Lecture IV.
THE CULTURE HERO.
(continued.)
The whole ground, so far as concerns the Culture Hero of the Celts, has now been in a sense rapidly traversed, in order that you may see at a glance the view advocated; but in so doing, a great many data had, for fear of overloading the discourse, to be passed over in silence. Thus, for example, the story of the birth of Llew has been omitted; but it will be convenient, for the sake of comparison, to give it before proceeding any further.
Gwydion and Cairbre.
The Laws of Wales speak of an officer of the court, who was called the troediog, or the foot-holder, one of whose duties, according to the Venedotian version, was to hold the king's feet in his lap from the time he took his seat at table to the moment when he retired to rest.[1] He had also to discharge the more delicate function of scratching his majesty's person whenever the royal skin happened to itch. Now Mâth ab Mathonwy used to have a lady to act as his foot-holder, and she must be a virgin. This office was filled by a most lovely damsel whose name was Goewyn; but while Mâth was away in the war with the men of Dyved (p. 244), she was outraged by Gilvaethwy son of Dôn, with his brother Gwydion's connivance. Mâth, whose conduct is always represented as just and righteous, indemnified Goewyn by making her his queen, while he punished Gwydion and his brother by changing them into deer, wild boars and wolves, forms which they had for three successive years. When the term of their punishment was completed, Mâth changed them back into their own shapes, and admitted them again to his court. He next asked Gwydion to recommend him a duly qualified foot-holder, and Gwydion brought his own mistress to Mâth, namely, Arianrhod, daughter of Mâth's sister Dôn, whereupon Mâth addressed her as follows: 'Ha, damsel, art thou the maiden?' 'I know not, Lord, other than that I am,' was the reply; at which Mâth took up his magic wand and bent it, saying, 'Step over this, and I shall know if thou art the maiden.' That, I ought to state, is Lady Charlotte Guest's translation;[2] but to do justice to the sense of the original,[3] one has to substitute both times for the words 'the maiden,' the words 'a virgin.' To continue the story, Arianrhod complied with Mâth's request, and left behind her a fine chubby, yellow-haired boy, at whose screaming she made for the door, near which she left a smaller form; but before anybody caught a second sight of the latter, Gwydion had wrapped it in a sheet of satin, and concealed it in a chest at the foot of his bed. Mâth took the chubby boy and had him christened; but no sooner was he christened, the story goes on to say, than he made for the sea; and no sooner was he in the sea than he acquired the nature thereof, for he swam as well as the best fish in its waters, wherefore he was called Dylan son of the Wave: no wave ever broke under him. The rest of his story is compressed into the single statement that his death was caused by a blow dealt by his uncle the smith, Govannon son of Dôn. To return to Gwydion: he heard one morning as he lay awake in his bed a low sound issuing from the chest at the foot of it; getting up quickly, he opened the chest, and, as he did so, he there beheld a little boy swaying his arms about from the folds of the satin sheet and scattering it. He took the child in his arms, and made for a town where he knew of a nurse and engaged her. The boy was in her charge for a year, in the course of which he attained to such a size as would have been surprising even if he had been two years old; and in the second year he was a big lad able to come to the court by himself. Gwydion took notice of him, and the boy became fonder of him than of anybody else. He was afterwards brought up at the court[4] until he was four; and at that age it would have been a wonder, the story tells us, to find a boy of eight as big as he was. One day, when he was out walking with his father, the latter took him to Arianrhod's castle. What then happened, owing to her disgust at finding her child alive, has been told elsewhere (p. 236): but she is not represented as making any allusion to his brother, who had made the sea his habitat.
Such is the story of Llew's birth and early years, as given in the Mabinogi of Mâth ab Mathonwy, where alone it occurs; and it puts us in a position to do justice to the parallel between Gwydion and Cairbre Musc, together with the other Cairbres whose identity with him has been suggested. For Cairbre Musc, like Gwydion, had two sons by his sister. Her name was Duben, and theirs were Corc and Cormac respectively. The children were twins, and the story of heir birth is no less strange than that of Dylan and Llew, for one of them was found to have nipped off his brother's ears before his birth. The crime of their parents caused the crops to fail, which, according to the idea prevalent in ancient Ireland, was its natural result,[5] and Cairbre was obliged to confess his guilt to he nobles of his realm, who, when the children were born, ordered thorn to be burnt, that the incest might not remain in the land. 'Give me,' said Cairbre's druid, 'that Corc[6] there, that I may place him outside Erinn, so that the incest may not be within it.' Corc was given to the druid, and the latter, with his wife, whose name was Bói, took him to an island. They had a white cow with red ears, and an ablution was performed by them every morning on Corc, placed on the cow's back; so in a year's time to the day the cow sprang away from them into the sea, and she became a rock in it; to wit, the heathenism of the boy had entered into her. Bó Búi, or Bói's Cow, is the name of the rock, and Inis Búi, or Bói's Isle, that of the island. The boy was afterwards brought back into Erinn. Such is the story[7] how Corc was purged of the virulence of his original sin, and the scene is one of the three islets called the Bull, the Cow and the Calf, not far from Dursey Island, in the gulf called Kenmare River.
Now I have only to reproduce, word for word, as it occurs in the Book of Leinster, the account of another Cairbre, whom Irish historians treat as distinct from Cairbre Musc, in order to enable the reader to see that they are mistaken, and that the two Cairbres were originally one and the same character. There are several important reasons for giving the story as there related:[8] it is part of a longer tract concerning an Irish triad of men said to have spoken as soon as they were born. The one here in point was called Morann son of Cairbre Cinnchait. The following is the reason why he spoke: all the offspring of the privileged classes in Erinn were killed by the Cairbre alluded to; for he belonged to the Peasant Tribes, and he seized the sovereignty of Erinn by force. And his reign was bad; for the corn would have only one grain in each ear, the holly but one berry, and the oak but one acorn in his time. Three sons were born to this Cairbre, and they [or rather two of them] were drowned together by his orders; for it appeared that they were monsters, because they were born helmeted. The same thing was attempted in the case of the third son: two of the king's men were charged to go with him to throw him into the billow's mouths. But as soon as they cast the boy from them into the sea, the billow broke his helmet, so that they beheld his face on its ridge. It is then he spoke, saying, 'Rough is wave.' They hastened to him and lifted him up. 'Do not lift me,' said he: 'Cold is wind.' 'What shall we do with the boy?' said one of the men. 'We shall do thus,' said the other: 'we shall leave him in a box on the top of the stone of the smith's door—that is Móen's, the smith of the king—and we shall keep watch over the child to see whether the smith will take to it.' When the latter came forth from his house he saw the child in the box, and he proceeded to carry it into the house. 'Light a candle, wife,' said he, 'that this find I have made may be seen.' A candle was then brought him, and then Morann [speaking for the third time] said, 'Bright is candle.' The child was brought up by Móen as his own. The two men aforesaid, however, knew that it was not his. Once on a time afterwards, Cairbre went to drink beer in Móen's house, and just when they found the drinking most agreeable, the child went from lap to lap until he went on Cairbre's. 'The lad takes to me: whose is the boy?' said Cairbre, with a heavy sigh. The child's mother, that is, Cairbre's wife, heaved another sigh. 'What is the matter with you,' said Móen; 'is it envy that seizes you? Though the boy be dear to me, and though he be my son, I had rather he were yours, on account of the love you bear me, and because you have need of him.' 'That, however, does not help us,' said Cairbre. 'Good now,' said the two men afore-mentioned; 'the reward of one who would bring thee a child like that would be good.' 'That it would be,' said Cairbre; 'I should give him its weight in silver and one-third its weight in gold; but it is useless to talk, as you are but uttering idle words.' 'But as we are on this subject of the boy,' said the two men, 'let the bargain be made binding on thee.' The bargain is accordingly bound on him, and no sooner was that done than the two men went to him and placed the boy in his bosom; they proved to him that he was his. 'That is the boy,' said they, 'whom we took from thee to be drowned, and we did so and so with him.' 'All that is true,' said the smith. It is therefore the boy was called the son of Móen; and these are the three first sentences that Morann spoke immediately after his birth, namely, Rough is wave, Cold is wind, and Bright is candle. Morann afterwards took the office of chief judge of Erinn, and his father Cairbre died. And he sent his son to Feradach Finn Fechtnach,[9] in the land of Alban, to invite him to the sovereignty of Erinn; for he had fled before Cairbre over the sea to escape death at his hands. He came at Morann's invitation and took the sovereignty of Erinn, while Morann occupied the office of chief brehon or judge.
Here the story abruptly ends, owing to the loss of a leaf in the manuscript. But elsewhere the Peasant Tribes are represented inviting all the nobles of Erinn to a great banquet, at which they murder them and make Cairbre their king: the scene is associated with Mag Cro, or the Field of Blood, near Knockmaa, in the county of Galway, and the whole is usually regarded as the echo of a great political revolution in Ireland during the first decades of the Christian era. Further, the attempt to convert the myth into history has long since been much aggravated by a notion that we have the Atecotti of the Roman history of Britain in the Peasant Tribes of Erinn, because the Irish which that term is meant to render was Aithech Tuatha.[10] But the story admits of a very different interpretation: Cairbre, as we take it, was originally one of the names of the Culture Hero, whose attacks were directed against the avaricious powers of Hades; but the great burial-places of pagan Ireland, near the head-quarters of its princes, brought Hades very near to this world. So it comes about that Cairbre, instead of being made to take a long journey to the nether world, as one might have been led by the story of Gwydion to expect, finds his foes in Erinn itself. But in spite of this shifting of the scene to this upper world, the parallel between Cairbre and Gwydion is preserved, one might say, to a nicety. Gwydion gains his victory over the powers of Hades, a deified man over the gods; so Cairbre differs from those whom he vanquishes by a corresponding inferiority of race, he being of ignoble descent, while they are described as of the noble and princely lineage of Mile.[11]
We must not leave this story without noticing the addition to Cairbre's name of the term Cinnchait, consisting of the genitive of Cenncait, meaning Cat's Head, which also occurs as Caitchenn, 'Cat-headed.'[12] As a rule, however, it is the representatives of darkness that are pictured as deformed about the head and ears, as in the case of Corc and the drowned brothers of Morann, together with many others. There would be nothing surprising in making Cairbre the Culture Hero a son of dark parents, just as Gwydion is son of Dôn, the goddess of death (p. 91), and this would explain the use of the genitive in Cairbre Cinnchait, which would mean that Cairbre was the son of Cenncait, just as the son of Duben is briefly called Corc Duibne. This view derives some confirmation from the principal name in the following story: the original, of which it is an abstract, has the interest of being one written down in Tory Island in 1835, by the Irish scholar and antiquary O'Donovan, from the dictation of Shane O'Dugan, whose ancestors are said to have been living there in St. Columba's time:[13]
In days of yore there were three brothers called Gavida, Mac Samthainn and Mac Kineely, living on the coast of Donegal, opposite Tory Island, which was so called from its tors or prominent rocks. Gavida was a distinguished smith who had his forge at Drumnatinnè (Fire-ridge), while Mac Kineely was lord of the district around, comprising what is now the parishes of Rath-Finan and Tullaghobegly, and he possessed such a valuable grey cow that attempts were always being made to steal her from him. At the same time Tory Island was the head-quarters of a notorious robber called Balor, who had one eye in the middle of his forehead and another in the back of his head; this latter, by its foul distorted looks and its venomous rays and glances, would strike one dead, so he used to cover it unless he wished to petrify his foes; and even to this day an evil or overlooking eye is called by the Irish Balor's eye. Once on a time his druid revealed to Balor that he should die by the hands of a grandson of his; and as he had only one child, a young daughter called Ethnea, he made sure against any future danger by having her shut up on a lofty and almost inaccessible height called Tor More, or the big tor, at the eastern extremity of the island. There she was guarded by twelve matrons, who were never to mention the other sex to her. Balor went on with his robberies, and he was clever enough at last to steal Mac Kineely's grey cow. He transformed himself for the purpose into a red-headed lad, and told Mac Samthainn, who happened to be holding the grey cow by a halter, that he had overheard his brothers at the forge agreeing to use his steel for their own swords, whereupon Mac Samthainn asked the foxy lad to take the halter, while he went to the forge in a towering passion. The next sight Mac Kineely had of his cow was to see her with Balor in the middle of the sound. Mac Kineely learnt from a druid that the cow could not be recovered till Balor had been killed, as he would, in order to keep her, never shut the basilisk eye; but Mac Kineely had a fairy friend who told him how Balor was to be brought to his fall. This lady, called Biroge of the Mountain, took Mac Kineely dressed as a woman through the air to the Tor More, and asked shelter for a lady she had just rescued from the hands of a cruel tyrant. The twelve matrons could not think of disobliging the banshee, and she in her turn put them all to sleep as fairies can; but when they woke they found that Biroge and her protégée were gone. The matrons tried to persuade their ward that it was but a dream; but the fair Ethnea knew better, and in due time she gave birth to three boys together. Balor was furious on finding this out, and had the three boys wrapped in a sheet and sent out to be drowned in a certain whirlpool which he indicated; but before the boat had reached the spot, the pin fell out of the sheet, and the eldest-born baby tumbled into the sea. The two others were taken to the whirlpool, while the previous one was picked up by the banshee and taken to its father Mac Kineely, and he gave it to his brother Gavida to foster and bring up a smith, a great profession in those days. Balor, finding out that Mac Kineely was the father of his grandchildren, who, he was pleased to think, were all three at the bottom of the sea, crossed with a party of his followers to the mainland, and took Mac Kineely out to a large white stone, and thereon chopped his head off. The warm blood gushed forth and penetrated the white stone to its very centre; and there it remains to speak of the cruel deed and to give its name of Cloch Chinnfhaolaidh, 'Kineely's Stone,' to a district comprising two parishes. Balor pursued his life of depredation more boldly than before; but in the course of years, Lug, for that was the name of the son of Mac Kineely and Ethnea, grew up to be a most excellent smith and to learn his own history: he was observed to gaze frequently at the blood-red veins in the white stone, and to be subject to fits of sullenness and gloom. He bided his opportunity, for Balor was again in the habit of frequenting Gavida's forge; and one day, when Lug's uncle was absent, Balor came and was foolish enough to boast of his victory over Mac Kineely years before. Lug worked for him and watched his movements: presently he took out of the fire a glowing rod of iron, which he adroitly thrust into Balor's evil eye, and out through his skull on the other side. This was at the forge at Drumnatinnè, though others will have it that the scene of Balor's death was at Cnoc na fola, or the Bloody Foreland.
Such is the modern version of a very ancient story, in which one cannot help seeing that Lug, saved from drowning with his anonymous brothers, and brought up by Gavida the smith, his father's brother, is the same person as Morann, rescued from drowning with his monster brothers, and brought up as the son of Móen the king's smith. The parallel between the two stories may be drawn still closer if one take into account that Cairbre may be inferred to have been the brother of Móen. It seems to be fairly established by the fact that Cairbre, in the person of the satirist of that name, who disturbs the reign of the Fomorian tyrant Bres, is called, the son of Etan the poetess (p. 253); and that Móen the seer, in whom we doubtless have Móen the smith, as every great smith was chiefly famous for his spells and divination, is also called Móen son of Etan.[14] It occurs, be it noticed, in the legend showing how by cunning and craft Cairbre—there called Cairbre Musc—got the first lapdog from Britain (p. 246). The story ends with the statement that after the dog died, its bare skull was one day shown by a wag to a seer and poet, to see if the latter could find whose it was, and that, by a process of divination familiar to him, he discovered that it was the skull of the dog imported by Cairbre. That the seer should have been no other than Móen son of Etan, looks quite an accident. In reality it was probably nothing of the kind, and it just serves to show how the legends centring around Cairbre's name must have originally hanged together. This is not all; for the father's name in the one story was Cairbre Cinnchait, or C. (son) of Cat's Head, while in the other he was Mac Kineely,[15] or Son of Wolf's Head. This parallel between Cenn-cait and Cenn-faelad or Kineely can hardly be considered an accidental coincidence of no significance, but rather a result of the original identity of the two tales; and it may be surmised that in an older version of the Donegal one, Mac Kineely's full name was Carpri mac Cinnfaelad, or C. mac Kineely.
Looked at from another point of view, Mac Kineely and his brother Gavida just exactly match Gwydion and his brother Govannon. Gwydion was the principal character and father of Llew; so Mac Kineely was lord of the country round his home and father of Lug, who will be shown later to have been the counterpart of Llew[16] in more than one respect. Govannon, or Govynnion as he is also called, was the great smith of Welsh story, and we have his counterpart in Gavida, who would probably, had we got the myth in an ancient form, have appeared under the name Goibniu, genitive Goibnenn, the exact equivalent of the Welsh Govynion, and the name of the great smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann. But in fact it would be more accurate to say that his name does occur in the story; for though the cow is said to have been Mac Kineely's, its name, as given to O'Donovan, was Glas Gaivlen, which he rightly corrects into Glas Gaivnen, that is, in later Irish spelling, Glas Gaibhnenn, 'Goibniu's Grey or Brindled (Cow):' practically, then, the legend gives the smith two names—one the direct representative of the ancient Goibniu, and the other, Gavida, of a more obscure origin. Lastly, Amaethon, the Culture Hero of Welsh agriculture, might at first sight seem to be here duly represented by Mac Samthainn, who takes charge of Mac Kineely's cow while the latter steps into his brother's forge. But as we have no further information about Mac Samthainn, the parallel must be acknowledged to be, to say the least of it, very faintly drawn; and it is possible that we should rather recognize in Mac Samthainn the herdsman's dog; for the name seems to claim kinship with the Irish word samthach, 'a haft or hilt,' also 'an axe with a long handle;' so that one may probably translate it 'the Boy of the Haft,' and compare the name of the dog introduced to Erinn by Cairbre Musc's craft, which was Mug-éime, or 'the Slave of the Haft.' The story, as you will remember, explains how the dog came, in acquiring it, into Cairbre's possession (p. 247). The coincidence is so striking that I cannot help thinking that we have here traces of another version of the story of Cairbre Musc and the dog he imported into Erinn. The old one, somewhat perversely, makes the animal into a lapdog; while the modern story is probably more faithful to the original in that it suggests a dog useful to the herdsman.[17]
From the foregoing stories and those mentioned in connection with Gwydion, it is evident that Cairbre was one of the principal names of the Mercury of the ancient Irish; but the epic, so to say, in which he played the leading part has only come down to us in fragments appropriated by different tribes, though they are hardly more disconnected and inconsistent than one would naturally expect in such a case. In the first place, Cairbre is, as it were, split up into a number of brothers, mostly to meet the exigencies of tribal genealogies. Foremost among them stands Cairbre Musc, from whose descendants at least six different districts in Minister were called Muscraige, Anglicized Musery or Muskerry.[18] The next in importance was Cairbre Niafer, or C. the Champion of Men, and that significant designation[19] reminds one of the Culture Hero under his name Ogma, who was represented as the champion of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Cairbre Niafer was monarch of Erinn and dwelt at Tara of the Kings,[20] and he was father of Ere, who survived him at Tara[21] to figure in the story of Cúchulainn. This Cairbre is mentioned as one of the avengers of his father Conaire (p. 135), and it was in his reign that the Fir Bolg were driven westwards to the islands including Arann.[22] The third brother is called Cairbre Rigfota, who is described as assisting his brothers to avenge their father;[23] but he is chiefly known as the ancestor of the Dál Riada, 'the division or tribe of Riada,' better known as the Dalriad Scots of Antrim and Alban, Riada and Rigfota being the same name, which Bæda wrote Reuda.[24] These three Cairbres are usually mentioned together as the sons of Conaire;[25] but sometimes a fourth, Cairbre Baiscinn, is added to them; and from him were supposed to be derived the Corco Baiscinn, a people in the south-west of the present county of Clare.[26] Probably Cairbre, king of Kerry and father of the poetess Crede (p. 252), should be added to our Cairbres; and identification with the Culture Hero has been suggested in the case of the harpist Cairbre, who had the so-called chord of knowledge in his lyre (p. 255). The meaning also of the reign of the tyrant Bres the Fomorian being disturbed by the Cairbre who composed the first satire in Erinn has been indicated (p. 253). It now only remains to be said that the great Culture Hero who bore the name of Cairbre was doubtless placed on a level with the gods, and this seems to be the meaning of the fact that Cairbre occurs in a triad of the poets of the Tuatha Dé Danann.[27] This is brought into still greater relief in a poetic version of an oath in the epic story of the Táin (p. 140) as told in the Book of Leinster, where Medb is represented urging a famous champion called Fer-diad to undertake a duel against her mighty enemy Cúchulainn. Fer-diad, wishing to feel certain that Medb's promises would be faithfully kept to his race in case he fell in the contest, says that it is not enough for him to have the pledging by sun and moon, by earth and sea, which seems to have constituted the ordinary oath; he must have the fulfilment bound on six sureties and no less: the queen concedes it readily in the following order:[28]
|
Cid domnal na charpat. |
Though it be Domnal in his chariot, |
Which of the sons of Medb the two were to whom allusion is made, it would perhaps be difficult to say, as she had many; but Cairbre and Morann come before them, and after the more dread divinities of the deep and of death, who, according to the Celtic notion, were the patrons of poetry and bardism. Why Cairbre should here be called smooth is not very clear, unless it be in reference to his manners and speech, supposing them to have been such as those of Gwydion would lead one to expect.[29] The obscurity of the allusions is a matter of no great importance; and what one has rather to notice is, that the names of Morann and Cairbre go together in the oath, just as those of Llew and Gwydion are inseparable in Welsh literature. Nay, one may go further and point, as will be done later, to distinct traces of the two corresponding divinities in the ancient inscriptions of Gaul and the Celtic portion of the Iberian peninsula.
Gwydion and Aitherne.
The next group of tales to be mentioned gives us, for comparison with Gwydion and others, a remarkable Ultonian poet called Aitherne, who belonged to Conchobar mac Nessa's court at a time when the Ultonians are represented enjoying such prosperity and power that they were occasionally much puzzled how to find an excuse for invading and plundering their neighbours; but, when no other means of fomenting a respectable quarrel could be found, the poets and bards might be safely entrusted to do the work; for "it was customary," to quote Prof. O'Curry's words,[30] "for distinguished poets and bards (who were also the philosophers, lawyers, and most educated men of their day) to pass from one province into another, at pleasure, on a circuit, as it may be called, of visits among the kings, chiefs, and nobles of the country; and, on these occasions, they used to receive rich gifts, in return for the learning they communicated, and the poems in which they sounded the praises of their patrons or the condemnation of their enemies. Sometimes the poet's visit bore also a diplomatic character; and he was often, with diplomatic astuteness, sent, by direction of his own provincial king, into another province, with which some cause of quarrel was sought at the moment. On such occasions he was instructed not to be satisfied with any gifts or presents that might be offered to him, and even to couch his refusals in language so insolent and sarcastic as to provoke expulsion if not personal chastisement. And, whenever matters proceeded so far, then he returned to his master, and to him transferred the indignities and injuries received by himself, and publicly called on him, as a matter of personal honour, to resent them. And thus, on occasions where no real cause of dispute or complaint had previously existed, an ambitious or contentious king or chief found means, in those days just as in our own, to pick what public opinion regarded as an honourable quarrel with his neighbour." To these words of O'Curry's I should add, that the rules of hospitality and honour with regard to the poets in ancient Erinn forbade the refusal to them of anything, whatsoever it might be, they chose to ask for; and this was now and then made the means of embarrassing an enemy. Thus, on the day of Cúchulainn's death, his cunning foes sent a poet to ask him for his spear[31] when the owner had most need of it himself. Not daring to refuse, he presented it in a way that proved instantly fatal to the recipient; but even so, it hastened Cúchulainn's fall. Now Conchobar chose as his emissary to pick quarrels with his neighbours the poet Aitherne, who is represented as notoriously the most unreasonable and avaricious of men; but it is to be remembered that his story, treated, of course, as a narration of facts, comes to us from the Book of Leinster, written by the scribes of the hereditary foes of Ulster. So it has to be discounted very considerably in so far as regards the poet's private character; and I think you will, as we proceed, see that it does not belong to history, but that Conchobar and Aitherne are Irish reflexes of Mâth and Gwydion, when the latter (pp. 243-6) got possession by stealth or cunning of certain animals from Hades.
Having premised this much, one may proceed to make an abstract of Aitherne's story.[32] He first made for the northern part of Connaught, where nothing is recorded of him. He then proceeded to the court of a king called Echaid mac Luchtai, near the Shannon. This king was one-eyed; so the only gift that would satisfy Aitherne was the king's eye, and the latter, pulling it out at once, gave it him. His servant then led the king to the bank of the lake that was hard by, and therein he washed the blood from his face. Hence the lake, so goes the story, was named Loch Dergdeirc,[33] or Red-eye's Lake. In consideration of the value Echaid attached to his honour, in that he gave his only eye to save it, Heaven is said to have given him thenceforth two eyes instead of the one he had parted with. He is, moreover, mentioned as one of the great judges of early Ireland; and if one is right in treating this tragic story as having been distorted by the quasi-historical treatment it met at the hands of the euhemerists of Leinster, there is no difficulty in seeing that we have in this Echaid some such a representative, for example, of the world of darkness and death as Balor of the Evil Eye, and one of his names may be inferred to have been Dergderc, or He of the Red Eye, whose abode was associated with the lake. Looking at it in this light, and presuming the sympathy of the Irish narrator to have been, for the reason already suggested, transferred to the wrong side, one may regard his story as a blurred version of the same original, which, in the ingenious hands of the poet of the Odyssey, speaks of Odysseus blinding the single eye of Polyphemus.
From the Shannon, Aitherne makes his way to the court of Tigerna, king of Munster, where he insists on a monstrous demand of a different nature. Thence he proceeds to South Leinster, where he was met by the king and the nobles of the country, who offered to give him the most handsome presents, provided only he abstained from entering their territory; but he paid no heed to their request. When, in the course of his progress, he sat with the king and his nobles in an assembly at a place called Ard Brestine, near Tullow, in the county of Carlow, he said that the only thing that would satisfy him was to have the finest treasure there. They could not divine what it was, and their distress was exceedingly great, but an accident delivered them out of their straits, for there chanced to be, on the outskirts of the multitude, a young man showing off his horse; and in wheeling round, the animal's hind hoofs cast a big sod into the air, which came down on the king's lap. Before anybody else could look at it, he espied in it a brooch, containing, as the story has it, no less than fourscore ounces of red gold. He bade Aitherne guess what he had in his lap, to which the poet promptly replied in rhyme, that he had the brooch that had served to fasten Maine mac Durthacht's cloak, adding that this was the very thing he wanted, as Maine was his mother's brother, and it was he that had buried the brooch there after the defeat and slaughter of the Ultonians by the men of Leinster in a battle on that spot. Now with regard to this story, it is to be observed, in the first place, that the name of the king of South Leinster was Fergus Fairge, that is to say, Fergus Ocean or of (the) Ocean, which sufficiently explains his non-historical character; for not only does the name Fergus take us back to Fergus Mac Róig (p. 139), but the world of waters and that of darkness are persistently associated with one another in Celtic mythology; and it looks natural to find that Lugaid[34] was his son, who, so far as concerns the Solar Hero, is the personification of darkness and evil. But we are not altogether left to rely on these indications as to the real scene of the story, namely Hades; for in Maine's brooch we have a counterpart of Woden's ring, Draupnir or Dropper, which, as will be mentioned when we come to speak more in detail of the story of the summer Sun-god, he placed on Balder's funeral pile, whereby it found its way with Balder to Hell. It was afterwards returned as a token by Balder to his father when the latter sent his son Hermoᵭr to Hell to ask for Balder's release: Balder was not allowed to go back with Hermoᵭr, but he gave his brother his father's gold ring to carry home again: it had the peculiarity, that every ninth night it dropped eight others like itself.[35] Thus it symbolized the ancient week, and its recovery by Woden its owner must mean the restoration of the regular vicissitude of day and night.
Aitherne, having got the brooch, went on to the court of the king of North Leinster, which was at Naas, on the Liffey. There he was not satisfied with the rich presents given him, but he insisted on sharing the queen's love, and in leading captive to Ulster 150 of the chief ladies of Leinster, with 700 red-eared white cows. The poet and the Leinster men did not, we are told, bless one another when they parted; and no sooner had the former crossed the boundary into his own country, than the latter, released from the obligations of hospitality, pursued him and rescued their wives and daughters. They further forced him and the Ultonian army that arrived to protect him to fortify themselves on Howth Head, near Dublin, where they underwent a siege for some days. Finally, the Ulster braves sallied forth and routed the men of Leinster, and their king, overtaken on the banks of the Liffey, was beheaded by Conall Cernach. [36] But it would be useless to attempt to interpret this story bit by bit; suffice it to say that Conall Cernach, or C. the Victorious, is to be regarded as a sun-hero, and the Leinster king's name was Mesgegra mac Datho, that he was the owner of a fabulous pig, and his brother Mesroida of a kind of Cerberus, which cannot be discussed at this point. There is nothing historical about them, and if one wash out the colouring given to the story by the Leinster story-tellers, we have the outlines left us of a picture which was originally that of the conflicts of the Culture Hero and his friends with the powers of darkness; but it must be confessed it can only be recognized in the light reflected on it by the cognate pictures of Gwydion and Woden. It may seem strange that not only Connaught and the west should be made to stand for Hades, but also Leinster. This latter appears, however, to have been so treated in other stories, as may be seen from the relations between the Ultonian court at Emain Macha and the Leinster court at Naas on the Liffey; as, for example, in the story of Conchobar and Medb, in which Naas is made the head-quarters of Ailill, whose wife Medb became after deserting Conchobar, her former husband. Ailill is, so to say, divided between Connaught and Leinster after his marriage with Medb, who possessed Connaught as her inheritance from her mother.[37] It is from their capital in the west that Ailill and Medb set out on the Táin (p. 140); but the former's portion of the army on that occasion consisted of a force from Leinster called the Gailióin, whose superiority over the rest of the troops so excited his wife's jealousy that she wished to have them all massacred: instead of that she was, however, only allowed to have them dispersed among the other batallions.[38] The narrative permits it to be seen that the superiority of the Gailióin is merely an interpretation of the magic arts ascribed to them;[39] and this is in harmony with the fact that Irish legend makes the Gailióin a part of an early invasion of Erinn, to whose share Leinster fell, where they ranged themselves always against the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the race of the gods. Similarly, Leinster, no less than Connaught and the west, appears to represent Hades in the story of Aitherne.
This view of Aitherne' s doings is not a little countenanced by a strange story told in the Book of Leinster about Aitherne's notorious churlishness. In that manuscript[40] it follows those of which an abstract has just been given, and it is so curious that I venture to give a literal translation of it as follows: "Aitherne the Importunate, son of Ferchertne, he is the most inhospitable man that dwelt in Erinn. He went to Mider of Bri Leith and took the cranes of denial and churlishness away from him surreptitiously; that is, with a view to refusal and churlishness, that no man of the men of Erinn should visit his house for hospitality or mendicancy. 'Do not come, not come,' says the first crane. 'Get away,' says her mate. '[Go] past the house, past the house,' says the third crane. Any man of the men of Erinn who should see them would not betake himself to his engagement to fight that day. He (Aitherne) never devoured his full meal in a place where one should see him. He proceeded, therefore, [one day] to take with him a cooked pig and a pot of mead, in order that he might eat his fill all alone. And he set in order before him the pig and the pot of mead, when he beheld a man coming towards him. 'Thou wouldst do [it] all alone,' said the stranger, whilst he took the pig and the pot away from him. 'What is thy name?' said Aitherne. 'Nothing very grand,' said he:
'Sethor. ethor. othor. sele. dele, dreng gerce.
mec gerlusce. ger ger. dír dír issed moainmse.'
Sethor, ethor, othor, sele, dele, dreng gerce,
Son of Gerlusce, sharp sharp, right right, that is my name.
Aitherne neither got the pig nor was he able to make rhymes to the satire. It is evident that it was one come from God to take away the pig; for Aitherne was not stingy from that hour forth."
From this little story one may gather, among other things, that Aitherne, unable to master on the spur of the moment metrical skill enough to manipulate the name of the angel in possession of the pig and the pot of mead, was powerless to curse him: it had to be done according to the rules of the poetic art, and the form of words was of course all-important. But let us come to the birds: Aitherne got them for the purposes of denial and stinginess, crimes treated in a version of the Vision of Adamnán as characteristic of a very bad class of men, who undergo punishment in Hell in the company of 'thieves and liars, and folk of treachery and blasphemy, and robbers, and raiders, and false-judging brehons, and folk of contention, and witches, and slanderers, men who mark themselves to the devil, and readers who preach heresy.'[41] But what, you may ask, had the three cranes to do with denial and stinginess? Directly, perhaps, they had nothing to do with them; but it is suggested that tiny were stolen by Aitherne to keep people away from his house. They answered that purpose by reason of their association with Mider, who was one of the kings of the fairies and the other world, which nobody would willingly visit. In other words, they were birds of evil omen, and so much so that no warrior who chanced to see them would proceed on his way to battle that day in spite of his having bound himself to go. I should hesitate to extract any more meaning out of the story, especially as one does not read that Mider was reckoned notorious for his churlishness; and if it were asked why the crane should be associated with Mider, we should give the question rather the form. Why a triad of cranes? Even then I could not pretend to answer it; but one might, perhaps, venture to point out that they are not improbably of the same origin as the three cranes perched on the back of the bull on the Paris monument, to which attention was called in the first of these lectures (p. 80). In Welsh they would seem to be matched by the three living things stolen by Amaethon son of Dôn from Hades, a plover, a bitch and a roe, for which Gwydion and he fought with Arawn the king of that country, and beat him in one of the Three Frivolous Battles at the expense of 71,000 lives (p. 245). Here the Welsh story, with its three different kinds of creatures, is possibly less original than the Irish one, with its three cranes or herons; and, to be more exact, the Welsh version may have compressed into a triad the stories of several thefts from Hades, so that one woild be left to compare the bird alone with the cranes of the Irish tale. One of the accounts of Arthur killing the infernal giant residing on Mont S. Michel (p. 91), represents three baleful birds turning his spits for the giant; but another makes them into three maidens forced to cook for him.[42] One is tempted to interpret the association of the three with the terrene powers as a reference to their supposed wisdom and knowledge extending over time in its three divisions of future, present and past; and the 'come,' 'go' and 'past' of the cranes' cries readily lend themselves to such an explanation. We might perhaps go so far as to bring the three maidens into comparison with the Norns or three weird sisters of Norse mythology, and even with other threes in our mythologies. Be that as it may, one may venture to hint that the story of Aitherne stealing Mider's cranes was the echo of a more ancient story with a far deeper meaning; one, in fact, which represented him procuring knowledge and wisdom from the powers of the nether world by stealth. But the Leinster euhemerist was bound, so to say, to construe everything relating to Aitherne in pejorem partem.
You might now be left to think the best of Aitherne in his reformed character; but one cannot dismiss him without giving the tale of his death. Irish story represents Conchobar marrying several times (p. 139), and one of the ladies given to him as consort was called Derdriu, whose name Macpherson has made into Darthula. Her birth had been attended with prophecies that she would have a somewhat Helen-like history; so some of Conchobar's nobles advised that the ill-starred child should not be reared; but the king would have none of that advice, and he ordered rather that she should be brought up to be his own wife. So when she had grown up a young woman of unsurpassed beauty, the king took her to wife. But she fell in love with one of the sons of Usnech, and they, to avoid the wrath of Conchobar, took her out of his kingdom; but when they had been years in exile in different parts of Erinn, and lastly in Britain, they longed to return to their country, and Fergus mac Róig undertook on their behalf to conciliate the king, and he thought that he had succeeded (p. 137); but no sooner had the sons of Usnech reached Emain than they were cruelly murdered by Eogan mac Durthacht, which he did as the price of peace with Conchobar. Fergus himself left Ulster to go as an exile to Connaught, while Conchobar obtained possession of Derdriu for the second time, though he knew that she by that time hated him with all her heart. One day it entered his head to ask her whom she most hated to see. The answer was, 'Thee and Eogan mac Durthacht.' 'Good,' said the king, 'thou shalt be a year with Eogan.' Then he took her out in his chariot in order to hand her over to the latter; but on the way she put an end to herself in the most tragic manner.[43] Conchobar after that event was observed to be sad, and a search was accordingly made for a beautiful maiden to take the place of the unfortunate Derdriu. Such a one was found, and married by the king with due solemnity and state. Her name was Luain, and two sons of Aitherne, who, like their father, were poets, came to her to seek the rich presents it was usual to give to men of their profession; but on seeing her they fell in love with her, and as she would lend no ear to their passion, they, together with their father Aitherne, satirized her so virulently that her face became covered with blotches, as the result of their potent incantations. This drove her back distracted to her father's house, where she died of grief. The men of Ulster, at the instigation of the king, who was furious at what had been done by the poets, killed Aitherne with his whole family, and levelled his house with the ground. Such is the story of Aitherne's end;[44] and it comes very close to that of Gwydion and Goewyn (p. 305) in the Welsh Mabinogi of Mâth. Here Conchobar, though not portrayed so noble a character, takes the place of Mâth, and the former's young and beautiful wife that of Goewyn, Mâth's virgin foot-holder. But instead of Aitherne and his two sons, we have in the Welsh tale Gwydion and his brother Gilvaethwy, who had a passion for Goewyn, and was enabled by the scheming of Gwydion to execute his purpose. In the next place, Mâth marries the outraged Goewyn—Luain is married earlier in the Irish sequence—and he then proceeds to punish Gwydion and his brother, where one notices that the euhemerist has laid his hand more heavily on the Irish narrative than on the Welsh one. For, while Conchobar and his Ultonians annihilate Aitherne and his house, Mâth only punishes the two brothers by transforming them into beasts for three years, at the end of which he restores them to their previous form and position. Lastly, the two stories agree as to the motive or, more correctly speaking, the lack of adequate motive, attributed to Gwydion and Aitherne in their lawless conduct towards Goewyn and Luain respectively. In this particular, both stories, together with that of Cairbre with Finn's Luignian wife (p. 98), may justly be suspected of having undergone serious distortion or blurring: the original myth, I doubt not, supplied some such an intelligible motive as that attributed to Woden in his guileful treatment of Gundfled (p. 288) the mead-giant's daughter, or such a one as may be detected in the scandal whispered about Prometheus and Zeus's daughter Athene.
Pwyll and Others visiting Hades.
There remain to be noticed in this lecture certain tales which show a general similarity to that of Gwydion and those that are inseparable from it, namely, in that they turn mostly on the dealings, whether hostile or friendly, of their respective heroes with the powers of the other world. It is, however, to be premised, that owing to a blending, especially common on Irish ground, of the characteristics of the Culture Hero with those of the Sun Hero, and to another source of complication to be touched on later, some of the tales I refer to ought in strictness to find their places elsewhere in tin-so lectures; but the arrangement about to be here followed has in its favour the desirability of keeping them with those which they otherwise most closely resemble, and of facilitating reference to them later as occasion may arise. One may begin with the story of Pwyỻ Prince of Dyved, otherwise known as Pwyỻ Head of Hades, who has hitherto been treated exclusively in the latter capacity. He forms the subject of one of our Welsh stories,[45] but it is too long to be reproduced here word for word. The following extract will suffice for the present purpose. Pwyỻ set out one day from his court at Arberth, near the Teivi, to hunt in the valley of the Cûch, a tributary of the Teivi, which divides Pembrokeshire from Carmarthenshire. When the morning of the following clay was still young, the horn was blown and the dogs were let loose under the wood which filled the Cûch valley, and Pwyỻ, following after them, soon found himself separated from his friends. Presently he heard a pack that was not his coming towards him, and just as his own dogs were reaching an open place in the forest, he beheld a stag before the strange pack, and they met him, and in passing threw him down. After he had got on his feet again and wondered for an instant at the colour of the hounds that had just gone past, he went after them, and came up with them just as they had killed the stag. He then proceeded to drive them away, and to lure his own dogs to the stag; but whilst he was thus engaged, the owner of the strange pack arrived on a big horse of a dismal grey colour: he had a huntsman's horn hanging from his neck, and he was clad in a hunting-dress of a kind of grey cloth. 'Ah, prince,' said he, 'I know who thou art, and I will not salute thee.' 'In that case,' said Pwyỻ, 'perhaps thy dignity is such that thou shouldst not. 'By my faith,' said he, 'it is not the dignity of my rank that prevents me.' 'Ah, prince,' said Pwyỻ, 'what else?' 'By my faith,' said he, 'it is thy bad manners and ungentlemanly conduct.' 'What ungentlemanly conduct, prince,' said Pwyỻ, 'hast thou seen me guilty of?' 'I have never seen a man guilty of more ungentlemanly conduct than to drive away from the stag the dogs that had killed him, and to lure thy own dogs to him: that,' said he, 'I call ungentlemanly conduct; and though I avenge myself not on thee, by my faith I shall cause thee disgrace exceeding the value of a hundred stags.' 'Ah, prince,' said Pwyỻ, 'if I have done wrong I will purchase thy good-will.' 'In what way,' said he, 'wilt thou purchase it?' 'According to thy rank,' said Pwyỻ: 'I know not who thou art.' 'I am,' said he, 'a crowned king in the country from which I come.' 'Lord,' said Pwyỻ, 'good day to thee, and what country is it from which thou comest?' 'From Hades,' said he; 'I am Arawn king of Hades.' 'Lord,' said Pwyỻ, 'how can I obtain thy good-will?' 'This is how thou shalt,' said Arawn: 'one whose territory is over against mine is always making war on me, and that is Havgan, a king of Hades. In return for ridding me of that scourge, which thou canst easily do, shalt thou have my good-will.' 'That will I do gladly,' said Pwyỻ; 'and do thou tell me in what way I may succeed.' 'I will make a strong covenant,' said Arawn, 'with thee; and this is what I shall do: I shall set thee in my place in Hades, and give thee the most beautiful woman thou hast ever seen to sleep with thee every night. Thou shalt have my form and shape, so that no valet, no officer, or anybody else who has ever been in my suite, should know that it is not I. That,' said he, 'is to last till this time to-morrow twelvemonth, when this spot is to be our meeting-place.' 'But,' said Pwyỻ, 'though I remain there a year, what certainty have I of engaging him thou speakest of?' 'This night twelvemonth,' said Arawn, 'I have an appointment to meet him in the ford; be thou there in my form, and from one blow thou shouldst give, he will not recover; and though he should ask thee to give him another blow, give it not, however much he may implore thee: no matter how many I should give him, he would be as well as ever the next morning.' After this arrangement between the two, Arawn showed Pwyỻ the way to his court in Hades, and then hastened in Pwyỻ's form to Arberth to rule over Dyved. Pwyỻ was successful in his doings: he gave Havgan his mortal wound, and annexed his kingdom to that of Arawn, whom he then hastened to meet in the glade in the valley of the Cûch. Pwyỻ returned to his kingdom to find that it had been governed better than usual that year. Arawn likewise was pleased with what Pwyỻ had done, and to find that not even the queen had discovered his absence, though she unintentionally let him know that she could not understand why he had slept every night during the year with his face turned away towards the outside of the bed. Arawn then told her all about his absence, and both wondered greatly at the exceeding fidelity[46] with which Pwyỻ had kept his covenant. In fact, this proved the means of stamping the friendship between Pwyỻ and Arawn with the seal of endurance; and afterwards, the one used to send the other presents of what he most thought would rejoice his friend's heart, such as horses, greyhounds and falcons; to which may be added from another tale that the same relation of friendliness continued between Arawn and Pwyỻ's son Pryderi, who got from Hades the swine that Gwydion coveted. Thus Pwyỻ and Pryderi were able to get by friendship from the powers below what Gwydion was only able to procure by craft and to retain by force of arms. But of the two ways of procuring boons from Hades, the one in Gwydion's story is probably the older, with this difference: Pwyỻ, whose name means sense, intelligence, deliberation, is in the one tale the counterpart of Gwydion in the other; so, likewise, is Pryderi that of Gwydion's son Llew. When, however, these heroes of parallel myths are brought into contact with one another, a complication arises, which the Mabinogi indicates in a sense when it states, that when Pwyỻ made it known that he had ruled Hades for a year and reduced the two kingdoms to one, his title of Pwyỻ Prince of Dyved came to be superseded by that of Pwyỻ Head of Hades. So when Pryderi meets Gwydion, we have to treat the former just as if he had always been one of the dark powers, and such is the rôle one has to assign him elsewhere; but it raises a question of considerable difficulty, which I cannot solve.
Let us now turn to some of the Irish stories that correspond in a manner to that of Pwytt's doings in Hades.
The first to claim our attention relates to Cúchulainn's relations with Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword, king of an Irish Hades or Elysium.[47] His wife's name is given as Liban, and she had a sister Fand, who had been deserted by her husband Manannán mac Lir. Fand fell in love with Cúchulainn on account of his fame, and she and her sister the queen tried to induce Cúchulainn to visit them in Labraid's Isle; but it was all in vain, until Labraid appealed to him to come on a certain day to his aid against his enemies, the chief of whom are called Senach the Demoniac, Echaid of Eol, and Eogan of Inber: at last Cúchulainn was induced to drive forth in his scythed chariot to the assistance of Labraid. Cúchulainn, when he arrived in Labraid's kingdom, would have made short work of the enemy, if Labraid himself had not intervened to put a stop to the slaughter, but for no more evident reason than that it was forbidden Pwyỻ to inflict more than one blow on Havgan. Just as Arawn promised Pwyỻ the handsomest woman he had ever seen as his consort, so the reward held out to Cúchulainn for descending to assist Labraid was the hand[48] of his sister-in-law Fand, who in consequence came away with Cúchulainn to Erinn. The next story to be mentioned relates also to Cúchulainn visiting Hades, but it differs from the foregoing in several important respects, besides introducing us to another set of names. It is to the effect[49] that a prince of the Hy-Many in Connaught, having been triumphed over by Cúchulainn, left to the latter as a sort of a souvenir of himself a 'destiny' that he, Cúchulainn, should enjoy no rest or peace till he discovered what had taken the three Sons of Dóel Dermait out of their country. Cúchulainn could find no one at the court of Conchobar to answer this strange question, which made him utterly restless, and proved well-nigh fatal to the king of Alban's son. This prince was accidentally met by Cúchulainn as he was landing to proceed on business to the king of Ulster's court: a mistake made by him brought on him Cúchulainn's fury, but he craved for mercy, which he obtained with the question, whether he knew what had taken the Sons of Dóel Dermait out of their country. The prince replied that he could not tell, but that if Cúchulainn would step into his boat he would set it sailing towards a land where he should get the mystery cleared up. This was agreed to, and Cúchulainn took with him two friends, Lugaid and Loeg, while he gave the king of Alban's son his little spear, with an ogam on it which he cut for him at the time: he was to take it with him and to seat himself in Cúchulainn's seat at the court of Ulster, and we hear no more about him. The boat brought Cúchulainn to the neighbourhood of Hades, to a very beautiful island surrounded by a wall of silver and a palisade of bronze. Here Cúchulainn was heartily welcomed on account of his friends Lugaid and Loeg. In answer to his question about the Sons of Dóel Dermait, he was told he should presently find it all out, as he would be directed to the next island, which was inhabited by the daughter of Dóel Dermait and her husband: the name of the former was Achtlann, and of the latter Condla Coel Corrbacc. When they reached this second island, they found Condla lying across it from east to west, and sending a mighty wave over the face of the deep every time he breathed. Achtlann accompanied Cúchulainn and his friends to a third island, where they were to find the Sons of Dóel Dermait. This at last was Hades, and it seems to have been ruled by two giants, called respectively Coirpre Cundail, brother to the Children of Dóel Dermait's father, and Echaid Glas or the Grey: these two were always at war with one another, like Arawn and Havgan in the Mabinogi of Pwyỻ. On his way to Coirpre's court, Cúchulainn was so irritated by the impertinence of one of his drudges that it drove him to commit an act of violence; and the news of it made Coirpre challenge Cúchulainn to fight, which they did the rest of the day. At last the giant was compelled to surrender, and he hospitably entertained Cúchulainn that night, lending him his daughter and relating the history of the Children of Dóel Dermait. On the morrow Coirpre was challenged to do battle with Echaid Glas, his hostile neighbour; so he and Cúchulainn proceeded to a place of torture called the Glenn, and it was not long ere Cúchulainn engaged Echaid. It was so difficult, however, to reach his person that Cúchulainn had to perch himself on the brim of his shield, whence Echaid repeatedly blew him off into the sea. At last Cúchulainn bethought him of an expedient whereby he was wounded from above and instantly killed. No sooner had this been done than the three Sons of Dóel Dermait, and the other wretched creatures kept in bondage by Echaid Glas, flocked together to bathe in his blood, whereupon they were healed of all their ailments and enabled to return to their own land. In passing, it may be suggested that the Sons of Dóel Dermait, which means the Beetle of Forgetfulness,[50] were personifications of the divisions of the day, as will be seen from comparison with Welsh stories to be mentioned by and by, containing clear references to the twenty-four hours personified; and it is worth while to recall here the fact mentioned in another lecture, that the 'twenty-four,' as we term them, were divided by the Irish into day and night, and the former subdivided by Conchobar into three parts: these may be considered the three Sons of Dóel Dermait whom Cúchulainn fetches, while there was no question of doing so with their sister: she stands for the night. But to pursue Cúchulainn's story further: he was loaded with treasure, given him when he left, by Coirpre Condail, who was now, like Arawn, rid of his rival; and when he reached the king of Ulster's court he found his rations of ale and food duly served as usual. I mention this, as it touches on a part of the story which had been blurred and forgotten, namely that relating to the owner of the boat used by Cúchulainn. He is represented as the son of the king of Alban or Albion; but we have found Alban in the story of Cairbre Musc and the dog, where the Welsh myth would lead one to expect Hades, and not Britain (p. 246); and if one assume the same substitution to have been made here, the boat that took Cúchulainn to his destination and brought him back would stand comparison with the little ship of bronze[51] that ferried passengers across to Labraid's Isle. Further, the allusion to Cúchulainn's finding his rations served as usual at the court, seems to mean that his seat had been occupied during the days of his absence in quest of the Sons of Dóel Dermait; and the story of Pwyỻ suggests the explanation that it had been all the while filled by the son of the king of Alban as Cúchulainn's substitute, bearing the personal semblance of Cúchulainn so completely that the absence of the real Cúchulainn was not discovered by his comrades: this was probably the virtue of the ogam which Cúchulainn wrote on the little spear the prince was to carry with him to Conchobar's court at Emain. That the tale was at one time more explicit with regard to Cúchulainn's substitute, is rendered certain by the terms in which he ordered the prince from Alban to go to the court: they are to the effect that he was to go and occupy Cúchulainn's seat at Emain Macha till he returned.[52] Finally, as to the geography of Cúchulainn's voyage, the two first islands he reaches are not exactly Hades, but they are near it, especially the one occupied by C. C. Corrbacc and Achtlann his wife; for not only does this latter name betray itself by its likeness to Taliessin's Ochren and the Achren[53] with which the latter has already been compared (p. 248), but Corrbacc is unmistakably to be identified with Welsh Kyrvach, the sous of Gwawrᵭur Kyrvach from the confines of Hell[54] being among the strange personages enumerated in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen.
All the visits of Cúchulainn to Hades were not of the same description as the one just mentioned. In the one previously detailed he proceeded more like Gwydion than Pwyỻ, and obtained the king's cauldron from the hand of the king's daughter. The same poem (p. 261) from which that was taken also relates how he invaded and conquered Lochlann, laying it under a heavy tribute of gold and silver. But all these tales agree in making the visitor to Hades obtain, whether by force or friendship, somewhat of the property of the powers of that country. There are, however, other tales which differ in their treatment of this matter, especially a Welsh one which makes the invader of Hades kill its king and marry his widow. I allude to the story of Owein son of Urien. This I must now introduce, in order partly to be able to refer to it later, and partly to compare it with the story of Diarmait's expedition to Tir fa Tonn, or the Land beneath the Billow, and also to show how it agrees in some respects with the story of Cúchulainn's quest of Dóel Dermait's three Sons. The following is an abstract of it:[55]
Kei son of Kynyr, Owein son of Urien, Kynon son of Klydno, and others of the knights of Arthur's court, were sitting together at Carlcon, when it became Kynon's turn to entertain his comrades with a story. So he related one about himself, showing how he, when young and curious, came across a fine valley with a stately castle in it, where he was hospitably received. When he had been refreshed with food and drink, his host made the usual inquiries; and he was told by Kynon that he was a knight travelling in quest of adventure, whereupon his host said he could tell him where he might find more than enough, but that he should be sorry to be the means of bringing him into trouble. This only made Kynon more curious and restless. At last his host was prevailed upon to give him proper directions how to find the place he had in view, which he did by telling him to go into the forest he had come through the previous day, and to proceed until he found a branch road on his right. "Follow that road, " said he, "until thou comest to a large open field with a mound on it with a big black man, no smaller than two of the men of this world, sitting on the top of the mound. He has but one foot, and only one eye in the centre of his forehead; and he has an iron staff which, as thou wilt perceive, there is no couple of men in the world who would not find it a load. He is not unkind, though he is ugly; he is the keeper of that forest, and thou wilt see a thousand wild beasts grazing around him. Ask him the way thence . . . . and he will point out to thee the road to take so as to find what thou art in quest of." Early on the morrow Kynon set out on his journey, and he found the Black Man just as his host had told him, except that he seemed to be far bigger, and that the wild animals around him appeared to be three times as many as he had been told: he guessed also that the iron rod would be a load for four warriors, and not two as he had been given to understand. Kynon asked the Black Fellow what his power over the animals might be. "I will show it thee, little man," said he; while he took the iron staff in his hand and struck a great blow with it at a stag, so that he gave a loud bell. At that bell there flocked together so many animals that they were as numerous as the stars in the sky, and that it was hard for Kynon to find room to stand on the plain with them, including as they did among them serpents and vipers and various kinds of beasts. The Black Man looked at them and told them to go to graze: they lowered their heads and made obeisance to him, like men doing homage to their liege lord. Then the Black Fellow said to Kynon, "Seest thou, little man, the power I have over the animals?" Then Kynon asked him the way, and was treated rudely by him; nevertheless, he inquired about his business, and when he had been answered he said to him, "Take the road at the end, and proceed uphill until thou reachest the top; from there thou wilt behold a strath resembling a large valley, and in the middle of the strath thou wilt see a large tree whose foliage is greener than the greenest fir-tree. Beneath that tree there is a fountain; close to the fountain there is a marble slab; and on the marble there is a silver tankard fastened by a silver chain, so that they cannot be separated. Take the tankard and throw its full of the water over the slab. Then thou wilt hear a great thunder, and it will seem to thee to make earth and sky tremble. After the thunder will come a cold shower, and with difficulty wilt thou live through the shower; it will be one of hail, and afterwards the weather will be fair again; but thou wilt not find a single leaf left on the tree by the shower. Then a flight of birds will come and light on the tree: thou hast never heard in thy country such good music as they will make; but when the music is most entertaining, thou wilt hear a sighing and a wailing coming along the valley towards thee. Thereupon thou wilt behold on a jet-black charger a knight clad in jet-black satin, with a flag of jet-black silk on his spear, making for thee as fast as he can. In case thou fleest, he will overtake thee; and in case thou awaitest him, he will leave thee a pedestrian instead of a rider. Shouldst thou not find trouble there, thou needest not seek any as long as thou livest?" The story goes on to relate how all happened to Kynon just as the Black Woodward had told him, and how the knight overthrew him and took away his horse: he had to trudge back on foot as best he could past the Black Woodward, whose mockery made him all but melt with shame; and when he finished the story at Arthur's court, Kynon was willing to admit that no man ever confessed to a more shameful adventure; but it stirred up Owein son of Urien to seek the place, and to try a duel with the Black Knight of the Fountain. So it was not long ere he stole away from Arthur's court, and took the path described by Kynon: in due time he reached the fountain, and the Black Knight came forth in his anger and fought with Owein; but ere long he perceived that he had received a mortal wound from Owein, and he turned and fled towards his castle. Owein pursued so closely, that, while the owner was admitted, he found himself caught between two heavy doors, one of which was let down behind him, so that it cut his horse in two close to his spurs. While in this evil plight, he saw through a crevice an auburn-haired, curly-headed maiden, with a diadem of gold on her head, coming towards the gate: she asked him to open it, which he said he should be only to glad to do if he could. The lady was a dear friend of the Black Knight's wife, and her name was Elunet, shortened always in this tale to Lunet, Tennyson's Lynette in his Idylls of the King. We are not told how she knew Owein, but in the conversation which ensued she expressed the highest opinion of his gallantry, and gave him a sort of Gyges' ring to make him invisible, and to enable him to get free when the Black Knight's men should come to fetch him for execution. He used it as he was directed, and Lunet kept him in concealment until the Black Knight had expired and his funeral was over. Now the holding of the Black Knight's dominions depended on successfully holding the Fountain, and no one could do that but one of Arthur's knights; so Lunet pretended to go to Arthur's court and in due time to return with one of them. The widow at once detected that neither Lunet nor Owein had travelled far that day, and she elicited the confession from her friend that Owein was the man who had killed the Black Knight of the Fountain. It was then urged that Owein was of all men the most fitted to hold the Fountain, and nolens volens she had to give him her hand. He stayed there with her three years. By that time, Arthur's longing for Owein had grown so grievous that he and his knights set out in quest of Owein. Suspecting that it was Kynon's story that had led him to leave the court, they came to the Fountain; and in time they found Owein out, and were feasted by him for three months at his castle. Then Arthur departed, and sent to ask the Lady of the Fountain, Owein's wile, if she would permit him to take Owein with him in order to show him for three months to the nobles of Britain. Much against her will, she gave her permission; but Owein, finding himself once more among his fellows, forgot his wife, and remained there, not three months, but three years, until, in fact, a strange maiden, on a horse caparisoned with gold, rode one day into the hall of Arthur's court. She went right up to Owein and took away the ring that was on his hand, saying, 'Thus is done to a deceiver, a false traitor, for a disgrace to thy beard.' She then rode away, and his former adventure came back to Owein's mind. This made him sad, and he left the society of men to live with wild beasts; but it would take me too long to relate how he was restored to his former life, how he rescued a lion from a serpent, and how the former followed him ever after as his faithful ally. At last Lunet brought Owein back to his wife, the Lady of the Fountain; and when he came away he brought her with him to Arthur's court, and she was his wife as long as she lived. So ends the tale; but it recommences by telling us how Owein one day went to the castle of a robber knight called the Du Traws, or the Perverse Black One. The owner was at the time not in his castle; and Owein found there twenty-four of the finest women one had ever seen, but they were in rags and extreme wretchedness. They had come there, they said, each with her husband, and at first they were hospitably and kindly treated, but later they were made drunk and stripped of their clothing, of their gold, and of their silver; while their husbands were murdered and their horses taken away. They pointed out to him where the corpses of their husbands and many others were heaped together; and they lamented his coming among thorn, as they had no doubt about his fate. Owein then went out and fell in with the Perverse Black Fellow himself; they fought, and Owein bound the robber with his hands behind him. The latter said that it was prophesied that Owein was to overcome him, and he asked for mercy, which was granted by Owein on condition that his castle was in future to be a hospice. But Owein took away with him to Arthur's court the twenty-four ladies, with their horses, their apparel, and all the treasure they had when they were robbed.
With regard to this episode, it is a matter of considerable doubt where it should stand in the story: as the lion has no part in it,[56] one should possibly regard it as connected with Owein's first stay with his wife in the Earldom of the Fountain, and not with his second visit to the same. But in any case the doubt seems to attach exclusively to the sequence of the story, while the description of the castle of the Perverse Black Fellow and Owein's triumph over him, together with the release of the twenty-four matrons, has the air of being genuinely ancient. For the Perverse Black Robber, whose castle may be inferred to have been not very far from the dominions of the Lady of the Fountain, corresponds in this tale to the giants against whom Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword was aided by Cúchulainn; but, above all, he forms the counterpart of Echaid Glas, whom Cúchulainn is made to kill in order to release the three Sons of Dóel Dermait. The latter probably represent, as already suggested, the tripartite day of the ancient Goidels; in Welsh they are three brothers slain every day by the Avanc of the Lake,[57] and brought to life again during the night; while we recognize them in a later form in the imprisoned ladies released by Owein, whose number, twenty-four, can hardly be mistaken as relating to the hours of the day, viewed as always passing away into the world of oblivion and darkness. If one were to press the story of Pwyỻ and Arawn as a parallel throughout, one would have to set the Perverse Black Robber over against Havgan or Summer-white, which forms a difficulty. There is also another difference, namely, that Pwyỻ wins his title of Head of Hades in a friendly way, while Owein gets possession of the Black Knight of the Fountain's dominions by killing him and marrying his widow. The Black Knight was probably no other than Arawn; for we detect a reference to this transaction in the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth, when he represents Arawn succeeded by Owein in the kingship of Alban or Scotland:[58] it is needless here to dwell on the ancient idea which made of the northern part of this island a sort of Hades and abode of the departed.
The meaning to be attached to Owein's releasing the twenty-four ladies, and Cúchulainn's bringing back to their country the three Sons of Dóel Dermait, together with the liberation and healing of a swarm of other captives at his coming to the dominions of Echaid Glas, has just been suggested. The same kind of liberation of captives[59] will be found to figure also in the Arthurian romances in various forms, as, for example, in the account of Arthur's intervention between Gwyn and Gwythur; and it forms a feature of the story which begins with Diarmait's visit to the Land beneath the Billow, and which was brought under your notice in the first lecture (p. 187). That narrative ends with an account of both Finn (as Culture Hero) and Dermait (as Sun Hero) sailing towards the west to recover their friends that had been carried away by a fairy giant on the sharp-ridged back of his monster steed. The realms of Faery and the other world generally had a variety of names in Irish legend; but the isle in which Finn and Diarmait found their friends, is called the Land of Promise; and another of the names belonging to the same mythic geography was that of Lochlann, which, like the Welsh Llychlyn, before it came to mean the home of the Norsemen, denoted a mysterious country in the lochs or the sea. I mention this, because I wish to close this group of tales with another about Diarmait: it relates how he attacked a giant who was the guardian of the berries of a certain divine rowan or quicken-tree which grew in the midst of a wood, wherein no one durst hunt, called Dubhros, or Black Forest, in the country of the Hy Fiachrach, in the present county of Sligo; but though the scene is laid this time within Erinn itself, the giant was of Lochlann, and his name was Searbhan, which may be interpreted to mean the Bitter or Sour One. The story is to the following effect:[60] Once on a time the Tuatha Dé Danann played a game of hurley against the Féni on the plain near the Lake of Lein of the Crooked Teeth, that is to say, the Lakes of Killarney. The game was continued three days and three nights without either side succeeding in winning a single goal from the other; and when the Tuatha Dé Danann saw that they could not prevail, they went away and journeyed northwards in a body. Their food during the contest and during their journey afterwards consisted of crimson nuts, arbutus apples and scarlet quicken-berries, which they had brought from the Land of Promise. These fruits were gifted with many secret virtues, and their owners were careful that neither apple nor nut should touch the soil of Erinn; but in passing through Dubhros they dropped a quicken-berry without observing it. From the berry there grew up a tree which had the virtues of the quicken-tree growing in fairy-land, for all the berries on it had many virtues: every one of them had in it the exhilaration of wine and the satisfying of old mead; and whoever should eat three of them, would, though he had completed his hundredth year, return to the age of thirty.
When the Tuatha Dé Danann heard of that tree in Dubhros and of its many virtues, they wished nobody but themselves to eat of the fruit; so they sent Searbhan of Lochlann to guard it, that no man might approach the tree. Searbhan was a giant of the race of the wicked Cain; he was burly and strong, with heavy bones, a large thick nose, crooked teeth, and a single broad fiery eye in the middle of his black forehead. He was armed with a great club, tied by a chain to an iron girdle round his body, and he was such a magician that he could not be killed by fire, by water, or by weapons of war: there was only one way of overcoming him, and that was by giving him three blows of his own club. By day he watched at the foot of the tree, and at night he slept in a hut he had made him aloft in its branches. He did not allow the Féni to hunt in the neighbourhood, so that it was a wilderness for many miles around the tree. Therefore Diarmait, when pursued by Finn, took refuge there; this he did with the giant's surly permission, provided only he did not eat of the berries of the quicken-tree. But Grainne, Diarmait's wife, hearing of the berries, was seized with a longing desire for them; knowing the danger, she concealed her desire as long as she could, until, in fact, she thought she must die unless she got some of the forbidden fruit. So Diarmait, fearing danger to her, went, much against his inclination, to ask for some of the berries. The giant's reply was a brutal negative. "I swear," quoth he, "were it [even] that thou shouldst have no children but that birth [now] in her womb, and were there but Grainne of the race of Cormac the son of Art, and were I sure that she should perish in bearing that child, that she should never taste one berry of those berries."[61] Diarmait replied, that, as he did not wish to deal treacherously by him, the giant must understand that he had no intention of going his way without them; a duel then began, which soon ended in Diarmait's killing the giant with his own club, and taking a quantity of the forbidden berries to his wife and to certain others who had asked for some. Such is the story of the berries, in which the brief allusion to the crimson nuts forming part of the food of the Tuatha Dé Danann, seems to refer to the same mysterious fruit that used to fall from the nine hazels into the secret well and to be devoured by the Salmon of Knowledge, to be mentioned in a later lecture.
At this point we are not so much interested in the crimson nuts as in the scarlet berries of the fairy rowan: both kinds of fruit formed part of the sustenance of the gods, according to Goidelic notions; and the description which has been quoted of the berries makes them a sort of Celtic counterpart to the soma-plant of Hindu mythology. I said 'Celtic,' but it would perhaps be more accurate to say 'Celtic and Teutonic;' for not only the Celts, but some also of the Teutons, have been in the habit of attaching great importance to the rowan or roan tree, and regarding it as a preservative against the malignant influence of witches and all things uncanny. The English name[62] appears to be of Scandinavian origin, the Old Norse being reynir, Danish rönne, Swedish rönn; and the old Norsemen treated the tree as holy and sacred to Thor, to whom it was fabled to have been of great service when he clutched its branches once on a time in crossing a stream. Moreover, the Swede of modern times believes the rowan a safeguard against witchcraft, and likes to have on board his ship something or other made of its wood, to protect him against tempests and the demons of the water world.[63] All this only renders more conspicuous the question of the origin of the importance and sacredness of the rowan: I mention it in the hope that somebody else may answer it, for I do not pretend to be able to do so, or to regard the Eddic explanation, to which allusion has been made, as giving us the real key. Possibly the inaccessible rocks on which the tree is not unfrequently found to grow, and the conspicuous colour of its berries, may have counted for something; but that something falls decidedly short of a solution of the question. One kind of answer that would meet the case, provided it be countenanced by facts, may be briefly indicated, namely, that the berries of the rowan were used in some early period in the brewing of an intoxicating drink, or, better still, of the first intoxicating drink ever known to the Teuto-Celtic Aryans. Such a use would render the belief intelligible, that they formed part of the sustenance of the gods, and that the latter kept them jealously for themselves until they were baffled in their purpose by some benefactor of man who placed them within the reach of his race. It is needless to repeat here the somewhat parallel conjectures (p. 296), that the many virtues ascribed to the soma in Hindu religion, and the Norse account of the acquisition for man of the gift of poetry by Woden, agree in postulating as their ultimate explanation some kind of food or drink calculated to intoxicate and exhilarate those who partook of it.
The Culture Hero and the Nine-night Week.
As allusion has more than once been made to an ancient reckoning of nine nights to a week, a word must now be said in explanation of that term. The Celts reckoned Dis the father of all, and regarded darkness and death as taking precedence over light and life; so in their computation of time they began with night and winter,[64] and not with daylight and summer. The Teutons reckoned similarly, and probably for the same mythological reason.[65] In ancient Italy we have a trace of the same idea in the Roman habit of considering the calends of every month sacred to Janus, one of the undoubted counterparts of the Celtic Dis; and especially was this the case with the winter month called after Janus, of which the calends and the ninth day, that is to say, the first day of the two first nine-night weeks of January, were sacred to that god. Further, we know that the Celts must have formerly reckoned not only the night with which the week or any period began, but also the night with which it ended. Witness such Celtic terms as the Welsh word wythnos, 'a week,' which literally means 'an eight-night,' where an Englishman might use 'sennight;' similarly, a fortnight is in Welsh pythewnos, 'a fifteen-night,' and the Irish cóicthiges (genitive cóicthigisi of the same meaning, is also derived from the name of the fifteenth numeral in its Irish form: compare the French huitaine and quinzaine respectively.[66] This way of counting, then, was the same as that usual in music, where a third is said to consist of two tones, or whatever the description of the intervals in any given case may happen to be; so a nine-night week would contain only eight days or eight portions of daylight, and that was, I believe, the ancient week of the Aryans, at least of the Aryans of Western Europe. In Italy we have traces of it in the Roman nundinæ or markets held every ninth day: the word is supposed to represent an older and longer form, novendinæ, from the ninth numeral; and it happens that nundinæ, in a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, is explained by means of the Brythonic word nouitiou,[67] which would, in modern Welsh, be newidiau, the plural of newid, 'change, exchange, barter.' This last is in its turn derived, like the Latin term just mentioned, from the ninth numeral, which is written in modern Breton and Welsh naô and naw respectively. It would thus seem that we have traces here of markets or fairs on the ninth day as an institution common to the Celts and the Italians of antiquity.
It might, however, be objected that the Brythons had merely adopted it from the Romans; but, over and above this, there is Irish evidence to which the objection will not apply, for the Irish term etymologically equivalent to nundinæ occurs in the form noinden or noenden,[68] explained to have meant an assembly,[69] and a compound ard-noenden, 'a great—literally 'a high'—assembly,' with which compare the term 'high festival' in English. Whether the assemblies to which this term would apply recurred regularly, and what the interval might be, I know not; but we have practically irrefragable evidence that the simple term noinden meant just half the duration of the nine-night week, that is to say, five nights and four days, which is given as the length of the Ultonian coavade.[70] This was called cess noinden Ulad, which, if we call noinden a week, would mean '(the) Ulster men's sickness or indisposition of a week,' or, as one would put it in English, 'the Ulster men's week of sickness;' and it was more briefly termed either cess noinden, '(the) sickness of (the) week,' that is to say, '(the) week's sickness,' or noinden Ulad, 'the Ultonians' week'—a term, however, which did not necessarily refer to the couvade.[71] It is not clear to me what the original meaning of the word noinden was, whether a heterogeneous nine consisting of five nights and four days, or a uniform reckoning, say one of nine nights. In the latter case, one might be tempted to regard the word as the Latin nundinæ borrowed;[72] but in any case the Irish could not be said to have borrowed anything beyond the word, inasmuch as the reckoning by nines was clearly more in vogue in Ireland than in Italy as represented in the classics. In fact, the favourite expression for a small number of days in Irish literature is exactly the length of the nine-night week, the term used being nómad, genitive feminine nómaide, '(the) ninth (night),' as in co cend nomaide, 'till the end of (a) ninth,' that is to say, to the end of the nine-night week. This is continued in Welsh with the incorrect substitution of day for night, for the favourite Welsh period is naw diwrnod, or nine days; as in fact it is in certain cases in English likewise, as when one speaks of 'the nine days' wonder.' From this point of view, the Germans are more correct with the space of acht tage, or eight days, to which they colloquially give a decided preference.
What, it may be asked in passing, should have led anybody to fix on a week of nine nights and eight days as a unit of time? It would be useless to demand an answer from the moon, and one should rather look at the fingers on one's hands: the half of a nine-night week would be the Irish noinden of five nights and four days; that is to say, a hand of nights, if you reckon the nights alone, as the ancient Celts must have done; and just as a third in music added to another third yields not a sixth but a fifth, so two hands of nights reduced to one sum make not ten nights but nine. But why the two hands should have been preferred as a unit to the single hand, I cannot say, though it may be guessed that the latter was too short a reckoning to be as useful as the longer one. The nine-night reckoning of eight days to the week could not, of course, be made in any way to coincide with the months as measured by the moon; but that cannot be urged as an objection. In fact, the more hopeless the discrepancy appeared, the more room it gave for the interference of the professional man, one of the strongholds of whose influence was doubtless the ancient calendar. Thus we find among the Taliessin-like boasts of Amorgin, the seer and poet of the Milesian invaders of Erinn, the challenge who but he could tell them the age of the moon.[73] But to return to the practice of counting on the fingers, we have evidence of it elsewhere among the Aryans, and I need, for instance, only remind you of the Greek word πεμπάζω, 'I count, reckon or cast up,' or, still better, of an old Norse word connoting the application of finger-counting to time: I allude to fimt, a legal term derived from the fifth numeral, which was in old Norse fimm. The former meant a summoning to a court of law with five days' notice, all Norse notices of the kind being given for either five days or some small multiple of five days. At first this would seem as if five days had been an incorrect translation of an older habit of giving notices of five nights, that is to say of four days, which would yield a welcome equivalent to the Irish noinden; but that can hardly be, for the Norsemen gave five days' notice, exclusive of the day of serving the summons, so that in Christian times no summons would be served on a Tuesday, as no court sat on Sundays.[74] Thus the shortest notice intended by the law would, in term of nights, be either six or seven, and not five. There is, however, no lack of allusions in Norse mythology to the nine-night week. Among the most remarkable, Heimdal's nine maiden-mothers have been mentioned as symbolic of time under its weekly aspects (p. 85), and Woden's gold ring Draupnir, regarded as matched in the Irish legend of Aitherne by Maine's gold brooch. But that is not all; for Draupnir was said to drop eight rings like itself every ninth night, and this, interpreted in reference to the nine-night week, means that the ninth night was regarded as containing the other eight: it was the limit and boundary, so to say, of that space of time.
This idea is reflected in a remarkable way in Irish mythology, as will be seen from the following details. When Christian missionaries made the Irish familiar with the Eastern week of seven days, they taught them its Latin name septimana; and this word, treated by the Irish in their own way, became sechtmain, genitive sechtmaine—a word seemingly beginning with secht, the Irish for septem or seven, and suggesting, therefore, the question, 'seven of what?' The answer was Secht Maini, seven persons bearing the name Maine or Mane.[75] How they came to acquire the personal form will appear presently; but what the Maini were pictured to be in Irish mythology, we learn from the fact that the single one in the story of Aitherne is termed son of Durthacht, whose name we have already met with (p. 142), and that the group is usually treated as the offspring of Ailill and Medb. Accordingly, the brothers always fight against the sun-hero Cúchulainn on the Táin.[76] Similarly, in another story, that of the death of Conaire Mór (p. 135), they figure as the haughtiest of the exiles following the lead of the cyclops Ingcél on the occasion of his landing in Erinn in the night.[77] While the Latin word septimana, and the Irish sechtmain made out of it, seemed to fix the number of the Maini at seven, the early Christians of Ireland must have treated the new week after the analogy of the old; that is to say, they reckoned it, not as seven days, but as eight nights, as the Welsh have also done; and the discrepancy arising from the habit of speaking of seven Maini, when they reckoned them eight, has led to curious results; for instance, in the Book of the Dun. The scribe of that manuscript, at the beginning of the twelfth century or a little earlier, can have had no idea that the Maini had anything to do with the week; but he gives us, more or less faithfully, the stories of previous generations when that must have been no secret. The following are the Maini in the order and with the surnames given to them by him in the Táin: (1) Maine Mathremail, or M. like his Mother; (2) Maine Athremail, or M. like his Father; (3) Maine Mórgor, or M. very Dutiful; (4) Main Míngor, or M. little Dutiful; (5) Maine mó Epert, or M. greater than Said; (6) Maine Milscothach, or M. of Honey-bloom;[78] (7) Maine Andóe, the meaning of whose surname I cannot find; (8) Maine cotageib Ule, or M. that contains them All. This last name has called forth from the scribe of the Táin the explanation that the Maine bearing it partook of the form of his mother Medb and of his father Ailill, together with the nobility and dignity of both combined in his own person; but it fails to meet the words used, which are to the effect that the last Maine contained or comprehended all the others. One cannot help seeing in it a case corresponding to that of Woden's ring, which dropped eight others like itself: the last Maine contains all the others, as being the boundary and limit within which the week was comprised. The only other Maine calling for a remark is that called Maine mó Epert, which I interpret, with some diffidence, to have meant a Maine that was greater than was said, or greater than uttering the name would imply; this is favoured by its being set in the fifth place; for the fifth night would just mark the end of the first noinden, or half of the nine-night week; and in regarding the week as made up of two noindens, this fifth night would have to be reckoned twice over,[79] namely, as the end of the one noinden and the beginning of the other. That, I think, is the explanation of the description of this middle Maine. The importance of this conjecture consists in the fact that, in case it prove well founded, it would make the name of the fifth Maine such that it can have only belonged to the older week of nine nights, and not to the new one of eight. Later in the Táin we come across a second treatment of the Maini, for it makes them amount to seven after Cúchulainn had slain one of them.[80] They appear on another occasion on the western bank of a ford that had been running blood for a week; and on the day they show themselves there, Cúchulainn parades himself on the opposite bank in his Oenach clothes, that is to say, those in which he would go to the Oenach or Irish ἄγορα. His enemies crowd to the river-bank to behold him; and the women, including the queen, climb on the men's shoulders to catch a glimpse of him.[81] The appearance of the Maini together in this story probably means the end of the week, and the coming round of the day for the market or the fair and the meetings, political and other, which took place then: this is signalized in the Táin by Cúchulainn wearing his gala dress and pausing for a while from harassing the enemy's camp. In the story of Conaire the Maini are dealt with in a third way, differing from both treatments in the Táin; for here[82] Maine mó Epert is placed at the end, even after the Maine that contained all the others, as though the scribe meant the reader to construe mó epert to mean that this Maine was one over and above the proper reckoning of secht (or seven) Maini, with which he had begun the allusion to them. If that was his idea,[83] I should be inclined to think that he was mistaken, and that Maine mó Epert's name is to be explained by reference to the nine-night week, and the habit of reckoning it as two noindens or half-weeks of five nights each.[84]
The Welsh treatment of the new week closely resembled that already mentioned as Irish; but as the Welsh did not borrow the Latin term, they called it wythnos, that is to say, 'a (period of) eight nights.' This week of nominally eight nights and seven days might be said to consist of seven and a half days, in our sense of the word day of twenty-four hours; and in this form we have a most remarkable reference to it in one of the Welsh Triads, which I must now mention, as it incidentally discloses a trace of the older week. The triad in question, i. 93 = ij. 11, speaks of the Three Horse-loads of the Isle of Britain, one of which it describes as borne by Du Moro[85] or the Black of Moro, the horse of Elidyr Mwynvawr, said to have carried seven and a half persons on his back from Penllech in the North to Penllech in Mona: they were, to wit, Elidyr and his wife Eurgein; Gwyn da Gyueᵭ, or White the good Drink-mate, and Gwyn da Reimat,[86] a designation of doubtful interpretation; Mynach Nawmon, Elidyr's counsellor; Petrylew Vynestyr, his cup-bearer; Aranuagyl, his servant; and Albeinwyn, his cook, who swam with his hands on the horse's crupper: it was he that was reckoned the half-man in the load. It would take too much of our time to discuss all the questions which this curious passage suggests, and I shall only make a remark on one or two of the names. Petrylew Vynestyr means a minister or servant whose name was Petrylew, and this last might be interpreted to mean him of the four lights.[87] Petrylew was therefore the fifth night in the reckoning, that is to say, the last night of the first noinden or half-week, as that would be the one preceded by four intervals of daylight. The cook reckoned as the half-person was the night with which the week began, though the triad in its present form contemplates this as occupying the last place; originally,
however, that place must have been reserved for another. No less than three of the names seem to refer to the nights of the week as the time for eating and carousing; but one seems to reflect the idea that night cools the head and gives room for deliberation and good counsel: I allude to Mynach Nawmon, where Mynach is the Welsh for 'monk,' and Nawmon is a word partly derived from naw, the Welsh for 'nine;' while the remainder of the word Nawmon challenges comparison with the Irish Maine, so that Nawmon might be interpreted to mean a Maine who was in some way nine or possessed of some ninely attribute. This, it will be seen, takes us back beyond the seven and a half of the later week to the nineness, so to say, of the more ancient one. The Christian week as a period of eight nights is also represented in the Arthurian romances, namely, by the eight officers of Arthur's court who acted as his porters and watchmen: they are said to have divided the year between them, and seven of them served as the subordinates of one of their number, who bore a name which suggests comparison between him and the Maine that contained the others, for he was Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, 'Brave Grey of the Great Grip.'[88]
So Celtic mythology probably indulged in a two-fold treatment of the ancient week: it was made either the basis of nine distinct personifications of a more or less uniform character, or else of a single personification with the attribute of nine in some way attaching to it. Of the former, one may give as an instance the nine porters at the nine gates of the dark being described as Yspaᵭaden Pencawr, 'Hawthorn chief of Giants,' in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen;[89] also the Nine Witches of Gloucester, who, like the brothers Maini, were aided in their ravages by their father and mother: it was, however, all in vain, as they were vanquished by the hero Peredur, who afterwards completed his military education under the care of one of their number.[90] We have the same idea, with the malignity of the witches replaced by the teaching of the muses, incorporated in the nine maidens who feed with their breath the fire beneath the Cauldron of the Head of Hades (p. 256), which is matched in Irish by the nine sacred hazels growing over the Well of Wisdom. The other treatment is reserved for Maine mac Durthacht, who is not mentioned in company with any brothers of his: he was the owner of the brooch on which Aitherne set such value, and in that brooch some ninely characteristic like that of Woden's Draupnir may be supposed to have resided. Moreover, the manner in which Maine son of Ailill is mentioned by himself in the Táin epic,[91] would suggest that under that name the myth originally contemplated but one personage, who was only multiplied into seven or eight under the influence of the Christian week and its Latin name, the Maine of the older treatment being made into a Maine said to contain all the others. Irish literature makes mention of other Maini, one of whom was styled Maine the Great, and also Maine Muineamon, or M. of the Rich Neck, as O'Curry has suggested, the surname being explained by a statement that he was the first king of Erinn to have torques of gold made for wearing round the neck, which is in Irish muin;[92] in this reference to the gold torques or collars, we have probably the echo of a myth like that of Maine mac Durthacht's brooch. Further, Maine Mór was the mythic ancestor of the Hy-Many,[93] whose prince was caught by Cúchulainn, on whom he avenged himself by adjuring him to find what had happened to the Sons of Dóel Dermait, a quest which involved the sun-hero in a visit to the other world. The name of Cúchulainn's captive was Echaid Rond, or E. of (the) Chains, so called from a seven-ounce chain or thread of gold which formed part of his head-gear.[94] This may be regarded as another of the treasures associated with the Maini: we have thus no less than three, a brooch, a torque, and a chain, all perhaps originally characterized by the number nine in the tales to which they belonged. One more Maine may be mentioned: he is called Maine son of Niall of the Nine Hostages.[95] Niall is fabled to have reigned over Ireland in the fifth century of our era, and to have conquered Britain, France and other lands; so his is a great name in Irish pedigrees, but it is probably altogether mythic, and to be equated with that of the Welsh Neol.[96] At any rate his name looks like evidence of the two treatments of the nine-night week; for the nine hostages serving as Niall's distinction possibly referred to the nine nights of the ancient week, while they may be supposed also represented in the single person of Niall's son Maine.
Enough has now been said to suggest that the parallel here lies between Woden's ring and the gold brooch, torque or chain of Maine, and the question then arises, what Maine himself was as a mythological being. It has already been shown that his name was associated with darkness and night. Let us now see what fresh light can be thrown on his character by a further study of his name. To begin, the word Maine, Mane or Mani, is bodily identical with the Menyw of Welsh literature. The person so called belonged to Arthur's court, but his character is in no wise thereby defined, as it is one of the peculiarities of Arthur that he draws his men from all the Brythonic cycles of mythology; but Menyw even in Arthur's service preserved a character and rôle corresponding closely to that which might be ascribed to the Irish Maine as a personification of darkness and night. Thus we read that a party of Arthur's men starting on a dangerous quest were ordered by him to be accompanied by Menyw, in order that, in case they came to a heathen land, Menyw might cast glamour and magic over his companions, so that they might be seen of nobody while they saw everybody.[97] Menyw is called the son of Teirgwaeᵭ, a feminine compound meaning Her of the Three Shouts, in which we have a reference to the triple division of the working portion of the day (p. 141), or else, perhaps, of time into present, past and future. This looks at first sight like a reversal of the Celtic habit of giving darkness precedence over light and day; but had we the myth in its original completeness, we should probably find that Teirgwaeᵭ had as her husband and father of Menyw a representative in some form or other of darkness, all reference to him being omitted in favour of the matronymic style of naming certain of the oldest Celtic divinities. All this is corroborated by the Triads[98] treating Menyw as one of the three chief magicians and glamour-men of the Isle of Britain.
It was suggested that the mon in the Welsh Nawmon was of the same origin as the Irish name Maine, and that is doubtless right, so that Mynach Nawmon may be rendered the Monk of the Nine Tricks;[99] for Irish proves the existence of a Celtic word mon, 'a trick,' from which was derived an Irish adjective monach or manach, 'tricky or dodgy.' This was applied to a notorious Fomorian called Forgall Monach, or Forgall the Tricky, who was an adept at magic and shape-shifting. In harmony with a very wide-spread kind of myth, he lost his life in trying to prevent Cúchulainn from carrying away his daughter to be his wife. The Welsh word mynawg corresponding to monach, however, means a courteous or polite person; the difference of meaning looks wide, but it is partly to be explained by the fact that the Welsh literature of the Middle Ages treats courteousness or good breeding as knowledge, a polite or courteous person being called dyn da ci wybod, or one who is good as to his knowledge, which is paralleled in English when a rude person is excused on the ground of his 'knowing' no better. The meanings of these names may, then, be said to centre around the ideas of knowledge and trickiness, and these admit of being traced in their turn back to the one idea of thought or mental activity, which may on the one hand result in praiseworthy skill, and on the other in ingenuity of the contrary nature. This appears illustrated probably by the Welsh word mynawg of a good signification, as compared with its derivative mynogan, which may be guessed to have had the reverse; for it is known as the name of the father of the death-god Beli the Great, the Irish Bile (p. 90). Similarly, Manawyᵭan, a good character in Welsh, is matched in Irish by Manannán, represented as a very tricky druid or magician.[100]
Maine or Menyw was a male personification, but Celtic mythology did not confine itself here to that sex, as it was in possession also of a female personification regarded as of cognate origin and endowed with nine forms; this served not only—perhaps not chiefly—to represent the nine nights of the week, or even the dawns or dusks of the same, so much as that which allowed of being measured by the limits of the week, that is to say, that metaphorical kind of space which we call time, and time for the most part contemplated as the bringer of boons and the teacher of wisdom. It was a sort of Athene with nine forms of beauty; so in the Ultonian cycle of Irish tales she is the daughter of king Conchobar, and known as Fedelm of the Nine Forms,[101] who will come under our notice later as she who sends her handmaid to comfort Cúchulainn at night and to give him his bath in concealment.[102] In Welsh, the nine forms of the mythic beauty have been effaced by the blanching hand of oblivion; but one recognizes her person in the Lady of the Fountain who becomes Owein's wife, after her handmaid Lunet had rescued him from death by giving him a Gygean ring to conceal him from his enemies. In the case of Fedelm, the reference to the nine nights of the week is involved in the nine forms of her beauty, and in that of Lunet they are symbolized by the ring which makes its possessor invisible whenever he pleases. The rest of the parallel is still more obvious, for Lunet is described not only giving Owein refuge and food, but also administering to him such services as that of washing his head and shaving his beard,[103] somewhat in the same way that Athene is represented weaving a peplos for her favourite Heracles, or causing springs of warm water to gush forth from the ground to supply him at the end of the day with a refreshing bath.[104] The ring associated with Lunet becomes in some stories a wheel, as, for instance, in that from which Gwydion's mistress was called Arianrhod, or She of the Silver Wheel; and the same conception probably entered into the story which made Cúchulainn's sister Dechtere the charioteer of her brother, king Conchobar; while in Norse literature we meet with it in the obscurely mentioned 'deep wheel' of Gefjon (p. 284).
In these goddesses and others like them, such as Duben the mother of Cairbre's children (p. 308), we seem to have a group of the mythic beings loosely called dawn-goddesses; but the location of some of the Celtic ones here in question, on an island or peninsula towards the west, would suggest that they at least would be as correctly designated dusk-goddesses. Neither dusk, however, nor dawn can help us so much to understand their nature as their connection with the ancient week and all it connoted. This gives, among other things, a very pregnant meaning to the intimate relations between them and the Culture Hero, whom the most important versions of the myth treat as the father by them of the Sun Hero, and sometimes of another birth representing darkness and night. It may perhaps seem at first sight somewhat daring to place Athene in the category of goddesses of the kind here discussed; but I would go further, and add that the name of Athene's Italian counterpart Minerva or, as it is less usually written, Menerva, brings us back again to the group of names which have been already touched upon; for Menerva is supposed to represent an early Menezva, derived from the same stem, menes, which we have in the Greek μένος, genitive μένους, 'mind, spirit, courage,' Sanskrit manas, genitive manasas, of much the same meaning. But such a name as Menezva would have to became Meneva in the early history of the Celtic languages still living; and from that name would be formed an adjective Menevjos, Menevja, Menevjon, 'relating to Meneva,' or the Celtic Minerva; but in later Welsh all these would be cut down to Menyw or Mynyw. The one representing the masculine Menevjos is mostly written Menyw or Menw, and is the name which has been equated with the Irish name Maine; while the feminine would seem to have been preserved uncurtailed as Menevia, to pass for the Latin name of St. David's, whence also the adjective Meneviensis,[105] while in Welsh it has mostly been treated as Mynyw or Menyw.[106] This indirect evidence to a goddess of the name Meneva, corresponding to that of Minerva in Latin, would mean that the district around St. David's, the western position of which near the sea fits in with other instances, was called after this Celtic Minerva, and treated perhaps as in some sense or other peculiarly hers. This allusion to Minerva will have probably suggested to you the Greek goddess Athene; but I may say in passing that one of her Celtic equivalents is possibly to be detected in Tlachtga daughter of Mog Ruith, both of whom have already been mentioned (p. 211). Greek religion closely associated Athene with Hephæstus, but Mog Ruith's ability to fly forces us to compare him rather with Dædalus than with Hephæstus; for the lines of classification do not coincide in Greek and Celtic; and if we followed Dædalus further, we should find that the story of his jealousy and murder of a too promising nephew and pupil would lead one to compare him with another Goidelic character, namely, Dian Cecht, who made his silver hand for Nuada: this was improved upon by the son of Dian Cecht, who was so enraged at being excelled, that he slew him.[107] It is right, however, to say that ancient authors sometimes went so far as to identify Hephæstus with Dædalus;[108] and that Völundr, or the Wayland Smith of the Norse Edda, combines the characteristics of both in having lost the use of his feet and made himself efficient wings.[109] But to come back to Tlachtga, the comparison with Athene turns on the latter's ever-brandished spear, and the attribute of Tlachtga's attested by her name, which seems to refer to a gái, that is to say a gæsum, or spear. It was possibly the gæsum used in a solemn ceremony of kindling fire in the ancient way by friction.
The question of the original identity with one another of the goddesses here alluded to, is too large to be now discussed at length, and I will only add a word as to an apparent discrepancy between the Celtic and Norse myths about the week: the gold ring in the latter belongs to the Culture God Woden, and it is to him that it is brought back from the Hell-imprisoned Balder by Hermoᵭr, after he had travelled nine nights[110] in the dark to find his brother Balder's place of confinement; whereas in the Irish tale the gold brooch is treated as the property of a very different kind of being, Maine son of Durthacht. On the other hand, it is Aitherne, a likeness, however distorted, of the Culture Hero, that recovers possession of it in the Irish version of the myth, and brings it back to Ulster; so that the two accounts may be said to amount to the same thing, inasmuch as they both associate the week and the alternation of day and night with the action of the Culture Hero. In Hindu mythology, Indra is represented as daily engaged in bringing back the sun and the dawn so as to be seen of men: it is his regular work. But this very primitive notion is not conspicuous in Celtic or in Norse mythology; it is nevertheless there, but buried beneath the débris of sundry metaphors and symbolisms; and it is to be extricated only as a matter of inference or interpretation. Even so it is valuable, as it serves to strengthen at its weakest point the parallel to be drawn between Indra in the East and Gwydion-Woden in the West.
Notes edit
- ↑ Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (London, 1841), Vol. i. bk. i. chap, xxxiv. Conaire Mór (p. 135), monarch of Erinn, had also a foot-holder: see O'Curry, iij. 143.
- ↑ Guest's Mab. iij. 231.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 68.
- ↑ At first sight this looks as if it meant Mâth's court in the neighbourhood of the Conwy, but the drift of the story is best understood by supposing the court meant to have been Gwydion'a own court, which was probably at Dinas Dinỻe or at Caer Seon (p. 271). It was doubtless some place nearer to Caer Arianrhod than Mâth's court.
- ↑ Rhys, Celtic Britain, p. 64; but to the references there given may be added traces of the same belief among the Welsh. Take, for instance, the following couplet from a prophecy of evil days, in the 12th century MS. called the Black Book of Carmarthen:
'An bit ni bluitinet a hir diev.
Ariev enwir edwi fruytheu.'
'We shall have years and long days
With false kings (and) failing fruit-crops.'The second 'and' rests on an emendation suggested by the metre, and if one omit it the rendering will be, 'With false kings (causes) of failing fruit-crops,' as the grammatical relation of the words might then be represented thus: 'With false kings of withering of fruits.' The original is given (with a serious misprint) by Skene, ij. 23, and translated, i. 485, as follows:
'To us there will be years and long days,
And iniquitous rulers, and the blasting of fruit.' - ↑ Corc means croppy or cropped: in this instance the name refers to the bearer's ears, and the verb used as to the action of his brother maiming him is ro-chorc. The correctness of this interpretation is borne out by a passage in the Bodley MS. Laud 610, fol. 98a1, where we read of a boy called Corc or Conall Corc hidden under the hearth, where fire dropping on him burnt off one of his ears (? both), and caused him to be named or surnamed Corc. The original runs thus: 'Foluigi amac foantellug fontalam . . . . Bruinnith intene forsin mac conloisc ahó isde bacorc corc mac luigthig.'
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 54a; see also O'Curry's Magh Lena, p. 28, note, where he calls the druid Dinioch. That is probably the word dinech, which I have ventured to render by 'ablution,' on the supposition that it is the same word as the Welsh dinea, 'the act of pouring or shedding a liquid.'
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 126b; see also Prof. Atkinson's analysis of the tale in the Introduction, p. 31.
- ↑ Elsewhere described as one of the heroes of Ulster: see O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 95.
- ↑ See the Four Masters, A.D. 9, 10, also 14 and O'Donovan's notes; likewise the editor's Introduction to O'Curry's Manners, pp. xxiv—xxxi.
- ↑ According, however, to another account, Cairbre was the son of a king of Lochlann: see O'Curry, p. 264.
- ↑ The Four Masters, A.D. 10, have Cairpre Cinncait, while under A.D. 14 they speak of him as Cairbre Caitcend. The Book of Fenagh (ed. Hennessy) has Cairpre Caitchenn at p. 34, and Cairpre cinn cait (with Cairpre in the nom. case) at p. 56. Cairbre's name happens to occur mostly in the genitive, so that it might be supposed that the genitive Cinnchait was merely in apposition to it; but O'Curry, who was well read in such matters, treats it as Cairbré Cinn-Cait in his Lectures on the MS. Materials; and a passage in the Bk. of Leinster, 129a, has Corpri Chindchaitt, where Corpri is not itself genitive. The verse runs thus:
'Lánrí corpri chindchaitt chrúaid.
osin temraig tailc tondbúain;
cóic bliadan arath asinraind.
éc atbath athair moraind.' - ↑ The Four Masters, A.M. 3330, editor's note (i. 18—21).
- ↑ In Cormac's Glossary in the Three Irish Glossaries, ed. by Stokes, p. 30, and the Stokes-O'Donovan translation of Cormac's Glossary, p. 112, the genitive is Edaine, of Edáin or Etáin; but in the Bodleian fragment, Laud 610, also ed. by Stokes, it is Etnæ, the gen. probably of Etan, while the Bk. of the Dun, 38b, has Etan, gen. Etaine.
- ↑ In later Irish orthography, Mac Cinnfhaoladh, 'the Son of Cennfhaoladh,' or, as it was written in mediæval Irish, Cennfaelad, which meant Fael's Head; but fael is explained to signify a wolf, Rev. Celt. iv. 415. That fáelad was the genitive of fáel is proved by the occurrence of the accusative as fóelaid in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, i. pp. 45, 114. Cenncait occurs independently in Clochan Chinnchait, where the Gilla Dacker lands, Joyce, pp. 272, 417.
- ↑ Treating the Welsh Beli as the consort of Dôn (p. 90), and regarding Irish Balor as well as Irish Bile as etymologically related to Beli, we may put the pedigrees of Llew and Lug side by side as follows:
Dôn (wife of Beli). Ceithlenn (wife of Balor), | | Arianrhod (mistress of Gwydion Eithne (mistress of Mac Kineely | brother of Govannon the smith). | brother of Gavida the smith). Llew (the Solar Hero). Lug (the Solar Hero). Ceithlenn, of which the nominative should be Ceithliu (for an older Ceithniu, gen. Ceithnenn), was possibly another name of Danu or Dona, Welsh Dôn; and it is probably after her that Inis Ceithlenn, or Ceithliu's Isle, that is, Enniskillen, a town on Lough Erne, has been called; but see M. d'A. de Jubainville's Cycle, p. 222.
- ↑ The name Mac Samthainn explains how in time the story-tellers got into the way of interpreting it to mean a man, a brother in fact to Mac Kineely, as the somewhat indefinite signification of the word mac was favourable to the error. For though it is commonly rendered 'son' in pedigrees, it means no more than 'boy,' and the genitive following it need be no parent's name: thus a student was called Mac Legind, 'Boy of Reading;' and there was an old name, Mac Naue, which Adamnán (Vita S. Columbae, ed. Reeves, Præf. p. ij. 9) rendered Filius Navis, but it meant more nearly 'Boy of the Ship or Ship-boy.' Still more to the point is the name of Diarmait's favourite hound, Mac an Chuill, usually rendered 'Son of the Hazel,' but it would be more exactly 'Boy of the Hazel,' in spite of which the pronoun used for the name is sí, 'she' (Pursuit, ij. 43, § 41). The vocabulary of the Celtic languages will be searched in vain for a word for son or daughter as distinguished from boy or girl, a fact of no little negative importance when weighed along with Caesar's ugly account of the ménage of the ancient Britons (v. 14).
- ↑ See p. 255, above; also the Bk. of Rights, p. 42, note.
- ↑ The scribe of the story of the Déisi in the Bk. of the Dun, 54a, calls him Corpri Niad, which should mean Cairbre 'of Champions,' or 'of (the) Champion.'
- ↑ See a poem by a poet called O'Hartagan in the Bk. of Leinster, 161a, 161b; also O'Curry's edition of it in his MS. Materials, pp. 514-6. This clashes with other supposed facts, and it has been represented that Cairbre was only king of Leinster, and that he lived, not at Tara of the Kings, but at another Tara: see O'Curry, ibid. p. 507 and O'Donovan's note to his Battle of Magh Rath, p. 138; but there is no mistaking O'Hartagan's meaning.
- ↑ Windisch, p. 212; O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 199.
- ↑ See a poem by Mac Liag in the Bk. of Leinster, 152a, 152b, and O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 122-3.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 54a.
- ↑ Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 1, where it is not quite evident whether Bæda left out the consonants gf as being both silent even in his time, or subsequent etymologists have thrust them into a word where they had no business. Cairbre Rigfota would mean Cairbre of the long elle or fore-arm, but this spelling does not appear to occur in connection with the name of the Dalriad Scots.
- ↑ But there were doubtless plenty of accounts inconsistent with this. For instance, Cairbre Niafer is made son of Ros Ruad, or R. the Red, and brother to Ailill the husband of Medb, and to Finn of Ailinn: see the passages cited in O'Curry's MS. Mat. pp. 483, 513, 515; also the pedigrees in the Bk. of Leinster, fol. 311a.
- ↑ O'Donovan's note to the Bk. of Rights, p. 48, and to the Topographical Poems, p. lxxi, note 616.
- ↑ Mac Firbis, quoted by O'Curry, pp. 217, 573.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 81b; O'Curry, iij. 418-9.
- ↑ The local reference is still more obscure, since, besides the Isle of Man and a district of Man in Scotland, which is partly represented by Clackmannan, there was a Dún Manann, or Fort of Man, somewhere in the territory of Fermoy in the county of Cork: see O'Donovan, Topographical Poems, pp. 102-3, notes 544-6; and the Bk. of Rights, p. 82, note.
- ↑ Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, p. 265.
- ↑ Rev. Celt. iij. 177—180.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 114b—117a; see the whole story, edited with a translation by Stokes, in the Rev. Celt. viij. 47—63.
- ↑ It is now more briefly called Loch Derg, and it is situated above Killaloe on the Shannon.
- ↑ O'Curry, pp; 465, 472.
- ↑ Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 114.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 116b, 117a: compare Rev. Celt. iij. 182-5.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 53b; O'Curry, p. 282. Their capital in the west was Cruachan Ái, a place near Belanagare, in the county of Roscommon, where the remains of the earthen forts distinguishing the site go by the name of Rath Croghan: see the Bk. of Rights, O'Donovan's note, p. 20.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 56b, 58a; see also O'Curry's remarks on them in his Manners, &c. ij. 259-61.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 57a.
- ↑ 117a, 117b.
- ↑ Stokes' Fis Adamnáin (Simla, 1870, pp. 14, 15; and Windisch, pp. 187-8; also s.v. diultaim (p. 485).
- ↑ See Thornton's Morte Arthure, ed. by Perry for the E. Eng. Text Society (London, 1865), p. 31, line 1029: 'Thre balefulle birdez his brochez they turne;' and Wright's Malory, i. 176-7: 'Three damosels turning three broches whereon was broached twelve young children late borne, like young birds.'
- ↑ Windisch, pp. 81-2.
- ↑ O'Curry's Manners, &c. iij. 373-4, where he bases his summary on the original in the Bk. of Ballymote and another Dublin manuscript which unfortunately I have not yet seen.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 1—25; Guest, iij. 37—71.
- ↑ This is quaintly put in the original, but without the slightest impropriety of speech; and as the whole story turns on it, I cannot imitate Lady Charlotte Guest when she omits it in toto in her
- ↑ The story is printed in Windisch's Irische Texte, pp. 205—227, from the Bk. of the Dun, pp. 43—50: for O'Curry's translation, see the Atlantis for 1858.
- ↑ Windisch, Ir. Texte, p. 209.
- ↑ It will be found, accompanied with a translation into German, in Stokes & Windisch's Irische Texte (Leipsic, 1884), pp. 173—209.
- ↑ The name may be compared with the Norse óminnis hegri, or the Heron of Forgetfulness, said to hover over banquets and to steal away the minds of men: see Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 23.
- ↑ Windisch, Irische Texte, p. 210.
- ↑ Windisch gives them thus: Erich co ro bi im shuidhi-se ind Emain Macha corris, and translates, Mach dich auf, bis dass es an meinem Sitze in Emain Macha ist, dass da ankommst (pp. 178, 196). But I take them literally to mean, 'Arise, so that thou be in my seat at Emain Macha until I come.'
- ↑ This would require us to correct the spelling Achtlann to Acclann; possibly, however, the Irish name is to be treated as correct and as the equivalent of what appears in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen as Acthlem (for Aethlen?), said to have followed Twrch Trwyth into the sea to be never heard of afterwards: see the R. B. Mab. pp. 125, 141.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 106; Guest, ij. 259.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 162-92; for Lady Charlotte Guest's translation, see her Mab. i. 39—84.
- ↑ This is in contradiction to the sentences which introduce the Perverse Black One; but they form a clumsy anticipation of the account of Owein's contest with him, and they are practically contradicted by it: I refer to p. 191, and to Lady Charlotte's translation, i. 82.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 223-6; Guest, i. 342-6.
- ↑ xi. 1, where Arawn is called Auguselus; see also Myv. Arch. ij. 354.
- ↑ I hope to return to this in my treatment of the Arthurian Legend: for the present it will suffice to refer to M. Gaston Paris' allusion to the captives, in the Romania, xij. 476-7, 479.
- ↑ Pursuit of Diarmuid, &c. ij. §§ 11, 13—18: I have freely used in this abstract Dr. Joyce's wording in his Old Celt. Rom. pp. 313—322.
- ↑ This is from the Pursuit of Diarmuid, &c., as translated by the Irish scholar, Mr. Standish H. O'Grady, ij. § 15.
- ↑ The rowan is also called mountain-ash, though it is no kind of ash; and as to its other name, there is a lack of evidence that the quicken or quick-beam of old English meant the rowan. The Welsh for rowan is in books cerddin, singular cerddinen; but the pronunciation familiar to me is cerdin, cerdinen, and even cerdingen; and the berries are called in Welsh criafol. The Irish name of the tree is caerthann, which corresponds in its consonants to cerdin, not to cerddin; but the etymology of these words offers more than one difficulty.
- ↑ See Grimm's Deutsche Myth.4 ij. 1016; and Vigfusson's Icelandic-Eng. Dic. s. v. reynir.
- ↑ This is probably the key to reckoning years as winters, of which we have instances in Med. Welsh literature, as when Kulhwch's horse is described as 'four winters' old (R. B. Mab. p. 102). The habit appears to have been also English and Gothic, not to mention that it is Icelandic to this day.
- ↑ The words of Tacitus, in his Germania, chapter xi., are worth quoting: Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant, sic constituunt, sic condicunt: nox ducere diem uidetur.
- ↑ A curious instance of this way of reckoning occurs in the Isle of Man, where the oath administered to the deemster since the revestment in 1765, makes the six days of creation in the book of Genesis into six days and seven nights. It runs thus: 'By this book, and by the holy contents thereof, and by the wonderful works that God hath miraculously wrought in heaven above and in the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I, A B, do swear that I will, without respect of favour or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy or malice, execute the laws of this isle justly, betwixt our sovereign lady the Queen and her subjects within this isle, and betwixt party and party, as indifferently as the herring backbone doth lie in the midst of the fish.' So stands the oath in Harrison's Records of the Tynwald, &c. (Douglas, 1871), p. 37; but it has been the practice of late years to make 'the six days and seven nights' into 'six days and nights;' and I have heard it characterized as an unwarranted innovation. This curious oath otherwise reminds one of old Irish oaths, with their invocation of the sun, the moon, the earth and the elements.
- ↑ It occurs in the Bodley MS. Auct. F. iv. 32, fol 7b, among the Glosses on Eutychius, which are now reckoned old Breton rather than old Welsh: see Stokes' edition of them in the Trans. of the (London) Phil. Society for 1860-1, p. 233; also the Gram. Celtica2, p. 1054.
- ↑ See O'Davoren's Glossary in Stokes' Three Irish Glossaries (London, 1862), p. 108; also the Berichte der K. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Phil.-Hist. Classe), 1884, p. 336, where Windisch has rendered Celtic scholars the service of publishing (with a translation) two versions of the story accounting for the Ultonian couvade.
- ↑ Such is the meaning in a line in the Bk. of the Dun, 81b, where in nóindin seems to mean the óenach or fair at which the men of Ulster used to meet.
- ↑ Windisch, ibid. pp. 342, 344, 347, 339, where it is stated that the noinden lasted either five days and four nights, or four days and five nights. The narrator of the first version (Bk. of Leinster, 125b) was in doubt; and that of the other (British Museum MS. Harl. 5280) omitted altogether the right reckoning, namely, four days and five nights. The old account was doubtless five nights and four days; but the later scribes, failing to see why the nights should be mentioned first, may readily be supposed to have introduced the alternative explanation.
- ↑ Noinden Ulad is applied, for instance, to the raiding into the other provinces, which was arranged at a feast given to Conchobar and his braves by one of their number called Bricriu: see Stokes and Windisch'a Irische Texte, pp. 174, 188.
- ↑ Windisch, ibid. p. 330, is inclined to this view.
- ↑ Bk. of Leinster, 12b.
- ↑ For this and further details relating to fimt, see Vigfusson's Dictionary under that word.
- ↑ For the first idea of this treatment I am indebted to Mr. Plummer. I use Maine or Mane in the singular, and Maini or Mani in the plural. The former rhymes with baili in the Tribes and Customs of the Hy-Many, ed. O'Donovan (Dublin, 1843), p. 13; and in the Bk. of Leinster, 256a, with the same word written bali, which now means 'a place,' but originally 'an enclosed place,' as in the bally of Anglo-Irish local names like Ballymote, Ballyadams, and many more. It is a loan-word not to be severed from the English bailey, as in the Old Bailey, or Vetus Ballium, of York as well as London. It was introduced (probably by the Normans) to South Wales, and is used to this day in Glamorgan in the form beili for the enclosure at the back of a farm-house. See Du Cange under Ballium, to which he gives three meanings: 'propugnaculi species, seu locus palis munitus et circumseptus;' also 'custodia, carcer, quia locus munitus.'
- ↑ See the Táin, passim; but the list of the Maini occurs near the beginning, Bk. of the Dun, 56b.
- ↑ The story is called Togail Bruden Da Derga, or the Destruction of the Hostel of Da Derga, where Conaire lodged on the night of his murder; the list of the Maini comes, ibid, 84b.
- ↑ The scribe identified Nos. 5 and 6; but the group remains eight in the Bruden, also in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, II. ij. 225, where Milscothach is Milbel, 'Honey-mouth.'
- ↑ This is the sort of reckoning, probably, which, applied by the Greeks to the last day of the month, gave rise to the term ἕνη καὶ νέα, 'old and new.' Compare the Irish 'full week between two áige,' or termini (?), in Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, II. ij. 211, 219.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 64b.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 74b; Rhys's Celtic Britain, p. 65.
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 84b, where the passage giving their names runs thus: Bátár and iarsin fíallach bátár úallchu .i. uii. maic ailella /⁊ medba .⁊ mane for cach fir díb .⁊ forainm for cach mani /i. mani athremail .⁊ m. máthremail .⁊ m. míngor .⁊ m. mórgor./ .m. andóe .⁊ m. milacotach .m. cotageib uli .⁊ m. as/mó epert.
- ↑ This, however, could not be said of the scribe of the Táin in the Bk. of Leinster, who mentions, at 55a, Mane Condamóepert last, though his group consists, owing probably to his carelessness, of only six, no mention being made of M. Andóe or M. Milscothach.
- ↑ Possibly other nines in Irish myths are to be similarly explained by means of the ancient week, such as the nine chariots always required by Medb on the Táin (Bk. of the Dun, 56b), and the nine doors of the palace called Bruden Da Derga (ib. 91b), in which Conaire was slain. It may likewise be that the four winged kisses of Aengus, that haunted the youths of Erinn (p. 151), were but the four intervals of daylight in the Goidelic half-week.
- ↑ In the Red Book version (see R. B. Mab. p. 300), this horse is called Du y Moroeᵭ, 'the Black One of the Seas;' but the older and less transparent name is Du Moro, as in the oldest copy of the Triads (Hengwrt MS. 54, p. 53), or Da March Moro Oerucdawc, 'Black, the Horse of Moro Oerveᵭawc,' in the story of Kulhwch (R. B. Mab. p. 124), where the rider of the beast is no other than Gwyn ab Nûᵭ. The Welsh Moro, Moroed, and the French Morois, are probably names of the same mythic place as the Irish Murias, whence the Tuatha Dé Danann brought the Undry Cauldron of the Dagda (p. 257); the name Mureif, borne by a district in the north, given to Urien, also belongs here, as I hope to show in my Arthurian Legend.
- ↑ I guess it to stand for an older reading Keimat: the name would then mean 'G. the good Comrade.'
- ↑ Petrylew is the reading of the Red Book; most of the other MSS. have Prydelaw, Prydelw, or the like, which I cannot explain.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 245; Guest, ij. 6; but in two other passages (R. B. Mab. pp. 103, 138; Guest, ij. 254, 312) he and his make only five, representing the half-week.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 118; Guest, ij. 277.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 210-1; Guest, i. 323; see also i. 369.
- ↑ See more especially pp. 66b, 67a, 69a, of the Bk. of the Dun.
- ↑ See O'Curry, iij. 84, 178, and the Four Masters, A.M. 3868, 3872.
- ↑ That is to say, the Ui Maini, or Descendants of Maine, whose territory may, roughly speaking, be said to have consisted of the counties of Galway and Roscommon.
- ↑ Stokes & Windisch's Ir. Texte, pp. 177, 192; O'Curry, iij. 106.
- ↑ O'Curry's Manners, &c. ij. 161.
- ↑ Fully described he is Neol cyn Croc, which seems to mean 'Neol before the Crucifixion;' the person so called is spoken of as the father of a lady, Eỻylw, said to have lived for three generations. See the story of Kulhwch, R. B. Mab. p. 113; Guest, ij. 212.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. p. 114-5; Guest, ij. 271-2.
- ↑ i. 31, 32, 33, ij. 20, iij. 90.
- ↑ Some of the Triad versions have Nawmod, which would mean, 'of nine modes or forms.' It is not impossible that the original was Mynawg Nawmon, with the mynawg explained below.
- ↑ Both names are of the same origin as those here in question, and the whole group is to be referred to the same source as the Irish menma, 'mind,' do-muiniur, 'I mean, think or believe,' and other compounds; while in English may be mentioned such words as mind, meaning, and probably man as the thinking being. Further may be added such instances as Latin memini, 'I remember;' mens, mentis, 'mind;' commentum, 'a lie;' moneo, 'I cause to think, I warn:' Greek, μένος, 'courage, sense;' μενεαίνω, 'I desire;' μέμονα, 'I wish for;' μάντις, 'a seer or prophet:' Sanskrit, man, 'think;' manas, 'courage, sense or mind;' manman, 'mind.' Among the proper names connected with this group of words may be mentioned such as Minterva, Μίνως, Μέντωρ, the Sanskrit Manu, and the old German Mannus, mentioned by Tacitus in the Germania.
- ↑ Some of the spellings suggest 'Nine Hearts' rather than 'Nine Forms.'
- ↑ Bk. of the Dun, 57a; Bk. of Leinster, 58a.
- ↑ R. B. Mab. pp. 173-6; Guest, i. 55-9.
- ↑ Preller's Gr. Mythologie3; ij. 161.
- ↑ Meneviensium episcopo in the Life of St. David, written by Rhygyvarch (Ricemarchus) in the twelfth century: see the Lives of the Cambro-Brit. SS. (Llandovery, 1853), p. 121.
- ↑ This is attested by the Welsh name of Old Mynyw (a church in the neighbourhood of Aberaeron, in Cardiganshire), which, called Hen Fenyw, just like the words hen fenyw, 'an old woman,' considerably exercises the popular-etymology man, especially when he takes it in conjunction with the name of a church on the other side of the Teivi, called Eglwys Wrw, which could not help striking him as meaning the 'Male Church.'
- ↑ See O'Curry in the Atlantis, Vol. iv. p. 158; Joyce, p. 403.
- ↑ See Preller's Gr. Myth. i. 148, ij. 497.
- ↑ Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 173-5.
- ↑ Simrock's Edda, p. 318.
translation (Vol. iij. pp. 42 and 45), which makes the tale consequently unintelligible.