Coire Sois, The Cauldron of Knowledge: A Companion to Early Irish Saga

Coire Sois

The Cauldron of Knowledge

A COMPANION TO EARLY IRISH SAGA

TOMÁS Ó CATHASAIGH

EDITED BY MATTHIEU BOYD

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2014 by University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

All Rights Reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-268-08857-6

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at ebooks@nd.edu

Contents

Foreword by Declan Kiberd

Preface by Matthieu Boyd

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Maps

1. Introduction: Irish Myths and Legends (2005)

PART 1. THEMES

2. The Semantics of síd (1977–79)

3. Pagan Survivals: The Evidence of Early Irish Narrative (1984)

4. The Concept of the Hero in Irish Mythology (1985)

5. The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature (1986)

6. Curse and Satire (1986)

7. The Threefold Death in Early Irish Sources (1994)

8. Early Irish Literature and Law (2006–7)

PART 2. TEXTS

The Cycles of the Gods and Goddesses

9. Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth (1983)

10. The Eponym of Cnogba (1989)

11. Knowledge and Power in Aislinge Óenguso (1997)

12. The Wooing of Étaín (2008)

The Ulster Cycle

13. Táin Bó Cúailnge (2002)

14. Mythology in Táin Bó Cúailnge (1993)

15. Táin Bó Cúailnge and Early Irish Law (2005)

16. Sírrabad Súaltaim and the Order of Speaking among the Ulaid (2005)

17. Ailill and Medb: A Marriage of Equals (2009)

18. Cú Chulainn, the Poets, and Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (2005)

19. Reflections on Compert Conchobuir and Serglige Con Culainn (1994)

The Cycles of the Kings

20. The Expulsion of the Déisi (2005)

21. On the LU Version of The Expulsion of the Déisi (1976)

22. The Déisi and Dyfed (1984)

23. The Theme of lommrad in Cath Maige Mucrama (1980–81)

24. The Theme of ainmne in Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin (1983)

25. The Rhetoric of Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin (1989)

26. The Rhetoric of Fingal Rónáin (1985)

27. On the Cín Dromma Snechta Version of Togail Brudne Uí Dergae (1990)

28. Gat and díberg in Togail Bruidne Da Derga (1996)

29. The Oldest Story of the Laigin: Observations on Orgain Denna Ríg (2002)

30. Sound and Sense in Cath Almaine (2004)

The Fenian Cycle

31. Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (1995)

The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne (translated by the author, 2011)

Further Reading (compiled by Matthieu Boyd)

Notes

Bibliography of Tomás Ó Cathasaigh

Works Cited

Foreword

Declan Kiberd

Tomás Ó Cathasaigh is one of a generation of scholars whose intellectual formation owes as much to French poststructuralism as to native interpretative traditions. His early essays appeared not only in Éigse but also in The Crane Bag, a journal of ideas whose very title encapsulated that moment when old Irish legend was invoked under the sign of continental literary theory. Repeatedly in the following pages, he cites the work of Georges Dumézil on the three functions of warrior and hero mythology in Indo-European narrative: sacred sovereignty; physical force; fertility and food production. Yet, unlike many scholars who found a guru and a method when Paris dictated fashions in cultural analysis, Ó Cathasaigh cheerfully admits at an early stage of his application that Dumézil’s approach may well be superseded; for the present, he concludes, it is the theory that accounts most fully for the workings of the texts under scrutiny.

There is an equally delicious moment in another essay when Ó Cathasaigh offers two quotations from that maître à penser, Claude Lévi-Strauss, on the structure of ancient myth: the sentences quoted are rather at odds with one another, but Ó Cathasaigh is content to note the discrepancy as an element in the range of possible interpretations, leaving resolution for some other time.

This is typical of his method with his own predecessors in the study of early Irish texts. In often-packed paragraphs, he offers reviews of the various mythological, historical, and linguistic approaches to Cú Chulainn or Fionn. These reviews sometimes hint at the conflicts between famous scholars without ever accusing them of fanaticism and without remarking that such monomania was of just that warlike kind warned against by many monkish redactors of the old tales.

As a gifted teacher, Ó Cathasaigh has the gift of explanation rather than simplification. He feels the need to acquaint his students with the range of past approaches, even as he develops his own method. There is a mellow, amused, sometimes vaguely regretful note in his surveys of the scholarly battlefield, but also an insistence on saying his piece, even though in saying it he will usually concede that there will be many more analyses to trump his own. That note of tentative, enquiring reverence for the text under discussion and of respect for all scholars past and future is still unusual enough in the field to be worthy of celebration.

Why did early Irish literature become, rather like Shakespeare’s texts in the nineteenth century, a happy hunting ground for zealotry and fanaticism among commentators? Some of this could be put down to the vanity of gifted pioneers in a developing discipline; more again might be attributed to the strident patriotism of certain nationalist interpreters of the matter of Ireland; but the main reason for such repressive analyses may have been a puritanical fear of art, the sort of panic that often overwhelms a mind confronted by the uncontrollable nature of literary texts. Many scholars were rather like patients in the early years of psychoanalysis who aborted the analysis not long after it had begun. Fearing the potent force of stories rich in emotional and symbolic power, they retreated into a merely linguistic or historical analysis, treating those texts as a means of establishing the rules of grammar or syntax or of understanding the surrounding world picture. The idea that each text might be the passionate utterance of a literary artist was the last thing most wanted to think about.

Ó Cathasaigh is quite trenchant and steadfast about this: In general we can say that an appreciation of the conceptual framework which underlies early Irish narrative is an essential element in the criticism of individual works. But whereas, in this respect as in others, the historian can cast light on the early texts by virtue of his knowledge and interpretation of other (non-literary) sources, there are strict limits to the amount of historical information which may be extracted from what are, after all, literary texts. That is a modest and timely warning to Celtic scholars of the autonomy of the creative imagination. Even the criticism of modern Irish texts, restricted to a largely linguistic analysis in the first half of the twentieth century, ran in the second half of that century the equal risks of reducing literature to fodder for historians. While it was certainly a good thing that some historians were now competent enough in Irish to use its materials, some of them, in taking the figurative promises of lovers over-literally, may have inferred a degree of material comfort in Gaelic society of the eighteenth century that did not widely exist. With much the same reservation in mind, it has to be said that a great lament like Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (The Lament for Art O’Leary) was something more than an exercise in rural sociology or indeed an example of composition by a group. As one reads and admires Ó Cathasaigh’s attempts to restore and respect the artistic nature of the foundational texts under his scrutiny, one is struck by a singular irony: the period in which he wrote many of these essays was one in which scholars of modern Irish-language texts often performed a reverse maneuver on, say, Caoineadh Airt, seeking to highlight it as an example of communal tradition rather than individual talent.

Ó Cathasaigh remarks that writers of English have turned to the legends and sagas for inspiration far more often than writers of modern Irish. That is undeniable—the achievements of a Yeats, Synge, or George Russell in recasting the story of Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach are proof enough of that. Yet the persistence of this story as the most popular of Trí Truaighe na Scéalaíochta (The Three Sorrows of Storytelling), while a sign of its artistic brilliance, must also have answered a felt need in more modern societies, wracked not only by emigration but also by guilt at the treatment of those migrants intrepid enough to return. It might even be said that the gae bolga, which explodes on entering the skin, was taken by more modern tellers as a prefiguration of the dum-dum bullet; or that accounts of the periodic bouts of depression overtaking heroes prefigure the jaded state of a society deprived of hope or innovation. Indeed, the obsession in so many tales and poems with the loss of sovereignty by flawed leaders must strike any young student now reading them in Dublin as a prophecy of an Ireland that they will, in all likelihood, have to leave. Although all the classic texts must be allowed to breathe in their own time and setting, there is every reason for current writers to want to make them live again as exempla of continuing crises in Irish culture.

And there is evidence that contemporary writers of Irish, such as Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, are turning for inspiration and guidance to texts that were once of great interest to the revival generation. Ó Cathasaigh, with characteristic modesty, suggests that many students may prioritize the study of modern Irish over early Irish literature; but, if anything, the reverse is true—the early texts provide one of the great literatures of Europe, beside which the writings in the modern Irish language, however brilliant, read like something of a coda.

The essays in this volume will be gratefully read by scholars of Irish literature in English for the light that they cast on such topics as the relation between god and man as mediated through a hero-figure, or for the ways in which they illuminate the difference between the story of Cú Chulainn (about his integration into Ulster society) and Fionn (expressing his extra-social status as a mercenary warrior for hire). If religion mediates man’s relation with destiny, morality deals with the attempts by mortals to regulate their dealings with one another—and it is on the cusp between these zones that the hero-figure comes into his own. Ó Cathasaigh has his own way of suggesting that the religious and moral impulse may clash with and destroy one another in the end: he finds in Tochmarc Étaíne (The Wooing of Étaín) a narrative commentary on "the relationship between god and man, between the denizens of the síde and the men and women living on the surface of Ireland."

There is much to learn from these pages, whose insights might assist even readers of Finnegans Wake. Ó Cathasaigh laments at one point that Giambattista Vico’s comment (that the first science to be learned should be the interpretation of fables) has left little impression upon the intellectual life of Ireland—but it certainly fascinated James Joyce, whose last work is an attempt to locate all knowledge from the Christian Gospels to the Annals of the Four Masters within a narrative that spans Vico’s ages of gods, heroes, and peoples. That said and admitted, it would of course be wrong if Irish legend were to be seen simply as (in Ó Cathasaigh’s phrase) a quarry for modern creative writers. The whole burden of these essays is that it constitutes a great literature in its own right and not a mere backdrop to the study of any other.

Ó Cathasaigh’s emphasis on the text serves as a corrective in his mind to a possible over-emphasis on the life of a writer, the accompanying world picture, or even the implied readers and audiences. (Borrowing from M.H. Abrams, he uses the terms the work, the artist, the universe, and the audience.) In this he may reflect something of the protocols of close reading, which came to prominence in the middle decades of the twentieth century, especially in English literary studies, under the influence of major thinkers like Abrams, W.K. Wimsatt, or, indeed, Denis Donoghue (who had a huge following in the lecture-halls of University College Dublin when Ó Cathasaigh was a young scholar). To those nativists who might object that such protocols are of little relevance to a literature produced out of very different conditions, the answer must surely be: why not? The work, as Ó Cathasaigh says, is our point of departure, and to it we must always return. But there are pressing reasons, other than the mid-twentieth-century fashion of treating texts as autonomous artifacts, for taking a severely literary approach: There are, of course, literary critics who would in any case argue the primacy of work-based criticism on theoretical grounds, but in regard to early Irish literature we need only appeal to the purely practical consideration that the work is virtually all that we have at our disposal in the way of evidence. Writing brilliantly of the Táin, Ó Cathasaigh marvels that, despite the limited but interesting range of interpretations, commentators have chosen to ignore rather than contest what literary criticism exists. Most of the essays here are a plea to fellow scholars to look up from their grammatical dictionaries and to engage in the wider debate. Nor should scholars of modern Irish feel excluded from the discussion, which might lead some of them to question some of Ó Cathasaigh’s own analyses. For instance, he disputes the suggestion that Cú Chulainn is a Christ-like personage, but a figure who combines pagan ferocity with a death while strapped to a pillar will continue to strike many of us as a prefiguration of muscular Christians, a sort of English public-schoolboy in the drag of Celtic hero.

Ó Cathasaigh’s invitation to scholars is pressing in its pragmatism but also in its confidence in the artistic value of the works to be studied. Earlier scholars who mined texts for their philological or historical learning were in all likelihood often lacking in such confidence: without ever quite realizing it, they may have feared that early Irish literature was often inferior as literature. It is a noteworthy and welcome development that in recent decades some of the leading commentators on modern Irish-language literature, such as Seán Ó Coileáin and Philip O’Leary, have themselves written on the early Irish tales in a manner that vindicates Ó Cathasaigh’s methods. For his own part, Ó Cathasaigh (again following Abrams) is supremely interested in the rhetorical devices of voice and authorial address that seem to conjure in turn an implied reader of a certain kind, trained in such literary devices. Yet he also remains grateful for the continuing work of historians and grammarians: It has to be said that an immense amount of work remains to be done on early Irish literature: most of the texts stand in need of competent edition and translation, not to speak of interpretation and evaluation.

Despite that need, the discipline of early Irish studies stands currently, in Irish universities at any rate, in real danger of collapse. The main source of that danger is a Higher Education Authority (and its agents in campus administrations) determined to introduce business methods to the study of the humanities and, in so doing, to count the number of students in every classroom. There is reason to believe that the rather cranky methods adopted by some scholars of Old Irish may have turned bright young people away from it to work in other areas. If that is true, then Ó Cathasaigh’s exciting, open-minded approach to narrative as art provides a perfect antidote along with the promise of revival. There may never be huge numbers studying Old Irish in Dublin or other cities, but it is no exaggeration to say that the health of their discipline provides a reliable indication of the true state of both academia and the nation. If ancient kings were enjoined to protect the sovereignty of the polity, placing duty to that order above short-term considerations, there ought to be a similar constraint on today’s education authorities and university presidents. Otherwise, the work of all academics is in vain; and the ces noínden (period of debility) that immobilized the men of the Táin may last even longer in our time than it did in theirs. A people without a clear sense of the past will cease to form a conception of the future. Ó Cathasaigh quotes a famous bardic poem that suggests that if the old texts are allowed to die, then people will know nothing more than the name of their own fathers. The warning may be even more apposite now than when Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe issued it.

Preface

Matthieu Boyd

For over thirty years, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh has been one of the foremost interpreters of early Irish narrative literature qua literature. His method combines a rare philological acuity with painstaking literary analysis.

Ó Cathasaigh broke new ground with his insistence that the extraordinarily rich and varied corpus of early Irish literature cannot be properly understood except as literature, with due allowance being made for its historical dimension. In Pagan Survivals: The Evidence of Early Irish Narrative (1984), the item in this volume that gives the fullest attention to scholarly trends, he remarked: the tendency has been to conduct the discussion of Irish texts principally in terms either of the artists who have produced them or of the universe which is reflected in them, so that there is a pressing need to analyze the extant texts as literary works in their own right. Later, in his study of "The Rhetoric of Fingal Rónáin, he added frankly that Irish studies has not had enough of the cultivation of literary scholarship as an intellectual discipline."

If he was correct in this, the phenomenon can partly be explained by the initial difficulty posed by the language of the texts and by the time and effort needed to develop the linguistic tools that literary critics would require. The Royal Irish Academy Dictionary of the Irish Language, begun in 1913, was only completed in 1976, and the Lexique étymologique de l’irlandais ancien, begun in 1959, remains unfinished. Even now, despite considerable progress in the last three decades, the field continues to feel the lack of modern editions and translations of important works.

However, there was also a question of attitudes. Previously, the literary texts had been treated as repositories of linguistic forms, historical data, and mythological debris to be exploited by philologists, historians, and mythologists, often for predetermined purposes. They were invariably seen as the products of mere scribes or redactors rather than self-conscious literary artists. Some scholars, like T.F. O’Rahilly, went so far as to consider the texts to be in error vis-à-vis their theories. Ó Cathasaigh’s point was that, regardless of the origins of a particular text, it could be profitably studied in the form in which it has come down to us, with respect to the rhetorical strategies employed, or the sustained development of key themes either within a single text (as in "The Theme of lommrad in Cath Maige Mucrama [1980–81]), or in a number of texts (as in The Semantics of síd [1977–79]). His studies revealed a hitherto unsuspected degree of narratorial art and thematic consistency within and among the sagas to which he gave his attention. He sometimes achieved this through the judicious application of theoretical frameworks such as Dumézil’s trifunctional approach to Indo-European myth, which he was among the first to bring to bear. He was not shackled to literary criticism, however, and was also able to produce outstanding historical research (e.g., in The Déisi and Dyfed" [1984]) and technical studies of manuscript redactions and early Irish grammar.

After nearly two decades of such work, it was natural that Ó Cathasaigh should have been asked to survey Early Irish Narrative Literature in the volume on Progress in Medieval Irish Studies edited by Kim McCone and Katharine Simms (see Ó Cathasaigh 1996b, a valuable snapshot of the field); but with characteristic modesty he said hardly anything there about his own contributions. Patrick Sims-Williams, in his 2009 John V. Kelleher Lecture at Harvard University, How Our Understanding of Early Irish Literature Has Progressed, was not so reticent. He identified two major advances of the past few decades: (1) the realization that early Irish literary texts are attuned to the political conditions in which they were redacted, and can be analyzed as propaganda; and (2) the realization that early Irish literary texts can be analyzed as works of literature, on their own terms. The first approach is exemplified by the work of Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Máire Herbert; the second by that of Ó Cathasaigh.

It is no longer necessary to justify a literary-critical approach to early Irish texts. Ó Cathasaigh was swiftly joined in this by Kim McCone, Joseph Nagy, Philip O’Leary, Joan Radner, William Sayers, and others. They in turn have been followed by a new generation of scholars. One thing that consistently distinguishes Ó Cathasaigh’s work is the respect in which it is held by scholars on both sides of ideological divides, such as the well-known nativist/antinativist tension that became acute upon the publication in 1990 of Kim McCone’s Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature. Often, Ó Cathasaigh’s reading of an early Irish saga is the basis for all subsequent work.

Medievalists in other areas, treading (perhaps unconsciously) in the tracks of nineteenth-century Celtic enthusiasts like Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold, too often have an unfortunate tendency to treat early Irish literature as exotic, mystical, and mystifying, calling it (for instance) extremely rich in color, fresh and sensuous description and imagery, a delight in nature, and a delight in the play of language but at the same time weak in consistent or logical narrative force, devoid of character development, and lacking in subtlety (Colish 1997, 85). Ó Cathasaigh’s body of work is a definitive rebuttal of such perceptions. The way he makes us see both the subtlety and the logic in this literature lays a strong foundation for comparative study and opens early Irish saga to the appreciation of the wider world.

With the exception of his book, The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Airt (1977)—which Patrick K. Ford, his future Harvard colleague, described as the best and most solid piece of comparative analysis of early Irish literature to appear in some time (1979, 836)—Ó Cathasaigh has chosen to express himself through articles in scholarly journals and edited collections. It may be said that the lasting fame of journals such as Celtica, Éigse, and Ériu is due in no small part to his contributions.

This volume brings together Ó Cathasaigh’s most important articles published over a period of some thirty years. For most of this time, he was employed at University College Dublin, where he attained the rank of Statutory Lecturer. In 1995, he became Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Irish Studies at Harvard University, where he remains in 2013.

The book is by no means a definitive collection of Ó Cathasaigh’s oeuvre. He has important contributions currently in press and many others still to be written. Nevertheless, the articles appearing here are proven classics, or instant classics of unmistakable value, and having them at last between two covers will not only make them more accessible to those who are already used to citing them, but also help a new audience to discover them and the fascinating literature that they discuss.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

The contents of this book are subdivided into Themes (studies on over-arching or recurrent issues in the field) and Texts (studies on individual literary works). An article like "The Theme of lommrad in Cath Maige Mucrama, which is an elucidation of a single saga, appears under Texts. Texts has been further subdivided into the conventional Cycles: the Cycles of the Gods and Goddesses (to use Ó Cathasaigh’s preferred designation, as against the Mythological Cycle"); the Ulster Cycle; the Cycles of the Kings; and the Fenian Cycle.

Articles are in chronological order within each group, except that Texts articles on the same subject (Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Expulsion of the Déisi, Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin, and Togail Bruidne Da Derga) appear together for ease of reference, and have sometimes been reordered to begin with the most general or accessible treatment, followed by more focused or specialized discussions.

The volume opens with Irish Myths and Legends, Ó Cathasaigh’s 2005 Anders Ahlqvist Lecture, which introduces the Cycles and many of the major topics that the articles explore in more detail. It is the work of a mature scholar presenting his subject through the lens of his own expertise.

At the end of the volume are a few suggestions for Further Reading relating to each article, which are intended to show the current state of scholarship with respect to the text or theme that Ó Cathasaigh discusses. These suggestions are not meant to be exhaustive, nor do they include sources that Ó Cathasaigh himself has cited; rather, they emphasize new work and conflicting interpretations. The scantiness of the Further Reading in some cases indicates that very little has been done on Ó Cathasaigh’s subject since he wrote about it—these may be especially productive topics for future research.

New editions and translations of early Irish texts are normally not mentioned in the Further Reading section. Rather, this information can be found in the list of Works Cited; for every edition that Ó Cathasaigh cites, the entry also identifies any more recent editions that have appeared, which then have their own entries in the Works Cited.

EDITORIAL INTERVENTION

Obvious misprints in the original publications (on the order of Rawlinson 5 B02 for Rawlinson B 502 or kinship for kingship) have been silently corrected. Further corrections have been made only with the author’s knowledge and approval. When a statement in the original article is no longer true, a correction appears in square brackets.

British English spellings have been changed to American English, except in quotations. The occasional Irishism has been amended for the benefit of North American readers.

The spelling of proper nouns such as names and titles of Irish texts has been standardized across the volume, except in quotations from the secondary literature. The spellings are those that Ó Cathasaigh currently prefers: Cúailnge instead of Cúailgne is one example. The spelling of names does occasionally vary according to the date of the text under discussion; thus the spellings Finn and Óengus are used for the characters in Old and Middle Irish texts, as opposed to Fionn and Aonghus for the characters in Early Modern Irish texts such as The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne.

Bibliographic references originally appeared in a variety of formats. All are now expressed in parenthetical notation. However, in order to preserve the original numbering, it was not thought advisable to eliminate any notes. In one case ("Gat and díberg in Togail Bruidne Da Derga") the notes had to be renumbered, as the numbering restarted on every page in the original.

Ó Cathasaigh’s works are listed in a separate bibliography in advance of the Works Cited.

A NOTE ON THE TITLE

As explained in the text known as The Caldron of Poesy (L. Breatnach 1981; compare Kelly 2010), the Cauldron of Knowledge, Coire Sois (pronounced approximately Corra Sosh), is generated upside-down within a person, and knowledge is distributed out of it. At earlier stages—the Cauldrons of Goiriath and Érmae, which represent basic and intermediate study—the cauldron has to be set upright so that it can fill with knowledge; it is converted into Coire Sois, the highest stage, by the action of either sorrow or joy. Included in this joy (fáilte) is fáilte dóendae ‘human joy,’ of which there are four kinds, the third of which is joy at the prerogatives of poetry after studying it well. This description, of both the knowledge-distributing cauldron and what is needed to create it, seems appropriate for Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, a consummate teacher whose official rank of professor would be expressed in Modern Irish as ollamh, the old word for the highest grade of fili or poet. The fili’s remit was not simply poetry but also the knowledge of history, law, philology, place-name lore, and narrative literature—diverse competencies exemplified by the essays assembled in this book.

The subtitle, A Companion to Early Irish Saga, should not be construed as a claim of exhaustiveness. Not every early Irish saga extant is even mentioned in these pages, let alone comprehensively discussed. However, the book is a wise and dependable guide to the corpus: it covers the Cycle groupings, key terms, important characters, recurring themes, rhetorical strategies, and the narrative logic that this literature employs, and thus constitutes exemplary preparation to read almost anything in the field.

Acknowledgments

The contents of this book have been reproduced from other sources, which are gratefully acknowledged here.

Irish Myths and Legends: The First Anders Ahlqvist Lecture, first published in Studia Celtica Fennica 2 (2005): 11–26, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Studia Celtica Fennica, Dr. Riitta Latvio.

"The Semantics of síd," first published in Éigse 17, no. 2 (1978): 137–55, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

Pagan Survivals: The Evidence of Early Irish Narrative, first published in P. Ní Chatháin and M. Richter (eds.), Ireland and Europe: The Early Church, 291–307 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), appears with the kind permission of the publisher, Klett-Cotta Verlag.

The Concept of the Hero in Irish Mythology, first published in R. Kearney (ed.), The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions, 79–90 (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985), appears with the kind permission of the volume editor, Prof. Richard Kearney.

The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature, first published in Peritia 5 (1986): 128–60, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Peritia, Prof. Donnchadh Ó Corráin.

Curse and Satire, first published in Éigse 21 (1986): 10–15, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

The Threefold Death in Early Irish Sources was first published in Studia Celtica Japonica n.s. 6 (1994): 53–75.

Early Irish Literature and Law: Lecture Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, April 27, 2007, first published in Sphinx (2007): 111–19, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Sphinx, Prof. Peter Holmberg, and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

"Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth," first published in P. de Brún, S. Ó Coileáin, and P. Ó Riain (eds.), Folia Gadelica: Essays Presented by Former Students to R.A. Breatnach, 1–19 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1983), appears with the kind permission of the publisher, Cork University Press.

The Eponym of Cnogba, first published in Éigse 23 (1989): 27–38, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

"Knowledge and Power in Aislinge Óenguso," first published in A. Ahlqvist and V. Ćapková (eds.), Dán do oide: Essays in Memory of Conn R. Ó Cléirigh, 431–38 (Dublin: Linguistics Institute of Ireland, 1997), appears with the kind permission of Prof. Anders Ahlqvist on behalf of the volume editors.

Myths and Sagas: ‘The Wooing of Étaín,’ first published in B. Ó Conchubhair (ed.), Why Irish? Irish Language and Literature in Academia, 55–69 (Galway: Arlen House, 2008), appears with the kind permission of the volume editor, Prof. Brian Ó Conchubhair.

"Táin Bó Cúailnge (spelled Táin Bó Cúailgne"), first published in A.D. Hodder and R.E. Meagher (eds.), The Epic Voice, 129–47 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), appears with the kind permission of the publisher’s parent, ABC-CLIO.

"Mythology in Táin Bó Cúailnge," first published in H.L.C. Tristram (ed.), Studien zur Táin bó Cuailnge, 114–32, ScriptOralia 52 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1993), appears with the kind permission of the publisher, Gunter Narr Verlag.

"Táin Bó Cúailnge and Early Irish Law: The Osborn Bergin Memorial Lecture V (Endowed by Vernam Hull); Lecture Delivered 31st October 2003" was first published by the Faculty of Celtic Studies, University College Dublin (2005).

"Sírrabad Súaltaim and the Order of Speaking among the Ulaid," first published in B. Smelik et al. (eds.), A Companion in Linguistics: A Festschrift for Anders Ahlqvist on His Sixtieth Birthday, 80–91 (Nijmegen: Stichting Uitgeverij de Keltische Draak, 2005), appears with the kind permission of Dr. Rijcklof Hofman on behalf of the volume editors and the publisher, Stichting Uitgeverij de Keltische Draak.

Ailill and Medb: A Marriage of Equals, first published in Ruairí Ó hUiginn and Brian Ó Catháin (eds.), Ulidia 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, 46–53 (Maynooth: An Sagart, 2009), appears with the kind permission of the publisher, Prof. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (An Sagart).

Cú Chulainn, the Poets, and Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, first published in J.F. Nagy and L.E. Jones (eds.), Heroic Poets and Poetic Heroes in Celtic Tradition: A Festschrift for Patrick K. Ford, 291–305, CSANA Yearbook 4–5 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), appears with the kind permission of then-editor of the CSANA Yearbook, Prof. Joseph Nagy, and of the publisher, Four Courts Press.

"Reflections on Compert Conchobuir and Serglige Con Culainn," first published in J.P. Mallory and G. Stockman (eds.), Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, 85–89 (Belfast: December Publications, 1994), appears with the kind permission of Prof. J.P. Mallory on behalf of the volume editors and the publisher, December Publications.

The Expulsion of the Déisi, first published in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 110 (2005): 68–75, appears with the kind permission of the guest editor, Dr. Kevin Murray, and of the Council of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society.

On the LU Version of ‘The Expulsion of the Déisi,’ first published in Celtica 11 (1976): 150–57, appears with the kind permission of the editors of Celtica, Prof. Fergus Kelly and Prof. Malachy McKenna, and of the publisher, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

The Déisi and Dyfed, first published in Éigse 20 (1984): 1–33, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

"The Theme of lommrad in Cath Maige Mucrama," first published in Éigse 18, no. 2 (1981): 211–24, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

"The Theme of ainmne in Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin," first published in Celtica 15 (1983): 78–87, appears with the kind permission of the editors of Celtica, Profs. Fergus Kelly and Malachy McKenna, and of the publisher, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

"The Rhetoric of Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin," first published in D. Ó Corráin, L. Breatnach, and K.R. McCone (eds.), Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney, 233–50 (Maynooth: An Sagart 1989), appears with the kind permission of the publisher, Prof. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta (An Sagart).

"The Rhetoric of Fingal Rónáin," first published in Celtica 17 (1985): 123–44, appears with the kind permission of the editors of Celtica, Profs. Fergus Kelly and Malachy McKenna, and of the publisher, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

"On the Cín Dromma Snechta Version of Togail Brudne Uí Dergae," first published in Ériu 41 (1990): 103–14, appears with the kind permission of the editors of Ériu and the Royal Irish Academy.

"Gat and díberg in Togail Bruidne Da Derga," first published in A. Ahlqvist et al. (eds.), Celtica Helsingiensia: Proceedings from a Symposium on Celtic Studies, 203–13, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 107 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1996), appears with the kind permission of Prof. Anders Ahlqvist on behalf of the volume editors.

"The Oldest Story of the Laigin: Observations on Orgain Denna Ríg," first published in Éigse 33 (2002): 1–18, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Éigse, Prof. Pádraig Breatnach.

"Sound and Sense in Cath Almaine," first published in Ériu 54 (2004): 41–47, appears with the kind permission of the editors of Ériu and the Royal Irish Academy.

"Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne," first published in Léachtaí Cholm Cille 25 (1995): 30–46, appears with the kind permission of the editor of Léachtaí Cholm Cille, Prof. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta. The translation is by the author, Tomás Ó Cathasaigh.

We are immensely grateful to Prof. Declan Kiberd for the foreword, and to Prof. Thomas Charles-Edwards and Dr. Fiona Edwards for creating the maps.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations used in only one article are defined within that article.

Map 1. Provinces and regions of early Ireland.

Map 2. Rivers and significant places mentioned in the text.

Map 3. Temair (Tara) and surroundings.

1

Introduction

Irish Myths and Legends

(2005)

An immense body of narrative lore has come down to us in Irish manuscripts, and the earliest surviving tales are probably to be dated to the seventh or the early eighth century. Literacy in the vernacular came early to Ireland. We know that there were Christians in Ireland in 431 A.D. for Pope Celestine sent them a bishop in that year. These Irish Christians must have had men among them who were literate in Latin. Some degree of literacy in the Irish language was present even earlier than the fifth century, however: evidence for this is found in the nature of the ogam alphabet. The oldest surviving records of the Irish language are ogam inscriptions incised in stone. Something under four hundred of these inscriptions survive, and they generally consist of a personal name in the genitive case, accompanied, more often than not, by the name of that person’s father or other ancestor. The earliest inscriptions probably date to the fifth and sixth centuries, and some may belong to the fourth (McManus 1991, 40). The invention of the ogam alphabet cannot be later than the fourth century (McManus 1991, 41), and Anders Ahlqvist (1983, 10) has suggested that it may date to the end of the second century or the beginning of the third. We know nothing of the identity of the inventor of this alphabet, but we can be sure that he knew Latin and that his invention entailed an analysis of the Irish language. It is possible that ogam may have been used to inscribe on wooden tablets what D.A. Binchy (1961, 9) called an elementary type of written literature, but nothing of the kind survives. The only such tablets that we have are six that were found in Springmount Bog (near Ballymena, County Antrim) in 1913: they have been dated to the later years of the sixth century (Ó Cuív 1984, 87) and bear portions of the psalms in Latin.

The literature that survives from the early Irish period, in Irish and in Latin, is the product of an intellectual elite that included ecclesiastical scholars and learned poets (filid, singular fili). The filid were the most prestigious of the áes dána (men of art) in early Ireland: they were highly trained and their power largely resided in their role as purveyors of praise and blame. The filid seem to have arrived at an early accommodation with the church. The sixth-century monastic saint Colum Cille (Columba) is traditionally represented as a defender of the filid, and this seems to have an historical basis. In the life of Colum Cille written in the seventh century by his kinsman Adomnán, Colum Cille is depicted as a patron of the Irish-language poets: he would entertain them and invite them to sing songs of their own composition. Colum Cille was the subject of the Amra Choluim Chille ‘The Eulogy of Colum Cille,’ which is attributed to the fili Dallán Forgaill and is generally considered to have been composed shortly after the saint’s death.

Another poet who is considered to be emblematic of the fusion of native tradition and Christianity in sixth-century Ireland (Watkins 1976a, 275) is Colmán mac Lénéni (died ca. 606). Colmán was a fili who became a cleric late in life. Some fragments of his work have been preserved, and in one of the surviving quatrains clearly dating from his time as a cleric, Colmán uses legal language to say that his poem has not been composed for earthly reward, but rather for the grace of God (Watkins 1976a, 274–75). The word used for grace in this connection is not (as one might expect) a borrowing from Latin, but rather a native Irish word rath that is used of the fief given by a lord to his vassal or client. Colmán’s talent and skill as a fili, which he had been using in the service of secular kings, will henceforth be devoted to praise of God.

The indications are that in early Ireland storytelling was a function of the filid, but we cannot say what the relationship may have been between the stories narrated by the filid and those that survive in the manuscripts. Some scholars have emphasized those features of the material that reflect an inheritance from Celtic or even Proto-Indo-European culture, while others have chosen to highlight the innovative character of the tales, and the ecclesiastical and Latin influences on their formation. These need not be mutually exclusive positions. In what I have to say, I shall refer from time to time to inherited features of the material, but I shall also be at pains to point to ways in which the narrative literature is at one with the laws and the wisdom literature.

Irish tales were classified according to their titles. Some of these have to do with major events in the life of an individual, such as comperta (conceptions), aitheda (elopements), tochmarca (wooings), echtrai (expeditions [to the Otherworld]), immrama (sea-voyages), and aitte/aideda (violent deaths). Others relate momentous or cataclysmic events in the social and political history of population groups, such as catha (battles), tomadmann (eruptions [of lakes or rivers]), tochomlada (migrations), oircne (slaughters, destructions), togla (destructions), and tána bó (cattle raids).

Modern commentators have found it convenient to classify the material according to cycles. The Mythological Cycle deals with the gods and goddesses, and I would prefer to speak of it as the Cycles of the Gods and Goddesses (cf. "Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth, chap. 9 in this volume). The Ulster Cycle depicts a Heroic Age in Ireland’s past, and celebrates the acts of a warrior caste. The Fenian Cycle also recounts the heroic deeds of fighting men, but these are hunter-warriors, and the Ulster and Fenian Cycles differ profoundly in their characters, their milieu, their ethos and their provenance" (Rees and Rees 1961, 62). The Cycles of the Kings focus on the lives of prehistoric and historic kings, and have to do as well with the activities of saints and poets. The Irish church also produced a formidable number of Saints’ Lives, first in Latin and then in Irish.

What I propose to do in this introduction is to focus on a few of the more important texts. The account which I shall give of the material will be a somewhat personal one, and I have no doubt that my biases will be readily apparent. I begin with Cath Maige Tuired, The Battle of Mag Tuired (E. Gray 1982), which is by common consent the most important of our mythological tales. The text that has come down to us would seem to be a composite work put together by an eleventh- or twelfth-century redactor mainly from ninth-century material (Murphy 1955a, 19), and it deals with a conflict between the Túatha Dé Danann and the Fomoiri, culminating in a great battle at Mag Tuired (Moytirra, County Sligo) in which the Túatha Dé Danann are victorious. This battle is included in the schema of legendary prehistory which came to be known as Lebor Gabála Érenn, The Book of the Taking of Ireland, often referred to as The Book of Invasions, and which tells of six prehistoric invasions of Ireland (Rees and Rees 1961, 104). It is also concerned with the origin of physical features, boundaries, and names, and with the genesis of Irish customs and institutions. The last three invasions were those of the Fir Bolg, the Túatha Dé Danann, and the Children of Míl or Gaels. The first battle of Mag Tuired was fought between the Túatha Dé Danann and the Fir Bolg. Our text is concerned with the second battle, in which the Túatha Dé Danann vanquished the Fomoiri.

The Túatha Dé Danann (The Tribes of the Goddess Danu) are in large measure Irish reflexes of the gods of the Celts, and it is possible to see among them some intimations of a Celtic pantheon (Mac Cana 1970, 23–41). The Fomoiri, whose name derives from fo ‘under’ + mor ‘specter,’ are malevolent and somewhat shadowy personages. The hero of the Túatha Dé Danann, the young god who leads them to victory at Mag Tuired, is Lug, the Irish reflex of a Celtic god who is commemorated in numerous Continental place-names, and whose Welsh equivalent is called Lleu. According to Cath Maige Tuired, the Túatha Dé Danann king of Ireland, Núadu, had an arm lopped off in battle. He had to relinquish the kingship, for an Irish king was required to be unblemished. He was succeeded—at the behest of the womenfolk of the Túatha Dé Danann—by Bres, whose relationship to the Túatha Dé Danann was through his mother. His father was of the Fomoiri: he had come over the sea to Ireland, impregnated Bres’s mother, and left her. Bres proved to be a thoroughly unworthy king, and the Túatha Dé Danann forced him to abdicate. Núadu in the meantime had been fitted with a silver arm, and he again became king. Bres went into exile, and gathered together a great army to invade Ireland.

In Cath Maige Tuired, Lug comes as a stranger to Tara, traditionally the seat of the kings of Ireland, and seeks admittance to Núadu’s court. He is opposed by an official of Núadu’s, who asks him repeatedly to name a skill that would entitle him to enter Tara. Lug names a remarkable number of skills, one by one, and is told each time that there is already a practitioner of that skill in Tara. He is not to be bested, however: he asks whether there is anyone in Tara who possesses all of those skills, and of course there is no such person. The king then decrees that Lug should be admitted to Tara. At first Lug sits in the sage’s seat, but Núadu decides that Lug will be just the one to liberate the Túatha Dé Danann from the depredations of the Fomoiri. He therefore changes places with Lug, who thus becomes king.

Lug’s father was Cían of the Túatha Dé Danann and his mother was a daughter of Balar of the Fomoiri. Balar had a destructive eye that would disable an entire army if they looked at it. In the decisive act of the battle, Lug casts a sling stone at Balar’s eye that carries it through his head, so that it is the Fomoiri that look at it. Balar dies, and by killing his own maternal grandfather, Lug ensures victory for the Túatha Dé Danann. He goes on to spare Bres’s life, and in return Bres has to reveal the secrets of ploughing, sowing, and reaping.

Cath Maige Tuired is the Irish version of the War of the Gods, an Indo-European theme that is well known from Greek and Scandinavian mythology and can be seen in Indian and Persian mythology as well. Georges Dumézil has interpreted this theme in terms of the tripartite structure that he posited for Proto-Indo-European ideology. This comprises three functions: the sacred, including sovereignty; physical force; and a third function, fertility, that includes food production.¹ In the War of the Gods Dumézil sees a contest between a group which is competent in the first and second functions and one which is competent in the third. The first of these groups vanquishes the second and incorporates it, thus achieving competence in all three functions. In the Irish version, the Túatha Dé Danann did not actually incorporate the defeated Fomoiri, but they did acquire competence in agriculture when the battle was over and Lug wrested the secrets of ploughing, sowing, and reaping from Bres (Dumézil 1968, 289–90). Moreover, Lug achieves victories over Núadu (who tries to exclude Lug from the seat of kingship at Tara), Balar (on the battlefield), and Bres (who is obliged to yield up the secrets of agriculture in exchange for his life): in this sequence he establishes his preeminence in kingship, physical force, and food production, thereby encompassing all three of the domains which belong to the tripartite structure (see "Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth," chap. 9 in this volume).

Bres’s reign stands in contrast to that of Lug. His relationship with the Túatha Dé Danann is a contractual one, and, as Dumézil (1943, 230–41) has seen, his failure to fulfil his obligations to his people signals the breakdown of the social contract: a king is obliged to show generosity to his subjects, and Bres declines to do so. What is in question here is the relationship between rí and túath. There was a hierarchy of kings in early Ireland, but even the most powerful of kings was basically ruler of a single túath (Byrne 1973, 41). The reciprocal pair túath and rí is of Indo-European origin: the small tribal unit (*teutā-) ruled by a powerful chieftain (*reg-) belongs to the reconstructed lexicon of Indo-European (Watkins 2000, xxxiv). In Cath Maige Tuired the Túatha Dé Danann are variously called Túatha Dé or Túath Dé, but in those parts of the text that recount the reign of Bres, the singular is always used. Moreover, the election of Bres to the kingship is described in technical legal language: for the obligations that the king must discharge to his people the word used is folad, and it is his failure in this respect that prompts his túath to depose him (see further The Sister’s Son in Early Irish Literature, chap. 5 in this volume). Thomas Charles-Edwards (1994) has shown that the Irish law tract Críth Gablach describes a contract between king and people: the king has obligations (folad) to his people, and they have obligations to him. He observed that the contractual approach to kingship in Críth Gablach is unlikely to have its roots in canon law, nor is it to be explained by any influence from Greek or Roman political thought for it stems from native ideas of lordship and contract (Charles-Edwards 1994, 119). We may add here that those very same native ideas of lordship and contract find narrative expression in the account of Bres’s reign in Cath Maige Tuired.

An equally important ideological concern in Cath Maige Tuired is that of kinship, and the contrast between Lug, who is related to the Túatha Dé Danann through his father, and Bres, who is related to them through his mother. Bres is what is known as a sister’s son and the Túatha Dé Danann are his maternal kin. The eighth-century poet Blathmac son of Cú Brettan son of Congus of the Fir Rois in what is now County Monaghan wrote at length about Christ in verse that he addressed to Christ’s mother, Mary (Carney 1964). For him Jesus was a sister’s son of the Israelites and their slaying of him was fingal, which is the crime of slaying a member of one’s own kindred. This was a particularly heinous crime in early Ireland, as it was the duty of the kindred to avenge the death of one of their members, and this would not be practicable if the perpetrator of the crime was himself a kinsman. In Cath Maige Tuired, Bres fails his maternal kinsmen; in Blathmac’s presentation of the story of Christ, the Israelites fail their sister’s son. I may add that Blathmac also sees their slaying of Christ as a repudiation of their legal obligation to him as lord (see again The Sister’s Son, chap. 5 in this volume).

The conceptual framework of Cath Maige Tuired is reflected in the way in which an eighth-century Irish poet interpreted and presented the life of Christ, and also in Críth Gablach, which Charles-Edwards (1986, 73) has described as one of the few outstanding pieces of social analysis in early medieval Europe. At least some of the contents of Cath Maige Tuired were inherited from oral tradition, but the ideology that it expresses was clearly of vital concern in the literate Christian community of early Ireland.

The Ulster Cycle celebrates the exploits of the warriors of the Ulaid (Ulstermen), and especially those of Cú Chulainn. The king of Ulster is Conchobor, and his court is at Emain Macha (now Navan Fort, near Armagh). There is a state of endemic warfare between the Ulstermen and the people of Connacht who are ruled by Ailill and Medb; their court is at Crúachu (now Rathcroghan in County Roscommon). The traditional date of the Ulster heroes is the century before Christ. The centerpiece of the cycle is Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Cattle-Raid of Cooley, often referred to as the Táin (TBC I; Kinsella 1970). It tells of an invasion of Ulster by a great army (the men of Ireland) led by Medb and Ailill; its purpose is to carry off the Brown Bull from the Cooley peninsula in what is now County Louth. The raid lasts for the three months of winter; during this time the men of Ulster are debilitated, and its defence falls to Cú Chulainn. Clustered around the Táin there is a group of foretales (remscéla), which provide background information on the circumstances in which the raid took place and the personages who were involved on either side.

One of the foretales is Compert Con Culainn, How Cú Chulainn Was Begotten (trans. Kinsella 1970, 21–25). Cú Chulainn had a divine father, Lug, and a human one, Súaltaim. According to his birth-tale some birds visited Emain Macha and devoured its vegetation to the very roots. The Ulstermen pursued the birds, which led them to Bruig na Bóinne (Newgrange and associated monuments at the bend of the Boyne). In early Irish literature Bruig na Bóinne is a localization of the Otherworld. A child was born during the night, and Conchobor’s sister Dechtine took the child back to Emain. The child died, and Lug appeared to Dechtine in a dream telling her that he was the father of the child, and had implanted the very same child into her womb. He told her that the boy would be called Sétantae. When Dechtine was visibly pregnant, Conchobor betrothed her to Súaltaim. She was ashamed to go pregnant to her husband’s bed, and she aborted the boy. Then she slept with Súaltaim: she conceived again and bore a son, Sétantae, who was later given the name Cú Chulainn.

This is one of the most remarkable of the many Irish comperta (Rees and Rees 1961, 213–43). The hero has a threefold conception. He is first begotten at Bruig na Bóinne by Lug upon his unnamed Otherworld consort; then at Emain by Lug upon Dechtine; and finally by Súaltaim upon Dechtine. In the first conception, the parents are both divine; in the third they are both human. In the second conception the father is divine and the mother human. We see in this sequence how the hero mediates the opposition between god and man.

It has been shown that the lives of many traditional heroes follow a largely uniform plot or pattern, which is sometimes called the heroic biography. The conception and birth of the hero is an essential part of the pattern. Other episodes in Cú Chulainn’s heroic biography are his Boyhood Deeds, which are recounted in the course of the cattle-raid in the Táin; Tochmarc Emire, The Wooing of Emer, which tells how he overcame formidable obstacles to win the hand of Emer in marriage; Serglige Con Culainn, The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn, dealing with his adventures in the Otherworld; and the story of his violent death.

We have seen that Cú Chulainn’s father Lug was a hero among the gods, and that he distinguished himself as a king, as a warrior, and in the domain of food production. Cú Chulainn, on the other hand, is a martial hero. The old words for such a hero express the notions of fury, ardour, tumescence, speed. The hero is the furious one possessed of his own tumultuous and blazing energy (Sjoestedt 1949, 58–59). This aspect of the hero is most dramatically expressed in Cú Chulainn’s ríastrad, the physical distortion that seizes him when he is angered, and for which Kinsella uses the inspired term warp-spasm. The martial ethos of the Ulster Cycle is also seen in the wolf-cult which underlies the names: the king, Conchobor, is the Hound/Wolf-Desiring One, the great warrior Conall (Cernach) is the Hound-/Wolf-Powerful One, and Cú Chulainn himself is the Hound/Wolf of Culann. One of the