THE RISE OF THE SUN-GOD[109]
It was as a result of the loss of his hand in this battle with the Fir
Bolgs that Nuada got his name of _Argetlám_, that is, the “Silver
Handed”. For Diancecht, the physician of the Tuatha Dé Danann, made him
an artificial hand of silver, so skilfully that it moved in all its
joints, and was as strong and supple as a real one. But, good as it was
of its sort, it was a blemish; and, according to Celtic custom, no
maimed person could sit upon the throne. Nuada was deposed; and the
Tuatha Dé Danann went into council to appoint a new king.
They agreed that it would be a politic thing for them to conciliate the
Fomors, the giants of the sea, and make an alliance with them. So they
sent a message to Bress, the son of the Fomorian king, Elathan, asking
him to come and rule over them. Bress accepted this offer; and they made
a marriage between him and Brigit, the daughter of the Dagda. At the
same time, Cian[110], the son of Diancecht, the physician of the Tuatha
Dé Danann, married Ethniu, the daughter of the Fomor, Balor. Then Bress
was made king, and endowed with lands and a palace; and he, on his part,
gave hostages that he would abdicate if his rule ever became unpleasing
to those who had elected him.
But, in spite of all his fair promises, Bress, who belonged in heart to
his own fierce people, began to oppress his subjects with excessive
taxes. He put a tax upon every hearth, upon every kneading-trough, and
upon every quern, as well as a poll-tax of an ounce of gold upon every
member of the Tuatha Dé Danann. By a crafty trick, too, he obtained the
milk of all their cattle. He asked at first only for the produce of any
cows which happened to be brown and hairless, and the people of the
goddess Danu granted him this cheerfully. But Bress passed all the
cattle in Ireland between two fires, so that their hair was singed off,
and thus obtained the monopoly of the main source of food. To earn a
livelihood, all the gods, even the greatest, were now forced to labour
for him. Ogma, their champion, was sent out to collect firewood, while
the Dagda was put to work building forts and castles.
One day, when the Dagda was at his task, his son, Angus, came to him.
“You have nearly finished that castle,” he said. “What reward do you
intend to ask from Bress when it is done?” The Dagda replied that he had
not yet thought of it. “Let me give you some advice,” said Angus. “Ask
Bress to have all the cattle in Ireland gathered together upon a plain,
so that you can pick out one for yourself. He will consent to that. Then
choose the black-maned heifer called ‘Ocean’.”
The Dagda finished building the fort, and then went to Bress for his
reward. “What will you have?” asked Bress. “I want all the cattle in
Ireland gathered together upon a plain, so that I may choose one of them
for myself.” Bress did this; and the Dagda took the black-maned heifer
Angus had told him of. The king, who had expected to be asked very much
more, laughed at what he thought was the Dagda’s simplicity. But Angus
had been wise; as will be seen hereafter.
Meanwhile Bress was infuriating the people of the goddess Danu by adding
avarice to tyranny. It was for kings to be liberal to all-comers, but at
the court of Bress no one ever greased his knife with fat, or made his
breath smell of ale. Nor were there ever any poets or musicians or
jugglers or jesters there to give pleasure to the people; for Bress
would distribute no largess. Next, he cut down the very subsistence of
the gods. So scanty was his allowance of food that they began to grow
weak with famine. Ogma, through feebleness, could only carry one-third
of the wood needed for fuel; so that they suffered from cold as well as
from hunger.
It was at this crisis that two physicians, Miach, the son, and Airmid,
the daughter, of Diancecht, the god of medicine, came to the castle
where the dispossessed King Nuada lived. Nuada’s porter, blemished, like
himself (for he had lost an eye), was sitting at the gate, and on his
lap was a cat curled up asleep. The porter asked the strangers who they
were. “We are good doctors,” they said. “If that is so,” he replied,
“perhaps you can give me a new eye.” “Certainly,” they said, “we could
take one of the eyes of that cat, and put it in the place where your
lost eye used to be.” “I should be very pleased if you would do that,”
answered the porter, So Miach and Airmid removed one of the cat’s eyes,
and put it in the hollow where the man’s eye had been.
The story goes on to say that this was not wholly a benefit to him; for
the eye retained its cat’s nature, and, when the man wished to sleep at
nights, the cat’s eye was always looking out for mice, while it could
hardly be kept awake during the day. Nevertheless, he was pleased at the
time, and went and told Nuada, who commanded that the doctors who had
performed this marvellous cure should be brought to him.
As they came in, they heard the king groaning, for Nuada’s wrist had
festered where the silver hand joined the arm of flesh. Miach asked
where Nuada’s own hand was, and they told him that it had been buried
long ago. But he dug it up, and placed it to Nuada’s stump; he uttered
an incantation over it, saying: “Sinew to sinew, and nerve to nerve be
joined!” and in three days and nights the hand had renewed itself and
fixed itself to the arm, so that Nuada was whole again.
When Diancecht, Miach’s father, heard of this, he was very angry to
think that his son should have excelled him in the art of medicine. He
sent for him, and struck him upon the head with a sword, cutting the
skin, but not wounding the flesh. Miach easily healed this. So Diancecht
hit him again, this time to the bone. Again Miach cured himself. The
third time his father smote him, the sword went right through the skull
to the membrane of the brain, but even this wound Miach was able to
leech. At the fourth stroke, however, Diancecht cut the brain in two,
and Miach could do nothing for that. He died, and Diancecht buried him.
And upon his grave there grew up three hundred and sixty-five stalks of
grass, each one a cure for any illness of each of the three hundred and
sixty-five nerves in a man’s body. Airmid, Miach’s sister, plucked all
these very carefully, and arranged them on her mantle according to their
properties. But her angry and jealous father overturned the cloak, and
hopelessly confused them. If it had not been for that act, says the
early writer, men would know how to cure every illness, and would so be
immortal.
The healing of Nuada’s blemish happened just at the time when all the
people of the goddess Danu had at last agreed that the exactions and
tyranny of Bress could no longer be borne. It was the insult he put upon
Cairpré, son of Ogma the god of literature, that caused things to come
to this head. Poets were always held by the Celts in great honour; and
when Cairpré, the bard of the Tuatha Dé Danann, went to visit Bress, he
expected to be treated with much consideration, and fed at the king’s
own table. But, instead of doing so, Bress lodged him in a small, dark
room where there was no fire, no bed, and no furniture except a mean
table on which small cakes of dry bread were put on a little dish for
his food. The next morning, Cairpré rose early and left the palace
without having spoken to Bress. It was the custom of poets when they
left a king’s court to utter a panegyric on their host, but Cairpré
treated Bress instead to a magical satire. It was the first satire ever
made in Ireland, and seems to us to bear upon it all the marks of an
early effort. Roughly rendered, it said:
“No meat on the plates,
No milk of the cows;
No shelter for the belated;
No money for the minstrels:
May Bress’s cheer be what he gives to others!”
This satire of Cairpré’s was, we are assured, so virulent that it caused
great red blotches to break out all over Bress’s face. This in itself
constituted a blemish such as should not be upon a king, and the Tuatha
Dé Danann called upon Bress to abdicate and let Nuada take the throne
again.
Bress was obliged to do so. He went back to the country of the Fomors,
underneath the sea, and complained to his father Elathan, its king,
asking him to gather an army to reconquer his throne. The Fomors
assembled in council—Elathan, Tethra, Balor, Indech, and all the other
warriors and chiefs—and they decided to come with a great host, and take
Ireland away, and put it under the sea where the people of the goddess
Danu would never be able to find it again.
At the same time, another assembly was also being held at Tara, the
capital of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Nuada was celebrating his return to the
throne by a feast to his people. While it was at its height, a stranger
clothed like a king came to the palace gate. The porter asked him his
name and errand.
“I am called Lugh,” he said. “I am the grandson of Diancecht by Cian, my
father, and the grandson of Balor by Ethniu, my mother.”
“But what is your profession?” asked the porter; “for no one is admitted
here unless he is a master of some craft.”
“I am a carpenter,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of a carpenter. We already have a very good one; his
name is Luchtainé.”
“I am an excellent smith,” said Lugh.
“We do not want a smith. We have a very good one; his name is Goibniu.”
“I am a professional warrior,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of one. Ogma is our champion.”
“I am a harpist,” said Lugh.
“We have an excellent harpist already.”
“I am a warrior renowned for skilfulness rather than for mere strength.”
“We already have a man like that.”
“I am a poet and tale-teller,” said Lugh.
“We have no need of such. We have a most accomplished poet and
tale-teller.”
“I am a sorcerer,” said Lugh.
“We do not want one. We have numberless sorcerers and druids.”
“I am a physician,” said Lugh.
“Diancecht is our physician.”
“I am a cup-bearer,” said Lugh.
“We already have nine of them.”
“I am a worker in bronze.”
“We have no need of you. We already have a worker in bronze. His name is
Credné.”
“Then ask the king,” said Lugh, “if he has with him a man who is master
of all these crafts at once, for, if he has, there is no need for me to
come to Tara.”
So the door-keeper went inside, and told the king that a man had come
who called himself Lugh the _Ioldanach_[111], or the “Master of all
Arts”, and that he claimed to know everything.
The king sent out his best chess-player to play against the stranger.
Lugh won, inventing a new move called “Lugh’s enclosure”.
Then Nuada invited him in. Lugh entered, and sat down upon the chair
called the “sage’s seat”, kept for the wisest man.
Ogma, the champion, was showing off his strength. Upon the floor was a
flagstone so large that fourscore yokes of oxen would have been needed
to move it. Ogma pushed it before him along the hall, and out at the
door. Then Lugh rose from his chair, and pushed it back again. But this
stone, huge as it was, was only a portion broken from a still greater
rock outside the palace. Lugh picked it up, and put it back into its
place.
The Tuatha Dé Danann asked him to play the harp to them. So he played
the “sleep-tune”, and the king and all his court fell asleep, and did
not wake until the same hour of the following day. Next he played a
plaintive air, and they all wept. Lastly, he played a measure which sent
them into transports of joy.
When Nuada had seen all these numerous talents of Lugh, he began to
wonder whether one so gifted would not be of great help against the
Fomors. He took counsel with the others, and, by their advice, lent his
throne to Lugh for thirteen days, taking the “sage’s seat” at his side.
Lugh summoned all the Tuatha Dé Danann to a council.
“The Fomors are certainly going to make war on us,” he said. “What can
each of you do to help?”
Diancecht the Physician said: “I will completely cure everyone who is
wounded, provided his head is not cut off, or his brain or spinal marrow
hurt.”
“I,” said Goibniu the Smith, “will replace every broken lance and sword
with a new one, even though the war last seven years. And I will make
the lances so well that they shall never miss their mark, or fail to
kill. Dulb, the smith of the Fomors, cannot do as much as that. The fate
of the fighting will be decided by my lances.”
“And I,” said Credné the Bronze-worker, “will furnish all the rivets for
the lances, the hilts for the swords, and the rims and bosses for the
shields.”
“And I,” said Luchtainé the Carpenter, “will provide all the shields and
lance-shafts.”
Ogma the Champion promised to kill the King of the Fomors, with thrice
nine of his followers, and to capture one-third of his army.
“And you, O Dagda,” said Lugh, “what will you do?”
“I will fight,” said the Dagda, “both with force and craft. Wherever the
two armies meet, I will crush the bones of the Fomors with my club, till
they are like hailstones under a horse’s feet.”
“And you, O Morrígú?” said Lugh.
“I will pursue them when they flee,” she replied. “And I always catch
what I chase.”
“And you, O Cairpré, son of Etan?” said Lugh to the poet, “what can you
do?”
“I will pronounce an immediately-effective curse upon them; by one of my
satires I will take away all their honour, and, enchanted by me, they
shall not be able to stand against our warriors.”
“And ye, O sorcerers, what will ye do?”
“We will hurl by our magic arts,” replied Mathgan, the head sorcerer,
“the twelve mountains of Ireland at the Fomors. These mountains will be
Slieve League, Denna Ulad, the Mourne Mountains, Bri Ruri, Slieve Bloom,
Slieve Snechta, Slemish, Blai-Sliab, Nephin, Sliab Maccu Belgodon,
Segais[112], and Cruachan Aigle[113]”.
Then Lugh asked the cup-bearers what they would do.
“We will hide away by magic,” they said, “the twelve chief lakes and the
twelve chief rivers of Ireland from the Fomors, so that they shall not
be able to find any water, however thirsty they may be; those waters
will conceal themselves from the Fomors so that they shall not get a
drop, while they will give drink to the people of the goddess Danu as
long as the war lasts, even if it last seven years.” And they told Lugh
that the twelve chief lakes were Lough Derg, Lough Luimnigh[114], Lough
Corrib, Lough Ree, Lough Mask, Strangford Lough, Lough Læig, Lough
Neagh, Lough Foyle, Lough Gara, Lough Reagh, and Márloch, and that the
twelve chief rivers were the Bush, the Boyne, the Bann, the Nem, the
Lee, the Shannon, the Moy, the Sligo, the Erne, the Finn, the Liffey,
and the Suir.
Finally, the Druid, Figol, son of Mamos, said: “I will send three
streams of fire into the faces of the Fomors, and I will take away
two-thirds of their valour and strength, but every breath drawn by the
people of the goddess Danu will only make them more valorous and strong,
so that even if the fighting lasts seven years, they will not be weary
of it.”
All decided to make ready for a war, and to give the direction of it to
Lugh.
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Footnote 109:
The principal sources of information for this chapter are the Harleian
MS. 5280 entitled _The Second Battle of Moytura_, of which
translations have been made by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the _Revue
Celtique_ and M. de Jubainville in his _L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande_,
and Eugene O’Curry’s translation in Vol. IV. of _Atlantis_ of the
_Fate of the Children of Tuirenn_.
Footnote 110:
Pronounced _Kian_.
Footnote 111:
Pronounced _Ildāna_.
Footnote 112:
The Curlieu Hills, between Roscommon and Sligo.
Footnote 113:
Croagh Patrick.
Footnote 114:
The estuary of the Shannon.
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