethroned goddessof the Goidelic mythology.


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C H A P T E R VTHE hIYTHIC L HISTORY O BRIT IN

'WHENBritain first, at Heaven's command, arosefrom out the azure main,' her nanie was ClasMyr dd i n that is, the Place, or Enclosure, ofNerlin. In later days, she became known as'the Honey Isle of Beli, and it was not untilsafely occupied by mankind that she took herpresent designat,ion, from Prydain, son of Aeddthe Great, who first established settled govern-ment. All this is told us by a Welsh Triad, andit is from such hagmentary sources that we gleanthe mythical history of our island.

With these relics me must nialre what we can;for the work has not been done for us in theway that it was done by the mediaeval monkishannalists for Ireland. We find our data scatteredthrough old bardic poems and romances, and inpseudo-hagiologies and hardly less apocryphal

Beli s ms to have been sometimes associated in Welshlegend with t h e seil, which wes called the drinlr of Beli, andits waves Beli s cattle.

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TH MYTHICAL HISTORY OF BRITAINhistories. Yet, without perhaps using more free-dom with our materials than an early writerwould have done, vve can piece them together,and find in them roughly the same story as thatof Ireland-the subjugation of the land by friendlygods for the subsequent use of men.

The greatest bulk of ancient British myth isfound in the Mabinogion-more correctly, the FourBranches of the Mabinogi. These tales evidentlyconsist of fragments of varying myths piecedtogether to inalre a cycle, and Professor Anwyll hasendeavoured with much learning to trace out anddisentangle the original legends. But in the form inwhich the Welsh writer has fixed them, they showa gradoal supersession of other deities by the godswho more especially represent human culture.

The first of the Four Branches deals with theleading incidents in tho life of Psvyll: how hebecame a king in Annwn, the Other World ofthe Welsh; how, by a clever trick, he won hisbride Rhinnnon; the birth of their son PrydBri,and his theft by inysterious powers; the punish-ment incurred by Rhiannon on the false chargeof having eaten hiin; and his recovery and re-storation upon the night of the First of May.

In the second Branch we find PrydBri, grownSee a rerieg o rtiolesin tho Zeilschrif t f ib Oeltische Philo logie43


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINup and married to a wife called lcicva, as theguest of Brin, son of Llfr, at Harlech. Matholmch,King of Ireland, arrives with a fleet to requestthe hand of Br5n s sister, Branwen of the FairBosom. I t is granted, and Branwen sails toIreland. But, later on, news comes that she isbeing badly treated by her husband, and Br2ngoes with an army to avenge her. There is parley,submission, treachery, and battle, out of which,after the slaughter of all the Irish, only sevenof Brh s host remain-Prydkri, Mana~vydrlan,hebard Taliesin, and four others of less known mythicfame. Bran himself is wounded in the foot witha poisoned spear, and in his agony orders theothers to cut off his head and carry it to ,theWhite Mount in London, by which Tower Hillis believed to have been meant. They wereeighty-seven years upon the way, cheered all thewhile by the singing of the Three Birds ofRhiannon, whose music w s so sweet that it wouldrecall the dead to life, and by the agreeable cou-versation of Brkn s severed head. But at lastthey reached the end of their journey, and buriedthe head with its face turned towards France,watching that no foreign foe came to Britain.And here it reposed until Arthur disinterred it,scorning, in his pride of heart, to hold the island


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THE MYTHICAL IIISTORY OF BRITAINotherwise than by valour, a rash act of which theSaxon conquest was the result.The third Mabinogi recounts the further adven-tures of Manawyddan, ~vhomarried the apparentlyold, but no doubt ever youthful, Rhiannon, motherof his friend PrydBri, and of PrydBri himself andhis wife Kicva. During their absence in Irelandtheir kinsmen had all been slain by Caswalla~vn,a son of Beli, and their kingdom taken fromthem by the Children of D8n. The four fngitiveswere compelled to live a homeless nomadic life,and it is the spiriting away by magic ofRhiannon and Prydbri and their recovery by thecraft of Mana~vyddanwhich forms the subject ofIhe tale.With the fourth Branch the Children of UAncome into a prominence which they keep to theend. They are shown as dwelling together a tCaer Dathyl, an unidentified spot in the nioun-tains of Csrnarvonshire, and ruled over by Math,UGn s brother. There are two chief incidents ofthe story. The first tells of the birth of the twinsons of Gwydion s sister, Arianrod-Dylan, appar-ently a marine deity,l who, as soon as he mas

P~ ofessorRhfa is inclined to see in him a deity of UarLness opposed to the god of Light i b b e ~ tLcc tu~es p. 387.See in this conneotion p 32 of the present book.

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MYTHOLOGY O ANCIENT BRITAINborn, disappeared into the sea, where he swam aswell as any fish, and Lleu, who 7vas fostered andbrought up by Gwydion; the rage of Arianrodwhen she found her intrigue made public, andher refusal of name, arms, or a wife to her un-wished-for son; the craft by which Gxvydion ob-tained for him those three essentials of a man slife; the infidelity of the damsel whom Mkth andGwydion had created for Lleu by charms andillusion out of the blossoms of the oak, and theblossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of themeadow-sweet, and his enchantment into aneagle by the cunning of her lover; the wander-ings of Gwydion in search of his protBgk, and hiseventual recovery of him; and the vengeancetaken by Lleu upon the man and by Gwydionupon the woman. The second relates the comingof pigs to Britain as a gift from Arawn, Kingof Aimwn, to PrydBri; their fraudulent acquisitiorlby Gwydion the war which followed the theft;and the death of PrydBri through the superiorstrength and magic of the great son of Dan.

These Four Branches of the Mabinogi thusgive a consecutive, if incon~plete, istory of someof the most important of the Brythonic gods.There are, however, other isolated legends fromwhich we can add to the information they afford.

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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY O BRITAINWe learn more of the details of Gwydion'sstruggles with his enemies. I n his first attemptshe seerns to have been unfortunate. Trespassingupon Hades, he was caught by Pwyll and PrydBri,and imprisoned in a mysterious island called CaerSidi. I t was the sufferings he endured there whichrnade him a poet, and any one who aspires to asimilar gift may try to gain it, it is said, by sleep-ing out either upon the top of Cader Idris orunder the Black Stone of the Arddu upon t,heside of Snowdon, for from that night of terrorshe will return either inspired or mad.But Gwydion escaped from his enemies, andwe find him victorious in the strange conflictcalled ad Godtlez~ he 'Battle of the Trees.'His brother Amaethon and his nephew Lleuwere with him, and they fought against Br&nand Arawn. We learn from various traditionshow the sons of D8n ch~nged he forms of theelementary trees and sedges into warriors howGwydion overcame the magic power of Br n byguessing his name; and how, by the defeat ofthe powers of the Underworld, three boons werewon for man-the dog, the deer, and some birdwhose name s translated as 'lapwing.'But now a fresh protagonist comes upon thescene-the famous Arthur, whose history and

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINeven existence have been involved in so muchdoubt. The word Arthur, of which several vary-ing explanations have been attempted, is nowheld to have been originally ArtCrizcs, a recog-nised Latin name found on inscriptions, and asArtGqaius in Juvenal, which would make hima Romanised Briton who, like Inany others ofhis period, adopted a Latin designation. Hispolitical pro~ninence, mplied not only by thetraditions which malie hixu a supreme war-leaderof the Britons, but also by the fact that he isdescribed in a twelfth century Welsh MS asEmperor (umher~~wclyr), hile his contempor-aries, however high in rank, are only princes(gwledig), may be due, as Professor Rhgs hassuggested, to his having filled, after the with-drawal of the Romans, a position equivalent totheir Comes Britc~nniae. But his legendary fameis hardly to be explained except upon the sup-position that the fabled exploits of a god or godsperhaps of somewhat similar name havc becomeconfounded with his own, as seerns to have also hap-pened in the case of Dietrich von Bern (Theodoricthe Goth) and the Gaulish Toutibrix. An inscrip-tion has been found at Beaucroissant, in the valleyof the IsBre, to Mercmius Artaios, while the name

Sts biea in the rthzwiax Legend p 78


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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY O BRITAINArtio appears elsewhere within the limits ofancient Gaul as that of a goddess These namesmay have been derived from either of two Celticroots, ar meaning 'to plough,' which would sug-gest a deity or deities of agriculture, or artsignifying a bear, as an animal worshipped atsome remote period in the history of the Celts.Probably we shall never know exactly whatdiverse local rnyths have been woven into thestoiy of Arthur, but they would doubtless be ofthe kind usually attributed to those divine bene-factors known as 'Culture Heroes,' and it is tobe noted that, in the earliest accounts we haveof him, his character and attributes are extremelylike those of another culture hero, Gwydion sonof D6n.Like Gwydion, he suffered imprisonment at thehands of his enemies. He was for three nightsin the Castle of Oeth and AnnoethX-the grue-some structure of human bones built by Mana-wyddan son of Ll r in Gower-'and three nightsin the prison of (?)Wen Pendragon,' and threenights in the dark prison under the stone,' aTriad tells us. Like Gwydion, too, he went pig-stealing, but he was neither so lucky nor so

Fi ofessor Anwyl suggests that this name may have beenoriginally Uthr Bendragon i e Bran. Seep. 71D 9


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINcrafty as his predecessor. W hen h e had designsupon the swine of March son of Meirchion (theKing Mark of the romances) which Trystanwas herding, he could not get, says anotherTriad, even one pig. But in the end he suc-ceeded wholly. An old W elsh poem tells us of

his Spoiling of Annwn PreiddeuAnnwn andhis capture of the magic cauldro~lof its Ring,though, like Brkn himself when he went toIreland, he brought back with him from his ex-pedition only seven of th e men who, a t starting ,had been thrice enough to ill Prydmen, hisship.

Bot, having accomplished this, he seems tohave had the other, and perhaps older, gods athis fee t LlBdd, according to Triads, was one ofhis Three Chief War Knights, and Arawn one ofhis Three Chief Counselling Knights. I n thestory of the hunting of the mild boar TwrchTrwyth, a quest in the course of which heacquired the Treasures of Britain, he is servedno t only by Amaethon and G ovannon, sons ofDbn, but also by the same Manawyddan who hadbeen his gaoler and another whilom king inHades, Gwyn son of NBdd. This tale, like itssimilar in Gaelic m yth, th e F a te of the Children

Book of Taliesin, poem xxx. Skene, vol i p. 2565


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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY O BRITAINof Tuireann,' is a long one, and the reader isreferred to Lady Guest's i k b i n o g i o ~or the fullstory, which a good judge has acclaimed to be,saving the finest tales of the Arabian Nights,

the greatest romantic fairy tale the world hasever kno~vn.'~The pursuit of wondrous pigsseems to have been an important feature ofArthur's career. Besides the boar Trwyth, heassenibled his hosts to capture a sow called Hen-men, which led him through the length of Wales.Wherever she went she dropped the germs ofwealth for Britain-three grains of wheat andthree bees, a grain of barley, a little pig, and agrain of rye. But she left evils behind her as~vell, a wolf cub and an eaglet which causedtrouble afterwards, as well as a kitten which grewup to be 'the Palug Cat,' famous as one of the'Three Plagues of the Isle of Mona.'

Of what rnay have been historical elements inhis story, the Triads also take notice. We learnhow Arthur and Medra~vtraided each olher'scourts during the owner's absence, and that thebattle of Camlan was one of the 'Three Frivolous

Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his notes to his edition 1902) of LndyGuest s MabinogionThis oreature is also mentioned in an Artliuris*~~oem inthe twe l f t h century Black ook of Carmarthen.

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINBattles of Britain,' because during it the twoantagonists thrice shared their forces, and thatthe usual 'Three' alone escaped from it, thoughArthur himself is, in spite of the triadic conven-tion, added as a fourth.

So he vanishes, passing to Avilion (Avallon),and the end of the divine age is also marked bythe similar departure of his associate Myrddin, orMerlin, to an island beyond the sunset, accom-panied by nine bards bearing with them thosewondrons talismans, the Thirteen Treasures.Britain was now ready for her Britons.

In Gwlkd yr H v, the 'Land o Summer'-aname for the Brythonic Other World-dwelt theancestors of the Cymry, rulcd over by a divinehero called Ha Gadarn ('the Mighty'), and thetime mas ripe for their corning to our island.

Apparently we have a similar legend tothe story of the conquest of Ireland from theTuatha DQ Dauann by the Milesians, thoughthere is here no hint of fighting, it being, onthe contrary, stated in a Triad that Ha obtainedhis dominion over Britain not by war and blood-shed, but by justice and peace. He instructedhis people in the art of agriculture, divided theminto federated tribes as a first step towards civilgovernment, and laid the foundations of literature


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THE MYTHICAL HISTORY O F BRITAINand history by the institution of bardism. H eput a stop to disastrous floods by dragging out ofthe lake where i t concealed itself th e dragon-Iilremonster which caused them, and, after the watershad subsided, he ~ v as he first to draw on Britishsoil furrow with a plough. Therefore he iscalled the first of the Three National Pil lars ofthe Isle of Britain, th e second being the Prydainwho gave her his name, while the third was themythical legislator Uyvmval Moelrnud, who re-duced to a system the laws, customs, maxims, andprivileges appertaining to a country and nation.


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C H P T E R V ITHE HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTER

~ addition to the myths of the Tuatha DP.Danann, and the not less apocryphal stories ofher early Milesian kings, Ireland has evolvedtwo heroic cycles. The completest, and in someways the most interesting, of these deals with thepalmy days of the then Kingdom of Ulster duringthe reign of Conchobar Concchc~r) Iac Nessa,whom the early annalists place at about the begin-ning oi the Christian era. But, precise as thisstatement sounds and vividly as the Championsof the Red J3ranch: as Xing Conchobar's braveswere called, are depicted for us by the story-tellers, there is probably little, if any, foundationof fact in their legends. We may discern in theirgenealogies and the stories of their births theclue to their real nature. Their chief figuresdraw descent from the Tuatha QDanann, andare twice described in the oldest manuscripts as

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HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTERterrestrial gods. One may compare then1 with

th e divinely descended heroes of the Greeks.Th e sagas, or romances, which make up th eUlster cycle are found mainly in three manu-scripts, th e Book of th e D un Cow and th e Bookof Leinster, both of which date from the begin-ning of tho twelfth centu ry, and the Yellow Bookof Lecan, assigned to t he end of the fourteenth.Th e longest slid u~osLm portan t of lhem is linownas the hin d C h u c ~ i l g ~ ethe Cattle Raid ofCooley ) the chief figure of which is th e famousCuchulainn, or Cuchullin, th e son of Conchobar ssister Dechtire bjr Lug of th e Tua tha QDanann.

Cuchulainn, indeed, for t i s s im t~ s heros Scott o n~m s the real cen tre of t he whole cycle. I tis very doubtful whether he ever had actualexistence. H is att rib ute s and adventures are ofth e type usually recorded of what are calledsolar heroes. W hen in his full strength noone could loolr h im in th e face without blinking.The heat of his body melted snow and boiledwater. I t was g is ( taboo ) to him to behold thosea. Th e antago nists whom he conquers are oftensuspiciously like mythological personifications ofthe dark shades of night.

H e was first called Seta nta, but i t was whilehe was still quite a child that he changed his55


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINname to C Ct~ulainu 'Hound of Culann') asthe result of an exploit in which he lrilled thewatch-dog of the chief srnith of Ulster, an d after-wards acted as its substitute until another couldbe procured and trained.

Other stories of his you th tell how he assumedarrns a t th e age of seven, and slew three championswho had se t all the warriors of U lster a t defiance;how he tr a ~ e ll e d o Alba (Scotland) to learn th ehighest skill in arms from ScBthach, the W arrior-Witch who gave her name to the Isle of Skye;how h e carried off h is bride Emer Avuir) n theteeth of a host ; and how, by success in a seriesof terrible tests, h e gained th e right to be calledHead-Champion of Ulster.But them isolated sagas are only external toth e real core of the cycle, th e Thin Bd Chuailgne.This is the story of a war which the other fourkingdom s of Ireland-Meath, Munster, Leinsterand Connaught-made upon Ulste r at th e biddingof Medb Maive),he Amazon-Queen of th e 1:tst-named province, to obtain possession of s magicbull called The Brown of Cualgne. I t s interes tlies i n no promiscuous battles in which th e deedsof an individual warrior are dmarfed by those ofhis compeers. Fo r th e mythic raid was under-taken at a time when all Conchobar's warriors

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HEROIC CYCLE OF ANCIENT ULSTERvere lying under a strange magic meakness mhichincapacitated them from fighting. Anthropo-logists tend to see in this mysterious infirmity adistorted lnemory of th e primitive custom of thecouvade and mythologists the helplessness ofthe gods o vegetation and agriculture during th ewint.er, while the storytellers attr ibu te it to acurse once laid upon Ulster by the goddess Macha.But when the land seemed most at its enemy'smercy, the heroic Cuchulainn, who for some un-explained reason was not subject to he sameincapacity s h is fello~v-tribesmen, tood np todefend it single-handed. For three months heheld the marches against all comers, fighting afresh champion every day, and the story of thehin consists mainly of a long series of duels inwhich exponents of every savage ar t of war orwitchcraft are sent against him,-each to be de-feated in his turn . Over this tremendous struggle

hover the figures of th e Tuatha Di Danann.Lug, Cuchulainn's divine father, comes to heal hisson's wounds, and the fierce Mbrrigu, queen ofbattle, is moved to offer so unrivalled a hero herlove. A short-lived pathos illumines the story inthe tale of his combat with his old friend andsworn companion, Ferdiad, who, drugged withlove and wine, had rashly pledged his word to

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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINtalre up the standing challenge. After a threedays' duel, during which the courtesies exchangedbetween the two combatants are not excelled inany tale of lnediaeval chivalry, Cuchulainn givesthe death-lslom Lo tho foe who is still his friend.When he sees him at his feet, he bursts intopassionate lament. I t was all a game and asport until Ferdiad came; the memory of thisday will be like a cloud hanging over me for ever.'But the victory ended his perilous labours; for themen of Ulster, at last shaking off' their wealiness,came down and dispersed their enemies.

Other stories of the cycle tell of such episodesas Cuchulainn's unwitting slaying of his only sonin single combat, an old Aryan motif which wefind also in Teutonic and Persian myth, or hisvisit to the Celtic Other World, and his lovcadventure with Fand, the deserted wife of Manann nson of L r until at last the mass of legendswhich make up a complete story of the hero'scareer are closed with the tragedy of his doathupon the plain of iVIuirthenm8.

I t was planned by Medb with the sons andrelations of the chicfs whom Cuchulainn hadlrilled in battle, and no stone was left unturned tocompass his downfall. Three witches who hadbeen to Alba and Babylon to learn all the sorcery


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HEROIC CYCLE O F NCIENT ULSTERof the world deceive him with magic shows, anddraw him out alone into the open; he is trickedinto breaking his tc~booby eating the flesh of adog-his name-sake, says the story, but perhapsalso his totem; satirists demand his favonriteweapons, threatening to lanlpoon his family if herefuses; and thus, stripped of material and super-natural aid, he is attaclred by overwhelmingnumbers. But, though signs and portents an-nounce his doom, there is no shadow of chang-ing in the hero s indomitable heart. TIToundedto the death, he binds himself with his belt to apillar-stone, so that he may die standing; and,even after he has drawn his last breath, hissword, falling from his grasp, chops off the handof the enemy who has come to take his head.

Out of the seventy-six stories of the Ulstercycle which have come down to us, no less thansixteen are personal to Cuchulainn. But the otherheroes are not altogether forgotten, though theirlists are compamtively short. Most of these taleshave beer1 already translated, and, talren together,they form a narrative which is almost epic in itscompleteness and interest.

list of ills trrles extant and lost, of tile Ulster Cyelc willbe found Appendix I of Miss Eleanor Hull s Oucl~ullinSagaLondon 1898

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MYTHOLOGY O F ANCIENT BRITAINProbably its growth was gradual, and spreadover a considerable time. Some of the redactors,too, have evidently had a hand in recasting the

pagan m yth s of Ulster for th e purposes ofChristian edification. W e are told with startlin ginconsistency how Cuchnlainn , going to his la stfight, heard th e angels hym ning in Heaven, con-fessed t.he true faith, and mas cheered by thecertain ty of salvation. The Tragical Dea th ofConchobar, in the Book of the Dun Cow relateshow th a t king died of wrath and sorrow a t learn-ing of th e Passion of Christ. Another story fromth e same source, entitled T h e Ph antom Chariot,shows us Cuchulainn, conjured from th e dead byS t. Patrick, testifying to th e t r u th of Christianitybefore an Irish king. B ut such interpolations dono t affect th e real m at te r of th e cycle, whichpresents us with a picture of th e Celts of Ire landa t an age perhaps contemporary with Caesar sinvasion of her sister isle of Britain.


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C H P T E R V I ITH BENIAN OR OSSIANIC SAGAS

THEsecond of the two Gaelic heroic cyclcs presentscertain striking contrasts to the first. I t depicts

quite different stage of human culture; forwhile the Ulster stories deal with chariot-drivingchiefs ruling over settled communities from forti-fied dbns the Fenian sagas mirror under a faintdisguise the lives of nomad hunters in primevalwoods. The especial possession not of any onetribal community but of the folk it is commonto the two Goidelic countries being as native toScotland as to Ireland. Moreover it has thedistinction unique among early literatures ofbeing still a living tradition. So firmly rooted arethe memories of Finn and his heroes in the mindsof the Gaelic peasantry that there is t proverb tothe effect that if the Fenians found that they hadnot been spoken of for a day they would risefrom the dead.

6 1


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MYTHOLOGY OF NCIENT BRITAINI t may be well here to remove a few possible

misconceptions concerning these sagas and theirheroes. The word Fenian in popular parlanceis applied to certain political agitators of recentnotoriety. But those Fenians merely assumedtheir title from the tradition that the originalFianna PBma)were a band of patriots sworn tothe defence of Ireland. With regard, too, to thesecond title of Ossianic which the romances andpoems which make up the cjrcle bear, it must notbe taken that the Fenian hero Ossian was theirauthor, an idea perhaps suggested by the prose-poem of James MacPherson, which, though doubt-less founded upon genuine Gaelic material, wasalmost certainly that writer s own composition.Some of the poetical pieces are, indeed, rightly or~vrongly ttributed to Ossian, as some are to Finnhimself, but the bulk of the poems and all theprose tales are, like the sagas of the Ulster cycle,by unknown authors. A few of them are foundin the earliest Irish manuscripts, but there hasbeen continuous stream of literary treatment ofthem, and they have also been handed down asfolk-tales by oral tradition.

The cycle as a whole deals with the history andadvenlures of a band of warriors who are describedas having formed a standing force, in the pay of

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THE F E N I N OR OSSI NIC S G Sthe High Kings of Tara, to protect Ireland, bothfrom internal trouble a11d foreign invasion. Theearly annalists were quite certain of their historicalreality, and dated their existence as a body from3 B C to 284 A.D . while even so late and sounda scholar as Eugene O Cury gave his opinionthat Film himself was as undoubtedly historical acharacter as Julius Caesar.Modern Celtic students, however, tend to reversethis view. The name Fionn or Finn, meaningwhite, or fair, appears elsewhere as that of amythical ancestor of the Gaels. His father s nameCumhal (Cot~l),according to Professor Rhjs, isidentical with CEtmtilos and the German immel(Heaven). The same writer is inclined to equateFionn mac Cumhail with Gwyn ab Xtidd, nWhite son of Sky who, me have seen, was a

British god of the Other World, and, afterwards,king of the Welsh fairies? But there may havebeen a historical nucleus of the Fenian cycle intowhich myths of gods and heroes became incor-porated.

This possible starting-point would shorn us aroving band of ~ i c k e dsoldiers, followii~g thechase in summer, quartered on the towns in

Rhps Hibhert Lectures pp. 178 179 But these identifica-tions are conteatcd.63


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MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAINminter, bu t always ready to march, at the biddingof th e H igh King of Ireland, to quell any dis-turbance or to meet any foreign foe. For a timeall goes smoothly. But at last their exactionsrouse the people against them , and their prideaffronts the king. Dissensions leading to inter-necine strife break out among themselves, and,taking advantage of these, king and people makecommon cause and destroy them.I n the romances, this seed of decay is sownbefore the bir th of Finn . H is fathe r Com halbanishes Go11 GauL),head of the powerful clan ofMorna. Goll goes into exile but returns, defeatsand lcills Curnhal, and disperses the clan of BaoisgneBadin),his tribe. But Cumhal s posthumousson is brought up in secret, is trained to manlyfeats, and, as the reward of a deed of prowess, iscalled upon by the High Icing to claim a boon.I ask only for my lawful inheritance, says theyonth, and tells his name. The king insists upon

Go11 admitting Finn s righ ts, and so he becomesleader of the Fenians. But, in the end , thesmouldering enmity breaks out, and, after thedeath of Goll, the rest of the clan of Morna goover to th e H igh King of Ireland-CairbrB, son ofthe Cormac who had restored Finn to his heritage.The disastrous battle of Gavra is fought, in which

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THE FENIAN OR OSSIANIC SAGASCairbrB himself falls, while the Fenians are practi-cally annihilnted.But attached to this possibly historical nucleusis a Inass of tales which may well have once beenindependent of it. Their actors are the principalfigures of the Fenian chivalry-Fionn Fi?zn) im-self, h

archibald constable - the mythology of ancient britain and ireland 1906

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