the mythology of ancient britain andirseland 1 - 4.pdfby many centuries were the celts-the...

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENTBRITAIN AND IRSELAND

C H A P T E R I

THE CELTS AND THEIR MYTHOLOGY

‘ THE Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland.’This title will possibly at first sight suggest tothe reader who has been brought up to considerhimself essentially an Anglo-Saxon only a fewdim memories of Tiw, of Woden, of Thunor(Thor), and of Prig, those Saxon deities who havebeclueathed to us the names of four of the days ofour week1 Yet the traces of the English 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-

1 Tiwesdreg, Wddnesdsg, Thnnresdceg (later, Thurresdsg),and Frigedsg. Sster(n)esdzeg is adapted from the Latin,Saturni dies.

A I

MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

logy, the tradition of which, though obscured, hasnever been quite lost. In such familiar names as‘ Ludgate,’ called after a legendary ‘good kingLud’ who was once the Celtic god LlQdd; 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 mythology 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 subject, Mr. Nicholson, inthe preface to his Keltic Researches.l ‘There isgood ground to believe,’ he says, ‘ that Lancashire,West Yorkshire, 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: &u&es in the History and Dikbutionof the Ancient Goidelic Language and Peoples, by EdwardWilliams Byron Nicholson, M.A. ; London, 1904.

2


shire, Gloucestershire, Devon, Dorset, North-amptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshireare more so-and equal to North Wales andLeinster ; while Buckinghamshire and Hertford-shire exceed even this degree and are on a levelwith South Wales and Ulster. Cornwall, ofcourse, is more Keltic than any other Englishcounty, and as much so as Argyll, Inverness-shire, or Connaught.’ If these statements arewell founded, Celt and Teuton must be veryequally woven into the fabric of the Britishnation.

But even the Celts themselves were not thefirst inhabitants of our islands. Their earliestarrivals found men already in possession. Wemeet with their relics in the ‘long barrows,’ anddeduce from them a short, dark, long-skullcd raceof slight physique and in a relatively low stage ofcivilisation. Its origin is uncertain, and so is allwe think we know of it, and, though it must havegreatly influenced Aryan-Celtic custom and myth,it would be hard to put a finger definitely uponany point where the two different cultures havemet and blended.

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

3


tion 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 that tongue-Goidelic, or Gaelic,and Brythonic, or British. Of these the Goidelswere the earlier, their first settlers having arrivedat some period between 1000 and 500 B.C., whilethe Brythons, or Britt6nes, seem to have appearedabout the third century B.C., steadily encroachingupon and ousting their forerunners. With theBrythons must be considered the Belgze, whomade, still later, an extensive invasion of SouthernBritain, but who seem to have been eventuallyassimilated to, or absorbed in, the Brythons, towhom they were, at any rate linguistically, mucha1~in.l In physique, as well as in language, therewas probably a difference between the Brythonsand 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

1 Rhfs, Celtic Britaiy, 1904, and Rh@ and Brynmor-Jones,The Welsh People, 1906.

4


nearest 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 be added certain peopleof West Britain, whose dark complexions andcurly hair caused Tacitus to regard them asimmigrants from Spain, and who probably belongedeither wholly or largely to the aboriginal st0ck.l

We have no records of the clash and counter-clash of savage warfare which must, if this theorybe taken as correct, have marked, first, the con-quest of the aborigines by the Goidels, andafterwards the displacement of the Goidels bythe later branches of the Celts. Nor do weknow when or how the Goidels crossed fromBritain to Ireland. All that we can state withapproximate certainty is that at the time of theRoman domination 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, the.West Highlands of Scotland,2 the primitive dark

1 Tacitus, Ayricola, chap, xi.a It is, however, held by others that the Goidels of Scotland

did not reach that country (from Ireland) before the Christianera.

5


race being still found in certain portions of Irelandand of West Britain, and in Scotland north of theGrampian Hills.

It 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 them from six different sources:(1) Dedications to Celtic divinities upon altarsand 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 hist,ories -notably that of Geoffrey ofMonmouth, written in the twelfth century-which consist largely of mythical matter dis-guised as a record of the ancient British kings ;(4) Early hagiology, in which the myths of godsof the pagan Goidels and Brythons have beentaken over by the ecclesiasts and fathered uponthe patron saints of the Celtic Church ; (5) Thegroundwork of British bardic tradition upon

6


which 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 must here be spared to show thereader the nature of the mediaeval manuscriptsjust mentioned. They consist of larger or smallervellum or parchment volumes, into which thescribe of a great family or of a monastery labori-ously copied whatever lore, godly or worldly, wasdeemed most worthy of perpetuation. They thuscontain very varied matter :-portions of the Bible ;lives 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 been the gods of an earlier age.The most famous of them are, in Irish, the Booksof the 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 date

7


from 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 year 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 pagansthey were ; while their Welsh congeners pose askings or knights, or even as dignitaries of theChristian Church. But the more primitive, lessadulterated, Irish myths 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 it is oftenpoetic and lofty, and, in its disguise of Arthurianromance, it has influenced modern art and litera-ture only less potently than that mighty inspira-tion-the mythology of Ancient Greece.

8

C H A P T E R I I

THE GODS OF THE CONTINENTAL CELTS

BUT before approaching the myths of the Celts ofGreat Britain and Ireland, we must briefly glanceat the mythology of the Celts of ContinentalEurope, that Gallia from which Goidels andBrythons alike came. From 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 classicwriters, especially by Julius Caesar in his Com-mentaries on the Gallic War.

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

9

MYTHOLOGY. OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

merchants. Next comes Apollo, the divinehealer, and he is followed by Minerva, the teacherof useful trades, by Jupiter, who rules the sky,and by Mars, the director of battles.1 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 own ; hence it is thatin the inscriptions discovered in Gaul, and indeedin our own islands, me find the names of Celticdivinities preceded by those of the Roman godsthey were considered to resemble :-as MercuriusArtaios, Apollo Grannos, Minerva Belisima,Jupiter Sticellos, and Mars Camtilos.

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 it in modernFrance. Costly statues stood in his honour ;one, of massive silver, was dug up in the gardensof the Luxembourg, while another, made in bronzeby a Greek artist for the great temple of the

’ De Belle G&co, iv. 17.

IO


Arverni upon the summit of the Puy de Dome, issaid to have stood a hundred and twenty feethigh, and to have taken ten years to finish. Yetit would seem to have been rather for the war-godthat some at least of the warlike Gauls reservedtheir chief worship. The regard in which he washeld is proved by two of his names or titles:-Rig%&mos (‘ Most Royal,‘) and Albierix (‘Kingof the World ‘). Much honour, too, must havebeen paid to a Gaulish Apollo, Grannos, lordof healing waters, from whom Aix-la-Chapelle(anciently called Aquae Granni), Graux and EauxGraunnes, in the Vosges, and Granheim, in Wtir-temburg, took their names, for we are told byDion Cassius 1 that the Roman Emperor Caracallainvoked him as the equal of the better-knownAesculapius and Serapis. Another Gaulish‘ Apollo,’ Tout&ix (’ Lord of the People ‘) haswon, however, a far wider, if somewhat vicariousfame. Accidentally confounded with Theodoricthe Goth, his mythical achievements are, in allprobability, responsible for the wilder legendsconnected with that historical hero under his titleof Dietrich von Bern.2

But the gods of the Continental Celts are being

l lxxvii. 15.z RI& Hibbert Lectures for 1886, pp. 30-32.

I I


treated in this series 1 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 wemeet with personages whose names and attributesidentify them with divinities 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 TuathaDe Danann, while a second-century Greek 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 was 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, a lesson

1 Celtic Religion, by Professor E. Anwyl, to whom the writerhere takes the opportunity of gratefully acknowledging his in-debtedness for valuable help towards the making of this book.

12


not yet quite forgotten by the Celt.’ In theContinental Lagus, whose name still clings to thecities of Lyons, Laon, and Leyden, all ancientlycalled Lfig-itdunum (‘LEgus’s town ‘), we mayclaim to see that important figure of the Goideliclegends, Lug of the Long Hand. With theGaulish goddess Brigindu, of whom mention ismade in a dedicatory tablet found at Volnay,near Beaune, we may connect Brigit, the IrishMinerva or Vesta who passed down into saint-ship as Saint Bridget. The war-god2 C&miilosis possibly found in Ireland as Cumhal (Co&),father of the famous Finn ; in Belinus, an apocry-phal British king who reappears in romance asBalm of the Mode Darthwr, we probably have theGaulish Belenos, whom the Latin writer Ausoniusmentions as a sun-god served by Druids ; whileMaptpdnos, identified by the Romans with Apollo,we find in the Welsh stories as Mabon son ofModron (Matrona), a companion of Arthur.

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

1 Rh$s, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 13-20.2 CLmtilus seems to have been a more important god than his

Roman equation with Mars (p. 10) suggests. Professor Rhpscalls him a ‘Mars-Jupiter.’ Cf.pp. 11,20-21, and 63 of this book.

I3

C H A P T E R I I I

THE GODS OF THE INSULAR CELTS

IT would be impossible, in so small a space as wecan afford, to mention all, or indeed any but afew, of the swarming 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 names and attributesare very largely common to both the Goidels andthe Brythons. In the old Gaelic literature theyare called the Tuatha De Danann (TOO&X duedommn), the ‘Tribe of the Goddess Danu,’ andin the Welsh documents, the ‘Children of Don’and the ‘Children of Llyr.’

Danu-or Donu, as the name is sometimesspelt-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-

14


what similar name, Anu or Ana, worshipped inMunster as a goddess of prosperity and abun-dance: who was likewise described as the motherof the Irish Pantheon--’ Well she used to cherishthe gods,’ wrote a commentator on a ninth-centuryIrish glossary.2 Turning to the British mytho-logy, we find that some of the principal figuresin what seems to be its oldest stratum are calledsons or daughters of Dan : Gwydion son of Don ;Govannon son of Don ; Arianrod daughter ofDon. But Arianrod is also termed the daughterof Beli, which makes it reasonably probable thatBeli, who otherwise appears as a mythical kingof the Brythons, was considered to be Don’sconsort. His Gaelic counterpart is perhaps Bile,the ancestor of the Milesians, the 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 Caesar3 tells us the Gaulsbelieved themselves to be descended, the two

1 Coir Anmann. ‘ The Choice of Names.’ Translated by Dr.Whitley Stokes in Irischs Texte.

z Cormao’s Cflossary. Translated by O’Donovan and editedby Stokes.

3 De Belle Gal&co, vi. 18.

15


shadowy pairs, Bile and Danu, Beli and Don,standing for the divine Father and Mother alikeof gods and men.

Ll$r, the head of the other family, appears inGaelic myths as LBr (gelz. Lir), both names pro-bably meaning (the Sea.’ Though ranked amongthe Tuatha DB Danann, L&r seems to descendfrom a different line, and plays little part in thestories of the earlier history of the Irish gods,though he is prominent in what are perhapsequally ancient legends concerning Finn and theFenians. On the other hand, there are detailsconcerning the British Ll$r which suggest thathe may have been borrowed by the Brythonsfrom the Goidels. His wife is called Iwerydd(Ireland), and he himself is termed Lljrr Llediaith,i.e. ‘ Ll@ of the Half-Tongue,’ which is supposedto mean that his language oould be but imper-fectly understood. He gave its name to Leicester,originally Llgr-cestre, called in Welsh Caer Lyr,while, through Geoffrey of Monmouth, he hasbecome Shakespeare’s ‘ King Lear,’ and is foundin hagiology as the head of the first of the‘Three Chief Holy Families of the Isle ofBritain.’

Both L&r and Llfrr are, however, better knownto mythology by their sons than from their own

1 6

THE GODS 0%’ THZ INSULAR CELTS

exploits. We find the Gaelic Bron mat Lir andManannBn mat Lir paralleling the British B&nab Ll$r and Manawyddan ab Llfr. Of the IrishBron we know nothing, except that he gave hisname to a place called Mag Bron (’ Bran’s Plain ‘),but B&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 mediaevalpoem 1 put into the mouth of the sixth-centuryWelsh poet Taliesin, to be himself a bard, aharper, a player upon the cr&th, and seven scoreother musicians all at once. He is a king inHades with whom the sons of D6n fight’to obtainthe treasures of the Underworld, and, paradoxi-cally enough, has passed down into ecclesiasticallegend as ‘the Blessed B&n, who brought Chris-tianity from Rome to Britain.

Turning to the brothers of Bron and Br$n, itis of the Irish god this time that we have thefullest account. Manannan mat Lir has always

1 ‘ Book of Taliesin,’ poem xlviii., in Skene’s Few AncientBooks of Wales, vol. i. p. 297.

B I7


been one of the most vivid of the figures of theTuatha De Danann. 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 wasinvoked by them as ‘The Lord of Headlands,’while the merchants claimed that he was thefounder of their guild. He was connected especi-tally 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. A 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.

18


One of his achievements was the building, in thepeninsula of Gower, of the Fortress of Oeth andAnnoeth, which is described as a gruesome prisonmade of human bones ; and in it he is said tohave incarcerated no less a person than thefamous Arthur.

Whether or not we may take the children ofLlyr to have been gods of the sea, we can hardlygo wrong in considering the children of Don ashaving come to be regarded as deities of the sky.Constellations bore their names - Cassiopeia’sChair was called Don’s Court (Llys Do”%), theNorthern Crown, Arianrod’s Castle (Caer Arian-rod), and the Milky Way, the Castle of Gwydion(Caer Gwydiom). Taken as a whole, they do notpresent such close analogies to the Irish TuathaDk Danann as do the Children of Llyr. Never-theless, there are striking parallels extending towhat would seem to have been some of thegreatest of their gods. In Irish myth we findNuada Argetlam, and in British, NGdd, or LlQddLlaw Ereint, both epithets having the same mean-ing of the ‘Silver Hand.’ What it signified wedo not know; in Irish literature there is a lamestory to account for it (see p. 35), but if therewas a kindred British version it has been lost.But the attributes of both Nuada and Nfidd


(Llndd) show them as the kind of deity whomthe Romans would have equated with theirJupiter. Nuada rules over the Tuatha DeDanann, while LlQdd, or Nndd, appears as amythical British king, who changed the nameof his favourite city from Trinovantum (Geoffrey’s‘ New Troy ‘) to Caer Ludd, which afterwards be-came London. He is said to have been buried atLudgate, a legend which we may perhaps connectwith the tradition that a temple of the Britonsformerly occupied the site of St. Paul’s Howeverthis may be, we know that he was worshippedat Lydney in Gloucestershire, for the ruins ofhis sanctuary have been discovered there, withvaried inscriptions to him as DEVO NODENTI, D.M.

NODOKTI, and DEO NUDENTE M., as well as a smallplaque of bronze, probably representing him,which shows us a youthful figure, with headsurrounded by solar rays, standing in a four-horsechariot, and attended by two winged genii andtwo Trit0ns.l The (Y ’ of the inscription mayhave read in f~dl MAGNO, MAXIMO, or, more pro-bably: YARTI, which would be the Roman, orRomano-British, way of describing the god as the

1 A monograph on the subject, entitled Roma?a Antiquitiesat Lydney Park, CTZoucestershire, by the Rev. W. II. Bathurst,was published in 1879.

2 Professor Rhfs, following Dr. Hiibner.

2 0


warrior he appears as in Irish legend. Withhim, though not necessarily as his consort, wemust rank a goddess of war whose name, Morrigu(the ‘Great Queen ‘), attests her importance,and who may have been the same as Macha(‘Battle’), Badb (’ Carrion Crow ‘), and Nemon(’ Venomous ‘), whose name suggests comparisonwith the British NgmZ%6na,1 a war-goddess towhom an inscription has been found at Bath.The wife of Lludd, however, in Welsh myth iscalled Gwyar, but her name also implies fighting,for it means ‘gore.‘2 The children of both theGaelic and the British god play noteworthy partsin Celtic legend. Tadg (Teugue), son of Nuada,was the grandfather, upon his mother’s side, ofthe famous Finn mat Coul. Gwyn, son of Nudd,originally a deity of the Underworld, has passeddown into living folk-lore as king of the TylwythTeg, the Welsh fairies.

Another of the sons of Don whom we also findin the ranks of the Tuatha De Danann is thegod of Smith-craft, Govannon3 in Irish Goibniu(yen. Goibnenn). The Gaelic deity appears in

1 The two are identified by the French scholar, M. Gaidoz,but the equation is not everywhere upheld.

2 Rhgs, Studies in the A&~m’nn Legend, p. 169.3 Also called in Welsh, ‘Govynion H8n.’ H&z means ‘The

Ancient.’

2 1


mythical 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. Of his British analoguewe know less, but he is found, in company withhis brother Amaethon, the god of Husbandry,engaging in a wonderful feat of agriculture atthe bidding of Arthur,

But, greater than any of the other sons ofDon 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 conjecture whetherhe may not have been identical with a stillgreater figure, the Teutonic Woden, or Odin.Professor Rhfs, especially, has drawn, in hisHibbert Lectures (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

l Pp. 282-304.

22


at 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 symbolic wheel, who.,,-posed as a maiden and was furiously indignant atthe birth of her children ; and each lost his son lin 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 create 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

1 But see note 2 on following page.

23


Gwydion in Britain are a few stories connectedwith certain place-names in the Welsh countiesof Carnarvonshire and Merionethshire. 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 we mayfind in the Gaulish Ogm?os, figured as a Heracleswho won his way by persuasion rather than byforce, and the Gaelic Ogma, at once championof the Tuatha De Danann, god of Literature andEloquence, and inventor of the ogam alphabet.

It is another of the family of Don-Arianrod,the goddess of the constellation ( Corona Borealis,’to which she sometime gave her name, whichwas popularly interpreted as ‘ Silver Wheel,’ lwho appears in connection with Gwydion asthe mother of Lleu, or Llew, depicted as thehelper of his uncles, Gwydion2 and Amaethon,

1 The form Arianrod, in earlier Welsh Aranrot, may have beenevolved by popular etymology under the influence of arian(silver).

a Lieu is sometimes treated as the son of Gwydion andArianrod, though there is no direct statement to this effect inWelsh literature, and the point has been elaborated by ProfessorRhys mainly on the analogy of similar Celtic myths. The fact,

24


in their battles against the powers of the Under-world. Llew’s epithet is Llaw Gyfis, i.e. ‘ Of the(?) Firm Hand,’ with which we may compare thatof L&W&& (’ Of the Long Hand ‘) borne by theGoidelic deity Lugh, or Lug. This tempts usto regard the two mythical figures as identical,equating Lleu (Llew) also with the GaulishLilgus. There are, however, considerable difii-culties in the way. Phonologically, the wordLle2c or Llew cannot be the exact equivalentof Ltigzcs, while the restricted character of theplace-names and legends connected with Lleuas a mythic figure mark him as belonging tomuch the same circle of local tradition as Gwydion.Nor do we know enough about Lleu to be ableto make any large comparison between him andthe Irish Lug. They are alike in the meaningof their epithets, in their rapid growth after birth,and in their helping the more beneficent godsagainst their enemies. But any such details arewanting with regard to Lleu as those which makethe Irish god so clear-cut and picturesque afigure. Such was the radiance of Lug’s face that

however, that Lleu is found in genealogies as ‘ Louh6 (Lou H&n),son of Guitg6 ’ (the ‘ Gwydyen ’ of the Book of Aneurin and theBook of Taliesin), seems to show that the idea was not absolutelyunfamiliar to the Welsh. For another side of the question seechap. ii. of The Welsh People (Rh$s and Brynmor-Jones).

25


it seemed like the sun, and none could gazesteadily at 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 of the myth-making mind.l

This similarity in name, title, and attributesbetween Bile and Beli, Danu and D8n, L&r andLl$r, Bron and Bran, Manann&n and Manawyddan,Nuada and NBdd (or LlCldd), (1) Nemon andNgmgttjna, 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

1 The Rig-Veda, for instance, tells UFJ that ’ Agni (Fire) isSRrya (the Sun) in the molning, SEirgs is Agni at night.’

26


for 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. Specialised 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 Dagodevos), 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 DBn’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, wouldbe, as a divinity of the tender passion, a counter-part of Dwyn, or Dwynwen,l the British Venus,

’ Dwynwen means ‘the Blessed Dwyn.’ The church of thisgoddess-saint is Llanddwyn in Anglesey.

27


who was, even by the later Welsh bards, hymned asthe ‘saint of love.’ Brigit, the Dagda’s daughter,patroness of poetry, may find her analogue inthe Welsh Kerridwen, the owner of a ‘cauldronof Inspiration and Science.’ Diancecht (Diadcet)the Goidelic god of Healing seems to have nocertain equivalent in Brythonic myth, but Mider,a deity of the 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(the Roman province of Demetia, and,,roughly,south-west Wales), Pwyll, who may perhaps repre-sent the same god as the Arawn who is connectedwith him in mythic romance, appears as anUnderworld deity, friendly with the children ofLlyr and opposed to the sons of Don, and withhim are grouped his wife, Rhiannon (in olderCeltic Rigantona, or ‘ Great Queen ‘) and hisson Pryderi, who succeeds his father as kingof Annwn or Annwvn (the British Other World),jointly with Manawyddan son of Ll$r. He isrepresented as the antagonist of Gwydion, who iseventually his conqueror and slayer,

But even the briefest account of the Celtic28


gods 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 the characters of earlyWelsh tradition who appear afterwards as thekings and knights and ladies of mediaeval Arthur-ian romance. There is Arthur himself, half god,half king, with his queen Gwenhwyvar-whosefather, Tennyson’s ‘ Leodogran, the King ofCameliard,’ was the giant 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. A greater figure in somerespects even than Arthur must have beenMyrddin, a mythical personage doubtless to bedistinguished from his namesake the supposedsixth-century bard to whom are attributed thepoems in the Black Book of Carmarthen. Promi-nent, too, are Urien, who sometimes appears as apowerful prince in North Britain, and sometimesas a deity with similar attributes to those of Bran,the son of Llyr, and Kai, who may have been (asseems likely from a passage in the Mubilzogiolzstory of ( Kulhwch and Olwen ‘) a personificationof fire, or the mortal chieftain with whom tradi-

29


tion 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 (Iseult), and his nephew Drystan,or Trystan, (Sir Tristrem). All these, and manyothers, seem to be inhabitants of an obscureborderland where vanishing myth and doubtfulhistory have mingled.

The memory of this cycle has passed down intoliving folk-lore among the descendants of thoseBrythons who, fleeing from the Saxon conquerors,found new homes upon the other side of theEnglish Channel. Little Britain has joined withGreat Britain in cherishing the fame 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 mythology have lost their indivi-dualities, to merge into the nameless hosts of thedwarfs (Korred), the fairies (Korrigan), and thewater-spirits (JJoyga7t) of Breton popular belief.

30

C H A P T E R I V

THE MYTHICAL HISTORY OF IRELAND

ACCORDING to the early monkish annalists, whosought to nullify the pagan traditions againstwhich they 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 1reland.l 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

1 Rhju, CeZtic B&&z, Third edition, p. 288.

31


landed 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 by 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 $‘onaor,which means ‘under wave,’ l and their descentfrom a goddess named Domnu, or ’ the Deep,’ 2seem to show them as a personification of the seawaves. To the Celtic mind the sea representeddarkness and death, and the J’onaoruclz appear 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.

1 Rh@, Hibbert Lectums, p. 594.a Ibid., p. 598.

32


The next immigrants were less fortunate. ThePeople 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. In desperation they attacked thestronghold of the giants upon Tory Island, offthe coast of Donegal, and took it, slaying Conann,one of the Fomor Kings, with many of his followers.But More, the other king, terribly avenged thisdefeat, and the 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 calledF&r Domw,a?zm, the ’ Men of Domnu,’ F+r Baili&%,the ‘ Men of Gailioin ’ and l%r 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 Domnu ’suggests that the Fomorach, who are called ’ Godsof Domnu,’ may have been the divinities of their

C 33

MYTKOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN

worship. 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 De Danann, in whom allserious students now recognise 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 mysterious‘Stone of Destiny,’ which would cry out with ahuman voice to acclaim a rightful king. Thisstone is said by some to be identical with our own’ Coronation Stone ’ at Westminster, which wasbrought 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 1reland.l They had not been long

1 See The Coronation Stone. A monograph by W. F. Skene,

34


in 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 ,VagT&readlz, ’ Plain of the Pillars ‘-was fought nearGong, in Mayo, in which the Tuatha De Dananngained 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 wereby no means ready to accept their occupation ofthe soil. But the Tuatha De Danann thought tofind a means of conciliating those hostile powers.Their own king, Nuada, had lost his right hand inthe battle of Moytura, and, although it 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 was agreed to; anda marriage was made between Bress and Brigitthe daughter of the Dagda, while Cian, a son ofDiancecht the god of Medicine, wedded Ethniu,

3 5


the daughter of a powerful prince of the Fomorachnamed Balor.

But Bress soon showed himself in his trueFomorian 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 affrontupon Cairbrd son of Ogma, the principal bard ofthe Tuatha .DB Danann, who retorted with asatire so scathing that boils broke 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 medicaments of a son anddaughter of Diancecht, came forward again totake the Kingship. Bress returned to his under-sea home, and, at a council of the Fomorach, itwas decided to make war upon the Tuatha DBDanann, and drive them out of Ireland.

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

36


and knowledge, so that he became known as theIoldanach (1Zd~rza), ‘Master of all Arts.’ Hethrew in his lot with his father’s people, andorganised the Tuatha De Danann for a greatstruggle. Incidentally, too, he obtained, as ablood-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 romance of ‘The Fate of theChildren of Tuireann,’ one of the famous ‘ThreeSorrowful Stories of Erin.’ 1

Thus, by the time the Fomorach had com-pleted their seven years of preparation, the TuathaDe 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 thewounded and brought the slain to life. But thiswell was discovered by the spies of the Fomorach,and a party of them went to it secretly and filledit 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

1 Translated by Eugene O’Curry, and published in vol. iv. ofAtlantis.

37


of rude stone monuments in the world, with theone exception of Carnac.l It is called Moytura theNorthern-to distinguish it from the other iVagTuirecdh further to the south. Great chiefs fellon either side. Ogma killed Indech, the son ofthe goddess Domnu, while Balor, the Fomorwhose eye shot death, slew Nuada, the King ofthe Tuatha DB Danann. But Lug turned thefortunes of the fray. With a carefully preparedmagic sling-stone he blinded the terrible Balorand, at the fall of their principal champion, thePomorach lost heart, and the Tuatha DB Dananndrove them back headlong to the sea. Bresshimself was captured, and the rule of the Giantsbroken for ever.

But the power of the Tuatha D6 Danann wasitself on the 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 the gods.

In the Other World dwelt Bile and Ith, deitiesof the dead. From their watch-tower they couldlook over the earth and see its various regions.Till now they had not noticed Ireland-perhapson account of its slow and gradual growth-but

1 Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments, pp. 180, etc.

38


at 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, whoWere in council at a spot near Londonderry stillcalled Grianan Aileach to choose a new king.

Three sons of Ogma were the candidates-MacCuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac GrBine. Unable tocome to a decision, the Tuatha DB Dannnn 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.

MilB, the son of BilB, 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 DB Danann them-selves had first come to Ireland.

Marching through the country 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

39


of Amergin, the druid of the Milesians-as thesefirst legendary Irish Celts are called-that, in theevent of their success, the island should be calledafter her. Amergin promised it 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 DQ Danann 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 TuathaDe Danann, ranged upon the beach, prepareddruidical spells to prevent their approachingnearer.

Manannan, 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 Sea, divinities more ancient and morepowerful than any anthropomorphic gods, and in

40


the end a remnant of the Milesians came safelyto shore in the estuary of the Boyne.

In two successive battles they defeated theTuatha De Danann, whose three kings fell at thehands of the three surviving sons of Mile. 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 the soil, they wereto receive worship and sacrifice. Thus beganreligion in Ireland.

Driven from upper earth, they sought for newhomes. Some withdrew to a Western Paradise-that Elysium of the Celts called Avnllon bythe Briton, and by many poetic names by theGael. Others found safe seclusion in under-ground dwellings marked by barrows or hillocks.From these sidhe, as they are called, they took anew name, that of Aes Sidhe, ‘Race of the FairyMounds, and it is by this title, sometimesshortened to ‘ The Sidhe ’ @%ee), that the Irishpeasantry of to-day call the fairies. The ‘banshee’of popular story is none other than the bean-s$ddhe, the ‘fairy woman,’ the dethroned goddessof the Goidelic mythology.

41

the mythology of ancient britain andirseland 1 - 4.pdfby many centuries were the celts-the...

Documents