The Zeus of the Insular Celts.
Nuada of the Silver Hand.
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| 1. Nuada |
To discover the insular Celt's god who should be identified
with Zeus, we must cast about us for other means, than the mere name. Now in Irish and Welsh literature, the great figures of Celtic mythology usually
assume the character of kings of Britain and of the sister island respectively,
and most of the myths of the modern Celts are to be found manipulated so as to
form the opening chapters of what has been usually regarded as the early history of the British Isles. This is especially the case with Ireland, and
there we meet with the divinity we are in quest of, bearing the Irish name of
Nuada, genitive Nuadat, and acting as the king of a mythical colony that took
possession of Erinn in very early times: it is commonly known as Tuatha De
Danann, forming a group made up of the gods and goddesses believed in by the ancient Goidel. The oldest account of
their origin tells us that they came from Heaven; but as the Celtic mind was in the habit of regarding darkness and death as preceding light and life,
the invaders from Heaven are said to have found the island
already peopled by a race called the Fir Bolg or Bag Men, together with their
hideous and horrid allies. These were in due time attacked and defeated by the
new-comers; but in one of the conflicts, Nuada, king of the latter, had his
right arm cut off, which was all the more serious, as it constituted a blemish
incompatible with the Goidelic idea of a king.
So he had to retire from the kingship; but a clever man at his court
made him a silver hand, which another perfected so that it was finally endowed
with motion in every joint, with the result that Nuada, after a retirement of
seven years, was allowed to resume the office of king, and was from that time
forth know as Nuada Argetlám, that is to say, Nuada of the Silver Hand.
With this may be compared the following story of Tiu, the
Tyr of Old Norse literature: Loki was the father of mischief and of a brood of
monsters, of which Fenrir's Wolf was one. This latter had escaped killing at
the hands of the Ases because they were loth to pollute them with his blood; but he was found to grow so fast, and the
things foreboded of him were of such a terrible nature, that they became
alarmed and proceeded to tie the Wolf; but he shook off the bonds with ease.
They then had a magic rope made, which the Wolf, suspecting treachery, would not
let them fasten him with, till one of their number became bail by placing his hand in the beast's mouth whilst
he was being bound. Tyr was the brave one who came forward to do so, and the
bonds proving effective, the Wolf bit off the god's hand on the spot; nor do we
read of his being provided with an artificial hand, as was the case with the
Irish Nuada, or of his being healed, as the corresponding Greek story which
describes the conflict between Zeus and his monster antagonist Typho would
suggest.
For Zeus, after plying Typho with his thunderbolt without
the desired result, engaged him at close quarters with a sickle, which Typho wrested from the god and
used against him: it was then that Zeus lost the use not only of one hand but
of both, for his foe cut out the tendons of his hands and feet and carried him
away on his shoulders, a helpless mass, to be thrown into a cave, while the
muscles were hidden away in the charge of a dragon. Hermes, however, came, and
with his usual cleverness stole them and restored them to their proper places
in the god's frame, who then recovered his strength and at last overcame Typho.
The stories differ considerably, but they are sufficiently
similar to make it in the highest degree probable that the Irish Nuada is to be
equated with Tiu and Zeus: in other words, Nuada may safely be regarded as a
Celtic Zeus or Jupiter.
Add to this that in case a god has several names, their existence
tends to lead him to be regarded as so many distinct divinities, and this
tendency can beyond doubt be proved in the history of Nuada: for besides the Nuada
to whom my remarks were thus far intended to apply, Irish legendary history had
other Nuadas to show, such as Nuada Derg, or the Eed; but what proves his
virtual identity with the Celtic Mars-Jupiter, is the fact, that the sun hero
Eogan Mor is called Mog Nuadat, ' Nuada's Slave.' Then there was also a Nuada Finnfail
and a Nuada Necht.
Now Nuada of the Silver Hand is said to have landed in Erinn
A.M. 3303, while Nuada Finnfail is made to begin his reign A.M. 4199, and Nuada
Necht is connected with Leinster in A.M. 5089. So disposed, they would seem to
have been placed at a safe distance from one another; but the artificial nature
of the arrangement betrays itself in various ways: thus it can hardly be an
accident that the king who superseded Nuada of the Silver Hand, when he lost
his natural hand, should have borne the same unusual name Bres, as the one who
succeeded Nuada Finnfail some 900 years later.
But let us try to force the vocables Finnfail and Necht to
disclose their history. The latter looks as if it had a derivative in the
well-known name Nechta or Nechtan, borne, among others, by a remarkable king of
the Picts of Scotland at the beginning of the 8th century, and by the mythic owner
of a fairy precinct, now called Trinity Well, into which one could not gaze
with impunity, and from which the river Boyne first burst forth, in pursuit of
a lady who had insulted it.
In point of phonological equivalence, the syllable necht
exactly renders in Irish the nept of Neptune's name. One cannot say, however,
whether they should be regarded as of the same meaning and origin; nor does this matter for our purpose, since Irish itself has
kindred words to show. Whether you associate Necht with Neptune or with the
other words, it may be presumed to connect Nuada Necht with the world of
waters.
As to the other name, Nuada Finnfail, it would seem literally
to have meant Nuada of Finnfail, that is, Nuada of the White Fal. But what did
fál mean? One attested signification of the word was that of a wall or enclosure;
and according to this interpretation Nuada Finnfail might be interpreted to
mean Nuada of the White Wall, which might be regarded as referring to the sky
or the heavens in somewhat the same way as names like Camulos, Nwyvre and
others to be discussed in the course of this lecture. Now fál, ' a wall,' is in
Welsh gwawl of the same import; but
Welsh has also a gwawl meaning radiance or light; and I am inclined to think
that the Irish fál in the compound Finnfál had that would be to call that spot
after him the Isle of Fal.
Nodens, Nud and Llud.
The god's Irish name Nuada assumes on Brythonic ground the
form of Nodens, genitive Nodentis, to be found in Latin inscriptions, of which more anon. One of the
forms in which this survives in Welsh literature is 'Nûd,' but the mythic
personage of that name is not known as the subject of any story like that of
Nuada, and the more complete counterpart of Nuada is to be recognized in a mythical
"Welsh king, called Llûd Llawereint, or Llûd of the Silver Hand, where we detect
the story in question compressed into the epithet Llawereint, or Silver-handed.
It is important to observe that the elements of the compound
are differently arranged in the two languages: in Irish, an approach is made,
as it were, to Argenteâ Manu, but in Welsh rather to Mann Argenteâ. Now the
name Llûd Llawereint, put back to its early form, would be Lodens Lâm’argentjos, in which one could not help recognizing a modification of
Nódens Lâmargenfjos, subjected to the influence of the analogy of personal
names with alliterative epithets. Thus, for the Irish Nuada and the
inscriptional Nodens, Welsh has, thanks to alliteration, the two names Nûd and Llûd.
This latter is well known in English in the name of ' King Lud,' and from the
same 'Llud,' or rather its antecedent Lodens, come Lothus and the Loth or Lot
of the Arthurian romances.
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| 2.Nodens |
A few words must now be said of the worship of Nodens in Roman
times. The remains of his temple have been found at Lydney, on the western bank of the
Severn, in the territory of the ancient Silures. One inscription there calls him Devo Nodenti,
in the dative case, while another reads D. M. Nodonti, and a third Deo Nudente
M. Moreover, the mosaic floor of his temple is said to show, besides a variety
of figures, an inscription which would seem to have commenced with D. M.; but
it is unfortunate that nowhere has the word represented by the M been found
written in full: the consequence is, that it has been differently treated, some
making it into maximo or magno, and others into Marti.
But though it is right to regard the Silurian god as a Mars,
most of the remains of antiquity connected with his temple make him a sort of
Neptune. The following are worthy of notice: the mosaic floor displayed not
only the inscription alluded to, but also representations of sea-serpents accompanying
Glaucus in Greek mythology, and fishes supposed to stand for the salmon of the
Severn; moreover, an ugly band of red, within the lines of the inscription,
surrounded the mouth of a funnel leading into the ground beneath; this hole is
supposed to have been used for libations to the god.
Further, a small plaque of bronze found on the spot gives us
probably a representation of the god himself. The principal figure thereon is a
youthful deity crowned with rays like Phoebus: he stands in a chariot drawn by
four horses, like the Roman Neptune. On either side the winds are typified by a
winged genius floating along, and the rest of the space is left to two Tritons;
while a detached piece probably of the same bronze represents another Triton, also
a fisherman who has just succeeded in hooking a salmon.
Moreover, the site on a hilly ground near the tidal bed of
the Severn makes likewise for the divinity's connection with the world of waters. The temple to whose
remains I have alluded was undoubtedly constructed under Roman auspices, but it
is equally probable that the god was worshipped and consulted on the spot long
before the Romans first crossed the Severn.
The oldest form of the god's name known to epigraphy is, as
we have seen, Nodens, for which we have in Welsh the two forms Nûd: and Llûd:;
but "Welsh literature, it must be admitted, recognizes no connection
between them. Nevertheless, the original identity of the names warrants us in
combining the attributes of the personages called Nud and Llud: respectively,
in the attempt to reproduce the character of the god in something like its
original completeness.
Now nothing hardly is known of Nud: except that a Welsh
Triad styles him one of the Three Generous Heroes of the Isle of Britain, and that, according to
another Triad, he had a herd of cattle consisting of no less than 21,000 milk-cows,
as to which it cannot be considered certain, whether or not they should be
interpreted to mean the monsters of the deep; but Nud's generosity is doubtless to be added
to the attributes of the god as represented at Lydney. Nor is it improbable that
the name Nodens referred originally to that quality, though it would seem as if
it were to be interpreted 'the rich or wealthy' god; but I should prefer supposing it to have had
the causative meaning of one who enabled others to enjoy riches and wealth, especially in the matter of
cattle—one, in fact, who was supposed to be the giver of wealth, whence his
traditional character for generosity.
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| 3. Zeus |
But all this must be considered highly conjectural until a
related Celtic word is identified. The other name representing that of Nodens
in "Welsh, as already stated, is ' Llûd,' with which, or an earlier form
of it, such as Lodens, should be connected the Loth or Lot of the romances,
which make the person so called king of Lodonesia or the Lothians, of the Orkneys
and of Lochlann. In all these he is more or less associated with the sea; and
even the Welsh tale, bearing his name in its form of Llud, gives him a fleet.
But on the whole the Welsh have been in the habit of regarding
him rather as a great and thriving king of their ancestors, as one who
delivered his subjects from three or more dire scourges to which they were
subject, and as the hero whom Geoffrey makes the builder of the walls of
London. The association of Livid, or 'King Lud' as he has come to be called in
English, with London, is apparently founded on a certain amount of fact: one of
the Welsh names for London is Caer Lûd or Lud's Fort, and if this is open to
the suspicion of having been suggested first by Geoffrey, that can hardly be
supposed possible in the case of the English name of Ludgate Hill.
The probability is, that as a temple on a hill near the Severn
associated him with that river in the west, so a still more ambitious temple on
a hill connected him with the Thames in the east; and as an aggressive creed
can hardly signalize its conquests more effectually than by appropriating the
fanes of the retreating faith, no site could be guessed with more probability
to have been sacred to the Celtic Zeus than the eminence on which the dome of
St. Paul's now rears its magnificent form.
The Irish Nuada was the same sort of god as his Welsh namesake:
he was king of the Tuatha De Danann and their leader in war. When the Boyne is
called the forearm of Nuada's wife, that queen would seem to be a personification
of the land of Erinn; but it is not clear whether Nuada, as her consort, is to
be regarded as god of the incumbent air or of the surrounding sea, or else as the
god of light, from whom the country derived its name of the Island or Plain of
Fál.
As compared with Llud, distinguished at most as a king and
hero on land and a warrior at sea, Nuada was split into no less than three personages,
one of whom was Nuada of the Silver Hand, the martial king, and another Nuada
Finnfail, god of light and of the heavens, while we have a third in Nuada Necht,
whose connection with the world of waters has already been hinted at.
Thus it appears that the mythology of the Celts was assuming
a departmental form as far as regarded their chief divinity, out of whose wide character
they specialized a warlike Poseidon or Neptune, with a tendency to make that
element predominate. This specializing presumably began before the Celts
divided themselves into Gallo-Brythons and Goidels or settled in the British
Isles; for it is not improbable that some of them accustomed themselves to a
seafaring life long before the time when they began to cross in sufficient
numbers to conquer these islands from their ancient inhabitants, and very long
before the Parisii sent a colony down the Seine to seek a home on the other
side of the Humber.
But Nodens, the Celtic Zeus, was not simply a Neptune or a Poseidon,
in his connection with the sea: he was also a Mars, as the inscriptions at
Lydney testify. That the Celts of Britain should have been inclined to
transform their Zeus into a marine Mars at so early a date is a remarkable
fact: it lends fresh significance to the words of Pomponius Mela when he speaks of the two giants eponymous of
Britain and Ireland, who fought with the vagrant Hercules, as two sons of
Neptune, while it forms a curious prelude to the history of that composite
British people whose merchantmen and men-of-war now cover all the seas.
This leads me, however, in a direction contrary to the one I
wish to take; for I am less interested
at this point in the way in which the Celtic Zeus was split into several characters,
than in the formation of an estimate of his character and attributes before the
time of his transformation.
As a god of the Celts in the earliest period of their
existence, he was probably king of their gods, giver of wealth and increase,
leader in war, and lord equally of both land and sea, if they then knew the
sea. To compare Nodens or the Celtic Zeus with the Greek Zeus, one has to
submit the latter to somewhat the same process of collecting his early
attributes; that is to say, Nodens is
not strictly to be compared with the classic Zeus, but with the pre-classic
Zeus who was Zeus, Poseidon and Pluto all in one; who also discharged the
functions of several of his classically so-called sons, such, for example, as
Ares. Greek literature usually presents Greek theology in a highly departmental
state; but traces are not lacking of a previous stage. We have a well-known
instance in Pluto, who was always a Zeus, that is to say a chthonian Zeus, with
his realm in the deep earth as far below its surface as the sky is above it.
This is borne out by the Orphic myth of the union with Persephone of Zeus in
the form of a snake, but still as father Zeus.
Not to mention how near the idea of Pluto as a god
associated with wealth, comes to that of Zeus Similarly with regard to the sea,
Zeus is sometimes spoken of interfering with it, and Poseidon occasionally
bears the designation of Zeus; but the original identity of Posidon with Zeus
is even more strikingly shown in the case of Zeus Ourios or the giver
of the fair winds desired by the mariner. His temple was not unfrequently built on a headland looking over
the sea; somewhat like that of Nodens as
regards the estuary of the Severn. A celebrated image of the headland Zeus, the
controller of wind and weather, was brought from Macedon to the Capitol in Rome,
where it was known as Jupiter Imperator. Here should also be mentioned Zeus who
protected the voyager's landings.
It is thus clear that
the provinces of Zeus and Poseidon cannot be wholly separated, and they betray
traces of a stage when a well-defined department
of activity had not as yet been entrusted to the latter god. Much the same
remark applies in the case of some of the sons of Zeus, whose functions originally
belonged to an undifferentiated Zeus. For instance, Ares looks like a
personality developed out of the warlike aspect of Zeus's character, since his
attributes coincide mostly with those of Zeus.
Not to mention the fact that the Zeus of the Carians was
equipped with a battle-axe and clad in the complete armor of a hoplite, which
calls to mind the Zeus of the Gauls, their Mars-Jupiter, as one might venture to
term him. It is needless to say that the Roman Mars was in no sense a mere counterpart
of the Greek Ares, but rather a sort of duplicate of Jupiter, owing his
existence alongside of the greater god to the composite character of the
ancient Roman community. Mars shared with Jupiter the title of father, and such
epithets as Loucetius or bright, while the chief honors of a successful
campaign belonged to Jupiter alone: the spolia opima were his, and Mars came
only second. But to step again on Greek ground, the pre-classic Zeus, with whom
one should compare the Nodens of the earliest Celtic period, may be described
in almost the same terms which were used of the latter: he was sovereign of
gods and men, the giver of wealth and prosperity, the supreme arbiter of the
fortunes of war, and lord both of land and sea.
Cormac, Conaire, Conchobar.
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| 4.Cormac |
Though Nuada under his various names has detained us long,
he is by no means the only representative in Irish literature of the
Mars-Jupiter of the Celts. As one of the most remarkable personages of this origin,
may be mentioned Cormac mac Airt, grandson of Conn the Hundred-fighter: he is
regarded as having reigned at Tara in the third century, and his story may
contain some slight admixture of history.
His reign is represented as one of remarkable prosperity, and he himself as exceeding 'all his
predecessors in magnificence, munificence, wisdom and learning, as also in
military achievements.' So great was his reputation for legal knowledge, that a well-known
book of Irish law has been attributed to him.
One version of his history as king of Erinn represents him
driven from his throne by an enemy called Fergus the Black-toothed, but enabled afterwards, like Nuada,
to recover the sovereignty. Another,
however, found in an older manuscript,
but not necessarily an older account, describes his court at Tara
invaded by a champion called Aengus of the Poisoned Spear, whose brother had
lost his daughter to a son of Cormac's called Cellach. Aengus slew Cellach
between his father and the wall, and in so doing put out one of the king's
eyes. This Aengus was a Plutonic prince associated with a historical people
called the Déisi, which probably means that he was a god specially worshipped
by them. His deed of violence is represented as the beginning of a revolt
against Cormac. In the war which followed, Aengus fell at the head of the Déisi,
who were then driven out of their land by Cormac's son Cairbre and his sons.
On the other hand, Cormac himself had to quit the office of
king on losing his eye, so that he lived some time in the neighbourhood of Tara and helped his son and
successor with his counsel until he was, according to one account, killed by
demons. In any case he is not described in these stories as restored again to
his throne; but the blemish incompatible with kingship is brought into relief
in his person as in that of Nuada.
A description of Cormac's person on the occasion of his entering
a great assembly in state, tells us that the equal of his form had never been
seen, except that of Conaire the Great, of Conchobar son of Nessa, or of Aengus
son of the Dagda. It is remarkable that the ancient writer should mention these
three, as they are adumbrations of the same god as Cormac. Thus I may here say,
that he was the constant aider and protector of the sun-hero Diarmait, while Conaire
was the subject of one of the most famous epic stories in Irish literature.
The plot centers in Conaire's tragic death, which is brought
about by the fairies of Erinn, through the instrumentality of outlaws coming from
the sea and following the lead of a sort of cyclops called Ingcél, said to have
been a big, rough, horrid, monster with only one eye, which was, however, wider
than an ox-hide, blacker than the back of a beetle, and provided with no less
than three pupils. The death of Conaire at his hands is one of the Celtic
renderings of the story which in its Greek form describes the treatment of Zeus
by Typho.
In another cycle of stories, which may be called Ultonian, the
Celtic Zeus finds his representative in Conchobar mac Nessa, or Conor son of
Nessa, king of Ulster, who cannot be dismissed quite so briefly as the others.
As in Cormac's case, a highly colored picture is drawn of his reign, which the
Euhemerists synchronize with the time of Christ, boldly fixing the Ultonian
king's death on the day of the Crucifixion.
His death was occasioned by a ball, with which he had been
wounded in the skull years before, and which the surgeons of the court had
never ventured to extract: it had been made, according to a savage practice, of
the brains of a fallen foe called Mesgegra, by mixing it with lime. There was a
prophecy that Mesgegra would avenge himself on the Ultonians, and a champion of
Conchobar's enemies, called Cét, having surreptitiously got possession of the ball thus made
of Mesgegra's brain, found an opportunity of hurling it at the Ultonian king's
head, with the result already mentioned.
Both Cét and Mesgegra belonged to the mythological party of
darkness and death, and here we have them helping to produce an Ultonian
parallel to Cormac losing one of his eyes, and Nuada one of his hands, especially
as the ball was in Conchobar's head for years before it caused his death, and
partly disabled him all that time, as he had to abstain from all violent
exercise or excitement.
But the early history of Conchobar is still more
interesting, as it contains one of the Goidelic versions of the story which in
its Greek form relates how Cronus was driven from power by his son Zeus. Conchobar's
mother's name was Nessa, after whom he was called Conchobar mac Nessa. She was
a warlike virago with a strange history; but who the father was is not quite
certain: according to some accounts, he was a great Ulster druid or magician
called Cathbad; but according to others, he was a monarch called Fachtna Fathach
or the Poetic, who died when Conchobar was a child.
The king of Ulster at the time, Fergus mac Eoig, fell
passionately in love with Nessa, and made proposals of marriage to her; but she would only listen to
him on the condition that he should hand over to her boy Conchobar the
sovereignty of Ulster for the space of one year. Fergus consented, and Nessa
made things so pleasant for the Ulster nobles during the year, that at its
close they declined to restore Fergus to the kingship.
He thereupon made war on Conchobar, but as he proved
unsuccessful he had to submit. He remained some years in Ulster, in the course of which Conchobar married
a daughter of the king who reigned over Erinn at Tara. She bore the name of
Medb, and she had a will of her own; for, becoming soon tired of Conchobar, she
left him, and we read of her afterwards as the wife of a prince called Ailill.
They are styled respectively king and queen, of Connaught.
As to Fergus, he undertook to reconcile Conchobar to the
return of certain exiles known as the Sons of Usnech, whose misfortunes form
the subject of a well-known Irish tale; but Conchobar behaving treacherously towards
them, Fergus and all his followers went into exile; and here it may be
mentioned in passing that Fergus had, some time before departing from Ulster,
acted as foster-father and tutor to the son of a sister of Conchobar's: this
was Cuchulainn, who, as the greatest of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle,
will have to be referred to repeatedly as we go on. Fergus and his adherents, while
in exile, were hospitably received by Ailill and Medb.
This completes the part of the story which is here in point,
and it requires one or two remarks. In the first place, Ailill has various descents ascribed him, or else
Medb must have married two Ailills in succession, which is the view sometimes
adopted; but that is of no great consequence. The name Ailill seems to be the Irish
equivalent of the "Welsh ellyll, ´an elf or demon,' and Medb's Ailill
belongs to a race which is always found ranged against the Tuatha De"
Danann. Medb herself, married first to Conchobar and then to Ailill, is to be classed
with what I may, in default of a better term, designate goddesses of the dawn
and dusk, who are found at one time consorting with bright beings and at
another with dark ones. They also commonly associate themselves with water;
thus Medb, after the death of her husband Ailill at the hands of an Ulster hero called Conall Cernach,
one of the solar heroes of the Ultonian cycle of stories, dwelt in an island in
Loch Eee, on the east side of which there was a spring where she bathed herself
every morning: there she was at last killed by the avenging hand of one of
Conchobar's sons.
To this may be added that Conchobar, when he lost Medb,
married a sister of hers named Eithne, who is fabled to have given her name to
a river in Westmeath, called after her Eithne, Anglicized into Inny. But there were two other sisters of Medb, severally
mentioned as Conchobar's wives, namely, Clothru of Inis Clothrann, or Clothru's Isle, in Loch Eee, and Mugain,
who is perhaps most commonly spoken of as Conchobar's queen.
In Fergus, usually
called Fergus mac Eoig after his mother, we have a kind of goodnatured Cronus
of gigantic proportions, endowed with the strength of 700 ordinary men,
wielding a sword of fairy make, which extended itself to the dimensions of a rainbow
whenever he chose to use it. Nevertheless, he could not prevail over Conchobar, so he thought it best to
leave the kingdom.
Fergus' relationship to Conchobar differed from that of
Cronus to Zeus, in that he was not Conchobar's father but his uncle. Given
Conchobar king of the Ultonians, his runaway wife queen of Connaught, and the
exile Fergus enjoying more than hospitality at her court, we have the relative positions
of some of the principal forces marshalled in the greatest epic story of the
Irish, that which their literary men most endeavoured to elaborate. It purports
to describe the events of an expedition by Ailill and Medb, with their numerous
allies, to the kingdom of Ulster. Their chief object is said to have been the
possession of a marvellous bull, called the Black of Ciiailnge, from
the district in which he grazed. Cuailnge is in modern Irish Cuailghe, Anglicized Cooley, the name of a mountainous
part of the county of Louth, ancient
Ulster extended to the Boyne, and sometimes even further southwards.
The story serves as the centre around which other stories
cluster, and the whole is known as the Tain or ´Driving' of the Kine of Cooley. Ailill and Medb made use of Fergus on the
Tain as the captain of the vanguard of their army, he being acquainted with the
district they wished to reach; and they arrived there during the couvade of the
Ultonians, when none of their heroes could stir, excepting Cuchulainn, who
accordingly had to face the invaders single-handed. The principal part of the Tain
describes the astounding feats of valour performed by him, and it forms the
Irish counterpart to the Greek story of Heracles defending the gods of Olympus
by despatching their foes for them with his invincible arrows.
Conchobar, though he showed himself capable on occasions of
being, like Zeus, unscrupulous and cruel, is described as an exemplary king of
the heroic period. His palace was considered a model of magnificence and comfort.
The king's administration of his kingdom is treated as a
pattern of what kingly rule should be. He is even represented as a reformer of the administration of justice, in
that he had put an end to the exclusive right of the poet-seers to give
judgment. The chief seer of Ulster had died, so goes the story, and the
succession to his office was contested by his son and an older man of the same
profession: the two argued their claims at great length with much eloquence,
and even settled the case to their own satisfaction; but the king and his
nobles understood naught of their abstruse and obscure language; so that when
it was over, the former determined, with a pardonable weakness for what he
could understand, that the seers and
poets should no longer arrogate to themselves the right to administer justice.
Conchobar's time was one of great prosperity for his people,
and he is himself styled Cathbuadach, or victorious in war, though he is more than once found overcome
by his enemies, like Zeus by Typho. Thus on one occasion a battle took place between the Ultonians and
a prince called Eogan mac Durthacht, who more than once in Conchobar's history
appears as the representative of darkness and treachery: the Ultonians were
beaten, Conchobar was left on the field, and night supervened. The king's life
was only saved by the coming of Cuchulainn, who found him exhausted and almost
wholly covered over with earth. He dug him out, procured food for him and took
him home to the court.
On another occasion the Ultonians were pursuing Ailill and
Medb with their forces, when Ailill's charioteer, called Ferloga, concealed
himself in the heather, whence he sprang on Conchobar's chariot and seized hold
of the king's neck from behind; nor did he loosen his grasp until the latter
had promised to ransom himself. When Ferloga specified his demand, it proved to
be merely that Conchobar should take him to his capital and bid the un-married
women and maidens of Ulster sing around him every evening a rhyme, the burden
of which was ´Ferloga, my sweetheart.' The mythological meaning of this insult to the heroes of Ulster is not quite evident; but
after a time Ferloga was sent home to the west with a present consisting of
Conchobar's two steeds richly caparisoned in gold.
Lastly, whatever elements of a historical nature have been
absorbed by the Conchobar legend, his well-defined position as a king of Ulster
becomes at once obscured when one begins to look a little more closely into the
so-called early history of Ireland.
Thus it speaks of another Conchobar, known as Conchobar
Abrad-ruad, Conchobar of the Red Eyebrows,' who alone has been admitted to a
place in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland, compiled by the Four Masters in
the earlier part of the 17th century. In that work he is represented as
reigning over Erinn six years before the Incarnation, and dying at the hands of
a son of Lugaid, a contemporary of
Cuchulainn, son of Conchobar mac Nessa's sister, Dechtere: so that the time of
this Conchobar, king of Erinn, coincides, roughly speaking, with that of the
king of Ulster of the same name, and I have very little doubt that the two were
originally one, a view corroborated by the fact that Conchobar is by no means a
common name in the remoter portions of Irish pedigrees, which are here quite in
point, as they make both Conchobars grandsons of one and the same Ross the
Red.
Conchobar was doubtless not a man; his sister Dechtere, the
mother of Cuchulainn, is called a goddess;
and the scribe of an old story in the Book of the Dun is obliged, in
spite of his Euhemerism, to remark in passing that Conchobar was a dia
talmaide, or terrestrial god, of the Ultonians of his time. He is, in short, to be regarded as holding, in the Ultonian cycle, a place
analogous to that of Nuada and Llud in the cycles to which they belong.
The Mac Oc.
The next to be mentioned is Aengus, who, on the other hand,
is never treated as a historical character: he is described as son of the god
called Dagda the Great, and the goddess Boann, from whom the river Boyne takes
its name. The younger god, fully described, was 'Aengus son of the (two) Young
Ones.'
What this exactly meant is not
clear; for though his parents as immortals might perhaps be regarded as ever
young, no reference is made, so far as I know, to the youthfulness of either:
on the contrary, the Dagda is represented both as old and old-fashioned, fond
of porridge, and generally a good subject for comic treatment.
Aengus is also called In Mac Oc, ´the Young Son,' possibly
'the Young Fellow,' which is in harmony with the stories extant about his youthful beauty and
personal attractions; as, for example, when he once on a time appeared to king
Cormac and gave him prophetic answers to his questions about the future: on
that occasion he carried a musical instrument, and he is usually described much
devoted to music of an irresistible nature.
The Mac Oc's foster-father was Mider, king of the Fairies,
whose wife was Etain, another dawn-goddess; but a fragmentary story represents a rival of hers succeeding by her
wiles and magic arts in severing her from Mider. When her husband lost her, she
was found in great misery by the Mac Oc, who had her clad in purple and placed
in a glass grianan or sun-bower, where she fed on fragrance and the bloom of
odoriferous flowers.
One of the most curious things in this very curious story is
the statement, that, when the Mac Oc travelled, he carried the glass grianan
about with him, and slept in it at night in order to attend on Etain while
awaiting the return of her former health and vigour. Once more Etain's rival
succeeded in separating her from her protector and in reducing her to a
condition of great wretchedness, prior to her entering on a new state of
existence.
The role of protecting a dawn-goddess is ascribed to the Mac
Oc in another story, where she appears under the name of Grainne, daughter of
Cormac mac Airt, and the Mac Oc is called Aengus. Grainne declines to wed Finn,
the counterpart of the Welsh god Gwyn, king of the fairies and the dead; but
she elopes with Diarmait, a solar hero who was Aengus' foster-son; and when
Diarmait and Grainne found themselves hard pressed by Finn and his men in
pursuit, Aengus repeatedly aided them by throwing his magic mantle around
Grainne and carrying her away unobserved by Finn. Here the mantle answers the
purpose of the more cumbrous glass grianan.
The latter, however, is of prime importance from a
mythological point of view, as it seems to be a sort of picture of the expanse of the heavens lit up by the light of
the sun; and in the Mac Oc, going about with this glass structure, we have a
representation of the Aryan Zeus in his original character of god of the sun
and daylight.
Now if the Mac Oc be regarded as a Goidelic Zeus, the Dagda
should be a Cronus, and that is corroborated by the peculiar relations in which the two Irish
gods are placed with regard to one another. For as Cronus is disinherited by
his youngest son Zeus, so is the Dagda by his Young Son the Mac Oc, excepting
that it is brought about in Irish mythology, not by war, but by craft. The
story is recorded that the Dagda, as king of the Tuatha De Danann, allotted
them their respective habitations, but that in so doing he happened to forget the
Mac Oc, who presently called on his father to claim his inheritance. The Dagda
replied that he had none left, at which his son naturally grumbled, and asked
to be allowed to stay at the Dagda's palace till night. The Dagda assented; but
at the end of the allotted time he told his son to go. The son replied that he
had been granted day and night, which was the sum of all existence. So he
stayed on in the palace of his father, who had to move out to seek a home
elsewhere.
This scene doubtless belonged originally to Irish mythology before
any Celts had settled in Ireland, but the story came to be localized in due
time in that country, thus associating the name of the Mac Oc with one of the abodes
of the happy departed.
How this was brought about may be gathered from the
following facts. The Tuatha De Danann were regarded, nobody knows how early, as
one of the races inhabiting Erinn, so that upon the arrival of the Sons of
Mile, or the mythic race from which most of the human dwellers in the island
are regarded as derived, a great battle took place between them at Tailltinn,
situated between Kells and Navan in the present county of Meath.
The gods, defeated, withdrew from the ken of the invaders,
forming themselves into an invisible world of their own. They retreated into
the hills and mounds of Erinn; so tradition associates them especially with the
burial mounds and cemeteries of the country. A very remarkable group of these
dot the banks of the Boyne: take, for example, the burial remains of Newgrange,
in Meath; of Knowth, near Slane, in the
same county, and only separated by the river from the ancient cemetery of Eos
na Kigh; of Dowth, near Drogheda; and of
Drogheda itself—all of which appear to have been plundered by the Norsemen in
the ninth century.
Add to these the Brugh of the Boyne, the home of the Dagda,
which he lost to his crafty son the Mac Oc, known thenceforth as the Aengus of
the Brugh. Euhemeristic tradition came to represent the Dagda and his sons as
buried there, and pointed to the Sid, or Fairy Mound, of the Brugh, as covering
their resting-place.
The older account, however, which relates how the Mac Oc got
possession of it, says nothing about it as a cemetery; in fact it describes it as an admirable place,
more accurately speaking as an admirable land, a term which, betrays the usual identification of the fairy mound
with the nether world to which it formed the entrance. Admirable, it says, is
that land; there are three trees there
always bearing fruit; there is one pig there always alive, and another pig
always ready cooked; and there is a
vessel there full of excellent ale. Nobody who is familiar with the literature
of ancient Erinn requires to be told that this description is an expression of
the old Irish idea of the Land of the Blessed.
So the myth placing the Dagda at the head of the departed, simply
happy on fruit and pork and ale, is the counterpart, and a very ancient one, of
the Greek story of Cronus, vanquished and driven from power, wandering to the
Isles of the Blessed, there to reign over them and share the functions of
Ehadamanthus.
The Irish idea of the Dagda as a Goidelic Cronus, ruling
over an Elysium with which a sepulchral mound was associated, nay even confounded,
contributed possibly to the formation of the story that all the Tuatha De
Danann, beaten in battle, withdrew into the hills and mounds of Erinn; but be that
as it may, this latter belief in its turn put an end to the singularity of the
Dagda's position by making that of the other gods much like his. Further, the
transference to his new sphere in Erinn of the incident of his replacement by his son, had the mythologically strange effect
of making into a king of the dead in nether dusk the Mac Oc, who should have
been the youthful Zeus of the Goidelic world, rejoicing in the translucent
expanse of the heavens as his crystal bower.
A somewhat similar localizing of mythic personages is observable
in connection with the ancient stone strongholds of the west. One of the most
remarkable stands in the island of Arann, off the coast of Galway: it is not
known when or by whom its cyclopean walls were built, but it is called Dun
Aengus, after an Aengus son of Timor, a father otherwise obscure. Now we read of
a lady called Maistiu, daughter to this Aengus, acting as embroideress to the
other Aengus; and it is by no means improbable that the Dagda's Son of the one
set of stories was Timor's Son of the other, whence it would follow that
Aengus's daughter who embroidered for him might be regarded as corresponding to
Zeus's daughter Athene, who excelled in the same kind of work.
The story of Aengus, son of Umdr, associates him with a mythic
people called the Fir Bolg, and brings him and the Clann TImoir from Scotland;
they obtained land in Meath from the king of Erinn, but finding his yoke too heavy,
they escaped to the west, when Aengus and his household settled in Arann. The
meaning of this myth will readily be seen by comparing it with its Welsh counterpart,
to which we are now coming.
But before dismissing the Mac Oc, it may be worthwhile
mentioning that he, like Zeus, figures in love adventures, and Irish literature
contains many allusions to him, some of which remain unexplained, such as one
which speaks of the four kisses of Aengus of the Brugh of the Boyne, that were
converted by him into ' birds which haunted the youths of Erinn.'
The counterpart of Aengus in Welsh is to be found, I think,
in Myrdin, better known in English as Merlin, and in Ambrosius called in Welsh Emrys or Emrys Wledig, that
is to say Prince Emrys or Ambrose the Gwledig. In Nennius' Historia Brittonum we find him brought
as a child before old king Vortigern in the neighborhood of Snowdon, where he was trying to build a
great fortress for himself and his household. Emrys then gave his name as
Ambrosius, and, though a mere child, he confounded Vortigern's magicians and frightened
the old king to leave him the fortress, together with all the western portion
of the island. The former was thenceforth called Dinas Emrys, the Town of
Ambrosius, a name still borne by a hill -spur near Bedgelert in Carnarvonshire.
The Mac Oc and Merlin.
Now this Ambrosius is otherwise identified with the king
Emrys, who was brother to Uthr, or Uther as he is called in English: the former
is called in Latin Aurelius Ambrosius, in whom we seem to have a historical
man, while the latter is to be identified with
the god of the Wonderful Head mentioned in the last lecture. But
the Emrys whom Nennius brings before Vortigern is the Myrdin or Merlin of other
versions of the story.
So a distinction of persons has been sometimes made,
according to which there was a prophet Merlin and a prince Emrys: even this was
not found sufficient, for some have subdivided Merlin into three, to wit,
Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin Caledonius, and Merlin Sylvaticus. In order to
approach the original conception our course is clear: we must give all the
attributes of Emrys and the Merlins to one Merlin Emrys; but this is only theoretically clear, as the
process is disturbed by the historical element introduced in the person of
Aurelius Ambrosius, who may possibly be regarded as in a sense responsible for
some of the chief difficulties in our way, looked at from a mythological point
of view.
We should, however, not be far wrong in treating Merlin
Emrys as an adumbration of a personage who was at once a king and warrior, a
great magician and prophet, in a word a Zeus of Brythonic paganism.
But if Merlin Emrys be a Brythonic Zeus, then Vortigern
ought to be a Brythonic Cronus; and this is, to say the least of it, in harmony
with the evidence of Vortigern's name, which means a supreme lord or over-king,
corresponding to the position of Cronus before he was driven from power.
The Mac Oc is represented as the Dagda's son, which cannot
be paralleled by any of the accounts of Merlin Emrys' birth; but this may be one of the results of the
disturbing influence of the historical element.
On a third point we are more fortunate: the Dagda and
Cronus, supplanted by their respective sons, go to preside over the departed;
and the parallel extends to Vortigern. For, when leaving his kingdom to Merlin
Emrys, he proceeded to the north, a part of the island supposed at one time to have
been the abode of the dead, a notion attested by so late an author as the Greek
writer Procopius in the 6th century. Further, the district in the north to
which Vortigern is made to go is called Gwynnwesi, a derivative used probably as the plural of Gwynwas, which
would mean the White or Blissful Abode.
The compound, analysed into Gwas Gwyn, of the same meaning,
occurs in another story, which represents a solar hero, called Caswallawn son
of Beli, going in pursuit of his mistress, Fflûr daughter of Mygnach the Dwarf,
who was carried away by the Romans, according to one account to Borne, and
according to another to Gwasgwyn. He recovered her after a great battle with the
Romans, who, to avenge their defeat, afterwards invaded Britain under Julius
Caesar:
another reference to the same
mythic expedition of Caswallawn's makes him and his host settle permanently in
Gwasgwyn.
Now Caswallawn belongs to Welsh mythology, but his name
happens to be the same as that of the historical man Cassivellaunus of Caesar's
narrative, and Gwasgwyn, in the stories mentioned, originally meant Gwas Gwyn,
the White Mansion, the mythical abode of the happy dead; but it was
misinterpreted to refer to Gascony, which came to be known in Welsh as Gwasgwyn.
It is to this mythic land of the White
Mansion or Blissful Abode, whither the sun-god's bride had been hurried away by
a rival, that the boy Merlin Emrys drove the aged and uxorious monarch once
correctly styled Vortigern or supreme king.
It may here be remarked that Vortigern resembled Cronus more
closely in point of character than did the Dagda, whose name appears to stand for an earlier Dagodêvos,
meaning the 'good god,' in reference probably to the goodnatured disposition
usually ascribed him in his last sphere of activity; but no description of the corresponding portion
of Vortigern's career has reached us, while we know that previous to his
expulsion from his realm his reputation for cruelty and treachery was such that
he was hated of his subjects. The crowning crime of his reign was his alliance
with the enemies of his country and his marrying Rhonwen, 'White –mane’, daughter of
one of their two leaders, known by the similarly equine names, Hengist and
Horsa.
This has to some extent to be regarded as history, for the
confounding of Aurelius Ambrosius, who was probably engaged in opposing German
invasions, with a mythic Ambrosius in the person of Merlin Emrys, would bring
in, as its natural complement, the explanation that the king, fabled to have
been driven from power, deserved it because of his alliance with the invader; but it fails to account for the original truculence of Vortigern's character, which, looking
at the Greek story of Cronus, I take to be part and parcel of the ancient myth.
Let us see in what form the crystal bower of the Mac Oc
appears in his story. First, then, and foremost may be mentioned the legend
which represents him going with his suite of nine bards into the sea in a Glass
House, after which nothing more was ever heard of either him or them. But another
story appears to have placed the Glass House in Bardsey, which probably derives
its name from Merlin as the bard and prophet par excellence; and we read that Merlin took with him into the
Glass House the thirteen treasures of Britain, including among them such rarities as
Arthur's tartan that rendered its wearer invisible, Gwydno's inexhaustible
basket, and other articles of equally fabulous virtues.
Further, a Welsh poet of the 15th century tells us that the
reason why Merlin entered the Glass House was in order to please his leman.
This tallies with the account, in the romances, of Merlin's final disappearance;
the person whom Merlin loved is called the Lady of the Lake, to whom he is
represented as disclosing the secrets of his magic art; but she would not rest
satisfied until she had the means of detaining him for evermore. Merlin must teach
her how she might imprison a man by enchantment alone in
'a tour with-outen walles, or with-oute eny closure.' He,
understanding what it meant, declined for a while to consent; but her winning
ways proved irresistible, for he showed her at length how to make
'a place feire and couenable,' so contrived
by art and by cunning that it might never be undone, and that he and she should
be there in joy and in solace.' So one day when they were going hand in
hand through the forest of Brécilien, they found a
'bussh that was feire and high of white hawthorne full of floures,'
and beneath that bush they sat them down in the shade. He fell asleep with his
head on the lady's lap; but as soon as she found him fast asleep, she arose and
gave effect to the feat of magic she had learned: she
'made a cerne with hir wymple all a-boute the bussh and all a-boute
Merlin, and
be-gan hir
enchauntementz soche as Merlin hadde hir taught, and made the cerne ix tymes,
and ix tymes hir enchauntementes.' When he woke he looked around ´and hym semed he was in the feirest tour of
the worlde, and the moste stronge.' He could not issue thence, but the Lady
of the Lake promised to spend the greater part of every day with him, as she
could go in and out at will.
Such is a summary of the story, to which should be added that when Merlin had
been missed at Arthur's court and several knights had gone in search of him, one of
them, as he was passing through the forest of Brettlien, heard a groaning close
by him; so he looked up and down, 'and nothinge he saugh, but as it hadde ben
a smoke of myste in the eyre that myght not passe oute.' Merlin then,
speaking out of the smoke of mist to the knight, explained to him how he came
to be thus imprisoned, adding that no one should any more address him, save his
mistress alone, since the knight would never be able to find the spot again.
Another story places the scene in another forest. Lastly,
Merlin's prison is represented as a sepulcher of marvelous beauty, in which his
leman has by magic arts entombed him alive, a view partially reflected by old
Welsh poetry in that it makes Merlin 'the man who speaks from the grave,' where
he is consulted with deference and respect by Gwendyd, who is, moreover, not
associated with his interment: they address one another as brother and sister, which recalls the romance that represents the
Lady of the Lake always a virgin, as regarded the enchanter, who doted on her charms.
According to another legend, of Breton origin, his mistress
chose to enclose him in a tree, but nobody knows where, though it is sometimes
surmised to have been on a little island, off the Bee du Eaz, called Sein, which
is fabled to have been also the scene of his birth. Tennyson describes Merlin's
prison as 'an oak, so hollow huge and old It look'd a tower of ruin'd
masonwork.'
This deviates greatly from the original myth, but it retains
one important feature: it makes Merlin immortal. He may pine away like
Tithonus, but he is a god,
who cannot
die;
his living spirit abides with his
dead body, an idea which Ariosto expresses with ghastly vividness in the words —'Col
corpo morto il vivo spirto alberga.'
Similarly, the fact of the Lady of the Lake being represented
coming every day to solace Merlin in his loneliness, is in thorough harmony
with the mythological notion that made the dawn-goddess sometimes ally herself
with the sun-god and sometimes with one of his dusky rivals.
The same remark applies with even more force to the
descriptions of Merlin's abode as a house of glass, as a bush of white thorns
laden with bloom, as a sort of smoke of mist in the air, or as ´a clos ....
nother of Iren, ne stiell, ne tymbir, ne of ston, but .... of the aire
with-oute eny othir thinge be enchauntemente so stronge, that it may neuer be un-don
while the worlde endureth.' These
pictures vie with one another in transparent truthfulness to the original scene
in nature, with the sun as the center of a vast expanse of light, which moves
with him as he hastens towards the west.
Even when at length one saw in Merlin but a magician, and in
his pellucid prison but a work of magic, the answer to the question, what had
become of him and it, continued to be one which the storehouse of nature-myths had
supplied. Where could Merlin have gone but whither the sun goes to rest at
night, into the dark sea, into an isle surrounded by the waves of the west, or
into the dusk of an impenetrable forest?
So it came about that legend sends Merlin to sea in his
house of glass never more to be heard of, or dimly moors him in the haze of Bardsey,
or else it leaves him bound by the spells of his own magic in a lonely spot in
the sombre forest of Brécilien, where Breton story gives him a material prison in
a tomb, at the end of the Val des Fées, hard by the babbling fountain of
Baranton, so beloved of the muse of romance. For me, however, the other stories
which leave Merlin in an isle off the Welsh or the Armoric coast have more
interest just now, as they help more than anything else to explain, how the
Zeus of the Celts could become so intimately associated with the sea as we
found him to be under the names Llud, Nud, Nodens.
This is all corroborated by the name of Merlin, which is in
"Welsh Myrdyn, and by its association with Carmarthen, in Welsh ' Caer
Vyrdin,' Myrdin's Caer or Fortress. On
the other hand, it is a matter of no doubt that here Myrdin is the regular and correct form of
the ancient Brythonic name of the place, namely, Moridûnon, which meant a
sea-fort, and correctly described the spot, in that it is reached by the tides
in the Towy.
Merlin Emrys and Maxen.
Thus we have Myrdin as the name of
the enchanter and as that of the town, which is to be explained by an accident of
Welsh, my conjecture being that the two names were distinguished, in an earlier
stage of the language, by a difference of termination. We have only to take Moridûnon
as given by Ptolemy, and to suppose a derivative
of a common form made from it, and we have Moridûnjos, which might mean 'him of Moridûnon or the sea-fort.'
Taken in reference to Carmarthen, it would explain the legend which makes the
prophet a native, under peculiar circumstances, of that town; but taken in
connection with his mythic home and prison, it suits his abode in Bardsey or
the Armoric isle of Sein, where he was also believed to have been born; and as
pedantry has had a hand in naming him, we may render Merlinus Ambrosius into
English as ' the Divine or Immortal One of the Stronghold of
the Sea.' Carmarthen enters into another legend which represents that town built
by a princess called Elen Lüydawg, or Elen Mistress of a Host: that is but
another way of describing the Lady of the Lake constructing a house of glass or
some still more pellucid material to be Merlin's prison.
It is also remarkable that Elen is
represented as causing to be built the highest fortress in Arvon, wherein we seem
to have a reference to Dinas Emrys, the spot fromwhich Merlin Emrys expelled
Vortigern.
The Elen I have referred to is a
personage of no merely incidental interest, and her story is essential to the theory of the identity of Aengus
the Mac Oc with our Merlin Emrys. The name Elen still belongs to mythology in Wales: thus in Arvon,
for instance, Arianrhod is said to have had three sisters who lived with her in her castle in the sea.
They were named Gwen or Gwennan, Maelan and Elen; all appear, like Arianrhod, to
have belonged to the class of goddesses associated with the dawn. So also with
an Elen said by Geoffrey to have been ravished on Mont St. Michel by the
Spanish giant. That incident is to be interpreted to mean the dawn passing
into the gloaming, and finally losing itself in the darkness of night, a view
corroborated by the fact that she is treated as sister of a solar knight of
Arthur's court, called Howel: this last name means able to see or easy to be
seen, that is to say, conspicuous, a fitting designation, whichever meaning you
take, for a sun hero.
But to return to Elen Lüydawg: she
is the heroine of an old Welsh saga known as the Dream of Maxen the Gwledig.
The following is an abstract of it:
Maxen was emperor of Rome and the
handsomest of men, as well as the wisest, with whom none of his predecessors
might compare. One day he and his courtiers went forth to hunt, and in the course
of the day he sat himself down to rest, while his chamberlains protected him
from the scorching rays of the sun with their shields. Beneath that shelter he
slept, and he dreamt that he was travelling over hill and dale, across rich
lands and fine countries until at length he reached a sea-coast. Then he
crossed the sea in a magnificent ship and landed in a great city in an island,
which he traversed from the one shore till he was in sight of the other: there
we find him in a district remarkable for its precipitous mountains and lofty
cliffs, from which he could descry an isle in front of him, surrounded by the
sea.
He stayed not his course until he
reached the mouth of a river, where he found a castle with open gates. He
walked in, and there beheld a fair hall built of stones precious and brilliant,
and roofed with shingles of gold. To pass by a great deal more gold and silver
and other precious things, Maxen found in the hall four persons, namely, two
youths playing at chess: they were the sons of the lord of the castle, who was
a venerable, gray-haired man, sitting in an ivory chair adorned with the images
of two eagles of ruddy gold. He had bracelets of gold on
his arms and many a ring glittered on his fingers: a massive gold torque adorned his neck, while a frontlet
of the same precious metal served to restrain his locks. Hard by sat his daughter in a chair of ruddy gold,
and her beauty was so transcendent, that it would be no more easy to look at
her face than to gaze at the sun when his rays arc most irresistible. She was
clad in white silk, fastened on her breast with brooches of ruddy gold, and
over it she wore a surcoat of golden satin, while her head was adorned with a
golden frontlet set with rubies and gems, alternating with pearls and imperial
stones. The narrator closes his description of the damsel by giving her a
girdle of gold and by declaring her altogether the fairest of the race. She
rose to meet Maxen, who embraced her and sat with her in her chair.
At this point the dream was suddenly
broken off by the restlessness of the horses and the hounds, and the creaking of
the shields rubbing against each other, which woke the emperor a bewildered
man. Reluctantly and sadly he moved, at the advice of his men, towards home;
for he could think of nothing but the fair maiden in gold. In fact there was no
joint in his body or even as much as the hollow of one of his nails which had
not become charged with her love.
When his courtiers sat at table to
eat or drink, he would not join them, and when they went to hear song and
entertainment, he would not go, or, in a word, do anything for a whole week but
sleep as often as the maiden slept, whom he beheld in his dreams.
When he was awake she was not
present to him, nor had he any idea where in. the world she was. This went on
till at last one of his nobles contrived to let him know, that his conduct in
neglecting his men and his duties was the cause of growing discontent.
Thereupon he summoned before him the wise men of Rome and told them the state
of mind in which he was. Their advice was that messengers should be sent on a
three years' quest to the three parts of the world, as they calculated that the
expectation of good news would help to sustain him.
But at the end of the first year the
messengers returned unsuccessful, which made Maxen sad; so other messengers
were sent forth to search another third of the world. They returned at the end of
their year, like the others, unsuccessful. Maxen, now in despair, took the
advice of one of his courtiers and resorted to the forest where he had first
dreamt of the maiden. When the glade was reached, he was able to give his
messengers a start in the right direction. They went on and on, identifying the
country they traversed with the emperor's description of his march day by day, until
at last they reached the rugged district of Snowdon, and beheld Mona lying in
front of them flat in the sea.
They proceeded a little further and
entered a castle where Carnarvon now stands, and there beheld the hall roofed
with gold: they walked in and found Kynan and Adeon playing at chess, while
their father Eudav, son of Karadawg, sat in his chair of ivory, with his
daughter Elen seated near him. They saluted her as empress of Borne, and
proceeded to explain the meaning of an act she deemed so strange. She listened
courteously, but declined to go with them, thinking it more appropriate that
the emperor should come in person to fetch her.
In due time he reached Britain,
which he conquered from Beli the Great and his sons; then he proceeded to visit Elen and her father, and it
was during his stay here, after the marriage, that Elen had Carmarthen built and
the stronghold in Eryri. The story adds Caerleon to them, but distinguishes the
unnamed Snowdon city as the favorite abode of her and her husband.
The next thing she undertook was to
employ the hosts at her command in the construction of roads between the three towns,
which she had caused to be built in part payment of her maiden-fee. But Maxen
remained here so many years that the Romans made an emperor in his stead.
So at length he and Elen, and her
two brothers and their hosts, set out for Rome, which they had to besiege and
take by storm. Maxen was now reinstated in power, and he allowed his
brothers-in-law and their hosts to settle wherever they chose; so Adeon and his
men came back to Britain, while Kynan and his reduced Brittany and settled
there.
Such is a summary of this curious
story, which sounds far too native to have originally had a Roman emperor for
its hero. Whose place, then, has Maxen usurped in it, you may ask. I have no
hesitation in suggesting that it was that of Emrys, and I think I can assign at
least one of the reasons why Maxen the Gwledig took the place of Emrys the
Gwledig.
The heroine is called Elen Lüydawg,
that is, Elen mistress and owner of a host, or the Elen who made expeditions
with a host; but I take her host to have been of a mythical nature, and the
Triads treat it as one of the Three Silver Hosts led out of Britain, leaving it
a prey to its foes: in fact, Elen's host is virtually to be equated with St.Ursula's
host of 11,000 virgins, whom the Euhemerists wish to treat as brides intended
for Maximus and his men. These virgins may be compared with the smaller suite
of the heroine of an Irish romance to be mentioned shortly; but for those who
tried to translate myth into history, they were hosts of armed men; so it
became necessary to face the question, who the tyrant was who led those troops abroad,
and the choice very naturally fell on Maximus, the Maxen of the Welsh Dream
with which you are now acquainted.
For history speaks of his revolt in
Britain, of his landing on the continent with the troops he could muster here,
of his success in acquiring possession of Gaul and Spain, of the flight and
death of the Emperor Gratian in the year 383. This, I take it, together with national
vanity, was the cause that led to the substitution of Maxen for Emrys, and it
supplies the key to a puzzle in the Nennian Genealogies, which make Maxen
descend from Constantine the Great: this was because Emrys is commonly
represented as the son of Constantine.
The narrator of the Dream of Maxen
remarks, in connection with the mention of Elen ordering the roads to be made
from one town to another, that they were therefore called the roads of Elen Lüydawg:
this is still the case, as it is not unusual to find a mountain track in Wales
termed Fford Elen, 'Elen's Road,' or Sarn Elen, 'Elen's Causeway;' and there is
a certain poetic propriety in associating the primitive paths and roads of the country
with this vagrant goddess of dawn and dusk.
Similarly, Nennius' account of the British auxiliaries of Maximus
has a mythic tone about it, which is worth noticing. ' The seventh emperor,' he
says, ' who reigned in Britain was Maximianus, the man who went with all the
soldiers of the Brythons from Britain, and killed Gratian king of the Romans;
and he held the government of the whole of Europe, and would not allow the soldiers
who had gone with him to return to Britain to their wives, their children and
their possessions; but he gave them numerous tracts of country from the lake on
the top of Mons Jovis as far as the city which is called Cantguic and as far as
Cruc Ochidient, that is to say, the Western Mound. These are the Armoric
Brythons, and they have never returned hither to this day.'
Merlin Emrys and Maxen.
The Cumulus Occidentalis alluded to sounds mythic enough to figure
in the same sort of stories as the forest of Brécilien or the isle of Sein; not
to mention that the choice of Brittany as the seat of the discharged
auxiliaries may have been from the first dictated, at least in part, by mythology.
For the Welsh for Brittany is Llydaw, a name which may have originally meant an
abode of the dead, a light in which almost any land situated on the other shore
would seem to have appeared to the Celts of antiquity.
Be that as it may, I have tried to reinstate Emrys or Myrdin
Emrys in the place usurped by Maxen. From this it would follow, among other things, that he was the conqueror
of this country from the chthonian divinity Beli the Great, which derives
unexpected confirmation from a hitherto unexplained Triad, which states that Britain's
first name, before it was inhabited, was Clas Myrdin, or Merlin's Close.
In this Triad, which must be the echo of an ancient notion,
the pellucid walls confining Merlin become, by a touch of the pencil of the mythic
muse, co-extensive with the utmost limits of our island home. Here may be
compared Erinn when called the Island of Fál, which suggests the possibility
that the double meaning of 'wall' and 'light' attaching to its Welsh equivalent
gwawl has helped to give the Merlin myth the form in which we know it.
But let me now bring your attention back to the dreams about
the dawn-goddess Elen, and the conjecture that the real dreamer was not Maxen
but Merlin Emrys; for I am persuaded that you will not fail to recognize a more
primitive version of the same story in the following Irish tale, called the
Vision of Aengus:
One night Aengus the Mac Oc dreamt that he saw at his bedside
a maiden the most beautiful in Erinn: he made a move to take hold of her, but
she vanished he knew not whither. He remained in his bed till the morning, but
he was in an evil plight on account of the maiden leaving him without
vouchsafing him a word, and he tasted no food that day. The next night the same
lovely form appeared again at his bedside, and this time she played on the
sweetest of musical instruments. The effect on him was much the same as before,
and he fasted that day also. This went on for a whole year, and he became the
victim of love; but he told nobody what ailed him. The physicians of Erinn were
called in, and one of them at length guessed by his face what he was suffering
from: he bade his mother Boann be sent for to hear her son's confession. She
came and he told her his story. She then sent for the Dagda his father, to whom
she explained that their son was the victim of a wasting sickness arising from
unrequited love, which was considered a fatal disease in ancient Erinn.
The Dagda was in bad humour and declared he could do
nothing, which was promptly contradicted: for he was told that as he was the
king of the Side, that is of the gods and fairies of Erinn, he might send word
to Bodb the Red, king of the fairies of Munster, to use his great knowledge of
the fairy settlements of Erinn to discover the maiden that haunted the Mac Oc's
dreams.
Aengus had now been ill two years, and Bodb required a year
for the search, but he proved successful before the year was out; so he came
with the news to the Dagda and took the Mac Oc to see if he could recognize the
lady. The Mac Oc did so the moment he descried her, among her thrice fifty maiden
companions. These, we are told, were joined two and two together by silver
chains, and their mistress towered head and shoulders above the rest. Her name was
Caerabar, or more shortly Caer, daughter of Etal Anbual, of the fairy
settlement of Uaman in the land of Connaught. She wore a silver collar round
her neck and a chain of burnished gold. Aengus was grieved that he had not the
power to take her away; so he returned home, and the Dagda was advised to seek
the aid of Ailill and Medb, the king and queen of the western kingdom.
But Caer's father declining to answer the summons that he
should appear before them, an attack was made on his residence, when he himself
was taken and brought before Ailill and Medb. He then explained to them that he
had no power over his daughter, who with her companions changed their forms
every other year into those of birds. In fact, he added that on the first day of
the ensuing winter they would appear as 150 swans on Loch bél draccon occruit
cliach, or the Lake of (the) mouths of (the) Dragons, near Cliach's Crowd.
Peace was accordingly made with Etal, and Aengus betook him to the shore of the
lake on the day mentioned.
Recognizing Caer in the form of a swan, he called to her and
said, ‘Come to speak to me, Cacr.'
'Who calls me ?' was the reply. ' Aengus calls thee,' he
said.
‘I will come,' said she, 'provided I obtain that thou wilt
on thy honour make for the lake after me.'
'I will,' said he.
She accordingly came to him, whereupon he placed his two
hands on her; then they flew off in the form of a pair of swans and they went
thrice round the lake. They afterwards took their flight to the Brugh of the
Boyne, where they made such enchanting music that it plunged everybody in a
deep sleep, which lasted three days and three nights. Caer remained at the
Brugh of the Boyne as the Mac Oc's consort.
Here must be added one or two extracts from the Irish
manuscript, of the 14th century, called the Speckled Book: the first runs, in
the words of O'Curry's translation, as follows: "It is in the reign of
Flann Cinaidh [‘Ginach, or 'the voracious'] that the Rowing- wheel, and the
Broom out of Fanaid, and the Fiery Bolt, shall come. Cliach was the harper of Smirdubh Mac Smáil, king
of the three Rosses of Sliabh Bán [in Connacht]. Cliach set out on one occasion
to seek the hand in marriage of one of the daughters of Bodhbh Derg, of the [fairy]
palace of Femhen [in Tipperary]. He continued a whole year playing his harp, on
the outside of the palace, without being able to approach nearer to Bodhbh, so
great was his [necromantic] power; nor did he make any impression on the
daughter. However, he continued to play on until the ground burst under his
feet, and the lake which is on the top of the mountain sprang up in the spot: that is Loch Bél Séad."
One of the previous names of the lake was Loch Crotta
Cliach, or the Lake of Cliach's Harps, as O'Curry renders it; but the instrument
was a crowd, not a harp, and its bulging shape may have helped to give a part
of a hill a highly descriptive name. The passage goes on as follows to explain
the name Loch Bél Sead:" Coerabar boeth, the daughter of Etal Anbuail of
the fairy mansions of Connacht, was a beautiful and powerfully gifted maiden. She had three times fifty ladies
in her train. They were all transformed every year into three times fifty
beautiful birds, and restored to their natural shape the next year. These birds
were chained in couples by chains of silver. One bird among them was the most
beautiful of the world's birds, having a necklace of red gold on her neck, with
three times fifty chains depending from it, each chain terminating in a ball of
gold. During their transformation into birds, they always remained on Loch
Crotta Cliach, wherefore the people who saw them were in the habit of saying: '
Many is the Séad [that is, a gem, a jewel, or other precious article] at the
mouth of Loch Crotta this day.' And hence it is called Loch Bél Séad [or the
Lake of the Jewel Mouth]. It was called also Loch Bél Dragain [or the Dragon-Mouth
Lake]; because Ternog's nurse caught a fiery dragon in the shape of a salmon,
and St. Fursa induced her to throw it into Loch Bél Séad.
And it is that dragon that will come in the festival of St.
John, near the end of the world, in the reign of Flann Cinaidh. And it is of it
and out of it shall grow the Fiery Bolt which will kill three-fourths of the
people of the world, men and women, boys and girls, and cattle, as far as the Mediterranean
Sea eastwards. And it is on that account it is called the Dragon-Mouth
Lake."
How closely the story of Aengus and Caer, which in some
respects recalls that of Leda and the Swan, corresponds to the Welsh Dream, I
leave you to judge; further, the Irish prophecy reminds one to a certain extent
of the event termed in Norse literature, the Doom of the Powers; but the
reference to the Dragon should be examined in the light of the conjecture that
the Welsh Elen's northern stronghold occupied the site of Dinas Emrys, where
Llud in a previous age had imprisoned the dragons that disturbed the peace of
his dominions. Welsh story lays it to Vortigern’s charge as one of his great
crimes that he disturbed them, whereby he brought calamity on his unfortunate
country, which was destined to be free from oppression and safe against the sword of the
foreigner so long as the dragons continued securely encisted in the
subterranean lake in the fastness of Snowdon.
Lastly, Caer's 150 companions with their silver chains
supply an explanation of the name Elen Lüydawg, that is Elen of the Host: her maiden attendants were her
host, and it becomes also clear why her expedition in company with her husband
is spoken of as the departure of one of the three Silver Hosts of the Isle of Britain;
for the silver was not of the common terrestrial kind, but the ancient metal of
a Celtic myth. However, this is no answer to the further question which
suggests itself, namely, what interpretation one is to put on the presence of
the attendant maidens, whether of Caer or Elen.
Some, having regard to the number of St. Ursula's
companions, would say that they mean the starry host of heaven, which goes
away, so to say, with the dawn and appears again with the dusk.
But another hypothesis is possible, and I venture to sketch it,
chiefly as a means of connecting certain facts which are not altogether
irrelevant. It is to the effect that the 11,000 companions of Ursula might be
regarded as an exaggeration of a far smaller number, and that those making up
the latter might be reckoned the priestesses in attendance on the dawn-goddess,
herself the consort of the god represented in the Merlin story as imprisoned. The
attendant damsels might then be compared with the virgin priestesses of the
isle of Sein, described by Mela as capable of taking any animal form they
chose.
In the case of Caer and her train the form preferred seems
to have been that of swans, while in other cases they are mostly described more
vaguely as birds, as when the goddess Dechtere is mentioned escaping, together with
her fifty maiden companions, from her brother's court in that form; but the
coupling-chains of silver or gold are seldom wanting.
The corresponding Welsh superstition prefers the goose to
the swan, and makes an approach to Mela's description of the maiden priestesses
of Sein, in that it treats those who assume the anserine form as witches. This
dates from remote antiquity, as it readily explains why the flesh of the goose
was tabu to the Brythons of Caesar's time: leporem et gallinam et anserem
gustare fas non putant [They think it not right to taste the hare, and the hen
and the goose]. Nor is it irrelevant to add, that the goose was sacred in
ancient Rome to Jupiter's consort Juno.
Lectures on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated
by Celtic heathendom. By John Rhys.
