25.
People of the Goddess Dana (Tuatha Dé Danann) or the
Sidhe
How gods were diminished into fae. St.Patrick raised the dead to learn the history. The nature, music, palaces, wars and the taking of humans by the sidhe. Why do people even today believe that the fae are 'fallen angels' ...
What follows are descriptions and tales from an old source:
'So firm was the hold which the ethnic gods of Ireland had
taken upon the imagination and spiritual sensibilities of our ancestors that
even the monks and christianized bards never thought of denying them. They
doubtless forbade the people to worship them, but to root out the belief in
their existence was so impossible that they could not even dispossess their own
minds of the conviction that the gods were real supernatural beings.'--Standish
O'grady.
The People of the Goddess Dana, or, the People of the god
whose mother was called Dana, are the
Tuatha De Danann of the ancient mythology of Ireland. The Goddess Dana, called
in the genitive Danand, in middle Irish times was named Brigit. And this
goddess Brigit of the pagan Celts has been supplanted by the Christian St.
Brigit; and, in exactly the same way as the pagan cult once bestowed on the spirits in wells and fountains has been transferred to Christian saints, to
whom the wells and fountains have been re-dedicated, so to St. Brigit as a
national saint has been transferred the pagan cult rendered to her predecessor.
Thus even yet, as in the case of the minor divinities of their sacred
fountains, the Irish people through their veneration for the good St. Brigit,
render homage to the divine mother of the People who bear her name Dana,--who
are the ever-living invisible Fairy-People of modern Ireland. For when the Sons
of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the
Tuatha De Danann in full possession of the country. The Tuatha De Danann then
retired before the invaders, without, however, giving up their sacred Island.
Assuming invisibility, with the power of at any time reappearing in a human-like
form before the children of the Sons of Mil, the People of the Goddess Dana
became and are the Fairy-Folk, the Sidhe of Irish mythology and romance. Therefore it is that today Ireland contains
two races,---a race visible which we call Celts, and a race invisible which we
call Fairies. Between these two races there is constant intercourse even now;
for Irish seers say that they can behold the majestic, beautiful Sidhe, and
according to them the Sidhe are a race quite distinct from our own, just as living
and possibly more powerful. the Celtic Otherworld.
The recorded mythology and literature of ancient Ireland
have, very faithfully for the most part, preserved to us clear pictures of the
Tuatha De Danann; so that disregarding some Christian influence in the texts of
certain manuscripts, much rationalization, and a good deal of poetical
colouring and romantic imagination in the pictures, we can easily describe the
People of the Goddess Dana as they appeared in pagan days, when they were more
frequently seen by mortals than now. Perhaps the Irish folk of the olden times
were even more clairvoyant and spiritual-minded than the Irish folk of today.
So by drawing upon these written records let us try to understand what sort of
beings the Sidhe were and are.
Nature of the sidhe
In the Book of Leinster the poem of Eochaid records that the Tuatha De
Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of siabra; and siabra is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites,
or ghosts. The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like
the modern 'gentry'; but the word ghosts is inappropriate, because our evidence
shows that the only relation the Sidhe or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a
superficial one, the Sidhe and ghosts being alike only in respect to
invisibility. In the two chief Irish MSS., the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book
of Leinster, the Tuatha De Danann are described as gods and not-gods; and Sir
John Rhys considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit deva
and adeva. It is also said, in the Book of the Dun Cow, that wise men do not
know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that it seems likely to them that
they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence
of their knowledge. The hold of the
Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian
transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of
intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently
misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons, as the ending of the story of the Sick-Bed of
Cuchulainn illustrates:'So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being
stricken by the people of the Sid: for the demoniac power was great before the
faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against
mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be
in immortality. It was thus they used to be believed in. So it is to such
phantoms the ignorant apply the names of Side and Aes Side.' A passage in the Silva Gadelica (ii. 202--3)
not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish
people made a clear distinction between the god-race and our own:--In The
Colloquy with the Ancients, as St. Patrick and Caeilte are talking with one
another, a lone woman robed in mantle of
green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a
glittering plate of yellow gold, came to them; and when Patrick asked from
whence she came, she replied: 'Out of uaimh Chruachna, or the cave of
Cruachan.'
Caeilte then asked: 'Woman, my soul, who art thou?'
'I am Scothniamh or Flower-lustre, daughter of
the Daghda's son Bodhb derg.'
Caeilte proceeded: 'And what started thee hither?'
'To require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a
time thou promisedst me such.'
And as they parleyed Patrick broke in with: 'It is a wonder
to us how we see you two: the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but
thou Caeilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey.'
'Which is no wonder at all,' said Caeilte, 'for no people of
one generation or of one time are we: she is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are
unfading and whose duration is perennial, I am of the sons of Milesius, that
are perishable and fade away.'
The exact distinction is between Caeilte, a withered old
ancient--in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may
question him about the past history of Ireland--and a fairy-woman who is one of
the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann.
In two of the more ancient Irish texts, the Echtra Nerai or Expedition
of Nera, a preliminary tale in the introduction to the Táin bó Cuailnge or Theft of the Cattle of Cuailnge; and a
passage from the Togail Bruidne dâ Derga, or Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, there seems no reasonable doubt whatever about
the Tuatha De Danann or Sidhe being a race like what we call spirits. The first
text describes how Ailill and Medb in their palace of Cruachan celebrated the
feast of Samain (November Eve, a feast of the dead even in pre-Christian
times). Two culprits had been executed on the day before, and their bodies,
according to the ancient Irish custom, were left hanging from a tree until the
night of Samain should have passed; for on that night it was dangerous to touch
the bodies of the dead while demons and the people of the Sidhe were at large
throughout all Ireland, and mortals found near dead bodies at such a time were
in great danger of being taken by these spirit hosts of the Tuatha De Danann.
And so on this very night, when thick darkness had settled down, Ailill desired
to test the courage of his warriors, and offered his own gold-hilted sword to
any young man who would go out and tie a coil of twisted twigs around the leg
of one of the bodies suspended from the tree. After many had made the attempt
and failed, because unable to brave the legions of demons and fairies, Nera
alone succeeded; but his success cost him dear, for he finally fell under the
power both of the dead man, round whose legs he had tied the coil, and of an
elfin host: with the dead man's body on his back, Nera was obliged to go to a
strange house that the thirst of the dead man might be assuaged therein; and
the dead man in drinking scattered 'the last sip from his lips at the faces of
the people that were in the house, so that they all died'. Nera carried back
the body; and on returning to Cruachan he saw the fairy hosts going into the
cave, 'for the fairy-mounds of Erinn are always opened about Halloween.' Nera
followed after them until he came to their king in a palace of the Tuatha De
Danann, seemingly in the cavern or elsewhere underground; where he remained and
was married to one of the fairy women. She it was who revealed to Nera the
secret hiding-place, in a mysterious well, of the king's golden crown, and then
betrayed her whole people by reporting to Nera the plan they had for attacking
Ailill's court on the Halloween to come. Moreover, Nera was permitted by his
fairy wife to depart from the síd; and he in taking leave of her asked: 'How
will it be believed of me that I have gone into the síd?'
'Take fruits of summer with thee,' said the woman.
Then he took wild garlic with him and primrose and golden
fern. And on the following November Eve when the síd of Cruachan was again
open, 'the men of Connaught and the black hosts of exile' under Ailill and Medb
plundered it, taking away from it the crown of Briun out of the well. But 'Nera
was left with his people in the síd, and has not come out until now, nor will
he come till Doom.'
All of this matter is definitely enough in line with the
living Fairy-Faith: there is the same belief expressed as now about November
Eve being the time of all times when ghosts, demons, spirits, and fairies are
free, and when fairies take mortals and marry them to fairy women; also the
beliefs that fairies are living in secret places in hills, in caverns, or underground--palaces
full of treasure and open only on November Eve. In so far as the real fairies,
the Sidhe, are concerned, they appear as the rulers of the Feast of the Dead or
Samain, as the controllers of all spirits who are then at large; and, allowing
for some poetical imagination and much social psychology and anthropomorphism,
elements as common in this as in most literary descriptions concerning the
Tuatha De Danann, they are faithfully enough presented.
The second text describes how King Conaire, in riding along
a road toward Tara, saw in front of him three strange horsemen, three men of
the Sidhe:--'Three red frocks had they, and three red mantles: three red steeds
they bestrode, and three red heads of hair were on them. Red were they all,
both body and hair and raiment, both steeds and men.'
'Who is it that fares before us?' asked Conaire. 'It was a
taboo of mine for those Three to go before me--the three Reds to the house of
Red. Who will follow them and tell them to come towards me in my track?'
'I will follow them,'
says Lé fri flaith, Conaire's son.
'He goes after them, lashing his horse, and overtook them
not. There was the length of a spearcast between them: but they did not gain
upon him and he did not gain upon them.' All attempts to come up with the red
horsemen failed. But at last, before they disappeared, one of the Three said to
the king's son riding so furiously behind them, 'Lo, my son, great the news.
Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach (?) from
the elfmounds. Though we are alive we are dead. Great are the signs: destruction
of life: sating of ravens: feeding of crows, strife of slaughter: wetting of
sword-edge, shields with broken bosses in hours after sundown. Lo, my son!'
Then they disappear. When Conaire and his followers heard
the message, fear fell upon them, and the king said: 'All my taboos have seized
me tonight, since those Three [Reds] [are the] banished folks.'
In this passage we behold three horsemen of the Sidhe
banished from their elfmound because guilty of falsehood. Visible for a time,
they precede the king and so violate one of his taboos; and then delivering
their fearful prophecy they vanish. These three of the Tuatha De Danann,
majestic and powerful and weird in their mystic red, are like the warriors of
the 'gentry' seen by contemporary seers in West Ireland. Though dead, that is
in an invisible world like the dead, yet they are living. It seems that in all
three of the textual examples already cited, the scribe has emphasized a
different element in the unique nature of the Tuatha De Danann. In the Colloquy
it is their eternal youth and beauty, in the Echtra Nerai it is their supremacy
over ghosts and demons on Samain and their power to steal mortals away at such
a time, and in this last their respect for honesty. And in each case their portrayal
corresponds to that of the 'gentry' and Sidhe by modern Irishmen; so that the
old Fairy-Faith and the new combine to prove the People of the God whose mother
was Dana to have been and to be a race of beings who are like mortals, but not
mortals, who to the objective world are as though dead, yet to the subjective
world are fully living and conscious.
O'Curry says:--'The term (sídh,), as far as we
know it, is always applied in old writings to the palaces, courts, halls, or
residences of those beings which in ancient Gaedhelic mythology held the place
which ghosts, phantoms, and fairies hold in the superstitions of the present
day.' In modern Irish tradition, 'the
People of the Sidhe,' or simply the Sidhe, refer to the beings themselves
rather than to their places of habitation. Partly perhaps on account of this
popular opinion that the Sidhe are a subterranean race, they are sometimes
described as gods of the earth or dei terreni, as in the Book of Armagh; and
since it was believed that they, like the modern fairies, control the ripening
of crops and the milk-giving of cows, the ancient Irish rendered to them
regular worship and sacrifice, just as the Irish of today do by setting out
food at night for the fairy-folk to eat.
Thus after their conquest, these Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann
in retaliation, and perhaps to show their power as agricultural gods, destroyed
the wheat and milk of their conquerors, the Sons of Mil, as fairies today can
do; and the Sons of Mil were constrained to make a treaty with their supreme
king, Dagda, who, in Cóir Anmann, is himself called an earth-god. Then
when the treaty was made the Sons of Mil were once more able to gather wheat in
their fields and to drink the milk of their cows; and we can suppose that ever since that time
their descendants, who are the people of Ireland, remembering that treaty, have
continued to reverence the People of the Goddess Dana by pouring libations of
milk to them and by making them offerings of the fruits of the earth.
The palaces of the sidhe
The marvellous palaces to which the Tuatha De Danann retired
when conquered by the race of Mil were hidden in the depths of the earth, in
hills, or under ridges more or less elevated. At the time of their conquest, Dagda their
high king made a distribution of all such palaces in his kingdom. He gave one
síd to Lug, son of Ethne, another to Ogme; and for himself retained two--one
called Brug na Boinne, or Castle of the Boyne, because it was situated on or
near the River Boyne near Tara, and the other called Síd or Brug Maic ind Oc,
which means Enchanted Palace or Castle of the Son of the Young. And this Mac
ind Oc was Dagda's own son by the queen Boann, according to some accounts, so
that as the name (Son of the Young) signifies, Dagda and Boann, both immortals,
both Tuatha De Danann, were necessarily always young, never knowing the touch
of disease, or decay, or old age. Not until Christianity gained its psychic
triumph at Tara, through the magic of Patrick prevailing against the magic of
the Druids--who seem to have stood at that time as mediators between the People
of the Goddess Dana and the pagan Irish--did the Tuatha De Danann lose their
immortal youthfulness in the eyes of mortals and become subject to death. In
the most ancient manuscripts of Ireland the pre-Christian doctrine of the
immortality of the divine race 'persisted intact and without restraint'; but in the Senchus na relec or 'History of the
Cemeteries', from the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, and in the Lebar gabala or 'Book of
the Conquests', from the Book of Leinster, it was completely changed by the
Christian scribes.
When Dagda thus distributed the underground palaces, Mac ind
Oc, or as he was otherwise called Oengus, was absent and hence forgotten. So
when he returned, naturally he complained to his father, and the Brug na
Boinne, the king's own residence, was ceded to him for a night and a day, but
Oengus maintained that it was forever. This palace was a most marvellous one:
it contained three trees which always bore fruit, a vessel full of excellent
drink, and two pigs--one alive and the other nicely cooked ready to eat at any
time; and in this palace no one ever died. In the Colloquy, Caeilte tells of a mountain
containing a fairy palace which no man save Finn and six companions, Caeilte
being one of these, ever entered. The Fenians, while hunting, were led thither
by a fairy woman who had changed her shape to that of a fawn in order to allure
them; and the night being wild and snowy they were glad to take shelter therein.
Beautiful damsels and their lovers were the inhabitants of the palace; in it
there was music and abundance of food and drink; and on its floor stood a chair
of crystal. In another fairy palace, the
enchanted cave of Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De
Danann, had sway; 'and so soon as he perceived that the hounds' cry now sounded
deviously, he bade his three daughters (that were full of sorcery) to go and
take vengeance on Finn for his hunting ' --just as nowadays the 'good people'
take vengeance on one of our race if a fairy domain is violated. Frequently the
fairy palace is under a lake, as in the christianized story of the
Disappearance of Caenchomrac:--Once when 'the cleric chanted his psalms, he saw
[come] towards him a tall man that emerged out of the loch: from the bottom of
'the water that is to say.' This tall man informed the cleric that he came from
an underwater monastery, and explained 'that there should be subaqueous
inhabiting by men is with God no harder than that they should dwell in any
other place'. In all these ancient
literary accounts of the Sidhe-palaces we easily recognize the same sort of
palaces as those described today by Gaelic peasants as the habitations of the'
gentry', or 'good people', or 'people of peace.' Such habitations are in
mountain caverns like those of Ben Bulbin or Knock Ma, or in fairy hills or
knolls like the Fairy-Hill at Aberfoyle on which Robert Kirk is believed to have been taken, or beneath lakes. This brings us directly to the way in which
the Sidhe or Tuatha De Danann of the olden times took fine-looking young men
and maidens.
How the sidhe 'took' mortals
Perhaps one of the earliest and most famous literary
accounts of such a taking is that concerning Aedh, son of Eochaid Lethderg son
of the King of Leinster, who is represented as contemporary with Patrick. While Aedh was enjoying a game of hurley with
his boy companions near the sídh of Liamhain Softsmock, two of the sídh-women,
who loved the young prince, very suddenly appeared, and as suddenly took him
away with them into a fairy palace and kept him there three years. It happened,
however, that he escaped at the end of that time, and, knowing the magical
powers of Patrick, went to where the holy man was, and thus explained himself:--'Against
the youths my opponents I (i. e. my side) took seven goals; but at the last one
that I took, here come up to me two women clad in green mantles: two daughters
of Bodhb derg mac an Daghda, and their names Slad and Mumain. Either of them took
me by a hand, and they led me off to a garish brugh; whereby for now three
years my people mourn after me, the sídh-folk caring for me ever since, and
until last night I got a chance opening to escape from the brugh, when to the
number of fifty lads we emerged out of the sídh and forth upon the green. Then
it was that I considered the magnitude of that strait in which they of the sídh
had had me, and away from the brugh I came running to seek thee, holy Patrick.'
'That,' said the saint, 'shall be to thee a safeguard, so
that neither their power nor their dominion shall any more prevail against
thee.'
And so when Patrick had thus made Aedh proof against the
power of the fairy-folk, he kept him with him under the disguise of a
travelling minstrel until, arriving in Leinster, he restored him to his father
the king and to his inheritance: Aedh enters the palace in his minstrel
disguise; and in the presence of the royal assembly Patrick commands him: 'Doff
now once for all thy dark capacious hood, and well mayest thou wear thy
father's spear!'
When the lad removed his hood, and none there but recognized
him, great was the surprise. He seemed like one come back from the dead, for
long had his heirless father and people mourned for him. 'By our word,'
exclaimed the assembly in their joyous excitement, 'it is a good cleric's
gift!'
And the king said: 'Holy Patrick, seeing that till this day
thou hast nourished him and nurtured, let not the Tuatha De Danann's power any
more prevail against the lad.'
And Patrick answered: 'That death which the King of Heaven
and Earth hath ordained is the one that he will have.'
This ancient legend shows clearly that the Tuatha De Danann,
or Sidhe, in the time when the scribe wrote the Colloquy were thought of in the
same way as now, as able to take beautiful mortals whom they loved, and able to
confer upon them fairy immortality which prevented 'that death which the King
of Heaven and Earth hath ordained'.
It will be interesting to learn that, unlike Aedh, whom some
perhaps would call a foolish youth, Laeghaire, also a prince, for he was the
son of the king of Connaught, entered a dun of the Sidhe, taking fifty other
warriors with him; and he and his followers found life in Fairyland so pleasant
that they all decided to enjoy it eternally. Accordingly, when they had been
there a year, they planned to return to Connaught in order to bid the king and
his people a final farewell. They announced their plan, and Fiachna of the
Sidhe told them how to accomplish it safely:-'If ye would come back take with
you horses, but by no means dismount from off them'; 'So it was done: they went
their way and came upon a general assembly in which Connaught, as at the year
expired, mourned for the aforesaid warrior-band, whom now all at once they
perceived above them (i. e. on higher ground). Connaught sprang to meet them,
but Laeghaire cried: "Approach us not [to touch us]: 'tis to bid you
farewell that we are here!"
"Leave me not!" Crimthann, his
father, said: "Connaught's royal power be thine; their silver and their
gold, their horses with their bridles, and their noble women be at thy
discretion, only leave me not!"
But Laeghaire turned
from them and so entered again into the sídh, where with Fiachna he exercises
joint kingly rule; nor is he as yet come out of it.'
Hill visions of sidhe women
There are many recorded traditions which represent certain
hills as mystical places whereon men are favoured with visions of fairy women.
Thus, one day King Muirchertach came forth to hunt on the border of the Brugh
(near Stackallan Bridge, County Meath), and his companions left him alone on
his hunting-mound. 'He had not been there long when he saw a solitary damsel
beautifully formed, fair-haired, bright-skinned, with a green mantle about her
sitting near him on the turfen mound; and it seemed to him that of womankind he
had never beheld her equal in beauty and refinement.' In the Mabinogion of Pwyll, Prince of Dyvet,
which seems to be only a Brythonic treatment of an original Gaelic tale, Pwyll
seating himself on a mound where any mortal sitting might see a prodigy, saw a
fairy woman ride past on a white horse, and she clad in a garment of shining
gold. Though he tried to have his servitor on the swiftest horse capture her,
'There was some magic about the lady that kept her always the same distance
ahead, though she appeared to be riding slowly.' When on the second day Pwyll
returned to the mound the fairy woman came riding by as before, and the
servitor again gave unsuccessful chase. Pwyll saw her in the same manner on the
third day. He thereupon gave chase himself, and when he exclaimed to her, 'For
the sake of the man whom you love, wait for me!' she stopped; and by mutual
arrangement the two agreed to meet and to marry at the end of a year.
The minstrels or musicians of the sidhe.
Not only did the fairy-folk of more ancient tunes enjoy
wonderful palaces full of beauty and riches, and a life of eternal youth, but
they also had, even as now, minstrelsy and rare music--music to which that of
our own world could not be compared at all; for even Patrick himself said that
it would equal the very music of heaven if it were not for 'a twang of the
fairy spell that infests it'. And this
is how it was that Patrick heard the fairy music:--As he was travelling through
Ireland he once sat down on a grassy knoll, as he often did in the good old
Irish way, with Ulidia's king and nobles and Caeilte also: 'Nor were they long
there before they saw draw near them a scológ or non-warrior that
wore a fair green mantle having in it a fibula of silver; a shirt of yellow silk
next his skin, over and outside that again a tunic of soft satin, and with a
timpán (a sort of harp) of the best slung on his back.
"Whence comest thou, scológ?"--asked the king.
"Out of the sídh of the Daghda's son Bodhb Derg, out of
Ireland's southern part."
"What moved thee
out of the south, and who art thou thyself?"
"I am Cascorach,
son of Cainchinn that is ollave to the Tuatha De Danann, and am myself the
makings of an ollave (i.e. an aspirant to the grade). What started me was the
design to acquire knowledge, and information, and lore for recital, and the
Fianna's mighty deeds of valour, from Caeilte, son of Ronan."
Then he took
his timpán and made for them music and minstrelsy, so that he sent them
slumbering off to sleep.' And Cascorach's music was pleasing to Patrick, who
said of it: 'Good indeed it were, but for a twang of the fairy spell that
infests it; barring which nothing could more nearly than it resemble Heaven's
harmony.'
And that very night
which followed the day on which the ollave to the Tuatha De Danann came to them
was the Eve of Samain. There was also another of these fairy timpán-players
called 'the wondrous elfin man', 'Aillén mac Midhna of the Tuatha De Danann,
that out of sídh Finnachaidh to the northward used to come to Tara: the manner
of his coming being with a musical timpán in his hand, the which whenever any
heard he would at once sleep. Then, all being lulled thus, out of his mouth
Aillén would emit a blast of fire. It was on the solemn Samain-Day (November
Day) he came in every year, played his timpán, and to the fairy music that he
made all hands would fall asleep. With his breath he used to blow up the flame
and so, during a three-and-twenty years' spell, yearly burnt up Tara with all
her gear.' And it is said that Finn, finally overcoming the magic of Aillén,
slew him.
Perhaps in the first musician, Cascorach, though he is
described as the son of a Tuatha De Danann minstrel, we behold a mortal like
one of the many Irish pipers and musicians who used to go, or even go yet, to
the fairy-folk to be educated in the musical profession, and then come back as
the most marvellous players that ever were in Ireland; though if Cascorach were
once a mortal it seems that he has been quite transformed in bodily nature so as
to be really one of the Tuatha De Danann himself. But Allen mac Midhna is
undoubtedly one of the mighty 'gentry' who could--as we heard from County
Sligo--destroy half the human race if they wished. Aillén visits Tara, the old
psychic centre both for Ireland's high-kings and its Druids. He comes as it
were against the conquerors of his race, who in their neglectfulness no longer
render due worship and sacrifice on the Feast of Samain to the Tuatha De
Danann, the gods of 'the dead, at that time supreme; and then it is that he
works his magic against the royal palaces of the kings and Druids on the
ancient Hill. And to overcome the magic of Aillén and slay him, that is, make
it impossible for him to repeat his annual visits to Tara, it required the
might of the great hero Finn, who himself was related to the same Sidhe race,
for by a woman of the Tuatha De Danann he had his famous son Ossian (Oisin).
In Gilla dé, who is Manannan mac Lir, the greatest magician
of the Tuatha De Danann, disguised as a being who can disappear in the
twinkling of an eye whenever he wishes, and reappear unexpectedly as a 'kern
that wore garb of yellow stripes', we meet with another fairy musician. And to
him O'Donnell says:--'By Heaven's grace again, since first I heard the fame of
them that within the hills and under the earth beneath us make the fairy
music,. . . music sweeter than thy strains I have never heard; thou art in sooth
a most melodious rogue!'
And again it is said of him:--'Then the gilla decair taking
a harp played music so sweet. . . and the king after a momentary glance at his
own musicians never knew which way he went from him.'
Social organization and warfare among the sidhe
So far, we have seen only the happy side of the life of the
Sidhe-folk--their palaces and pleasures and music; but there was a more human
(or anthropomorphic) side to their nature in which they wage war on one
another, and have their matrimonial troubles even as we moderns. And we turn
now to examine this other side of their life, to behold the Sidhe as a warlike
race; and as we do so let us remember that the 'gentry' in the Ben Bulbin
country and in all Ireland, and the people of Finvara in Knock Ma, and also the
invisible races of California, are likewise described as given to war and
mighty feats of arms.
The invisible Irish races have always had a very distinct
social organization, so distinct in fact that Ireland can be divided according
to its fairy kings and fairy queens and their territories even now; and no doubt we see in this how the ancient
Irish anthropomorphically projected into an animistic belief their own social
conditions and racial characteristics. And this social organization and territorial
division ought to be understood before we discuss the social troubles and
consequent wars of the Sidhe-folk. For example in Munster, Bodb was king and his
enchanted palace was called the Síd of the Men of Femen; and we already know about the over-king Dagda
and his Boyne palace near Tara. In more modern times, especially in popular
fairy-traditions, Eevil or Eevinn (Aoibhill or Aolbhinn) of the Craig Liath or
Grey Rock is a queen of the Munster fairies; and Finvara is king of the Connaught fairies . There are also the Irish fairy-queens
Cleeona (Cliodhna, or in an earlier form
Clidna and Aine.
We are now prepared to see the Tuatha De Danann in their
domestic troubles and wars; and the following story is as interesting as any,
for in it Dagda himself is the chief actor. Once when his own son Oengus fell
sick of a love malady, King Dagda, who ruled all the Sidhe-folk in Ireland,
joined forces with Ailill and Medb in order to compel Ethal Anbual to deliver
up his beautiful daughter Caer whom Oengus loved. When Ethal Anbual's palace
had been stormed and Ethal Anbual reduced to submission, he declared he had no
power over his daughter Caer, for on the first of November each year, he said,
she changed to a swan, or from a swan to a maiden again.
'The first of November next,' he added, 'my daughter will be
under the form of a swan, near the Loch bel Draccon. Marvellous birds will be
seen there: my daughter will be surrounded by a hundred and fifty other swans.'
When the November Day arrived, Oengus went to the lake, and,
seeing the swans and recognizing Caer, plunged into the water and instantly
became a swan with her. While under the form of swans, Oengus and Caer went
together to the Boyne palace of the king Dagda, his father, and remained there;
and their singing was so sweet that all who heard it slept three days and three
nights. In this story, new elements in
the nature of the Sidhe appear, though like modern ones: the Sidhe are able to
assume other forms than their own, are subject to enchantments like mortals;
and when under the form of swans are in some perhaps superficial aspects like
the swan-maidens in stories which are world-wide, and their swan-song has the
same sweetness and magical effect as in other countries.
In the Rennes Dinnshenchas there is a tale about a war among
the 'men of the Elfmounds' over 'two lovable maidens who dwelt in the
elfmound', and when they delivered the battle 'they all shaped themselves into
the shapes of deer'. Midir's Sons under Donn mac Midir, in rebellion against
the Daghda's son Bodh Derg, fled away to an obscure sídh, where in yearly
battle they met the hosts of the other Tuatha De Danann under Bodh Derg; and it
was into this sídh or fairy palace on the very eve before the annual contest
that Finn and his six companions were enticed by the fairy woman in the form of
a fawn, to secure their aid. And in
another tale, Laeghaire, son of the king of Connaught, with fifty warriors, plunged
into a lake to the fairy world beneath it, in order to assist the fairy man,
who came thence to them, to recover his wife stolen by a rival.
The sidhe as war-goddesses or the badb
It is in the form of birds that certain of the Tuatha De
Danann appear as war-goddesses and directors of battle, and we learn from one
of our witnesses that the 'gentry'
or modern Sidhe-folk take sides even now in a great war, like that between
Japan and Russia. It is in their relation to the hero Cuchulainn that one can
best study the People of the Goddess Dana in their role as controllers of human
war. In the greatest of the Irish epics, the Tam Bó Cuailnge, where Cuchulainn
is under their influence, these war-goddesses are called Badb (or Bodb) which
here seems to be a collective term for Neman, Macha, and Morrigu (or Morrigan) --each
of whom exercises a particular supernatural power. Neman appears as the
confounder of armies, so that friendly bands, bereft of their senses by her,
slaughter one another; Macha is a fury that riots and revels among the slain;
while Morrigu, the greatest of the three, by her presence infuses superhuman
valour into Cuchulainn, nerves him for the cast, and guides the course of his
unerring spear. And the Tuatha De Danann in infusing this valour into the great
hero show themselves--as we already know them to be on Samain Eve--the rulers
of all sorts of demons of the air and awful spirits:--In the Book of Leinster
(fol. 57, B 2) it is recorded that 'the satyrs, and sprites, and maniacs of the
valleys, and demons of the air, shouted about him, for the Tuatha De Danann
were wont to impart their valour to him, in order that he might be more feared,
more dreaded, more terrible, in every battle and battle-field, in every combat
and conflict, into which he went.'
The Battles of Moytura seem in most ways to be nothing more
than the traditional record of a long warfare to determine the future spiritual
control of Ireland, carried on between two diametrically opposed orders of invisible
beings, the Tuatha De Danann representing the gods of light and good and the
Fomorians representing the gods of darkness and evil. It is said that after the
second of these battles 'The Morrigu, daughter of Ermnas (the Irish
war-goddess), proceeded to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which
had taken place, to the royal heights of Ireland and to its fairy host and its
chief waters and its river-mouths '. For good had prevailed over evil, and it
was settled that all Ireland should forever afterwards be a sacred country
ruled over by the People of the Goddess Dana and the Sons of Mil jointly. So
that here we see the Tuatha De Danann with their war-goddess fighting their own
battles in which human beings play no part.
It is interesting to observe that this Irish war-goddess,
the bodb or badb, considered of old to be one of the Tuatha De Danann, has
survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief Celtic countries. In
Ireland the survival is best seen in the popular and still almost general
belief among the peasantry that the fairies often exercise their magical powers
under the form of royston-crows; and for this reason these birds are always
greatly dreaded and avoided. The resting of one of them on a peasant's cottage
may signify many things, but often it means the death of one of the family or
some great misfortune, the bird in such a case playing the part of a bean-sidhe
(banshee). And this folk-belief finds its echo in the recorded tales of Wales,
Scotland, and Brittany. In the Mabinogi, 'Dream of Rhonabwy,' Owain, prince of
Rheged and a contemporary of Arthur, has a wonderful crow which always secures
him victory in battle by the aid of three hundred other crows under its
leadership. In Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands the fairies very
often exercise their power in the form of the common hoody crow; and in
Brittany there is a folk-tale entitled 'Les Compagnons' in which the chief actor is a fairy under the
form of a magpie who lives in a royal forest just outside Rennes.
W. M. Hennessy has shown that the word bodb or badb,
aspirated bodhbh or badhbh, originally signified rage, fury, or violence, and
ultimately implied a witch, fairy, or goddess; and that as the memory of this
Irish goddess of war survives in folk-lore, her emblem is the well-known
scald-crow, or royston-crow. By
referring to Peter O'Connell's Irish Dictionary we are able to confirm this
popular belief which identifies the battle-fairies with the royston-crow, and
to discover that there is a definite relationship or even identification
between the Badb and the Bean-sidhe or banshee, as there is in modern Irish
folklore between the royston-crow and the fairy who announces a death.
Badb-catha is made to equal 'Fionog, a royston-crow, a squall crow'; Badb is
defined as a bean-sidhe, a female fairy, phantom, or spectre, supposed to be
attached to certain families, and to appear sometimes in the form of
squall-crows, or royston-crows'; and the Badb in the threefold aspect is thus
explained: 'Macha, i. e. a royston-crow; Morrighain, i. e. the great fairy;
Neamhan, i. e. Badb catha nó feannóg; a badb catha, or royston-crow.' Similar
explanations are given by other glossarists, and thus the evidence of
etymological scholarship as well as that of folk-lore support the Psychological
Theory.
The sidhe in the battle of clontarf, A.D. 1014
The People of the Goddess Dana played an important part in
human warfare even so late as the Battle of Clontarf, fought near Dublin, April
23, 1014; and at that time fairy women and phantom-hosts were to the Irish
unquestionable existences, as real as ordinary men and women. It is recorded in
the manuscript story of the battle, of which numerous copies exist, that the
fairy woman Aoibheall came to Dunlang
O'Hartigan before the battle and begged him not to fight, promising him life
and happiness for two hundred years if he would put off fighting for a single
day; but the patriotic Irishman expressed his decision to fight for Ireland, and
then the fairy woman foretold how he and his friend Murrough, and Brian and
Conaing and all the nobles of Erin and even his own son Turlough, were fated to
fall in the conflict.
On the eve of the battle, Dunlang comes to his friend
Murrough directly from the fairy woman; and Murrough upon seeing him reproaches
him for his absence in these words:--'Great must be the love and attachment of
some woman for thee which has induced thee to abandon me.'
'Alas O King,' answered Dunlang, 'the delight which I have
abandoned for thee is greater, if thou didst but know it, namely, life without
death, without cold, without thirst, without hunger, without decay, beyond any
delight of the delights of the earth to me, until the judgement, and heaven
after the judgement; and if I had not pledged my word to thee I would not have
come here; and, moreover, it is fated for me to die on the day that thou shalt
die.'
When Murrough has heard this terrible message, the prophecy
of his own death in the battle, despondency seizes him; and then it is that he
declares that he for Ireland like Dunlang for honour has also sacrificed the
opportunity of entering and living in that wonderful Land of Eternal Youth: 'Often
was I offered in hills, and in fairy mansions, this world (the fairy world) and
these gifts, but I never abandoned for one night my country nor mine
inheritance for them.'
And thus is described the meeting of the two armies at
Clontarf, and the demons of the air and the phantoms, and all the hosts of the
invisible world who were assembled to scatter confusion and to revel in the
bloodshed, and how above them in supremacy rose the Badb:--'It will be one of
the wonders of the day of judgement to relate the description of this
tremendous onset. There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad, inexorable,
furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious badb, which was
shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and
sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and
owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom
host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them.' It is said of Murrough (Murchadh) as he
entered the thick of the fight and prepared to assail the foreign invaders, the
Danes, when they had repulsed the Dal-Cais, that 'he was seized with a boiling
terrible anger, an excessive elevation and greatness of spirit and mind. A bird
of valour and championship rose in him, and fluttered over his head and on his
breath'.
Conclusion:
The recorded or manuscript Fairy-Faith of the Gaels
corresponds in all essentials with the living Gaelic Fairy-Faith: the Tuatha De
Danann or Sidhe, the 'Gentry', the 'Good People', and the 'People of Peace' are
described as a race of invisible divine beings eternally young and unfading.
They inhabit fairy palaces, enjoy rare feasts and love-making, and have their
own music and minstrelsy. They are essentially majestic in their nature; they
wage war in their own invisible realm against other of its inhabitants like the
ancient Fomorians; they frequently direct human warfare or nerve the arm of a
great hero like Cuchulainn; and demons of the air, spirit hosts, and awful
unseen creatures obey them. Mythologically they are gods of light and good,
able to control natural phenomena so as to make harvests come forth abundantly
or not at all. But they are not such mythological beings as we read about in
scholarly dissertations on mythology, dissertations so learned in their curious
and unreasonable and often unintelligible hypotheses about the workings of the
mind among primitive men.
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, 1911
