Gaelic Folklore (28): The Terror of the Night and the Morrigain

 

The ‘terror of the Night’ and the Morrígain: Shifting faces of the supernatural.

Introduction

A rich man has a beautiful but poor woman as his lover. They have two sons together. One day he tells her that he is going to marry a rich woman, chosen by his family. He will take the children with him. She weeps and wails like a madwoman, but it is to no avail. Then she picks up the children and goes to the river, where she drowns them. She falls down, and dies in grief. In heaven, she is welcomed because she has suffered. But before they let her in, she must return to collect the souls of her children and bring them with her. So she goes to the river. Her long hair flows over the riverbanks; her long fingers grope deep into the water and she calls out for her children. Parents tell their children not to go to the river after dark, because the Weeping Woman might mistake them for her own children and take them with her forever.

In this Mexican tale, we see shifting imagery of a woman. A lovely but unfortunate woman transforms into a nocturnal ghost, forever restless, lamenting, looking for her children. At the same time, we are told about a horrible creature that might harm living children. She reminds us of other mythological supernatural women, such as the Jewish Lilith and the Greek Lamia, whose children were killed, causing them to become relentless, murdering demons.

The narratives portray these women in a linear chronological development from happy to sad to horrible and from beautiful to ugly, but somehow these women never seem entirely to lose their original characteristics. Their representations in text and art shift between the various stages in a non-linear way. In other words: we are dealing with coexisting, diverse images of the supernatural. We tend to emphasise one aspect, but often there are several sides to supernatural beings that are equally ‘true’.

This tendency is sometimes also noticeable with regard to early Irish mythological beings. The subject of this contribution is the supernatural woman called the Morrígain, who is usually classified as a War Goddess. Máire Herbert, however, has rightly pleaded for a fresh, open minded study of the primary sources about supernatural women, without preconceived ideas about their function. In this paper the imagery of the supernatural in the Old Irish poem Reicne Fothaid Canainne will be studied. I hope to show that the poem represents not only familiar images from the Irish background of the Morrígain, but that we may also detect unfamiliar, foreign faces of this figure. This shifting of images makes the Morrígain into a more complex and a richer symbol than merely a supernatural representative of war.

In the Old Irish poem, central to this paper, it is the spectral shape of Fothad (§49), who addresses the woman on the battle field. He refers to his bloody corpse and unwashed head being elsewhere (§2). Before focusing on the supernatural beings mentioned in this poem, we will first look at its structure. A schematic survey is given below; the numbers refer to the stanzas.

1a. Woman, do not speak to me

1b–7. A lament about his death

1b. I look back at what happened at [Linn] Féic.

2. My bloody corpse lies beside Leitir Dá mBruach; my unwashed head is among the slaughtered warriors.

3. My tryst with you was a tryst with death.

4. My death at Féic was destined for me.

5. Our last meeting was doomed (but I do not blame you).

6. If we had known, we would have avoided this tryst.

7. I was generous during my life.

8–19. A lament about the death of his men

12–19. Description of his men

20. A lament about the present situation

21–22. The battle and death of Fothad & Ailill

23. Warning to the woman

Watch out for the terror of the night

Do not have a conversation with a dead man

Go home with my treasures

24–41a. Description of the treasures

41b–44. Warning to the woman

41b–43. Watch out for the Morrígain

44. I am in danger; I cannot protect you

Go home while parting is still fair.

45. His departure in the morning

Go home; the night is ending

46–47. Request for a memorial

46. Remember this reicne

47. Put a stone on my grave

48–49. The farewell

48a. My imminent departure and the torture of my soul by a dark one

48b. Only the adoration of the King of Heaven matters

49a. The dark blackbird’s laughter to the believers

49b. My speech and face are spectral

Woman, do not speak to me.

The poem is addressed to the woman. The dead man contradicts himself regularly, which heightens the emotionality of the poem. His tryst with the woman turned out to be a tryst with death. The woman was the cause of this and yet, he does not blame her. His death was destined, but if he had known this outcome, he would have avoided the tryst. He speaks of his love for his men and the woman, and asks her to remember his poem and make his gravestone. If she does this, her love would not be a waste of time, because she would create two everlasting memorials for him. Yet, he concludes that earthly love is a folly―the only thing that counts is the adoration of the King of Heaven.

There are several supernatural entities mentioned in this poem, such as the spectral shape of Fothad, the terror of the night, the Morrígain, the dark one, and the King of Heaven. Three of them will be discussed in this paper: first, the terror of the night; second, the Morrígain, and third, the dark creature mentioned at the end of the poem. I will try to show that the imagery of these three is interrelated or, in other words, how the faces of the supernatural shift and mix.

2. The terror of the night and Irish úatha

Fothad starts his poem by silencing the woman. After lamenting the death of himself and his men, he warns her of danger threatening her:

“Do not wait for the terror of night on the battle-field among the resting-places of the hosts; one should not hold converse with a dead man, betake thee to thy house, carry my spoils with thee!”

What is this ‘terror of night’? Does this merely refer to the general human fear of the dark night, augmented by the presence of bloody corpses on the battlefield? The Dictionary of the Irish Language (DIL) translates úath as ‘fear, horror, terror; a horrible or terrible thing’. Fothad does not seem to refer to merely an emotion here, but to a supernatural being that may endanger the woman. She must hurry, because it is somewhere on the battlefield.

There are several descriptions of úatha in early Irish literature, of which I give a selection here. Úatha are extremely frightening beings, often associated with battle. The Lebor na hUidre (LU) version of Fled Bricrenn, ‘The feast of Bricriu’, supplies the following portrayal of úatha:

The geniti screech at him. They wrestle with each other. His spear is fragmented and his shield is destroyed and his clothes are torn around him. And the geniti beat and subdue him. ‘Well then, Cú Chulainn’, said Lóeg, ‘wretched coward, one-eyed sprite, your fury and your valour have gone since it is spectres that ruin you’. Thereupon Cú Chulainn is contorted in a spectral way and he turns towards the terrors and he hacks and fragments them so that the valley was full with their blood.

Apparently, the terms urtrochta or airdrecha, ‘spectres’, and úatha were seen as suitable synonyms for geniti, ‘(female?) creatures’. Previously in the text at line 8872, the supernatural fighters are referred to as geniti glinne, ‘(female?) creatures of the valley’. After the fight, they are referred to as ‘dark enemies’ (lochnamait; line 8894). Their spectral nature seems to be expressed by the term airdrecha. It could be that the term geniti indicates their female gender, because a gloss in Lebor na hUidre by scribe H and glossaries explain genit and/or gen as ‘woman’.

It is worthwhile to have a closer look at this lemma in the glossaries. We read in O’Mulconry’s Glossary: gen .i. benglynnon .i. foglaid .i. banfoglaid bid anglinn genit glinde .i. ben inglinn gen, that is: a glynnon [valley?] woman; that is: a robber; that is: a female robber, who is in a valley genit glinde [creature of a valley], that is: a woman in a valley. The lemma genit glinne is thus explained as a woman in a valley, whereby genit is explained as ben, ‘woman’. The interlinear gloss, however, explains gen as ‘woman’, albeit a special type: the rather mysterious glynnon woman. The latter in its turn is glossed as a robber, to be precise, as a female robber dwelling in a valley. The additional gloss that explains gen as ben, ‘woman’, seems to be inspired by the two previous lemmata in the glossary (nrs 638–639), in which gene―representing the Greek word for ‘woman’ γυνή―is explained with Latin mulier, ‘woman’.

In another glossary, found in Dublin, TCD, MS H.3.18, genit glinne is explained as gen and then two further explanations are given, one seemingly in Latin and one in Irish: Genit glinde .i. gen .i. glynoon; ben bid hi nglinn Genit glinne, that is: gen, that is: glynoon woman; that is a woman who is in a valley. It seems to me that glynnon and glynoon are fake Latin (or Greek?) terms (cp. Welsh glyn = Irish glenn) which are used here to specify gen, which does not simply refer to ‘woman’ as it did in lemmata 638 and 639 of O’Mulconry’s Glossary, but which is here used to explain genit, a supernatural type of woman.

The main lemma of O’Mulconry’s Glossary, however, directly explains genit as woman, just as genaiti is glossed mná, ‘women’, in Lebor na hUidre, line 3520. This latter use of the word genaiti also refers to supernatural women, who, moreover, are said to laugh in an ominous way.

The examples of geniti in the literature confirm their supernatural nature. What we can deduct from the episode in Fled Bricrenn about these úatha, geniti glinne and airdrecha is the following. They are very powerful, possibly female, supernatural fighters. Three excellent Ulster heroes are sent to them to test their valor and two of them return naked and defeated. Cú Chulainn, the most formidable hero, is able to overcome them, but only when he is roused to his extraordinary martial fury, brought about by the taunts of his charioteer Lóeg. The úatha are screaming, fighting, nocturnal apparitions, associated with a valley. The word ‘spectre’ gives the impression that they are made of thin air, but it should be noted that they appear to have a body that can be grasped and fought with. Moreover, their valley is covered with their blood after the fight.

These úatha may be female; another episode in the Lebor na hUidre version of Fled Bricrenn describes a male Úath. This Úath mac Imomain (Terror son of Great Fear) possesses great supernatural power, is a shape-shifter and functions both as a test (like the geniti glinne or úatha) and as a judge (unlike them) of the three contestants for the hero’s portion.

Another encounter with úatha is found in an adventure of Finn mac Cumaill. This narrative has come down to us in the form of a prose tale and two poems, usually referred to as ‘Finn and the Phantoms’. Finn, Oisín and Caílte are lured to a mysterious house in a valley, where they spend the night in a gruesome, spectral company. A churl, a three-headed old woman, a headless man with one eye in his chest, and nine bodies with nine loose heads make ‘music’ for them by shrieking horribly. The churl kills their horses and roasts the flesh on spits of rowan. When it is still raw, it is offered as a ‘meal’. Finn refuses to eat, which is taken as an insult. The fire is extinguished, and Finn and his companions are beaten up during the dark night. At sunrise the house and its inhabitants vanish, and the human victims and horses are well again. Finn discovers the identity of their enemies through a mantic procedure: they were the three or nine Terrors of Yew Valley. It should be noted that the prose version mentions three úatha, Poem I three fúatha and Poem II nine fúatha.

In the Middle Irish period, it is difficult to distinguish úath from fúath, ‘form, likeness; hideous or supernatural form, spectre’, because even though fúath is a different word, semantically úath and fúath converge. The úatha are thus portrayed as nocturnal, shrieking, fighting and frightening shapeshifters, associated with a valley.

These terrifying beings also appear in hagiography. Fúatha threaten the seventh-century Saint Moling in his youth, according to the Middle Irish Geinemain Molling ocus a bethae, ‘The birth of Moling and his Life’. When the saint is sixteen years old, he wanders through Luachair, singing his prayer. Suddenly, he sees an ominous company on his path: an unshapely, ugly monster (torathar)―explained by the text as the Fúath aingeda―and his dark, ugly, unshapely household―explained as people in the shape of spectres (arrachta). The whole company consists of the Wicked Fúath, his wife, his servant, his dog and a group of nine persons. St Moling manages to escape from them by making three enormous leaps. The fúatha cry loud and pursue him, but it is to no avail. The main fúath in St Moling’s Life is male.

Whitley Stokes  translates in Fúath aingeda as ‘the Evil Spectre’, taking aingeda as andgedae, sister form of andgid, derived from andach, ‘evil’. Proinsias Mac Cana points out that the first title of the úath-group in Tale List A is Uath Angeda and suggests that this refers to an earlier form of the Moling tale. According to Mac Cana, the original tale may have been about a hag. He bases this upon a Middle Irish poem ascribed to Moling, in which the saint has a female adversary, called Aingid. These fúatha share the following characteristics with the úatha that were described above: residence in a wild place, their loud shouting, and their fighting habits. Interestingly, the spectres are said to be engaged in fogal, ‘attack, injury, damage; plundering’, and díberg, ‘marauding, freebooting, pillaging’, which occupation is also ascribed to geniti glinne in the above-quoted gloss on the relevant lemma in O’Mulconry’s Glossary.

Finally, two poems use the term úath to describe the ugly appearance of the Sovereignty. The poem Temair Breg, baile na fían, extant in the Book of Leinster (LL) and Rawlinson B 502, ascribed to Cuán Ó Lothcháin (†1024) tells of the meeting of the five sons of King Eochu Muigmedón with an old, female seer (écess) in the wilderness, who guards a well. When the son who is destined to be king kisses her horrible mouth, she turns into the beautiful appearance of the Sovereignty. The second poem, the metrical dindshenchas on Carn Máil, also describes king’s sons in the wilderness after a hunt. They are visited by an old, ugly woman, characterised as úath olair abbáeth, ‘obese lustful terror’. She threatens to eat them and their dogs, but when one of them says that he will yield to her sexual desire, she transforms into a radiant, young beauty. These úatha are dark, ominous appearances, who function as tests for the sons of a king, and the right reaction of the young man destined for royalty brings about her transformation into a radiant, promising figure. Again, an úath turns out to be a shape-shifter, and this specific type has the gift of prophecy as well.

Thus far, I have discussed humanoid úatha. There are also bestial terrors, of which I will only mention an example from a text in Old Irish. The previously described úatha turned out to be a test for kings-to-be. The úath in Echtrae Fergusa maic Leiti forms a test for a ruling king. When King Fergus mac Leite sees a monster (designated water beast, muirdris and úath) under water, his face becomes deformed by fear. This ‘loss of face’ makes him unfit to be a king and in the end, he also loses his life.

As our poem is Old Irish, our main focus is on texts that are contemporaneous with it. Therefore, we should take our clues from Fled Bricrenn and the lemma on genit glinne, which belongs to the Old Irish stratum of O’Mulconry’s Glossary. It is possible that Fothad warns his lover of one of these frightening, screaming, utterly destructive fighters, possibly robbers living in a valley, operating at night. Some readers may have associated the terror of the night with these supernatural beings.

3. A demon called ‘terror of the night’

There is another possibility that should be considered as well. Readers who were acquainted with the Bible may have made a different identification. In the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, there are two references to a harmful supernatural being, associated with the night and with a sudden attack. It is

called pa»ad laylâ or ‘the terror of the night’. In Jewish sources and liturgy, Psalm 91 (Psalm 90 in the Vulgate) is called ‘a song for evil encounters’, which should be recited before sleep.

What people feared were attacks by harmful supernatural beings. The Psalm lists several demons ―among them we find the terror of the night: His [i.e. God’s] truth shall surround you with a shield, You will not be afraid of the terror of the night. This Psalm was not only used by Jews in their daily rituals, but was also part of medieval Irish liturgy. Psalm 90:5 is quoted in ‘Gloria in Excelsis’ in the Irish Liber Hymnorum and paraphrased in the Antiphonary of Bangor. We know that these texts were sung or recited at night, and thus one prayed for protection from demons and dangers.

The second reference to the ‘terror of the night’ is in the Song of Songs. The text tells of sixty strong men surrounding the bed of King Solomon: “All holding swords and most expert in war Every man’s sword upon his thigh because of terrors of the night.” A scene of warriors with swords on their thighs is also known in early Irish literature. In The wasting sickness of Cú Chulainn men are thus said to swear as testimony to the truth of their boasts upon battle deeds. Even though the context is completely different, it is interesting that this statement was put in a ‘demonic’ context by a gloss explaining that a demon used to talk from the sword. If we want to identify these ‘demons’, we should think of supernatural women, such as the Morrígain.

Apparently, demons and weapons were associated with each other, but there is a contrast between the biblical and Irish texts in the function of armour within this association. In Irish texts, demons are sometimes said to dwell in armour (i.e., helmets, shields and weapons). As we saw, in Psalm 90 God’s truth functions as a shield and thus as a way of protection against demons. A similar function is attributed to the swords held by the strong men around the bed of King Solomon. This scene reflects the belief, widespread in the Ancient Near East, that a couple was vulnerable to the attacks of evil spirits and night demons during the wedding night, especially when the marriage was consummated. This is why armed servants are present in the room ―as a protection against demonic attacks. This type of harm to newly-weds was in particular ascribed to ‘Terror of the night’.

If the author of Reicne Fothaid Canainne knew of this belief, then the expression ‘terror of the night’ in the context of the poem is well suited to the occasion. The lover, already killed, warns his beloved woman of this ‘terror’ in the night that should have been the start of their marriage. This supernatural attacker of newly-weds could thus have been assumed to be nearby.

It is, however, uncertain to what extent the author of our poem was aware of the mythological and cultic background of the terror of the night as referred to in the Song of Songs. What we badly need is knowledge about which Jewish traditions were known to medieval Christians. A channel of transmission that is still traceable today is represented by the writings of the Church Fathers. In their comments on these two biblical passages, they explain the ‘terror of the night’ in a sexual and demonic way. Thus far, I have not found an exposé on the cultic background of the verse in the Song of Songs, but we could surmise that if the author of Reicne Fothaid Canainne was acquainted with the Bible, the demonic nature of the terror of the night is obvious from Psalm 90. What should be noted is that some Jewish theologians identified this demon as Lilith. As will become clear in this paper, the question whether (Irish) Christian exegetes also linked the nocturnal terror with this succubus demon is an intriguing one. The fear of nocturnal temptation expressed by the Church Fathers seems to hint at a similar identification.

We return to the Old Irish poem. There is a third possible way to interpret the terror of the night. Looking at the structure of the poem (see above), we observe that the warning to the woman is interrupted by the command to take away the treasures. Then an elaborate description of Fothad’s treasures is given, which breaks off in the middle of quatrain §41. It is as if the spectre takes up the warning again, by focusing on a supernatural being nearby: the Morrígain. It might be the case that ‘the terror of night’ already refers to her.

We learn from the Old Irish Glossary of Cormac that the supernatural beings called úath and Morrígain have something in common: “False demons, that is: terrors and Morrígnae.” Apparently, both ‘terrors’ and morrígnae were good equivalents for the word gúdemain, translated as ‘spectres’ in the Dictionary of the Irish Language. This translation is presumably based upon the somewhat popular translation by John O’Donovan: ‘.i. spectres and fairy queens’, to which Stokes added: “Guidemain seems to mean ‘false demons’, from gó, gúa 😊 W. gau) ‘false’ and demain for demuin, n. pl. of demon, a demon, daemonion, (Corn. Gevan or jevan), gen. s. demuin”. The meaning ‘false demons’ is indeed more likely, because this is one of the interpretations offered by another gloss. It should be noted, moreover, that the last name of the red woman alias the Morrígain in the Yellow Book of Lecan version of Táin bó Regamna is Úath.

What is important to us now is that both the Morrígain and the terror of the night could be classified as terrifying demons. It is possible that Fothad’s warning is not a double but an interrupted warning about a supernatural being nearby on the battlefield, known as the terror of the night alias the Morrígain.

4. Supernatural women and demons

Fothad describes the Morrígain as follows. He calls her ‘an evil guest’. She visits, stirs up and frightens people. She is washing entrails and spoils. She laughs and throws her long hair over her back. All these characteristics deserve further study. For the purpose of the present paper, I have selected one in particular: her laughter.

The laughter of the Morrígain is described as follows: “Horrible the hateful laugh she laughs“. The ambiguity of laughter in Irish has been noted previously: Joseph Vendryes points out that tibid not only means ‘laughs, smiles’ but also ‘to beat, hit, push’; Philip O’Leary discusses the danger of laughter as a

literary motif; and, most recently, Liam Mac Mathúna displays the full spectrum of laughter in his survey of Irish lexical expressions for laughing and smiling.

The expression used in our poem―tibid gen, ‘to laugh a laugh’ or ‘to smile a smile’―is also found elsewhere in early Irish literature. Especially interesting for a comparison with the description of the Morrígain are examples of supernatural women laughing in an ominous and dangerous context. I selected an example from The wasting sickness of Cú Chulainn, the text with the scene of warriors with swords on their thighs, mentioned above.

This is the well-known tale about Cú Chulainn and his relationship with a woman of the síd called Fand, which means ‘tear’. The story ends indeed in a sad way for Fand and to a certain extent for Cú Chulainn, but laughter is part of the first meeting between Cú Chulainn and representatives of the Otherworld. It is, however, ominous laughter, which is expressed by the words tibid gen. Two women approach Cú Chulainn, who lies asleep against a pillar stone. They both laugh at him and then almost kill him by beating him with horsewhips: “The woman in the green mantle came to him and laughed at him, and struck him with her horsewhip. The other came to him, too, and laughed at him, and struck him in the same way”. These two women are Lí Ban and Fand from the síd, who first visited Cú Chulainn in bird form but were attacked by him, despite his wife’s warning against this, because of the supernatural power (cumachtae) she perceives behind the birds.

At first sight, the contrast could not be greater when we compare the Morrígain as described in our poem with the beautiful, enticing women of the síd in this tale. If we look closer, however, there are some similarities. The laughter combined with the beating might be seen as a sign of the sinister

side of the áes síde. A similar hint is found in a poem, uttered by Cú Chulainn’s charioteer Lóeg, when he calls the women genaiti:

It is great frivolousness for a warrior

To lie in sleep of wasting sickness,

For it shows genaiti i.e., women

Folk from Tenmag Trogaige, i.e., from Mag Mell

And they have subdued (?) thee,

They have confined thee,

They torture thee

in the toils of female frivolousness.

We have seen that the word geniti is used for supernatural frightening female fighters, also called terrors (úatha), who beat and subdue Cú Chulainn in Fled Bricrenn; and this is consistent with the image that Lóeg paints in this poem. They have subdued and tortured Cú Chulainn, who is confined to his bed. It should be noted that a gloss explains geniti here as ‘women’ (mná), which reminds us of O’Mulconry’s glossary, quoted above: a genit is a woman (Genit glinde .i. ben i nglinn). The well-known colophon at the end of the text tells the readers that they should call these women ‘demons’. One could wonder now what this has to do with the Morrígain. The only two points of comparison are 1) ominous laughter in a battle context and 2) supernatural women associated with fighting.

At this point we need to pay attention to an obscure, heavily glossed poem that accompanies the text ofThe wasting sickness of Cú Chulainn in the manuscript margin. We read in the upper margin of Lebor na hUidre folio 50a:47:

The desire of the woman of the scaldcrow i.e. badb are her fires i.e. spear & armour. The slaughter of a body i.e. side thereafter Juices i.e. blood, body i.e. body/corpse under bodies i.e. under men Eyes i.e. eyes, heads i.e. head belonging to a raven i.e. of a raven.

Joanne Findon emphasises the fact that this poem is found on the page where an emotional poem is written, uttered by Fand, in which she says farewell to Cú Chulainn. Findon points out that one’s eyes are, however, drawn to the upper margin of the page first, where the scribe (M) “has boxed in the quatrain and its glosses with dark lines, as if to highlight it particularly”. The quatrain speaks of the desire of the scaldcrow woman, and this is glossed by the words: ‘that is: Badb’. Findon states that the bloodthirsty desire of the Badb in the marginal quatrain is here in fact juxtaposed with the sexual desire of Fand in the poem in the main text. In her opinion this comparison “is an outrageous textual distortion that completely misrepresents [Fand’s] Otherworld nature as it is configured in this text”. Findon suggests that this poem might be a Christian warning against fascinating Otherworld portrayals, and especially the moving description of female desire as expressed by Fand.

Just as readers in the Middle Ages could have different readings of the same text, so can we. Even though I admire Findon’s reading that focuses on the contrast, I want to look at the similarities between the Badb and Fand, and include the Morrígain in my reading. The tale is clearly a moving love story, but there is more to it. There is a good reason why Lóeg called Fand and Lí Ban geniti. Geniti shriek, fight, and hover above fighting armies, inciting or frightening warriors. Some of them help Cú Chulainn by making him more dread-inspiring in battle; others oppose him or are even involved in his downfall.

Looking again at the role of Fand and Lí Ban in The wasting sickness of Cú Chulainn we note that they not only overpower Cú Chulainn and beat him up, but they also incite him to fight in the Otherworld, on the side of Lí Ban’s husband. Schematically, Lí Ban and Fand represent: first, an approach to Cú Chulainn in a different―bird―form; second, a threat represented by the beating; third, an offer of sex; and fourth, an incitement to fight. This is similar to what the Badb and the Morrígain represent for Cú Chulainn in Táin Bó Cúailnge Recension I.

As a boy of five, Cú Chulainn is on the battlefield on a dark night, fighting with a spectre. The Irish word is aurddrag, the term also used for the úatha or geniti glinne that Cú Chulainn fights with in Fled Bricrenn. The spectre overpowers him, but then the voice of the Badb from among the corpses incites him to fight: “They wrestled then and Cú Chulainn was thrown. He heard the Badb crying from among the corpses: “Poor stuff to make a warrior is he who is overthrown by phantoms”.

This spectre seems to personify the terror experienced on the battlefield. It seems as if Conchobar hints at this terror (úath) by using the word úathbás when Cú Chulainn has found him after conquering the spectre: ‘Why have you come to the battle-field’ said Conchobar, “where you may die of fright?”

Moreover, in the same epic text, it is the Morrígain who approaches him in female human form with an offer of assistance in the fight and of sex, followed by a threat and a fight when he refuses her. These similarities make me wonder: was the quatrain perhaps added as a reminder of other supernatural women, who are closely related to Cú Chulainn?

This comparison, moreover, highlights non-stereotypical sides of supernatural females. The Morrígain is not only dangerous, but also sensual. The Badb is not only an enemy but also helpful. Fand is not only beautiful but also connected with violence. Even though we find them sometimes lumped together in a single category as demons, yet early Irish literature with its many voices has kept differentiation alive.The glossaries not only apply the common denominator of demons to supernatural beings but also supply different names and nuances for them. This seems to be another instance of the shifting of the faces of the supernatural.

In the area of classification there appears to be some flexibility as well. For instance, we have seen that Cormac’s Glossary brought úatha and morrígnae together as gúdemain. In another glossary on ‘The last Bretha Nemed or judgments of privileged (or professional) persons’, gúdemain are explained as scald crows and women of the síd, which are then connected with the Morrígain in a plural form in a gloss in the upper margin: Howlers, that is: foxes or a wolf. Gudomuin (Gúdemain, false demons), that is: scald crows or women of the síd. (In the upper margin:) false (?) howlers, that is the false demons, the morrígna; or it is a falsehood so that the women of the síd are not demons; it is a falsehood so that the scald crows are not demons of hell, but demons of the air. (In the right-hand margin:) Or: the foxes double their howls and the scald crows double their sounds/vowels.

The word gúdemain apparently needed explanation and it is interesting to note that both marginal comments connect the term with the previous lemma on glaídemuin. The gloss in the right-hand margin etymologises both words as having to do with sound. Glaidomuin is explained from glaéd, ‘howl, shout, call’, and emuin, ‘pairs, twins’. Gudomuin is split up in guth, ‘vowel, sound’, and emuin, ‘pairs, twins’. The gloss in the upper margin is concerned with classification. It is possible that the author took inspiration from Cormac’s Glossary, because false demons are here explained as morrígna. Perhaps this glossator also added the wolf to the explanation of howlers as foxes, because this is the explanation of howlers in Cormac’s Glossary: Gláidemain .i. maic tíre gláidaite .i. focerdait húalla, ‘Howlers, that is: wolves that howl; that is: they utter wails’.

At first sight, it may seem that the glossator added a third category to the howlers and false demons: false howlers. Demons are, however, also infamous as producers of horrible sounds, screams and shrieks. It looks, therefore, as if the foxes and wolves should be seen as the true howlers, and the others perhaps as screamers but not as true howlers. The glossator then goes on speculating about other ‘false’ classifications and seems to suggest that women of the síd are not really demons. Scald crows, furthermore, are demons of the air and―he seems to say―thus not really demons either, because the true demons are located in Hell.

I have thus tried to make sense of the comments in the upper margin, and my views remain of course tentative. There is one aspect that is absent in my interpretation, and that is etymology. What etymological basis did the author of the gloss in the upper margin have for connecting glaidomuin with gudomuin other than that they appear in the same order in Cormac’s Glossary? The only thing I can think of is that the author saw glaidomuin as consisting of gláed, ‘cry, shout, howl’, and demain, ‘demons’, just as gúdemain was possibly formed from gú, ‘false’, and demain, ‘demons’. Thus, the lemmata on ‘howl demons’ and ‘false demons’ would have led to an explanation starting with ‘false howlers’ in order to distinguish the howlers from the shriekers.

The classification of scald crows as demonic in Irish texts is well known, but is it also possible to put foxes and wolves in the same category. It suffices within the context of this study to point out that upernatural beings, birds of prey and wild beasts are associated with demons, because all of these may howl or shriek, and they may inhabit similar places that are wild or deserted. We encounter collections of these creatures as an evil omen for the battle to come in, for instance, In cath catharda, the Middle Irish adaptation/translation of Lucan’s Civil War.

Thus, the centre of Rome is described as becoming a night lair for wild beasts; nocturnal birds fly around at day time; phantoms and shades from the Underworld terrify the human inhabitants at night; the Badb of battle (a Fury in the source text) goes around, and many other abnormal phenomena are described. The Irish text adds the loud howling of hounds and wolves at night to the description.61 Biblical visions of destruction also portray deserted cities, inhabited by wild beasts, birds of prey and frightening female and male demons. There are several examples of such scenes; one of them will be discussed below.

5. Black birds and demons

We move on now from the study of the terror of the night and the Morrígain to the third supernatural being. The first two entities are said to be a threat to the living woman. The supernatural being to be discussed now is said to be a threat to the dead man. Toward the end of the poem, Fothad announces that soon his soul will be tormented:

My riddled body must part from thee awhile,

My soul to be tortured by the black demon.

Save (for) the worship of Heaven’s King,

Love of this world is folly.

Kuno Meyer translates donn as ‘the black demon’. In a later publication he corrects this into Donn, the proper name of an ancestral deity of the Irish, the presumably pre-Christian Death God. As this line is immediately followed by Fothad’s sudden insight that only the adoration of the King of Heaven matters and love for this world is foolish, we can safely conclude that an infernal demon is meant here by donn, which literally means ‘a dark one’. ‘Dark’ (teimen) is also used to describe a blackbird, which is mentioned in the final quatrain:

It is the dusky ousel that laughs

a greeting to all the faithful:

My speech, my shape are spectral –

hush, woman, do not speak to me!.

Initially, I took this description as another reference to the dark tormentor of the soul, for lon can also signify ‘demon’. A dangerous demon, laughing at dead people would supply a nice parallel with the terrifying Morrígain, laughing at living people.

I have, however, come to a different conclusion. Lon means ‘demon’ in two texts only, and then it is always part of a compound, as lon craís. This demon of gluttony is found in the Middle Irish Aislinge Meic Conglinne and ‘The Death of King Herod’. Clearly, this is something different from what is portrayed in our poem. The blackbird in this poem seems to represent the biological species. Blackbirds start to sing half an hour before sunrise, which is earlier than the other birds. Its song is, therefore, the messenger of the start of the day. Immediately after its mention, Fothad says that his speech and face are spectral, and―as we all know―when the day begins, phantoms must vanish. The song of the blackbird is melodious and melancholic, but does not resemble laughter. We should, therefore, see the laughter in the poem symbolically, and it could help to combine this laughter with that of the Morrígain. People doomed to go to hell will fear the sound of the blackbird, but the faithful can enjoy it. They are protected from danger, just as those who recite before sleep ‘the psalm for evil encounters’. Neither the terror of the night nor the laughter of the Morrígain nor the dark demon will affect them.

Conclusion

The supernatural beings in Reicne Fothaid Canainne overlap to a certain extent. The terror of the night could represent a nocturnal, frightening female, from Irish or Jewish tradition, and the term might also hint at the Morrígain. The Morrígain threatens the woman on the battlefield; a dark one threatens Fothad as an infernal tormentor. The laughter of the Morrígain is both paralleled by and contrasted with the laughter of the dark blackbird. Diverse details are visible in the imagery of the supernaturals, even though the category ‘demonic’ serves as an umbrella. It could very well be that another demon hovers in the background of this imagery: the Jewish Lilith, seducer of men, killer of babies. Like the Morrígain, she is a nocturnal terror, she has long hair and she howls. She lives in deserted places, among other demons, birds of prey and wild beasts. In this habitat she is described in the Book of Isaiah. Jerome replaced Lilith by Lamia in his Latin translation of the Bible: ’And demons will meet ass-centaurs and the hairy creature shall cry out, the one to the other. There the Lamia has lain down and found rest for herself.

A gloss on this verse in Vatican Library, Codex Reginae Lat. 215, written in 876 or 877, ascribed to Eriugena, explains Lamia as ‘the Morrígain’: Lamia is a monster in the form of a woman, that is: a morrígain. Lilith, the terror of the night according to some Jewish thinkers, is thus equated with the Morrígain, who seems to be described as another nocturnal terror in the Old Irish poem Reicne Fothaid Canainne.

Jacqueline Borsje.

Full article: here.