CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN
Of that part of every Irish pedigree which runs back from the first
century to Milesius nothing can be laid down with certainty, nor indeed
can there be any _absolute certainty_ in affirming that Irish pedigrees
from the eleventh to the third century are reliable--we have only an
amount of cumulative evidence from which we may draw such a deduction
with considerable confidence. The mere fact that these pedigrees are
traced back a thousand years further through Irish kings and heroes,
and end in a son of Milesius, need not in the least affect--as in
popular estimation it too often does--the credibility of the last
seventeen hundred years, which stands upon its own merits.
On the contrary, such a continuation is just what we should expect.
In the Irish genealogies the sons of Milesius occupy the place that
in other early genealogies is held by the gods. And the sons of
Milesius were possibly the tutelary gods of the Gael. We have seen
how one of them was so, at least in folk belief, and was addressed in
semi-seriousness as still living and reigning even in the last century.
All the Germanic races looked upon themselves as descended from gods.
The Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings were traced
back either to Woden or to some of his companions or sons.[1] It was
the same with the Greeks, to whom the Celts bear so close a similitude.
Their Herakleids, Asklepiads, Æakids, Neleids, and Daedalids, are a
close counterpart to our Eremonians, Eberians, Ithians, and Irians, and
in each case all the importance was attached to the primitive eponymous
hero or god from whom they sprang. Without him the whole pedigree
became uninteresting, unfinished, headless. These beliefs exercised
full power even upon the ablest and most cultured Greeks. Aristotle
and Hippocratês, for instance, considered themselves descended from
Asklêpius, Thucidydes from Æakus, and Socrates from Daedalus; just as
O'Neill and O'Donnell did from Eremon, O'Brien from Eber, and Magennis
from Ir. It was to the divine or heroic fountain heads of the race, not
so much as to the long and mostly barren list of names which led up to
it, that the real importance was attached. It is not in Ireland alone
that we see mythology condensing into a dated genealogy. The same thing
has happened in Persian history, and the history of Denmark by Saxo
Grammaticus affords many such instances. In Greece the Neleid family
of Pylus traced their origin to Neptune, the Lacedæmonian kings traced
theirs to Cadmus and Danaüs, and Hekatæus of Miletus was the fifteenth
descendant of a god.
Again we meet with in Teutonic and Hellenic mythology the same
difficulty that meets us in our own--that of distinguishing gods from
heroes and heroes from men. The legends of the Dagda and of Angus of
the Boyne and the Tuatha De Danann, of Tighearnmas and the Fomorians,
of Lugh the Long-handed and the children of Tuireann--all evidently
mythologic--were treated in the same manner, recited by the same
tongues, and regarded with the same unwavering belief, as the history
of Conor mac Nessa and Déirdre, of Cuchulain and Mève, or that of
Conn of the Hundred Battles, Owen Mór, Finn mac Cool, and the Fenians.
The early Greek, in the same way, treated the stories of Apollo and
Artemis, of Arês and Aphroditê, just as he did those of Diomede and
Helen, Meleager and Althæa, Achilles, or the voyage of the _Argo_.
All were in a primitive and uncritical age received with the same
unsuspicious credulity, and there was no hard-and-fast line drawn
between gods and men. Just as the Mórrígan, the war-goddess, has her
eye dashed out by Cuchulain, so do we find in Homer gods wounded by
heroes. Thus, too, Apollo is condemned to serve Admetus, and Hercules
is sold as a slave to Omphalê. Herodotus himself confesses that he is
unable to determine whether a certain Thracian god Zalmoxis, was a
god or a man,[2] and he finds the same difficulty regarding Dionysus
and Pan; while Plutarch refuses to determine whether Janus was a god
or a king;[3] and Herakleitus the philosopher, confronted by the same
difficulty, made the admirable _mot_ that men were "mortal gods," gods
were "immortal men."[4]
In our literature, although the fact does not always appear distinctly,
the Dagda, Angus Óg, Lugh the Long-handed, Ogma, and their fellows are
the equivalents of the immortal gods, while certainly Cuchulain and
Conor and probably Curigh Mac Daire, Conall Cearnach, and the other
famous Red Branch chiefs, whatever they may have been in reality, are
the equivalent of the Homeric heroes, that is to say, believed to
have been epigoni of the gods, and therefore greater than ordinary
human beings; while just as in Greek story there are the cycles of
the war round Thebes, the voyage of the _Argo_ the fate of Œdipus,
etc., so we have in Irish numerous smaller groups of epic stories--now
unfortunately mostly lost or preserved in digests--which, leaving out
the Cuchulain and Fenian cycles, centre round such minor characters as
Macha, who founded Emania, Leary Lore, Labhraidh [Lowry] the Mariner,
and others.
That the Irish gods die in both saga and annals like so many human
beings, in no wise militates against the supposition of their godhead.
Even the Greek did not always consider his gods as eternal. A study of
comparative mythology teaches that gods are in their original essence
magnified men, and subject to all men's changes and chances. They are
begotten and born like men. They eat, sleep, feel sickness, sorrow,
pain, like men. "Like men," says Grimm, "they speak a language, feel
passions, transact affairs, are clothed and armed, possess dwellings
and utensils." Being man-like in these things, they are also man-like
in their deaths. They are only on a greater scale than we. "This
appears to me," says Grimm,[5] "a fundamental feature in the faith
of the heathen, that they allowed to their gods not an unlimited
and unconditional duration, but only a term of life far exceeding
that of man." As their shape is like the shape of man only vaster,
so are their lives like the lives of men only indefinitely longer.
"With our ancestors [the Teutons]," said Grimm, "the thought of the
gods being immortal retires into the background. The Edda never
calls them 'eylifir' or 'ôdauðligir,' and their death is spoken of
without disguise." So is it with us also. The Dagda dies, slain in the
battle of North Moytura; the three "gods of the De Danann" die at the
instigation of Lugh; and the great Lugh himself, from whom Lugdunum,
now Lyons, takes its name, and to whom early Celtic inscriptions are
found, shares the same fate. Manannán is slain, so is Ogma, and so
are many more. And yet though recorded as slain they do not wholly
disappear. Manannán came back to Bran riding in his chariot across the
Ocean,[6] and Lugh makes his frequent appearances amongst the living.
[1] These genealogies were in later times, like the Irish ones,
extended to Noah.
[2] Herod, iv. 94-96.
[3] Numa, ch. xix.
[4] "θεοὶ θνητοὶ," "ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι." It is most curious to find this
so academic question dragged into the hard light of day and subjected
to the scrutiny of so prosaic a person as the Roman tax-collector.
Under the Roman Empire all lands in Greece belonging to the immortal
gods were exempted from tribute, and the Roman tax-collector refused
to recognise as immortal gods any deities who had once been men. The
confusion arising from such questions offered an admirable target to
Lucian for his keenest shafts of ridicule.
[5] "Deutsche Mythologie," article on the Condition of the Gods.
[6] "Voyage of Bran mac Febail," Nutt and Kuno Meyer, vol. i. p. 16.