Esus
1.
2.
“M. d'Arbois regards this as illustrating the Tain. Esus, the woodsman, is Cuchulainn; his action depicts what the hero did -- cutting down trees to bar the way of Medb's host; "Esus" is derived from words meaning "anger," "rapid motion," such as Cuchulainn often displayed. The bull is the Brown Bull; the birds are the forms in which Morrigan and her sisters appeared, though these bird-forms were those of the crow, not the crane; the personal names Donnotaurus is found in Gaul and is equivalent of the Donn Tarb -- the "Brown Bull."
“Cúchulainn, who had spent the night with a woman (some say his wife, others say differently), woke up later that morning and when he went out he found the tracks of the passing army.
'I was foolish,' he said to Laeg. 'I have let an army
through and gave no warning to Ulster.' Determined and angry at himself, he and
Laeg made haste and eventually overtook the advancing force. He settled down at
the ford at Áth Gabhla and cut a massive tree-fork with one slice and set it
deep in the waters of the ford so no chariot could pass that way. As he was
finishing his task the four sons of Urard mac Anchinne came upon him. He cut
off their heads and impaled them on the four points of the tree-fork. The
chariot horses returned to the armies and the men there saw all the blood on
the animals and thought there was a battle-force awaiting them at the river at
Áth Gabhla. A company of men were sent to inspect the place, but all they saw
was the track-marks of one chariot, the four heads impaled of the tree-fork,
and Ogam writing on the side of the fork.
When the army met up with the company at the river Medb could not recognise the heads and asked if they were of her people.
'They are," said Ailill, 'and the very best of them too. How could they have been killed so easily? And what does that blasted Ogam say now!'
One of the druids spoke out the writing: One man, using one
hand, had placed this fork. None may pass therefore unless another man - again,
not Fergus - could do likewise.
'Very well," said Ailill, 'we will not attempt this
challenge yet, if at all, but the messages says nothing about removing the
obstacle. I leave that to you, Fergus.'
Fergus broke fourteen chariots in the attempt to remove the
embedded fork. Only when he hitched up his own horse and chariot did he succeed
in removing the fork from the riverbed.”
(An Táin Bó Cuailgne: The Cattle-Raid of Cooley)
3.
What is known of Esus?
“Esus: The Roman poet Lucan described in a poem, the
Pharsalia, dating from the 1st c. AD, the last great battle in the civil war
between Pompey and Caesar. In it, he alludes to the journey of Caesar's troops
through southern Gaul and their encounter with three Gaulish gods: Taranis,
Teutates and Esus (Pharsalia I, 444-6). Lucan describes this triad as cruel,
savage and demanding of human sacrifice: 'horrid Esus with his wild altars'. In
later commentaries on Lucan's poem, probably dating from the 9th c. from Berne,
Esus is mentioned as being propitiated by human sacrifice: men were stabbed,
hung in trees and allowed to bleed to death. The two commentators equate Esus
with Mars and Mercury respectively, but this may not pose as great a problem as
it first appears, since the word 'Esus' is not so much a name as a title,
meaning 'Lord' or 'Good Master'.
Whilst the implication of Lucan's description is that Esus was an important and powerful Gaulish divinity, this is belied by the archaeological evidence in which Esus may be traced to only two monuments. The more significant stone forms part of the pillar dedicated to Jupiter by Parisian sailors in the reign of Tiberius. The block from Paris was found with five others in 1711 on the site of Notre-Dame. The Esus stone itself is inscribed with his name, and beneath this is a depiction of a muscular god chopping at a branch of a willow tree. On a juxtaposed scene is another willow, a bull and three cranes or egrets, with the inscription 'TARVOSTRIGARANUS'. Essentially similar iconography recurs on a 1st c. AD stone at Trier, where an unnamed woodcutter attacks a willow in which repose three egrets and the head of a bull.
The symbolism of the two monuments, whilst not identical, is sufficiently similar and idiosyncratic for it to be possible to identify the presence of Esus on both. In addition to the image of the woodman, the willow, the marsh birds and bull appear on the Paris and Trier images. The iconography is obscure, but there is a natural association between bulls, birds, and willows: egrets feed on parasites in cattle hide; they, like the willow, are inhabitants of marsh or water margin, and egrets nest in willows. The woodcutting scene is problematical in terms of interpretation. It has been suggested that Esus prunes the tree for sacrificial purposes. It may be that there is a cyclical imagery in the destruction and rebirth of the Tree of Life in winter and spring: the birds may represent the soul in flight, perhaps the soul of the tree itself; the bull could himself be a sacrificial beast. Seasonal imagery may also be present in the symbiotic relationship enjoyed between bull and birds, which are of mutual benefit to one another. Finally, it should be recalled that trees are associated with Esus not simply in the iconography buy also in the Berne commentaries which describe the fate of Esus' sacrificial victims.”
4.
Three clues offer themselves to the meaning of this deity:
1. His name;
2. The kind of sacrifice offered to him;
3. The ritual act on the altars from Paris and Trier. We
will examine them in turn.
The word "Esus" is not unknown in Gaulish. We find it in the personal names Esunertus, Esumagos, Eusmopas, Esugenus. This name is found in Irish Eogan, in Welsh Ewein, Owain; even simply as Hesus. Perhaps also the name of the Esuvii tribe belongs to it. The explanation of this word can be broken up further, however. Dom Martin seeks a connection with the Breton word (h)euzuz, meaning "terrible." Others have thought it from Italic aisus, esus, "God," and the Etruscan Erus or also from the Latin herus, "Lord, Master." On the other hand, Vendryes explains the name from esu, "good" (cf. Gk. eus and also archaic Indic asura); but we hardly get the impression of a good god from the Berne scholia. Others would like to derive it from the Indo-European root *is, "to desire;" then arguing the sense: the one who fulfills men's desires. Perhaps better might be the derivation from the root *eis, which means "energy, passion." These are, however, only possibilities, which prove one more time that one can't come far with etymology.
That the scholia of Bern refer to horrible sacrifices also give us few clues to the significance of the god. Already the expression membra digesserit cannot be understood. Must one understand by it, "to tear up, to cup up?" Or do we rather have to deal here with a disposition of the limbs after the blood has flowed out? It is important that the sacrifice would be hung from a tree, because a tree likewise stands out as full of meaning in the pictured representations. The objection that we hear only seldom of hanging rituals among the Celts and that the chopping off of lime is completely unknown says little. What do we know about the bases of Celtic sacrifice? What the classical authors have told us of it is in any case terrible enough. If we consider the reports of these sacrificial practices reliable, Esus must seem to us to be a god of little friendliness.
Finally, the portraits from both altars. To what purpose does the god strike a tree? It seems to me completely erroneous to think of a simple forester god, and to connect Esus with clearing-work, or to see in him at all a manual laborer who provided the nautae of Paris with the necessary workforce for their ships. Likewise it is incorrect that the cutting down of trees would be regarded as a death, and then further to remind us of Maypole rituals. It seems even more to me that Esus in the picture is cutting the limbs of a tree; if one imagines that sacrifices for him were only just hung on the tree, once comes perhaps to the conclusion that god would have been shown here by the injury of a tree for the hanging-sacrifice.
We must admit, with W. Deonna, that the meaning of the myth is for us incomprehensible; perhaps the picture only refers to a single piece of the ritual. At any rate, I would like to assert that there can be not talk of a "rural" god of clearing-work. The relief of the blocks from Paris represents him in the same rank as Jupiter and Volcanus. The Berne scholiasts compare him with the great Roman god; it remains only questionable whether he is Mercury or Mars or perhaps neither of them. The Esus-complex has also been compared with Hercules, and it has been pointed out in that regard that figures of bas-reliefs with the name Smert… are themselves found; one could consequently think of a Gaulish Herakles or Donar, thus of a god of physical strength.
But that will not explain the hanging-sacrifice. When one accordingly takes this into consideration, the comparison with Mercury gains special meaning. If the German Mercury is simply Woden-Odhin, this go stands in undoubted connection with an act of sacrifice by means of hanging. It can likewise be said of both gods that they are also gods who protect travel: Odhin is called: [ed. note: obscured], thus "god of cargo;" he gives mariners good winds. The Paris altar was erected by nautae. On the other hand, one is reminded how cautious one must be with one's interpretation. Great gods are always ambivalent; their power extends into many areas of life. Odhin is not only a god of force, but of tricks and intrigues, of crafts and skillfulness. Exactly for these reasons could the mariners have worshipped him. The god to whom the hanging-sacrifice was offered was also, however, a cruel god. In that vein one could point to the name "Esus," if one accepts O'Rahilly's etymology; but also the interpretation of Vendryes deserves consideration, if one thinks that the name "the good god" is perhaps to be considered as only a euphemism.
All in all: the account of the hanging-sacrifice and the picture on the Paris altar sets out as the nearest course of assumption that Esus was a name for the head god of the Gauls and perhaps most likely to be compared to Mercury and the northern Germanic Odhin.
(1) Proinsias Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology.
(2) John A. MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology.
(3) Miranda J. Green, Dictionary of Celtic Myth
and Legend.
(4) Jan de Vries, Keltische Religion.
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