14.
The Celtic Otherworld
Heroes and kings visited the otherworld, realm of the death, while they were still alive. They were taken there by the gods or the fairies, or they went there themselves. Time spent in the otherworld is not the same as the time that passes in our world, the realm of the living. Often a magic wand was involved to make the entrance to the otherworld possible.
What follows are descriptions and tales of the Celtic Otherworld, and those who went there, from an old source.
‘In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death
are not far apart.'--W. B. Yeats.
'Many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep, and some are said to
have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in
the eyes which marks the presence of a soul.'--A. E.
General Description
he Heaven-World
of the ancient Celts, unlike that of the Christians, was not situated in some
distant, unknown region of planetary space, but here on our own earth. As it
was necessarily a subjective world, poets could only describe it in terms more
or less vague; and its exact geographical location, accordingly, differed
widely in the minds of scribes from century to century. Sometimes, as is usual
to-day in fairy-lore, it was a subterranean world entered through caverns, or
hills, or mountains, and inhabited by many races and orders of invisible
beings, such as demons, shades, fairies, or even gods. And the underground
world of the Sidhe-folk, which cannot be separated from it, was divided into
districts or kingdoms under different fairy kings and queens, just as the upper
world of mortals. We know how the Tuatha
De Danann or Sidhe-folk, after
their defeat by the Sons of Mil at the Battle of Tailte, retired to this
underground world and took possession of its palaces beneath the green hills
and vales of Ireland; and how from there, as gods of the harvest, they still
continued to exercise authority over their conquerors, or marshalled their own
invisible spirit-hosts in fairy warfare, and sometimes interfered in the wars
of men.
More frequently, in the old Irish manuscripts, the Celtic Otherworld was located in the
midst of the Western Ocean, as though it were the 'double' of the lost Atlantis; and Manannan Mac Lir, the Son of the Sea--perhaps himself the 'double'
of an ancient Atlantean king--was one of the divine rulers of its fairy
inhabitants, and his palace, for he was one of the Tuatha De Danann, was there
rather than in Ireland; and when he travelled between the two countries it was in
a magic chariot drawn by horses who moved over the sea-waves as on land. And
fairy women came from that mid-Atlantic world in magic boats like spirit boats,
to charm away such mortal men as in their love they chose, or else to take
great Arthur wounded unto death. And in that island world there was neither
death nor pain nor scandal, nought save immortal and unfading youth, and
endless joy and feasting.
Even yet at rare intervals, like a phantom, Hy Brasil appears far out on the
Atlantic. No later than the summer of 1908 it is said to have been seen from
West Ireland, just as that strange invisible island near Innish murray,
inhabited by the invisible 'gentry',
is seen--once in seven years. And too many men of intelligence testify to
having seen Hy Brasil at the same moment, when they have been together, or
separated, as during the summer of 1908, for it to be explained away as an
ordinary illusion of the senses. Nor can it be due to a mirage such as we know,
because neither its shape nor position seems to conform to any known island or
land mass. One of the commonest legends among all Celtic peoples is about some
lost city like the Breton Is, or some
lost land or island and we can be quite sure that if, as some scientists now
begin to think Atlantis once existed, its disappearance must have left from a
prehistoric epoch a deep impress on folk-memory. But the Other-world idea being
in essence animistic is not to be regarded, save from a superficial point of
view, as conceivably having had its origin in a lost Atlantis. The real
evolutionary process, granting the disappearance of this island continent,
would seem rather to have been one of localizing and anthropomorphizing very
primitive Aryan and pre-Aryan beliefs about a heaven-world, such as have been
current among almost all races of mankind in all stages of culture, throughout
the two Americas and Polynesia as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. The
Celtic Otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond
the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save
with the mystic vision of the Irish seer. Thus in the legend of Bran's friends,
who sat over dinner at Harlech with the Head of Bran for seven years, three curious birds acted as musicians, the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which were
said to sing the dead back to life and the living into death;--but the birds
were not in Harlech, they were out over the sea in the atmosphere of Rhiannon's realm in the bosom of
Cardigan Bay. And though we might say of
that Otherworld, as we learn from these Three Birds of Rhiannon, and as
Socrates would say, that its inhabitants are come from the living and the
living in our world from the dead there, we ought not to think of the Sidhe-folk, nor of such great heroes and
gods as Arthur and Cuchulainn and Finn, who are also of its invisible company, as in any sense
half-conscious shades; for they are always represented as being in the full
enjoyment of an existence and consciousness greater than our own.
n Irish manuscripts, the Otherworld beyond the Ocean bears
many names. It is Tír-na-nog, 'The
Land of Youth'; Tír-Innambéo, 'The Land
of the Living'; Tír Tairngire, 'The
Land of Promise'; Tír N-aill, 'The
Other Land (or World)'; Mag Már, 'The
Great Plain'; and also Mag Mell, 'The
Plain Agreeable (or Happy).'
But this western Otherworld, if it is what we believe it to
be--a poetical picture of the great subjective world--cannot be the realm of
any one race of invisible beings to the exclusion of another. In it all
alike--gods, Tuatha De Danann, fairies, demons, shades, and every sort of
disembodied spirits--find their appropriate abode; for though it seems to
surround and interpenetrate this planet even as the X-rays interpenetrate
matter, it can have no other limits than those of the Universe itself. And that
it is not an exclusive realm is certain from what our old Irish manuscripts record
concerning the Fomorian races. These, when they met defeat on the battle-field
of Moytura at the hands of the Tuatha De Danann, retired altogether from
Ireland, their overthrow being final, and returned to their own invisible
country--a mysterious land beyond the Ocean, where the dead find a new
existence, and where their god-king Tethra
ruled, as he formerly ruled in this world. And the fairy women of Tethra's
kingdom, even like those who came from the Tuatha De Danann of Erin, or those of Manannan's
ocean-world, enticed mortals to go with them to be heroes under their king, and
to behold there the assemblies of ancestors. It was one of them who came to Connla, son of Conn, supreme king of
Ireland; and this was her message to him:--'The
immortals invite you. You are going to be one of the heroes of the people of
Tethra. You will always be seen there, in the assemblies of your ancestors, in
the midst of those who know and love you.' And with the fairy spell upon
him the young prince entered the glass boat of the fairy woman, and his father
the king, in great tribulation and wonder, beheld them disappear across the
waters never to return.
The Silver Branch and the Golden Bough.
o enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by
death, a passport was often necessary, and this was usually a silver branch of
the sacred apple-tree bearing blossoms, or fruit, which the queen of the Land of the Ever-Living and Ever-Young gives to
those mortals whom she wishes for as companions; though sometimes, it was a single apple without its branch. The queen's gifts serve not only
as passports, but also as food and drink for mortals who go with her. Often the
apple-branch produces music so soothing that mortals who hear it forget all troubles
and even cease to grieve for those whom the fairy women take. For us there are
no episodes more important than those in the ancient epics concerning these
apple-tree talismans, because in them we find a certain key which unlocks the
secret of that world from which such talismans are brought, and proves it to be
the same sort of a place as the Otherworld of the Greeks and Romans. Let us
then use the key and make a few comparisons between the Silver Branch of the Celts and the Golden Bough of the Ancients, expecting the two symbols naturally
to differ in their functions, though not fundamentally.
It is evident at the outset that the Golden Bough was as
much the property of the queen of that
underworld called Hades as the Silver Branch was the gift of the Celtic fairy queen, and like the Silver
Bough it seems to have been the symbolic bond between that world and this,
offered as a tribute to Proserpine by
all initiates, who made the mystic voyage in full human consciousness. And, as
we suspect, there may be even in the ancient Celtic legends of mortals who make
that strange voyage to the Western Otherworld and return to this world again,
an echo of initiatory rites--perhaps druidic--similar to those of Proserpine as
shown in the journey of Aeneas, which,
as Virgil records it, is undoubtedly a poetical rendering of an actual psychic
experience of a great initiate.
In Virgil's classic poem the
Sibyl commanded the plucking of the sacred bough to be carried by Aeneas
when he entered the underworld; for without such a bough plucked near the
entrance to Avernus from the wondrous tree sacred to Infernal Juno (i. e. Proserpine) none could enter
Pluto's realm. And when Charon
refused to ferry Aeneas across the
Stygian lake until the Sibyl-woman drew forth the Golden Bough from her bosom,
where she had hidden it, it becomes clearly enough a passport to Hades, just as
the Silver Branch borne by the fairy woman is a passport to Tír N-aill; and the
Sibyl-woman who guided Aeneas to the Greek and Roman Otherworld takes the place
of the fairy woman who leads mortals like Bran to the Celtic Other-world. Classical
parallels to the Celtic Otherworld journeys exist in the descent of Dionysus to
bring back Semele, of Orpheus to recover his beloved Eurydike, of Herakles at
the command of his master Eurystheus to fetch up the three-headed Kerberos--as
mentioned first in Homers Iliad; and chiefly in the voyage of Odysseus across
the deep-flowing Ocean to the land of the departed.
The Otherworld Idea Literally Interpreted
ith this parallel between the Otherworld of the Celts and
that of the Ancients seemingly established, we may leave poetical images and
seek a literal interpretation for the animistic idea about those realms. The Rites of Proserpine as conducted in the
Mysteries of Antiquity furnish us with the means; and in what Servius has written we have the material
ready. Taking the letter Υ,
which Pythagoras said is like life with its dividing ways of good and evil, as
the mystic symbol of the branch which all initiates like Aeneas offered to
Proserpine in the subjective world while there out of the physical body, he
says of the initiatory rites:--'He (the poet) could not join the Rites of
Proserpine without having the branch to hold up. And by "going to the shades" he (the poet)
means celebrating the Rites of Proserpine.' This passage is certainly capable
of but one meaning; and we may perhaps assume that the invisible realm of the
Ancients, which is called Hades, is like the Celtic Other-world located in the
Western Ocean, and is also like, or has its mythological counterpart in, the Elysian Fields to the West, reserved by
the Greeks and Romans for their gods and heroes, and in the Happy Otherworld of
Scandinavian, Iranian, and Indian mythologies. It must then follow that all
these realms--though placed in different localities by various nations, epochs,
traditions, scribes, and poets (even as the under-ground world of the Tuatha De
Danann in Ireland differs from that ruled over by one of their own race,
Manannan the Son of the Sea)--are simply various ways which different Aryan
peoples have had of looking at that one great invisible realm of which we have
just spoken, and which forms the Heavenworld of every religion, Aryan and
non-Aryan, known to man. And if this conclusion is accepted, and it seems that
it must be, merely on the evidence of the literary or recorded Celtic Fairy-Faith,
our Psychological Theory stands proven.
The Rites of Proserpine had many counterparts. Thus, to pass
on to another parallel, in the Mysteries of Eleusis the disappearance of the
Maiden into the under-world, into Hades, the land of the dead, was continually
re-enacted in a sacred drama, and it no doubt was one of the principal rites
attending initiation. In our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, we shall
return to this subject of Celtic Initiation.
The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal.
he tale is based on seven manuscripts ranging in age from
the Leabhar na h-Uidhre of about A.D.
1100 to six others belonging to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries We are well prepared now to enjoy the best known voyages which men,
heroes, and god-men, are said to have made to Avalon, or the Land of the Living, through the invitation of a
fairy woman or else of the god Manannan himself; and probably the most famous
is that of the Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal. Perhaps in all Celtic literature no poem surpasses this in natural and simple
beauty.
One day Bran heard strange music behind him as he was alone
in the neighbourhood of his stronghold; and as he listened, so sweet was the
sound that it lulled him to sleep. When he awoke, there lay beside him a branch
of silver so white with blossoms that it was not easy to distinguish the
blossoms from the branch. Bran took up the branch and carried it to the royal
house, and, when the hosts were assembled therein, they saw a woman in strange
raiment standing on the floor. Whence she came and how, no one could tell. And
as they all beheld her, she sang fifty quatrains to Bran:--
A branch of the
apple-tree from Emain
I bring, like those
one knows;
Twigs of white silver
are on it,
Crystal brows with
blossoms.
There is a distant
isle,
Around which
sea-horses glisten:
A fair course against
the white-swelling surge,--
Four feet uphold it.
When the song was finished, 'the woman went from them while they knew not whither she went. And she
took her branch with her. The branch sprang from Bran's hand into the hand of
the woman, nor was there strength in Bran's hand to hold the branch.' The
next day, with the fairy spell upon him, Bran begins the voyage towards the
setting sun. On the ocean he meets Manannan riding in his magic chariot over
the sea-waves; and the king tells Bran that he is returning to Ireland after
long ages. Parting from the Son of the Sea, Bran goes on, and the first island
he and his companions reach is the 'Island
of Joy', where one of the party is set ashore; the second isle is the 'Land of Women', where the queen draws
Bran and his followers to her realm with a magic clew, and then entertains them
for what seems no more than a year, though 'it
chanced to be many years'. After a while, home-sickness seizes the
adventurers and they come to a unanimous decision to return to Ireland; but they
depart under a taboo not to set foot on earth, or at least not till holy water
has been sprinkled on them. In their coracle they arrive before a gathering at
Srub Brain, probably in West Kerry, and Bran (who may now possibly be regarded
as an apparition temporarily returned from the Otherworld to bid his people
farewell) announces himself, and this reply is made to him:--'We do not know such a one, though the
Voyage of Bran is in our ancient stories.' Then one of Bran's party, in his
eagerness to land, broke the taboo; he 'leaps
from them out of the coracle. As soon as he touched the earth of Ireland,
forthwith he was a heap of ashes, as though he had been in the earth for many
hundred years. . . .” Thereupon, to the people of the gathering, Bran told
all his wanderings from the beginning until that time. And he wrote these
quatrains in Ogam, and then bade them farewell. And from that hour his
wanderings are not known.'
Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise.
anuscripts of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries; i. e. Book of
Ballymote, and Yellow Book of Lecan mention this tale.
In Cormac's Adventure in the Land of
Promise, there is again a magic silver branch with three golden apples on
it:--'One day, at dawn in May-time, Cormac, grandson of Conn, was alone on Múr
Tea in Tara. He saw coming towards him a sedate (?), grey-headed warrior. . . A branch of silver with three golden apples on
his shoulder. Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music
of that branch, for men sore wounded, or women in child-bed, or folk in
sickness, would fall asleep at the melody when that branch was shaken.' And the
warrior tells Cormac that he has come from a land where only truth is known,
where there is 'neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor
jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness'. On his promising the unknown warrior any
three boons that he shall ask, Cormac is given the magic branch. The
grey-headed warrior disappears suddenly; 'and Cormac knew not whither he had
gone.'
'Cormac turned into the palace. The household marvelled at
the branch. Cormac shook it at them, and cast them into slumber from that hour
to the same time on the following day. At the end of a year the warrior comes
into his meeting and asked of Cormac the consideration for his branch. "It
shall be given," says Cormac. "I will take [thy daughter] Ailbe to-day," says the warrior. So
he took the girl with him. The women of Tara utter three loud cries after the
daughter of the king of Erin. But Cormac shook the branch at them, so that he
banished grief from them all and cast them into sleep. That day month comes the
warrior and takes with him Carpre
Lifechair (the son of Cormac). Weeping and sorrow ceased not in Tara after
the boy, and on that night no one therein ate or slept, and they were in grief
and in exceeding gloom. But Cormac shook the branch at them, and they parted
from [their] sorrow. The same warrior comes again. "What askest thou
to-day?" says Cormac. "Thy wife," saith he, "even Ethne the Longsided, daughter of Dunlang
king of Leinster." Then he takes away the woman with him.' Thereupon
Cormac follows the messenger, and all his people go with him. But 'a great mist
was brought upon them in the midst of the plain of the wall. Cormac found
himself on a great plain alone'. It is the 'Land
of Promise'. Palaces of bronze, and houses of white silver thatched with
white birds' wings are there. 'Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain,
with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its
water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over
the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five
salmon which are in the fountain sever them, and send their husks floating down
the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than
any music that [men] sing.' The fountain is a sacred fountain containing the sacred salmon; and the nine hazels are
the sacred hazels of inspiration and poetry. These passages are among the most
mystical in Irish literature.
Cormac having entered the fairy palace at the fountain
beholds 'the loveliest of the world's women'. After she has been magically
bathed, he bathes, and this, apparently, is symbolical of his purification in
the Otherworld. Finally, at a feast, the warrior-messenger sings Cormac to
sleep; and when Cormac awakes he sees beside him his wife and children, who had
preceded him thither to the Land of Promise. The warrior-messenger who took
them all is none other than the great god Manannan Mac Lir of the Tuatha De
Danann.
There in the Otherworld, Cormac gains a magic cup of gold
richly and wondrously wrought, which would break into three pieces if 'three
words of falsehood be spoken under it', and the magic silver branch; and
Manannan, as the god-initiator, says to Ireland's high king:--'Take thy family
then, and take the Cup that thou mayest have it for discerning between truth
and falsehood. And thou shalt have the Branch for music and delight. And on the
day that thou shalt die they all will be taken from thee. I am Manannan, son of
Ler, king of the Land of Promise; and to see the Land of Promise was the reason
I brought [thee] hither. . . The
fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of
Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is
obtained (?). And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of
the fountain itself and out of the streams. The folk of many arts are those who
drink of them both.'
'Now on the morrow morning, when Cormac arose, he found
himself on the green of Tara, with his wife and his son and daughter, and
having his Branch and his Cup. Now that was afterwards [called] "Cormac's
Cup", and it used to distinguish between truth and falsehood with the
Gael. Howbeit, as had been promised him [by Manannan], it remained not after
Cormac's death.'
This beautiful tale evidently echoes in an extremely
poetical and symbolical manner a very ancient Celtic initiation of a king and
his family into the mystic cult of the mighty god Manannan, Son of the Sea.
They enter the Otherworld in a trance state, and on waking are in Erin again,
spiritually enriched. The Cup of Truth is probably the symbol of having gained
knowledge of the Mystery of Life and Death, and the Branch, that of the Peace
and Joy which comes to all who are truly Initiated; for to have passed from the
realm of mortal existence to the Realm of the Dead, of the Fairy-Folk, of the
Gods, and back again, with full human consciousness all the while, was equivalent
to having gained the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, the Cup of Truth,
and to having bathed in the Fountain of Eternal Youth which confers triumph
over Death and unending happiness. Thus we may have here a Celtic poetical
parallel to the initiatory journey of Aeneas to the Land of the Dead or Hades.
The Magic Wand of Gods, Fairies, and Druids.
s a god-messenger, Manannan of the Tuatha De Danann, from
the invisible realm bearing the apple-branch of silver, is in externals, though
not in other ways, like Hermes, the
god-messenger from the realm of the gods bearing his wand of two intertwined
serpents. The Greeks saw in Hermes the symbol of the Logos. Like Manannan, he
conducted the souls of men to the Otherworld of the gods, and then brought them
back to the human world. Hermes holds a rod in his hands, beautiful, golden,
wherewith he spellbinds the eyes of men whomsoever he would, and wakes them
again from sleep '--in initiations; while Manannan and the fairy beings lure
mortals to the fairy world through sleep produced by the music of the Silver
Branch.--Hippolytus on the Naasenes
(from the Hebrew Nachash, meaning a
'Serpent'.) Or again, 'the Caduceus,
or Rod of Mercury (Hermes), and the Thyrsus in the Greek Mysteries, which conducted
the soul from life to death, and from death to life, figured forth the
serpentine power in man, and the path whereby it would carry the
"man" aloft to the height, if he would but cause the "Waters of
the Jordan" to "flow upwards". In modern fairy-lore this divine
branch or wand is the magic wand of fairies; or where messengers like old men
guide mortals to an underworld it is a staff or cane with which they strike the
rock hiding the secret entrance.
The Irish Druids made their wands of divination from the yew-tree;
and, like the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are believed to have
controlled spirits, fairies, daemons, elementals, and ghosts while making such
divinations. It will help us to understand how closely the ancient symbols have
affected our own life and age--though we have forgotten their relation with the
Otherworld--by offering a few examples, beginning with the ancient Irish bards
who were associated with the Druids. A wand in the form of a symbolic branch,
like a little spike or crescent with gently tinkling bells upon it, was borne
by them; and in the piece called Mesca
Ulad or 'Inebriety of the Ultonians' it is said of the chief bard of Ulster,
Sencha, that in the midst of a bloody fray he 'waved the peaceful branch of
Sencha, and all the men of Ulster were silent, quiet'. In Agallamh an dá Shuadh or the 'Dialogue of the two Sages', the mystic symbol used by gods, fairies,
magicians, and by all initiates who know the mystery of life and death, is thus
described as a Druid symbol:--'Neidhe'
(a young bard who aspired to succeed his father as chief poet of Ulster), 'made
his journey with a silver branch over him. The Anradhs, or poets of the second order, carried a silver branch, but
the Ollamhs, or chief poets, carried
a branch of gold; all other poets bore a branch of bronze.' Modern and ancient parallels are world-wide,
among the most civilized as among the least civilized peoples, and in civil or
religious life among ourselves. Thus, it was with a magic rod that Moses struck
the rock and pure water gushed forth, and he raised the same rod and the Red
Sea opened; kings hold their sceptres no less than Neptune his trident; popes
and bishops have their croziers; in the Roman Church there are little wandlike
objects used to perform benedictions; high civil officials have their mace of
office; and all the world over there are the wands of magicians and of
medicine-men.
The Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn
e turn now to the story of the Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn. And this is how the great hero of Ulster was fairy-struck. Manannan Mac Lir, tiring
of his wife Fand, had deserted her,
and so she, wishing to marry Cuchulainn, went to Ireland with her sister Liban. Taking the form of two birds
bound together by a chain of red gold, Fand and Liban rested on a lake in
Ulster where Cuchulainn should see them as he was hunting. To capture the two
birds, Cuchulainn cast a javelin at them, but they escaped, though injured.
Disappointed at a failure like this, which for him was most unusual, Cuchulainn
went away to a menhir where he sat down and fell asleep. Then he saw two women,
one in a green and one in a crimson cloak; and the woman in green coming up to
him laughed and struck him with a whip-like object. The woman in crimson did
likewise, and alternately the two women kept striking him till they left him
almost dead. And straightway the mighty hero of the Red Branch Knights took to
his bed with a strange malady, which no Druid or doctor in all Ireland could
cure.
Till the end of a year Cuchulainn lay on his sick-bed at Emain-Macha without speaking to any one.
Then--the day before Samain (November
Eve)--there came to him an unknown messenger who sang to him a wonderful song,
promising to cure him of his malady if he would only accept the invitation of
the daughters of Aed Abrat to visit
them in the Otherworld. When the song was ended, the messenger departed, 'and
they knew not whence he came nor whither he went.' Thereupon Cuchulainn went to
the place where the malady had been put on him, and there appeared to him again
the woman in the green cloak. She let it be known to Cuchulainn that she was
Liban, and that she was longing for him to go with her to the Plain of Delight to fight against Labraid's enemies. And she promised
Cuchulainn as a reward that he would get Fand to wife. But Cuchulainn would not
accept the invitation without knowing to what country he was called. So he sent
his charioteer Laeg to bring back
from there a report. Laeg went with the fairy woman in a boat of bronze, and
returned; and when Cuchulainn heard from him the wonderful glories of that
Otherworld of the Sidhe he willingly set out for it.
After Cuchulainn had overthrown Labraid's enemies and had
been in the Otherworld a month with the fairy woman Fand, he returned to
Ireland alone; though afterwards in a place agreed upon, Fand joined him. Emer, the wife of Cuchulainn, was
overcome with jealousy and schemed to kill Fand, so that Fand returned to her
husband the god Manannan and he received her back again. When she was gone
Cuchulainn could not be consoled; but Emer obtained from the Druids a magic
drink for Cuchulainn, which made him forget all about the Otherworld and the
fairy woman Fand. And another drink the Druids gave to Emer so that she forgot
all her jealousy; and then Manannan Mac Lir himself came and shook his mantle
between Cuchulainn and Fand to prevent the two ever meeting again. And thus it
was that the Sidhe-women failed to steal away the great Cuchulainn. The magic
of the Druids and the power of the Tuatha De Danann king triumphed; and the
Champion of Ulster did not go to the Otherworld until he met a natural death in
that last great fight.
Ossian's Return from Fairyland
Safe in Ireland, Ossian seeks the Brotherhood, and though he
goes from one place to another where his old companions were wont to meet, not
one of them can he find. And how changed is all the land! He realizes at last
how long he must have been away. The words of his fairy wife are too sadly
true.
While Ossian wanders disconsolately over Ireland, he comes
to a multitude of men trying to move an enormous slab of marble, under which
some other men are lying. 'Ossian's assistance is asked, and he generously
gives it. But in leaning over his horse, to take up the stone with one hand,
the girth breaks, and he falls. Straightway the white horse fled away on his
way home, and Ossian became aged, decrepit, and blind.' Laeghaire, who also came back from Fairyland on a fairy horse, and
fifty warriors with him each likewise mounted, to say good-bye forever to the
king and people of Connaught, were warned as they set out for this world not to
dismount if they wished to return to their fairy wives. The warning was
strictly observed, and thus they were able to go back to the Sidhe-world.
The Going of Lanval to Avalon
airy romances which were recorded during the mediaeval period in continental Europe report a surprisingly large number of heroes who, like Cuchulainn and Ossian, fell under the power of fairy women or fées, and followed one of them to the Apple-Land or Avalon. Besides Arthur, they include Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawayne, Ogier, Guingemor and Lanval. Lanval was a mediaeval knight who lived during the time of King Arthur in Brittany. He was young and very beautiful, so that one of the fairy damsels fell in love with him; and in the true Irish fashion--himself and his fairy sweetheart mounted on the same fairy horse--the two went riding off to Fairyland:
airy romances which were recorded during the mediaeval period in continental Europe report a surprisingly large number of heroes who, like Cuchulainn and Ossian, fell under the power of fairy women or fées, and followed one of them to the Apple-Land or Avalon. Besides Arthur, they include Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawayne, Ogier, Guingemor and Lanval. Lanval was a mediaeval knight who lived during the time of King Arthur in Brittany. He was young and very beautiful, so that one of the fairy damsels fell in love with him; and in the true Irish fashion--himself and his fairy sweetheart mounted on the same fairy horse--the two went riding off to Fairyland:
On the horse behind her
With full rush Lanval jumped.
With her he goes away into Avalon,
According to what the Briton tells us,
Into an isle, which is very beautiful.
The Voyage of Teigue, Son of Cian
At the third dún, the dún with a silver rampart, Teigue and
his party met Connla, the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles. 'In his hand he
held a fragrant apple having the hue of gold; a third part of it he would eat,
and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished.' And at
his side sat a young woman of many charms, who spake thus to Teigue:--'I had
bestowed on him (i.e. felt for him) true affection's love, and therefore
wrought to have him come to me in this land; where our delight, both of us, is
to continue in looking at and in perpetual contemplation of one another: above
and beyond which we pass not, to commit impurity or fleshly sin whatsoever.'
Both Connla and his friend were clad investments of green--like the fairy-folk;
and their step was so light that hardly did the beautiful clover-heads bend
beneath it. And the apple 'it was that supported the pair of them and, when
once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could affect them'. When
Teigue asked who occupied the dún with the silver rampart the maiden with
Connla made this reply:--'In that one there is not any one. For behoof of the
righteous kings that after acceptance of the Faith shall rule Ireland it is
that yonder dún stands ready; and we are they who, until such those virtuous
princes shall enter into it, keep the same: in the which, Teigue my soul, thou
too shalt have an appointed place.' 'Obliquely across the most capacious palace
Teigue looked away' (as he was observing the beauty of the yet uninhabited
dun), 'and marked a thickly furnished wide-spreading apple-tree that bare
blossoms and ripe fruit both. "What is that apple-tree beyond?" he
asked [of the maiden], and she made answer:--"That apple-tree's fruit it
is that for meat shall serve the congregation which is to be in this mansion,
and a single apple of the same it was that brought (coaxed away) Connla to
me."'
Then the party rested, and there came towards them a whole
array of feminine beauty, among which was a lovely damsel of refined form who
foretold to Teigue the manner and time of his death, and as a token she gave
him 'a fair cup of emerald hue, in which are inherent many virtues: for [among
other things] though it were but water poured into it, incontinently it would
be wine'. And this was her farewell message to Teigue:--'From that (the cup),
let not thine hand part; but have it for a token: when it shall escape from
thee, then in a short time after shalt thou die; and where thou shalt meet thy
death is in the glen that is on Boyne's side: there the earth shall grow into a
great hill, and the name that it shall bear will be croidhe eisse; there too
(when thou shalt first have been wounded by a roving wild hart, after which
Allmarachs will slay thee) I will bury thy body; but thy soul shall come with
me hither, where till the Judgement's Day thou shalt assume a body light and
ethereal.'
As the party led by Teigue were going down to the seashore
to depart, the girl who had been escorting them asked 'how long they had been
in the country'. 'In our estimation,' they replied, 'we are in it but one
single day.' She, however, said: 'For an entire twelvemonth ye are in it;
during which time ye have had neither meat nor drink, nor, how long soever ye
should be here, would cold or thirst or hunger assail you.' And when Teigue and
his party had entered their currach they looked astern, but 'they saw not the
land from which they came, for incontinently an obscuring magic veil was drawn
over it'.
The Adventures of Art, Son of Conn
Bécuma Cneisgel, a
woman of the Tuatha De Danann, because of a transgression she had committed in
the Other-world with Gaidiar, Manannan's son, was banished thence. She came to
Conn, high king of Ireland, and she bound him to do her will; and her judgement
was that Art, the son of Conn, should
not come to Tara until a year was past. During the year, Conn and Bécuma were
together in Tara, 'and there was neither corn nor milk in Ireland during that
time.' The Tuatha De Danann sent this dreadful famine; for they, as
agricultural gods, thus showed their displeasure at the unholy life of
Ireland's high king with the evil woman whom they had banished. The Druids of
all Ireland being called together, declared that to appease the Tuatha De
Danann 'the son of a sinless couple should be brought to Ireland and slain
before Tara, and his blood mingled with the soil of Tara'. It was Conn himself
who set out for the Otherworld and found there the sinless boy, the son of the
queen of that world, and he brought him back to Tara. A strange event saves the
youth:--'Just then they (the assembly of people and Druids, with Conn, Art, and
Finn) heard the lowing of a cow, and a woman wailing continually behind it. And
they saw the cow and the woman making for the assembly.' The woman had come
from the Otherworld to save Segda;
and the cow was accepted as a sacrifice in place of Segda, owing to the wonders
it disclosed; for its two bags when opened contained two birds--one with one
leg and one with twelve legs, and 'the one-legged bird prevailed over the bird
with twelve legs'. Then rising up and calling Conn aside, the woman declared to
him that until he put aside the evil woman Bécuma 'a third of its corn, and its
milk, and its mast' should be lacking to Ireland. 'And she took leave of them
then and went off with her son, even Segda. And jewels and treasures were
offered to them, but they refused them.'
In the second part of this complex tale, Bécuma and Art are
together playing a game. Art finally loses, because' the men of the sidh (like
invisible spirits) began to steal the pieces 'with which he and the woman play;
and, as a result, Bécuma put on him this taboo:--'Thou shalt not eat food in
Ireland until thou bring with thee Delbchaem,
the daughter of Morgan.' 'Where is she?' asked Art. 'In an isle amid the
sea, and that is all the information that thou wilt get.' 'And he put forth the
coracle, and travelled the sea from one isle to another until he came to a
fair, strange island,' the Otherworld. The blooming women of that land
entertain the prince of Ireland during six weeks, and instruct him in all the
dangers he must face and the conquests he must make.
Having successfully met all the ordeals, Art secures
Delbchaem, daughter of Morgan the king of the 'Land of Wonders', and returns to
Ireland. 'She had a green cloak of one hue about her, with a gold pin in it
over her breast, and long, fair, very golden hair. She had dark-black eyebrows,
and flashing grey eyes in her head, and a snowy-white body.' And upon seeing
the chaste and noble Delbchaem with Art, Bécuma, the banished woman of the
Tuatha Dc Danann, lamenting, departs from Tara forever.
Otherworld Quests of Cuchulainn and of Arthur.
In the Book of
Taliessin a weird poem, Preiddeu
Annwfn, or the 'Spoils of Annwn', describes, in language not always clear,
how the Brythonic Arthur made a similar journey to the Welsh Hades world named
Annwn, where he, like Cuchulainn in Scáth, gained possession of a magic
cauldron--a pagan Celtic type of the Holy Grail--which furnishes inexhaustible
food though 'it will not boil the food of a coward'. But in stanzas iii and iv
of Preiddeu Annwfn, Annwn, or Uffern
as it is otherwise called, is not an underground realm, but some world to be
reached like the Gaelic Land of Promise by sea. Annwn is also called Caer Sidi, which in another poem of the
Book of Taliessin (No. XIV) is thought of as an island of immortal youth amid
'the streams of the ocean' where there is a food-giving fountain.
Literary Evolution of the Happy Otherworld Idea
As a rule the Hades world, or underground and under-wave
world, is unlike Manannan's peaceful ocean realm, being often described as a
place of much strife; and mortals are usually induced to enter it to aid in
settling the troubles of its fairy inhabitants.
All the numerous variations of Otherworld tales now extant
in Celtic literature show a common pre-Christian origin, though almost all of
them have been coloured by Christian ideas about heaven, hell, and purgatory.
From the earliest tales of the over-sea Otherworld type, like those of Bran,
Maelduin, and Connla, all of which may go back to the early eighth century as
compositions, the christianizing influence is already clearly begun; and in the
Voyage of Snedgus and of Mac Riagla,
of the late ninth century, this influence predominates. Purely Christian texts of about the same
period or later describe the Christian heaven as though it were the pagan
Otherworld. Some of these, like the Latin version of the tale of St. Brandan's Voyage, greatly influenced European
literature, and probably contributed to the discovery of the New World.
The combination of Christian and pagan Celtic ideas is well
shown in the Voyage of the Húi Corra:--'Thereafter
a wondrous island was shown to them. A psalm-singing venerable old man, with
fair, builded churches and beautiful bright altars. Beautiful green grass
therein. A dew of honey on its grass. Little ever-lovely bees and fair,
purple-headed birds a-chanting music therein, so that [merely] to listen to
them was enough of delight.' But in another passage the Christian scribe
describes Otherworld birds as souls, some of them in hell:--'"Of the land
of Erin am I," quoth the bird, "and I am the soul of a woman, and I
am a monkess unto thee," she saith to the elder. ... "Come ye to
another place," saith the bird, "to hearken to yon birds. The birds
that ye see are the souls that come on Sunday out of hell."' Still other
islands are definitely made into Christian hells full of fire, wherein wailing
and shrieking men are being mangled by the beaks and talons of birds.
But sometimes, like the legends about the Tuatha De Danann,
the legends about the Otherworld were taken literally and most seriously by some
early Irish-Christian saints. Professor J. Loth records a very interesting
episode, how St. Malo and his teacher
Brandan actually set out on an ocean
voyage to find the Heaven-world of the pagan Celts:--'Saint Malo, when a youth,
embarks with his teacher Brandan in a boat, in search of that mysterious
country; after some days, the waves drive him back rebuffed and discouraged
upon the seashore. An angel opens his eyes: the land of eternal peace and of
eternal youth is that which Christianity promises to its elect.'
Not only was the Celtic Otherworld gradually changed into a
Christian Heaven, or Hell, from the eighth century onward, but its divine
inhabitants soon came to suffer the rationalization commonly applied to their
race; and the transcribers began to set them down as actual personages of Irish
history. As we have already observed, the Tuatha De Danann were shorn of their
immortality, and were given in exchange all the passions and shortcomings of
men, and made subject to disease and death. This perhaps was a
natural anthropomorphic process such as is met with in all
mythologies. Celtic myth and mysticism, wherein may yet be read the deepest
secrets of life and death, supplied names and legends to fill out a
christianized scheme of Irish chronology, which was made to begin some six
thousand years ago with Adam.
A few of the pagan legends, however, met very fair treatment
at the hands of poetical and patriotic Christian transcribers. Thus in Adamnan's Vision, though the Celtic Otherworld has become 'the
Land of the Saints', its primal character is clearly discernible: to reach it a
sea voyage is necessary; and it is a land where there is no pride, falsehood,
envy, disease or death, 'wherein is delight of every goodness.' In it there are
singing birds, and for sustenance while there the voyagers need only to hear
its music and 'sate themselves with the odour which is in the Land'.
Again, in the Book of
Leinster, and in later MSS., there is a dinnshenchas of almost primal pagan
purity. It alludes to Clidna's Wave,
that of Tuag Inbir:--To Tuag,
daughter of Conall, Manannan the sea-god sent a messenger, a Druid of the
Tuatha De Danann in the shape of a woman. The Druid chanted a sleep spell over
the girl, and while he left her on the seashore to look for a boat in which to
embark for the 'Land of Everliving Women', a wave of the flood tide came and
drowned her. But the Oxford version of the same tale doubts whether the maiden
was drowned, for it suggests, 'Or maybe it (the wave) was Manannan himself that
was carrying her off.' Thus the scribe
understood that to go to Manannan's world literally meant entering a sleep or
trance state, or, what is equivalent in the case of the maiden whom Manannan
summoned, the passage through death from the physical body. And still, to-day,
the Irish peasant believes that the 'good people' take to their invisible world all young men or maidens who meet death;
or that one under a fairy spell may go to their world for a short-time, and
come back to our world again.
We have frequently emphasized how truly the modern Celtic
peasant in certain non-commercialized localities has kept to the faith of his
pagan ancestors, while the learned Christian scribes have often departed widely
from it. The story of the voyage of Fionn
to the Otherworld, which Campbell
found living among Scotch peasants as late as the last century, adds a striking
proof of this assertion. So does Michael Comyn's peasant version of Ossian in the 'Land of Youth' which,
though dating from about 1749, has all the natural character of the best
ancient tales, like those about Bran and Cormac. We are inclined, therefore, to
attach a value even higher than we have already done to the testimony of the
living Fairy-Faith which confirms in so many parallel ways, as has been shown,
the Fairy-Faith of the remote past. Mr. W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet, adequately
sums up this matter by saying, 'But the
Irish peasant believes that the utmost he can dream was once or still is a reality
by his own door. He will point to some mountain and tell you that some famous
hero or beauty lived and sorrowed there, or he will tell you that Tir-na-nog,
the Country of the Young, the old Celtic paradise--the Land of the Living
Heart, as it used to be called--is all about him.'
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, 1911
Nico
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, 1911
Nico
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