XXV. DÉIRDRE
One of the key-stone stories of the Red Branch Cycle is Déirdre, or the Fate of the Children of Usnach. Cuchulain, though he appears in this saga, is not a prominent figure in it. This piece is perhaps the finest, most pathetic, and best-conceived of any in the whole range of our literature. But like much of that literature it exists in the most various recensions, and there are different accounts given of the death of all the principal characters.
This saga commences with the birth of Déirdre. King Conor and his Ultonians had gone to drink and feast in the house of Felim, Conor's chief story-teller, and during their stay there Felim's wife gives birth to a daughter. Cathba the Druid prophesies concerning the infant, and foretells that much woe and great calamities shall yet come upon Ulster because of her. He names her Déirdre.[1] The Ultonians are smitten with horror at his prophecies, and order her to be instantly put to death. The most ancient text, that of the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, tells the beginning of this saga exceedingly tersely.
"'Let the girl be slain,' cried the warriors. 'Not so,' said King Conor, 'but bring ye her to me to-morrow; she shall be brought up as I shall order, and she shall be the woman whom I shall marry.' The Ultonians ventured not to contradict the King; they did as he commanded.
"Déirdre was brought up in Conor's house. She became the handsomest maiden in Ireland. She was reared in a house apart: no man was allowed to see her until she should become Conor's wife. No one was permitted to enter the house except her tutor, her nurse, and Lavarcam,[2] whom they ventured not to keep out, for she was a druidess magician whose incantations they feared.
"One winter day Déirdre's tutor slew a young tender calf upon the snow outside the house, which he was to cook for his pupil. She beheld a raven drinking the blood upon the snow. She said to Lavarcam, 'The only man I could love would be one who should have those three colours, hair black as the raven, cheeks red as the blood, body white as the snow.' 'Thou hast an opportunity,' answered Lavarcam, 'the man whom thou desirest is not far off, he is close to thee in the palace itself; he is Naesi, son of Usnach.' 'I shall not be happy,' answered Déirdre, 'until I have seen him.'"
This famous story "which is known," as Dr. Cameron puts it, "over all the lands of the Gael, both in Ireland and Scotland,"[3] has been more fortunate than any other in the whole range of Irish literature, for it has engaged the attention of, and been edited from different texts by, nearly every great Celtic scholar of this century.[4] Yet I luckily discovered last year in the museum in Belfast by far the amplest and most graphic version of them all, bound up with some other pieces of different dates. It was copied at the end of the last or the beginning of the present century by a northern scribe, from a copy which must have been fairly old to judge from the language and from the glosses in the margin. I give here a literal translation of the opening of the story from this manuscript, and it is an admirable example of the later extension and embellishment of the ancient texts.
THE OPENING OF THE FATE OF THE SONS OF USNACH, FROM A MS. IN THE BELFAST MUSEUM.
"Once upon a time Conor, son of Fachtna, and the nobles of the Red Branch, went to a feast to the house of Feidhlim, the son of Doll, the king's principal story-teller; and the King and people were merry and light hearted, eating that feast in the house of the principal story-teller, with gentle music of the musicians, and with the melody of the voices of the bards and the ollavs, with the delight of the speech and ancient tales of the sages, and of those who read the keenes (?) (written on) flags and books; (listening) to the prognostications of the druids and of those who numbered the moon and stars. And at the time when the assembly were merry and pleasant in general it chanced that Feidhlim's wife bore a beautiful, well-shaped daughter, during the feast. Up rises expeditiously the gentle Cathfaidh, the Head-druid of Erin, who chanced to be present in the assembly at that time, and a bundle of his ancient ...? fairy books in his left hand with him, and out he goes on the border of the rath to minutely observe and closely scrutinise the clouds of the air, the position of the stars and the age of the moon, to gain a prognostication and a knowledge of the fate that was in store for the child who was born there. Cathfaidh then returns quickly to all in presence of the King and told them an omen and prophecy, that many hurts and losses should come to the province of Ulster on account of the girl that was born there. On the nobles of Ulster receiving this prophecy they resolved on the plan of destroying the infant, and the heroes of the Red Branch bade slay her without delay.
"'Let it not be so done,' says the King; 'it is not laudable to fight against fate, and woe to him who would destroy an innocent infant, for agreeable is the appearance and the laugh of the child; alas! it were a pity to quench her (life). Observe, O ye Nobles of Ulster, and listen to me, O ye valiant heroes of the Red Branch, and understand that I still submit to the omen of the prophecies and foretellings of the seers, but yet I do not submit to, nor do I praise, the committing of a base deed, or a deed of treachery, in the hope of quenching the anger of the power of the elements. If it be a fate which it is not possible to avoid, give ye, each of you, death to himself, but do not shed the blood of the innocent infant, for it were not (our) due (to have) prosperity thereafter. I proclaim to you, moreover, O ye nobles of Emania, that I take the girl under my own protection from henceforth, and if I and she live and last, it may be that I shall have her as my one-wife and gentle consort. Therefore, I assure the men of Erin by the securities of the moon and sun, that any one who would venture to destroy her either now or again, shall neither live nor last, if I survive her.'
"The nobles of Ulster, and every one in general listened silent and mute, until Conall Cearnach, Fergus mac Roigh, and the heroes of the Red Branch rose up together, and 'twas what they said, 'O High-king of Ulster, right is thy judgment, and it is (our) due to observe it, and let it be thy will that is done.'
"As for the girl, Conor took her under his own protection, and placed her in a moat apart, to be brought up by his nurse, whose name was Lavarcam, in a fortress of the Red Branch, and Conor and Cathfaidh the druid gave her the name of Déirdre. Afterwards Déirdre was being generously nurtured under Lavarcam and (other) ladies, perfecting her in every science that was fitting for the daughter of a high prince, until she grew up a blossom-bearing sapling, and until her beauty was beyond every degree surpassing. Moreover, she was nurtured with excessive luxury of meat and drink that her stature and ripeness might be the greater for it, and that she might be the sooner marriageable. This is how Déirdre's abode was (situated, namely) in a fortress of the Branch, according to the King's command, every (aperture for) light closed in the front of the dún, and the windows of the back (ordered) to be open. A beautiful orchard full of fruit (lay) at the back of the fort, in which Déirdre might be walking for a while under the eye of her tutor at the beginning and the end of the day; under the shade of the fresh boughs and branches, and by the side of a running, meandering stream that was winding softly through the middle of the walled garden. A high, tremendous difficult wall, not easy to surmount, (was) surrounding that spacious habitation, and four savage man-hounds (sent) from Conor (were) on constant guard there, and his life were in peril for the man who would venture to approach it. For it was not permitted to any male to come next nor near Déirdre, nor even to look at her, but (only) to her tutor, whose name was Cailcin, and to King Conor himself. Prosperous was Conor's sway, and valiant was the fame (i.e., famous was the valour) of the Red Branch, defending the province of Ulster against foreigners and against every other province in Erin in his time, and there were no three in the household of Emania or throughout all Banba [Ireland] more brilliant than the sons of Uisneach, nor heroes of higher fame than they, Naoise [Neeshă], Ainle, and Ardan.
"As for Déirdre, when she was fourteen years of age she was found marriageable and Conor designed to take her to his own royal couch. About this time a sadness and a heavy flood of melancholy lay upon the young queen, without gentle sleep, without sufficient food, without sprightliness--as had been her wont.
"Until it chanced of a day, while snow lay (on the ground), in the winter, that Cailcin, Déirdre's tutor, went to kill a calf to get ready food for her, and after shedding the blood of the calf out upon the snow, a raven stoops upon it to drink it, and as Déirdre perceives that, and she watching through a window of the fortress, she heaved a heavy sigh so that Cailcin heard her. 'Wherefore thy melancholy, girl?' said he. 'Alas that I have not yon thing as I see it,' said she. 'Thou shalt have that if it be possible,' said he, drawing his hand dexterously so that he gave an unerring cast of his knife at the raven, so that he cut one foot off it. And after that he takes up the bird and throws it over near Déirdre. The girl starts at once, and fell into a faint, until Lavarcam came up to help her. 'Why art thou as I see thee, dear girl,' said she, 'for thy countenance is pitiable ever since yesterday?' 'A desire that came to me,' said Déirdre. 'What is that desire?' said Lavarcam. 'Three colours that I saw,' said Déirdre, 'namely, the blackness of the raven, the redness of the blood, and the whiteness of the snow.' 'It is easy to get that for thee now,' said Lavarcam, and arose (and went) out without delay, and she gathered the full of a vessel of snow, and half the full of a cup of the calf's blood, and she pulls three feathers out of the wing of the raven. And she laid them down on the table before the girl. Déirdre began as though she were eating the snow and lazily tasting the blood with the top of the raven's feather, and her nurse closely scrutinising her, until Déirdre asked Lavarcam to leave her alone by herself for a while. Lavarcam departs, and again returns, and this is how she found Déirdre--shaping a ball of snow in the likeness of a man's head and mottling it with the top of the raven's feather out of the blood of the calf, and putting the small black plumage as hair upon it, and she never perceived her nurse examining her until she had finished. 'Whose likeness is that?' said Lavarcam. Déirdre starts and she said,'It is a work easily destroyed.' 'That work is a great wonder to me, girl,' said Lavarcam, 'because it was not thy wont to draw pictures of a man, (and) it was not permitted to the women of Emania to teach thee any similitude but that of Conor only.' 'I saw a face in my dream,' said Déirdre, 'that was of brighter countenance than the King's face, or Cailcin's, and it was in it that I saw the three colours that pained me, namely, the whiteness of the snow on his skin, the blackness of the raven on his hair, and the redness of the blood upon his countenance, and oh woe! my life will not last, unless I get my desire.' 'Alas for thy desire, my darling,' said Lavarcam. 'My desire, O gentle nurse,' said Déirdre. 'Alas! 'tis a pity thy desire, it is difficult to get it,' said Lavarcam, 'for fast and close is the fortress of the Branch, and high and difficult is the enclosure round about, and [there is] the sharp watch of the fierce man-hounds in it.' 'The hounds are no danger to us,' said Déirdre. 'Where did you behold that face?' said Lavarcam. 'In a dream yesterday,' said Déirdre, and she weeping, after hiding her face in her nurse's bosom, and shedding tears plentifully. 'Rise up from me, dear pupil,' said Lavarcam, 'and restrain thy tears henceforth till thou eatest food and takest a drink, and after Cailcin's eating his meal we shall talk together about the dream.' Her nurse raises Déirdre's head, 'Take courage, daughter,' said she, 'and be patient, for I am certain that thou shalt get thy desire, for according to human age and life, Conor's time beside thee is not (to be) long or lasting.'
"After Lavarcam's departing from her, she [Lavarcam] perceived a green mantle hung in the front of a closed-up window on the head of a brass club and the point of a spear thrust through the wall of the mansion. Lavarcam puts her hand to it so that it readily came away with her, and stones and moss fell down after it, so that the light of day, and the grassy lawn, and the Champion's Plain in front of the mansion, and the heroes at their feats of activity became visible. 'I understand, now, my pupil,' said Lavarcam, 'that it was here you saw that dream.' But Déirdre did not answer her. Her nurse left food and ale on the table before Déirdre, and departed from her without speaking, for the boring-through of the window did not please Lavarcam, for fear of Conor or of Cailcin coming to the knowledge of it. As for Déirdre, she ate not her food, but she quenched her thirst out of a goblet of ale, and she takes with her the flesh of the calf, after covering it under a corner of her mantle, and she went to her tutor and asks leave of him to go out for a while (and walk) at the back of the mansion. 'The day is cold, and there is snow darkening in (the air) daughter,' said Cailcin, 'but you can walk for a while under the shelter of the walls of the mansion, but mind the house of the hounds.'
"Déirdre went out, and no stop was made by her until she passed down through the middle of the snow to where the den of the man-hounds was, and as soon as the hounds recognised her and the smell of the meat they did not touch her, and they made no barking till she divided her food amongst them, and she returns into the house afterwards. Thereupon came Lavarcam, and found Déirdre lying upon one side of her couch, and she sighing heavily and shedding tears. Her nurse stood silent for a while observing her, till her heart was softened to compassion and her anger departed from her. She stretched out her hand, and 'twas what she said, 'Rise up, modest daughter, that we may be talking about the dream, and tell me did you ever see that black hero before yesterday?' 'White hero, gentle nurse, hero of the pleasant crimson cheeks,' said Déirdre. 'Tell me without falsehood,' said Lavarcam, 'did you ever see that warrior before yesterday, or before you bored through the window-work with the head of a spear and with a brass club, and till you looked out through it on the warriors of the Branch when they were at their feats of activity on the Champion Plain, and till you saw all the dreams you spoke of?' Déirdre hides her head in her nurse's bosom, weeping, till she said, 'Oh, gentle mother and nurturer of my heart, do not tell that to my tutor; and I shall not conceal from thee that I saw him on the lawn of Emania, playing games with the boys, and learning feats of valour, and och! he had the beautiful countenance at that time, and very lovely was it yesterday (too).' 'Daughter,' said Lavarcam, 'you did not see the boys on the green of Emania from the time you were seven years of age, and that is seven years ago.' 'Seven bitter years,' said Déirdre, 'since I beheld the delight of the green and the playing of the boys, and surely, too, Naoise surpassed all the youths of Emania.' 'Naoise, the son of Uisneach?' said Lavarcam. 'Naoise is his name, as he told me,' said Déirdre, 'but I did not ask whose son he was.' 'As he told you!' said Lavarcam. 'As he told me,' said Déirdre, 'when he made a throw of a ball, by a miss-cast, backwards transversely over the heads of the band of maidens that were standing on the edge of the green, and I rose from amongst them all, till I lifted the ball, and I delivered it to him, and he pressed my hand joyously.' 'He pressed your hand, girl!' said Lavarcam. 'He pressed it lovingly, and said that he would see me again, but it was difficult for him, and I did not see him since until yesterday, and oh, gentle nurse, if you wish me to be alive take a message to him from me, and tell him to come to visit me and talk with me secretly to-night without the knowledge of Cailcin or any other person.' 'Oh, girl,' said Lavarcam, it is a very dangerous attempt to gain the quenching of thy desire [being in peril] from the anger of the King, and under the sharp watch of Cailcin, considering the fierceness of the savage man-hounds, and considering the difficulty of (scaling) the enclosure round about.' 'The hounds are no danger to us,' said Déirdre. 'Then, too,' said Lavarcam, 'great is Conor's love for the children of Uisneach, and there is not in the Red Branch a hero dearer to him than Naoise.' 'If he be the son of Uisneach,' said Déirdre, 'I heard the report of him from the women of Emania, and that great are his own territories in the West of Alba, outside of Conor's sway, and, gentle nurse, go to find Naoise, and you can tell him how I am, and how much greater my love for him is than for Conor.' 'Tell him that yourself if you can,' said Lavarcam, and she went out thereupon to seek Naoise till he was found, and till he came with her to Déirdre's dwelling in the beginning of the night, without Cailcin's knowledge. When Naoise beheld the splendour of the girl's countenance he is filled with a flood of love, and Déirdre beseeches him to take her and escape to Alba. But Naoise thought that too hazardous, for fear of Conor. But in the course (?) of the night Déirdre won him over, so that he consented to her, and they determined to depart on the night of the morrow.
"Déirdre escaped in the middle of the night without the knowledge of her tutor or her nurse, for Naoise came at that time and his two brothers along with him, so that he bored a gap at the back of the hounds' den, for the dogs were dead already through poison from Déirdre.
"They lifted the girl over the walls, through every rough impediment, so that her mantle and the extremity of her dress were all tattered, and he set her upon the back of a steed, and no stop was made by them till (they reached) Sliabh Fuaid and Finn-charn of the watch, till they came to the harbour and went aboard a ship and were driven by a south wind across the ocean-waters and over the back-ridges of the deep sea to Loch n-Eathaigh in the west of Alba, and thrice fifty valiant champions [sailed] along with them, namely, fifty with each of the three brothers, Naoise, Ainle, and Ardan."
The three brothers and Déirdre lived for a long time happily in Scotland and rose to great favour and power with the King, until he discovered the existence of the beautiful Déirdre, whom they had carefully kept concealed lest he should desire her for his wife. This discovery drives them forth again, and they live by hunting in the highlands and islands.
It is only at this point that most of the modern copies, such as that published by O'Flanagan in 1808, begin, namely, with a feast of King Conor's, in which he asks his household and all the warriors of Ulster who are present, whether they are aware of anything lacking to his palace in Emania. They all reply that to them it seems perfect. "Not so to me," answers Conor, "I know of a great want which presseth upon you, namely, three renowned youths, the three luminaries of the valour of the Gaels, the three beautiful, noble sons of Usnach, to be wanting to you on account of any woman in the world." "Dared we say that," said they, "long since would we have said it."
Conor thereupon proposes to send ambassadors to them to solicit their return. He takes Conall Cearnach apart and asks him if he will go, and what would he do should the sons of Usnach be slain while under his protection. Conall answers that he would slay without mercy any Ultonian who dared to touch one of them. So does Cuchulain. Fergus mac Róigh alone promises not to injure the King himself should he touch them, but any other Ultonian who should wrong them must die. Fergus and his two sons sailed to Alba, commissioned to proclaim peace to the sons of Usnach and bring them home. Having landed, Fergus gives forth the cry of a "mighty man of chace." Naoise and Déirdre were sitting together in their hunting booth playing at chess. Naoise heard the cry and said, "I hear the call of a man of Erin." "That was not the call of a man of Erin," said Déirdre, "but the call of a man of Alba." Twice again did Fergus shout, and twice did Déirdre insist that it was not the cry of a man of Erin. At last Naoise recognises the voice of Fergus, and sends his brother to meet him. Then Déirdre confesses that she had recognised the call of Fergus from the beginning. "Why didst thou conceal it then, my queen?" said Naoise. "A vision I had last night," said Déirdre, "for three birds came to us from Emania having three sups of honey in their beaks, and they left them with us, but they took with them three sups of our blood." "And how readest thou that, my queen," said Naoise. "It is," said Déirdre, "the coming of Fergus to us with a peaceful message from Conor, for honey is not more sweet than the peaceful message of the false man."
But all is of no avail. Fergus and his sons arrive and spend the night with the children of Usnach, and despite of all that Déirdre can do, she sees them slowly win her husband round to their side, and inspire him with a desire to return once more to Erin.
Next morning they embark. Déirdre weeps and utters lamentations; she sings her bitter regret at leaving the scenes where she had been so happy.
"Delightful land," she sang, "yon eastern land, Alba, with its wonders. I had never come hither out of it had I not come with Naoise....
"The Vale of Laidh, Oh in the Vale of Laidh, I used to sleep under soft coverlet; fish and venison and the fat of the badger were my repast in the Vale of Laidh.
"The Vale of Masan, oh the Vale of Masan, high its harts-tongue, fair its stalks, we used to enjoy a rocking sleep above the grassy verge of Masan.[5]
"The vale of Eiti, oh the vale of Eiti! In it I raised my first house, lovely was its wood (when seen) on rising, the milking-house of the sun was the vale of Eiti.
"Glendarua, oh Glendarua! my love to every one who enjoys it; sweet the voice of the cuckoo upon bending bough upon the cliff above Glendarua.
"Dear is Droighin over the strong shore. Dear are its waters over pure sand; I would never have come from it had I not come with my love."
She ceased to sing, the vessel approached the shore, and the fugitives are landed once more in Erin. But dangers thicken round them. Through a strategy of King Conor's Fergus is placed under geasa or tabu by a man called Barach to stay and partake of a feast with him, and thus detached from the sons of Usnach, who are left alone with his two sons instead. Then Déirdre again uses all her influence with her husband and his brothers to sail to Rathlin and wait there until they can be rejoined by Fergus, but she does not prevail. After that she has a terrifying dream, and tells it to them, but Naoise answered lightly in verse--
"Thy mouth pronounceth not but evil, O maiden, beautiful, incomparable; The venom of thy delicate ruby mouth Fall on the hateful furious foreigners."
Thereafter, as they advanced farther upon their way towards King Conor's palace at Emania, the omens of evil grow thicker still, and all Déirdre's terrors are re-awakened by the rising of a blood-red cloud.
"'O Naoise, view the cloud That I see here on the sky, I see over Emania green A chilling cloud of blood-tinged red.
I have caught alarm from the cloud I see here in the sky, It is like a gore-clot of blood, The cloud terrific very-thin.'"
And she urged them to turn aside to Cuchulain's palace at Dundalgan, and remain under that hero's safeguard till Fergus could rejoin them. But she cannot persuade the others that the treachery which she herself sees so clearly is really intended. Her last despairing attempt is made as they come in sight of the royal city; she tells them that if, when they arrive, they are admitted into the mansion in which King Conor is feasting with the nobles of Ulster round him, they are safe, but if they are on any pretext quartered by the King in the House of the Red Branch, they may be certain of treachery. They are sent to the House of the Red Branch, and not admitted among the King's revellers, on the pretended grounds that the Red Branch is better prepared for strangers, and that its larder and its cellar are better provided with food and drink than the King's mansion. All now begin to feel that the net is closing over them. Late in the night King Conor, fired with drink and jealousy, called for some one to go for him and bring him word how Déirdre looked, "for if her own form live upon her, there is not in the world a woman more beautiful than she." Lavarcam, the nurse, undertakes to go. She, of course, discloses to Déirdre and Naoise the treachery that is being plotted against them, and returning to Conor she tells him that Déirdre has wholly lost her beauty, whereat, "much of his jealousy abated, and he continued to indulge in feasting and enjoyment a long while, until he thought of Déirdre a second time." This time he does not trust Lavarcam, but sends one of his retainers, first reminding him that his father and his three brothers had been slain by Naoise. But in the mean time the entrances and windows of the Red Branch had been shut and barred and the doors barricaded by the sons of Usnach. One small window, however, had been left open at the back and the spy climbed upon a ladder and looked through it and saw Naoise and Déirdre sitting together and playing at chess. Déirdre called Naoise's attention to the face looking at them, and Naoise, who was lifting a chessman off the board, hurled it at the head and broke the eye that looked at them. The man ran back and told the King that it was worth losing an eye to have beheld a woman so lovely. Then Conor, fired with fury and jealousy, led his troops to the assault, and all night long there is fighting and shouting round the Red Branch House, and Naoise's brothers, helped by the two sons of Fergus, pass the night in repelling attack, and in quenching the fires that break out all round the house. At length one of Fergus's sons is slain and the other is bought off by a bribe of land and a promise of power from King Conor, and now the morning begins to dawn, but the sons of Usnach are still living, and Déirdre is still untaken. At last Conor's druid, Cathba, consents to work a spell against them if Conor will plight his faithful word that having once taken Déirdre he will not touch or harm the sons of Usnach. Conor plights his word and troth, and the spell is set at work. The sons of Usnach had left the half-burnt house and were escaping in the morning light with Déirdre between them when they met, as they thought, a sea of thick viscid waves, and they cast down their weapons and spread abroad their arms and tried to swim, and Conor's soldiers came and took them without a blow. They were brought to Conor and he caused them to be at once beheaded. It was then the druid cursed Emania, for Conor had broken his plighted word, and that curse was fulfilled in the misery that fell upon the province during the wars with Mève. He cursed also the house of Conor, and prophesied that none of his descendants should possess Emania for ever, "and that," adds the saga, "has been verified, for neither Conor nor any of his race possessed Emania from that time to this."[6]
As for Déirdre, she was as one distracted; she fell upon the ground and drank their blood, she tore her hair and rent her dishevelled tresses, and the lament she broke forth into has long been a favourite of Irish scribes. She calls aloud upon the dead, "the three falcons of the mount of Culan, the three lions of wood of the cave, the three sons of the breast of the Ultonians, the three props of the battalion of Chuailgne, the three dragons of the fort of Monadh."
"The High King of Ulster, my first husband, I forsook him for the love of Naoise.
* * * * *
That I shall live after Naoise Let no man on earth imagine.
* * * * *
Their three shields and their three spears Have often been my bed.
* * * * *
I never was one day alone Until the day of the making of the grave, Although both I and ye Were often in solitude.
My sight has gone from me At seeing the grave of Naoise."
She remembers now in her own agony another woman who would lament with her could she but know that Naoise had died.
"On a day that the nobles of Alba [Scotland] were feasting, And the sons of Usnach, deserving of love, To the daughter of the lord of Duntrone Naoise gave a secret kiss.
He sent to her a frisking doe, A deer of the forest with a fawn at its foot, And he went aside to her on a visit While returning from the host of Inverness.
But when I heard that My head filled full of jealousy, I launched my little skiff upon the waves, I did not care whether I died or lived.
They followed me, swimming, Ainnlé and Ardan, who never uttered falsehood, And they turned me in to land again, Two who would subdue a hundred.
Naoise pledged me his word of truth, And he swore in presence of his weapons three times, That he would never cloud my countenance again Till he should go from me to the army of the dead.
Alas! if she were to hear this night That Naoise was under cover in the clay, She would weep most certainly, And I, I would weep with her sevenfold."[7]
After her lay of lamentation she falls into the grave where the three are being buried, and dies above them. "Their flag was raised over their tomb, and their names were written in Ogam, and their funeral games were celebrated. Thus far the tragedy of the sons of Usnach."
The oldest and briefest version of this fine saga, that preserved in the Book of Leinster, ends differently, and even more tragically. On the death of Naoise, who is slain the moment he appears on the lawn of Emania, Déirdre is taken, her hands are bound behind her back and she is given over to Conor.
"Déirdre was for a year in Conor's couch, and during that year she neither smiled nor laughed nor took sufficiency of food, drink, or sleep, nor did she raise her head from her knee. When they used to bring the musicians to her house she would utter rhapsody--
"'Lament ye the mighty warriors Assassinated in Emania on coming,' etc.
"When Conor would be endeavouring to sooth her, it was then she would utter this dirge--
"'That which was most beauteous to me beneath the sky, And which was most lovely to me, Thou hast taken from me--great the anguish-- I shall not get healed of it to my death,' etc.
"'What is it you see that you hate most?' said Conor.
"'Thou thyself and Eoghan [Owen] son of Duthrecht,'[8] said she.
"'Thou shalt be a year in Owen's couch then,' said Conor. Conor then gave her over to Owen.
"They drove the next day to the assembly at Muirtheimhne. She was behind Owen in a chariot. She looked towards the earth that she might not see her two gallants.
"'Well, Déirdre,' said Conor, 'it is the glance of a ewe between two rams you cast between me and Owen.'
"There was a large rock near. She hurled her head at the stone, so that she broke her skull and was dead.
"This is the exile of the sons of Usnach and the cause of the exile of Fergus and of the death of Déirdre."
It was in consequence of Conor's treachery in slaying the sons of Usnach while under Fergus's protection that this warrior turned against his king, burnt Emania, and then seceded into Connacht to Oilioli [Ulyul] and Mève, king and queen of that province, where he took service with about fifteen hundred Ultonians who, indignant at Conor, seceded along with him. "It was he," says Keating, summing up the substance of the sagas, "who carried off the great spoils from Ulster whence came so many wars and enmities between the people of Connacht and Ulster, so that the exiles who went from Ulster into banishment with Fergus continued seven, or as some say, ten years in Connacht, during which time they kept constantly spoiling, destroying and plundering the Ultonians, on account of the murder of the sons of Usnach. And the Ultonians in like manner wreaked vengeance upon them, and upon the people of Connacht, and made reprisals for the booty which Fergus had carried off, and for every other evil inflicted upon them by the exiles and by the Connacht men, insomuch that the losses and injuries sustained on both sides were so numerous that whole volumes have been written upon them, which would be too long to mention or take notice of at present."
It was with the assistance of Fergus and the other exiles that Mève undertook her famous expedition into Ulster, of which we must now speak.
[1] Pronounced "Dare-dră," said to mean "alarm." Jubainville translates it "Celle-qui-se-débat."
[2] In the older form Leborcham. She is generally described as Conor's messenger; in one place she is called his bean-cainte or "talking-woman"; this is the only passage I know of in which she is credited with any higher powers. She is said elsewhere to have been the daughter of two slaves of Conor's household, Oa or Aué and Adarc.
[3] Yet when in Trinity College Dublin, a few years ago, the subject--the first Irish subject for twenty-seven years--set for the Vice-Chancellor's Prize in English verse was "Déirdre," it was found that the students did not know what that word meant, or what Déirdre was, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. So true it is that, despite all the efforts of Davis and his fellows, there are yet two nations in Ireland. Trinity College might to some extent bridge the gap if she would, but she has carefully refrained from attempting it.
[4] O' Flanagan first printed two versions of it in the solitary volume which comprises the "Transactions of the Gaelic Society," as early as 1808. The older of these two versions agrees closely with that contained in "Egerton, 1782," of the British Museum, but neither of the MSS. which he used is now known to exist. Eugene O'Curry edited the story from the text in the Yellow Book of Lecan, with a translation in the "Atlantis," a long defunct Irish periodical. Windisch edited the oldest existing version, that of the Book of Leinster, in the first volume of "Irische Texte." None of these three versions differ appreciably. In the second volume of the same, Dr. Whitley Stokes edited a consecutive text from 56 and 53 of the MSS. in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, the latter of which is a vellum of the fifteenth century. Finally, the text of both these MSS. was published in full in vol. ii. of Dr. Cameron's "Reliquiæ Celticæ," where he also gives a translation of the first. Keating, too, in his history, retells the story at considerable length. Windisch's, O'Curry's, and O'Flanagan's texts were reprinted in 1883 in the "Gaelic Journal." In addition to all these Mr. Carmichael published in Gaelic in 1887 an admirable folk-lore version of the story from the Isles of Scotland in the thirteenth volume of the "Transactions of the Inverness Gaelic Society," and the tale is retold in English, chiefly from this version, by Mr. Jacobs in the first series of his "Celtic Fairy Tales." M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has given a French translation of the entire story from the Book of Leinster, the older Edinburgh MS., and the Highland Folktale, the latter two being translated by M. Georges Dottin. Macpherson made this story the foundation of his "Darthula." Dr. Dwyer Joyce published the story in America as an English poem. Sir Samuel Ferguson, Dr. Todhunter, and the present writer have all published adaptations of it in English verse, and Mr. Rolleston made it the subject of the Prize Cantata at the Féis Ceóil in Dublin in 1897. Hence I may print here this new and full opening of a piece so celebrated. For text see Zeit. f. Celt. Phil. II. 1, p. 142.
[5]
"Gleann Masáin, ón Gleann Masáin, Árd a chneamh, geal a ghasáin, Do ghnidhmís codladh corrach Os inbhear mongach Masáin."
[6] We have seen that none of the race of Ir claim descent from Conor; all their great families O'Mores, O'Farrells, etc., descend from Fergus mac Róigh [Roy] or Conall Cearnach (see ch. VI note 17); yet Conor had twenty-one sons, all of whom, says Keating, died without issue except three--"Benna, from whom descended the Benntraidhe; Lamha, from whom came the Lamhraidhe; and Glasni, whose descendants were the Glasnaide; but even of these," adds Keating, "there is not at this day a single descendant alive in Ireland." See O'Mahony's translation, p. 278.
[7]
"Och! da gcluinfeadh sise anocht Naoise bheith fá bhrat i gcré, Do ghoilfeadh sise go beacht, Acht do ghoilfinn-se fá seacht lé."
[8] Who had slain Náoise at Conor's bidding, in the older version.
XXVI. THE TÁIN BO CHUAILGNE
The greatest of the heroic sagas and the longest is that which is called the Táin Bo Chuailgne,[1] or "Cattle-Raid of Cooley," a district of Ulster contained in the present county of Louth, into which Oilioll and Méadhbh [Mève], the king and queen of Connacht, led an enormous army composed of men from the four other provinces, to carry off the celebrated Dun Bull of Cooley.
Although there is a great deal of verbiage and piling-up of rather barren names in this piece, nevertheless there are also several finely conceived and well-executed incidents. The saga which, according to Zimmer, was probably first committed to writing in the seventh or eighth century, is partially preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a manuscript made about the year 1100, and there is a complete copy of it in the Book of Leinster made about fifty years later. I have chiefly translated from a more modern text in my own possession, which differs very slightly from the ancient ones.
The story opens with a conversation between Mève, queen of Connacht, and Oilioll her husband, which ends in a dispute as to which of them is the richest. There was no modern Married Women's Property Act in force, but Irish ladies seem to have been at all times much more sympathetically treated by the Celtic tribes than by the harder and more stern races of Teutonic and Northern blood, and Irish damsels seem to have been free to enjoy their own property and dowries.[2] The story, then, begins with this dispute as to which, husband or wife, is the richer in this world's goods, and the argument at last becomes so heated that the pair decide to have all their possessions brought together to compare them one with another and judge by actual observation which is the most valuable. They collected accordingly jewels, bracelets, metal, gold, silver, flocks, herds, ornaments, etc., and found that in point of wealth they were much the same, but that there was one great bull called Finn-bheannach or White-horned, who was really calved by one of Mève's cows, but being endowed with a certain amount of intelligence considered it disgraceful to be under a woman, and so had gone over to Oilioll's herds. With him Mève had nothing that could compare. She made inquiry, however, and found out from her chief courier that there was in the district of Cuailgne in Louth (Mève lived at Rathcroghan in Roscommon) a most celebrated bull called the Dun Bull of Cuailgne belonging to a chieftain of the name of Darè. To him accordingly she sends an embassy requesting the loan of the bull for one year, and promising fifty heifers in return. Darè was quite willing, and promised to lend the animal. He was in fact pleased, and treated the embassy generously, giving them good lodgings with plenty of food and drink--too much drink in fact. The fate of nations is said to often hang upon a thread. On this occasion that of Ulster and Connacht depended upon a drop more or less, absorbed by one of the ten men who constituted Mève's embassy. This man unfortunately passed the just limit, and Darè's steward coming in at the moment heard him say that it was small thanks to his master to give his bull "for if he hadn't given it we'd have taken it." That word decided the fate of provinces. The steward, indignant at such an outrage, ran and told his master, and Darè swore that now he would lend no bull, and what was more, but that the ten men were envoys he swore he would hang them. With indignity they were dismissed, and returned empty-handed to Mève's boundless indignation. She in her turn swore she would have the bull in spite of Darè. She immediately sent out to collect her armies, and invited Leinster and Munster to join her. She was in fact able to muster most of the three provinces to march against Ulster to take the bull from Darè, and in addition she had Fergus mac Roy and about fifteen hundred Ulster warriors who had never returned to their homes nor forgiven Conor for the murder of the sons of Usnach. She crossed the Shannon at Athlone, and marched on to Kells, within a few miles of Ulster, and there she pitched her standing camp. She was accompanied by her husband and her daughter who was the fairest among women. Her mother had secretly promised her hand to every leader in her army in order to nerve them to do their utmost.
At the very beginning Mève is forewarned by a mysterious female of the slaughter which is to come. She had driven round in her chariot to visit her druid and to inquire of him what would come of her expedition, and is returning somewhat reassured in her mind by the druid's promise which was--
"'Whosoever returneth or returneth not, thou shalt return,' and," says the saga, "as Mève returned again upon her track she beheld a thing which caused her to wonder, a single woman (riding) beside her, upon the pole of her chariot. And this is how that maiden was. She was weaving a border with a sword of bright bronze[3] in her right hand with its seven rings of red gold, and, about her, a spotted speckled mantle of green, and a fastening brooch in the mantle over her bosom. A bright red gentle generous countenance, a grey eye visible in her head, a thin red mouth, young pearly teeth she had. You would think that her teeth were a shower of white pearls flung into her head. Her mouth was like fresh coral? [partaing]. The melodious address of her voice and her speaking tones were sweeter than the strings of curved harp being played. Brighter than the snow of one night was the splendour of her skin showing through her garments, her feet long, fairy-like, with (well) turned nails. Fair yellow hair very golden on her. Three tresses of her hair round her head, one tress behind falling after her to the extremities of her ankles.
"Mève looks at her. 'What makest thou there, O maiden?' said Mève.
"'Foreseeing thy future for thee, and thy grief, thou who art gathering the four great provinces of Ireland with thee to the land of Ulster, to carry out the Táin Bo Chuailgne.'
"'And wherefore doest thou me this?" said Mève.
"'Great reason have I for it,' said the maiden. 'A handmaid of thy people (am I),' said she.
"'Who of my people art thou?' said Mève.
"'Féithlinn, fairy-prophetess of Rathcroghan, am I,' said she.
"'It is well, O Féithlinn, prophetess,' said Mève, 'and how seest thou our hosts?'
"'I see crimson over them, I see red,' said she.
"'Conor is in his sickness[4] in Emania,' said Mève, 'and messengers have reached me from him, and there is nothing that I dread from the Ultonians, but speak thou the truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess,' said Mève.
"'I see crimson, I see red,' said she.
"'Comhsgraidh Meann ... is in Innis Comhsgraidh in his sickness, and my messengers have reached me, and there is nothing that I fear from the Ultonians, but speak me truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess, how seest thou our host?'
"'I see crimson, I see red.'
"'Celtchar, son of Uitheachar, is in his sickness,' said Mève, 'and there is nothing I dread from the Ultonians, but speak truth, O Féithlinn, prophetess.'
"'I see crimson, I see red,' said she.
"' ...?' said Mève, 'for since the men of Erin will be in one place there will be disputes and fightings and irruptions amongst them, about reaching the beginnings or endings of fords or rivers, and about the first woundings of boars and stags, of venison, or matter of venery, speak true, O Féithlinn, prophetess, how seest thou our host? said Mève.
"'I see crimson I see red,' said she."
After this follows a long poem, wherein "she foretold Cuchulain to the men of Erin."
The march of Mève's army is told with much apparent exactness. The names of fifty-nine places through which it passed are given; and many incidents are recorded, one of which shows the furious, jealous, and vindictive disposition of the amazon queen herself. She, who seems to have taken upon herself the entire charge of the hosting, had made in her chariot the full round of the army at their encamping for the night, to see that everything was in order. After that she returned to her own tent and sat beside her husband Olioill at their meal, and he asks her how fared the troops. Mève then said something laudatory about the Gaileóin,[5] or ancient Leinstermen, who were not of Gaelic race, but appear to have belonged to some early non-Gaelic tribe, cognate with the Firbolg.
"'What excellence perform they beyond all others that they be thus praised?' said Oilioll.
"'They give cause for praise,' said Mève, 'for while others were choosing their camping-ground, they had made their booths and shelters; and while others were making their booths and shelters, they had their feast of meat and ale laid out; and while others were laying out their feasts of bread and ale, these had finished their food and fare; and while others were finishing their food and fare, these were asleep. Even as their slaves and servants have excelled the slaves and servants of the men of Erin, so will their good heroes and youths excel the good heroes and youths of the men of Erin in this hosting.'
"'I am the better pleased at that,' said Oilioll, 'because it was with me they came, and they are my helpers.'[6]
"'They shall not march with thee, then,' said Mève, 'and it is not before me, nor to me, they shall be boasted of.'
"'Then let them remain in camp,' said Oilioll.
"'They shall not do that either,' said Mève.
"'What shall they do, then?' said Findabar, daughter of Oilioll and Mève, 'if they shall neither march nor yet remain in camp.'
"'My will is to inflict death and fate and destruction on them,' said Mève."
It is with the greatest difficulty that Fergus is enabled to calm the furious queen, and she is only satisfied when the three thousand Gaileóins have been broken up and scattered throughout the other battalions, so that no five men of them remained together.
Thereafter the army came to plains so thickly wooded, in the neighbourhood of the present Kells, that they were obliged to cut down the wood with their swords to make a way for their chariots, and the next night they suffered intolerably from a fall of snow.
"The snow that fell that night reached to men's legs and to the wheels of chariots, so that the snow made one plain of the five provinces of Erin, and the men of Ireland never suffered so much before in camp, none knew throughout the whole night whether it was his friend or his enemy who was next him, until the rise early on the morrow of the clear-shining sun, glancing on the snow that covered the country."
They are now on the borders of Ulster, and Cuchulain is hovering on their flank, but no one has yet seen him. He lops a gnarled tree, writes an Ogam on it, sticks upon it the heads of three warriors he had slain, and sets it up on the brink of a ford. That night Oilioll and Mève inquire from the Ultonians who were in her army more particulars about this new enemy, and nearly a sixth part of the whole Táin is taken up by the stories which are then and there related about Cuchulain's earliest history and exploits, first by Fergus, and, when he is done relating, by Cormac Conlingeas, and when he has finished, by Fiacha, another Ultonian. This long digression, which is one of the most interesting parts of the whole saga, being over, we return to the direct story.
Cuchulain, who knows every tree and every bush of the country, still hangs upon Mève's flank, and without showing himself during the day, he slays a hundred men with his sling[7] every night.
Mève, through an envoy, asks for a meeting with him, and is astonished to find him, as she thinks, a mere boy. She offers him great rewards in the hope of buying him off, but he will have none of her gold. The only conditions upon which he will cease his night-slaying is if Mève will promise to let him fight with some warrior every day at the ford, and will promise to keep her army in its camp while these single combats last, and this Mève consents to, since she says it is better to lose one warrior every day than one hundred every night.
A great number of single combats then take place, each of which is described at length. One curious incident is that of the war-goddess, whom he had previously offended, the Mór-rígu,[8] or "great queen," attacking him while fighting with the warrior Loich. She came against him, not in her own figure, but as a great black eel in the water, who wound itself around his legs, and as he stooped to disengage himself Loich wounded him severely in the breast. Again she came against him in the form of a great grey wolf-bitch, and as Cuchulain turned to drive her off he was again wounded. A third time she came against him as a heifer with fifty other heifers round her, but Cuchulain struck her and broke one of her eyes, just as Diomede in the Iliad wounds the goddess Cypris when she appears against him.[9] Cuchulain, thus embarrassed, only rids himself of Loich by having recourse to the mysterious feat of the Gae-Bolg, about which we shall hear more later on. His opponent, feeling himself mortally hurt, cries out--
"'By thy love of generosity I crave a boon.'
"'What boon is that?' said Cuchulain.
"'It is not to spare me I ask,' said Loich, 'but let me fall forwards to the east, and not backward to the west, that none of the men of Erin may say that I fell in panic or in flight before thee.'
"'I grant it,' said Cuchulain, 'for surely it is a warrior's request.'"
After this encounter Cuchulain grew terribly despondent, and urged his charioteer Laeg again to hasten the men of Ulster to his assistance, but their pains were still upon them, and he is left alone to bear the brunt of the attack as best he may. Mève also breaks her compact by sending six men against him, but them he overcomes, and in revenge begins again to slay at night.
Thereafter follows the episode known in Irish saga as the Great Breach of Moy Muirtheimhne. Cuchulain, driven to despair and enfeebled by wounds, fatigue, and watching, was in the act of ascending his chariot to advance alone against the men of the four provinces, moving to certain death, when the eye of his charioteer is arrested by the figure of a tall stranger moving through the camp of the enemy, saluting none as he moved, and by none saluted.
"That man," said Cuchulain, "must be one of my supernatural friends of the shee[10] folk, and they salute him not because he is not seen."
The stranger approaches, and, addressing Cuchulain, desires him to sleep for three days and three nights, and instantly Cuchulain fell asleep, for he had been from before the feast of Samhain till after Féil Bhrighde[11] without sleep, "unless it were that he might sleep a little while beside his spear, in the middle of the day, his head on his hand, and his hand on his spear, and his spear on his knee, but all the while slaughtering, slaying, preying on, and destroying, the four great provinces."
It was after this long sleep of Cuchulain's that, awaking fresh and strong, the Berserk rage fell upon him. He hurled himself against the men of Erin, he drove round their flank, he "gave his chariot the heavy turn, so that the iron wheels of the chariot sank into the earth, so that the track of the iron wheels was (in itself) a sufficient fortification, for like a fortification the stones and pillars and flags and sands of the earth rose back high on every side round the wheels." All that day, refreshed by his three days' sleep, he slaughtered the men of Erin.
Other single combats take place after this, in one of which the druid Cailitin and his twenty sons would have slain him had he not been rescued by his countryman Fiacha, one of those Ultonians who with Fergus had turned against their king and country when the children of Usnach were slain.
It was only at the last that his own friend Ferdiad was despatched against him, through the wiles of Mève. Ferdiad was not a Gael, but of the Firbolg or Firdomhnan race,[12] yet he proved very nearly a match for Cuchulain. Knowing what Mève wanted with him, he positively refused to come to her tent when sent for, and in the end he is only persuaded by her sending her druids and ollavs against him, who threatened "to criticise, satirise, and blemish him, so that they would raise three blisters[13] on his face unless he came with them." At last he went with them in despair, "because he thought it easier to fall by valour and championship and weapons than to fall by [druids'] wisdom and by reproach."
The fight with Ferdiad is perhaps the finest episode in the Táin. The following is a description of the conduct of the warriors after the first day's conflict.
THE FIGHT AT THE FORD.[14]
"They ceased fighting and threw their weapons away from them into the hands of their charioteers. Each of them approached the other forthwith and each put his hand round the other's neck and gave him three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that night, and their charioteers at the same fire; and their charioteers spread beds of green rushes for them with wounded men's pillows to them. The professors of healing and curing came to heal and cure them, and they applied herbs and plants of healing and curing to their stabs, and their cuts, and their gashes, and to all their wounds. Of every herb and of every healing and curing plant that was put to the stabs and cuts and gashes, and to all the wounds of Cuchulain, he would send an equal portion from him, westward over the ford to Ferdiad, so that the men of Erin might not be able to say, should Ferdiad fall by him, that it was by better means of cure that he was enabled to kill him.
"Of each kind of food and of palatable pleasant intoxicating drink that was sent by the men of Erin to Ferdiad, he would send a fair moiety over the ford northwards to Cuchulain, because the purveyors of Ferdiad were more numerous than the purveyors of Cuchulain. All the men of Erin were purveyors to Ferdiad for beating off Cuchulain from them, but the Bregians only were purveyors to Cuchulain, and they used to come to converse with him at dusk every night. They rested there that night."
The narrator goes on to describe the next day's fighting, which was carried on from their chariots "with their great broad spears," and which left them both in such evil plight that the professors of healing and curing "could do nothing more for them, because of the dangerous severity of their stabs and their cuts and their gashes and their numerous wounds, than to apply witchcraft and incantations and charms to them to staunch their blood and their bleeding and their gory wounds."
Their meeting on the next day follows thus:--
"They arose early the next morning and came forward to the ford of battle, and Cuchulain perceived an ill-visaged and a greatly lowering cloud on Ferdiad that day.
"'Badly dost thou appear to-day, O Ferdiad,' said Cuchulain, 'thy hair has become dark this day and thine eye has become drowsy, and thine own form and features and appearance have departed from thee.'
"'It is not from fear or terror of thee that I am so this day,' said Ferdiad, 'for there is not in Erin this day a champion that I could not subdue.'
"And Cuchulain was complaining and bemoaning and he spake these words, and Ferdiad answered:
CUCHULAIN. Oh, Ferdiad, is it thou? Wretched man thou art I trow, By a guileful woman won To hurt thine old companion.
FERDIAD. O Cuchulain, fierce of fight, Man of wounds and man of might, Fate compelleth each to stir Moving towards his sepulchre."[15]
The lay is then given, each of the heroes reciting a verse in turn, and it is very possibly upon these lays that the prose narrative is built up. The third day's fighting is then described in which the warriors use their "heavy hand-smiting swords," or rather swords that gave "blows of size. "[16] The story then continues--
"They cast away their weapons from them into the hands of their charioteers, and though it had been the meeting pleasant and happy, griefless and spirited of two men that morning, it was the separation, mournful, sorrowful, dispirited, of the two men that night.
"Their horses were not in the same enclosure that night. Their charioteers were not at the same fire. They rested that night there.
"Then Ferdiad arose early next morning and went forwards alone to the ford of battle, for he knew that that day would decide the battle and the fight, and he knew that one of them would fall on that day there or that they both would fall.
* * * * *
"Ferdiad displayed many noble, wonderful, varied feats on high that day, which he never learned with any other person, neither with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with Aife, but which were invented by himself that day against Cuchulain.
"Cuchulain came to the ford and he saw the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high.
"'I perceive these, my friend, Laeg' [said Cuchulain to his charioteer], 'the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high, and all these feats will be tried on me in succession, and, therefore, it is that if it be I who shall begin to yield this day thou art to excite, reproach, and speak evil to me, so that the ire of my rage and anger shall grow the more on me. If it be I who prevail, then thou shalt laud me, and praise me, and speak good words to me that my courage may be greater.'[17]
"'It shall so be done indeed, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg.
"And it was then Cuchulain put his battle-suit of conflict and of combat and of fight on him, and he displayed noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats on high on that day, that he never learned from anybody else, neither with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with Aife. Ferdiad saw those feats and he knew they would be plied against him in succession.
"'What weapons shall we resort to, O Ferdiad?' said Cuchulain.
"'To thee belongs thy choice of weapons till night,' said Ferdiad.
"'Let us try the Ford Feat then,' said Cuchulain.
"'Let us indeed,' said Ferdiad. Although Ferdiad thus spoke his consent it was a cause of grief to him to speak so, because he knew that Cuchulain was used to destroy every hero and every champion who contended with him in the Feat of the Ford.
"Great was the deed, now, that was performed on that day at the ford--the two heroes, the two warriors, the two champions of Western Europe, the two gift and present and stipend bestowing hands of the north-west of the world; the two beloved pillars of the valour of the Gaels, and the two keys of the bravery of the Gaels to be brought to fight from afar through the instigation and intermeddling of Oilioll and Mève.
"Each of them began to shoot at other with their missive weapons from the dawn of early morning till the middle of midday. And when midday came the ire of the men waxed more furious, and each of them drew nearer to the other. And then it was that Cuchulain on one occasion sprang from the brink of the ford and came on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of striking his head over the rim of his shield from above. And it was then that Ferdiad gave the shield a blow of his left elbow and cast Cuchulain from him like a bird on the brink of the ford. Cuchulain sprang from the brink of the ford again till he came on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of striking his head over the rim of the shield from above. Ferdiad gave the shield a stroke of his left knee and cast Cuchulain from him like a little child on the brink of the ford.
"Laeg [his charioteer] perceived that act. 'Alas, indeed,' said Laeg, 'the warrior who is against thee casts thee away as a lewd woman would cast her child. He throws thee as foam is thrown by the river. He grinds thee as a mill would grind fresh malt. He pierces thee as the felling axe would pierce the oak. He binds thee as the woodbine binds the tree. He darts on thee as the hawk darts on small birds, so that henceforth thou hast nor call nor right nor claim to valour or bravery to the end of time and life, thou little fairy phantom,' said Laeg.
"Then up sprang Cuchulain with the rapidity of the wind and with the readiness of the swallow, and with the fierceness of the dragon and the strength of the lion into the troubled clouds of the air the third time, and he alighted on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman to endeavour to strike his head over the rim of his shield from above. And then it was the warrior gave the shield a shake, and cast Cuchulain from him into the middle of the ford, the same as if he had never been cast off at all.
"And it was then that Cuchulain's first distortion came on, and he was filled with swelling and great fulness, like breath in a bladder, until he became a terrible, fearful, many-coloured, wonderful Tuaig, and he became as big as a Fomor, or a man of the sea, the great and valiant champion, in perfect height over Ferdiad.[18]
"So close was the fight they made now that their heads met above and their feet below and their arms in the middle over the rims and bosses of their shields. So close was the fight they made that they cleft and loosened their shields from their rims to their centres. So close was the fight which they made that they turned and bent and shivered their spears from their points to their hafts. Such was the closeness of the fight which they made that the Bocanachs and Bananachs, and wild people of the glens, and demons of the air screamed from the rims of their shields and from the hilts of their swords and from the hafts of their spears. Such was the closeness of the fight which they made that they cast the river out of its bed and out of its course, so that it might have been a reclining and reposing couch for a king or for a queen in the middle of the ford, so that there was not a drop of water[19] in it unless it dropped into it by the trampling and the hewing which the two champions and the two heroes made in the middle of the ford. Such was the intensity of the fight which they made that the stud of the Gaels darted away in fright and shyness, with fury and madness, breaking their chains and their yokes, their ropes and their traces, and that the women and youths, and small people, and camp followers, and non-combatants of the men of Erin broke out of the camp south-westwards.
"They were at the edge-feat of swords during the time. And it was then that Ferdiad found an unguarded moment upon Cuchulain, and he gave him a stroke of the straight-edged sword, and buried it in his body until his blood fell into his girdle, until the ford became reddened with the gore from the body of the battle-warrior. Cuchulain would not endure this, for Ferdiad continued his unguarded stout strokes, and his quick strokes and his tremendous great blows at him. And he asked Laeg, son of Riangabhra, for the Gae Bulg. The manner of that was this: it used to be set down the stream and cast from between the toes [lit. in the cleft of the foot], it made the wound of one spear in entering the body, but it had thirty barbs to open, and could not be drawn out of a person's body until it was cut open. And when Ferdiad heard the Gae Bulg mentioned he made a stroke of the shield down to protect his lower body. Cuchulain thrust the unerring thorny spear off the centre of his palm over the rim of the shield, and through the breast of the skin-protecting armour, so that its further half was visible after piercing his heart in his body. Ferdiad gave a stroke of his shield up to protect the upper part of his body, though it was 'the relief after the danger.' The servant set the Gae Bulg down the stream and Cuchulain caught it between the toes of his foot, and he threw an unerring cast of it at Ferdiad till it passed through the firm deep iron waistpiece of wrought iron and broke the great stone which was as large as a millstone in three, and passed through the protections of his body into him, so that every crevice and every cavity of him was filled with its barbs.
"'That is enough now, indeed,' said Ferdiad, 'I fall of that. Now indeed may I say that I am sickly after thee, and not by thy hand should I have fallen,' and he said [here follow some verses]....
"Cuchulain ran towards him after that, and clasped his two arms about him and lifted him with his arms and his armour and his clothes across the ford northward, in order that the slain should lie by the ford on the north, and not by the ford on the west with the men of Erin.
"Cuchulain laid Ferdiad down there, and a trance and a faint and a weakness fell then on Cuchulain over Ferdiad.
"'Good, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg, 'rise up now for the men of Erin are coming upon us, and it is not single combat they will give thee since Ferdiad, son of Daman, son of Dare, has fallen by thee.'
"'Servant,' said he, 'what availeth me to arise after him that hath fallen by me.'"
Cuchulain is carried away swooning after this fight and is brought by the two sons of Géadh to the streams and rivers to be cured of his stabs and wounds, by plunging him in the waters and facing him against the currents, "for the Tuatha De Danann sent plants of grace and herbs of healing (floating) down the streams and rivers of Muirtheimhne, to comfort and help Cuchulain, so that the streams were speckled and green overhead with them." The Finglas, the Bush, the Douglas, and eighteen other rivers are mentioned as aiding to cure him.
During the period of Cuchulain's leeching many events were happening in Mève's camp, amongst others the tragic death of her beautiful daughter, Finnabra.[20] Isolated bands of the men of Ulster were now beginning to at last muster in front of Mève, and amongst them came a certain northern chief, who was, as her daughter secretly confessed to Mève, her own love and sweetheart beyond all the men of Erin.
The prudent Mève immediately desires her to go to him, if he is her lover, and do everything in her power to make him draw off his warriors. This design, however, got abroad, and came to the ears of the twelve Munster princes who led the forces of the southern province in Mève's army. These gradually make the discovery that the astute queen had secretly promised her daughter's hand to each one of the twelve, as an inducement to him to take part in her expedition. Infuriated at being thus trifled with and at Mève's treachery in now sending her daughter to the Ultonian, they fall with all their forces upon the queen's battalion and the whole camp becomes a scene of blood and confusion. The warrior Fergus at last succeeds in separating the combatants, not before seven hundred men have fallen. But when Finnabra saw the slaughter that was raging, of which she herself was cause, "a blood-torrent burst from her heart in her bosom through (mingled) shame and generosity," and she was taken up dead.
In the meantime Cuchulain is joined by another great Ultonian warrior, who is also being leeched. He had fallen upon the men of Erin single-handed, and received many wounds, one from Mève herself, who fought, like Boadicea, at the head of her troops. He describes the amazon who wounded him to Cuchulain--
"A largely-nurtured, white-faced, long-cheeked woman, with a yellow mane on the top of her two shoulders, with a shirt of royal silk over her white skin, and a speckled spear red-flaming in her hand; it was she who gave me this wound, and I gave her another small wound in exchange.
"'I know that woman,' said Cuchulain, 'that woman was Mève, and it had been glory and exultation to her had you fallen by her hand.'"
Afterwards Sualtach, father of Cuchulain, heard the groans of his son as he was being cured, and said, "Is it heaven that is bursting, or the sea that is retiring, or the land that is loosening, or is it the groan of my son in his extremity that I hear?" said he. Cuchulain despatches him to urge the Ultonians to his assistance. "Tell them how you found me," he said; "there is not the place of the point of a needle in me from head to foot without a wound, there is not a hair upon my body without a dew of crimson blood upon the top of every point, except my left hand alone that was holding my shield."
And now the Ultonians begin to rally and face the men of Erin. Troops are seen to pour in from every quarter of Ulster, gathering upon the plains of Meath for the great battle that was impending. Mève sends out her trusted messenger to bring word of what is going on amongst the hostile bands. His first report is that the noise of the Ultonians hewing down the woods before their chariots with the edge of their swords was "like nothing but as it were the solid firmament falling upon the surface-face of the earth, or as it were the sky-blue sea pouring over the superficies of the plain, as it were the earth being rent asunder, or the forests falling [each tree] into the grasp and fork of the other."
Mac Roth, the chief messenger, is again sent out to observe the gathering of the hosts and to bring word of what bands are coming in to the hill where Conor, king of Ulster, has set up his standard. On his return at nightfall there follows a long, minute, and tedious account, something like the list of ships in the Iliad, only broken by the questions of Mève and Oilioll, and the answers of Fergus. It contains, however, some passages of interest. The scout describes the arrival of twenty-nine different armaments around their respective chiefs at the hill where King Conor is encamping. Incidentally he gives us descriptions of characters of interest in the Saga-cycle. As he ends his description of each band and its leaders, Oilioll turns to Fergus, and Fergus from Mac Roth's description recognises and tells him who the various leaders are. In this way we get a glimpse at Sencha, the wise man, the Nestor of the Red Branch, whose counsel was ever good. "That man," said Fergus, "is the speaker and peace-maker of the host of Ulster, and I pledge my word that it is no cowardly or unheroic counsel which that man will give to his lord this day, but counsel of vigour and valour and fight." We see the arrival of Feirceirtné, the arch-ollav of the Ultonians, of Cathbadh the Druid, he who had prophesied of Déirdre at her birth, who was supposed, according to the earliest accounts, to have been the real father of King Conor, he who weakened the children of Usnach by his spells; and we see also Aithirne, the infamous and overbearing poet of the Ultonians, about whom much is related in other tales. "The lakes and rivers," said Fergus, "recede before him when he satirises them, and rise up before him when he praises them." "There are not many men in life more handsome or more golden-locked than he," said Mac Roth, "he bears a gleaming ivory[-hilted] sword in his right hand." With this sword he amuses himself, something like the Norman trouvère Taillefer at the battle of Hastings, by casting it aloft and letting it fall almost on the heads of his companions but without hurting them. The arch-druid is described as having scattered whitish-grey hair, and wearing a purple-blue mantle with a large gleaming shield and bosses of red brass, and a long iron sword of foreign look. Conor's leech, Finghin, led a band of physicians to the field; "that man could tell," said Fergus, "what a person's sickness is by looking at the smoke of the house in which he is." Another hero whom we catch a glimpse of is the mighty Conall Cearnach, the greatest champion of the north, whose name was till lately a household word around Dunsevrick, he who afterwards so bloodily avenged Cuchulain's death, "the sea over seas, the bursting rock, the furious troubler of hosts," as Fergus calls him.
We also see the youth Erc, son of Cairbré Niafer the High-king, who comes from Tara to assist his grandfather King Conor. It is curious, however, that in this catalogue of the Ultonians quite as much space is given to the description of men whose names are now--so far, at least, as I know--unknown to us, as to those who often and prominently figure in our yet remaining stories.
At last the great battle of the Táin comes off, when the men of Ulster meet the men of Ireland fairly and face to face. Prodigies of valour are performed on both sides, and Fergus--who after Cuchulain is certainly the hero of the Táin--seconded by Oilioll, by Mève, by the Seven Mainès, and by the sons of Magach, drives the Ultonians back on his side of the battle three times. Conor, who is on the other flank, perceives that the men of his far wing are being broken, and loudly
"he shouts to the Household of the Red Branch, 'hold ye the place in the battle where I am, till I go find who it is who has thrice inclined the battle against us on the north.'
"'We take that upon ourselves,' said they, 'for heaven is over us, and earth is under us, and unless the firmament fall down upon the wave-face of the earth, or the ocean encircle us, or the ground give way under us, or the ridgy blue-bordered sea rise over the expanse[21] of life, we shall give not one inch of ground before the men of Erin till thou come to us again, or till we be slain.'"
Conor hastens northward and finds himself confronted by the man he had so bitterly wronged, whose hand had lain heavy on his province and himself, Fergus, who now comes face to face with him after so many years. Tremendous are the strokes of Fergus.
"He smote his three enemy blows upon Conor's shield 'Eochain' so that the shield screamed thrice upon him, and the three leading waves of Erin answered it.
"'Who,' cries Fergus, 'holds his shield against me in this battle?'[22]
"'O Fergus,' cried Conor, 'one who is greater and younger and handsomer, and more perfect than thyself is here, and whose father and whose mother were better than thine; one who slew the three great candles of the valour of the Gaels, the three prosperous sons of Usnach, in spite of thy guarantee and thy protection, the man who banished thee out of thy own land and country, the man who made of it a dwelling-place for the deer and the roe and the foxes, the man who never left thee as much as the breadth of thy foot of territory in Ulster, the man who drove thee to the entertainment of women,[23] and the man who will drive thee back this day in the presence of the men of Erin, [I] Conor, son of Fachtna Fathach, High-king of Ulster, and son of the High-king of Ireland."
Despite this boasting he would certainly have been slain by his great opponent had not one of his sons clasped his arms in supplication around Fergus's knees and conjured him not to destroy Ulster, and Fergus, melted by these entreaties, consented to remain passive if Conor retired to the other wing of the battle, which he did.
In the meantime Mève had sent away the Dun Bull with fifty heifers round him and eight men, to drive him to her palace in Connacht, "so that whoever reached Cruachan alive, or did not reach it, the Dun Bull of Cuailgne should reach it as she had promised."
Cuchulain, who had joined the Ultonians, and whose arms had been taken from him, lest in his enfeebled condition he should injure himself by taking part in the fray, unable to bear any longer the look of the battle, the shouting and the war-cries, rushes into the fight with part of his broken chariot for a weapon, and performs mighty feats. At length he ceases to slay at Mève's solicitation, whose life he spares, and the shattered remnants of her host begin slowly to withdraw across the ford. "Oilioll draws his shield of protection behind the host [i.e., covers the rear], Mève draws her shield of protection in her own place, Fergus draws his shield of protection, the Mainès draw their shield of protection, the sons of Magach draw their shield of protection behind the host; and in this manner they brought with them the men of Erin across the great ford westward," nor did they cease their retreat till Mève and her army found themselves at Cruachan in Connacht, whence they had set out.
The long saga ends with a decided anti-climax, the encounter between the Dun Bull, whom Mève had carried off, and her own bull, the White-Horned.[24] These bulls, according to one of the most curious of the short auxiliary sagas to the Táin, were really rebirths of two men who hated each other during life, and now fought it out in the form of bulls. When they caught sight of each other they pawed the earth so furiously that they sent the sods flying across their shoulders, "they rolled the eyes in their heads like flames of fiery lightning." All day long they charged, and thrust, and struggled, and bellowed, while the men of Ireland looked on, "but when the night came they could do nothing but be listening to the noises and the sounds." The two bulls traversed much of Ireland during that night.[25] Next morning the people of Cruachan saw the Dun Bull coming with the remains of his enemy upon his horns. The men of Connacht would have intercepted him, but Fergus, ever generous, swore with a great oath that all that had been done in the pursuit of the Táin was nothing to what he would do if the Dun Bull were not allowed to return to his own country with his kill. The Dun made straight for his home at Cuailgne in Louth. He drank of the Shannon at Athlone, and as he stooped one of his enemy's loins fell off from his horn, hence Ath-luain, the Ford of the Loin. After that he rushed, mad with passion, towards his home, killing every one who crossed his way. Arrived there, he set his back to a hill and uttered wild bellowings of triumph, until "his heart in his breast burst, and he poured his heart in black mountains of brown blood out across his mouth."
Thus far the Táin Bo Chuailgne.
[1] Pronounced "Taun Bo Hooiln'ya."
[2] Yet in the Brehon law a woman is valued at only the seventh part of a man, three cows instead of twenty-one; but if she is young and handsome she has her additional "honour price."
[3] "Findruini." See Book of Leinster, f. 42, for the old text of this, but I am here using a modern copy, not trusting myself to translate accurately from the old text.
[4] This is the mysterious sickness which seizes upon all the Ultonians at intervals except Cuchulain. See ch. XXIV, note 3.
[5] For more about the Gaileóin see p. 598 of Rhys's Hibbert Lectures, and O'Curry, "M. and C.," vol. ii. p. 260.
[6] They were countrymen of Oilioll's.
[7] Crann-tábhail; it is doubtful what kind of missile weapon this really was. It was certainly of the nature of a sling, but was partly composed of wood.
[8] See above, p. 54 and 291. Rigú is the old form of roghan.
[9]
"ὁ δέ Κύπριν ἐπῴχετο νηλέι χαλκῷ Γιγνώσκων ὅτ᾽ ἄναλκις ἔην θεός, οὐδὲ θεάων Τάων αἵ τ᾽ ἀνδρῶν πόλεμον κατα κοιρανέουσιν, Οὔτ᾽ ἄρ᾽ Ἀθηναίη, οὔτε πτολίπορθος Ἐνυώ. Ἀλλ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐκίχανε πολὺν καθ᾽ ὅμιλον ὀπάζων, Ἐνθ᾽ ἐπορεξάμενος, μεγαθύμου Τυδέος υἱὸς Ἄκρην οὔτασε χεῖρα, μετάλμενος ὀξέϊ δουρὶ Ἀβληχρήν. εἶθαρ δὲ δόρυ χροὸς ἀντετόρησεν Ἀμβροσίου διὰ πέπλου, ὁν οἱ Χάριτες κάμον αὐταὶ, Πρυμνὸν ὑπερ θέναρος ῥέε δ᾽ ἄμβροτον αἷμα θεοῖο Ἰχώρ, οἷος πέρ τε ῥέει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν."
Iliad, v. 330.
A better instance except for the sex is where he afterwards wounds Ares. (See v. 855.)
[10] In Irish, sidh. The stranger is really Cuchulain's divine father.
[11] This is incredible, for the sickness of the Ultonians could not have endured so long.
[12] The prominence given to and the laudatory comments on the non-Gaelic or non-Milesian races, such as the Gaileóins and Firbolg in this saga is very remarkable. It seems to me a proof of antiquity, because in later times these races were not prominent.
[13] These are the three blisters mentioned in Cormac's Glossary under the word gaire. Nede satirises--wrongfully--his uncle Caier, king of Connacht; "Caier arose next morning early and went to the well. He put his hand over his countenance, he found on his face three blisters which the satire had caused, namely, Stain, Blemish, and Defect [on, anim, eusbaidh], to wit, red and green and white."
[14] I give here, for the most part, the translation given by Sullivan in his Addenda to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," but it is an exceedingly faulty and defective one from a linguistic point of view. However, even though some words may be mistranslated or their sense mistaken, it is immaterial here. Windisch is said to have finished a complete translation of the Táin, but it has not as yet appeared anywhere. Max Netlau has studied the texts of the Ferdiad episode in vols. x. and xi. of the "Revue Celtique."
[15] This is the metre of the original. The last lines are literally, "A man is constrained to come unto the sod where his final grave shall be." The metre of the last line is wrong in the Book of Leinster.
[16] Tortbullech = toirt-bhuilleach.
[17] A common trait even in the modern Gaelic tales, as in the story of Iollan, son of the king of Spain, whose sweetheart urges him to the battle by chanting his pedigree; and in Campbell's story of Conall Gulban, where the daughter of the King of Lochlann urges her bard to exhort her champion in the fight lest he may be defeated, and to give him "Brosnachadh file fir-ghlic," i.e., the urging of a truly wise poet.
[18] Compare this with the Berserker rage of the Northmen.
[19] Cf. the common Gaelic folk-lore formula, "they would make soft of the hard and hard of the soft, and bring cold springs of fresh water out of the hard rock with their wrestling."
[20] Or Findabar, the fair-eyebrowed one.
[21] "Tulmuing." See p. 7.
[22] I do not think this is rightly translated, but the passage is obscure to me.
[23] Alluding to Fergus serving with Queen Mève.
[24] The Finnbheannach, pronounced "Fin-van-ach." Both the bulls were endowed with intelligence. One of the virtues of the Dun Bull was that neither Bocanachs nor Bananachs nor demons of the glens could come into one cantred to him. There emanated from him, too, when returning home every evening, a mysterious music, so that the men of the cantred where he was, required no other music. The war-goddess herself, the Mór-rigú, speaks to him.
[25] Every place in Ireland, says the saga, that is called Cluain-na-dtarbh, Magh-na-dtarbh, Bearna-na-dtarbh, Druim-na-dtarbh, Loch-na-dtarbh, i.e., the Bull's meadow, plain, gap, ridge, lake, etc., has its name from them!
XXVII. THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN
Although Cuchulain won for himself in this war an imperishable fame, yet he was not destined to enjoy it long, for he perished before arriving at middle age.[1] The account of his death is preserved in the Book of Leinster, a manuscript of the middle of the twelfth century, which quotes incidentally from an Irish poet[2] of the seventh century, thus showing that Cuchulain was at this early age the hero of the poets. Unfortunately the opening of the story in the Book of Leinster is lost, but many modern extensions of the saga still exist, from one of which in my possession I shall supply what is missing.[3]
Cuchulain had three formidable enemies, who were bent upon his life, these were Lughaidh [Lewy] the son of the Momonian king Curigh,[4] whom Cuchulain had slain, Erc, the son of Cairbré Niafer king of all Ireland, who was slain in the battle of Rosnaree,[5] and the descendants of the wizard Calatin, who with his twenty sons and his son-in-law fell by Cuchulain in one of the combats at the Ford, during the raid of the Táin. His wife, however, brought into the world three posthumous children, daughters.[6] These unhappy creatures Mève mutilated by cutting off their right legs and left arms, so that they might be odious and horrible, and all the fitter for the dread profession she proposed for them--evil wizardry. She reared them carefully, and so soon as they were of a fitting age she sent them into the world to gain a knowledge of charms and spells, and druidism, and witchcraft, and incantations. In pursuit of this knowledge they roamed throughout the world, and at last returned to the queen as perfect adepts as might be.
Thereupon she convened a second muster of the men of the four provinces, and joined by Lewy the son of Curigh, and Erc the son of Cairbré Niafer, both of whose parents had fallen by Cuchulain, and having with her the odious but powerful children of Calatin, eager to avenge the death of their father and their family, she again marched upon Ulster during the sickness of their warriors, and began to plunder and to burn and to drive away a mighty prey. King Conor immediately surmised that it was against Cuchulain the expedition was prepared, and without a moment's delay he depatched Lavarcam his female messenger, to desire him instantly to leave his palace and his patrimony at Dundealgan[7] in the plain of Muirtheimhne, and come to himself at Emania, there to be under the King's immediate orders. This command he gave, thinking to rescue Cuchulain from the possible effects of his own valour and rashness, for there was scarcely a man of distinction in any of the four provinces of Erin some of whose relatives had not been slain by him.
Lavarcam found the hero upon the shore, between sea and land, intent upon the slaying of sea-fowl with his sling, but though birds many flew over him and past him, not one could he bring down--they all escaped him. And this was to him the first bad omen. Very reluctantly did he obey the call of Conor, and sorely loath was he to leave his patrimony. He accompanied Lavarcam, however, to Emania, and abode there in his own bright-lighted crystal grianán. Then Conor consulted with his druids as to how best to keep him there, and they sent the bright ladies of Emania, and his wife Emer, and the poets and the musicians, and the men of science, to surround and distract and amuse him, with conversation and music and banquets.
In the meantime, however, Mève's army had advanced upon and burned Dundealgan, and the children of Calatin had promised that within three days and three nights they would bring Cuchulain to his doom.
And now ensues what is to my mind one of the most powerful incidents in all this saga--the malignant ghoulish efforts of the children of Calatin to draw forth Cuchulain from his place of safety, and on the other side the anxiety of the druids and ladies, and the frenzied heart-sick efforts of his wife, and his mistress, to detain him. The loathsome wizards flew through the air and stationed themselves upon the plain outside Emania--
"They smote the soil and beat and tore it up around them, so that they made of fuz-balls, and of stalks of sanna, and of the fine foliage of the oaks, as it were ordered battalions, and hosts, and multitudes of men, and the confused shoutings of the battalions and of the war-bands, and the battle array, were heard on all sides, as it were striking and attacking the fortress."
Geanan the druid, the son of old Cathbadh, was watching Cuchulain this day. As soon as the sounds of war and shouting reached him Cuchulain rose and "looked forth, and he saw the battalions smiting each other unsparingly," as he thought, and he burned at once with fury and shame; but the druid cast his two arms round him in time to prevent him from bursting forth to relieve the apparently foe-beleaguered town. Over and over again must the druid assure him that all he saw was blind-work and magic, and unreal phantoms, employed by the clan Calatin to lure him forth to his destruction.[8] It was impossible, however, to keep Cuchulain from at least looking, and, the next time he looked forth,
"he thought he beheld the battalions drawn up upon the plains, and the next time he looked after that he thought he saw Gradh son of Lir upon the plain, and it was a geis (tabu) to him to see that, and then he thought moreover that he heard the harp of the son of Mangur playing musically, ever-sweetly, and it was a geis to him to listen to those pleasing fairy sounds, and he recognised from these things that his virtue was indeed overcome, and that his geasa (tabus) were broken, and that the end of his career had arrived, and that his valour and prowess were destroyed by the children of Calatin."
After that one of the daughters of the wizard Calatin, assuming the form of a crow, came flying over him and incited him with taunts to go and rescue his homestead and his patrimony from the hands of his enemies. And although Cuchulain now understood that these were enchantments that were working against him, yet was he none the less anxious to rush forth and oppose them, for he felt moved and troubled in himself at the shouting of the imaginary hosts, and his memory, and his senses, and his right mind were afflicted by the sounds of that ever-thrilling harp.
Then the druid used all his influence, explaining to him that if he would only remain for three days more in Emania the spells would have no power, and he would go forth again, "and the whole world would be full of his victories and his lasting renown," and thereafter the ladies of Emania and the musicians closed round him, and they sang sweet melodies, and they distracted his mind, and the day drew to a close:--the clan Calatin retired baffled, and Cuchulain was himself once more.
During that night the ladies and the druids took council together and determined to carry him away to a glen so remote and lonely that it was called the Deaf Valley, and to hide him there, preparing for him a splendid banquet, with music, and poets, and delights of every kind.
Next morning came the accursed wizards and inspected the city, and they marvelled that they saw not Cuchulain, and that he was neither beside his wife, nor yet amongst the other heroes of the Red Branch. Then they understood that he had been hidden away by Cathbadh the druid, "and they raised themselves aloft, lightly and airily, upon a blast of enchanted wind, which they created to lift them," and went soaring over the entire province of Ulster to discover his retreat. This they do by perceiving Cuchulain's grey steed, the Liath Macha, standing outside at the entrance to the glen. Then the three begin their wizardry anew, and made, as it were, battalions of warriors to appear round the glen, and they raised anew the sounds of arms and the shouts of war and conflict, as they had done at Emania.
The instant the ladies round Cuchulain heard it they also shouted, and the musicians struck up--but in vain; Cuchulain had caught the sound. They succeeded, however, in calming his mind, and in inducing him to pay no heed to the false witcheries of the clan Calatin. These continued for a long time waiting and filling the air with their unreal battle tumult, but Cuchulain did not appear. Then they understood that the druids had been more powerful than they. Mad with impotent fury one of them enters the glen, and pushes her way right into the very fortress where Cuchulain was feasting. Once there she changes herself into the form of the beautiful Niamh [Nee-av], Cuchulain's love and sweetheart. First she stood at the door in the likeness of an attendant damsel, and beckoned to the lady to come to her outside. Niamh, thinking she has something to communicate, follows her through the door and out into the valley, and the other ladies follow Niamh. Instantly she raises an enchanted fog between them and the dún, so that they wander astray, and their minds are troubled. But she, assuming the form of the lady Niamh herself, slips back into the fortress, comes to Cuchulain, and cries to him: "Up, O Cuchulain, and meet the men of Erin, or thy fame shall be lost for ever, and the province shall be destroyed." At this speech Cuchulain is astounded, for Niamh had bound him by an oath that he would not go forth or take arms until she herself should give him leave, and this leave he never thought to receive of her until the fatal time was over. "I shall go," said Cuchulain, "and that is a pity, O Niamh," said he, "and after that it is difficult to trust to woman, for I had thought thou hadst not given me that leave for the gold of the world, but since it is thou who dost let me go to face the men of Erin, I shall go." After that he rose and left the dún. "I have no reason for preserving my life longer," said Cuchulain, "for the end of my time is come, and all my geasa (tabus) are lost, and Niamh has let me go to face the men of Erin; and since she has let me, I shall go."
Afterwards the real Niamh overtakes him at the entrance to the glen, and assured him with torrents of tears, and wild sobs, that it was not she who had given him leave, but the vile enchantress who had assumed her form, and she conjured him with prayers and piteous entreaties to remain with her. But Cuchulain would not believe her, and urged Laeg to catch his steeds and yoke them, for he thought that he beheld--
"The great battle-battalions ranged upon the green of Emania, and the whole plain filled up and crowded with broad bands of hundreds of men, with champions, and steeds, and arms, and armour, and he thought he heard the awful shoutings, and [saw] the burnings extending, widely-let-loose through the buildings of Conor's city, and him-seemed that there was nor hill nor rising ground about Emania that was not full of spoils, and it appeared to him that Emer's sunny-house was overthrown and had fallen out over the ramparts of Emania, and that the House of the Red Branch was in one blaze, and that all Emania was one meeting-place of fire, and of black, dark, spacious, brown-red smoke."[9]
Then Cuchulain's brooch fell from his hand and pierced his foot, another omen of ill. Nor would his noble grey war-horse allow himself to be caught. It was only when Cuchulain addressed him with persuasive words of verse that he consented to let himself be harnessed to the chariot, and even then "he lets fall upon his fore feet, from his eyes, two large tears of blood." In vain did the ladies of Emania try to bar his passage, in vain did fifty queens uncover their bosoms before him in supplication. "He is the first," says the saga, "of whom it is recounted that women uncovered before him their bosoms."[10]
Thereafter another evil omen overtook him, for as he pursued the high road leading to the south,
"and had passed the plain of Mogna, he perceived something, three hags of the half-blind race,[11] who were on the track before him cooking a poisoned dog's flesh upon spits of holly. Now it was a geis (tabu) to Cuchulain to pass a cooking-fire without visiting it and accepting food. It was another geis to eat of his own name" [i.e., a hound, he is Cu-Chulain or Culan's hound], "so he pauses not, but passes the three hags. Then one of them cries to him--
"'Come, visit us, Cuchulain.'
"'I shall not visit you,' said Cuchulain.
"'There is something to eat here,' replied the hag; 'we have a dog to offer thee. If our cooking-place were great,' said she, 'thou wouldst come, but because it is small thou comest not; a great man who despises the small, deserves no honour.'
"Cuchulain then moved over to the hag, and she with her left hand offered him half the dog. Cuchulain ate, and it was with his left hand he took the piece, and he placed part of it under his left thigh, and his left hand and his left thigh were cursed, and the curse reached all his left side, which from his head to his feet lost a great part of its power."
At last Cuchulain meets the enemy on his ancestral patrimony of Moy Muirtheimhne, drawn up in battle array, with shield to shield as though it were one solid plank that was around them. Cuchulain displays his feats from his chariot, especially "his three thunder-feats--the thunder of an hundred, the thunder of three hundred, the thunder of thrice nine men."
"He played equally with spear, shield, and sword, he performed all the feats of a warrior. As many as there are of grains of sand in the sea, of stars in the heaven, of dewdrops in May, of snowflakes in winter, of hailstones in a storm, of leaves in a forest, of ears of corn in the plains of Bregia, of sods beneath the feet of the steeds of Erin on a summer's day, so many halves of heads, and halves of shields, and halves of hands and halves of feet, so many red bones were scattered by him throughout the plain of Muirtheimhne, it became grey with the brains of his enemies, so fierce and furious was Cuchulain's onslaught."
The plan which Erc, son of the late High-king Cairbré Niafer had adopted was to place two men pretending to fight with one another upon each flank of the army and a druid standing near who should first make Cuchulain separate the combatants, and should then demand from him his spear, since there ran a prophecy to the effect that Cuchulain's spear should kill a king, but if they could get the spear from him they at least would be safe from the prophecy; it would not be one of them who should be slain by it.
Cuchulain separates the fighters as the druid asks him, by killing each of them with a blow.
"'You have separated them,' said the druid, 'they shall do each other no more harm.'
"'They would not be so silenced,' said Cuchulain, 'hadst thou not prayed me to interfere between them.'
"'Give me thy spear, O Cuchulain,' said the druid.
"'I swear by the oath which my nation swears,' said Cuchulain, 'you have no greater need of the spear than I. All the warriors of Erin are come together against me, and I must defend myself.'
"'If thou refuse me,' said the druid, 'I shall solemnly utter against thee a magic curse.'
"'Up to this time,' replied Cuchulain, 'no curse has ever been levelled against me for any act of refusal on my part.'"
And with that he reversed his spear and threw it at the druid butt foremost, killing him and nine more. Lewy, the son of Curigh, immediately picked it up.
"'Whom,' said he to the children of Calatin, 'is this to overthrow?'
"'It is a king whom that spear shall slay,' said they.
"Lewy hurled it at Cuchulain's chariot, and it pierced Laeg, his charioteer.
"Cuchulain bade his charioteer farewell.
"'To-day,' said Cuchulain, 'I shall be both warrior and charioteer.'"
The same incident happens again. Cuchulain kills the second druid in the same way, and his spear is picked up by Erc.
"'Children of Calatin,' said Erc, 'what exploit shall this spear perform?'
"'It shall overthrow a king,' said they.
"'You said this spear would overthrow a king when Lewy hurled it some time ago,' said Erc.
"'Nor were we deceived,' said they, 'that spear has brought down the king of the charioteers of Ireland, Laeg, the son of Riangabhra, Cuchulain's charioteer.'"
Erc hurls the spear and it passes through the side of Cuchulain's noble steed, the Liath Macha. Cuchulain took a fond farewell of the animal who galloped with half the yoke around its neck to the lake from whence he had first taken it, on the mountain of Fuad in far-off Armagh.
The third time a druid demands his spear, and is killed by Cuchulain, who throws it to him handle foremost. The spear is picked up this time by Lewy son of Curigh.
"'What feat shall this spear perform, ye children of Calatin?' said Lewy.
"It shall overthrow a king,' said they.
"'Ye said as much when Erc hurled it this morning,' answered Lewy.
"'Yes,' answered the children of Calatin, 'and our word was true. The spear which Erc hurled has wounded mortally the king of the steeds of Ireland, the Liath Macha.'
"'I swear then,' said Lewy, 'by the oath which my nation swears, that Erc's blow smote not the king which this spear is to slay.'"
Then Lewy hurls the spear, and this time pierces Cuchulain through the body, and Cuchulain's other steed burst the yoke and rushed off and never ceased till he, too, had plunged into the lake from which Cuchulain had taken him in far-off Munster.[12] Cuchulain remained behind, dying in his chariot. With difficulty and holding in his entrails with one hand, he advanced to a little lake hard by, and drank from it, and washed off his blood. Then he propped himself against a high stone a few yards from the lake, and tied himself to it with his girdle. "He did not wish to die either sitting or lying, it was standing," says the saga, "that he wished to meet death."
But his grey steed, the Liath Macha,[13] returned once more to defend his lord, and made three terrible charges, scattering with tooth and hoof all who would approach the stone where Cuchulain was dying. At last a bird was seen to alight upon his shoulder. "Yon pillar used not to be a settling place for birds," said Erc. They knew then that he was dead. Lewy, the son of Curigh, seized him by the back hair and severed his head from his body.
* * * * *
But Cuchulain was too important an epic hero to thus finish with him. Another very celebrated, but probably later épopée tells of how his friend Conall Cearnach pursued the retreating army and exacted vengeance for his death. A brief digest of Conall's revenge is contained in the Book of Leinster, but modern copies of much longer and more literary versions exist, and there was no more celebrated poem amongst the later Gael than that called the Lay of the Heads in which Conall Cearnach returns to Emer, Cuchulain's wife, to Emania, with a large bundle of heads strung upon a gad, or withy-wand, thrust through their mouths from cheek to cheek, and there explains in a lay to Emer who they were.
In the ancient version in the Book of Leinster it is only Lewy who is slain by Conall. In my more modern recension he slays Erc and the children of Calatin as well, and recovers the head of Cuchulain, which he found being used as a football by two men near Tara. "If this city," said he of Tara, "were Erc's own lordship and patrimony I would burn it down, but since it is the very navel and meeting-point of the men of Ireland, I shall affront it no more."
Emer's joy and her grief on recovering her husband's head are touchingly described.
"She washed clean the head and she joined it on to its body, and she pressed it to her heart and her bosom, and fell to lamenting and heavily sorrowing over it, and began to suck in its blood and to drink it,[14] and she placed around the head a lovely satin cloth. 'Ochone!' said she, 'good was the beauty of this head, although it is low this day, and it is many of the kings and princes of the world would be keening it if they thought it was like this; and the men who demand gold and treasure, and ask petitions of the men of Erin and Alba [i.e., the poets and druids] thou wast their one love and their one choice of the men of the earth, and woe for me that I remain behind this day; for there was not of the women of Erin, nor in the whole great world, a woman mated with a husband, or unmated, not a single one, who, until this day, was not envious of me; for many were the goods and jewels and rents and tributes from the countries of the world that thou broughtest to me, with the valour and strength of thy hand,' and she took his hand in hers and fell to making lamentations over it, and to telling of its fame and its exploits, and 't was what she said, 'Alas!' said she, 'it is many of the kings and of the chieftains and of the strong men of the world that fell by this hand, and it is many of the goods and treasures of this world that were scattered by it upon poets and men of knowledge,' and she spake the lay,
"'Ochone O head, Ochone O head,'" etc.
Afterwards Conall Cearnach arrives with his pile of heads and planted them carefully "all round about the wide grass-green lawn" upon pointed sticks, and relates to Emer who they were and how they fell.[15]
"Thereafter," says the saga, "Emer desired Conall to make a wide very deep tomb for Cuchulain," and she laid herself down in it along with her gentle mate, and she set her mouth to his mouth, and she spake--
"'Love of my soul,' she said, 'O friend, O gentle sweetheart, and O thou one choice of the men of the earth, many is the woman envied me thee until now, and I shall not live after thee;' and her soul departed out of her, and she herself and Cuchulain were laid in the one grave by Conall, and he raised their stone over their tomb, and he wrote their names in Ogam, and their funeral games were performed by him and by the Ultonians.
"THUS FAR THE RED ROUT OF CONALL CEARNACH."
[1] He died at the age of twenty-seven years, according to the Annals of Tighearnach, and also according to a note in the Book of Ballymote, which Charles O'Conor of Belinagare identifies as an extract from the Synchronisms of Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. But an account in a MS. H. 3. 17, in Trinity College, Dublin, which was copied about the year 1460, asserts that Cuchulain died in his fifty-ninth year. (See O'Curry's MS. Mat., p. 507.)
[2] Cennfaelad, son of Ailill.
[3] This MS., which contains many of the Cuchulain sagas, was copied about a hundred years ago by a scribe named Seághain O'Mathghamhna on an island in the Shannon.
[4] The older form of this name is Curoi. A detailed account of this saga is given by Keating. See p. 282 of O'Mahony's edition. The saga is also told under the title of Aided Conrui, in Egerton 88, British Museum.
[5] The saga of the battle of Rosnaree has recently been published with a translation by Rev. Ed. Hogan, S.J.
[6] Some say six children--three daughters and three sons. The MS. H. i. 8, in Trinity College, which dates from about 1460, according to O'Curry, relates thus: "And the sons of Cailitin were eight years after the Táin before they went to pursue their learning, for they were but infants in cradles at the time their father was killed. Nine years for them after that pursuing their learning. Seven years after finishing their learning was spent in making their weapons, because there could be found but one day in the year to make their spears. And three years after that did the sons of Cailitin spend in assembling and marching the men of Erin to Belach Mic Uilc in Magh Muirtheimhne (Cuchulain's patrimony)."
[7] Now Dundalk in the County Louth.
[8] "Ni bhfuil acht saobh-lucht siabhartha ann súd, sian-sgarrtha duaibh-siocha draoidheachta do dhealbhadar clann cuirpthe Chailitin go claon-mhillteach fad' chómhair-se, dod' chealgadh, agus dod' chomh-bhuaidh-readh, a churaidh chalma chath-bhuadhaigh."
[9] Up to this I have followed the version of my own modern manuscript. From this out, however, the version in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster is used. Monsieur d'Arbois de Jubainville, in his introduction to the fragment of the saga in the Book of Leinster, seems to think that Emania was really besieged, and women and children slaughtered round its walls by the men of Erin, whereas it would appear that the lost part of the saga refers to some such version as I have given from my manuscript, and that it was only the wizardry and sorcery of the children of Calatin, who raised these phantasms. This is the more evident because Cuchulain, when he issues forth, meets no enemy until he has arrived at the plain of Muirtheimhne. Jubainville's words are, "Cependant les cris de douleur des femmes et des enfants qu'on massacrait jusqu'au pied des remparts d'Emain macha [Emania] parvinrent à son oreille: on en verra un peu plus bas les conséquences, dont la dernière fut la mort du heros."
[10] It was geis, or tabu, to him to behold the exposed breast of a woman. See above, p. 301.
[11] These are in my version the three daughters of Calatin.
[12] The belief in water-horses is quite common even still amongst the old people in all parts of Connacht, and, I think, over the most of Ireland.
[13] With the Liath Macha so renowned throughout the whole Cuchulain saga compare Areiōn, the celebrated steed of Adrastus, who saved his master at the rout of the Argeian chiefs round Thebes. The Liath Macha returns to the water from whence it came, and Areiōn, too, was believed to have been the offspring of Poseidōn. He is alluded to by Nestor in the Iliad xxiii. 346:
κ ἔσθ᾿ ὅς κέ σ᾿ἕλῃσι μετάλμενος ὀυδὲ παρέλθῃ, οὐδ᾿ εἴ κεν μετόπιφσθεν Ἀρείονα δῖον ἔλαυνοι, Ἀδρήστου ταχύν ἵππον ὃς ἐκ θεόφιν γένος ἦεν.
He appears, however, to have been black not grey. Hesiod alludes to him as μέγαν ἵππον Ἀρείονα κυανοχαίτην.
[14] "Do rinne an ceann do niamhghlanadh agus do chuir ar a chollain féin é, agus do dhruid re na h-ucht agus n-a h-urbhruinne é, agus do ghaibh ag tuirse agus ag trom-mhéala os a chionn, agus do ghaibh ag sughadh a choda fola agus ag a h-ól," etc. This was to express affection. Déirdre does the same when her husband is slain, she laps his blood.
[15] This is the celebrated Laoi na gceann, or Lay of the Heads, which begins by Emer asking--
"A Chonaill cia h-iad na cinn? Is dearbh linn gar dheargais h-airm, Na cinn o thárla ar an ngad Slointear leat na fir d'ar baineadh."
It was popular in the Highlands also. There is a copy in the book of the Dean of Lismore, published by Cameron in his "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol. i. p. 66. Also in the Edinburgh MSS. 36 and 38. See ibid. pp. 113 and 115. The piece consists of 116 lines. The oldest form of Emer's lament over Cuchulain, "Nuallguba Emire," is in the Book of Leinster, p. 123, a. 20. It is a kind of unrhymed chant. The lament I have given is from my own modern manuscript.
XXVIII. OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH
Another saga belonging to this cycle affords so curious a picture of pagan customs that it is worth while to give here some extracts from it. This is the story of Mac Dáthó's Pig and Hound, which is contained in the Book of Leinster, a MS. copied about the year 1150. It was first published without a translation by Windisch in his "Irische Texte," from the Book of Leinster copy collated with two others. It has since been translated by Kuno Meyer from a fifteenth-century vellum.[1] The story runs as follows.
Mac Dáthó was a famous landholder in Leinster, and he possessed a hound so extraordinarily strong and swift that it could run round Leinster in a day. All Ireland was full of the fame of that hound, and every one desired to have it. It struck Mève and Oilioll, king and queen of Connacht, to send an embassy to Mac Dáthó to ask him for his hound, at the same time that the notion came to Conor, king of Ulster, that he also would like to possess it. Two embassies reach Mac Dáthó's house at the same time, the one from Connacht and the other from Ulster, and both ask for the hound for their respective masters. Mac Dáthó's house was one of those open hostelries[2] of which there were five at that time in Ireland.
"Seven doors," says the saga, "there were in each hostelry, seven roads through it, and seven fireplaces therein. Seven caldrons in the seven fireplaces. An ox and a salted pig would go into each of these caldrons, and the man that came along the road would (i.e., any traveller who passed the way was entitled to) thrust the flesh fork into the caldron, and whatever he brought up with the first thrust, that he would eat, and if nothing were brought up with the first thrust there was no other for him."
The messengers are brought before Mac Dáthó to his bed, and questioned as to the cause of their coming.
"'To ask for the hound are we come,' said the messengers of Connacht, 'from Oilioll and from Mève, and in exchange for it there shall be given three score hundred milch cows at once, and a chariot with the two horses that are best in Connacht under it, and as much again at the end of the year besides all that.'
"'We, too, have come to ask for it,' said the messengers of Ulster, 'and Conor is no worse a friend than Oilioll and Mève, and the same amount shall be given from the north (i.e., from the Ultonians) and be added to, and there will be good friendship from it continually.'
"Mac Dáthó fell into a great silence, and was three days and nights without sleeping, nor could he eat food for the greatness of his trouble, but was moving about from one side to another. It was then his wife addressed him and said, 'Long is the fast in which thou art,' said she; 'there is plenty of food by thee, though thou dost not eat it.'
"And then she said--
"'Sleeplessness was brought To Mac Dáthó into his house. There was something on which he deliberated Though he speaks to none.[3]
He turns away from me to the wall, The Hero of the Féne of fierce valour, His prudent wife observes That her mate is without sleep.'"
A dialogue in verse follows. The wife advises her husband to promise the hound to both sets of messengers. In his perplexity he weakly decides to do this. After the messengers had stayed with him for three nights and days, feasting, he called to him first the envoys of Connacht and said to them--
"'I was in great doubt and perplexity, and this is what is grown out of it, that I have given the hound to Oilioll and Mève, and let them come for it splendidly and proudly, with as many warriors and nobles as they can get, and they shall have drink and food and many gifts besides, and shall take the hound and be welcome.'
"He also went with the messengers of Ulster and said to them, 'After much doubting I have given the hound to Conor, and let him and the flower of the province come for it proudly, and they shall have many other gifts and you shall be welcome.' But for one and the same day he made his tryst with them all."
Accordingly on the appointed day the warriors and men of each province arrive at his hostelry in great state and pomp.
"He himself went to meet them and bade them welcome. ''Tis welcome ye are, O warriors,' said he, 'come within into the close.'
"Then they went over, and into the hostelry; one half of the house for the men of Connacht and the other half for the men of Ulster. That house was not a small one. Seven doors in it and fifty beds between (every) two doors. Those were not faces of friends at a feast, the people who were in that house, for many of them had injured other. For three hundred years before the birth of Christ there had been war between them.[4]
"'Let the pig be killed for them,' said Mac Dáthó."
This celebrated pig had been fed for seven years on the milk of three score milch cows, and it was so huge that it took sixty men to draw it when slain. Its tail alone was a load for nine men.
"'The pig is good,'" said Conor, king of Ulster.
"'It is good,'" said Oilioll, king of Connacht.
Then there arose a difficulty about the dividing of the pig. As in the case of the "heroes' bit" the best warrior was to divide it. King Oilioll asked King Conor what they should do about it, when suddenly the mischievous, ill-minded Bricriu spoke from a chamber overhead and asked, "How should it be divided except by a contest of arms seeing that all the valorous warriors of Connacht were there."
"'Let it be so,' said Oilioll.
"'We like it well,' said Conor, 'for we have lads in the house who have many a time gone round the border.'
"'There will be need of thy lads to-night, O Conor,' said a famous old warrior from Cruachna Conalath in the west. 'The roads of Luachra Dedad have often had their backs turned to them (as they fled). Many, too, the fat beeves they left with me.'
"''Twas a fat beef thou leftest with me,' said Munremar mac Gerrcind, 'even thine own brother, Cruithne mac Ruaidlinde from Cruachna Conalath of Connacht.'
"'He was no better,' said Lewy mac Conroi, 'than Irloth, son of Fergus, son of Leite, who was left dead by Echbél, son of Dedad, at Tara Luachra.'
"'What sort of man do ye think,' said Celtchair mac Uthechair, 'was Conganchnes, son of (that same) Dedad, who was slain by myself, and me to strike the head off him?'
"Each of them brought up his exploits in the face of the other, till at last it came to one man who beat every one, even Cet mac Mágach of Connacht.[5]
"He raised his prowess over the host, and took his knife in his hand, and sat down by the pig. 'Now let there be found,' said he, 'among the men of Ireland one man to abide contest with me, or let me divide the pig.'
"There was not at that time found a warrior of Ulster to stand up to him, and great silence fell upon them.
"'Stop that for me, O Laeghaire [Leary],' said Conor, [King of Ulster, i.e., 'Delay, if you can, Cet's dividing the pig'].
"Said Leary, 'It shall not be--Cet to divide the pig before the face of us all!'
"'Wait a little, Leary,' said Cet, 'that thou mayest speak with me. For it is a custom with you men of Ulster that every youth among you who takes arms makes us his first goal.[6] Thou, too, didst come to the border, and thus leftest charioteer and chariot and horses with me, and thou didst then escape with a lance through thee. Thou shalt not get at the pig in that manner!'
"Leary sat down upon his couch.
"'It shall not be,' said a tall, fair warrior of Ulster, coming out of his chamber above, 'that Cet divide the pig.'
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
"'A better warrior than thou,' say all, 'even Angus, son of Hand-wail of Ulster.'
"'Why is his father called Hand-wail?' said Cet.
"'We know not indeed,' say all.
"'But I know,' said Cet; 'once I went eastward (i.e., crossed the border into Ulster), an alarm-cry is raised around me, and Hand-wail came up with me, like every one else. He makes a cast of a large lance at me. I make a cast at him with the same lance, which struck off his hand, so that it was (i.e., fell) on the field before him. What brings the son of that man to stand up to me?' said Cet.
"Then Angus goes to his couch.
"'Still keep up the contest,' said Cet, 'or let me divide the pig.'
"'It is not right that thou divide it, O Cet,' said another tall, fair warrior of Ulster.
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
"'Owen Mór, son of Durthacht,' say all, 'king of Fernmag.'[7]
"'I have seen him before,' said Cet.
"'Where hast thou seen me,' said Owen.
"'In front of thine own house when I took a drove of cattle from thee; the alarm cry was raised in the land around me, and thou didst meet me and didst cast a spear at me, so that it stood out of my shield. I cast the same spear at thee, which passed through thy head and struck thine eye out of thy head, and the men of Ireland see thee with one eye ever since.'
"He sat down in his seat after that.
"'Still keep up the contest, men of Ulster,' said Cet, 'or let me divide the pig.'
"'Thou shalt not divide it,' said Munremar, son of Gerrcend.
"'Is that Munremar?' said Cet.
"'It is he,' say the men of Ireland.
"'It was I who last cleaned my hands in thee, O Munremar,' said Cet; 'it is not three days yet since out of thine own land I carried off three warriors' heads from thee, together with the head of thy first son.'
"Munremar sat down on his seat.
"'Still the contest,' said Cet,' or I shall divide the pig.'
"'Verily thou shalt have it,' said a tall, grey, very terrible warrior of the men of Ulster.
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
"'That is Celtchair, son of Uithechar,' say all.
"'Wait a little, Celtchair,' said Cet, 'unless thou comest to strike me. I came, O Celtchair, to the front of thy house. The alarm was raised around me. Every one went after me. Thou comest like every one else, and going into a gap before me didst throw a spear at me. I threw another spear at thee, which went through thy loins, nor has either son or daughter been born to thee since."
"After that Celtchair sat down on his seat.
"'Still the contest,' said Cet, 'or I shall divide the pig.'
"'Thou shalt have it,' said Mend, son of Sword-heel.
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
"'Mend,' say all.
"'What! deem you,' said Cet, 'that the sons of churls with nicknames should come to contend with me? for it was I was the priest,[8] who christened thy father by that name, since it is I that cut off his heel, so that he carried but one heel away with him. What should bring the son of that man to contend with me?'
"Mend sat down in his seat.
"'Still the contest,' said Cet, 'or I shall divide the pig.'
"'Thou shalt have it,' said Cumscraidh, the stammerer of Macha, son of Conor.
"'Who is this?'
"'That is Cumscraidh,' say all.
"He is the makings of a king, so far as his figure goes....
"'Well,' said Cet, 'thou madest thy first raid on us. We met on the border. Thou didst leave a third of thy people with me, and camest away with a spear through thy throat, so that no word comes rightly over thy lips, since the sinews of thy throat were wounded, so that Cumscraidh, the stammerer of Macha, is thy name ever since.'
"In that way he laid disgrace and a blow on the whole province.
"While he made ready with the pig and had his knife in his hand, they see Conall Ceârnach [the Victorious], coming towards them into the house. He sprang on to the floor of the house. The men of Ulster gave him great welcome. 'Twas then [King] Conor threw his helmet from his head and shook himself [for joy] in his own place. 'We are glad,' said Conall, 'that our portion is ready for us, and who divides for you?' said Conall.
"One man of the men of Ireland has obtained by contest the dividing of it, to wit, Cet mac Mágach.
"'Is that true, Cet?' said Conall, 'art thou dividing the pig?'"
There follows here an obscure dialogue in verse between the warriors.
"'Get up from the pig, Cet,' said Conall.
"'What brings thee to it?' said Cet.
"'Truly [for you] to seek contest from me,' said Conall, 'and I shall give you contest; I swear what my people swear since I [first] took spear and weapons, I have never been a day without having slain a Connachtman, nor a night without plundering, nor have I ever slept without the head of a Connachtman under my knee.'
"'It is true,' said Cet, 'thou art even a better warrior than I, but if Anluan mac Mágach [my brother] were in the house,' said Cet, 'he would match thee contest for contest, and it is a pity that he is not in the house this night.'
"'Aye, is he, though,' said Conall, taking the head of Anluan from his belt and throwing it at Cet's chest, so that a gush of blood broke over his lips. After that Conall sat down by the pig and Cet went from it.
"'Now let them come to the contest,' said Conall.
"Truly there was not then found among the men of Connacht a warrior to stand up to him in contest, for they were loath to be slain on the spot. The men of Ulster made a cover around him with their shields, for there was an evil custom in the house, the people of one side throwing stones at the other side. Then Conall proceeded to divide the pig, and he took the end of the tail in his mouth until he had finished dividing the pig."
The men of Connacht, as might be expected, were not pleased with their share. The rest of the piece recounts the battle that ensued both in the hostelry, whence "seven streams of blood burst through its seven doors," and outside in the close or liss after the hosts had burst through the doors, the death of the hound, the flight of Oilioll and Mève into Connacht, and the curious adventures of their charioteer.
* * * * *
The Conception of Cuchulain,[9] the Conception of Conor,[10] the Wooing of Emer,[11] the Death of Conlaoch,[12] the Siege of Howth,[13] the Intoxication of the Ultonians,[14] Bricriu's Banquet,[15] Emer's Jealousy and Cuchulain's Pining,[16] the Battle of Rosnaree,[17] Bricriu's Feast and the Exile of the Sons of Dael Dermuit,[18] Macha's Curse on the Ultonians,[19] the Death of King Conor,[20] the Wooing of Ferb,[21] the Cattle Spoil of Dartaid, the Cattle Spoil of Flidais, the Cattle Spoil of Regamon, the Táin bé Aingen, the Táin Bo Regamna,[22] the Conception of the two Swineherds[23] the Deaths of Oilioll (King of Connacht) and Conall Cearnach,[24] the Demoniac Chariot of Cuchulain,[25] the Cattle Spoil of Fraich,[26] are some of the most available of the many remaining sagas belonging to this cycle.
[1] "Hibernica Minora," p. 57, from Rawlinson B. 512, in the Bodleian Library. I have followed his excellent translation nearly verbatim.
[2] In Old Irish, Bruiden; in modern, Bruidhean (Bree-an).
[3]
"Tucad turbaid chotulta / do Mac Dáthó co a thech. Ros bói ni no chomairled / cen co labradar fri nech."
[4] But especially since Fergus mac Róigh or Roy had deserted Ulster and gone over to Connacht on the death of Déirdre.
[5] He is well known in the Ultonian saga. Keating describes him in his history as a "mighty warrior of the Connachtmen, and a fierce wolf of evil to the men of Ulster." It was he who gave King Conor the wound of which, after nine years, he died. He was eventually slain by Conall Cearnach as he was returning in a heavy fall of snow from a plundering excursion in Ulster, carrying three heads with him. See O'Mahony's Keating, p. 274, and Conall Cearnach was taken up for dead and brought away by the Connacht men after the fight, but recovered. This evidently formed the plot of another saga now I think lost.
[6] This is what Cuchulain also does the day he assumes arms for the first time. The story of his doings on that day and his foray into Connacht as recited by Fergus to Oilioll and Mève forms one of the most interesting episodes of the Táin Bo Chuailgne. Every young Ultonian on assuming arms made a raid into Connacht.
[7] It was he who, in the oldest version of the Déirdre saga, slew Naoise, and it was to him Conor made Déirdre over at the end of a year. See above p. 317.
[8] This phrase, introduced by a Christian reciter or copyist, need not in the least take away from the genuine pagan character of the whole.
[9] Windisch's "Irische Texte," Erste Serie, 134, and D'Arbois de Jubainville's "L'Épopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.
[10] D'Arbois de Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," p. 3.
[11] Translated by Kuno Meyer in "Revue Celtique," vol. xi., and "The Archæological Review," vol. i., and Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," p. 39.
[12] A poem published by Miss Brooke in her "Reliques of Irish Poetry," p. 393 of the 2nd Edition of 1816. There are fragmentary versions of it in the Edinburgh MSS. 65 and 62, published in Cameron's "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol. i. pp. 112 and 161, and in the Sage Pope Collection from the recitation of a peasant about a hundred years ago, p. 393. The oldest form of the story is in the Yellow Book of Lecan, and it has been studied in Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," p. 52.
[13] Edited and translated by Stokes in the "Revue Celtique," vol. viii. p. 49.
[14] Translated by Hennessy for Royal Irish Academy, Todd Lecture, Ser. I.
[15] The text published by Windisch, "Irische Texte," I. p. 235, and translated by Jubainville in "Épopée Celtique," p. 81.
[16] The text published by Windisch, "Irische Texte," I. p. 197, and by O'Curry in "Atlantis," vol. i. p. 362, with translation, and by Gilbert and O'Looney in "Facsimiles of National MSS. of Ireland." Translated into French by MM. Dottin, and Jubainville in "Épopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 174.
[17] Translated and edited by Rev. Edward Hogan, S.J., for the Royal Irish Academy, Todd, Lecture Series, vol. iv.
[18] The text edited by Windisch, "Irische Texte," Serie II., i. Heft, p. 164, and translated by M. Maurice Grammont, in Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 150.
[19] Translated and edited by Windisch, "Dans les comptes rendus de la classe de philosophie et d'histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences de Saxe," says M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, who gives a translation from Windisch's text at p. 320 of his "Épopée Celtique."
[20] Edited and translated by O'Curry in Lectures on the MS. Mat. p. 637, and again by D'Arbois de Jubainville.
[21] Edited and translated by Windisch in "Irische Texte," Dritte Serie, Heft II., p. 445.
[22] These are short introductory stories to the Táin Bo Chuailgne; they have been edited and translated by Windisch in "Irische Texte," Zweite Serie, Heft II., p. 185-255.
[23] Edited and translated by Windisch, "Irische Texte," Dritte Serie, Heft I., p. 230, and translated into English by Alfred Nutt, in his "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. p. 58.
[24] Translated and edited by Kuno Meyer in the "Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie," I Band, Heft I., p. 102.
[25] Edited by O'Beirne Crowe in the "Journal of the Royal Historical and Archæological Association of Ireland," Jan., 1870.
[26] Edited by O'Beirne Crowe in "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," 1871.
XXIX. THE FENIAN CYCLE
Cuchulain's life and love and death entranced the ears of the great for many centuries, and into hundreds of bright eyes tears of pity had for a thousand years been conjured up by the pathetic tones of bards reciting the fate of her who perished for the son of Usnach. The wars of Mève and of Conor mac Nessa were household words in the hall of Muirchertach of the leather cloaks, and in the palace at the head of the weir--Brian Boru's Kincora. Whosoever loved what was great in conception, and admired the broad sweep of the epic called upon his bards to recite the loves, the wars, the valour, and the deaths of the Red Branch knights.[1]
But there was yet another era consecrated in story-telling, another age of history peopled by other characters, in which the households of many chieftains and some even of the chiefs themselves delighted. These are pictured in the romances that were woven around Conn of the Hundred Battles, his son Art the Lonely, his grandson Cormac mac Art, and his great-grandson Cairbré of the Liffey. This cycle of romance may be called the "Fenian" Cycle, as dealing to some extent with Finn mac Cúmhail and his Fenian[2] militia, or the "Ossianic" Cycle since Ossian, Finn's son, is supposed to have been the author of many of the poems which belong to it.
In point of time--as reckoned by the Irish annalists and historians--the men of the Fenian Cycle lived something over two hundred years later than those of the Cuchulain era[3] and in none of the romances do we see even the faintest confusion or sign of intermingling the characters belonging to the different cycles. One of the surest proofs--if proof were needed--that Macpherson's brilliant "Ossian" had no Gaelic original, is the way in which the men and events of the two separate cycles are jumbled together.
As the war between Ulster and Connacht, which followed the death of the children of Usnach, is the great historic event which serves as basis to so many of the Red Branch romances, so the principal thread of history round which many of the Fenian stories are woven, is the gradual and slowly increasing enmity which proclaimed itself between the High-kings of Erin and their Fenian cohorts, resulting at last in the battle of Gabhra, the fall of the High-king, and the destruction of the Fenians.
Thus in the battle of Cnucha is related how Cúmhail[4] [Cool], the father of Finn, made war upon Conn of the Hundred Battles because he had raised Criomhthan of the Yellow Hair to the throne of Leinster, and how he obtained the aid of the Munster princes in the war. At the battle of Cnucha or Castleknock, near Cool's rath--now Rathcoole some ten miles from Dublin--Cool was routed and slain by the celebrated Connacht champion Aedh mac Morna, who lost an eye in the battle and was thenceforth called Goll (or the blind)[5] mac Morna. Many of the Munster Fenians followed Cool in this battle, and we find here the broadening rift between the Fenians of Munster and of Connacht which ultimately tended to bring about the dissolution of the whole body.
Again we find in the fine tale called the Battle of Moy Muchruime how Finn, through spite at his father Cool being thus killed by Conn of the Hundred Battles, kept out of the way when Conn's son Art was fighting the great battle of Moy Muchruime and gave him no assistance.
And again it was partly because Finn kept out of the way on that occasion that Conn's great-grandson fought the battle of Gabhra against Finn's son Ossian and his grandson Oscar, a battle which put an end to Fenian power for ever.
Of many of these tales we find two redactions, that of the old vellum MSS. and that of the modern paper ones, the latter being as a rule much longer and more decorative. Here, for instance, is the later version of one passage out of many which is slurred over or disregarded in the old one[6]; it is the sailing of Cúmhail, Finn's father, to Ireland to take the throne of Leinster. I translate this from a modern manuscript of the battle of Cnucha, in my own possession, as a good instance of the decorative, and in places inflated style of the later redactions of many of the Fenian sagas.
THE SAILING OF CÚMHAIL.
"Now the place where Cúmhail chanced to be at that time was between the islands of Alba and the deserts of Fionn-Lochlan, for he was hunting and deer-stalking there. And the number of those who were with the over-throwing hero Cúmhail in that place, was thrice fifty champions of his own near men. And he heard at that time that his country was left without any good king to defend it, and that Cáthaoir Mór [king of Leinster] had fallen in the pen of battle, and that there was no hero to keep the country. Thereupon, those chieftains were of a mind to proceed unto the isolated green isle of Erin, there to maintain with valour and might the red-hand province of Leinster. And joyfully they proceeded straight forwards towards their ship.[7]
"And there they quickly and expeditiously launched the towering, wide-wombed, broad-sailed bark, the freighted full-wide, fair-broad, firm-roped vessel, and they grasped their shapely well-formed broad-bladed, well-prepared oars, and they made a powerful sea-great, dashing, dry-quick rowing over the broad hollow-deep, full-foamed, pools [of the sea], and over the vast-billowed, vehement, hollow-broken rollers, so that they shot their shapely ships under the penthouse of each fair rock in the shallows nigh to the rough-bordered margin of the Eastern lands, over the unsmooth, great-forming, lively-waved arms of the sea, so that each fierce, broad, constant-foaming, bright-spotted, white-broken drop that the heroes left upon the sea-pool with that rapid rowing, formed [themselves] like great torrents upon soft mountains.
"When that valiant powerful company perceived the moaning of the loud billow-waves and the breaking forth of the ocean from her barriers, and the swelling of the abyss from her places, and the loud convulsion of the sea from her smooth streams, it was then they hoisted the variegated, tough-cordaged, sharp-pointed mast with much speed. And when the great foundation-blasts of the angry wind touched the even upright-standing, sword-straight masts, and when the huge-flying, loud-voiced, broad-bordered sails swallowed the wind attacking them suddenly with sharp voice, that stout, strong, active, powerful crew rose up promptly and quickly, and every one went straight to his work with speed and promptitude, and they stretched forth their ready courageous, white-coloured, brown-nailed hands most valiantly to the tackling, till they let the wind in loud, sharp, fast, voice-bursts into the shrouds of the mast, so that the ship gave an eager, very quick, vigorous leap forward, right straight into the salt-ocean, till they arrived in the delightfully-clear, cold-pooled, querulously-whistling, joyfully-calling reaches of the sea, and the dark sea rose speedily around them in desperate-daring floodful doisleana, in hardly-separated ridges and in rough-grey, proud-tongued, gloomy-grim, blue-capacious valleys, and in impetuous shower-topped wombs [of water]; and the great merriment of the cold wind was answered by the chieftains, strong-workingly, stout-enduringly, truly-powerfully, and they proceeded to manage and attend the high-ocean, until at last the strong and powerful sea overcame the intention of the high wind, and the murmur and giddy voice of the deep was humbled by that great rowing, till the sea became restful, smooth, and very calm behind them, until they took port and harbour at Inver Cholpa, which is at this time called Drogheda."
The stories about Cormac mac Art, his grandfather Conn of the Hundred Battles, and his son Cairbré of the Liffey, which are numerous, are mostly more or less connected with the Fenians, and may, as they deal with the same era and the same characters, be conveniently classed along with the Fenian sagas. One of the best known of these sagas is the Battle of Moy Léana[8] in which Conn of the Hundred Battles slew his rival Owen, who had forced from him half his kingdom. Owen had lived for six years in Spain, and had married a daughter of the Spanish king. At the end of this time he was seized with great home-sickness and he proposed to return to Ireland. When his father-in-law heard this, he said to him:--
"If that Erin of which you speak, Owen, were a thing easily moved, we would deem it easier to send the soldiers and warriors of Spain with you thither to cut it from its foundation and lay it on wheels and carry it after our ships and place it a one angle of Spain"--a grandiloquent speech which Owen did not relish; "He did not receive it with satisfaction, and it was not sweet to him," says the saga.
The King perceived this however, and offered him just what he wanted, two thousand warriors to help him and his exiles in acquiring the kingdom. The account of their embarcation and voyage is perhaps as good a specimen of exaggerated verbosity and of the rhetoric of the professed story-teller as any other in these sagas, which abound with such things, and it is perhaps worth while to give it at length. It will be seen that the story-teller or prose-poet, passes everything through the prism of his imagination, and aided by an extraordinary exuberance of vocabulary and unbounded wealth of alliterative adjectives, wraps the commonest objects in a hurricane of--to use his own phrase--"misty-dripping" epithet. The Battle of Moy Léana is recorded in the Annals of Ulster, by Flann in the eleventh century, and by the Book of Leinster, and no doubt the essence of the saga is very ancient, but the dressing-up of it, and especially the passage I am about to quote, is, in its style--not to speak of the language which is modern--almost certainly post-Norman.
THE SAILING OF OWEN MÓR.
"Then that vindictive unmerciful host went forward to the harbours and ports where their vessels and their sailing ships awaited them; and they launched their terrible wonderful monsters; their black, dangerous, many-coloured ships; their smooth, proper-sided, steady, powerful scuds, and their cunningly-stitched Laoidheangs from their beds and from their capacious, full-smooth places, out of the cool clear-winding creeks of the coast, and from the calm, quiet, well-shaped, broad-headed harbours, and there were placed upon every swift-going ship of them free and accurately arranged tiers of fully-smoothed, long-bladed oars, and they made a harmonious, united, co-operating, thick-framed, eager-springing, unhesitating, constant-going rowing against currents and wild tempests, so that loud, haughty, proud-minded, were the responses of the stout, fierce-fronted, sportive-topped billows in conversing with the scuds and beautiful prows.
"The dark, impetuous, proud, ardent waters became as white-streaked, fierce-rolling, languid-fatigued Leibhiona, upon which to cast the white-flanked, slippery, thick, straight-swimming salmon, among the dark-prowling, foamy-tracked heads [of sea monsters] from off the brown oars.
"And upon that fleet, sweeping with sharp rapidity from the sides and borders of the territories, and from the shelter of the lands, and from the calm quiet of the shores, they could see nothing of the globe on their border near them, but the high, proud, tempestuous waves of the abyss, and the rough, roaring shore, shaking and quivering, and the very-quick, swift motion of the great wind coming upon them, and long-swelling, gross-springing, great billows rising over the swelling sides of the [sea] valleys, and the savage, dangerous, shower-crested sea, maintaining its strength against the rapid course of the vessels over the expanse, until at last it became exhausted, subdued, drizzling and misty, from the conflict of the waves and fierce winds.
"The labouring crews derived increased spirits from the bounding of the swift ships over the wide expanse, and the wind coming from the rear, directly fair for the brave men, they arose manfully and vigorously to their work, and lashed the tough, new masts to the brown, smooth, ample, commodious bulwarks, without weakness, without spraining, without overstraining. Those ardent, expert crews put their hands to the long linen [sails] without shrinking, without mistake, from Eibhil to Achtuaim, and the swift-going, long, capacious ships, passed from the hand-force of the warriors, and over the deep, wet, murmuring pools of the sea, and past the winding, bending, fierce-showery points of the harbours, and over the high-torrented, ever-great mountains of the brine, and over the heavy, listless walls of the great waves, and past the dark, misty-dripping hollows of the shores, and past the saucy, thick-flanked, spreading, white-crested currents of the streams, and over the spring-tide, contentious, furious, wet, overwhelming fragments of the cold ocean, until the sea became rocking like a soft, fragrant, proud-bearing plain, swelling and heaving to the force of the anger and fury of the cold winds.
"The upper elements quickly perceived the anger and fury of the sea growing and increasing. Woe indeed was it to have stood between those two powers, the sea and the great wind when mutually attacking each other, and contending at the sides of strong ships and stout-built vessels and beautiful scuds. So that the sea was in showery-tempestuous, growling, wet, fierce, loud, clamorous, dangerous stages after them, whilst the excitement of the murmuring dark-deeded wind continued in the face and in the sluices of the ocean from its bottom to its surface. And tremulous, listless, long-disjointed, quick-shattering, ship-breaking, was the effect of the disturbance, and treacherous the shivering of the winds and the rolling billows upon the swift barks, for the tempest did not leave them a plank unshaken, nor a hatch unstarted, nor a rope unsnapped, nor a nail unstrained, nor a bulwark unendangered, nor a bed unshattered, nor a lifting uncast-down, nor a mast unshivered, nor a yard untwisted, nor a sail untorn, nor a warrior unhurt, nor a soldier unterrified, nor a noble unstunned--excepting the ardour and sailorship of the brave men who attended to the attacks and howlings of the fierce wind.
"However, now, when the wind had exhausted its valour and had not received reverence nor honour from the sea, it went forward, stupid and crestfallen, to the uppermost regions of its residence; and the sea was fatigued from its roarings and drunken murmurings, and the wild billows ceased their motions, so that spirit returned to he nobles and strength to the hosts, and activity to the warriors, and strength to the champions. And they sailed onwards in that order without delay or accident until they reached the sheltered smooth harbour of Cealga and the shore of the island of Greagraidhe."
Who or what the Fenians were, has given rise to the greatest diversity of opinion. The school of Mr. Nutt and Professor Rhys would, I fancy, recognise in them nothing but tribal deities, euhemerised or regarded as men.[9] Dr. Skene and Mr. Mac Ritchie believed that they were an altogether separate race of men from the Gaels, probably allied to, or identical with, the Picts of history; and the latter holds that they are the sidhe [shee] or fairy folk of the Gaels. The native Irish, on the other hand, who were perfectly acquainted with the Picts, and tell us much about them, have always regarded the Fenians as being nothing more or less than a body of janissaries or standing troops of Gaelic and Firbolg families, maintained during several reigns by the Irish kings, a body which tended to become hereditary. Nor is there in this account anything inherently impossible or improbable, especially as the Fenian régime synchronises with a time when the Irish were probably aggressively warlike. Keating, writing in Irish about the year 1630, gives the traditional account of them as he gathered it from ancient books and other authorities now lost, and this certainly preserves some ancient and unique traits. He begins by rejecting the ridiculous stories told about them, such as the battle of Ventry and the like, as well as the remarks of Campion and of Buchanan, who in his history of Scotland had called Finn a giant.
"It is proved," writes Keating, "that their persons were of no extraordinary size compared with the men that lived in their own times, and moreover that they were nothing more than members of a body of buanadha or retained soldiers, maintained by the Irish kings for the purpose of guarding their territories and of upholding their authority therein. It is thus that captains and soldiers are at present maintained by all modern kings for the purpose of defending their rule and guarding their countries.
"The members of the Fenian Body lived in the following manner. They were quartered on the people from November Day till May Day, and their duty was to uphold justice and to put down injustice on the part of the kings and lords of Ireland, and also to guard the harbours of the country from the oppression of foreign invaders. After that, from May till November, they lived by hunting and the chase, and by performing the duties demanded of them by the kings of Ireland, such as preventing robberies, exacting fines and tributes, putting down public enemies, and every other kind of evil that might afflict the country. In performing these duties they received a certain fixed pay....
"However, from May till November the Fenians had to content themselves with game, the product of their own hunting, as this [right to hunt] was their maintenance and pay from the kings of Ireland. That is, the warriors had the flesh of the wild animals for their food, and the skins for wages. During the whole day, from morning till night they used to eat but one meal, and of this it was their wont to partake towards evening. About noon they used to send whatever game they had killed in the morning by their attendants to some appointed hill where there were wood and moorland close by. There they used to light immense fires, into which they put a large quantity of round sandstones. They next dug two pits in the yellow clay of the moor, and having set part of the venison upon spits to be roasted before the fire they bound up the remainder with sugàns--ropes of straw or rushes--in bundles of sedge, and then placed them to be cooked in one of the pits they had previously dug. There they set the stones which they had before this heated in the fire, round about them, and kept heaping them upon the bundles of meat until they had made them seethe freely, and the meat had become thoroughly cooked. From the greatness of these fires it has resulted that their sites are still to be recognised in many parts of Ireland by their burnt blackness. It is they that are commonly called Fualachta na bhFiann, or the Fenians' cooking-spots.
"As to the warriors of the Fenians, when they were assembled at the place where their fires had been lighted, they used to gather round the second of those pits of which we have spoken above, and there every man stripped himself to his skin, tied his tunic round his waist, and then set to dressing his hair and cleansing his limbs, thus ridding himself of the sweat and soil of the day's hunt. Then they began to supple their thews and muscles by gentle exercise, loosening them by friction, until they had relieved themselves of all sense of stiffness and fatigue. When they had finished doing this they sat down and ate their meal. That being over, they set about constructing their fiann-bhotha or hunting-booths, and preparing their beds, and so put themselves in train for sleep. Of the following three materials did each man construct his bed, of the brushwood of the forest, of moss, and of fresh rushes. The brushwood was laid next the ground, over it was placed the moss, and lastly fresh rushes were spread over all. It is these three materials that are designated in our old romances as the tri Cuilcedha na bhFiann--the three Beddings of the Fenians."
Every man who entered the Fenian ranks had four geasa [gassa, i.e., tabus] laid upon him,
"The first, never to receive a portion with a wife, but to choose her for good manners and virtues; the second, never to offer violence to any woman; the third, never to refuse any one for anything he might possess; the fourth, that no single warrior should ever flee before nine [i.e., before less than ten] champions."
There was a curious condition attached to entrance into the brotherhood which rendered it necessary that
"Both his father and mother, his tribe, and his relatives should first give guarantees that they should never make any charge against any person for his death. This was in order that the duty of avenging his own blood [wounds] should rest with no man other than himself, and in order that his friends should have nothing to claim with respect to him however great the evils inflicted upon him."
All the Fenians were obliged to know the rules of poetry,[10] for no figure in Irish antiquity, layman or cleric, could ever arrive at the rank of a popular hero unless he could compose, or at least appreciate a poem.
The Fenian tales and poems are extraordinarily numerous, but their conception and characteristics are in general distinctly different from those relating to the Red Branch. They have not the same sweep, the same vastness and stature, the same weirdness, as the older cycle. The majority of them are more modern in conception and surroundings. There is little or no mention of the war chariot which is so important a factor in the older cycle. The Fenians fought on foot or horseback, and we meet, too, frequent mention of helmets and mail-coats, which are post-Danish touches. Things are on a smaller scale. Exaggeration does not run all through the stories, but is confined to small parts of them, and it is set off by much that is trivial or humorous.
The Fenian stories became in later times the distinctly popular ones. They were far more of the people and for the people than those of the Red Branch. They were most intimately bound up with the life and thought and feelings of the whole Gaelic race, high and low, both in Ireland and Scotland, and the development of Fenian saga, for a period of 1,200 or 1,500 years, is one of the most remarkable examples in the world of continuous literary evolution. I use the word evolution advisedly, for there was probably not a century from the seventh to the eighteenth in which new stories, poems, and redactions of sagas concerning Finn and the Fenians were not invented and put in circulation, while to this very day many stories never committed to manuscript are current about them amongst the Irish and Scotch Gaelic-speaking populations. We have found no such steady interest evinced by the people in the Red Branch romances, and in attempting to collect Irish folk-lore I have found next to nothing about Cuchulain and his contemporaries, but great quantities about Finn, Ossian, Oscar, Goll, and Conan. The one cycle, then, antique in tone, language, and surroundings, was, I suspect, that of the chiefs, the great men, and the bards; the other--at least in later times--more that of the un-bardic classes and of the people.
I do not mean to say that many of the Cuchulain stories were not copied into modern MSS. and circulated freely among the people all over Ireland during the eighteenth century and the beginning of this, especially Cuchulain's training, Conlaoch's (his son's) death, the Fight at the Ford, and others, but these appear never to have put out shoots and blossoms from themselves and to have generated new and yet again new stories as did the ever-youthful Fenian tales; nor do they appear to have equally entwined themselves at this day round the popular imagination.
A striking instance of how the Ossianic tale continued to develop down to the eighteenth century was supplied me the other day when examining the Reeves Collection.[11] I there came upon a story in a Louth MS., written, I think, in the last century, which seemed to me to contain one of the latest developments of Ossianic saga. It is called "The Adventures of Dubh mac Deaghla," and tells us of how a prophet was born of the race of Eiremóin, "and all say," adds the writer, "that it was he was the druid who prophesied to Fiacha Sreabhtainne that he should fall in the battle of Dubh-Cumair by the three brothers, Cairioll, Muircath, and Aodh." He also "prophesied to the race of Tuathal that Cairbré of the Liffey was that far-branching tree which was to spread round about through the great circuit of Erin, around which smote the powerful wind from the south-west, overthrowing it wholly to the ground--which wind meant the Fenians, as had been announced by the smith's daughter."[12] The Fenians it seems heard that this Torna had prophesied about them and intended to kill him, and he and his family had to emigrate to Britain. From there he sends a letter in true epistolary style to an old friend of his, one Conor son of Dathach, beginning "Dear Friend"--an evident mark of seventeenth or possibly eighteenth century authorship, for there are no letters written in this style in the older literature, and this piece evidently follows a Latin or a Spanish, or possibly an English model. However this may be, Torna's letter asks Conor for news of the situation, and in time receives the following answer:
"To Torna son of Dubh, our dear friend in Glen Fuinnse in Britain in Saxony.
"Thy affectionate missive was read by me as soon as it arrived, and it had been a cause of joy to me, were it not for the way we are in at Tara at this moment.
"For we never felt until the Munster Fenians came and encamped at the marsh of Old Raphoe and Treibhe to the south-west; the warriors of Leinster also and Baoisgnidh, together with Clan Ditribh and Clan Boirchne, were to the south of them, towards the bottom of the stream of Gabhra and on the west towards the old fort of Mève; and that same evening the King having received an account of the encamping of the Fenians urges messengers secretly to Connacht to the Clan of Conal Cruachna that they might come, along with all the king's friends from the western border of Erin; and other messengers he despatches to Scotland for the Clan of Garaidh Glúnmhar, desiring Oscar of the blue Javelin, Aodh, Argal, and Airtre to come from abroad without delay, and that secretly.
"On the early morning of the morrow, before the stars of the air retired, the King urged the druids of Tara against the Fenians to argue with them, and ask what was the cause of their rebelling in this guise, or who it was with whom they had now come to do battle, because they appeared not in habiliments of peace or friendship, but a flush of anger appeared in the face and countenance of every several man of them.
"'And there is another unlawful thing of which ye are guilty,' said the druids, 'which shows that ye have broken the vow of allegiance and obedience to your king, in that ye have come in array and garb of battle to the door of his fortress without receiving his leave or advice, without giving him notice or warning. To what point of the compass do ye travel, or on what have ye set your mind [that ye act not] as is the right and due of a prince's subjects, and as was always before this the habitude of the bands that came before ye; and as shall last with honest people till the end of the world.'
"However, now the druids are a-preaching to them and casting at them bold storm-showers of reproofs by way of retarding them till the coming back of the messengers who went abroad, for Mac Cool is not amongst them to excite them against us, and we hope that they will remain thus until help come to us. For this is the eleventh day since the druids went from us, and our watchmen who observe what approaches and what goes, disclose all tidings to us, and they are ever a-listening to the loud argument of the druids and the captains against one another. Moreover, the desire of the Fenians to make a rapid assault upon Tara is the less from their having heard that Cairbré was gone on his royal round to Dun Sreabhtainne to visit Fiacha,[13] though he is really not gone there, but to a certain place under cover of night with his women and the royal jewels of Tara. And it was lucky for him that he did not go to Dun Sreabhtainne, for the Fenians had sent Cairioll and nine mighty men with him to plunder Dun Sreabhtainne. In that, however, they miscarried, for his tutor was gone off before that with Fiacha, by order of the King, to the same place where the women were. That, however, we shall pursue no further at present.
"But it is easy for you who are knowledgeable to form a judgment upon the state in which the inhabitants of a country must be, over which such a whelming calamity is about to fall. Let me leave off. And here we send our affectionate greeting to you, and to you all, with the hope of some time seeing you in full health, but I have small hope of it.
"From your faithful friend till death, Conor, son of Dathach in Tara, the royal fortress of Erin. Written the 20th day of the month of March in the year of the age of the world ... " [The figures in the MS. are not legible].
The romance, which is a long one, is chiefly occupied with events relating to the family of Dubh mac Deaghla in Britain. But later on in the book the Conor who despatched this letter turns up and gives in person a most vivid description of the Battle of Gowra, and the events which followed his letter.
I have only instanced and quoted from this comparatively unimportant story, as showing one of the very latest developments of Fenian literature, and as proving how thoroughly even the seventeenth and eighteenth century Gaels were imbued with, and realised the spirit of, the Fenian Cycle, and also as a peculiar specimen of what rarely happens in literature, but is always of great interest when it does happen--a specimen of unconscious saga developing into semi-conscious romance.
There are comparatively few ancient texts belonging to the Finn saga, compared with the wealth of old vellum books that contain the Red Branch stories. There is, however, quite enough of documentary proof to show that so early as the seventh century Finn was looked on as a popular hero.
The actual data that we have to go upon in estimating the genesis and development of the Fenian tales have been lucidly collected by Mr. Nutt. They are, as far as is known at present, as follows. Gilla Caemhain, the poet who died in 1072, says that it was fifty-seven years after the battle of Moy Muchruime that Finn was treacherously killed "by the spear points of Urgriu's three sons."[14] This would make Finn's death take place in 252, for Moy Muchruime was fought according to the "Four Masters" in A.D. 195. Tighearnach the Annalist, who died in 1088, writes that Finn was killed in A.D. 283, "by Aichleach, son of Duibhdrean, and the sons of Urgriu of the Luaighni of Tara, at Ath-Brea upon the Boyne." The poet Cinaeth O Hartagain, who died in A.D. 985, wrote: "By the Fiann of Luagne was the death of Finn at Ath-Brea upon the Boyne." All these men in the tenth and eleventh centuries certainly believed in Finn as implicitly as they did in King Cormac.
The two oldest miscellaneous Irish MSS. which we have, are the Leabhar na h-Uidhre and the Book of Leinster. The Leabhar na h-Uidhre was compiled from older MSS. towards the close of the eleventh century, and the Book of Leinster some fifty years later. The oldest of them contains a copy of the famous poem ascribed to Dallán Forgaill in praise of St. Columcille, which was so obscure in the middle of the eleventh century that it required to be glossed. In this gloss, made perhaps in the eleventh century, perhaps long before, there is an explanatory poem on winter, ascribed to Finn, grandson of Baoisgne, that is our Finn mac Cool, and in the same commentary we find an explanation of the words "diu" = long, and "derc" = eye, in proof of which this verse is quoted, "As Gráinne," says the commentator, "daughter of Cormac, said to Finn."
"There lives a man On whom I would love to gaze long, For whom I would give the whole world, O Son of Mary! though a privation!"
This verse, quoted as containing two words which required explanation in or before the eleventh century, pre-supposes the story of Diarmuid and Gráinne. In addition to this we have the apparently historical story of the "Cause of the Battle of Cnucha." We have also the story of the Mongan, an Ulster king of the seventh century, according to the annalists who declared that he was not what men took him to be, the son of the mortal Fiachna, but of the god Mananán mac Lir, and a re-incarnation of the great Finn, and calls back from the grave the famous Fenian, Caoilte, who proves it. This account is strongly relied upon by Mr. Nutt to prove the wild mythological nature of the Finn story, but it is by no means unique in Irish literature, for we find the celebrated Tuan mac Cairrill had a second birth also, and the great Cuchulain too has his parentage ascribed to the god Lugh, not to Sualtach, his reputed father. Consequently, supposing Finn to have been a real historical character of the third century, there would be nothing absolutely extraordinary in the story arising in half pagan times that Mongan, also an historical character, was a re-incarnation of Finn.
In the second oldest miscellaneous manuscript, the Book of Leinster, the references to Finn and the Fenians are much more numerous, containing three poems ascribed to Ossian, Finn's son, five poems ascribed to Finn himself, two poems ascribed to Caoilte the Fenian poet, a poem ascribed to one of Finn's followers, allusions to Finn in poems by one Gilla in Chomded and another, passages from the Dinnsenchas or topographical tract about Finn, the account of the battle of Cnámhross, in which Finn helps the Leinstermen against King Cairbré, the genealogy of Finn, and the genealogy of Diarmuid O'Duibhne.
Again, in the Glossary ascribed, and probably truly, to Cormac, King-Bishop of Cashel, A.D. 837-903, there are two allusions to Finn, one of which refers to the unfaithfulness of his wife. This, indeed, is not contained in the oldest copy, but Whitley Stokes, than whom there can be no better authority, believes these allusions to belong to the older portion of the Glossary, a work which is probably much interpolated.
But there is yet another proof of the antiquity of the Finn stories which Mr. Nutt does not note, and in some respects it is the most important and conclusive of all. For if, as D'Arbois de Jubainville has, I think, proved, the list of 187 historic tales contained in the Book of Leinster was really drawn up at the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century, we find that even then Finn or his contemporaries were the subjects of, or figure in, several of them, as in the story of "The Courtship of Ailbhe, daughter of King Cormac mac Art, by Finn," "The Battle of Moy Muchruime," where King Art, Cormac's father, was slain; "The Cave of Bin Edair," where Diarmuid and Gráinne took shelter when pursued by Finn; "The Adventures of Finn in Derc Fearna (the cave of Dunmore)," a lost tale; "The Elopement of Gráinne with Diarmuid," and perhaps one or two more.
Thus Finn is sandwiched in as a real person along with his other contemporaries, not only in tenth and eleventh century annalists and poets, but is also made the hero of historic romance as early as the seventh or eighth century. Side by side in our list with the battle of Moy Muchruime we have the battle of Moy Rath. Copies of both, coloured with the same literary pigments, exist. The last we know to be historical, it can be proved; why should not the first be also? It is true that the one took place 438 years before the other, but the treatment of both is absolutely identical, and it is the merest accident that we happen to have external evidence for the latter and not for the former. I can see, then, no sufficiently cogent reasons for viewing Finn mac Cúmhail with different eyes from those with which we regard his king. Cormac mac Art is usually acknowledged to have been a real king of flesh and blood, whose buildings are yet seen on the site of Tara, after whose daughter Gráinne one of them is named, why should Finn, his chief captain, who married that Gráinne, be a deity euhemerised? I do not see any arguments sufficient to differentiate this case of Finn, to whom no particular supernatural qualities (except the knowledge he got when he chewed his thumb) are attributed, from that of Cormac and other kings and heroes who were the subjects of bardic stories, and whose deaths were recorded in the Annals, except the accident that the creative imagination of the later Gaels happened to seize upon him and make him and his contemporaries the nucleus of a vast literature instead of some earlier or later group of perhaps equally deserving champions. Finn has long since become to all ears a pan-Gaelic champion just as Arthur has become a Brythonic one.
Of the Fenian sagas the longest--though it is only fragmentary--is that known as the Dialogue or Colloquy of the Ancients, which is preserved in the Book of Lismore, and would fill about 250 of these pages. The plot of it is simple enough. Caoilte [Cweeltya] the poet and Ossian, almost sole survivors of the Fenians--who had lived on after the battle of Gabhra, where Cairbré, the High-king, broke their power for ever--meet in their very old age St. Patrick and the new preachers of the gospel. Patrick is most desirous of learning the past history of the island from them, and the legends connected with streams and hills and raths and so forth, and these are willingly recounted to him, and were all written[15] down by Brogan Patrick's scribe for posterity to read hereafter. The saga describes their wanderings along with the saint, the stories they relate to him, and the verses--over a couple of thousand--sung or repeated by them to the clerics and others.[16] Some of these pieces are exceedingly beautiful. Here is a specimen, the lament which Credé made over her husband who was drowned at the battle of Ventry. Caoilte repeats the verses to Patrick:
"The haven roars, and O the haven roars, over the rushing race of Rinn-da-bharc. The drowning of the warrior of Loch-da-chonn, that is what the wave impinging on the strand laments.[17] Melodious is the crane, and O melodious is the crane, in the marshlands of Druim-dá-thrén. 'Tis she who may not save her brood alive. The wild dog of two colours is intent upon her nestlings. A woful note, and O a woful note is that which the thrush in Drumqueen emits, but not more cheerful is the wail which the blackbird makes in Letterlee. A woful sound, and O a woful sound, is that the deer utters in Drumdaleish. Dead lies the doe of Drumsheelin,[18] the mighty stag bells after her. Sore suffering, and O suffering sore, is the hero's death, his death, who used to lie by me.... Sore suffering to me is Cael, and O Cael is a suffering sore, that by my side he is in dead man's form; that the wave should have swept over his white body, that is what hath distracted me, so great was his delightfulness. A dismal roar, and O a dismal roar, is that the shore's surf makes upon the strand.... A woful booming, and O a boom of woe, is that which the wave makes upon the northward beach, butting as it does against the polished rock, lamenting for Cael now that he is gone. A woful fight, and O a fight of woe, is that the wave wages with the southern shore. A woful melody, and O a melody of woe, is that which the heavy surge of Tullacleish emits. As for me the calamity which has fallen upon me having shattered me, for me prosperity exists no more."
Perhaps the Fenian saga, next in length and certainly in merit, is the well-known "Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne."[19] Diarmuid of the Love-spot unwittingly causes Gráinne, daughter of Cormac mac Art, the High-king, to fall in love with him, just on the eve of her marriage with his captain, Finn mac Cool. He is driven to elope with her, and is pursued round Ireland by the vengeful Finn, who succeeds after many years in compassing the death of the generous and handsome Diarmuid by a wild boar, and then winning back to himself the love of the fickle Gráinne.
The Enchanted Fort of the Quicken Tree, the Enchanted Fort of Céis Corann,[20] the Little Brawl at Allen,[21] the Enchanted Fort of Eochaidh Beag the Red,[22] the Pursuit of Sive, daughter of Owen Óg, the Pursuit of the Giolla Deacar,[23] the Death of the Great Youth the King of Spain's son,[24] The Feast in the House of Conan,[25] the Legend of Lomnochtan of Slieve Riffé,[26] the Legend of Ceadach the Great,[27] the Battle of Tulach na n-each,[28] the Battle of Ventry,[29] the Battle of Cnucha, the Battle of Moy Muchruime,[30] the Battle of Moy Léana,[31] the youthful Exploits of Finn mac Cool,[32] the Battle of Gabhra,[33] the Birth of King Cormac,[34] the Battle of Crinna,[35] the Cause of the Battle of Cnucha,[36] the Invitation of Maol grandson of Manannán to the Fenians of Erin,[37] the Legend of the Clown in the Drab Coat,[38] the Lamentation of Oilioll after his children,[39] Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise,[40] the Decision about Cormac's Sword,[41] an ancient fragment about Finn and Gráinne,[42] an ancient fragment on the Death of Finn[43]--are some of the remaining prose sagas of this cycle.
[1] Moore's genius has stereotyped amongst us the term Red Branch knight, which, however, has too much flavour of the mediæval about it. The Irish is curadh, "hero." The Irish for "Knight" in the appellations White Knight, Knight of the Glen, etc., is Ridire (pronounced "Rĭd-ĭr-yă," in Connacht sometimes corruptly "Rud-ir-ya"), which is evidently the mediæval "Ritter," i.e., Rider.
[2] Moore helped to bring this word into common use under the form of Finnian in his melody, "The wine-cup is circling in Alvin's hall." It is probable that he derived the word from Finn, and meant by it "followers of Finn mac Cool." The Irish word is Fiann (pronounced "Fee-an") and has nothing to do with Finn mac Cúmhail. In the genitive it is nà Féine (na Fayna). It is a noun of multitude, and means the Fenian body in general. The individual Fenian was called Féinnidhe, i.e., a member of the Fenian force. The bands of militia were called Fianna [Fee-ăn-a], The word is declined An Fhiann, na Féinne, do'n Fhéinn [In Eean, nă Fayn-a, don Aen] and its resemblance to the proper name Finn is only accidental. The English translation of Keating made early in the last century, by Dermot O'Conor, does not use the term "Fenian" at all, but translates the word by "Irish Militia." Nor does O'Halloran, in 1778, when he published his history, seem to have known the term. The first person who appears to have used it is Miss Brooke, as early as 1796: in her translation of some Ossianic pieces, I find the lines--
"He cursed in rage the Fenian chief And all the Fenian race."
I have been told that Macpherson had already used the word, but I have looked carefully through his Ossian and have not been able to find it. Halliday in his edition of Keating, in 1808, talks in a foot-note of "Fenian heroes." It was John O'Mahony the head-centre of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a brilliant Irish scholar and translator of Keating, who succeeded in perpetuating the ancient historic memory by christening the "men of '68" the "Fenians."
[3] Cormac mac Art came to the throne, A.D. 227, according to the "Four Masters"; A.D. 213, according to Keating.
[4] See ch. XX, note 9.
[5] The word is long obsolete. Goll is a stock character in Fenian folk-lore, a kind of Ajax.
[6] Contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a volume copied about the year 1100, and printed in "Revue Celtique," vol. ii. p. 86.
[7] With this thunderous description, all sound and fury, and signifying very little, compare the Homeric description of a like scene, clear, accurate, cut like a gem:
τοῖσιν δ᾿ἴκμενον οὖρον ἵει ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων, οἱ δ᾿ἱστὸν στήσαντ᾿, ἀνά θ᾿ ἱστία λευκὰ πέτασσαν ἐν δ᾿άνεμος πρῆσεν μέσον ἱστίον, ἀμφὶ δὲ κῦμα στείρῃ πορφύρεον μεγάλ᾿ ἴαχε, νηὸς ἰούσης ῾η δ᾿ ἔθεεν κατὰ κῦμα, διαπρήσσυσα κέλευθα. ILIAD I., p. 480.
But the Irish passage, though quoted here to exemplify a common feature of the Fenian tales, really dates from a time of decadence.
[8] Published by Eugene O'Curry for the Celtic Society. I adhere to his admirable, and at the same time perfectly literal, translation.
[9] Mr. Nutt seems to believe that the whole groundwork of the Fenian tales is mythical. His position with regard to them is fairly summed up in this extract from his note on Mac Innes' Gaelic stories. "Every Celtic tribe," he writes, "possessed traditions both mythical and historical, the former of substantially the same character, the latter necessarily varying. Myth and history acted and reacted upon each other, and produced heroic saga which may be defined as myth tinged and distorted by history. The largest element is as a rule suggested by myth, so that the varying heroic sagas of the various portions of a race, have always a great deal in common. These heroic sagas, together with the official or semi-official mythologies of the pre-Christian Irish are the subject-matter of the Annals. They were thrown into a purely artificial chronological shape by men familiar with biblical and classical history. A framework was thus created into which the entire mass of native legend was gradually fitted, whilst the genealogies of the race were modelled, or it may be remodelled in accord with it. In studying the Irish sagas we may banish entirely from our mind all questions as to the truth of the early portions of the Annals. The subject matter of the latter is mainly mythical, the mode in which it has been treated is literary. What residuum of historic truth may still survive can be but infinitesimal." (See Mr. Nutt's valuable essay on Ossianic or Fenian Saga in "Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition," vol. ii. p. 399.)
[10] "Of all these," says, with true Celtic hyperbole, the fifteenth-century vellum in the British Museum, marked "Egerton, 1782," "not a man was taken until he was a prime poet versed in the twelve books of poetry. No man was taken till in the ground a large hole had been made such as to reach the fold of his belt, and he put into it with his shield and a forearm's length of a hazel stick. Then must nine warriors having nine spears, with a ten furrows' width between them and him, assail him, and in concert let fly at him. If he were then hurt past that guard of his, he was not received into the Fian-ship. Not a man of them was taken until his hair had been interwoven into braids on him, and he started at a run through Ireland's woods, while they seeking to wound him followed in his wake, there having been between him and them but one forest bough by way of interval at first. Should he be overtaken he was wounded and not received into the Fian-ship after. If his weapons had quivered in his hand he was not taken. Should a branch in the wood have disturbed anything of his hair out of its braiding he was not taken. If he had cracked a dry stick under his foot [as he ran] he was not accepted. Unless that [at full speed] he had both jumped a stick level with his brow, and stooped to pass under one on a level with his knee, he was not taken. Unless also without slackening his pace he could with his nail extract a thorn from his foot he was not taken into the Fian-ship. But if he performed all this he was of Finn's people." (See "Silva Gadelica," p. 100 of English vol.)
[11] These MSS. volumes, fifty-four in number, had most of them belonged to Mr. MacAdam, editor of the "Ulster Journal of Archæology," from whom Bishop Reeves bought them. On the lamented death of that great scholar they were put up to auction, when the Royal Irish Academy bought some thirty volumes, the rest unfortunately were allowed to be scattered again to the four winds of heaven. For his exertions and generosity in securing even so many of these MSS., especially those which at first sight looked least important, but which contained treasures of folk-lore and folk-song, the Hon. Treasurer, the Rev. Maxwell Close, has placed Irish-speaking Ireland under yet another debt of gratitude to him. It is not always that which is most ancient which is most valuable from a literary or a national point of view. The pity of it is that any Irish MS. that comes into the market should not be bought up for the nation with the money assigned by the Government and confided to the Royal Irish Academy for Irish studies, unless a special search should show that the Academy already possesses a copy of each piece in it. I am convinced that many hundreds or thousands of pieces have been through neglect to do this irreparably lost to the nation. Oh the pity of it!
[12] This is in allusion to the romance of Moy Muchruime, where we read of the prophecy and what followed. For Cairbré see above, p. 32.
[13] Fiacha was the King's son, and succeeded him in the sovereignty. He was finally slain by his nephews, the celebrated Three Collas--they who afterwards burned Emania and caused the Ultonian dynasty and the Red Branch knights, after a duration of more than seven hundred years, to set in blood and flame, never to rise again.
[14] "There were many among the Fenians," says Keating, "who were more remarkable for their personal prowess, their valour, and their corporeal stature than Finn. The reason why he was made king of the Fiann, and set over the warriors, was simply because his father and grandfather had held that position before him. Another reason also why he had been made king of the Fiann was because he excelled his contemporaries in intellect and learning, in wisdom and in subtlety, and in experience and hardihood in battlefields. It was for these qualities that he was made king of the Fiann, and not for his personal prowess or for the great size or strength of his body."
"Warrior better than Finn," says an old vellum MS. in the British Museum, "never struck his hand into chiefs, inasmuch as for service he was a soldier, a hospitaller for hospitality, and in heroism a hero. In fighting functions he was a fighting man, and in strength a champion worthy of a king, so that ever since and from that until this, it is with Finn that every such is co-ordinated."
And in another place the same vellum says, "A good man verily was he who had those Fianna, for he was the seventh king ruling Ireland, that is to say, there were five kings of the provinces, and the King of Ireland, he being himself the seventh conjointly with the King of all Ireland."
In a MS. saga in my own possession, called "The Pursuit of Sadhbh (Sive)," there is an amusing account of the truculence of the Fenians about their exclusive right of hunting, and the way they terrorised the people they were quartered on, but I have not space for this extract.
[15] See above, p. 116.
[16] This has been edited by Standish Hayes O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica," from the Book of Lismore.
[17]
"Géisid cuan, ón géisid cuan Os buinne ruad rinnda bharc, Badad laeich locha dhá chonn Is ed cháinios tonn re trácht."
"Silva Gadelica," p. 113 of Gaelic volume, p. 122 of English volume. I have not altered Dr. O'Grady's beautiful translation.
[18] This passage and that about the crane are not explained in the "Colloquy," but curiously enough I find the same passage in the saga called the Battle of Ventry, which Kuno Meyer published in "Anecdota Oxoniensia" from a fifteenth-century vellum in the Bodleian. The lady is there called Gelges [white swan], and as she sought for Cael among the slain "she saw the crane of the meadow and her two birds and the wily beast yclept the fox a-watching of her birds, and when she covered one of the birds to save it he would make a rush at the other bird, so that the crane had to stretch herself out between them both, so that she would rather have found and suffered death by the wild beast than that her birds should be killed by him. And Gelges mused on this greatly and said, 'I wonder not that I so love my fair sweetheart, since this little bird is in such distress about its birdlets.'" She heard, moreover, a wild stag on Drum Reelin above the harbour, and it was vehemently bewailing the hind from one pass to the other, for they had been nine years together and had dwelt in the wood that was at the foot of the harbour, the wood of Feedesh, and the hind had been killed by Finn, and the stag was nineteen days without tasting grass or water, mourning for the hind. "It is no shame for me," said Gelges, "to find death with grief for Cael, as the stag is shortening his life for grief of the hind," etc.
[19] Pronounced "Graan-ya." This story has been edited and translated in the third volume of the Ossianic Society by Standish H. O'Grady, and has been since reprinted from his text. Dr. Joyce also translated it into English in his Old Celtic romances, but omits the cynical but most characteristic conclusion. The story was only known to exist in quite modern MSS., but I find an excellent copy written about the year 1660 in the newly-acquired Reeves Collection in the Royal Irish Academy. This saga was in existence in the seventh century, for it is mentioned in the list in the Book of Leinster. It is the subject of a recent cantata by the Marquis of Lome and Mr. Hamish Mac Cunn.
[20] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[21] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[22] The Irish text published without a translation by Patrick O'Brien in his Bláithfleasg.
[23] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[24] I published in a periodical a translation of this from a MS. in my own possession.
[25] Published in vol. ii. of Ossianic Society.
[26] Is being published in the "Gaelic Journal" by the editor.
[27] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady, but I have met no copies of it, though I have heard a story of this name told orally.
[28] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady.
[29] Published from a fifteenth-century vellum in the Bodleian by Kuno Meyer in a volume of the "Anecdota Oxoniensia."
[30] Published by Standish H. O'Grady in "Silva Gadelica" from the Book of Leinster. I have a seventeenth-century paper copy of the same saga which is completely different.
[31] Published by O'Curry for the Celtic Society.
[32] Edited by O'Donovan for the Ossianic Society and by Mr. David Comyn with a translation into modern Irish for the Gaelic League.
[33] Edited by O'Kearney for the Ossianic Society, vol. i.
[34] Published in "Silva Gadelica."
[35] Published in "Silva Gadelica."
[36] A brief tale in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, published in "Revue Celtique," vol. ii.
[37] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady in his preface to Diarmuid and Gráinne, but unknown to me.
[38] Published without a translation by O'Daly of Anglesea Street in "Irish Self-taught," and with a translation in the "Silva Gadelica."
[39] Usually joined on to the modern version of the Battle of Mochruime.
[40] Published by Standish H. O'Grady for the Ossianic Society, vol. iii. p. 212, from a modern MS.; and by Whitley Stokes in "Irische Texte," iii. Serie, Heft. i. p. 203, from the Book of Ballymote and Yellow Book of Lecan.
[41] Published by Stokes in the same place as the last.
[42] "Zeitschrift für Celt Phil.," Band I. Heft. 3, p. 458, translated by Kuno Meyer.
[43] Ibid., and O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica."
XXX. MISCELLANEOUS ROMANCE
In addition to the stories that centre round Cuchulain and round Finn there are a number of miscellaneous ones dealing with episodes or characters in Irish history; some are in short groups or minor cycles, but others are completely independent tales. All are built upon lines similar to those which we have been considering, and they are composed for the most part in a mixture of both verse and prose. Some of these sagas deal with pre-Christian times, and others with the early mediæval period. Very few, if any, deal with post-Danish and still fewer with post-Norman subjects. The seventh century was the golden era of the Irish saga, and nothing that the race did in later times improved on it. Out of the hundred and eighty-seven stories whose names are preserved in the Book of Leinster, in a list which must have been, as D'Arbois de Jubainville points out, drawn up in the seventh century, about one hundred and twenty seem to have utterly perished. Of the others--many of which, however, are preserved only in the baldest and most condensed form--some four or five relate to the Fenian Cycle, some eighteen are Red Branch stories, and some eight or nine, mostly preserved in the colourless digests of the Book of Invasions, are mythological. About twenty-one of the others belong to minor groups, or are miscellaneous single tales. Some of them are of the highest interest and antiquity. Of these the storming of the Bruidhean [Bree-an] or Court of Dá Derga is, after the Táin Bo Chuailgne, probably the oldest and most important saga in the whole range of Irish literature.
These two stories substantially dating from the seventh century, and perhaps formed into shape long before that time, are preserved in the oldest miscellaneous MSS. which we possess, and throw more light upon pagan manners, customs, and institutions than perhaps any other.[1]
The period in which the Court-of-Dá-Derga story is laid is about coincident with that of the Red Branch Cycle, only it does not deal with Emania, and the Red Branch, but with Leinster, Tara, and the High-king of Erin, who was there resident. The High-king at this time was the celebrated Conairè the "Great," and rightly, if we may believe our Annals, was he so called, for he had been a just, magnanimous, and above all fortunate ruler of all Ireland for fifty years.[2] So just was he, and so strict, that he had sent into banishment a number of lawless and unworthy persons who troubled his kingdom. Among these were his own five foster brothers whom he was reluctantly compelled to send into exile along with the others. These people all turned to piracy, and plundered the coasts of England, Scotland, and even Ireland, wherever they found an opportunity of making a successful raid upon the unarmed inhabitants.[3] It so happened that the son of the King of Britain, one Ingcel, also of Irish extraction, had been banished by his father for his crimes, and was now making his living in much the same way as the predatory Irishmen. These two parties having met, being drawn together by a fellow-feeling and their common lawlessness, struck up a friendship, and made a league with one another, thus doubling the strength of each. Soon after this the High-king found himself in Clare, called thither to settle, according to his wont, some dispute between rival chiefs. His business ended, he was leisurely taking his way with his retinue back to his royal seat at Tara, when on entering the borders of Meath he beheld the whole country in the direction of his city a sheet of flame and rolling smoke. Terrified at this, and divining that the banished pirates had made a descent on his capital during his absence, he turned aside and took the great road that, leading from Tara to Dublin, passed thence into the heart of Leinster. Pursuing this road the King crossed the Liffey in safety and made for the Bruighean [Bree-an] or Court of Dá Derg on the road close to the river Dothar or Dodder, called ever since Boher-na-breena,[4] the "road of the Court," close to Tallacht, not far from Dublin. This was one of the six great courts of universal hospitality[5] in Erin, and Dá Derg, its master, was delighted and honoured by the visit from the High-king.
The pirates having plundered Tara, took to their vessels, and having laden them with their spoils were now under a favourable breeze running along the sea coast towards the Hill of Howth, when they perceived from afar the King's company making in their chariots for Dublin along the great high road. One of his own foster brothers was the first to recognise that it was the High-king who was there. He was kept in view and seen at last to enter Dá Derg's great court of hospitality. The pirates ran their ships ashore to the south of the Liffey, and Ingcel the Briton set off as a spy to examine the court and the number of armed men about it; to see if it might not be possible to surprise and plunder it during the night. On his return he is questioned by his companions as to what he saw, and by this simple device--familiar to all poets from Homer down--we are introduced to the principal characters of his court, and are shown what the retinue of a High-king consisted of in the sixth or seventh century, about which time the saga probably took definite shape on parchment, or in the second or third century if we are to suppose the traits to be more archaic than the composition of the tale. We have here a minute account of the King and the court and the company, with their costumes, insignia, and appearance. We see the King and his sons, his nine pipers or wind-instrument players, his cupbearers, his chief druid-juggler, his three principal charioteers, their nine apprentice charioteers, his hostages the Saxon princes, his equerries and outriders, his three judges, his nine harpers, his three ordinary jugglers, his three cooks, his three poets, his nine guardsmen, and his two private table attendants. We see Dá Derg, the lord of the court, his three doorkeepers, the British outlaws, and the king's private drink-bearers. Here is the description of the King himself--
"'I saw there a couch,'[6] continued Ingcel, 'and its ornamentation was more beautiful than all the other couches of the Court, it is curtained round with silver cloth, and the couch itself is richly ornamented. I saw three persons on it. The outside two of them were fair both hair and eyebrows, and their skin whiter than snow. Upon the cheek of each was a beautiful ruddiness. Between them in the middle was a noble champion. He has in his visage the ardour and action of a sovereign, and the wisdom of an historian. The cloak which I saw upon him can be likened only to the mist of a May morning. A different colour and complexion are seen on it each moment, more splendid than the other is each hue. I saw in the cloak in front of him a wheel broach of gold, that reaches from his chin to his waist. Like unto the sheen of burnished gold is the colour of his hair. Of all the human forms of the world that I have seen his is the most splendid.[7] I saw his gold-hilted sword laid down near him. There was the breadth of a man's hand of the sword exposed out of the scabbard. From that hand's breadth the man who sits at the far end of the house could see even the smallest object by the light of that sword.[8] More melodious is the melodious sound of that sword than the melodious sounds of the golden pipes which play music in the royal house.... The noble warrior was asleep with his legs upon the lap of one of the men, and his head in the lap of the other. He awoke up afterwards out of his sleep and spake these words--
"'"I have dreamed of danger-crowding phantoms, A host of creeping treacherous enemies, A combat of men beside the Dodder, And early and alone the King of Tara was killed."'"
This man whom Ingcel had seen was no other than the High-king.
The account of the juggler is also curious--
"'I saw there,' continued Ingcel, 'a large champion in the middle of the house. The blemish of baldness was upon him. Whiter than the cotton of the mountains is every hair that grows upon his head. He had ear-clasps of gold in his ears and a speckled white cloak upon him. He had nine swords in his hand and nine silvery shields and nine balls of gold. He throws every one of them up into the air and not one falls to the ground, and there is but one of them at a time upon his palm, and like the buzzing of bees on a beautiful day was the motion of each passing the other.'
"'Yes,' said Ferrogain [the foster brother], 'I recognise him, he is Tulchinne, the Royal druid of the King of Tara; he is Conairè's juggler,[9] a man of great power is that man.'"
Dá Derg himself is thus described--
"'I saw another couch there and one man on it, with two pages in front of him, one fair, the other black-haired. The champion himself had red hair and had a red cloak near him. He had crimson cheeks and beautiful deep blue eyes, and had on him a green cloak. He wore also a white under-mantle and collar beautifully interwoven, and a sword with an ivory hilt was in his hand, and he supplies every couch in the Court with ale and food, and he is incessant in attending upon the whole company. Identify that man.'
"'I know that man,' said he, 'that is Da Derg himself. It was by him the Court was built, and since he has taken up residence in it, its doors have never been closed except on the side to which the wind blows; it is to that side only that a door is put. Since he has taken to house-keeping his boiler has never been taken off the fire, but continues ever to boil food for the men of Erin. And the two who are in front of him are two boys, foster sons of his, they are the two sons of the King of Leinster.'"
Not less interesting is the true Celtic hyperbole in Ingcel's description of the jesters: "I saw then three jesters at the fire. They wore three dark grey cloaks, and if all the men of Erin were in one place and though the body of the mother or the father of each man of them were lying dead before him, not one of them could refrain from laughing at them."
In the end the pirates decide on making their attack. They marched swiftly and silently across the Dublin mountains, surrounded and surprised the court, slew the High-king caught there, as in a trap, and butchered most of his attendants.
After this tale of Dá Derg come a host of sagas, all calling for a recognition, which with our limited space it is impossible to grant them. Of these one of the most important, though neither the longest nor the most interesting, is the account of the Boromean or Boru tribute, a large fragment of which is preserved in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of about the year 1150.
When Tuathal or Toole, called Techtmhar, or the Possessor, was High-king of Ireland, at the close of the first century, he had two handsome daughters, and the King of Leinster asked one of them in marriage and took and brought home to his palace the elder as his wife. This was as it should be, for at that time it was not customary for the younger to be married "before the face of the elder." The Leinster men, however, said to their king that he had left behind the better girl of the two. Nettled at this the King went again to Tara and told Tuathal that his daughter was dead and asked for the other. The High-king then gave him his second daughter, with the courteous assurance "had I one and fifty daughters they were thine." When he brought back the second daughter to his palace in Leinster she, like another Philomela, discovered her sister alive and before her. Both died, one of shame the other of grief. When news of this reached Tara steps were taken to punish the King of Leinster. Connacht and Ulster led a great hosting with 12,000 men into Leinster to plunder it. The High-king too marched from Tara through Maynooth to Naas and encamped there. The Leinstermen were at first successful; they beat the Ultonians and killed their prince; but at last all the invading forces having combined defeated them and slew the bigamist king. They then levied the blood-tax, which was as follows:--Fifteen thousand cows, fifteen thousand swine, fifteen thousand wethers, the same number of mantles, silver chains, and copper cauldrons, together with one great copper reservoir to be set up in Tara's house itself, in which would fit twelve pigs and twelve kine. In addition to this they had to pay thirty red-eared cows with calves of the same colour, with halters and spancels of bronze and bosses of gold.
The consequences of this unfortunate tribute were to the last degree disastrous for Ireland. The High-kings of Ireland continued for ages to levy it off Leinster, and the Leinstermen continued to resist. The Fenians took part in the conflict, for they followed Finn mac Cúmhail in behalf of the men of Leinster against their own master the High-king. The tribute continued to be levied, off and on, during the reigns of forty kings, whenever Leinster seemed too weak to resist, or whenever the High-king deemed himself strong enough to raise it: until King Finnachta at last remitted it at the close of the seventh century, at the request of St. Molling.[10]
"It is beyond the testimony of angels, It is beyond the word of recording saints, All the kings of the Gaels That make attack upon Leinster."[11]
Of course the unfortunate province, thus plundered during generations, lost in some measure its nationality, and no doubt it was partly owing to this that it seemed more ready than any other district to ally itself with the Danes. The great Brian is said to have gained his title of Borumha or Boru through his having reimposed the tribute on Leinster, but though he conquered that province and plundered it, I am aware of no good authority for his actually re-imposing the Boru tribute.
Some of the early saints' lives, too, may be considered as belonging almost as much to historico-romantic as to hagiological literature. From one of these, at least, we must give an extract, so that this voluminous side of Irish literature may not remain unrepresented. Here is a fragment of the life of St. Ceallach [Kal-lach] which is preserved in that ample repository of ecclesiastical lore the Leabhar Breac, a great vellum manuscript written shortly after the year 1400. The story[12] deals with the dispute between Guairé [Goo-ǎr-yǎ], a well-known king of Connacht, and St. Ceallach, the latter of whom had during his student life left St. Ciaran and his studies, and thus drawn down upon himself the prediction of that great saint that he would die by point of weapon.
Guairé having banished Ceallach, against whom his mind had been poisoned by lying tongues, the fugitive took refuge in an island in Loch Con, where he remained for a long time. Guairé, still excited against him through the lies of go-betweens, invited him to a feast with intent to kill him. He refuses however to go. The King's messengers then requested him to at least allow his four condisciples, the only ones who had remained with him in his solitude, to go with them to the feast, saying that they would bear the king's messages to him when they returned. "I will neither prevent them from going nor yet constrain them to go," answered Ceallach, the result of which was that the four condisciples returned along with the envoys, and the king was greatly pleased to see them come, and meat and drink, with good welcome, were provided for them. After this the saga proceeds.
DEATH OF CEALLACH.
"Then a banqueting-house apart was set in order for them, and thither for their use the fort's best liquor was conveyed. On Guairé's either side were set two of them, and--with an eye to win them that they might leave Ceallach--great gifts were promised to them; all the country of Tirawley, four unmarried women such as themselves should choose out of the province, and, with these, horses and kine, sufficient marriage dowry for their wives (such gifts by covenant to be secured to them), and an adequate equipment of arms to be furnished to each one.
"That night they abode there, but, at the morning's meal, with one accord they consented to kill Ceallach.
"Thence they departed to Loch Con, and where they had left the boat they found it, and pulling off they reached Ceallach. They found him with his psalter spread out before him, as he said the psalms, nor did he speak to them. When he had made an end of his psalmody he looked at them, and marked their eyes unsteady in their heads, and clouded with the hue of parricide.
"'Young men,' said Ceallach, 'ye have an evil aspect, since ye went from me your natures ye have changed, and I perceive in you that for King Guairé's sake ye have agreed to murder me.'
"Never a tittle they denied, and he went on, 'An ill design it is, but follow now no longer your own detriment, and from me shall be had gifts, which far beyond all Guairé's promises shall profit you.'
"They rejoined, 'By no means shall we do as thou wouldst have us, Ceallach, seeing that if we acted so, not in all Ireland might we harbour anywhere.' And, even as they spoke, at Ceallach they drave with their spears in unison; yet he made shift to thrust his psalter in between him and his frock. They stowed him then in the boat amidships, two of themselves in the bow, and so gained a landing-place. Thence they carried him into the great forest and into the dark recesses of the wood.
"Ceallach said: 'This that ye would do I count a wicked work indeed, for in Clonmacnois [if ye spared me] ye might find shelter for ever, or should it please you to resort rather to Bláthmac and to Dermot, sons of Aedh Sláine, who is now King of Ireland [ye would be secure].'"
[Then Ceallach utters a poem of twenty-four lines.]
"'To advise us further in the matter is but idle,' they retorted, 'we will not do it for thee.'
"'Well then,' he pleaded, 'this one night's respite grant to me for God's sake.'
"'Loath though we be to concede it, we will yield thee that,' they said. Then they raised their swords which in their clothes they carried hidden, and at the sight of them a mighty fear took Ceallach. They ransacked the wood until they found a hollow oak having one narrow entrance, and to this Ceallach was committed, they sitting at the hole to watch him till the morning. They were so to the hour of night's waning end, when drowsy longing came to them, and deep sleep fell on them then.
"Ceallach, in trouble for his violent death, slept not at all, at which time it was in his power to have fled had it so pleased him, but in his heart he said that it were misbelief in him to moot evasion of the living God's designs. Moreover, he reflected that even were he so to flee they must overtake him, he being but emaciated and feeble, after the Lent. Morning shone on them now, and he (for fear to see it and in terror of his death) shut to the door, yet he said: 'to shirk God's judgment is in me a lack of faith, Ciaran, my tutor, having promised me that I must meet this end,' and as he spoke he flung open the tree's door. The Raven called then, and the Scallcrow, the Wren, and all the other birds. The Kite of Cluain-Eó's yew tree came, and the red Wolf of Drum-mic-dar, the deceiver whose lair was by the island's landing-place.
"'My dream of Wednesday's night last past was true,' said Ceallach, 'that four wild dogs rent me and dragged me through the bracken, and that down a precipice I then fell, nor evermore came up,' and he uttered this lay:--
"'HAIL to the Morning, that as a flame falls on the ground; hail to Him, too, that sends her, the Morning many-virtued, ever-new![13]
"'O Morning fair, so full of pride, O sister of the brilliant Sun, hail to the beauteous morning that lightest for me my little book!
"'Thou seest the guest in every dwelling, and shinest on every tribe and kin; hail O thou white-necked beautiful one, here with us now, golden-fair, wonderful!
"'My little book with chequered page tells me that my life has not been right. Maelcróin, 't is he whom I do well to fear; he it is who comes to smite me at the last.
"'O Scallcrow, and O Scallcrow, small grey-coated, sharp-beaked fowl, the intent of thy desire is apparent to me, no friend art thou to Ceallach.
"'O Raven that makest croaking, if hungry thou art now, O bird, depart not from this same homestead until thou eatest a surfeit of my flesh!
"'Fiercely the Kite of Cluain-Eó's yew tree will take part in the scramble, the full of his grey talons he will carry off, he will not part from me in kindness.
"'To the blow [that fells me] the fox that is in the darkling wood will make response at speed, he too in cold and trackless confines shall devour a portion of my flesh and blood.
"'The wolf that is in the rath upon the eastern side of Drum-mic-dar, he on a passing visit comes to me, that he may rank as chieftain of the meaner pack.
"'Upon Wednesday's night last past I beheld a dream, I saw the wild dogs dragging me together eastward and westward through the russet ferns.
"'I beheld a dream, that into a green glen they took me, four there were that bore me thither, but methought, ne'er brought me out again.
"'I beheld a dream, that to their house my condisciples brought me, for me they poured out a drink, and to me did they a drink quaff.
"'O tiny Wren most scant of tail, dolefully hast thou piped prophetic lay, surely thou art come to betray me and to curtail my gift of life![14]
"'O Maelcróin and O Maelcróin, thou hast resolved upon an unrighteous deed, for ten hundred golden ingots Owen's son[15] had ne'er consented into thy death!
"'O Maelcróin and O Maelcróin, pelf it is that thou hast taken to betray me; for this world's sake thou hast accepted it, accepted it for the sake of hell!
"'All precious things that ever I had, all sleek-coated grey horses, on Maelcróin I would have bestowed them, that he should not do me this treason.
"'But Mary's great Son up above me, thus addresses speech to me, "Thou must leave earth, thou shalt have heaven; welcome awaits thee, Ceallach."'"
The saint is then, as soon as the morning had fully risen, taken out of the tree by the four traitors, and put to death. The kite and the wolf and the scallcrow tear his flesh. The remainder of what is really a fine saga describes the hunt for the murderers and their final death at the hands of Ceallach's brother, who wrested for himself all the territory that Guairé had given them, marries Guairé's daughter, and is, like Ceallach his brother, finally himself put to death by Guairé's treachery.
It would be quite impossible within the limits of a volume like this to give any adequate study of the evolution of Irish saga. All Irish romances are compositions upon which more or less care had evidently been bestowed, in ancient times, as is evidenced by their being all shot through and through with verse. These verses amount to a considerable portion of the saga, often to nearly a quarter or even a third of the whole, and Irish versification is usually very elaborate, and not the work of any mere inventor or story-teller, but of a highly-trained technical poet. Very few pieces indeed, and these mostly of the more modern Fenian tales, are written in pure prose. It may be that the reciter of the ancient sagas actually sang these verses, or certainly gave them in a different tone from the prose narrative with which he filled up the gap between them. Whether the same man was both the composer of the verse and the framer of the prose narrative, in each particular story, is a difficult question to answer, but I should think that in most cases, at least in the older saga, incidents had been taken up by the bards and poets as themes for their verses, for perhaps ages before they were brought together by somebody and woven into one complete épopée with a prose intermixture. Dr. Sullivan thought that the Táin Bo Chuailgne was all originally written in verse, and has his own interpretation for the account given in the curious tale, the "Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution," which tells us that the story was at one time lost, and that the Bardic Association was commanded to search for and recover it. This, according to him, meant that the verses had been lost, and that only a fragmentary form of it had been saved, the gaps being filled with prose. I do not quite know how far this is a probable suggestion, because it would appear to be reversing the processes which produce epic poetry in other literatures. The complete versified epic, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Mahābhārata, are indeed "the hatch and brood of time," embodying not the first but the last results of a long series of national poetry. But to this last result, so close to them, so easily attainable, the Irish never arrived, and hence the various ballads that compose the books of their Red Branch Iliad, or Fenian Odyssey, remains separate to this day, and find their unity, if at all, only by means of a bridge of prose thrown across from poem to poem, by men who were not poets. Had the internal development of the Irish not been so rudely arrested by the Northmen towards the close of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century, there is every reason to believe that both the Red Branch and the Fenian Cycle would have undergone a further development and appeared in poems of continuous verse.
The poems with which these sagas are intermixed are mostly of two kinds, one kind, speeches in the form of lays, placed in the mouths of the actors, prefaced by such words as "and he sang," "so that he spake the lay," or the like, and the other kind, which occurs less often, is as it were a résumé in verse of what had been just told in prose. In almost every case I should imagine that the narrative poems are the oldest, and of them the prose is not unfrequently, as it were, an explanation and an extension.
That the Irish had already made some approach to the construction of a great epic is evident from the way in which they attempted, from a very early date, to group a number of minor sagas, which were evidently independent in their origin, round their great saga the Táin Bo Chuailgne. There are twelve minor tales which the Irish called preface-stories to the Táin and which they worked into it by links, some of which, at least, were evidently forged long after the story which they were wanted to connect. Especially remarkable in this way is the story of the metempsychosis of the two swineherds, whose souls passed into the two bulls who occasioned the great war of the Táin,--a story which is of a distinctly independent origin, and which was forced to do duty as an outlying book, as it were, of the Táin Bo Chuailgne.
How very great the number of Irish sagas must have been can be conjectured from the fact that out of the list of one hundred and eighty-seven contained in the Book of Leinster, at least one hundred and twenty have completely disappeared, and of the majority of the remainder we have only brief digests, whilst very many of the ones still preserved, are not mentioned in the Book of Leinster at all, thus proving that the list given in that manuscript is an imperfect one. A perfect one would have contained at the very least two hundred and fifty prime stories and one hundred secondary ones, for this was the number which every ollamh or chief poet was obliged, by law, to know. The following are some of the best known and most accessible of the earlier sagas which we have not yet mentioned, and which do not belong to any of the greater cycles. This list is drawn up, not according to the age of the texts or the manuscripts which contain them, but according to the date of the events to which they refer, and round which they are constructed.
SIXTH CENTURY B.C--The destruction of Dinn Righ, otherwise called the exile of Labhraidh [Lowry] the Mariner. This appears to have been one of a group of lost romances which centred round the children of Ugony the Great,[16] of some of which Keating has given a résumé in his history.[17]
SECOND CENTURY B.C--The King of the Leprechanes' journey to Emania, and how the death of Fergus mac Léide, King of Ulster, was brought about.[18]
The triumphs of Congal Clàringneach, which deals with a revolution in the province of Ulster, the death of the King of Tara, and accession of Congal to the throne.[19]
The Courtship of Etain by Eochaidh Aireach, King of Ireland, who came to the throne 134 years B.C., according to the "Four Masters."[20]
FIRST CENTURY B.C.--The Courtship of Crunn's wife.[21] To this century belong the Red Branch tales.
FIRST CENTURY A.D.--The Battle of Ath Comair, fought by the three Finns, brothers of Mève, Queen of Connacht.[22]
The Destruction of the Bruidhean [Bree-an] Da Choga, in West Meath, where Cormac Conloingeas, the celebrated son of King Conor mac Nessa, was killed about the year 33.[23]
The Revolution of the Aitheach Tuatha, and the Death of Cairbré Cinn-cait by the free clans of Ireland.[24]
SECOND CENTURY A.D.--The Death of Eochaidh [Yohy], son of Mairid.[25]
The progress of the Deisi from Tara.[26]
The Courtship of Moméra, by Owen Mór.[27] (The Fenian tales and tales of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and Cormac mac Art, relate to this and the following century.)
THIRD CENTURY.--The Adventures of Teig, son of Cian [Kee-an], son of Oilioll Olum.[28]
The Siege of Drom Damhgaire, where Cormac mac Art attempted to lay a double tribute on the two provinces of Munster.[29]
FOURTH CENTURY.--The History of the Sons of Eochaidh Muighmheadhon [Mwee-va-on] father of Niall of the Nine Hostages.[30]
Death of King Criomhthann [Criv-ban or Criffan] and of Eochaidh Muighmheadhon's three sons.[31]
FIFTH CENTURY.--The Expedition or Hosting of Dáithi, the last pagan king of Ireland, who was killed by lightning at the foot of the Alps.[32]
SIXTH CENTURY.--Death of Aedh Baclamh.[33]
Death of King Diarmuid--he who was cursed by St. Ruadhan.[34]
The birth of Aedh [Ae] Sláine,[35] the son of Diarmuid, who came to the throne in 595, according to the "Four Masters."
The Wooing of Becfola, in the reign of Aedh Sláine's son.[36]
The Voyage of the Sons of Ua Corra.[37]
SEVENTH CENTURY.--The Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution.[38]
The Battle of Moyrath.[39]
Suibhne's Madness, a sequel to the last.[40]
The Feast of Dún na ngedh,[41] a preface tale to the Battle of Moyrath.
The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riaghla.[42]
The Love of Dubhlacha for Mongan.[43]
The Death of Maelfathartaigh, son of Ronán,[44] who was King of Leinster about the year 610.
EIGHTH CENTURY.--The Voyage of Maelduin.[45]
There are very few sagas, indeed, which deal with events posterior to the eighth century, and among those which do (like the stories about Callaghan of Cashel and the Danes, or the Leeching of Cian's leg, which relates to the reign of Brian Boru, or O'Donnell's Kerne, which seems as late as the sixteenth century) there are not many whose literary merits stand high. It is evident from this, that, apart from the poets, almost all the genuine literary activity of Ireland centred around the days of her freedom, and embraced a vast range of time, from the mythical De Danann period down to the birth of Christ, and from that to the eighth century, and that after this period and the invasions of the Northmen and Normans, Irish national history produced few subjects stimulating to the national muse; so that the literary production which still continued, though in narrower channels and in feebler volume, looked for inspiration not to contemporaneous history, but to the glories of Tara, the exploits of Finn mac Cúmhail, and the past ages of Irish greatness.
The number of sagas still surviving, though many of them are mere skeletons, may be conjectured from the fact that O'Curry, in his manuscript lectures on Irish history, quotes from or alludes to ninety different tales, all of considerable antiquity, whilst M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, in his "Essai d'un Catalogue de la littérature épique de l'Irlande," gives the names of no less than about 540 different pieces.
[1] There is an almost complete copy of this saga in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre. Like the Táin Bo Chuailgne, it has never been published in a translation. The language is much harder and more archaic than that of the Táin. I have principally drawn upon O'Curry's description of it, for I can only guess at the meaning of a great part of the original. Were all Europe searched the scholars who could give an adequate translation of it might be counted on the fingers of both hands--if not of one.
[2] According to the "Four Masters" he was slain in AM. 5161 [i.e., 43 B.C.], after a reign of seventy years. "It was in the reign of Conairè," the "Four Masters" add, "that the Boyne annually cast its produce ashore at Inver Colpa. Great abundance of nuts were annually found upon the Boyne and the Buais. The cattle were without keeping in Ireland in his reign on account of the greatness of the peace and concord. His reign was not thunder-producing nor stormy. It was little but the trees bent under the greatness of their fruit." It is from Conairè the Ernaan tribes were descended. They were driven by the Rudricians, i.e., the Ultonians of the Red Branch, into Munster, and from thence they were driven by the race of Eber [the Mac Carthys, etc. of Munster], into the western islands.
[3] It appears to have been partly in order to check raids like this, that the High-kings maintained the Fenians a couple of centuries later, for their chief duty was "to watch the harbours."
[4] A constant rendezvous for pedestrians and bicyclists from Dublin, not one in ten thousand of whom knows the origin of the name or its history.
[5] For a description of another of these courts see above p. 355.
[6] Here is the original as given by O'Curry, "Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 141. This will show the exceeding difficulty of the language: "Atcondarc and imdae acas bacáimiu acomthach oldáta imdada in tigi olchena. Seolbrat nairgdidi impe acas cumtaige isin dimdae. Atcondarc triar ninni," etc.
[7] Keating says that according to some Conairè reigned only 30 years.
[8] The allusion appears to be to a bright steel sword in an age of bronze. Perhaps the music referred to means the vibration of the steel when struck. The "Sword of light" is a common feature in Gaelic folk-lore. Of course iron was common in Ireland centuries before this time, but the primitive description of Sword of light, transmitted itself from age to age.
[9] "Cleasamhnach," from cleas, "a trick," a living word still.
[10] See above p. 236.
[11] Broccan's poem in the Book of Leinster translated by O'Neill Russell, in an American periodical.
[12] Translated by Standish Hayes O'Grady in "Silva Gadelica," whose vigorous rendering I have closely followed.
[13]
"Is mochean in maiten bán No taed for lár, mar lasán, Is mochean do'n té rusfói In maiten buadach bithnói"
[14] Compare the legend of the wren's having betrayed the Irish to the English, whence the universal pursuit of him made by boys on St. Stephen's day.
[15] Ceallach himself.
[16] For him, see above, p. 25.
[17] Some account of this saga is given in O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 256, and by Keating, p. 253, of O'Mahony's translation. The entire saga is preserved in the Yellow Book of Lecan. My friend, the late Father James Keegan, made me a translation of another version, which he afterwards published in a St. Louis paper.
[18] Translated and edited by Standish Hayes O'Grady, p. 269 of his "Silva Gadelica."
[19] Only one copy of this tale was known to O'Curry in 205, Hodges and Smith, R. I. A.
[20] Edited without a translation by Windisch, in his "Irische Texte," i. p. 117, and referred to at length by O'Curry, "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. pp. 192-4; and summarised and examined by Alfred Nutt, in his "Voyage of Bran." See for this saga, p. 102, above.
[21] This was Macha who pronounced the curse on the Ultonians. See above, ch. XXIV note 3. The story is preserved in the Harleian MS. 5280, British Museum.
[22] There is a long extract from this battle given by O'Curry in his "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. pp. 261-3.
[23] Preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre. See O'Curry, "Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 254. There is a full copy in H. 3. 18, T. C., D.
[24] In H. 3. 18, T. C., D. See above, p. 27.
[25] Edited from the Leabhar na h-Uidhre by O'Beirne Crowe, in the "Journal of the Royal Irish Historical and Archæological Association, 1870," and by Standish Hayes O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica," p. 265.
[26] See O'Curry, "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. p. 205. I think Kuno Meyer has translated this saga somewhere. See p. 40.
[27] Published by O'Curry for the Celtic Society as an appendage to the Battle of Moy Léana. See above, p. 368.
[28] Translated by O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica," p. 385, and studied at length by Alfred Nutt, in his "Voyage of Bran," vol. i. p. 201.
[29] See O'Curry's "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. p. 212, and MS. Materials p. 271. This saga is contained at length in the Book of Lismore.
[30] Translated in O'Grady's "Silva Gadelica," p. 368. Ibid., p. 373.
[31] Ibid., p. 373.
[32] This is one of the tales in the Book of Leinster list. Modern versions are common.
[33] See above, ch. XVIII, note 6, translated in "Silva Gadelica," p. 70.
[34] Ibid., p. 76.
[35] Ibid., p. 88.
[36] A short tale, translated in "Silva Gadelica," p. 91.
[37] Translated in the "Revue Celtique."
[38] Published by Professor Connellan for the Ossianic Society in 1860, vol. v.
[39] Published by O'Donovan in 1842 for the Irish Archæological Society.
[40] MS. 60, Hodges and Smith, R. I. A.
[41] Published by O'Donovan in 1842 for the Irish Archæological Society.
[42] Edited, with English translation, by Whitley Stokes, in "Revue Celtique," vol. ix., and translated into modern Irish by Father O'Growney in the "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 85, from the Yellow Book of Lecan.
[43] Edited by Kuno Meyer in "Voyage of Bran," vol. i. p. 58, from the Book of Fermoy. This version seems to have escaped the notice of D'Arbois de Jubainville, who says in his "Essai d'un Catalogue," "Cette pièce parait perdue." I have in my own possession a copy in a MS. written by a scribe named O'Mahon in the last century, which is at least twice as long as that published by Kuno Meyer.
[44] The story of an Irish Hippolytus, whose death at his father's hands is compassed by his step-mother, spretæ injuria formæ. O'Curry mentions this tale, MS. Materials, p. 277. It is one of the stories in the catalogue of the Book of Leinster, under the head of Tragedies. Another Hippolytus story is that of the death of Comgan, son of the King of the Decies, quoted by O'Curry, "Manners and Customs," vol. ii. p. 204, but I do not know from what MS.
[45] Translated, but not very literally, by Joyce in his "Early Celtic Romances," and by M. Lot in D'Arbois de Jubainville's "Épopée Celtique," critically edited by Whitley Stokes in the "Revue Celtique," t. ix. p. 446, and x. pp. 50-95.