THE CONQUEST OF THE GODS BY MORTALS
Of what Badb had in mind when she uttered this prophecy we have no
record. But it was true. The twilight of the Irish gods was at hand. A
new race was coming across the sea to dispute the ownership of Ireland
with the people of the goddess Danu. And these new-comers were not
divinities like themselves, but men like ourselves, ancestors of the
Gaels.
This story of the conquest of the gods by mortals—which seems such a
strange one to us—is typically Celtic. The Gaelic mythology is the only
one which has preserved it in any detail; but the doctrine would seem to
have been common at one time to all the Celts. It was, however, of less
shame to the gods than would otherwise have been; for men were of as
divine descent as themselves. The dogma of the Celts was that men were
descended from the god of death, and first came from the Land of the
Dead to take possession of the present world.[141] Caesar tells us, in
his too short account of the Gauls, that they believed themselves to be
sprung from Dis Pater, the god of the underworld.[142] In the Gaelic
mythology Dis Pater was called Bilé, a name which has for root the
syllable _bel_, meaning “to die”. The god Beli in British mythology was
no doubt the same person, while the same idea is expressed by the same
root in the name of Balor, the terrible Fomor whose glance was
death.[143]
The post-Christian Irish chroniclers, seeking to reconcile Christian
teachings with the still vital pagan mythology by changing the gods into
ancient kings and incorporating them into the annals of the country,
with appropriate dates, also disposed of the genuine early doctrine by
substituting Spain for Hades, and giving a highly-fanciful account of
the origin and wanderings of their ancestors. To use a Hibernicism,
appropriate in this connection, the first Irishman was a Scythian called
Fenius Farsa. Deprived of his own throne, he had settled in Egypt, where
his son Niul married a daughter of the reigning Pharaoh. Her name was
Scôta, and she had a son called Goidel, whose great-grandson was named
Eber Scot, the whole genealogy being probably invented to explain the
origin of the three names by which the Gaels called themselves—Finn,
Scot, and Goidel. Fenius and his family and clan were turned out of
Egypt for refusing to join in the persecution of the children of Israel,
and sojourned in Africa for forty-two years. Their wanderings took them
to “the altars of the Philistines, by the Lake of Osiers”; then, passing
between Rusicada and the hilly country of Syria, they travelled through
Mauretania as far as the Pillars of Hercules; and thence landed in
Spain, where they lived many years, greatly increasing and multiplying.
The same route is given by the twelfth-century British historian,
Geoffrey of Monmouth, as that taken by Brutus and the Trojans when they
came to colonize Britain.[144] Its only connection with any kind of fact
is that it corresponds fairly well with what ethnologists consider must
have been the westward line of migration taken, not, curiously enough,
by the Aryan Celts, but by the pre-Aryan Iberians.
It is sufficient for us to find the first men in Spain, remembering that
“Spain” stood for the Celtic Hades, or Elysium. In this country Bregon,
the father of two sons, Bilé and Ith, had built a watch-tower, from
which, one winter’s evening, Ith saw, far off over the seas, a land he
had never noticed before. “It is on winter evenings, when the air is
pure, that man’s eyesight reaches farthest”, remarks the old tract
called the “Book of Invasions”,[145] gravely accounting for the fact
that Ith saw Ireland from Spain.
Wishing to examine it nearer, he set sail with thrice thirty warriors,
and landed without mishap at the mouth of the River Scêné.[146] The
country seemed to him to be uninhabited, and he marched with his men
towards the north. At last he reached Aileach, near the present town of
Londonderry.
Here he found the three reigning kings of the people of the goddess
Danu, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Greiné, the sons of Ogma, and
grandsons of the Dagda. These had succeeded Nuada the Silver-handed,
killed in the battle with the Fomors; and had met, after burying their
predecessor in a tumulus called Grianan Aileach, which still stands on
the base of the Inishowen Peninsula, between Lough Swilly and Lough
Foyle, to divide his kingdom among them. Unable to arrive at any
partition satisfactory to all, they appealed to the new-comer to
arbitrate.
The advice of Ith was moral rather than practical. “Act according to the
laws of justice” was all that he would say to the claimants; and then he
was indiscreet enough to burst into enthusiastic praises of Ireland for
its temperate climate and its richness in fruit, honey, wheat, and fish.
Such sentiments from a foreigner seemed to the Tuatha Dé Danann
suggestive of a desire to take the country from them. They conspired
together and treacherously killed Ith at a place since called “Ith’s
Plain”. They, however, spared his followers, who returned to “Spain”,
taking their dead leader’s body with them. The indignation there was
great, and Milé, Bilé’s son and Ith’s nephew, determined to go to
Ireland and get revenge.
Milé therefore sailed with his eight sons and their wives. Thirty-six
chiefs, each with his shipful of warriors, accompanied him. By the magic
arts of their druid, Amergin of the Fair Knee, they discovered the exact
place at which Ith had landed before them, and put in to shore there.
Two alone failed to reach it alive. The wife of Amergin died during the
voyage, and Aranon, a son of Milé, on approaching the land, climbed to
the top of the mast to obtain a better view, and, falling off, was
drowned. The rest disembarked safely upon the first of May.
Amergin was the first to land. Planting his right foot on Irish soil, he
burst into a poem preserved in both the Book of Lecan and the Book of
Ballymote.[147] It is a good example of the pantheistic philosophy of
the Celtic races, and a very close parallel to it is contained in an
early Welsh poem, called the “Battle of the Trees”, and attributed to
the famous bard Taliesin.[148] “I am the wind that blows upon the sea,”
sang Amergin; “I am the ocean wave; I am the murmur of the surges; I am
seven battalions; I am a strong bull; I am an eagle on a rock; I am a
ray of the sun; I am the most beautiful of herbs; I am a courageous wild
boar; I am a salmon in the water; I am a lake upon a plain; I am a
cunning artist; I am a gigantic, sword-wielding champion; I can shift my
shape like a god. In what direction shall we go? Shall we hold our
council in the valley or on the mountain-top? Where shall we make our
home? What land is better than this island of the setting sun? Where
shall we walk to and fro in peace and safety? Who can find you clear
springs of water as I can? Who can tell you the age of the moon but I?
Who can call the fish from the depths of the sea as I can? Who can cause
them to come near the shore as I can? Who can change the shapes of the
hills and headlands as I can? I am a bard who is called upon by
seafarers to prophesy. Javelins shall be wielded to avenge our wrongs. I
prophesy victory. I end my song by prophesying all other good
things.”[149]
The Welsh bard Taliesin sings in the same strain as the druid Amergin
his unity with, and therefore his power over, all nature, animate and
inanimate. “I have been in many shapes”, he says, “before I attained a
congenial form. I have been a narrow blade of a sword; I have been a
drop in the air; I have been a shining star; I have been a word in a
book; I have been a book in the beginning; I have been a light in a
lantern a year and a half; I have been a bridge for passing over
threescore rivers; I have journeyed as an eagle; I have been a boat on
the sea; I have been a director in battle; I have been a sword in the
hand; I have been a shield in fight; I have been the string of a harp; I
have been enchanted for a year in the foam of water. There is nothing in
which I have not been.” It is strange to find Gael and Briton combining
to voice almost in the same words this doctrine of the mystical Celts,
who, while still in a state of semi-barbarism, saw, with some of the
greatest of ancient and modern philosophers, the One in the Many, and a
single Essence in all the manifold forms of life.
The Milesians (for so, following the Irish annalists, it will be
convenient to call the first Gaelic settlers in Ireland) began their
march on Tara, which was the capital of the Tuatha Dé Danann, as it had
been in earlier days the chief fortress of the Fir Bolgs, and would in
later days be the dwelling of the high kings of Ireland. On their way
they met with a goddess called Banba, the wife of Mac Cuill. She greeted
Amergin. “If you have come to conquer Ireland,” she said, “your cause is
no just one.” “Certainly it is to conquer it we have come,” replied
Amergin, without condescending to argue upon the abstract morality of
the matter. “Then at least grant me one thing,” she asked. “What is
that?” replied Amergin. “That this island shall be called by my name.”
“It shall be,” replied Amergin.
A little farther on, they met a second goddess, Fotla, the wife of Mac
Cecht, who made the same request, and received the same answer from
Amergin.
Last of all, at Uisnech, the centre of Ireland, they came upon the third
of the queens, Eriu, the wife of Mac Greiné. “Welcome, warriors,” she
cried. “To you who have come from afar this island shall henceforth
belong, and from the setting to the rising sun there is no better land.
And your race will be the most perfect the world has ever seen.” “These
are fair words and a good prophecy,” said Amergin. “It will be no thanks
to you,” broke in Donn, Milé’s eldest son. “Whatever success we have we
shall owe to our own strength.” “That which I prophesy has no concern
with you,” retorted the goddess, “and neither you nor your descendants
will live to enjoy this island.” Then, turning to Amergin, she, too,
asked that Ireland might be called after her. “It shall be its principal
name,” Amergin promised.
And so it has happened. Of the three ancient names of Ireland—Banba,
Fotla, and Eriu—the last, in its genitive form of “Erinn”, is the one
that has survived.
The invaders came to Tara, then called Drumcain, that is, the “Beautiful
Hill”. Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac Greiné met them, with all the host
of the Gaelic gods. As was usual, they held a parley. The people of the
goddess Danu complained that they had been taken by surprise, and the
Milesians admitted that to invade a country without having first warned
its inhabitants was not strictly according to the courtesies of
chivalrous warfare. The Tuatha Dé Danann proposed to the invaders that
they should leave the island for three days, during which they
themselves would decide whether to fight for their kingdom or to
surrender it; but the Milesians did not care for this, for they knew
that, as soon as they were out of the island, the Tuatha Dé Danann would
oppose them with druidical enchantments, so that they would not be able
to make a fresh landing. In the end, Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht, and Mac
Greiné offered to submit the matter to the arbitration of Amergin, the
Milesians’ own lawgiver, with the express stipulation that, if he gave
an obviously partial judgment, he was to suffer death at their hands.
Donn asked his druid if he were prepared to accept this very delicate
duty. Amergin replied that he was, and at once delivered the first
judgment pronounced by the Milesians in Ireland.
“The men whom we found dwelling in the land, to them is possession due
by right.
It is therefore your duty to set out to sea over nine green waves;
And if you shall be able to effect a landing again in spite of them,
You are to engage them in battle, and I adjudge to you the land in
which you found them living.
I adjudge to you the land wherein you found them dwelling, by the right
of battle.
But although you may desire the land which these people possess, yet
yours is the duty to show them justice.
I forbid you from injustice to those you have found in the land,
however you may desire to obtain it.”[150]
This judgment was considered fair by both parties. The Milesians retired
to their ships, and waited at a distance of nine waves’ length from the
land until the signal was given to attack, while the Tuatha Dé Danann,
drawn up upon the beach, were ready with their druidical spells to
oppose them.
The signal was given, and the Milesians bent to their oars. But they had
hardly started before they discovered that a strong wind was blowing
straight towards them from the shore, so that they could make no
progress. At first they thought it might be a natural breeze, but Donn
smelt magic in it. He sent a man to climb the mast of his ship, and see
if the wind blew as strong at that height as it did at the level of the
sea. The man returned, reporting that the air was quite still “up
aloft”. Evidently it was a druidical wind. But Amergin soon coped with
it. Lifting up his voice, he invoked the Land of Ireland itself, a power
higher than the gods it sheltered.
“I invoke the land of Eriu!
The shining, shining sea!
The fertile, fertile hill!
The wooded vale!
The river abundant, abundant in water!
The fishful, fishful lake!”
In such strain runs the original incantation, one of those magic
formulas whose power was held by ancient, and still is held by savage,
races to reside in their exact consecrated wording rather than in their
meaning. To us it sounds nonsense, and so no doubt it did to those who
put the old Irish mythical traditions into literary shape; for a later
version expands and explains it as follows:[151]—
“I implore that we may regain the land of Erin,
We who have come over the lofty waves,
This land whose mountains are great and extensive,
Whose streams are clear and numerous,
Whose woods abound with various fruit,
Its rivers and waterfalls are large and beautiful,
Its lakes are broad and widely spread,
It abounds with fountains on elevated grounds!
May we gain power and dominion over its tribes!
May we have kings of our own ruling at Tara!
May Tara be the regal residence of our many succeeding kings!
May the Milesians be the conquerors of its people!
May our ships anchor in its harbours!
May they trade along the coast of Erin!
May Eremon be its first ruling monarch!
May the descendants of Ir and Eber be mighty kings!
I implore that we may regain the land of Erin,
I implore!”
The incantation proved effectual. The Land of Ireland was pleased to be
propitious, and the druidical wind dropped down.
But success was not quite so easy as they had hoped. Manannán, son of
the sea and lord of headlands, shook his magic mantle at them, and
hurled a fresh tempest out over the deep. The galleys of the Milesians
were tossed helplessly on the waves; many sank with their crews. Donn
was among the lost, thus fulfilling Eriu’s prophecy, and three other
sons of Milé also perished. In the end, a broken remnant, after long
beating about the coasts, came to shore at the mouth of the River Boyne.
They landed; and Amergin, from the shore, invoked the aid of the sea as
he had already done that of the land.
“Sea full of fish!
Fertile land!
Fish swarming up!
Fish there!
Under-wave bird!
Great fish!
Crab’s hole!
Fish swarming up!
Sea full of fish!”
which, being interpreted like the preceding charm, seems to have meant:
“May the fishes of the sea crowd in shoals to the land for our use!
May the waves of the sea drive forth to the shore abundance of fish!
May the salmon swim abundantly into our nets!
May all kinds of fish come plentifully to us from the sea!
May its flat-fishes also come in abundance!
This poem I compose at the sea-shore that fishes may swim in shoals to
our coast.”
Then, gathering their forces, they marched on the people of the goddess
Danu.
Two battles were fought, the first in Glenn Faisi, a valley of the
Slieve Mish Mountains, south of Tralee, and the second at Tailtiu, now
called Telltown. In both, the gods were beaten. Their three kings were
killed by the three surviving sons of Milé—Mac Cuill by Eber, Mac Cecht
by Eremon, and Mac Greiné by the druid Amergin. Defeated and
disheartened, they gave in, and, retiring beneath the earth, left the
surface of the land to their conquerors.
From this day begins the history of Ireland according to the annalists.
Milé’s eldest son, Donn, having perished, the kingdom fell by right to
the second, Eremon. But Eber, the third son, backed by his followers,
insisted upon a partition, and Ireland was divided into two equal parts.
At the end of a year, however, war broke out between the brothers; Eber
was killed in battle, and Eremon took the sole rule.
-----
Footnote 141:
It may be noted that, according to Welsh legend, the ancestors of the
Cymri came from Gwlâd yr Hâv, the “Land of Summer”, _i.e._ the Celtic
Other World.
Footnote 142:
_De Bello Gallico_, Book VI, chap. XVIII.
Footnote 143:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_, chap. X. Rhys: _Hibbert
Lectures_—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
Footnote 144:
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _Historia Britonum_, Book I, chap. II.
Footnote 145:
Contained in the _Book of Leinster_ and other ancient manuscripts.
Footnote 146:
Now called the Kenmare River.
Footnote 147:
This poem and the three following ones, all attributed to Amergin, are
said to be the oldest Irish literary records.
Footnote 148:
_Book of Taliesin_, poem VIII, in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales,
Vol. I, p. 276.
Footnote 149:
De Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique_. See also the _Transactions of
the Ossianic Society_, Vol. V.
Footnote 150:
Translated by Professor Owen Connellan in Vol. V of the _Transactions
of the Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 151:
The original versions of this and the following charm are from De
Jubainville: _Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_, the later from Professor
Owen Connellan’s translations in Vol. V of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_. “Some of these poems”, explains the Professor,
“have been glossed by writers or commentators of the Middle Ages,
without which it would be almost impossible now for any Irish scholar
to interpret them; and it is proper to remark that the translation
accompanying them is more in accordance with this gloss than with the
original text.”
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