cromlech epoch, the epoch of the Atlantean builders, from Algeria to
Ireland, from Ireland to the Baltic, is ten or twelve thousand years
ago; extending, perhaps, much further back in the past, and in certain
regions coming much further down towards the present, but having a
period of twelve thousand years ago as its central date. It happens that
we have traditions of a great dispersion from the very centre we have
been led to fix, the neighborhood of Atlas or Gibraltar, and that to
this dispersion tradition has given a date over eleven thousand years
ago; but to this side of the subject we cannot more fully allude; it
would take us too far afield.
We have gone far enough to make it tolerably certain, first, that these
great and wonderful monuments were built when uniform conditions of
order, uniform religious beliefs and aspirations, and a uniform mastery
over natural forces extended throughout a vast region spreading
northward and eastward from Mount Atlas or Gibraltar; we have seen,
next, that these conditions were furnished when a well-defined race,
whom we have called Atlantean, was spread as the dominant element over
this whole region; and, finally, we have seen reason to fix on a period
some eleven or twelve thousand years ago as the central period of that
domination, though it may have begun, and probably did begin, many
centuries earlier. The distribution of the cromlechs is certain; the
distribution of the race is certain; the age of one characteristic group
of the monuments is certain. Further than this we need not go.
When we try to form a clearer image of the life of this tall archaic
race of cromlech-builders, we can divine very much to fill the picture.
We note, to begin with, that not only do they always hold to the
Atlantic ocean as something kindred and familiar, but that they are
found everywhere in islands at such distances from the nearest coasts as
would demand a certain seamanship for their arrival. This is true of
their presence in Malta, Minorca, Sardinia; it is even more true of
Ireland, the Western Isles of Scotland, the Norwegian Isles; all of
which are surrounded by stormy and treacherous seas, where wrecks are
very common even in our day. We must believe that our tail, dark
invaders were a race of seamen, thoroughly skilled in the dangerous
navigation of these dark seas; Caesar marveled at, and imitated, the
ship-building of the natives of Brittany in his day; we equally admire
the prowess of their sons, the Breton fishermen, in our own times. We
find, too, that in the western districts and ocean islands of our own
Ireland the tall, dark race often follows the sea, showing the same
hereditary skill and daring; a skill which certainly marked the first
invaders of that race, or they would never have reached our island at
all. We are the more justified in seeing, in these dark
cromlech-builders, the Fomorians of old Gaelic tradition, who came up
out of the sea and subjugated the Firbolgs.
Even to those familiar with the geological record of man it is
sufficiently startling to find that the Firbolgs, the early dwarfish
race of Hyperboreans, in all probability were ignorant of boats; that
they almost certainly came to our island dry-shod, as they had come
earlier to Britain, migrating over unbroken spaces of land to what
afterwards became the isle of Erin; for this race we find everywhere
associated with the mammoth--on the continent, in Britain, in our own
island--and the mammoths certainly never came over in ships. Needless to
say, there is abundant geological evidence as well, to show our former
union with continental Europe,--though of course at a time immensely
more remote than ten or twelve thousand years ago.
We are, therefore, led to identify our Atlantean race of hardy seamen
with the Fomorians who came up out of the sea and found the furtive
Firbolgs in possession of our island; and to this race, the Fomorians of
the sea, we credit the building of cromlechs and standing stones, not
only among ourselves, but in Norway, in Britain, in Brittany, in Spain,
in Africa.
We shall presently pick up the thread of tradition, as we find it in
Ireland, and try to follow the doings and life of the Fomorian invaders;
but in the meantime we may try to gain some insight into the most
mysterious and enduring of their works. The cromlechs which have been
excavated in many cases are found to contain the funereal urns of a
people who burned their dead. It does not follow that their first and
only use was as tombs; but if we think of them as tombs only, we must
the more marvel at the faith of the builders, and their firm belief in
the reality and overwhelming import of the other world which we enter at
death. For of dwellings for the living, of fortresses or storehouses, of
defences against the foes who later invaded them, we find few traces;
nothing at all to compare with their massive mausoleums. The other
world, for them, was a far weightier concern than this, and to the
purposes of that world, as they conceived it, all their energies were
directed. We can hardly doubt that, like other races who pay extreme
reverence to the dead, their inner vision beheld these departed ones
still around them and among them, forming with them a single race, a
single family, a single life. This world was for them only the threshold
of the other, the place of preparation. To that other their thoughts all
turned, for that other they raised these titanic buildings. The solemn
masses and simple grandeur of the cromlechs fitly symbolize the mood of
reverence in which they drew near to the sublime world of the hidden;
the awe with which their handiwork affirmed how greatly that world
outweighs this. At these houses of the dead they were joined in spirit
and communion with those who had passed away; once more united with
their fathers and their fathers' fathers, from the dim beginning of
their race. The air, for them, was full of spirits. Only the dead
truly lived.
The circles of standing stones are also devoted to ideal ends. Though
the men who set them up could have built not less wonderful forts or
dwellings of stone, we find none of these; nor has any worldly purpose
ever been assigned to the stone circles. Yet there seems to be a very
simple interpretation of their symbology; the circle, through all
antiquity, stood for the circling year, which ever returns to its point
of departure, spring repeating spring, summer answering to summer,
winter with its icy winds only the return of former winters: the
circling year and its landmarks, whether four seasons, or twelve months,
or twenty-seven lunar mansions, through one of which the wandering moon
passes in a day. We should thus have circles of twelve or twenty-seven
stones, or four outlying stones at equal distances, for the four
seasons, the regents of the year. By counting the stones in each circle
we can tell to which division of the year they belonged, whether the
solar months or the lunar mansions.
But with all ancient nations the cycle of the year was only the symbol
of the spiritual cycle of the soul, the path of birth and death. We
must remember that even for ourselves the same symbolism holds: in the
winter we celebrate the Incarnation; in spring, the Crucifixion; in
summer, the birth of the beloved disciple; in autumn, the day of All
Souls, the feast of the dead. Thus for us, too, the succeeding seasons
only symbolize the stages of a spiritual life, the august procession
of the soul.
We cannot think it was otherwise with a people who lived and built so
majestically for the hidden world; these great stone circles symbolized
for them, we must believe, the circling life of the soul, the cycle of
necessity, with the door of liberation to the home of the blest, who
have reached perfect freedom and go no more out. We may picture in
imagination their solemn celebrations; priests robed, perhaps, in the
mingled green and purple of their hills, passing within the circle,
chanting some archaic hymn of the Divine.
IV.
THE DE DANAANS.
In the dim days of Fomorian and Firbolg, and for ages after, Erin was a
land of forests, full of wild cattle and deer and wolves. The central
plain was altogether hidden under green clouds of oak-woods, full of
long, mysterious alleys, dimpled with sunny glades, echoing in spring
and summer to the songs of innumerable birds. Everywhere through the
wide and gloomy forests were the blue mirrors of lakes, starred with
shaggy islands, the hanging hills descending verdant to the water's
edge. Silver rivers spread their network among the woods, and the lakes
and the quiet reaches of the rivers teemed with trout and salmon. The
hilly lands to the north and south showed purple under the sky from
among their forests, oak mingling with pine; and the four seas beat
around our island with their white fringe of hovering gulls. Over all,
the arch of the blue, clearer and less clouded then than now. A pleasant
land, full of gladness and mystery.
We can but obscurely image to ourselves the thoughts and deeds of the
earliest dwellers in our island. We know that they were skilled in many
arts of peace and inured to the shock of war. The sky spread above them
as over us, and all around them was the green gloom of the forests, the
whiteness of lakes and rivers, the rough purple of the heather. The
great happenings of life, childhood and age and death, were for them
what they are for us, yet their blood flowed warmer than ours. Browned
by wind and sun, wet by the rain and the early dew of the morning, they
delighted in the vigor of the prime. Their love for kindred, for their
friends and lovers, was as ours; and when friends and kindred passed
into the darkness, they still kept touch with their souls in the
invisible Beyond.
[Illustration: River Erne, Belleek.]
The vision of our days is darkened by too much poring over earthly
things; but the men of old, like many of our simpler races now, looked
confidently and with intent faith across the threshold. For them the
dead did not depart--hidden but from their eyes, while very near to
their souls. Those in the beyond were still linked to those on earth;
all together made one undivided life, neither in the visible world alone
nor in the hidden world alone, but in both; each according to their
destinies and duties. The men of old were immeasurably strong in this
sense of immortality--a sense based not on faith but on knowledge; on a
living touch with those who had gone before. They knew both over-world
and under-world, because they held their souls open to the knowledge of
both, and did not set their hearts on earthly things alone. A strong
life close to the life of the natural world, a death that was no
separation, the same human hearts as ours,--further we need not go in
imagining that far-off time.
A third people was presently added to these two, at an epoch fixed by
tradition some four thousand years ago. A vivid picture of their coming
has been handed down to us, and this picture we shall reproduce, as many
circumstances and particulars of our knowledge drawn from other sources
concur to show that our old legend is near to the truth, both in time
and happenings.
The name these newcomers bore was Tuata De Danaan, the De Danaan tribes;
they were golden-haired and full of knowledge, and their coming was
heavy with destiny for the dark races of Fomor and Firbolg. Even to-day,
mysterious whispers of the De Danaans linger among the remote valleys
and hillsides of our island, and truth is hidden in every legend of
their deeds. They have borne a constant repute for magical knowledge,
and the first tradition of their coming not only echoes that repute, but
shows how first they came by it.
The De Danaans came from the north; from what land, we shall presently
inquire. They landed somewhere on the northeast coast of our island,
says the tradition; the coast of Antrim was doubtless the place of their
arrival, and we have our choice between Larne and the estuary of the
Foyle. All between, lofty cliffs face a dark and angry sea, where no one
not familiar with the coast would willingly approach; their later course
in the island makes it very probable that they came to the Foyle.
There, still within sight of the Caledonian isles and headlands hovering
in blue shadows over the sea, they entered, where the sun rose over long
silver sands and hills of chalk, with a grim headland on the west
towering up into sombre mountains. Once within the strait, they had a
wide expanse of quiet waters on all sides, running deep among the rugged
hills, and receiving at its further end the river Foyle, tempting them
further and further with their ships. Up the Foyle went the De Danaan
fleet, among the oak-woods, the deer gazing wide-eyed at them from dark
caverns of shadow, the wolves peering after them in the night. Then,
when their ships would serve them no further, they landed, and, to set
the seal on their coming, burned their boats, casting in their lot with
the fate of their new home. Still following the streams of the Foyle,
for rivers were the only pathways through the darkness of the woods,
they came to the Lakes of Erne, then, as now, beautiful with innumerable
islands, and draped with curtains of forest. Beyond Erne, they fixed
their first settlement at Mag Rein, the Plain of the Headland, within
the bounds of what afterwards was Leitrim; and at this camp their legend
takes up the tale.
It would seem that the Fomorians were then gathered further to the west,
as well as in the northern isles. The Firbolgs had their central
stronghold at Douin Cain, the Beautiful Eminence, which, tradition tells
us, later bore the name of Tara. The chief among their chiefs was
Eocaid, son of Ere, remembered as the last ruler of the Firbolgs. Every
man of them was a hunter, used to spear and shield, and the skins of
deer and the shaggy hides of wolves were their garments; their dwellings
were built of well-fitted oak. To the chief, Eocaid, Erc's son, came
rumor of the strangers near the Lakes of Erne; their ships, burned at
their debarking, were not there to tell of the manner of their coming,
and the De Danaans themselves bruited it abroad that they had come
hither by magic, borne upon the wings of the wind. The chiefs of Tara
gathered together, within their fort of earth crowned with a stockade,
and took counsel how to meet this new adventure. After long consultation
they chose one from among them, Sreng by name, a man of uncommon
strength, a warrior tried and proven, who should go westward to find out
more of the De Danaans.
Doubtless taking certain chosen companions with him, Sreng, the man of
valor from among the Firbolgs, set forth on his quest. As in all
forest-covered countries, the only pathways lay along the river-banks,
or, in times of drought, through the sand or pebbles of their beds.
Where the woods pressed closest upon the streams, the path wound from
one bank to the other, crossing by fords or stepping-stones, or by a
bridge of tree-trunks. So went Sreng, careful and keen-eyed, up the
stream of the Blackwater, and thence to the Erne, and so drew near to
the Plain of the Headland, where was the De Danaan camp. They, too, had
word of his coming from their scouts and hunters, and sent forth Breas,
one among their bravest, to meet the envoy.
They sighted each other and halted, each setting his shield in the
earth, peering at his adversary above its rim. Then, reassured, they
came together, and Breas first spoke to Sreng. After the first words
they fell, warrior-like, to examining each other's weapons; Sreng saw
that the two spears of Breas the De Danaan were thin, slender and long,
and sharp-pointed, while his own were heavy, thick and point-less, but
sharply rounded.
Here we have a note of reality, for spears of these two types are well
known to us; those of Sreng were chisel-shaped, round-edged, socketed
celts; the De Danaan lances were long and slender, like our spears.
There are two materials also--a beautiful golden bronze, shining and
gleaming in the sunlight, and a darker, ruddier metal, dull and heavy;
and these darker spears have sockets for greatly thicker hafts. Both
also carried swords, made, very likely, the one of golden, the other of
dull, copper-colored bronze.
Then, putting these pleasant things aside, they turned to weightier
matters, and Breas made a proposal for the De Danaan men. The island was
large, the forests wide and full of game, the waters sweet and
well-stocked with fish. Might they not share it between them, and join
hands to keep out all future comers? Sreng could give no final answer;
he could only put the matter before the Firbolg chiefs; so, exchanging
spears in sign of friendship and for a token between them, they returned
each to his own camp.
Sreng of the Firbolgs retraced his path some four-score miles among the
central forests, and came to the Beautiful Eminence, where the Firbolgs
had their settlement. Eocaid, Erc's son, their chieftain, called the
lesser chiefs around him, and Sreng made full report of what he had seen
and heard. The Firbolgs, pressed on by their fate, decided to refuse all
terms with the De Danaans, but to give them battle, and drive them from
the island. So they made ready, each man seeing to the straps of his
shield, the burnishing of his thick sword and heavy spear. Eyes gleamed
out beneath lowering brows all about the dwellings of Tara, and hot
words were muttered of the coming fight. The dark faces of the Firbolgs
were full of wrath.
Breas, returning to the camp of the Tuata De Danaan, gave such account
of the fierceness and strength of Sreng, and the weight and sturdiness
of his weapons, that the hearts of the golden-haired newcomers misgave
them, and they drew away westward to the strip of land that lies between
the lakes of Corrib and Mask. There, tradition tells us, they made an
encampment upon the hill of Belgadan, near the stream that flows through
caverns beneath the rocks from the northern to the southern lake. From
their hill-top they had clear view of the plain stretching eastward,
across which the Firbolg warriors must come; to the right hand and to
the left were spread the great white waters of the lakes, stretching far
away to the northern and southern verge of the sky. Islands dotted the
lakes, and trees mirrored themselves in the waters. Behind them, to the
westward, rose a square-topped mountain, crowned by a clear tarn; and,
behind that, tier upon tier of hills, stretching dark and sombre along
Lough Mask to the north, and spreading westward to the twelve crystal
hills of Connemara.
Across the plain to the east, then called the Plain of Nia, but
thereafter Mag Tuiread or Moytura, the Plain of the Pillars, lay the
forests, and thence issued forth the hosts of the Firbolgs, encamping on
the eastern verge of the open space. Nuada, the De Danaan king, once
more sought a peaceful issue to their meeting, but Erc's son Eocaid
refused all terms, and it was plain to all that they must fight.
It was midsummer. The air was warm about them, the lake-shores and the
plain clothed in green of many gently blended shades. The sun shone down
upon them, and the lakes mirrored the clear blue above. From their hill
of encampment descended the De Danaans, with their long slender spears
gleaming like bright gold, their swords of golden bronze firmly grasped,
their left hands griping the thong of their shields. Golden-haired, with
flowing tresses, they descended to the fight; what stately battle-song
they chanted, what Powers they called on for a blessing, we cannot tell;
nor in what terms the dark-browed Firbolgs answered them as they
approached across the plain. All that day did the hosts surge together,
spear launched against spear, and bronze sword clashing against shield;
all that day and for three days more, and then the fate of the Firbolgs
was decided. Great and dire was the slaughter of them, so that Erc's son
Eocaid saw that all was lost. Withdrawing with a hundred of his own men
about him, Eocaid was seeking water to quench his thirst, for the heat
of the battle was upon him, when he was pursued by a greater band of
the De Danaans, under the three sons of Nemed, one of their chieftains.
Eocaid and his bodyguard fled before Nemed's sons, making their way
northeastward along the Moy river, under the shadow of the Mountains of
Storms, now wrongly named Ox Mountains. They came at last to the great
strand called Traig Eotaile, but now Ballysadare, the Cataract of the
Oaks,--where the descending river is cloven into white terraces by the
rocks, and the sea, retreating at low tide, leaves a world of wet sand
glinting under the moonlight. At the very sea's margin a great battle
was fought between the last king of the Firbolgs with his men, and the
De Danaans under Nemed's sons; so relentless was the fight along the
tideways that few remained to tell of it, for Erc's son Eocaid fell, but
Nemed's three sons fell likewise, The three De Danaan brothers were
buried at the western end of the strand, and the place was called The
Gravestones of the Sons of Nemed, in their memory. The son of Erc was
buried on the strand, where the waves lap along the shore, and his cairn
of Traig Eotaile still stands by the water-side, last resting-place of
the last ruler of the Firbolgs.
Meanwhile the fighting had gone on at Mag Tuiread by the lakes, till
but three hundred of the Firbolgs were left, with Sreng, the fierce
fighter, at their head. Sreng had gained enduring fame by meeting Nuada,
the De Danaan king, in combat, and smiting him so that he clove the
shield-rim and cut down deep into Nuada's shoulder, disabling him
utterly from the battle. Seeing themselves quite outnumbered, therefore,
the survivors of the Firbolgs with Sreng demanded single combat with De
Danaan champions, but the victors offered them worthy terms of peace.
The Firbolgs were to hold in lordship and freedom whichever they might
choose of the five provinces; the conquerors were to have the rest.
Sreng looked around among his band of survivors,--a little band, though
of great valor,--and he remembered the hosts of his people that had
entered the battle three days before, but now lay strewn upon the plain;
and thinking that they had done enough for valor he accepted the offered
terms, choosing the Western Province for his men. In memory of him it
was called Cuigead Sreing for generations, until Conn of the Five-Score
Battles changed the name for his own, calling the province Connacht, as
it is to this day.
It fared less well with the victors, and with their victory were sown
seeds of future discord. For Nuada, the king, being grievously wounded,
was in no state to rule, so that the chief power was given to Breas,
first envoy of the De Danaans. Now Breas was only half De Danaan, half
Fomor, and would not recognize the De Danaan rites or laws of
hospitality, but was a very tyrannous and overbearing ruler, so that
much evil came of his government. Yet for seven years he was endured,
even though meat nor ale was dispensed at his banquets, according to De
Danaan law.
Mutterings against Breas were rife among the chiefs and their followers
when the bard Cairbré, whose mother Etan was also a maker of verses,
came to the assembly of Breas. But the bard was shown little honor and
given a mean lodging,--a room without fire or bed, with three dry loaves
for his fare. The bard was full of resentment and set himself to make
songs against Breas, so that all men repeated his verses, and the name
of Breas fell into contempt. All men's minds were enkindled by the bard,
and they drove Breas forth from the chieftainship. Breas fled to his
Fomor kindred in the isles, with his heart full of anger and revenge
against the De Danaans.
He sought help of his kindred, and their design was told to the
Fomorian chieftains--to Balor of the Evil Eye, and to Indec, son of De
Domnand, chiefs of the Isles. These two leaders gathered ships from all
the harbors and settlements of the Fomorians, from the Hebrides, the
Shetlands, and far-distant Norway, so that their fleet was thick as
gulls above a shoal of fish along the north shores of Erin.