THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE--CUCHULAIN
The mythological tales that we have been glancing at deal with the folk
who are fabled as having first colonised Erin; they treat of peoples,
races, dynasties, the struggle between good and evil principles. The
whole of their creations are thrown back, even by the Irish annalists
themselves, into the dim cloud-land of an unplumbed past, ages before
the dawn of the first Olympiad, or the birth of the wolf-suckled twins
who founded Rome. There is over it all a shadowy sense of vagueness,
vastness, uncertainty.
The Heroic Cycle, on the other hand, deals with the history of the
Milesians themselves, the present Irish race, within a well-defined
space of time, upon their own ground, and though it does not exactly
fall within the historical period, yet it does not come so far short
of it that it can be with any certainty rejected as pure work of
imagination or poetic fiction. It is certainly the finest of the three
greater saga-cycles, and the epics that belong to it are sharply drawn,
numerous, clear cut, and ancient, and for the first time we _seem_,
at least, to find ourselves upon historical ground, although a good
deal of this seeming may turn out to be illusory. Yet the figures of
Cuchulain, Conor mac Nessa, Naoise, and Déirdre, Mève, Oilioll, and
Conall Cearnach, have about them a great deal of the circumstantiality
that is entirely lacking to the dim, mist-magnified, and distorted
figures of the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh the Long-handed, and their fellows.
The gods come and go as in the Iliad, and according to some accounts
leave their posterity behind them. Cuchulain himself, the incarnation
of Irish ἀριστέια, is according to certain authorities the son of
the god Lugh the Long-handed.[1] He himself, like another Anchises,
is beloved of a goddess and descends into the Gaelic Elysium,[2]
and the most important epic of the cycle is largely conditioned
by an occurrence caused by the curse of a goddess, an occurrence
wholly impossible and supernatural.[3] Yet these are for the most
part excrescences no more affecting the conduct of the history than
the actions of the gods affect the war round Troy. Events, upon the
whole, are motivated upon fairly reasonable human grounds, and there
is a certain air of probability about them. The characters who now
make their appearance upon the scene are not long prior to, or are
contemporaneous with, the birth of Christ; and the wars of the Tuatha
De Danann, Nemedians, and Fomorians, are left some seventeen hundred
years behind.
This cycle, which I have called the "Heroic" or "Red Branch," might
also be named the "Ultonian," because it deals chiefly with the heroes
of the northern province. One saga relates the birth of Conor mac
Nessa. His mother was Ness and his father was Fachtna Fathach, king
of Ulster, but according to what is probably the oldest account,
his father was Cathba the Druid. This saga relates how, through the
stratagem of his mother Ness, Conor slipped into the kingship of
Ulster, displacing Fergus mac Róigh [Roy], the former king, who is
here represented as a good-natured giant, but who appears human enough
in the other sagas.[4] Conor's palace is described with its three
buildings; that of the Red Branch, where were kept the heads and arms
of vanquished enemies; that of the Royal Branch, where the kings
lodged; and that of the Speckled House, where were laid up the shields
and spears and swords of the warriors of Ulster. It was called the
Speckled or Variegated House from the gold and silver of the shields,
and gleaming of the spears, and shining of the goblets, and all arms
were kept in it, in order that at the banquet when quarrels arose the
warriors might not have wherewith to slay each other.
Conor's palace at Emania contained, according to the Book of Leinster,
one hundred and fifty rooms, each large enough for three couples to
sleep in, constructed of red oak, and bordered with copper. Conor's
own chamber was decorated with bronze and silver, and ornamented with
golden birds, in whose eyes were precious stones, and was large enough
for thirty warriors to drink together in it. Above the king's head
hung his silver wand with three golden apples, and when he shook it
silence reigned throughout the palace, so that even the fall of a pin
might be heard. A large vat, always full of good drink, stood ever on
the palace floor.
Another story tells of Cuchulain's mysterious parentage. His mother was
a sister of King Conor; consequently he was the king's nephew.
Another again relates the wooing of Cuchulain, and how he won Emer for
his wife.
Another is called Cuchulain's "Up-bringing," or teaching, part of
which, however, is found in the piece called the "Wooing of Emer."
This saga relates how he, with two other of the Ultonians, went abroad
to Alba to perfect their warlike accomplishments, and how they placed
themselves under the tuition of different female-warriors,[5] who
taught them various and extraordinary feats of arms. He traverses the
plain of Misfortune by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by
an unknown friend, and reaches the great female instructress Scathach,
whose daughter falls in love with him.
An admirable example occurs to me here, of showing in the concrete that
which I have elsewhere laid stress upon, namely, the great elaboration
which in many instances we find in the modern versions of sagas,
compared with the antique vellum texts. It does not at all follow that
because a story is written down with brevity in ancient Irish, it was
also told with brevity. The oldest form of the saga of Cuchulain's
"Wooing of Emer" contains traces of a pre-Danish or seventh-century
text, but the condensed and shortened relation of the saga found in
the oldest manuscript of it, is almost certainly not the form in which
the bards and ollavs related it. On the contrary, I believe that the
stories now epitomised in ancient vellum texts were even then told,
though not written down, at full length, and with many flourishes
by the bards and professed story-tellers, and that the skeletons
merely, or as Keating calls it, the "bones of the history,"[6] were
in most instances all that was committed to the rare and expensive
parchments. It is more than likely that the longer modern paper
redactions, though some of the ancient pagan traits, especially those
most incomprehensible to the moderns, may be missing, yet represent
more nearly the _manner_ of the original bardic telling, than the
abridgments of twelfth or thirteenth-century vellums.
In this case the ancient recension,[7] founded on a pre-Danish text,
merely mentions that Scathach's house, at which Cuchulain arrives,
after leaving the plain of Misfortune,
"was built upon a rock of appalling height. Cuchulain followed the
road pointed out to him. He reached the castle of Scathach. He knocked
at the door with the handle of his spear and entered. Uathach, the
daughter of Scathach, meets him. She looked at him, but she spoke
not, so much did the hero's beauty make her love him. She went to her
mother and told her of the beauty of the man who had newly come. 'That
man has pleased you,' said her mother. 'He shall come to my couch,'
answered the girl, 'and I shall sleep at his side this night.' 'Thy
intention displeases me not,' said her mother."
One can see at a glance how bald and brief is all this, because it is a
précis, and vellum was scarce. I venture to say that no bard ever told
it in this way. The scribes who first committed this to parchment, say
in the seventh or eighth century, probably wrote down only the leading
incidents as they remembered them. They may not have been themselves
either bards, ollavs, or story-tellers. It is chiefly in the later
centuries, after the introduction of paper, when the economising of
space ceased to be a matter of importance, that we find our sagas told
with all the redundancy of description, epithet, and incident with
which I suspect the very earliest bards embellished all those sagas
of which we have now only little more than the skeletons. Compare,
for instance, the ancient version which I have just given, with the
longer modern versions which have come down to us in several paper
manuscripts, of which I here use one in my own possession, copied about
the beginning of the century by a scribe named O'Mahon, upon one of the
islands on the Shannon.
In the first place this version tells us that on his arrival at
Scathach's mansion he finds a number of her scholars and other warriors
engaged in hurling outside the door of her fortress. He joins in the
game and defeats them--this is a true folk-lore introduction. He finds
there Naoise, Ardan, and Ainnlè, the three sons of Usnach, celebrated
in perhaps the most touching saga of this whole cycle, and another
son of Erin with them. This is a literary touch, by one who knew his
literature.[8] Learning that he is come from Erin, they ask news of
their native country, and salute him with kisses. They then bring him
to the Bridge of the Cliffs, and show him what their work is during the
first year, which was learning to pass this bridge.
"Wonderful," says the saga, "was the sight that bridge afforded when
any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow
as the hair of one's head, and the second time it shortened until it
became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery until
it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose
up on high against you until it was as tall as the mast of a ship."
All the warriors and people on the lawn came down to see Cuchulain
attempting to cross this bridge. In the meantime Scathach's _grianán_
or sunny house is described: "It had seven great doors, and seven
great windows between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty
couches between every two windows of them, and thrice fifty handsome
marriageable girls, in scarlet cloaks, and in beautiful and blue
attire, attending and waiting upon Scathach."
Then Scathach's lovely daughter, looking from the windows of the
_grianán_, perceives the stranger attempting the feat of the bridge,
and she falls in love with him upon the spot. Her emotions are thus
described: "Her face and colour constantly changed, so that now she
would be as white as a little white flowret, and again she would become
scarlet," and in the work she was embroidering she put the gold thread
where the silver thread should be, and the silver thread into the place
where the gold thread should go; and when her mother notices it, she
excuses herself by saying beautifully, "I would greatly grieve should
he not return alive to his own people, in whatever part of the world
they may be, for I know that there is some one to whom it would be
anguish to know that he is thus."
This refined reflection of the girl we may with certainty ascribe
to the growth of modern sentiment, and it is extremely instructive
to compare it with the ancient, and no doubt really pagan version;
but I strongly suspect that the bridge over the cliffs is no modern
embellishment at all, but part of the original saga, though omitted
from the pre-Norse text which only tells us that Scathach's house was
on the top of a rock of appalling height.
It was during this sojourn of Cuchulain in foreign lands that he
overcame the heroine Aoife,[9] and forced her into a marriage with
himself. He returned home afterwards, having left instructions with her
to keep the child she should bear him, if it were a daughter, "for with
every mother goes the daughter," but if it were a son she was to rear
him until he should be able to perform certain hero-feats, and until
his finger should be large enough to fill a ring which Cuchulain left
with her for him. Then she was to send him into Erin, and bid him tell
no man who he was; also he desired her not to teach him the feat of
the Gae-Bulg, "but, however," says the saga, "it was ill that command
turned out, for it was of that it came to pass that Conlaoch [the son]
fell by Cuchulain."[10]
I know of no prose saga of the touching story of the death of this
son, slain by his own father, except the _résumé_ given of it by
Keating,[11] but there exists a poem or épopée upon the subject which
was always a great favourite with the Irish scribes, and of which
numerous but not ancient copies exist. This is the Irish Sohrab and
Rustum, the Celtic Hildebrand and Hadubrand. The son comes into
Ireland, but in consequence of his mother's command, refuses to tell
his name. This is looked upon as indicating hostility, and many of
the Ultonians fight with him, but he overcomes them all, even the
great Conall Cearnach. Conor in despair sends for Cuchulain, who with
difficulty slays him by the feat of the Gae-Bolg, and then finds out
when too late that the dying champion is his own son. So familiar to
the modern Irish scribes was this piece that in my copy, in the last
verse, which ends with Cuchulain's lament over his son--
"I am the bark (buffeted) from wave to wave,
I am the ship after the losing of its rudder,
I am the apple upon the top of the tree
That little thought of its falling."[12]
instead of the text of the third line stands a rough picture of a tree
with a large apple on the top!
Another saga[13] tells of Cuchulain's _geasa_ [gassa] or restrictions.
It was _geis_ or tabu to him to narrate his genealogy to one champion,
as it was also to his son Conlaoch, to refuse combat to any one man, to
look upon the exposed bosom of a woman, to come into a company without
a second invitation, to accept the hospitality of virgins, to boast to
a woman, to let the sun rise before him in Emania, he must when there
rise before it, etc. There is in this saga a graphic description of the
pagan king's retinue journeying with him to be fed in the house of a
retainer.
"All the Ultonian nobles set out; a great train of provincials, sons
of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and
rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair ringleted ladies
of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid,
fully-developed women were there. Satirists and scholars were there,
and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs
and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came
also with them from Emania historians, judges, horse-riders, buffoons,
tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the
same way, behind the king."[14]
Dismissing Cuchulain for the present, we pass on now to another
personality of the Red Branch saga--the Lady Déirdre.
[1] _See_ "Compert Conculaind," by Windisch in "Irische Texte," t. i.
p. 134, and Jubainville's "Epopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.
[2] _See_ the story of Cuchulain's sick-bed, translated by O'Curry
in the first volume of the "Atlantis," and by Mr. O'Looney in Sir J.
Gilbert's "Facsimiles of the National MSS. of Ireland," and by Windisch
in "Irische Texte," vol. i., pp. 195-234, and by M. de Jubainville in
his "Epopée Celtique," p. 174, and lastly, Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of Bran,"
vol. ii., p. 38.
[3] This is the periodic curse which overtook the Ulstermen at certain
periods, rendering them feeble as a woman in child-bed, in consequence
of the malediction of the goddess Macha, who was, just before the birth
of her children, inhumanly obliged by the Ultonians to run against the
king's horses. The only people of the northern province free from this
curse were the children born before the curse was uttered, the women,
and the hero Cuchulain. It transmitted itself from father to son for
nine generations, and is said to have lasted five nights and four days,
or four nights and five days. But one would think from the Táin Bo
Chuailgne that it must have lasted much longer. For this curse _see_
Jubainville's "Epopée Celtique," p. 320. I was, not long ago, told a
story by a peasant in the county Galway not unlike it, only it was
related of the mother of the celebrated boxer Donnelly.
[4] Except in one place in the Táin Bo Chuailgne, where his sword is
spoken of, which was like a thread in his hand, but which when he smote
with it extended itself to the size of a rainbow, with three blows of
which upon the ground he raised three hills. The description of Fergus
in the Conor story preserved in the Book of Leinster, is simply and
frankly that of a giant many times the size of an ordinary man.
[5] The female warrior and war-teacher was not uncommon among the
Celts, as the examples of Boadicea and of Mève of Connacht show.
[6] "Cnámha an tseanchusa."
[7] Rawlinson, B. 512.
[8] For Déirdre in her lament over the three does call them "three
pupils of Scathach."
[9] Pronounced "Eefă." The triphthong _aoi_ has always the sound of
_ee_ in English. The stepmother of the Children of Lir was also called
Aoife.
[10] I quote this from my paper version. The oldest text only says that
"Cuchulain told her that she should bear him a son, and that upon a
certain day in seven years' time that son should go to him; he told her
what name she should give him, and then he went away."
[11] P. 279 of John O'Mahony's edition, translated also by M. de
Jubainville in his "Epopée Celtique," who comparing the Irish story
with its Germanic counterpart expresses himself strongly on their
relative merits: "Tout est puissant, logique, primitif, dans la pièce
irlandaise; sa concordance avec la piece persanne atteste une haute
antiquité. Elle peut remonter aux époques celtiques les plus anciennes,
et avoir été du nombre des _carmina_ chantés par les Gaulois à la
bataille de Clusium en 295 av. J.-C. Le poème allemand dont on a une
copie du huitième siècle est une imitation inintelligente et affaiblie
du chant celtique qui a dû retentir sur les rives du Danube et du Mein
mille ans plus tôt, et dont la rédaction germanique est l'œuvre de
quelque naïf Macpherson, prédécesseur honnêtement inhabile de celui du
dix-huitième siècle."
[12]
"Is mé an barc o thuinn go tuinn,
Is mé an long iar ndul d'á stiúr.
Is mé an t-ubhall i mbárr an chroinn
Is beag do shaoil a thuitim."
_See_ Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Ancient Irish Poetry," 2nd ed. p.
393. See also Kuno Meyer's note at p. xv of his edition of _Cath
Finntragha_, in which he bears further evidence to the antiquity and
persistence of this story.
[13] See the Book of Leinster, 107-111, a MS. copied about the year
1150.
[14] Thus translated by my late lamented friend and accomplished
scholar Father James Keegan of St. Louis.