THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE
The cycle of the mythological stories which group themselves round the
early invasions of Erin is sparsely represented in Irish manuscripts.
Not only is their number less, but their substance is more confused
than that of the other cycles. To the comparative mythologist and the
folk-lorist, however, they are perhaps the most interesting of all, as
throwing more light than any of the others upon the early religious
ideas of the race. Most of the sagas connected with this pre-Milesian
cycle are now to be found only in brief digests preserved in the
Leabhar Gabhála,[1] or Book of Invasions of Ireland, of which large
fragments exist in the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, and which
Michael O'Clery (collecting from all the ancient sources which he could
find in his day) rewrote about the year 1630.
This tells us all the early history of Ireland and of the races that
inhabited it before our forefathers landed. It tells us of how first
a man called Partholan made a settlement in Ireland, but how in time
he and his people all died of the plague, leaving the land deserted;
and how after that the Nemedians, or children of Nemed, colonised the
island and multiplied in it, until they began to be oppressed by the
Fomorians, who are usually described as African sea-robbers, but the
etymology of whose name seems to point to a mythological origin "men
from under sea."[2] A number of battles took place between the rival
hosts, and the Fomorians were defeated in three battles, but after the
death of Nemed, who, like Partholan, died of a plague, the Fomorians
oppressed his people again, and, led by a chief called Conaing, built a
great tower upon Tory, _i.e._, Tower Island, off the north-west coast
of Donegal. On the eve of every Samhain [Sou-an, or All Hallow's]
the wretched Nemedians had to deliver up to these masters two-thirds
of their children, corn, and cattle. Driven to desperation by these
exactions they rose in arms, stormed the tower, and slew Conaing, all
which the Book of Invasions describes at length. The Fomorians being
reinforced, the Nemedians fought them a second time in the same place,
but in this battle most of them were killed or drowned, the tide
having come in and washed over them and their foes alike. The crew
of one ship, however, escaped, and these, after a further sojourn of
seven years in Ireland, led out of it the surviving remnants of their
race with the exception of a very few who remained behind subject
to the Fomorians. Those who left Ireland divided into three bands:
one sought refuge in Greece, where they again fell into slavery; the
second went--some say--to the north of Europe; and the third, headed
by a chief called Briton Mael--Hence, say the Irish, the name of Great
Britain--found refuge in Scotland, where their descendants remained
until the Cruithni, or Picts, overcame them.
After a couple of hundred years the Nemedians who had fled to Greece
came back again, calling themselves Firbolg,[3] _i.e._, "sack" or "bag"
men, and held Ireland for about thirty-five years in peace, when
another tribe of invaders appeared upon the scene. These were no less
than the celebrated Tuatha De Danann, who turned out to be, in fact,
the descendants of the second band of Nemedians who had fled to the
north of Europe, and who returned about thirty-six years later than
their kinsmen, the Firbolg.
The Tuatha De Danann soon overcame the Firbolg, and drove them, after
the Battle of North Moytura,[4] into the islands along the coast, to
Aran, Islay, Rachlin, and the Hebrides,[5] after which they assumed the
sovereignty of the island to themselves.
This sovereignty they maintained for about two hundred years, until
the ancestors of the present Irish, the Scots, or Gaels, or Milesians,
as they are variously called, landed and beat the Tuatha De Danann, and
reigned in their stead until they, too, in their turn were conquered
by the English. The Book of Conquests is largely concerned with their
landing and first settlements and their battles with the De Danann
people whom they ended in completely overcoming, after which the
Tuatha Dé assume a very obscure position. They appear to have for the
most part retired off the surface of the country into the green hills
and mounds, and lived in these, often appearing amongst the Milesian
population, and sometimes giving their daughters in marriage to them.
From this out they are confounded with the _Sidhe_ [Shee], or spirits,
now called fairies, and to this very day I have heard old men, when
speaking of the fairies who inhabit ancient raths and interfere
occasionally in mortal concerns either for good or evil, call them by
the name of the Tuatha De Danann.
The first battle of Moytura was fought between the Tuatha De Danann
and the Firbolg, who were utterly routed, but Nuada, the king of the
Tuatha Dé, lost his hand in the battle. As he was thus suffering
from a personal blemish, he could be no longer king, and the people
accordingly decided to bestow the sovereignty on Breas [Bras],[6] whose
mother was a De Danann, but whose father was a king of the Fomorians,
a people who had apparently never lost sight of or wholly left Ireland
since the time of their battles with the Nemedians over two hundred
years before. The mother of Breas, Eiriu,[7] was a person of authority,
and her son was elected to the sovereignty on the understanding that
if his reign was found unsatisfactory he should resign. He gave seven
pledges of his intention of doing so. At this time the Fomorians again
smote Ireland heavily with their imposts and taxes, as they had done
before when the Nemedians inhabited it. The unfortunate De Dannan
people were reduced to a state of misery. Ogma[8] was obliged to carry
wood, and the Dagda himself to build raths for their masters, and they
were so far reduced as to be weak with hunger.
In the meantime the kingship of Breas was not successful. He was hard
and niggardly. As the saga of the second battle of Moytura puts it--
"The chiefs of the Tuatha De Danann were dissatisfied, for Breas did
not grease their knives; in vain came they to visit Breas; their
breaths did not smell of ale. Neither their poets, nor bards, nor
druids, nor harpers, nor flute-players, nor musicians, nor jugglers,
nor fools appeared before them, nor came into the palace to amuse
them."
Matters reached a crisis when the poet Coirpné came to demand
hospitality and was shown "into a little house, small, narrow, black,
dark, where was neither fire nor furniture nor bed. He was given three
little dry loaves on a little plate. When he rose in the morning he
was not thankful." He gave vent then to the first satire ever uttered
in Ireland, which is still preserved in eight lines which would be
absolutely unintelligible except for the ancient glosses.
After this the people of the De Danann race demanded the abdication
of Breas, which he had promised in case his reign did not please
them. He acknowledged his obligation to them, but requested a delay
of seven years, which they allowed him, on condition that he gave
them guarantees to touch nothing belonging to them during that time,
"neither our houses nor our lands, nor our gold, nor our silver, nor
our cattle, nor anything eatable, we shall pay thee neither rent nor
fine to the end of seven years." This was agreed to.
But the intention of Breas in demanding a delay of seven years was
a treacherous one; he meant to approach his father's kindred the
Fomorians, and move them to reinstate him at the point of the sword.
He goes to his mother who tells him who his father is, for up to that
time he had remained in ignorance of it; and she gives him a ring
whereby his father Elatha, a king of the Fomorians, may recognise him.
He departs to the Fomorians, discovers his father and appeals to him
for succour. By his father he is sent to Balor, a king of the Fomorians
of the Isles of Norway--a locality probably ascribed to the Fomorians
after the invasions of the Northmen--and there gathered together an
immense army to subdue the Tuatha De Danann and give the island to
their relation Breas.
In the meantime Nuada, whose hand had been replaced by a silver one,
reascends the throne and is joined by Lugh of the Long-hand, the
"Ildana" or "man of various arts." This Lugh was a brother of the Dagda
and of Ogma, and is perhaps the best-known figure among the De Danann
personalities. Lugh and the Dagda and Ogma and Goibniu the smith and
Diancécht the leech met secretly every day at a place in Meath for
a whole year, and deliberated how best to shake off the yoke of the
Fomorians. Then they held a general meeting of the Tuatha De and spoke
with each one in secret.
"'How wilt thou show thy power?' said Lugh, to the sorcerer Mathgen.
"'By my art,' answered Mathgen, 'I shall throw down the mountains of
Ireland upon the Fomorians, and they shall fall with their heads to
the earth;' then told he to Lugh the names of the twelve principal
mountains of Ireland which were ready to do the bidding of the goddess
Dana[9] and to smite their enemies on every side.
"Lugh asked the cup-bearer: 'In what way wilt thou show thy power?'
"'I shall place,' answered the cup-bearer, 'the twelve principal lakes
of Ireland under the eyes of the Fomorians, but they shall find no
water in them, however great the thirst which they may feel;' and he
enumerated the lakes, 'from the Fomorians the water shall hide itself,
they shall not be able to take a drop of it; but the same lakes will
furnish the Tuatha De Danann with water to drink during the whole war,
though it should last seven years.'
"The Druid Figal, the son of Mamos, said, 'I shall make three rains
of fire fall on the faces of the Fomorian warriors; I shall take
from them two-thirds of their valour and courage, but so often as
the warriors of the De Danann shall breathe out the air from their
breasts, so often shall they feel their courage and valour and
strength increase. Even though the war should last seven years it
shall not fatigue them.'
"The Dagda answered, 'All the feats which you three, sorcerer,
cup-bearer, druid, say you can do, I myself alone shall do them.'
"'It is you then are the Dagda,'[10] said those present, whence came
the name of the Dagda which he afterwards bore."
Lugh then went in search of the three gods of Dana--Brian, Iuchar,
and Iucharba (whom he afterwards put to death for slaying his father,
as is recorded at length in the saga of the "Fate of the Children of
Tuireann"[11]) and with these and his other allies he spent the next
seven years in making preparations for the great struggle with the
Fomorians.
This saga and the whole story of the Tuatha De Danann contending
with the Fomorians, who are in one place in the saga actually called
_sidhe_, or spirits, is all obviously mythological, and has usually
been explained, by D'Arbois de Jubainville and others, as the struggle
between the gods or good spirits and the evil deities.
The following episode also shows the wild mythological character of the
whole.
"Dagda," says the saga, "had a habitation at Glenn-Etin in the north.
He had arranged to meet a woman at Glenn-Etin on the day of Samhan
[November day] just a year, day for day, before the battle of Moytura.
The Unius, a river of Connacht, flows close beside Glenn-Etin, to the
south. Dagda saw the woman bathe herself in the Unius at [Kesh] Coran.
One of the woman's feet in the water touched Allod Eche, that is to
say Echumech to the south, the other foot also in the water touched
Lescuin in the north. Nine tresses floated loose around her head.
Dagda approached and accosted her. From thenceforth the place has been
named the Couple's Bed. The woman was the goddess Mór-rígu"--
the goddess of war, of whom we shall hear more in connection with
Cuchulain.
As for the Dagda himself, his character appears somewhat contradictory.
Just as the most opposite accounts of Zeus are met with in Greek
mythology, some glorifying him as throning in Olympus supreme over
gods and men, others as playing low and indecent tricks disguised as
a cuckoo or a bull; so we find the Dagda--his real name was Eochaidh
the Ollamh--at one time a king of the De Danann race and organiser
of victory, but at another in a less dignified but more clearly
mythological position. He is sent by Lugh to the Fomorian camp to put
them off with talk and cause them to lose time until the De Danann
armaments should be more fully ready. The following account exhibits
him, like Zeus at times, in a very unprepossessing character:--
"When the Dagda had come to the camp of the Fomorians he demanded a
truce, and he obtained it. The Fomorians prepared a porridge for him;
it was to ridicule him they did this, for he greatly loved porridge.
They filled for him the king's cauldron which was five handbreadths
in depth. They threw into it eighty pots of milk and a proportionate
quantity of meal and fat, with goats and sheep and swine which they
got cooked along with the rest. Then they poured the broth into a hole
dug in the ground. 'Unless you eat all that's there,' said Indech to
him, 'you shall be put to death; we do not want you to be reproaching
us, and we must satisfy you.' The Dagda took the spoon; it was so
great that in the hollow of it a man and a woman might be contained.
The pieces that went into that spoon were halves of salted pigs and
quarters of bacon. The Dagda said, 'Here is good eating, if the broth
be as good as its odour,' and as he carried the spoonful to his mouth,
he said, 'The proverb is true that good cooking is not spoiled by a
bad pot.'[12]
"When he had finished he scraped the ground with his finger to the
very bottom of the hole to take what remained of it, and after that
he went to sleep to digest his soup. His stomach was greater than the
greatest cauldrons in large houses, and the Fomorians mocked at him.
"He went away and came to the bank of the Eba. He did not walk with
ease, so large was his stomach. He was dressed in very bad guise. He
had a cape which scarcely reached below his shoulders. Beneath that
cloak was seen a brown mantle which descended no lower than his hips.
It was cut away above and very large in the breast. His two shoes
were of horses' skin with the hair outside. He held a wheeled fork,
which would have been heavy enough for eight men, and he let it trail
behind him. It dug a furrow deep enough and large enough to become
the frontier mearn between two provinces. Therefore is it called the
'track of the Dagda's club.'"
When the fighting began, after the skirmishing of the first days, the
De Danann warriors owed their victory to their superior preparations.
The great leech Diancecht cured the wounded, and the smith Goibniu and
his assistants kept the warriors supplied with constant relays of fresh
lances. The Fomorians could not understand it, and sent one of their
warriors, apparently in disguise, to find out. He was Ruadan, a son of
Breas by a daughter of Dagda.
"On his return he told the Fomorians what the smith, the carpenter,
the worker in bronze, and the four leeches who were round the spring,
did. They sent him back again with orders to kill the smith Goibniu.
He asked a spear of Goibniu, rivets of Credné the bronze-worker, a
shaft of Luchtainé the carpenter, and they gave him what he asked.
There was a woman there busy in sharpening the weapons. She was Cron,
mother of Fianlug. She sharpened the spear for Ruadan. It was a chief
who handed Ruadan the spear, and thence the name of chief-spear given
to this day to the weaver's beam in Erin.
"When he had got the spear Ruadan turned on Goibniu and smote him with
the weapon. But Goibniu drew the javelin from the wound and hurled it
at Ruadan; who was pierced from side to side, and escaped to die among
the Fomorians in presence of his father. Brig [his mother, the Dagda's
daughter] came and bewailed her son. First she uttered a piercing cry,
and thereafter she made moan. It was then that for the first time in
Ireland were heard moans and cries of sorrow. It was that same Brig
who invented the whistle used at night to give alarm signals"--
the mythological genesis of the saga is thus obviously marked by the
first satire, first cry of sorrow, and first whistle being ascribed to
the actors in it.
In the end the whole Fomorian army moved to battle in their solid
battalions, "and it was to strike one's hand against a rock, or thrust
one's hand into a nest of serpents, or put one's head into the fire,
to attack the Fomorians that day." The battle is described at length.
Nuada the king of the De Danann is killed by Balor. Lugh, whose counsel
was considered so valuable by the De Danann people that they put
an escort of nine round him to prevent him from taking part in the
fighting, breaks away, and attacks Balor the Fomorian king.
"Balor had an evil eye, that eye only opened itself upon the plain
of battle. Four men had to lift up the eyelid by placing under it
an instrument. The warriors, whom Balor scanned with that eye once
opened,[13] could not--no matter how numerous--resist their enemies."
When Lugh had met and exchanged some mystical and unintelligible
language with him, Balor said, "Raise my eyelid that I may see the
braggart who speaks with me."
"His people raise Balor's eyelid. Lugh from his sling lets fly a stone
at Balor which passes through his head, carrying with it the venomous
eye. Balor's army looked on." The Mór-rígu, the goddess of war,
arrives, and assists the Tuatha De Danann and encourages them. Ogma
slays one of the Fomorian kings and is slain himself. The battle is
broken at last on the Fomorians; they fly, and Breas is taken prisoner,
but his life is spared.
"It was," says the saga, "at the battle of Moytura that Ogma, the
strong man, found the sword of Tethra, the King of the Fomorians. Ogma
drew that sword from the sheath and cleaned it. It was then that it
related to him all the high deeds that it had accomplished, for at
this time the custom was when swords were drawn from the sheath they
used to recite the exploits[14] they had themselves been the cause of.
And thence comes the right which swords have, to be cleaned when they
are drawn from the sheath; thence also the magic power which swords
have preserved ever since"--
to which curious piece of pagan superstition an evidently later
Christian redactor adds, "weapons were the organs of the demon to speak
to men. At that time men used to worship weapons, and they were a magic
safeguard."
The saga ends in the episode of the recovery of the Dagda's harp,
and in the cry of triumph uttered by the Mór-rígu and by Bodb, her
fellow-goddess of war, as they visited the various heights of Ireland,
the banks of streams, and the mouths of floods and great rivers, to
proclaim aloud their triumph and the defeat of the Fomorians.
M. d'Arbois de Jubainville sees in the successive colonisations of
Partholan, the Nemedians, and the Tuatha De Danann, an Irish version
of the Greek legend of the three successive ages of gold, silver, and
brass. The Greek legend of the Chimæra, otherwise Bellerus, the monster
slain by Bellerophon, he equates with the Irish Balor of the evil eye;
the fire from the throat of Bellerus, and the evil beam shot from
Balor's eye may originally have typified the lightning.[15]
[1] "L'yowar (rhyming to _hour_) gow-awla," the "book of the takings or
holdings of Ireland."
[2] Keating derives it from _foghla_, "spoil," and _muir_, "sea," which
is an impossible derivation, or from _fo muirib_, as if "along the
seas," but it really means "under seas."
[3] Also Fir Domnan and Fir Galeóin, two tribes of the same race.
[4] When the oldest list of current Irish sagas was drawn up, probably
in the seventh century, only one battle of Moytura was mentioned; this
was evidently what is now known as the second battle. In the more
recent list contained in the introduction to the Senchus Mór there is
mention made of both battles. There is only a single copy of each of
these sagas known to exist. Of most of the other sagas of this cycle
even the last copy has perished.
[5] Long afterwards, at the time that Ireland was divided into five
provinces, the Cruithnigh, or Picts, drove the Firbolg out of the
islands again, and they were forced to come back to Cairbré Niafer,
king of Leinster, who allotted them a territory, but placed such
a rack-rent upon them that they were glad to fly into Connacht,
where Oilioll and Mève--the king and queen who made the Táin Bo
Chuailgne--gave them a free grant of land, and there Duald Mac Firbis,
over two hundred and fifty years ago, found their descendants in
plenty. According to some accounts, they were never driven wholly
out of Connacht, and if they are a real race--as, despite their
connection with the obviously mythical Tuatha De Danann, they appear
to be--they probably still form the basis of population there. Máine
Mór, the ancestor of the O'Kellys, is said to have wrested from them
the territory of Ui Máiné (part of Roscommon and Galway) in the sixth
century. Their name and that of their fellow tribe, the Fir Domnan,
_appear_ to be the same as the Belgæ, and the Damnonii of Gaul and
Britain, who are said to have given its name to Devonshire. Despite
their close connection in the Book of Invasions and early history of
Ireland, the Firbolg stand on a completely different footing from the
De Danann tribes. Their history is recorded consecutively from that day
to this; many families trace their pedigree to them, and they never
wholly disappeared. No family traces its connection to the De Danann
people; they wholly disappear, and are in later times regarded as gods,
or demons, or fairies.
[6] Bress in the older form.
[7] When the Milesians landed they found a Tuatha De Danann queen,
called Eiriu, the old form of Eire or Erin, from whom the island was
believed to take its name. John Scotus is called in old authorities
Eriugena, not Erigena.
[8] For him _see_ above, pp. 113-15.
[9] Jubainville translates Tuatha De Danann by "tribes of the goddess
Dana." Danann is the genitive of Dana, and Dana is called the "mother
of the gods," but she is not a mother of the bulk of the De Danann
race, so that Jubainville's translation is a rather venturesome one,
and the Old Irish themselves did not take the word in this meaning;
they explained it as "the men of science who were as it were gods."
"Tuatha dé Danann, _i.e._, Dee in taes dána acus andé an taes trebtha,"
_i.e._, "the men of science were (as it were) gods and the laymen
no-gods."
[10] Whitley Stokes translates this by "good hand." It is explained
as--_Dago-dêvo-s_, "the good god." The "Dagda, _i.e._, daigh dé,
_i.e._, dea sainemail ag na geinntib é," _i.e._, "Dagda ie ignis
Dei," for "with the heathen he was a special god," MS. 16, Advocates'
Library, Edinburgh.
[11] Paraphrased by me in English verse in the "Three Sorrows of
Story-telling."
[12] Thus perilously translated by Jubainville; Stokes does not attempt
it.
[13] A legend well known to the old men of Galway and Roscommon,
who have often related it to me, tells us that when Conan (Finn mac
Cúmhail's Thersites) looked through his fingers at the enemy, they were
always defeated. He himself did not know this, nor any one except Finn,
who tried to make use of it without letting Conan know his own power.
[14] There is a somewhat similar passage ascribing sensation to swords
in the Saga of Cuchulain's sickness.
[15] The First Battle of Moytura, the Second Battle of Moytura, and the
Death of the Children of Tuireann are three sagas belonging to this
cycle. Others, now preserved in the digest of the Book of Invasions,
are, the Progress of Partholan to Erin, the Progress of Nemed to Erin,
the Progress of the Firbolg, the Progress of the Tuatha De Danann, the
Journey of Mileson of Bile to Spain, the Journey of the Sons of Mile
from Spain to Erin, the Progress of the Cruithnigh (Picts) from Thrace
to Erin and thence into Alba.