Significance of the Study
Tuatha de Danaan (“Children of Danu”)
Nicknames: Celtic Gods, Gallic Gods, British Gods, Gods of the Celts, Gods of Gaul, Gods of Eire, Irish Gods, et al
Other Associated Dimensions: Avalon exists in a cosmology of worlds known collectively as Otherworld including but not confined to the realms of Momur (aka Tir na bog, a land of faeries), Tir fo Thuinn, the Land of the Waves, ruled by Llyr, Tir inna Mbhan, a Land of Paradise, ruled by Manannan, and Anwyn (Annfwn), the realm of the dead, ruled by Arawn, the god of the dead. The realm is populated by other beings such as faeries and leprechauns (Celtic elves), giants and ogres, trolls and dragons. Time seems to pass by much quicker in Otherworld than on Earth; when the hero Bran (the son of Febhal, not to be confused with Bran, the son of Llyr) spent a year in Tir inna Mbhan, he and his crew sailed back to Eire to realize they had actually been gone for hundreds of years. Unable to leave their ship because they would regain their true age upon touching Eire, they returned to Tir inna Mbhan.
==History==
The Tuatha de Danaan or Celtic Gods are a race of superhumanly powerful humanoid beings who were once worshipped by the ancient Celts and Britons from about 1500 BC to 600 AD when they were replaced by Christianity. The Danaans dwell on Avalon, a small planetary body existing in a cosmology of worlds known collectively as Otherworld which is also home to a number of other beings such as elves, leprechauns, faeries, trolls and the Fomore, the ancestral spirits and gods of Eire from whom the Danaans might be descended. Unlike most of the realms of the gods of Earth, Otherworld through several “sidhs” or faerie mounds located through Ireland. (In later years, “sidh” was also used as a word to describe the faerie spirits who protected these mounds.) Because these portals rested underground, later myths claimed the Celtic gods retreated beneath the Earth. In actuality, Avalon seems to be an actual planetary body existing in other-dimensional space with regular seasonal intervals of night and day. The Danaan’s human worshippers in Ancient Eire called these gods by different names than those by which the gods were known in ancient Gaul: for example, the Celts called the king of the gods the Dagda, whereas the Gaels knew him as Sucellos. The invading Romans knew him as Taranis in order to merge his worship rites with their god, Zeus. The Celtic gods, however, no longer have or actively seek worshippers on Earth.
The precise origin of the Celtic gods, like that of all of Earth’s pantheons of gods, is shrouded in legend. According to one legend, the Celtic gods are the descendants of the Dagda and another goddess later known as Morrigan. However, the Dagda was the son of Bile (Belenus), also known as Elathan, one of the chieftains of the race known as the Fomore. The Fomore identified their maternal ancestor as the goddess, Domnu, later know as Danu. It is believed that Danu was actually Gaea, the primordial earth-mother who had survived the destruction of the Elder Gods of Earth by infusing her life into the life-giving essence of the Earth. Many of the Elder Gods had degenerated into demonic status and were destroyed by Atum or had fled Earth for other planes of existence. Atum had been born from Gaea by mating with the sentient biosphere of the Earth known as the Demiurge. Atum later departed the earth after shedding the excess demonic energies of the Elder Gods he had slain.
According to myths, Danu had sired a race of beings known as the Fomore by Neit (or Net), later confused with Nuadhu, a mortal chieftain of the Tuatha de Danaan and ancestor of CuChulainn, one of the greatest heroes of Ancient Eire. Neit was supposedly a Danaan ruler overthrown by the Fomore. The Fomore were later claimed by Early Christian writers documenting the stories of the Celts as descendants of Ham, one of the sons of the Biblical Noah, who had survived a flood in Ancient Mesopotamia around 2490 BC. The Fomore had claimed Ancient Eire at the center of the ley lines of Earth for themselves. They repelled a consecutive series of invasions by Fintan and Cessair, descendants of Japeth, another of Noah’s sons around 2340 BC. Partholon, the grandson of Fintan, lead another invasion about thirty-three years later. A third invasion by the Nemedians was more successive, forcing the Fomore as far as the Isle of Man, but eventually the Fomore returned and subjugated the Nemedians, their survivors departing for Greece, the land of their ancestors. The Fir Bholg tribes, descendants of the Nemedians, returned and laid siege to Ireland, taking it away from the Fomore.
According to Celtic myth, the Tuatha de Danaan were another tribe descended from Partholon, having departed from Eire to settle near Scythia near the Black Sea and along the Danube River. Meanwhile, Elathan, a Fomore chieftain, known as Beli or Belenus to the Welsh, took Danu as his wife and she conceived him a number of children. Also known as Donn to the Welsh, Danu concealed the births of her children in the land of Gaul along the Danube River from which she had derived her name. Among these children were the gods, Eochaid (later known as the Dagda), Llyr, Gwydion, Amaethon, Arianrhod, Penardun and others. Danu departed Eire with her children to raise them as antagonists to the Fomore. The Dagda, Leir and Gwydion learned their magicks from Earthly wizards, mystics and mages. Gwydion stayed behind to become a tutelary deity of the Gaels, while the Dagda lead a majority of the Danaans back to Eire. When Eochaid Mac Erc, the last of the Fir Bholg died without a worthy heir, the Danaans and the Fomore clashed at the battlefield of Magh Tureidh to lay claim to Eire. Nuadhu, son of the Dagda and the greatest champion of the Danaans, faced off against Sreng, the greatest champion of the Fir Bholg. The Danaans were victorious, but Nuadhu was unable to rule because he lost an hand in battle and the Danaans could not honor a ruler with an obvious wound. The Dagda allowed his half-brother, Bres, to rule in place of his son, but Bres turned Eire over to the Fomore, forcing the Danaans into subservient roles. The hero, Lugh, hidden away since birth, however, eventually joined the Tuatha de Danaan, and lead them to a second victory on the plains of Magh Tureidh by slaying Balor, forcibly exiling the Fomore into another dimension.
The ascendant Danaans claimed Eire and became the divine rulers of the land. In departing Earth for the last time, the Dagda divided Eire into provinces between his sons, Oenghus, Bodb, Ogmios and Mider, with Badb possessing sovereign power over all after Lugh. The Dagda departed Eire for the realm of Otherworld to become ruler of the gods. In the Tenth Century BC, the last wave of invaders invaded Eire. Arriving from Gaul, the Milesians lead by Milesius claimed Eire by divine right as descendants of Partholon, the rightful ruler of Eire. The Danaans were forced to comply and departed Eire through hidden underground portals concealed by various sidhs or “faerie mounds” located through the countryside. (In later myths, it would be claimed the Tuatha de Danaan were driven underground. Later generations of Eire would also call the faerie spirits and former gods of Eire collectively as the Sidh.) The Milesians would become ancestors of the British monarchy. Trojan refugees lead by Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas, a hero of Troy, later claimed Britain around 1150 BC. Their ancestors included King Arthur who converted England over to Christianity from their native worship of the Celtic Gods. Arthur’s Britain would be seized by the Saxons bringing worship of their native Asgardian gods, their chieftains later becoming ancestors of the later British Kings.
At their zenith, worship of the Celtic Gods covered much of the British Isles and much of modern-day Spain, France and parts of Germany.
One of the most often encountered and yet least understood of the fairies which inhabit the same everyday world as humans is the Gremlin. Folklorists have shown little enthusiasm for documenting the Gremlin, possibly due to its contemporary nature. They are sufficiently well known, however, to be found in standard references. Webster, for example, defines them as “impish foot high gnomes reported by airmen as interfering with and disordering equipment such as motors, instruments, machine guns”. The Dictionary of Folklore defines them as “any airborne supernatural being (spirit, demon, imp) whose function is to cause pilots and air-crew (especially military) trouble and inconvenience”. A more general description is found in the Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were, where they are defined as spirits associated with tools and machinery.
In early stories concerning these creatures, they were depicted as craftsmen, rather like the Dwarfs. The “Shoemaker Elves”, who used the tools and technology of the time to help poor artisans were probably Gremlins. Contemporary myths, on the other hand, generally portray their destructive side, presenting them more as imps or devils. Unlike devils, however, they are not wholly malign and in fact were once considered helpful to man.
This was particularly true for craftsmen and inventors, who found that the Wee Mechanics have the ability to make tools work more efficiently and are credited with assisting in the invention of the steam engine and helping Ben Franklin in his studies of lightning. It is believed that they turned against man, or at least became disillusioned, when denied recognition for their contributions.
The first notice of Gremlins, as such, took place amongst aviators. This is not surprising as malfunctions in an aircraft often have disastrous results, and unexplained problems become a matter of some discourse. The first obvious reference to them was in the British newspaper “The Spectator” which wrote that “the old Royal Naval Air Service in 1917 and the newly constituted Royal Air Force in 1918 appear to have detected the existence of a horde of mysterious and malicious sprites whose whole purpose in life was…to bring about as many as possible of the inexplicable mishaps which, in those days as now, trouble an airman’s life.”
The word ‘Gremlin’ is claimed by Brew’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable to have been first coined by a Squadron of Bomber Command serving on the North West Frontier in India in 1939. This squadron began to have numerous difficulties with its aircraft, the cause of which was duly placed on a mischievous fairy with an intimate knowledge of aerial sabotage, called the Gremlin. The word probably formed by analogy with Goblin. Of course, there are competing versions of how the word came about. The Dictionary of Folklore, for example, supposes that it may be related to an obsolete Old English transitive verb ‘gremian’ meaning to vex. Yet another version involves the relation of the word to a popular been of the time, called Fremlins.
There have been numerous published descriptions of the physical appearance of Gremlins. Those most commonly encountered by airmen during the second world war were considered to be between six and eighteen inches tall, and either blue or green in color. Some writers maintain that they have horns, like incipient devils, others that these are merely large ears which are covered by a rudimentary growth of hair. Their feet were reported to be large, and may have some special kind of suction grip which enables them to walk in safety all over aircraft (2). Although they are considered to be true Fairies, they are differentiated by the fact that Gremlins have no trouble handling and working with metals like iron, which fairies find deadly.
Their character can be described as mischievous, by which they resemble hobgoblins. Usually, they confine themselves to causing minor annoyances and only occasionally serious trouble. The latter still with a sense of mischief and never out of evil malice. Typically, World War II Gremlins would sit on an aircraft’s wing, fiddling with the aileron (American Gremlins were sometimes called Yehudis, because they are always fiddling) or blow dust into the fuel pipes. The time and place they would manifest themselves was predictable only by its unpredictability.
Gremlins are very sophisticated technologically, and implicitly understand even the most complicated equipment. No known instrument is beyond their intellectual capacity to master. They may also possess a sense of telepathy as they seem to know what a pilot is going to do before he does. The range of their activities are limitless, and besides their mechanical tricks they have been known to produce the appearance of the ground in a completely unexpected place out of a cloud. Navigators claim they are capable of moving mountains, island, and under extreme conditions even reshuffle the stars, although this more accurately represents the state of confusion they can produce in an aviator’s mind rather than a talent for earth moving.
During World War II, the existence of Gremlins was recognized by such authorizes as the British Air Ministry – where they were studied on the Ministry’s behalf by the well known Gremlorist, Pilot Officer Percy Prune, who wrote up their exploits in a service manual. This was the first official document to take Gremlins seriously and to propose ways to either placate them or distract them sufficiently to accomplish the mission without major mishap.
SECTION II
THE PEOPLE OF THE GODDESS DANA (Tuatha Dé Danann) OR THE SIDHE (pronounced Shee)
‘So firm was the hold which the ethnic gods of Ireland had taken upon the imagination and spiritual sensibilities of our ancestors that even the monks and Christianized bards never thought of denying them. They doubtless forbade the people to worship them, but to root out the belief in their existence was so impossible that they could not even dispossess their own minds of the conviction that the gods were real supernatural beings.’—Standish O’Grady.
The Goddess Dana and the modern cult of St. Brigit—The Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe conquered by the Sons of Mil—But Irish seers still see the Sidhe—Old Irish MSS. faithfully represent the Tuatha De Danann—The Sidhe as a spirit race—Sidhe palaces—The ‘Taking’ of mortals—Hill visions of Sidhe women—Sidhe minstrels and musicians—Social organization and warfare among the Sidhe—The Sidhe war-goddesses, the Badb—The Sidhe at the Battle of Clontarf, A. D. 1014—Conclusion.
The People of the Goddess Dana, or, according to D’Arbois de Jubainville, the People of the god whose mother was [Pg 284]called Dana,[220] are the Tuatha De Danann of the ancient mythology of Ireland. The Goddess Dana, called in the genitive Danand, in middle Irish times was named Brigit.[220] And this goddess Brigit of the pagan Celts has been supplanted by the Christian St. Brigit[220]; and, in exactly the same way as the pagan cult once bestowed on the spirits in wells and fountains has been transferred to Christian saints, to whom the wells and fountains have been re-dedicated, so to St. Brigit as a national saint has been transferred the pagan cult rendered to her predecessor. Thus even yet, as in the case of the minor divinities of their sacred fountains, the Irish people through their veneration for the good St. Brigit, render homage to the divine mother of the People who bear her name Dana,—who are the ever-living invisible Fairy-People of modern Ireland. For when the Sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the Tuatha De Danann in full possession of the country. The Tuatha De Danann then retired before the invaders, without, however, giving up their sacred Island. Assuming invisibility, with the power of at any time reappearing in a human-like form before the children of the Sons of Mil, the People of the Goddess Dana became and are the Fairy-Folk, the Sidhe of Irish mythology and romance.[221] Therefore it is that to-day Ireland contains two races,—a race visible which we call Celts, and a race invisible which we call Fairies. Between these two races there is constant intercourse even now; for Irish seers say that they can behold the majestic, beautiful Sidhe, and according to them the Sidhe are a race quite distinct from our own, just as living and possibly more powerful. These Sidhe (who are the ‘gentry’ of the Ben Bulbin country and have kindred elsewhere in Ireland, Scotland, [Pg 285]and probably in most other countries as well, such as the invisible races of the Yosemite Valley) have been described more or less accurately by our peasant seer-witnesses from County Sligo and from North and East Ireland. But there are other and probably more reliable seers in Ireland, men of greater education and greater psychical experience, who know and describe the Sidhe races as they really are, and who even sketch their likenesses. And to such seer Celts as these, Death is a passport to the world of the Sidhe, a world where there is eternal youth and never-ending joy, as we shall learn when we study it as the Celtic Otherworld.
The recorded mythology and literature of ancient Ireland have, very faithfully for the most part, preserved to us clear pictures of the Tuatha De Danann; so that disregarding some Christian influence in the texts of certain manuscripts, much rationalization, and a good deal of poetical colouring and romantic imagination in the pictures, we can easily describe the People of the Goddess Dana as they appeared in pagan days, when they were more frequently seen by mortals than now. Perhaps the Irish folk of the olden times were even more clairvoyant and spiritual-minded than the Irish folk of to-day. So by drawing upon these written records let us try to understand what sort of beings the Sidhe were and are.
Nature of the Sidhe
In the Book of Leinster[222] the poem of Eochaid records that the Tuatha De Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of siabra; and siabra is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts. The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like the modern ‘gentry’; but the word ghosts is inappropriate, because our evidence shows that the only relation the Sidhe or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a superficial one, the Sidhe and ghosts being alike only in respect to invisibility. In the two chief Irish MSS., the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of Leinster, the Tuatha De Danann are described as ‘gods[Pg 286] and not-gods’; and Sir John Rhŷs considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit deva and adeva, but not with ‘poets (dée) and husbandmen (an dée)’ as the author of Cóir Anmann learnedly guessed.[223] It is also said, in the Book of the Dun Cow, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that ‘it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence of their knowledge’.[224] The hold of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons,[225] as the ending of the story of the Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn illustrates:—‘So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being stricken by the people of the Sid: for the demoniac power was great before the faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be in immortality. It was thus they used to be believed in. So it is to such phantoms the ignorant apply the names of Side and Aes Side.’[226] A passage in the Silva Gadelica (ii. 202-3) not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish people made a clear distinction between the god-race and our own:—In The Colloquy with the Ancients, as St. Patrick and Caeilte are talking with one another, ‘a lone woman robed in mantle of green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a glittering plate of yellow gold,’ came to them; and when Patrick asked from whence she came, she replied: ‘Out of uaimh Chruachna, or “the cave of Cruachan”.’ Caeilte then asked: ‘Woman, my soul, who art thou?’ ‘I am Scothniamh or “Flower-lustre”, daughter of the Daghda’s son Bodhb derg.’ Caeilte proceeded: ‘And what started thee hither?’ ‘To[Pg 287] require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a time thou promisedst me such.’ And as they parleyed Patrick broke in with: ‘It is a wonder to us how we see you two: the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but thou Caeilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey.’ ‘Which is no wonder at all,’ said Caeilte, ‘for no people of one generation or of one time are we: she is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are unfading and whose duration is perennial; I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable and fade away.’ The exact distinction is between Caeilte, a withered old ancient—in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may question him about the past history of Ireland—and a fairy-woman who is one of the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann.[227]
In two of the more ancient Irish texts, the Echtra Nerai[228] or ‘Expedition of Nera’, a preliminary tale in the introduction to the Táin bó Cuailnge or ‘Theft of the Cattle of Cuailnge’; and a passage from the Togail Bruidne dâ Derga, or ‘Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’,[229] there seems[Pg 288] no reasonable doubt whatever about the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe being a race like what we call spirits. The first text describes how Ailill and Medb in their palace of Cruachan celebrated the feast of Samain (November Eve, a feast of the dead even in pre-Christian times). Two culprits had been executed on the day before, and their bodies, according to the ancient Irish custom, were left hanging from a tree until the night of Samain should have passed; for on that night it was dangerous to touch the bodies of the dead while demons and the people of the Sidhe were at large throughout all Ireland, and mortals found near dead bodies at such a time were in great danger of being taken by these spirit hosts of the Tuatha De Danann. And so on this very night, when thick darkness had settled down, Ailill desired to test the courage of his warriors, and offered his own gold-hilted sword to any young man who would go out and tie a coil of twisted twigs around the leg of one of the bodies suspended from the tree. After many had made the attempt and failed, because unable to brave the legions of demons and fairies, Nera alone succeeded; but his success cost him dear, for he finally fell under the power both of the dead man, round whose legs he had tied the coil, and of an elfin host: with the dead man’s body on his back, Nera was obliged to go to a strange house that the thirst of the dead man might be assuaged therein; and the dead man in drinking scattered ‘the last sip from his lips at the faces of the people that were in the house, so that they all died’. Nera carried back the body; and on returning to Cruachan he saw the fairy hosts going into the cave, ‘for the fairy-mounds of Erinn are always opened about Halloween.’ Nera followed after them until he came to their king in a palace of the Tuatha De Danann, seemingly in the cavern or elsewhere underground; where he remained and was married to one of the fairy women. She it was who revealed to Nera the secret hiding-place, in a mysterious well, of the king’s golden crown, and then betrayed her[Pg 289] whole people by reporting to Nera the plan they had for attacking Ailill’s court on the Halloween to come. Moreover, Nera was permitted by his fairy wife to depart from the síd; and he in taking leave of her asked: ‘How will it be believed of me that I have gone into the síd?’ ‘Take fruits of summer with thee,’ said the woman. ‘Then he took wild garlic with him and primrose and golden fern.’ And on the following November Eve when the síd of Cruachan was again open, ‘the men of Connaught and the black hosts of exile’ under Ailill and Medb plundered it, taking away from it the crown of Briun out of the well. But ‘Nera was left with his people in the síd, and has not come out until now, nor will he come till Doom.’
All of this matter is definitely enough in line with the living Fairy-Faith: there is the same belief expressed as now about November Eve being the time of all times when ghosts, demons, spirits, and fairies are free, and when fairies take mortals and marry them to fairy women; also the beliefs that fairies are living in secret places in hills, in caverns, or under ground—palaces full of treasure and open only on November Eve. In so far as the real fairies, the Sidhe, are concerned, they appear as the rulers of the Feast of the Dead or Samain, as the controllers of all spirits who are then at large; and, allowing for some poetical imagination and much social psychology and anthropomorphism, elements as common in this as in most literary descriptions concerning the Tuatha De Danann, they are faithfully enough presented.
The second text describes how King Conaire, in riding along a road toward Tara, saw in front of him three strange horsemen, three men of the Sidhe:—‘Three red frocks had they, and three red mantles: three red steeds they bestrode, and three red heads of hair were on them. Red were they all, both body and hair and raiment, both steeds and men.’ ‘Who is it that fares before us?’ asked Conaire. ‘It was a taboo of mine for those Three to go before me—the three Reds to the house of Red. Who will follow them and tell them to come towards me in my track?’ ‘I will follow [Pg 290]them,’ says Lé fri flaith, Conaire’s son. ‘He goes after them, lashing his horse, and overtook them not. There was the length of a spearcast between them: but they did not gain upon him and he did not gain upon them.’ All attempts to come up with the red horsemen failed. But at last, before they disappeared, one of the Three said to the king’s son riding so furiously behind them, ‘Lo, my son, great the news. Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach (?) from the elfmounds. Though we are alive we are dead. Great are the signs: destruction of life: sating of ravens: feeding of crows, strife of slaughter: wetting of sword-edge, shields with broken bosses in hours after sundown. Lo, my son!’ Then they disappear. When Conaire and his followers heard the message, fear fell upon them, and the king said: ‘All my taboos have seized me to-night, since those Three [Reds] [are the] banished folks (?).’ In this passage we behold three horsemen of the Sidhe banished from their elfmound because guilty of falsehood. Visible for a time, they precede the king and so violate one of his taboos; and then delivering their fearful prophecy they vanish. These three of the Tuatha De Danann, majestic and powerful and weird in their mystic red, are like the warriors of the ‘gentry’ seen by contemporary seers in West Ireland. Though dead, that is in an invisible world like the dead, yet they are living. It seems that in all three of the textual examples already cited, the scribe has emphasized a different element in the unique nature of the Tuatha De Danann. In the Colloquy it is their eternal youth and beauty, in the Echtra Nerai it is their supremacy over ghosts and demons on Samain and their power to steal mortals away at such a time, and in this last their respect for honesty. And in each case their portrayal corresponds to that of the ‘gentry’ and Sidhe by modern Irishmen; so that the old Fairy-Faith and the new combine to prove the People of the God whose mother was Dana to have been and to be a race of beings who are like mortals, but not mortals, who to the objective world are as though dead, yet to the subjective world are fully living and conscious.
[Pg 291]O’Curry says:—‘The term (sídh, pron. shee), as far as we know it, is always applied in old writings to the palaces, courts, halls, or residences of those beings which in ancient Gaedhelic mythology held the place which ghosts, phantoms, and fairies hold in the superstitions of the present day.’[230] In modern Irish tradition, ‘the People of the Sidhe,’ or simply the Sidhe, refer to the beings themselves rather than to their places of habitation. Partly perhaps on account of this popular opinion that the Sidhe are a subterranean race, they are sometimes described as gods of the earth or dei terreni, as in the Book of Armagh; and since it was believed that they, like the modern fairies, control the ripening of crops and the milk-giving of cows, the ancient Irish rendered to them regular worship and sacrifice, just as the Irish of to-day do by setting out food at night for the fairy-folk to eat.
Thus after their conquest, these Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann in retaliation, and perhaps to show their power as agricultural gods, destroyed the wheat and milk of their conquerors, the Sons of Mil, as fairies to-day can do; and the Sons of Mil were constrained to make a treaty with their supreme king, Dagda, who, in Cóir Anmann (§ 150), is himself called an earth-god. Then when the treaty was made the Sons of Mil were once more able to gather wheat in their fields and to drink the milk of their cows;[231] and we can suppose that ever since that time their descendants, who are the people of Ireland, remembering that treaty, have continued to reverence the People of the Goddess Dana by pouring libations of milk to them and by making them offerings of the fruits of the earth.
The Palaces of the Sidhe
The marvellous palaces to which the Tuatha De Danann retired when conquered by the race of Mil were hidden in[Pg 292] the depths of the earth, in hills, or under ridges more or less elevated.[232] At the time of their conquest, Dagda their high king made a distribution of all such palaces in his kingdom. He gave one síd to Lug, son of Ethne, another to Ogme; and for himself retained two—one called Brug na Boinne, or Castle of the Boyne, because it was situated on or near the River Boyne near Tara, and the other called Síd or Brug Maic ind Oc, which means Enchanted Palace or Castle of the Son of the Young. And this Mac ind Oc was Dagda’s own son by the queen Boann, according to some accounts, so that as the name (Son of the Young) signifies, Dagda and Boann, both immortals, both Tuatha De Danann, were necessarily always young, never knowing the touch of disease, or decay, or old age. Not until Christianity gained its psychic triumph at Tara, through the magic of Patrick prevailing against the magic of the Druids—who seem to have stood at that time as mediators between the People of the Goddess Dana and the pagan Irish—did the Tuatha De Danann lose their immortal youthfulness in the eyes of mortals and become subject to death. In the most ancient manuscripts of Ireland the pre-Christian doctrine of the immortality of the divine race ‘persisted intact and without restraint’;[233] but in the Senchus na relec or ‘History of the Cemeteries’, from the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, and in the Lebar gabala or ‘Book of the Conquests’, from the Book of Leinster, it was completely changed by the Christian scribes.[233]
When Dagda thus distributed the underground palaces, Mac ind Oc, or as he was otherwise called Oengus, was absent and hence forgotten. So when he returned, naturally he complained to his father, and the Brug na Boinne, the king’s own residence, was ceded to him for a night and a day, but Oengus maintained that it was for ever. This palace was a most marvellous one: it contained three trees which always bore fruit, a vessel full of excellent drink, and two pigs—one alive and the other nicely cooked ready to eat [Pg 293]at any time; and in this palace no one ever died.[234] In the Colloquy, Caeilte tells of a mountain containing a fairy palace which no man save Finn and six companions, Caeilte being one of these, ever entered. The Fenians, while hunting, were led thither by a fairy woman who had changed her shape to that of a fawn in order to allure them; and the night being wild and snowy they were glad to take shelter therein. Beautiful damsels and their lovers were the inhabitants of the palace; in it there was music and abundance of food and drink; and on its floor stood a chair of crystal.[235] In another fairy palace, the enchanted cave of Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann, had sway; ‘and so soon as he perceived that the hounds’ cry now sounded deviously, he bade his three daughters (that were full of sorcery) to go and take vengeance on Finn for his hunting’[236]—just as nowadays the ‘good people’ take vengeance on one of our race if a fairy domain is violated. Frequently the fairy palace is under a lake, as in the christianized story of the Disappearance of Caenchomrac:—Once when ‘the cleric chanted his psalms, he saw [come] towards him a tall man that emerged out of the loch: from the bottom of the water that is to say.’ This tall man informed the cleric that he came from an under-water monastery, and explained ‘that there should be subaqueous inhabiting by men is with God no harder than that they should dwell in any other place’.[237] In all these ancient literary accounts of the Sidhe-palaces we easily recognize the same sort of palaces as those described to-day by Gaelic peasants as the habitations of the ‘gentry’, or ‘good people’, or ‘people of peace.’ Such habitations are in mountain caverns like those of Ben Bulbin or Knock Ma, or in fairy hills or knolls like the Fairy-Hill at Aberfoyle on which Robert Kirk is believed to have been taken, or beneath lakes. This brings us directly to the way in which the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann of the olden times took fine-looking young men and maidens.
How the Sidhe ‘took’ Mortals
Perhaps one of the earliest and most famous literary accounts of such a taking is that concerning Aedh, son of Eochaid Lethderg son of the King of Leinster, who is represented as contemporary with Patrick.[238] While Aedh was enjoying a game of hurley with his boy companions near the sídh of Liamhain Softsmock, two of the sídh-women, who loved the young prince, very suddenly appeared, and as suddenly took him away with them into a fairy palace and kept him there three years. It happened, however, that he escaped at the end of that time, and, knowing the magical powers of Patrick, went to where the holy man was, and thus explained himself:—‘Against the youths my opponents I (i. e. my side) took seven goals; but at the last one that I took, here come up to me two women clad in green mantles: two daughters of Bodhb derg mac an Daghda, and their names Slad and Mumain. Either of them took me by a hand, and they led me off to a garish brugh; whereby for now three years my people mourn after me, the sídh-folk caring for me ever since, and until last night I got a chance opening to escape from the brugh, when to the number of fifty lads we emerged out of the sídh and forth upon the green. Then it was that I considered the magnitude of that strait in which they of the sídh had had me, and away from the brugh I came running to seek thee, holy Patrick.’ ‘That,’ said the saint, ‘shall be to thee a safeguard, so that neither their power nor their dominion shall any more prevail against thee.’ And so when Patrick had thus made Aedh proof against the power of the fairy-folk, he kept him with him under the disguise of a travelling minstrel until, arriving in Leinster, he restored him to his father the king and to his inheritance: Aedh enters the palace in his minstrel disguise; and in the presence of the royal assembly Patrick commands him: ‘Doff now once for all thy dark capacious hood, and well mayest thou wear thy father’s spear!’ When the lad removed his hood, and none there but recognized him, great [Pg 295]was the surprise. He seemed like one come back from the dead, for long had his heirless father and people mourned for him. ‘By our word,’ exclaimed the assembly in their joyous excitement, ‘it is a good cleric’s gift!’ And the king said: ‘Holy Patrick, seeing that till this day thou hast nourished him and nurtured, let not the Tuatha De Danann’s power any more prevail against the lad.’ And Patrick answered: ‘That death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained is the one that he will have.’ This ancient legend shows clearly that the Tuatha De Danann, or Sidhe, in the time when the scribe wrote the Colloquy were thought of in the same way as now, as able to take beautiful mortals whom they loved, and able to confer upon them fairy immortality which prevented ‘that death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained’.
Mortals, did they will it, could live in the world of the Sidhe for ever, and we shall see this more fully in our study of the Otherworld. But here it will be interesting to learn that, unlike Aedh, whom some perhaps would call a foolish youth, Laeghaire, also a prince, for he was the son of the king of Connaught, entered a dún of the Sidhe, taking fifty other warriors with him; and he and his followers found life in Fairyland so pleasant that they all decided to enjoy it eternally. Accordingly, when they had been there a year, they planned to return to Connaught in order to bid the king and his people a final farewell. They announced their plan, and Fiachna of the Sidhe told them how to accomplish it safely:—‘If ye would come back take with you horses, but by no means dismount from off them’; ‘So it was done: they went their way and came upon a general assembly in which Connaught, as at the year expired, mourned for the aforesaid warrior-band, whom now all at once they perceived above them (i. e. on higher ground). Connaught sprang to meet them, but Laeghaire cried: “Approach us not [to touch us]: ’tis to bid you farewell that we are here!” “Leave me not!” Crimthann, his father, said: “Connaught’s royal power be thine; their silver and their gold, their horses with their bridles, and their[Pg 296] noble women be at thy discretion, only leave me not!” But Laeghaire turned from them and so entered again into the sídh, where with Fiachna he exercises joint kingly rule; nor is he as yet come out of it.’[239]
Hill Visions of Sidhe Women
There are many recorded traditions which represent certain hills as mystical places whereon men are favoured with visions of fairy women. Thus, one day King [Pg 297]Muirchertach came forth to hunt on the border of the Brugh (near Stackallan Bridge, County Meath), and his companions left him alone on his hunting-mound. ‘He had not been there long when he saw a solitary damsel beautifully formed, fair-haired, bright-skinned, with a green mantle about her sitting near him on the turfen mound; and it seemed to him that of womankind he had never beheld her equal in beauty and refinement.’[240] In the Mabinogion of Pwyll, Prince of Dyvet, which seems to be only a Brythonic treatment of an original Gaelic tale, Pwyll seating himself on a mound where any mortal sitting might see a prodigy, saw a fairy woman ride past on a white horse, and she clad in a garment of shining gold. Though he tried to have his servitor on the swiftest horse capture her, ‘There was some magic about the lady that kept her always the same distance ahead, though she appeared to be riding slowly.’ When on the second day Pwyll returned to the mound the fairy woman came riding by as before, and the servitor again gave unsuccessful chase. Pwyll saw her in the same manner on the third day. He thereupon gave chase himself, and when he exclaimed to her, ‘For the sake of the man whom you love, wait for me!’ she stopped; and by mutual arrangement the two agreed to meet and to marry at the end of a year.[241]
The Minstrels Or Musicians of the Sidhe
Not only did the fairy-folk of more ancient times enjoy wonderful palaces full of beauty and riches, and a life of eternal youth, but they also had, even as now, minstrelsy and rare music—music to which that of our own world could not be compared at all; for even Patrick himself said that it would equal the very music of heaven if it were not for ‘a twang of the fairy spell that infests it’.[242] And this is how it was that Patrick heard the fairy music:—As he was travelling through Ireland he once sat down on a grassy[Pg 298] knoll, as he often did in the good old Irish way, with Ulidia’s king and nobles and Caeilte also: ‘Nor were they long there before they saw draw near them a scológ or “non-warrior” that wore a fair green mantle having in it a fibula of silver; a shirt of yellow silk next his skin, over and outside that again a tunic of soft satin, and with a timpán (a sort of harp) of the best slung on his back. “Whence comest thou, scológ?” asked the king. “Out of the sídh of the Daghda’s son Bodhb Derg, out of Ireland’s southern part.” “What moved thee out of the south, and who art thou thyself?” “I am Cascorach, son of Cainchinn that is ollave to the Tuatha De Danann, and am myself the makings of an ollave (i. e. an aspirant to the grade). What started me was the design to acquire knowledge, and information, and lore for recital, and the Fianna’s mighty deeds of valour, from Caeilte son of Ronan.” Then he took his timpán and made for them music and minstrelsy, so that he sent them slumbering off to sleep.’ And Cascorach’s music was pleasing to Patrick, who said of it: ‘Good indeed it were, but for a twang of the fairy spell that infests it; barring which nothing could more nearly than it resemble Heaven’s harmony.’[243] And that very night which followed the day on which the ollave to the Tuatha De Danann came to them was the Eve of Samain. There was also another of these fairy timpán-players called ‘the wondrous elfin man’, ‘Aillén mac Midhna of the Tuatha De Danann, that out of sídh Finnachaidh to the northward used to come to Tara: the manner of his coming being with a musical timpán in his hand, the which whenever any heard he would at once sleep. Then, all being lulled thus, out of his mouth Aillén would emit a blast of fire. It was on the solemn Samain-Day (November Day) he came in every year, played his timpán, and to the fairy music that he made all hands would fall asleep. With his breath he used to blow up the flame and so, during a three-and-twenty years’ spell, yearly burnt up Tara with all her gear.’ And it is said that Finn, finally overcoming the magic of Aillén, slew him.[243]
[Pg 299]Perhaps in the first musician, Cascorach, though he is described as the son of a Tuatha De Danann minstrel, we behold a mortal like one of the many Irish pipers and musicians who used to go, or even go yet, to the fairy-folk to be educated in the musical profession, and then come back as the most marvellous players that ever were in Ireland; though if Cascorach were once a mortal it seems that he has been quite transformed in bodily nature so as to be really one of the Tuatha De Danann himself. But Aillén mac Midhna is undoubtedly one of the mighty ‘gentry’ who could—as we heard from County Sligo—destroy half the human race if they wished. Aillén visits Tara, the old psychic centre both for Ireland’s high-kings and its Druids. He comes as it were against the conquerors of his race, who in their neglectfulness no longer render due worship and sacrifice on the Feast of Samain to the Tuatha De Danann, the gods of the dead, at that time supreme; and then it is that he works his magic against the royal palaces of the kings and Druids on the ancient Hill. And to overcome the magic of Aillén and slay him, that is, make it impossible for him to repeat his annual visits to Tara, it required the might of the great hero Finn, who himself was related to the same Sidhe race, for by a woman of the Tuatha De Danann he had his famous son Ossian (Oisin).[244]
In Gilla dé, who is Manannan mac Lir, the greatest magician of the Tuatha De Danann, disguised as a being who can disappear in the twinkling of an eye whenever he wishes, and reappear unexpectedly as a ‘kern that wore garb of yellow stripes’, we meet with another fairy musician. And to him O’Donnell says:—‘By Heaven’s grace again, since first I heard the fame of them that within the hills and under the earth beneath us make the fairy music, … music sweeter than thy strains I have never heard; thou art in sooth a most melodious rogue!’[245] And again it is said of [Pg 300]him:—‘Then the gilla decair taking a harp played music so sweet … and the king after a momentary glance at his own musicians never knew which way he went from him.’[246]
Social Organization and Warfare among the Sidhe
So far, we have seen only the happy side of the life of the Sidhe-folk—their palaces and pleasures and music; but there was a more human (or anthropomorphic) side to their nature in which they wage war on one another, and have their matrimonial troubles even as we moderns. And we turn now to examine this other side of their life, to behold the Sidhe as a warlike race; and as we do so let us remember that the ‘gentry’ in the Ben Bulbin country and in all Ireland, and the people of Finvara in Knock Ma, and also the invisible races of California, are likewise described as given to war and mighty feats of arms.
The invisible Irish races have always had a very distinct social organization, so distinct in fact that Ireland can be divided according to its fairy kings and fairy queens and their territories even now;[247] and no doubt we see in this how the ancient Irish anthropomorphically projected into an animistic belief their own social conditions and racial characteristics. And this social organization and territorial division ought to be understood before we discuss the social troubles and consequent wars of the Sidhe-folk. For example in Munster Bodb was king and his enchanted palace was called the Síd of the Men of Femen;[248] and we already know about the over-king Dagda and his Boyne palace near Tara. In more modern times, especially in popular fairy-traditions, Eevil or Eevinn (Aoibhill or Aoibhinn) of the Craig Liath or Grey Rock is a queen of the Munster fairies;[249] and Finvara is king of the Connaught fairies. There are also the Irish fairy-queens [Pg 301]Cleeona (Cliodhna, or in an earlier form Clidna [cf. p. 356]) and Aine
We are now prepared to see the Tuatha De Danann in their domestic troubles and wars; and the following story is as interesting as any, for in it Dagda himself is the chief actor. Once when his own son Oengus fell sick of a love malady, King Dagda, who ruled all the Sidhe-folk in Ireland, joined forces with Ailill and Medb in order to compel Ethal Anbual to deliver up his beautiful daughter Caer whom Oengus loved. When Ethal Anbual’s palace had been stormed and Ethal Anbual reduced to submission, he declared he had no power over his daughter Caer, for on the first of November each year, he said, she changed to a swan, or from a swan to a maiden again. ‘The first of November next,’ he added, ‘my daughter will be under the form of a swan, near the Loch bel Draccon. Marvellous birds will be seen there: my daughter will be surrounded by a hundred and fifty other swans.’ When the November Day arrived, Oengus went to the lake, and, seeing the swans and recognizing Caer, plunged into the water and instantly became a swan with her. While under the form of swans, Oengus and Caer went together to the Boyne palace of the king Dagda, his father, and remained there; and their singing was so sweet that all who heard it slept three days and three nights.[250] In this story, new elements in the nature of the Sidhe appear, though like modern ones: the Sidhe are able to assume other forms than their own, are subject to enchantments like mortals; and when under the form of swans are in some perhaps superficial aspects like the swan-maidens in stories which are world-wide, and their swan-song has the same sweetness and magical effect as in other countries.[251]
In the Rennes Dinnshenchas there is a tale about a war among the ‘men of the Elfmounds’ over ‘two lovable maidens who dwelt in the elfmound’, and when they delivered the battle ‘they all shaped themselves into the [Pg 302]shapes of deer’.[252] Midir’s sons under Donn mac Midir, in rebellion against the Daghda’s son Bodh Derg, fled away to an obscure sídh, where in yearly battle they met the hosts of the other Tuatha De Danann under Bodh Derg; and it was into this sídh or fairy palace on the very eve before the annual contest that Finn and his six companions were enticed by the fairy woman in the form of a fawn, to secure their aid.[253] And in another tale, Laeghaire, son of the king of Connaught, with fifty warriors, plunged into a lake to the fairy world beneath it, in order to assist the fairy man, who came thence to them, to recover his wife stolen by a rival.[253]
The Sidhe as War-Goddesses or the Badb
It is in the form of birds that certain of the Tuatha De Danann appear as war-goddesses and directors of battle,[254]—and we learn from one of our witnesses (p. 46) that the ‘gentry’ or modern Sidhe-folk take sides even now in a great war, like that between Japan and Russia. It is in their relation to the hero Cuchulainn that one can best study the People of the Goddess Dana in their rôle as controllers of human war. In the greatest of the Irish epics, the Taín Bó Cuailnge, where Cuchulainn is under their influence, these war-goddesses are called Badb[255] (or Bodb) which here seems to be a collective term for Neman, Macha, and Morrigu (or Morrigan)[256]—each of whom exercises a particular supernatural power. Neman appears as the confounder of armies, so that friendly bands, bereft of their senses by her, slaughter one another; Macha is a fury that riots and revels among [Pg 303]the slain; while Morrigu, the greatest of the three, by her presence infuses superhuman valour into Cuchulainn, nerves him for the cast, and guides the course of his unerring spear. And the Tuatha De Danann in infusing this valour into the great hero show themselves—as we already know them to be on Samain Eve—the rulers of all sorts of demons of the air and awful spirits:—In the Book of Leinster (fol. 57, B 2) it is recorded that ‘the satyrs, and sprites, and maniacs of the valleys, and demons of the air, shouted about him, for the Tuatha De Danann were wont to impart their valour to him, in order that he might be more feared, more dreaded, more terrible, in every battle and battle-field, in every combat and conflict, into which he went.’
The Battles of Moytura seem in most ways to be nothing more than the traditional record of a long warfare to determine the future spiritual control of Ireland, carried on between two diametrically opposed orders of invisible beings, the Tuatha De Danann representing the gods of light and good and the Fomorians representing the gods of darkness and evil. It is said that after the second of these battles ‘The Morrigu, daughter of Ernmas (the Irish war-goddess), proceeded to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which had taken place, to the royal heights of Ireland and to its fairy host and its chief waters and its river-mouths’.[257] For good had prevailed over evil, and it was settled that all Ireland should for ever afterwards be a sacred country ruled over by the People of the Goddess Dana and the Sons of Mil jointly. So that here we see the Tuatha De Danann with their war-goddess fighting their own battles in which human beings play no part.
It is interesting to observe that this Irish war-goddess, the bodb or badb, considered of old to be one of the Tuatha De Danann, has survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief Celtic countries. In Ireland the survival is best seen in the popular and still almost general belief among the peasantry that the fairies often exercise their magical powers under the form of royston-crows; and for this[Pg 304] reason these birds are always greatly dreaded and avoided. The resting of one of them on a peasant’s cottage may signify many things, but often it means the death of one of the family or some great misfortune, the bird in such a case playing the part of a bean-sidhe (banshee). And this folk-belief finds its echo in the recorded tales of Wales, Scotland, and Brittany. In the Mabinogi, ‘Dream of Rhonabwy,’ Owain, prince of Rheged and a contemporary of Arthur, has a wonderful crow which always secures him victory in battle by the aid of three hundred other crows under its leadership. In Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands the fairies very often exercise their power in the form of the common hoody crow; and in Brittany there is a folk-tale entitled ‘Les Compagnons’[258] in which the chief actor is a fairy under the form of a magpie who lives in a royal forest just outside Rennes.[259]
W. M. Hennessy has shown that the word bodb or badb, aspirated bodhbh or badhbh (pronounced bov or bav), originally signified rage, fury, or violence, and ultimately implied a witch, fairy, or goddess; and that as the memory of this Irish goddess of war survives in folk-lore, her emblem is the well-known scald-crow, or royston-crow.[260] By referring to Peter O’Connell’s Irish Dictionary we are able to confirm this popular belief which identifies the battle-fairies with [Pg 305]the royston-crow, and to discover that there is a definite relationship or even identification between the Badb and the Bean-sidhe or banshee, as there is in modern Irish folk-lore between the royston-crow and the fairy who announces a death. Badb-catha is made to equal ‘Fionog, a royston-crow, a squall crow’; Badb is defined as a ‘bean-sidhe, a female fairy, phantom, or spectre, supposed to be attached to certain families, and to appear sometimes in the form of squall-crows, or royston-crows’; and the Badb in the three-fold aspect is thus explained: ‘Macha, i. e. a royston-crow; Morrighain, i. e. the great fairy; Neamhan, i. e. Badb catha nó feannóg; a badb catha, or royston-crow.’ Similar explanations are given by other glossarists, and thus the evidence of etymological scholarship as well as that of folk-lore support the Psychological Theory.
The Sidhe in the Battle of Clontarf, a. d. 1014
The People of the Goddess Dana played an important part in human warfare even so late as the Battle of Clontarf, fought near Dublin, April 23, 1014; and at that time fairy women and phantom-hosts were to the Irish unquestionable existences, as real as ordinary men and women. It is recorded in the manuscript story of the battle, of which numerous copies exist, that the fairy woman Aoibheall[261] came to Dunlang O’Hartigan before the battle and begged him not to fight, promising him life and happiness for two hundred years if he would put off fighting for a single day; but the patriotic Irishman expressed his decision to fight for Ireland, and then the fairy woman foretold how he and his friend Murrough, and Brian and Conaing and all the nobles of Erin and even his own son Turlough, were fated to fall in the conflict.
On the eve of the battle, Dunlang comes to his friend Murrough directly from the fairy woman; and Murrough [Pg 306]upon seeing him reproaches him for his absence in these words:—‘Great must be the love and attachment of some woman for thee which has induced thee to abandon me.’ ‘Alas O King,’ answered Dunlang, ‘the delight which I have abandoned for thee is greater, if thou didst but know it, namely, life without death, without cold, without thirst, without hunger, without decay, beyond any delight of the delights of the earth to me, until the judgement, and heaven after the judgement; and if I had not pledged my word to thee I would not have come here; and, moreover, it is fated for me to die on the day that thou shalt die.’ When Murrough has heard this terrible message, the prophecy of his own death in the battle, despondency seizes him; and then it is that he declares that he for Ireland like Dunlang for honour has also sacrificed the opportunity of entering and living in that wonderful Land of Eternal Youth:—‘Often was I offered in hills, and in fairy mansions, this world (the fairy world) and these gifts, but I never abandoned for one night my country nor mine inheritance for them.’
And thus is described the meeting of the two armies at Clontarf, and the demons of the air and the phantoms, and all the hosts of the invisible world who were assembled to scatter confusion and to revel in the bloodshed, and how above them in supremacy rose the Badb:—‘It will be one of the wonders of the day of judgement to relate the description of this tremendous onset. There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad, inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious badb, which was shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them.’[263] It is said of Murrough (Murchadh) as he entered the thick of the fight and prepared to assail the [Pg 307]foreign invaders, the Danes, when they had repulsed the Dal-Cais, that ‘he was seized with a boiling terrible anger, an excessive elevation and greatness of spirit and mind. A bird of valour and championship rose in him, and fluttered over his head and on his breath’.[264]
Conclusion
The recorded or manuscript Fairy-Faith of the Gaels corresponds in all essentials with the living Gaelic Fairy-Faith: the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe, the ‘Gentry’, the ‘Good People’, and the ‘People of Peace’ are described as a race of invisible divine beings eternally young and unfading. They inhabit fairy palaces, enjoy rare feasts and love-making, and have their own music and minstrelsy. They are essentially majestic in their nature; they wage war in their own invisible realm against other of its inhabitants like the ancient Fomorians; they frequently direct human warfare or nerve the arm of a great hero like Cuchulainn; and demons of the air, spirit hosts, and awful unseen creatures obey them. Mythologically they are gods of light and good, able to control natural phenomena so as to make harvests come forth abundantly or not at all. But they are not such mythological beings as we read about in scholarly dissertations on mythology, dissertations so learned in their curious and unreasonable and often unintelligible hypotheses about the workings of the mind among primitive men. The way in which social psychology has deeply affected all such animistic beliefs was pointed out above in chapter iii. In chapter xi, entitled Science and Fairies, our position with respect to the essential nature of the fairy races will be made clear.
SECTION II
BRYTHONIC DIVINITIES AND THE BRYTHONIC FAIRY-FAITH[265]
‘On the one hand we have the man Arthur, whose position we have tried to define, and on the other a greater Arthur, a more colossal figure, of which we have, so to speak, but a torso rescued from the wreck of the Celtic pantheon.’—The Right Hon. Sir John Rhŷs.
The god Arthur and the hero Arthur—Sevenfold evidence to show Arthur as an incarnate fairy king—Lancelot the foster-son of a fairy woman—Galahad the offspring of Lancelot and the fairy woman Elayne—Arthur as a fairy king in Kulhwch and Olwen—Gwynn ab Nudd—Arthur like Dagda, and like Osiris—Brythonic fairy-romances: their evolution and antiquity—Arthur in Nennius, Geoffrey, Wace, and in Layamon—Cambrensis’ Otherworld tale—Norman-French writers of twelfth and thirteenth centuries—Romans d’Aventure and Romans Bretons—Origins of the ‘Matter of Britain’—Fairy-romance episodes in Welsh literature—Brythonic origins.
Arthur and Arthurian Mythology
As we have just considered the Gaelic Divinities in their character as the Fairy-Folk of popular Gaelic tradition, so now we proceed to consider the Brythonic Divinities in the same way, beginning with the greatest of them all, Arthur. Even a superficial acquaintance with the Arthurian Legend [Pg 309]shows how impossible it is to place upon it any one interpretation to the exclusion of other interpretations, for in one aspect Arthur is a Brythonic divinity and in another a sixth-century Brythonic chieftain. But the explanation of this double aspect seems easy enough when we regard the historical Arthur as a great hero, who, exactly as in so many parallel cases of national hero-worship, came—within a comparatively short time—to be enshrined in the imagination of the patriotic Brythons with all the attributes anciently belonging to a great Celtic god called Arthur.[266] The hero and the god were first confused, and then identified,[267] and hence arose that wonderful body of romance which we call Arthurian, and which has become the glory of English literature.
Arthur in the character of a culture hero,[268] with god-like powers to instruct mortals in wisdom, and, also, as a being in some way related to the sun—as a sun-god perhaps—can well be considered the human-divine institutor of the mystic brotherhood known as the Round Table. We ought, probably, to consider Arthur, like Cuchulainn, as a god incarnate in a human body for the purpose of educating the race of men; and thus, while living as a man, related definitely and, apparently, consciously to the invisible gods or fairy-folk. Among the Aztecs and Peruvians in the New World, there was a widespread belief that great heroes who had once been men have now their celestial abode in the sun, and from time to time reincarnate to become teachers of [Pg 310]their less developed brethren of our own race; and a belief of the same character existed among the Egyptians and other peoples of the Old World, including the Celts. It will be further shown, in our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, that anciently among the Gaels and Brythons such heroes as Cuchulainn and Arthur were also considered reincarnate sun-divinities. As a being related to the sun, as a sun-god, Arthur is like Osiris, the Great Being, who with his brotherhood of great heroes and god-companions enters daily the underworld or Hades to battle against the demons and forces of evil,[269] even as the Tuatha De Danann battled against the Fomors. And the most important things in the traditions of the great Brythonic hero connect him directly with this strange world of subjectivity. First of all, his own father, Uthr Bendragon,[270] was a king of Hades, so that Arthur himself, being his child, is a direct descendant of this Otherworld. Second, the Arthurian Legend traces the origin of the Round Table back to Arthur’s father, Hades being ‘the realm whence all culture was fabled to have been derived’.[271] Third, the name of Arthur’s wife, Gwenhwyvar, resolves itself into White Phantom or White Apparition, in harmony with Arthur’s line of descent from the region of phantoms and apparitions and fairy-folk. Thus:—Gwenhwyvar or Gwenhwyfar equals Gwen or Gwenn, a Brythonic word meaning white, and hwyvar, a word not found in the Brythonic dialects, but undoubtedly cognate with the Irish word siabhradh, a fairy, equal to siabhra, siabrae, siabur, a fairy, or ghost, the Welsh and the Irish word going back to the form *seibaro.[272] Hence the name of Arthur’s wife means the white ghost or white phantom, quite in keeping with the nature of the Tuatha De Danann and that of the fairy-folk of Wales or Tylwyth Teg—the ‘Fair Family’.
Fourth, as a link in the chain of evidence connecting [Pg 311]Arthur with the invisible world where the Fairy-People live, his own sister is called Morgan le Fay in the romances,[273] and is thus definitely one of the fairy women who, according to tradition, are inhabitants of the Celtic Otherworld sometimes known as Avalon. Fifth, in the Welsh Triads,[274] Llacheu, the son of Arthur and Gwenhwyvar, is credited with clairvoyant vision, like the fairy-folk, so that he understands the secret nature of all solid and material things; and ‘the story of his death as given in the second part of the Welsh version of the Grail, makes him hardly human at all.’[275] Sixth, the name of Melwas, the abductor of Arthur’s wife, is shown by Sir John Rhŷs to mean a prince-youth or a princely youth, and the same authority considers it probable that, as such, Melwas or Maelwas was a being endowed with eternal youth,—even as Midir, the King of the Tuatha De Danann, who though a thousand years old appeared handsome and youthful. So it seems that the abduction of Gwenhwyfar was really a fairy abduction, such as we read about in the domestic troubles of the Irish fairy-folk, on a level with the abduction of Etain by her Otherworld husband Midir.[276] And in keeping with this superhuman character of the abductor of the White Phantom or Fairy, Chrétien de Troyes, in his metrical romance Le Conte de la Charrette, describes the realm of which Melwas was lord as a place whence no traveller returns.[277] As further proof that the realm of Melwas was meant by Chrétien to be the subjective world, where the god-like Tuatha De Danann, the Tylwyth Teg, and the shades of the dead equally exist, it is said that access to it was by two narrow bridges; ‘one called li Ponz Evages or the Water Bridge, because it was a narrow passage a foot and a half wide and as much in height, with water above and below it as well as on both sides’; the other [Pg 312]li Ponz de l’Espée or the Sword Bridge, because it consisted of the edge of a sword two lances in length.[278] The first bridge, considered less perilous than the other, was chosen by Gauvain (Gwalchmei), when with Lancelot he was seeking to rescue Gwenhwyfar; but he failed to cross it. Lancelot with great trouble crossed the second. In many mythologies and in world-wide folk-tales there is a narrow bridge or bridges leading to the realm of the dead. Even Mohammed in the Koran declares it necessary to cross a bridge as thin as a hair, if one would enter Paradise. And in living folk-lore in Celtic countries, as we found among the Irish peasantry, the crossing of a bridge or stream of water when pursued by fairies or phantoms is a guarantee of protection. There is always the mystic water between the realm of the living and the realm of subjectivity.[279] In ancient Egypt there was always the last voyage begun on the sacred Nile; and in all classical literature Pluto’s realm is entered by crossing a dark, deep river,—the river of forgetfulness between physical consciousness and spiritual consciousness. Burns has expressed this belief in its popular form in his Tam O’Shanter. And in our Arthurian parallel there is a clear enough relation between the beings inhabiting the invisible realm and the Brythonic heroes and gods. How striking, too, as Gaston Paris has pointed out, is the similarity between Melwas’ capturing Gwenhwyvar as she was in the woods a-maying, and the rape of Proserpine by Pluto, the god of Hades, while she was collecting flowers in the fields.[280]
A curious matter in connexion with this episode of Gwenhwyvar’s abduction should claim our attention. Malory relates[281] that when Queen Guenever advised her knights of the Table Round that on the morrow (May Day, when fairies have special powers) she would go on maying, she warned them all to be well-horsed and dressed in green. This was the colour that nearly all the fairy-folk of Britain and [Pg 313]Ireland wear. It symbolizes, as many ancient mystical writings declare, eternal youth, and resurrection or re-birth, as in nature during the springtime, when all vegetation after its death-sleep of winter springs into new life.[282] In the Myvyrian Archaiology,[283] Arthur when he has reached the realm of Melwas speaks with Gwenhwyvar,[284] he being [Pg 314]on a black horse and she on a green one:—‘Green is my steed of the tint of the leaves.’ Arthur’s black horse—black perhaps signifying the dead to whose realm he has gone—being proof against all water, may have been, therefore, proof against the inhabitants of the world of shades and against fairies:—
Black is my steed and brave beneath me,
No water will make him fear,
And no man will make him swerve.
The fairy colour, in different works and among different authors differing both in time and country, continues to attach itself to the abduction episode. Thus, in the fourteenth century the poet D. ab Gwilym alludes to Melwas himself as having a cloak of green:—‘The sleep of Melwas beneath (or in) the green cloak.’ Sir John Rhŷs, who makes this translation, observes that another reading still of y glas glog resolves it into a green bower to which Melwas took Gwenhwyvar.[285] In any case, the reference is significant, and goes far, in combination with the other references, to represent the White Phantom or Fairy and her lover Melwas as beings of a race like the Irish Sidhe or People of the Goddess Dana. And though by no means exhausting all examples tending to prove this point, we pass on to the seventh and most important of our links in the sequence of evidence, the carrying of Arthur to Avalon in a fairy ship by fairy women.
From the first, Arthur was under superhuman guidance and protection. Merlin the magician, born of a spirit or daemon, claimed Arthur before birth and became his teacher afterwards. From the mysterious Lady of the Lake, Arthur received his magic sword Excalibur,[286] and to her returned it, through Sir Bedivere. During all his time on earth the ‘lady [Pg 315]of the lake that was always friendly to King Arthur’[287] watched over him; and once when she saw him in great danger, like the Irish Morrigu who presided over the career of Cuchulainn, she sought to save him, and with the help of Sir Tristram succeeded.[287] The passing of Arthur to Avalon or Faerie seems to be a return to his own native realm of subjectivity. His own sister was with him in the ship, for she was of the invisible country too.[288] And another of his companions on his voyage from the visible to the invisible was his life-guardian Nimue, the lady of the lake. Merlin could not be of the company, for he was already in Faerie with the Fay Vivian. Behold the passing of Arthur as Malory describes it:—‘… thus was he led away in a ship wherein were three queens; that one was King Arthur’s sister, Queen Morgan le Fay; the other was the Queen of Northgalis; the third was the Queen of the Waste Lands. Also there was Nimue, the chief lady of the lake, that had wedded Pelleas the good knight; and this lady had done much for King Arthur, for she would never suffer Sir Pelleas to be in no place where he should be in danger of his life.’[289] Concerning the great Arthur’s return from Avalon we shall speak in the chapter dealing with Re-birth. And we pass now from Arthur and his Brotherhood of gods and fairy-folk to Lancelot and his son Galahad—the two chief knights in the Arthurian Romance.
According to one of the earliest accounts we have of Lancelot, the German poem by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, as analysed by Gaston Paris, he was the son of King Pant and Queen Clarine of Genewis.[290] In consequence of the hatred [Pg 316]of their subjects the royal pair were forced to flee when Lancelot was only a year old. During the flight, the king, mortally wounded, died; and just as the queen was about to be taken captive, a fairy rising in a cloud of mist carried away the infant Lancelot from where his parents had placed him under a tree. The fairy took him to her abode on an island in the midst of the sea, from whence she derived her title of Lady of the Lake, and he, as her adopted son, the name of Lancelot du Lac; and her island-world was called the Land of Maidens. Having lived in that world of Faerie so long, it was only natural that Lancelot should have grown up more like one of its fair-folk than like a mortal. No doubt it was on account of his half-supernatural nature that he fell in love with the White Phantom, Gwenhwyvar, the wife of the king who had power to enter Hades and return again to the land of the living. Who better than Lancelot could have rescued Arthur’s queen? No one else in the court was so well fitted for the task. And it was he who was able to cross one of the magic bridges into the realm of Melwas, the Otherworld, while Gauvain (in the English form, Gawayne) failed.
Malory’s narrative records how Lancelot, while suffering from the malady of madness caused by Gwenhwyvar’s jealous expulsion of Elayne his fairy-sweetheart,—quite a parallel case to that of Cuchulainn when his wife Emer expelled his fairy-mistress Fand,—fought against a wild boar and was terribly wounded, and how afterwards he was nursed by his own Elayne in Fairyland, and healed and restored to his right mind by the Sangreal. Then Sir Ector and Sir Perceval found him there in the Joyous Isle enjoying the companionship of Elayne, where he had been many years, and from that world of Faerie induced him to return to Arthur’s court. And, finally, comes the most important element of all to show how closely related Lancelot is with the fairy world and its people, and how inseparable from that invisible realm another of the fundamental elements in the life of Arthur is—the Quest of the Holy Grail, and the story of Galahad, who of all the knights was pure and good [Pg 317]enough to behold the Sacred Vessel, and who was the offspring of the foster-son of the Lady of the Lake and the fairy woman Elayne.[291]
In the strange old Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen we find Arthur and his knights even more closely identified with the fairy realm than in Malory and the Norman-French writers; and this is important, because the ancient tale is, as scholars think, probably much freer from foreign influences and re-working than the better-known romances of Arthur, and therefore more in accord with genuine Celtic beliefs and folk-lore, as we shall quickly see. The court of King Arthur to which the youth Kulhwch goes seeking aid in his enterprise seems in some ways—though the parallel is not complete enough to be emphasized—to be a more artistic, because literary, picture of that fairy court which the Celtic peasant locates under mountains, in caverns, in hills, and in knolls, a court quite comparable to that of the Irish Sidhe-folk or Tuatha De Danann. Arthur is represented in the midst of a brilliant life where, as in the fairy palaces, there is much feasting; and Kulhwch being invited to the feasting says, ‘I came not here to consume meat and drink.’
And behold what sort of personages from that court Kulhwch has pledged to him, so that by their supernatural assistance he may obtain Olwen, herself perhaps a fairy held under fairy enchantment[292]: the sons of Gwawrddur Kyrvach, [Pg 318]whom Arthur had power to call from the confines of hell; Morvran the son of Tegid, who, because of his ugliness, was thought to be a demon; Sandde Bryd Angel, who was so beautiful that mortals thought him a ministering angel; Henbedestyr, with whom no one could keep pace ‘either on horseback, or on foot’, and who therefore seems to be a spirit of the air; Henwas Adeinawg, with whom ‘no four-footed beast could run the distance of an acre, much less go beyond it’; Sgilti Yscawndroed, who must have been another spirit or fairy, for ‘when he intended to go on a message for his Lord (Arthur, who is like a Tuatha De Danann king), he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way lay through a wood he went along the tops of the trees’, and ‘during his whole life, a blade of reed-grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did one ever break, so lightly did he tread’; Gwallgoyc, who ‘when he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would not let sleep come to the eyes of any whilst he remained there’; Osla Gyllellvawr, who bore a short broad dagger, and ‘when Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek for a narrow place where they might pass the water, and would lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would form a bridge sufficient for the armies of the three Islands of Britain, and of the three islands adjacent, with their spoil.’ It seems very evident that this is the magic bridge, so often typified by a sword or dagger, which connects the world invisible with our own, and over which all shades and spirits pass freely to and fro. In this case we think Arthur is very clearly a ruler of the spirit realm, for, like the great Tuatha De Danann king Dagda, he can command its fairy-like inhabitants, and his army is an army of spirits or fairies. The unknown author of Kulhwch, like Spenser in modern times in his Faerie Queene, seems to have made the Island of Britain the realm of Faerie—the Celtic Otherworld—and Arthur its king. But let us take a look at more of the men pledged to [Pg 319]Kulhwch from among Arthur’s followers: Clust the son of Clustveinad, who possessed clairaudient faculties of so extraordinary a kind that ‘though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her nest in the morning’; and the wonderful Kai, who could live nine days and nine nights under water, for his breath lasted this long, and he could exist the same length of time without sleep. ‘A wound from Kai’s sword no physician could heal.’ And at will he was as tall as the highest tree in the forest. ‘And he had another peculiarity: so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire.’
Yet besides all these strange knights, Arthur commanded a being who is without any reasonable doubt a god or ruler of the subjective realm—‘Gwynn ab Nudd, whom God has placed over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy the present race. He will never be spared thence.’ Whatever each one of us may think of this wonderful assembly of warriors and heroes who recognized in Arthur their chief, they are certainly not beings of the ordinary type,—in fact they seem not of this world, but of that hidden land to which we all shall one day journey.[293] But to avoid too much conjecture and to speak with a degree of scientific exactness as to how Arthur and these companions of his are to be considered, let us undertake a brief investigation into the mythological character and nature of the chief one of them next to the great hero—Gwynn ab Nudd. Professor J. Loth has said that ‘nothing shows better the evolution of mythological personages than the history of Gwynn’;[294] and in Irish we have the equivalent form of Nudd in the name Nuada—famous for having had a hand [Pg 320]of silver; and Nuada of the Silver Hand was a king of the Tuatha De Danann. The same authority thus describes Gwynn, the son of Nudd:—‘Gwynn, like his father Nudd, is an ancient god of the Britons and of the Gaels. Christian priests have made of him a demon. The people persisted in regarding him as a powerful and rich king, the sovereign of supernatural beings.’[295] And referring to Gwynn, Professor Loth in his early edition of Kulhwch says:—‘Our author has had an original idea: he has left him in hell, to which place Christianity had made him descend, but for a motive which does him the greatest honour: God has given him the strength of demons to control them and to prevent them from destroying the present race of men: he is indispensable down there.’[295] Lady Guest calls Gwynn the King of Faerie,[296] the ruler of the Tylwyth Teg or ‘Family of Beauty’, who are always joyful and well-disposed toward mortals; and also the ruler of the Elves (Welsh Ellyllon), a goblin race who take special delight in misleading travellers and in playing mischievous tricks on men. It is even said that Gwynn himself is given to indulging in the same mischievous amusements as his elvish subjects.
The evidence now set forth seems to suggest clearly and even definitely that Arthur in his true nature is a god of the subjective world, a ruler of ghosts, demons, and demon rulers, and fairies; that the people of his court are more like the Irish Sidhe-folk than like mortals; and that as a great king he is comparable to Dagda the over-king of all the Tuatha De Danann. Arthur and Osiris, two culture heroes and sun-gods, as we suggested at first, are strikingly parallel. Osiris came from the Otherworld to this one, became the first Divine Ruler and Culture Hero of Egypt, and then returned to the Otherworld, where he is now a king. Arthur’s father was a ruler in the Otherworld, and Arthur evidently came from there to be the Supreme Champion of the Brythons, and then returned to that realm whence he took his origin, a realm which poets called Avalon. The passing of Arthur seems mystically to represent the sunset over the Western Ocean: Arthur disappears beneath the horizon into the Lower World which is also the Halls of Osiris, wherein Osiris journeys between sunset and sunrise, between death and re-birth. Merlin found the infant Arthur floating on the waves: the sun rising across the waters is this birth of Arthur, the birth of Osiris. In the chapter on Re-birth, evidence will be offered to show that as a culture hero Arthur is to be regarded as a sun-god incarnate in a human body to teach the Brythons arts and sciences and hidden things—even as Prometheus and Zeus are said to have come to earth to teach the Greeks; and that as a sixth-century warrior, Arthur, in accordance with the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, is an ancient Brythonic hero reincarnate.
Reference: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
Author: W. Y. Evans Wentz