16.
The Magic Art Among The Celts, part 1
The practice of magic in many variations was well known to the celts and their adversaries.
What follows are descriptions and tales from an old source:
The practice of magic in many variations was well known to the celts and their adversaries.
What follows are descriptions and tales from an old source:
t is necessary to say at once that such records as we have
of Celtic Magic in the region which is now known as England furnish us with
only scanty clues to the magical ideas or practices of the Celtic race. For
such information it is necessary to appeal mainly to the literature and
traditions of Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Certain parts of these records are
acceptable as being of the nature of genuine chronicle and folk-tradition, and
are not easily disposed of. In the lands alluded to we find the mysterious
caste of the Druids wielding powers of illusion, raising winds and tempests,
casting mists over the landscape for the confusion of their enemies or for
reasons of defence. They are masters of the arts of shape-shifting and bodily
transformations, they are capable of vision at a distance. We find them united
in magical colleges for the instruction and furtherance of arcane knowledge. By
a draught of mysterious elixir they can induce forgetfulness. They can dry up
watercourses and employ their sorcery on behalf of their native rulers in
battle. They engage in magical contests with Christian saints and missionaries.
They can annihilate time through prophecy and the divination of omens. An
understanding of the language of the animal world is vouchsafed them. Indeed,
there is no department of the magical art in which, apparently, they are not
versed.
n account of the
great contest of St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, with the Irish Druids, as
set forth in his Tripartite Life, well exemplifies the contemporary belief in
those magical potencies which the Druidic brotherhood were said to be able to
wield, and to a certain extent summarizes them. On the eve of Bealltainn, when
the great bonfire of the god Beli was lit, a fire was seen to be burning in the
direction of Tara, the Irish religious capital. This was irregular, as only by
the hands of the Chief Druid could such a fire be kindled at that festival. In
some dismay the Archdruid proceeded to the spot where the blaze appeared, and
in angry surprise discovered St. Patrick and his followers chanting their
psalms round a camp-fire. The Druid ordered the offending Saint to accompany
him to the Assembly at Tara, where he eloquently defended his mission of
salvation before the King, with arguments so damaging to the Druidic faith that
the wrathful pontiff challenged him to work a miracle which would justify those
powers he claimed on behalf of his divine Master. The Saint refused to disturb
the order of Providence to gratify mere curiosity, whereupon the pagan priest,
to display his occult powers, chanting spells and brandishing his wand, plunged
the landscape in a heavy snowfall. This illusion Patrick dispersed by simply
making the sign of the Cross, on which the Druid, not to be defeated, caused a
thick darkness to fall upon the countryside. But the Saint, resorting to
prayer, dissolved the gloomy cloud.
he King, anxious for
further proofs of the relative powers of the rival priests, commanded each of
them to cast his book into the water, so that he in whose volume the letters
remained uninjured might be declared the minister of truth. To this the Druid
would not consent, and he further refused a similar trial by fire. The King
then ordered each of the rivals to enter a tent filled with dry boughs which
would be set alight.
"Nay," said the Saint, willing to display the
superiority of his divine Magic, "let one be filled with green branches,
and this I resign to my opponent."
St. Benin, who accompanied Patrick,
besought his leave to enter the tent of dry boughs, and did so, bearing the
Druid's mantle, while the Druid, carrying his, as fearlessly entered the tent
of green twigs full of sap. Both huts were fired at the same moment, and in the
twinkling of an eye the shelter of green boughs, containing the Druid, was
reduced to ashes with all that it held, save the young saint's mantle. In the
other nothing was consumed except the Druid's cloak.
f we seek among the Celtic languages for expressions
relative to the Magic Arts we find that the noun employed to describe the
spoken word of Magic, or the spell, among the Gaelic speaking Celts of ancient
Scotland and Ireland was Bricht, which has been equated with the Icelandic
bragr, "poetry", that is "magical rhyme". A term commonly in use among the Gaels to
denote any magical act, or sleight of sorcery, is Druidheachd, which only too
readily reveals the actual source of its inspiration. The word Eolas,
"knowledge", is also frequently still in use as signifying magical
potency in the more popular and general sense of the term.
If we look for
examples of the type of sorcery implied by the word Drǔidry we
shall most easily discern them in the records of Irish Druidism. To induce
confusion, or to conceal themselves, the Druids were in the habit of casting
dense fogs over a landscape. To cover their approach from the sea, such a
method was employed by the leaders of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or Children of the
Goddess Danu, an early race of Celtic magicians, when they first invaded
Ireland. These immigrant sorcerers spread "druidically formed showers and
fog sustaining shower-clouds" over the countryside, causing the heavens to
rain down fire and blood upon its defenders, the native aboriginal race of the
Fir-Bolgs. But the Fir-Bolgs had Druids of their own, whose counter-enchantments
put a period to the disastrous exhalations. Another instance of this species of
smoke-screen is to be found in the tale of Cormac, who, seeking for his wife
Eithne and his children, kidnapped by Manannan, the god of the sea, passed
through "a dark magical mist" in the course of his successful efforts
to discover them.
he raising of artificial windstorms was also a prominent
feature of Druidical sorcery. When the Tuatha Dé Danann, in their turn,
hopelessly endeavoured to repel the onset of the Milesians, the last of the
Hibernian races to seek settlement upon the soil of Ireland, they sent a
"druidical" tempest against the invaders, which made it impossible
for them to reach the shore. Donn, one of the Milesian leaders, discovered that
the atmosphere was quite unruffled above his galley, and realizing that the
storm was magically induced, invoked "the power of the land of Erin"
against its violence, whereupon it subsided. But the Danann sea-god, Manannan,
shook his magic mantle in the direction of the Milesians and a fresh tempest
wrecked some of their craft before they succeeded in making a landing.
nspired by all the hate of Celtic feud, the Druid Mog Ruath
of Munster, when he opposed King Cormac and his Druids, drove them by his magic
fire and storm-spells from that kingdom. We learn, too, that the Druids of King
Loegaire sadly persecuted the early Christian missionaries by sending heavy
snowfalls and thick darkness upon them. Broichan, the Druid of King Brude, a
Pictish monarch who ruled over a part of Scotland, caused so dire a storm and
such fell darkness to descend upon Loch Ness that St. Columba found navigation
upon its waters impossible for a time.
The god Lugh bore off Conn of the Hundred Battles in a magic mist to an
enchanted palace, where he prophesied to him concerning the fortunes of his
royal descendants. The tales regarding such magical interference with the
elements are so numerous as to make possible reference to the most typical
only. Shape-shifting and
the transformation of persons into forms other than their own are equally the
common themes of Celtic magical story. It is necessary to discriminate between
these forms of enchantment.
he first is, of course, descriptive of the guises into
which a magician can transform himself. The second implies his transformation
of another person into any shape, human, animal or inanimate. The Irish Druid
Fer Fidail abducted a girl by transforming himself into the shape of a woman,
while another Druid deceived Cuchullin, the Irish Achilles, by assuming the
shape of the Lady Niamh. The "Rennes
Dindsenchas", an ancient Irish tract, informs us that an enchantress
named Dalb the Rough transformed three men and their wives into swine, while in
the famous tale of The Children of Lir, the three children of that
god are changed into swans by their stepmother Aeife. The Druid Fear Doirche,
furious with the maiden Saar, changed her into a fawn, in which shape she
became the mother of Ossian. In many instances of transformation it appears to
be the rule that a person's shape may not be magically altered unless he or she
is without clothing at the time of the metamorphosis; but it is certainly a
rule which has numerous exceptions, and it does not seem to apply to
shapeshifting. The examples I have given above refer both to the first class of
transformation and the second, and I have placed them side by side for the
purpose of contrast and comparison, as they are frequently confused by writers
on Magic and folklore.
ransformation is also frequently to be remarked in
connection with that series of tales which deals with the supernatural
personage known as the Loathly Lady—a hideous hag who seeks
deliverance from an enchanted condition (the result of some spell laid upon
her) by union with a self-denying hero. In a Scottish Gaelic tale, The Daughter
of King Underwaves, Diarmid, a Fenian hero, encounters such a hag, who begs for
shelter and a share of his couch. When the request is granted she is
transformed into a damsel of surpassing loveliness. In the adventures of Pwyll, Prince of Dyved,
as related in the Welsh Mabinogion, we find it recorded that that hero assumed
for a year the shape and outward seeming of Arawn, King of Annwn or Hades,
while his plutonic highness took on the bodily guise of the mortal prince for
reasons mutually beneficial. This is rather an unusual case of transformation,
illustrating as it does an incident in which two magicians agree to exchange
their outward identities for a political reason. But we are not led to believe
that they exchanged their bodies and they certainly retained their
personalities.
n the Irish Book of
Invasions we find the Milesian hero Amergin vaunting that it is possible for
him to change his shape "like a god". He can become even "the
wind that blows upon the sea, the ocean wave, the surge". He can transform
himself into "a strong bull", an eagle, a herb, a lake. The elucidation of this passage is of the
utmost importance for the comprehension of Celtic Magic. Remarking upon the
quality and character of the magical science which enabled Amergin to
accomplish these metamorphoses, M. D'Arbois de Jubainville declares that
according to the tenets of Celtic philosophy it consisted in making oneself
identical with those forces of nature which the magician desired to wield.
"To possess this science was to possess nature in her entirety." The
process is "sympathetic" to some extent—that is, it corresponds to
that modern scientific idea of Magic which believes that like causes are
capable of bringing about like results. But it would be absurd to refer it to
merely sympathetic notions alone, for it is clear that a vital and
overmastering desire also enters into the conception of it. We find a similar
passage eloquent of the ability of the knowledgeable magician to assume the
appearance of any given object or force or quality in one of the poems of the
Welsh bard Taliesin, who tells us that he is "a vulture upon the
rock", and that he has been an eagle, the fairest of plants, the wood in
the covert, the word of science, the sward itself. Now this passage might be, and has been,
referred to a belief in reincarnation, but I consider erroneously so. It is
indeed a wonderful proof of the recognition by the Celtic imagination that all
matter is indeed one and that the assumption of its various forms can readily
be achieved through the spiritual and mental potency of the magical initiate,
as expressed by Avicenna and Paracelsus. As M. D'Arbois indicated, this
doctrine was reflected in the teachings of the Celtic philosopher John Scotus
Erigena at the court of Charles the Bald, King of France, in the ninth
century.
n the tale of Art and Balor Beimenach we are
told how Balor, the one-eyed god of the Fomorians, was transformed into a white
horse through the enchantments of his wife, who had eloped with a cripple. In
this equine form Balor was forced to carry grain to the mill, but he succeeded
in escaping and dwelt in the hills until his wife discovered his whereabouts,
had him brought to her and transformed him once more, this time into a wolf. In
this guise he avenged himself by killing his wife's cattle, but was hunted, and
was about to be despatched, when his father-in-law, to whom he made signs, took
pity on him and spared his life. His wife, who knew him for her husband, pretended
that he had slaughtered one of her children, whereupon the King, his
father-in-law, angrily struck him with his wand, thus inadvertently causing him
to take human shape once more.
n the story of the King of Lochlin, an interlude in the
much longer tale of The Cotter's Son and the Half-Slim Champion, in
which the injured monarch recounts the manner in which he was bewitched by his
wife when he discovered her with her paramour. When surprised by her husband,
the lady, who was evidently a sorceress, struck him with a rod and changed him
into a wild deer. She turned a pack of hounds upon the luckless king, and he
was hunted by them into the fastnesses of the mountains, where he succeeded in
eluding them. He then indulged his vengeance by making raids upon her gardens
and fields and destroying her crops. But one day, as he was engaged in his work
of mischief, she sprang up from behind a wall and once more struck him with her
magic wand, whereupon he became a wolf. Shortly afterwards he fell in with a
she-wolf, a woman under enchantment. She had been placed under spells when
about to become a mother, but could not bear her child unless she received her
mortal form again. One day the wolf-king, awaking suddenly from sleep, and
confused by a dream, bit her in the side, when there emerged from her body an
infant who grew to the stature of a man in a single moment. The wolf-woman died
from the wound, but her son survived and nourished enmity for his mother's
slayer. He chased the enchanted king from place to place and in one of these
encounters the latter once again came face to face with his treacherous queen,
who, terrified at the sight of him, dealt him a blow with her wand, upon which
he regained human shape. The now disenchanted King of Lochlin snatched the wand
from her and by its aid transformed her into wolf-shape as a punishment for her
misdeeds.
he weird legend of Earl Gerald Fitzgerald, a renowned
practitioner of the Black Art and an inveterate enemy of the English. His wife,
cognizant of his powers of enchantment, begged him to display them for her
diversion, so to please her he transformed himself into a goldfinch. But while
he disported himself before her in this guise he was attacked by a hawk and
immediately killed. Once in seven years he rides round the Curragh of Kildare
on a steed whose silver shoes were half an inch thick at the time of his
disappearance, and not until these are worn down to the thinness of a cat's ear
will he be restored to human society. He and his warriors await the hour of their
liberation in a great cavern beneath the Rath of Mullaghmast, until a miller's
son with six fingers on each hand shall awake them by blowing a horn. The tale
is similar to those told of Arthur, Thomas the Rhymer and Barbarossa.
n his familiar work on The Topography of Ireland, Giraldus
Cambrensis alludes to several instances of the transformation of people into
animal shape which occurred in his own time, the twelfth century. He tells how
a priest, journeying from Ulster to Meath, through forest country, encountered
a wolf which addressed him in human speech and led him to where a she-wolf lay
grovelling in agony beneath the shelter of a tree. These animals informed him
that they were natives of the province of Ossory, who had been transformed into
their present shapes by an enchantress named Natalis. At the end of seven years
the enchantment would cease and they would be restored to human form, when two
other persons would be substituted in their stead. The she-wolf, who appeared
to be at the point of death, begged the priest to afford her the comfort of the
Sacrament, but as he thought he was not provided with its elements, he could
only refuse her piteous request. But the he-wolf reminded him that he carried a
few wafers in his missal. The creature then tore off a part of the skin which
covered his mate, thus revealing her as an old woman, whereupon the holy man,
doubting no longer, administered the viaticum. He parted with the enchanted
animals in the morning, and reported the adventure to the Bishop of Meath, who
later consulted Giraldus himself as to the proprietry of placing the matter
before the Pope!
hen Ceridwen, a
nature-goddess of the British Celts, brewed a draught of poetic inspiration in
her magical cauldron, she left it in the keeping of a certain Gwion, upon whose
fingers some drops of its contents fell. He thrust his scalded hand into his
mouth, whereupon he suddenly acquired universal knowledge. Enraged that such a
boon should be conferred upon so undistinguished a mortal, the goddess attacked
him, whereon he took refuge in flight. She pursued him, and to escape her fury
he transformed himself successively into many shapes —a hare, a fish, and a
grain of wheat. In order to destroy Gwion the more easily, the offended deity
assumed in turn the appropriate forms of a grey-hound, an otter, and lastly a
hen, in which most unromantic guise she swallowed the luckless Gwion, later to
bear him as an infant, whom she abandoned to the waves in a coracle. Yet he
survived, to become the inspired bard Taliesin.
anannan, the Celtic
god of the sea, somewhat resembled the Greek Proteus, also an oceanic deity, in
his ability to change his shape as easily as does the element over which he
ruled and which he personified. He was wont to cast thick fogs round his chief
dwelling in the Isle of Man, and by the power of his magics was able to make
one object seem a hundred, while little chips which he cast into the water
assumed the proportions of great vessels of war. Like certain Eastern gods he
had three legs, and these are still represented on the coat-of-arms of the Isle
of Man. Some authorities believe them to be a form of the swastika. It seems to
me much more probable that in the case of a sea-god they are a memory of that
symbol known as "the churning of the ocean", which represented the
primal flood or the power of the sea. A weird legend of the island tells how
two fishermen mending their nets on the shore saw Manannan rise from the sea to
the accompaniment of thunderous uproar. The weather had been foggy and they had
lit a fire with flint and steel, but at the first spark from their tinder-box
the fog began to move up the mountain-side, closely followed by a revolving
object resembling three legs spread out like the spokes of a wheel.
n the Scottish Highlands most of the tales which allude to
shape-shifting are associated with enchantresses who take the form of deer. In
a tale from South Uist entitled The Widow's Son the hero, a simple
youth named Iain, was engaged in shooting deer. He espied a hind, and took aim
at it. But when he was about to pull the trigger she suddenly changed her
appearance, and he beheld "the finest woman he ever saw". He
therefore refrained from shooting, and as suddenly the maiden changed once more
into a deer. The animal scampered off at last and Iain followed in its track
until it leapt on the thatch of a cottage, calling out to him that if he were
hungry he might enter the house and eat his fill. The house turned out to be a
robbers' den, and the bandits, entering, surprised and slew the young hunter.
But when they left the body the hind made her way inside, and shaking wax from
her ears upon the dead man, restored him to life. In the sequel the hind turns
out to be a king's enchanted daughter, and she and Iain are duly united.
similar tale from Cowal, in Argyllshire, tells how a
forester in the army of the Earl of Argyll, when that nobleman was in the field
against the great Marquess of Montrose, was ordered to fire at a hind which
persisted in following the army. It was observed that the forester refrained
from firing, and when rebuked for doing so he piteously exclaimed: "I will
fire, but it will be the last shot that ever I will fire." Scarcely was
the charge out of his gun when he fell dead. The enchantress, who was the
forester's sweetheart in deer-form, reassumed her human shape, uttered a
terrific shriek, "rose like a cloud of mist up the shoulder of the
neighbouring mountain", and vanished among its heathery slopes.
he late Mr. J. G. McKay was of the opinion that
deer-transformations in the Highlands are to be accounted for by the manner in
which the priestesses of a deer-cult attired themselves in the skins of hinds,
suddenly discarding them, or reassuming them while on the moors. In his notes
to the recently published fifth volume of J. F. Campbell's work under the title
of More West Highland Tales, Mr. McKay particularly directed attention to cases
of magical sex-shifting in Highland superstition. He indicated that the form of
the Gaelic adjective in all recorded tales of metamorphosis into equine shape
shows that a female animal is intended. No matter what the sex of the person
transformed, he or she becomes a female when enchanted into animal shape, more
particularly the equine. He adds: "There are three other Highland tales,
however, in which sex-shifting occurs, but on the part of women. In one, a
queen and her attendant maidens are all changed into white stags; in another, a
white stag becomes a woman; and in a third a woman becomes a water-horse."
erhaps the
weirdest Celtic tale of animal transformation is that Welsh instance of such a
change to be found in the Mabinogion story of Math, Son of Mathonwy, Prince of
Gwynedd. Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, his nephews, had conspired to compass the ruin
of Goewin, his foot-holder, and the maiden was outraged by Gilvaethwy. In order
to punish the miscreants, Math, who was a magician of might, by aid of his
magic wand turned Gilvaethwy into a hind and Gwydion into a stag, dooming them
to be paired together and to have young while in this condition. Next year he
turned them into a sow and boar, only on this occasion he changed the sex of
both. At the beginning of the third year he again transformed them, this time
into a wolf and a she-wolf, again changing their sex. In each transformation
the unhappy pair brought forth offspring, which were later transformed into
human children. In some West Highland
tales transformation into horse-shape is achieved by shaking a bridle at a person.
George Willox, a sorcerer of Strathavon, was the possessor of a kelpie's
bridle, by means of which he enchanted many people. There is also a tale from
Galloway in which a woman farmer changes one of her labourers into a pony by
shaking a bridle over him while he sleeps. Three Irish magicians with whom a
certain Cian falls in get the better of him in playing a game, then strike him
with a magic wand and turn him into a pillar of stone. In the tale of The
Battle of the Birds, a young man is transformed into a raven, but is
released from that shape by a king's son.
Alfred Nutt was of opinion that the belief might have
originated in the Zeus legend. Zeus, the shape-shifting father of the
shape-shifting wonder-child Dionysus, may have supplied the model upon which
the sagas of Manannan, of Lugh and Cuchullin, of Ceridwen and Taliesin, were
framed, though a little later on in his Voyage of Bran he suggests a community
of origin for these similar beliefs rather than any direct Classical influence
upon Celtic thought.
rising probably from the idea of the fluid nature of
spirit, it was imagined that spirits could assume any form they chose with ease
because of the plastic essence of which they are composed. From this view it is
but a step to the further assumption that a sorcerer is able to transform a
person into any shape he may will him to take, for by primitive man body and
spirit are frequently regarded as one and the same. Nor may we ignore the evidence that the savage actually
beholds certain transformations which appeal to him as magical.
e now approach
another department of Celtic Magic, that art of illusion which lent to the
normal aspect of a place or building an entirely different appearance during a
greater or less period of time. In Lowland Scotland we find this described as
glamourie, and in the Gaelic tongue as sian. Through this agency a
hut or shieling might be transformed so as to appear as a lordly palace or
castle, while a pool of water or puddle took the form of a surrounding moat.
Rags might be temporarily glorified as resplendent attire and leaves or beans
take the semblance of golden coin. When King Conchobar of Ulster and his men
set out to drive away certain mischievous birds which were destroying his
crops, they found themselves nightbound during the chase, and sought shelter in
a magnificent mansion standing in a moorland waste. During his stay there the
king became enamoured of the owner's wife, but was disappointed in his suit. In
the morning he and his courtiers found themselves under the clear sky of heaven
upon the desolate heath. In a West
Highland tale, too, we are told how a sorceress to whom Diarmid, the Irish
hero, paid his addresses, built a resplendent castle on a hilltop for his
delectation. "There was not a shadow of thing that was for the use of a
castle that was not in it, even to a herd for the geese." In this
delightful abode the happy pair resided for three days. But Diarmid moped and
grieved for his comrades and hounds, so one fine morning he awoke to find
himself in a moss-hole, deserted by the lady, who had grown tired of his
petulant complaints. "There was no castle, nor a stone left of it on
another." In the Irish tale of Koisha Kaya it is recounted how a
certain Irish knight, O'Kroinikeard, when shooting at a hare, beheld it change
into a most beautiful woman, who promised to marry him under certain
conditions. Her presence utterly altered his home and estates, glorifying them
out of all knowledge. But he broke his promises one after another. She punished
him by mauling him frightfully and his house and land returned to their former
condition, much of his domain degenerating into bush and ditches. The number of such tales of glamourie in Celtic tradition is
legion, and those which I have cited above are merely standard examples of this
very numerous class. They are, I think, to be accounted for not so much as
examples of "sympathetic" Magic, but rather as issuing from that
inherent power of the will which primitive folk believe exists in magicians and
in spirits—a species of Magic unscheduled by anthropologists. In some cases,
however, they seem to imply a kind of hypnotic power directed upon the person
who beholds these wonders as a magical interference with his vision. This is perhaps the
place to consider what has come to be regarded as another distinctive section
of the Celtic magical tradition associated with that mystic ornament which the
Druids were wont to carry suspended from their necks as a mark of their office—the serpent's egg, so called, an oval ball of crystal said to be produced
from the foam of a number of serpents meeting in congress. He who possessed it was certain to gain any lawsuit in which
he might engage and would be "well received by kings". Algernon
Herbert was of opinion that the serpents were none other than the
Druids themselves, and that the process of manufacture was one of simple
glass-blowing. The Druids, says
Davies in his Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, "are called Nadredd,
adders, by the Welsh bards", and he believed that they owed this title
"to their regenerative system of transmigration", which was
symbolized by the serpent, which cast its skin and returned to a second youth.
These eggs, he thought, were manufactured by the Druids when
"they assembled at a stated time in the summer", and he quotes Camden
as saying that in many parts of Wales, Scotland and Cornwall people retained
superstitious ideas concerning the origin and virtues of these eggs similar to those which Pliny recorded concerning them. This statement is
interesting as it reveals the continuance of a belief from Druidic times until
those of recent popular memory. The island of Bardsey, remarks Meilyr, an old
Welsh poet, was known as "the holy island of the Glain", or Druidic
egg, "in which," he adds, "there is a fair representation of a
resurrection". "These Gemmae
Anguine," says Camden, "are small glass amulets, commonly about as
wide as our finger-rings, but much thicker, of a green colour, usually, though
some of them are blue, and others curiously waved with blue, red and
white." "Such beads," says Mr. Kendrick in his work The Druids,
"were called snake-stones in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland and it is said
that in Wales and in Ireland they were also sometimes called Druids'
Glass." Many of them date from the first two or three centuries before
the Christian era. Pliny, he thinks, may have seen a fossil, an echinus,
"a conglomeration of tiny ammonites". The persistence of the belief
seems to have impressed Mr. Kendrick, and with good reason.
t is impossible to study Celtic magical science for any
length of time without encountering frequent allusions to that famous race of
wizard-gods known to Irish saga as the Tuatha Dé Danann, or Children of the
Goddess Danu. In practically every one of the tales and sagas which so
frequently mention them incidents of a magical character are to be observed
with such frequency as to distinguish them as a caste profoundly addicted to
arcane dealings. From the glowing pages of Keating we learn that the ancient
home of this divine tribe was in Greece, and that while sojourning there they
had come timeously to the assistance of the harassed Athenians in their wars
with the Syrians. For, by their powers of necromancy, they sent demons into the
bodies of those Greeks who had been slain, resuscitating them so that they
might once more engage in combat. At a later time they migrated to the north of
Europe, where they dwelt for some generations in the four enchanted cities of
Falias, Gorias, Finias and Murias. Thence they took ship for North Britain and
Ireland, bearing with them four of the most potent magical talismans
conceivable—the Lia Fail, a stone which hailed the king of the race by roaring
under his feet at his coronation; the sword of the sun-god Lugh; the spear of
the same divinity and lastly the cauldron of their chief deity, the Dagda. That
all of these arcane symbols reappear in the emblematic history of the Grail has
long been acknowledged. It is difficult to
resist the conclusion, that the Irish Druids were either Dananns themselves, or
had learned their wizardry in the Danannic school. In the Irish Book of
Invasions we are informed that in the four cities of the Tuatha Dé Danann there
presided four celebrated magicians, Moirfhais, Erus, Arias, famed for his skill
in charms, and Semias, equally renowned as a spellbinder, and these, it is
said, instructed youth in the several departments of the Magic Art.
waive here the familiar circumstance that the Tuatha Dé
Danann came to be regarded at a later time as a race of earthly monarchs and
heroes. The Irish chroniclers, at a loss for the actual material of history,
seized upon the myths of this divine race and transformed them into mundane
occurrences— though of a nature so marvellous that it is easy to discern their
supernatural associations. The more ancient myth of their origins narrated
their descent from heaven, although later Christian belief regarded them as
devils.
It is scarcely
necessary at this time of day to dissent from the sour and unfriendly verdicts
which our godly forefathers pronounced upon the deities of the vanished races.
In this particular case the aspersion was peculiarly stupid and unsympathetic,
for the Tuatha Dé were not only gods of light whose magical powers were for the
most part wielded for good, but, as is now well understood, they imposed upon
the peasantry of Ireland a most rigid rule of decency and morality, and are
still regarded by them with affection as the fairies who dwell in the mounds
and raths of romantic Eire—for to such a degenerate condition has modern
folklore reduced this great and potent pantheon of wonder-working divinities!
For it was chiefly from the Tuatha Dé that the Irish Druids would appear to
have received their magical inspiration. We find their British kindred, the
Children of Don, who, in some respects, are one and the same divine pantheon,
intimately associated with the secret doctrine of later British Druidism, so
that it is reasonable to assume that the earlier Druidic brotherhoods, both in
Britain and Ireland, regarded this family of divine beings as the fount of all
Magic. It is, however, not to be denied that at a later period, when
degeneration of the Celtic religion occurred in Ireland, the gods at intervals
appear, through one or other of their representatives, to have expressed their
displeasure with Druidic motive and policy. When a beauteous lady from the Land
of the Gods sought to beguile Connla, the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, to
the Land of the Living, Conn requested his Druid Coran, "of the mystic
arts and the mighty incantations", to save his son from a fate so
obnoxious to his father's unromantic prepossessions. At this the lady waxed
wroth and declared that "the faith of the Druids has come to little honour
among the upright, mighty, numberless people of this land. When the righteous
law shall be restored it will seal up the lips of the false black demon: and
his Druids shall not longer have power to work their guileful spells." This
passage is probably an interpolation from the hand of some later priestly
scribe, who seized the opportunity to belittle the Druidic caste, even at the
expense of justifying the pagan divinities.
t is also on record
that King Cormac, "the Magnificent", whose historical era is placed
at A.D. 177, attempted to put down Druidism, in revenge for which a Druid, one
Maelcen, conjured up an evil spirit who placed a salmon-bone crossways in the
King's throat as he sat at meat and so brought about his death. How far these
sentiments, unfriendly to the Druidic brotherhood, were dictated by Christian
opinion we can only guess, but the aspersions of the supernatural lady in the
tale of Connla certainly appear to me as a pious invention. This is scarcely
surprising, as most of the ancient Irish manuscripts which treat of the Tuatha
Dé were edited or rewritten by priestly scribes of the early Irish Church, who
at times seem to have been unable to restrain their quite natural bias against
a tradition which appeared to them to reek of the abominations of ancient
sorcery. In any case, a marked difference in treatment is apparent in the
accounts of the character of the Tuatha Dé at those various periods when the
Irish sagas were copied and redacted.
ut the Tuatha Dé Danann were not the only Irish race to
indulge in Druidical practices. The Nemedians, who competed with the Fomorians
for the soil of Ireland, had Druids of their own, as indeed had the Fomorians,
whose spells proved too powerful for their enemies. It was these Nemedians, who
had withdrawn to Scandinavia, we are informed by one text, who later returned
under the designation of the Tuatha Dé Danann. While in the Northland they
became expert in all the arts of divination, Druidism and philosophy. And the Milesians,
who ultimately overthrew the Tuatha Dé, and who arrived in Ireland from Spain,
had also Druids who proved more efficacious in their sorceries than those of
the elder caste. But what we are able to glean from these confused stories of
invasion proves one thing very clearly—that by the term "Druid" the
Christian priesthood of Ireland intended to convey a caste of magical
practitioners rather than a religious sodality. This view, however, largely
arose out of prejudice, as it cannot be doubted that Druidism in Ireland was a
religious as well as a magical cultus.
he early Irish
Druids appear to have been grouped together in magical colleges or seminaries
devoted to the study of the arcane. The Book of the Four Masters refers to the
existence of a settlement known as Mur Ollavan, "the City of the
Learned", as early as the year 927 B.C., which date, of course, may be
regarded as distinctly hypothetical.
Tradition speaks of Isles of Women in both Ireland and
Scotland, where Druidesses dwelt apart from their husbands at certain seasons.
Indeed, several ancient nunneries in Ireland are conjectured to have been
originally the retreats of Druidesses. At Kildare, afterwards the shrine of St.
Brigid and her sisterhood, there was in more remote times a community of
Druidesses, who, like the Vestal Virgins of Rome, were charged with the upkeep
of the sacred fire which burned there, and who in virtue of their office were
known as Ingheaw Andagha, or "Daughters of Fire". Of this sacred
establishment the twelfth-century Welsh churchman Giraldus Cambrensis gives
some account, laying stress upon its sanctity, yet failing to disguise its
semi-pagan character, as he tells us that the holy fire was surrounded by a
hedge which no male was permitted to surmount. Nor was any plough suffered to
turn a furrow in the adjoining pastures—a certain sign of pagan associations
recalled in days when the earlier character of this shrine was half forgotten.
Tuam, with its nine-score nuns, may also originally have been a seat of Druidic
women.
n his History of the
Druids Toland remarks in a note that a tradition existed that a Druidical
college at Deny was converted into a monastery by St. Columba and he cites
place-names in Anglesey as revealing the former existence of Druidic colleges
in that island, particularly Tre'r Driu, "the town of the Druid", and
Caer-Dreuin, "the city of the Druids", etymologies which, however,
have been severely censured by modern authorities. The Rev. W. L. Alexander
states that a college of Druids existed in "the isle of the Druids"
among the Western Isles until A.D. 563-4, when Columba arrived at Iona. Martin
found that many circular hut-foundations in the Western Isles were still known
in his time as "Druids' Houses", although in this connection tradition
may well have been at fault.
ut Ireland appears
to have nourished a type of sorcerer who had no Druidic associations. A
prominent figure in Irish magical legend was the wizard Calatin, the parent of
a brood of twenty-seven monstrous sons. This family, who were known as the Clan
Calatin, also embraced several female members of a peculiarly fearsome type.
Their spears, which dripped with poison, were directed by magical means so that
they never failed to reach their mark. When Calatin himself was at last slain
by the hero Cuchullin, Maeve, the Queen of Connaught, dispatched the wizard's
daughters, three in number, to Scotland and then to Babylon, to be instructed
in Magic. When they returned some years later they were expert in every sleight
of sorcery. Maeve, on their reappearance in the island, kept them at her
court until such time as she thought her old enemies of Ulster might be taken
unawares. Then she let them loose with all their deadly arts upon Cuchullin,
the slayer of their sire. The three grisly harpies descended upon the meadow
before, the house where the hero was in conference with his allies. They
gathered grass and, mixing it with thistles, puff-balls, and withered leaves,
they transformed this vegetable substance into the likeness of an armed host by
the aid of their sorceries. Suddenly the air in the vicinity of the dwelling
was rent with war-cries and the boasting of trumpets, and Cuchullin, believing
that his enemies had surprised him, rushed out-of-doors sword in hand. But the
Druids present assured him that the hubbub was only the result of a base
enchantment made by the daughters of Calatin, which was intended to lure him to
his destruction. The party thought it well in the circumstances to withdraw
to a glen which had the property of shutting out all sound, but they were
followed there by the daughters of Calatin, who once more proceeded to conjure
up phantom battalions. Then one of the sorceresses took the form of a woman to
whom Cuchullin was much attached, and entering the place where he lay, cried
out that the entire province of Ulster was ravaged and undone. This was too
much for the hero, and in high wrath he seized his weapon and hastened from the
silent glen, only, after being reduced to weakness by a series of magical stratagems,
to meet his death on the battle-plain.
n a search through Celtic literature for magicians of the
more celebrated sort, we meet with the statement of Dafydd ap Gwilym, a Welsh
poet of the fourteenth century, who avers that the three most famous sorcerers
of Britain were Menw, Eiddilic the Dwarf (an Irish enchanter) and Math, the
monarch, who appears in the Mabinogion tale of Math, Son of Mathonwy. The Welsh
triads also speak of Gwydion and Uther Pendragon as practitioners of the Magic
Art, and of a certain Rhuddlwm the Dwarf, whom Davies calls the red, bony
giant. The magicians of the Tuatha Dé Danann I have already alluded to,
and concerning Merlin special treatment is essential. In a poem attributed by
some to Taliesin, that bard vaunts his powers as an enchanter, and (if it be
correctly translated) he tells us that he has associated with men skilled in
the Magic Art, with Math, and with Govannon. Indeed, he describes himself as
having been created by the Magic of Math, or by magicians resembling Math. Gwydion, indeed,
appears to have superseded Math as "druid of the gods", and certainly
Llew, his son, cannot be omitted from the role of conspicuous Celtic wizards.
Most of the outstanding Irish magicians I have alluded to in connection with
incidents which reflect their arcane reputation, and these are described either
in this chapter or in that which follows it.
hose mysterious regions which lay beneath the seas, and
which were known to the Gaelic-speaking Celts as Lochlann and Sorcha, appear to
have been the natural homes of Magic. The former seems to have been originally
a peaceful enough demesne, inhabited by spirit-folk who brought fertility to
the land, ensuring it plentiful harvests and numerous herds of cattle. These
obscure spirits were probably the gods of a more ancient people, but later
Celtic traditions regarded them as cunning and evil magicians, known as
Fomorians, who dwelt in a gloomy sphere fulfilled of dark and gruesome
sorceries. In short, the Celts conceived them as devils, precisely as the
Christian missionaries at a later time regarded the Celtic deities as fiends or
demons. In these submarine provinces Magic meets the invader at every turn, and
he is much at a loss to vie with its inhabitants, who have the power to
resuscitate the dead, to raise armies by a word, and change their shapes with
such protean facility as to baffle the most ingenious magicians sent against
them. But I must not close
this chapter without some more particular reference to the nature of the
darksome spirits who populated the submarine localities of which I have spoken.
As I have said, these were the Fomorians. The word implies "Dwellers under
the Sea", and they are perhaps best described as the gods of an ancient
and discredited pantheon, who were in opposition to the deities of light, as
represented by the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were worshipped by a later race. They
are alluded to as monstrous and misshapen forms, deformed and frequently
equipped with but one leg or arm apiece, and with the heads of bulls, horses or
goats. The chief of this band of demon-like creatures was that Balor, the
one-eyed, of whom more than one mention has already been made. They appear to
have waged continual war against the Tuatha Dé Danann, by whom they were
conquered in the terrific battle of Moytura. But they were by no means crushed
by this defeat and continued to harass the gods of light for generations
chiefly by employing their undoubted powers of sorcery. At last they were
finally routed and, says D'Arbois de Jubainville, "left Ireland and
retired to their own country, that mysterious land across the ocean, where the
souls of the dead find a new body and a second dwelling place". For the
gods of a conquered race almost invariably become the rulers of the Land of the Dead in the mythology of a conquering folk. Normally, they are represented in
Irish literature as giants, that is they seem to have resembled the Titans of
Greek myth who warred with the immortal gods of Classical tale. Their Magic
does not appear to have differed in kind from that of their conquerors, yet it
seems to have held for the earlier Irish tribes a terror which even the darker
superstitions of Druidism could scarcely arouse.
efore closing this chapter I consider it proper to remark
that quite a number of books, both "ancient and modern", purport to
describe very fully, and even minutely, the entire ritual and magical
circumstance of the Druidic faith and its arcane proceedings. A few of these
originated with the Neo-Druidic movement in Wales and America which had its
inception in the 'eighties of last century, and the greater number of them are
inspired by a spirit of invention, or rely on the shaky foundations of the
"Barddas" of Williams ap Ithel. Some of the older treatises are
frankly imaginative to a degree. Still others of more modern provenance are
simply concoctions specially written to appeal to popular credulity.
The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain, by Lewis Spence, 1945
Nico
