Celtic mythology, p.1
Celtic Mythology, page 1
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
OTHER TITLES BY PHILIP FREEMAN
The World of Saint Patrick
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes
PHILIP FREEMAN
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© Philip Freeman 2017
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ISBN 978–0–19–046047–1
eISBN 978–0–19–046049–5
CONTENTS
Introduction: Who Were the Celts?
Pronunciation Guide
1.The Earliest Celtic Gods
2.The Book of Invasions
3.The Wooing of Étaín
4.Cú Chulainn and the Táin Bó Cuailnge
The Discovery of the Táin
The Conception of Conchobar
The Curse of Macha
The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu
The Birth of Cú Chulainn
The Boyhood Deeds of Cú Chulainn
The Wooing of Emer
The Death of Aife’s Only Son
The Táin Begins
Single Combat
Cú Chulainn and Ferdia
The Final Battle
5.Tales from the Ulster Cycle
The Story of Mac Dá Thó’s Pig
The Cattle Raid of Fróech
The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel
Athairne and Amairgen
Briccriu’s Feast
The Intoxication of the Ulstermen
The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn and the Only Jealousy of Emer
The Death of Cú Chulainn
6.Stories of the Irish Otherworld
The Adventure of Nera
The Adventure of Cormac
The Adventure of Conla
The Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedón
The Voyage of Bran
7.Finn the Outlaw
The Boyhood Deeds of Finn
The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne
8.Welsh Mythology—The Mabinogi
Pwyll Prince of Dyfed
Branwen Daughter of Llyr
Manawydan Son of Llyr
Math Son of Mathonwy
9.Welsh Stories and Sagas
Lludd and Lleuelys
Gwion Bach and Taliesin
Culhwch and Olwen
10.Christian Mythology
Saint Patrick
Saint Brigid
Saint Brendan
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
INTRODUCTION: WHO WERE THE CELTS?
Over two thousand years ago, someone on the cold and windswept shores of the Atlantic Ocean sat down before a blazing fire and told a story. Long ago, this person said, there were two gods who were brothers, twins born together from the same womb of a great mother goddess of the sea. When these brothers grew up, they left the ocean behind and came to dwell among the people who lived near the sea.
There was much more to the story, but that is all that survives. The only reason we know even this bare outline is that the tale was passed on by word of mouth until a visitor from the Mediterranean world wrote it down. In time that document found its way to a Greek historian named Timaeus from the island of Sicily, who lived just after the age of Alexander the Great. He recorded the story as part of his monumental history of the world from legendary times until his own day. But all the volumes of Timaeus were lost over the centuries, so that his words are preserved only in a few quotations by later classical writers whose works did survive. One of these writers was another Greek named Diodorus, who three hundred years later briefly summarized the story of the twin gods he had read in Timaeus.
And thus the oldest myth of the Celtic people of ancient Europe has been preserved for us today by the merest chance.
Everyone today knows about the gods and heroes of the ancient Greeks, such as Zeus, Hera, and Hercules, and most have read of the Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Freya, but how many people have heard of the Gaulish god Lugus, or the magical Welsh queen Rhiannon, or the great Irish warrior Cú Chulainn? We still thrill to the story of the Trojan War, but the epic battles of the Irish Táin Bó Cuailnge are known only to a few. And yet those who have read the stories of Celtic myth and legend—among them writers like J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis—have been deeply moved and influenced by these amazing tales, for there is nothing in the world quite like them. In these stories a mysterious and invisible realm of gods and spirits exists alongside and sometimes crosses over into our own human world, fierce women warriors battle with kings and heroes, and even the rules of time and space can be suspended.
But who were these Celts who told such tales, what sort of stories did they tell, and how have they survived? We know the Celts were one of the most feared and admired peoples of ancient Europe, inhabiting in Roman times the coastal lands from Spain, Britain, and Ireland across the continent to northern Italy and into eastern Europe and Asia Minor. They served as mercenary soldiers in the armies of Egyptian kings and fought for centuries against the expanding empire of Rome. Their druid priests taught of reincarnation and sacrificed human captives by burning them alive in wicker cages; their poets sang hauntingly beautiful songs of praise and satire. They were never a single nation but, rather, a vast collection of tribes sharing similar languages, religion, and mythology.
We first hear of a people called the Keltoi from Greek merchants and explorers who sailed to the western shores of the Mediterranean and Atlantic around 500 B.C.E. But soon these same Celts who lived in Gaul (modern France) were crossing the Alps and invading Italy and Greece. Writers such as the Greek historian Xenophon and the philosopher Aristotle describe them as matchless warriors who feared nothing and plunged sword-first into battle with joyous abandon, sometimes naked except for the gold torques they wore around their necks.
The Celtic warriors of northern Italy sacked the young city of Rome in 390 B.C.E. and demanded a ransom of gold before leaving the smoldering ruins behind them. Their descendants ventured into the Balkans and invaded Greece a century later. Some of these Celtic tribes even crossed into what is now Turkey and established kingdoms that would last for centuries in the mountainous heart of Asia Minor, becoming the Galatians to whom St. Paul would address one of his New Testament letters.
A curious and brave Greek philosopher named Posidonius visited the wild interior of Gaul at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. and wrote about the Celtic warriors who were his hosts. He records that they were a proud and brave people who loved fighting, riddles, and feasting. He was appalled to see the preserved heads that decorated the halls of their tribal chieftains serving as trophies of valiant enemies they had slain. He spoke of their devotion to the gods and their fondness for tales sung by their bards, though he preserved only a few hints of what these stories were.
Almost half a century after the visit of Posidonius, the Roman general Julius Caesar conquered the Celts of Gaul in a brutal war that left hundreds of thousands dead or enslaved. Caesar writes at length of his battles with the Gauls, but also briefly preserves some of our best descriptions of their gods and religion. And although the Romans took over Gaul and banned human sacrifice by the druids, they had little interest in changing native Celtic religion and culture. Bits and pieces of this religion and mythology survive in Greek and Roman stories, carved into stone monuments, or etched on lead tablets, though rarely anything that could be called a complete story. Sadly for us, the Celts of classical times did not record any of their own myths. Thus for the ancient Gauls, Galatians, and other Celtic peoples of continental Europe, we must be content with a few scattered references to their gods and a handful of short and possibly distorted myths that come to us from Greek and Roman visitors.
Caesar crossed the channel and attacked Britain twice during his first-century B.C.E. war in Gaul, but he left the conquest of the island to the Romans of the next century, beginning under the emperor Claudius. Years of bloody fighting by the legions pushed the Roman frontier all the way to Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain. The British Celts were eventually subdued and became a vital part of the empire, but their language, gods, and stories persisted under Roman rule until the Saxons and other Germanic tribes landed on their shores in the fifth century A.D. These new invaders were more thorough than the Romans. Celtic culture soon vanished from Britain except in the remote regions of Wales, Cornwall, and for a time, in the native British kingdoms of the north. Others left Britain altogether and settled across the sea on the remote peninsula of Brittany in what is now northwes
By the end of the fifth century A.D., only Ireland remained as a free land where the ancient ways of the Celts remained untouched by Rome. The classical world knew of Ireland only as a distant and savage island, supposedly full of cannibals and barbarians. In truth it was a rich and fertile land with an ancient and sophisticated culture. Kings, warriors, and druids formed an aristocracy that ruled over a land of prosperous farms where cattle were the measure of a family’s wealth. Around these farms throughout the island were stone tombs and monuments far more ancient than the Celts that became a part of Irish mythology as entrances to the mysterious Otherworld.
Christianity reached Ireland by the early fifth century A.D., when Pope Celestine sent a bishop named Palladius to the distant island to minister to its people. A young Roman nobleman named Patrick, who had been captured in an Irish slave raid on Britain, escaped from captivity in Ireland during this time, but later returned as a missionary, bringing with him not only a new religion but also the art of writing, which could at last record ancient Irish myths on parchment. The monks of Ireland soon became famous scribes who wrote down both Christian tales and native Irish stories.
And what stories they were—gods and goddesses battling for control of the island in epic wars, heroes engaged in endless combat to win undying glory, voyages across the sea to magical islands, divine women who with the gift of their sexuality could establish or destroy the power of kings. Even early Christian saints such as Patrick, Brigid, and Brendan became part of Irish mythology.
For centuries the Irish and Welsh, along with the Scots, Cornish, and Bretons, preserved their traditional tales in their own languages as the English and French, through war and campaigns of cultural assimilation, tried to force them to abandon their heritage. But fortunately for all of us they did not prevail, so that when we ask who the Celts were, we should really ask who they are—for the Celtic people with their unique languages and cultures still survive. On the west coast of Ireland, in Welsh towns and villages, in the hills and islands of western Scotland, and on the farms of Brittany, visitors today can still hear the ancient tales of the Celts told and sung in their native languages. In music and stories, the mythology of the Celts lives on for all of us.
In writing any book on mythology, an author first has to decide what a myth is. The ancient Greeks thought of a mythos simply as a spoken story. But ask a random person today what a myth is and they will probably say it’s a story that isn’t true. Even scholars of mythology can rarely agree on what exactly a myth is. My definition for this book is simple—a myth is a traditional tale about gods and heroes.
One problem about our written sources for Celtic mythology is that many of the authors who recorded them were far removed from the original tales, if not plainly hostile to them. The Christian scribe who wrote down one version of the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge includes on the last page a warning to his readers:
I, however, who have copied this history—or more accurately this fable—give no credence to various incidents narrated here. Some things in this story are feats of devilish deception, others are poetic figments, a few are probable, others improbable, and even more invented for the delight of fools.
The earlier Greek and Roman authors who wrote about the Celts had their own prejudices that could distort the stories they were recording. To many of them the Celts were wild barbarians who threatened to destroy civilization; to others they were romantic figures of primal innocence. The later medieval stories, like the tales of Norse mythology, were all recorded by Christians who viewed an earlier pre-Christian world through the lens of their own beliefs and experiences. In many cases we can see beneath the classical and Christian biases to the original Celtic tale, but the recovery of a “pure” myth isn’t always possible or even desirable. The best mythology of every culture is a rich blend of many influences—and the remarkable stories of the Celts are no exception.
It has been my privilege to teach courses on Celtic literature and mythology to university and college students for many years. It’s always a thrill to stand before my students on the first day of class and talk about the stories we will be reading that semester. There’s such excitement among people young and old about the traditional stories of Ireland, Wales, and the rest of the Celtic world that I can’t imagine a more enjoyable project than writing this book to introduce readers everywhere to these tales.
I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my own professors at Harvard University who patiently taught me the languages and myths of the Celts, but I also must thank the many friends in Ireland and Wales who have shared so many stories with me over the years and made the mythology of the Celts come alive before my eyes. I hope in my own small way I can do the same for everyone who reads this book.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
The ancient Celtic languages of Roman times are pronounced very much as they look (e.g., E-po-na), but the medieval languages of Ireland and Wales can confound even the most dedicated students of mythology. The following is a brief guide to a few of the more important features of the languages. A more extensive guide to the pronunciation of medieval Irish words and names is found in Carson, The Táin, xxvii–xxx. For Welsh, see Ford, The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales, 195–196.
Gaulish
Anyone who has studied a little Latin in school will have no trouble with the ancient Celtic words and names recorded in Greek and Roman authors. Like Latin, almost all the consonants and vowels are pronounced as they appear on the page and no letters are silent; c is always hard (k, not s or ch), as is g (as in go, never j). For example:
Lugus LU-gus
Teutates teu-TA-tes
Matrona ma-TRO-na
Welsh
Medieval Welsh is related to Gaulish, but its spelling and pronunciation underwent radical changes in the early Middle Ages; g is always pronounced hard, w can be a consonant or a vowel (short as in put or long as in tool), y is a vowel (short as in in or long as in screen), ch as in German ich or Scottish loch, and ll (represented below by LL) is found in few other languages of the world—try pronouncing it by making a regular l sound without vibrating your throat:
Lleu LLai
Pwyll pwiLL
Culhwch KIL-huch
Mabinogi mab-in-O-gee
Irish
Like its linguistic cousin Welsh, medieval Irish evolved rapidly soon after the Roman era. Long vowels are marked by an accent (e.g., cú) and ch is pronounced in the back of the throat as in Welsh. Consonants standing between vowels are usually softened, so that for example t becomes d and d becomes the sound of the final consonant in English bathe (shown below as dh):
Ailill A-lil
Cathbad CATH-badh
Cú Chulainn ku CHU-lan
Medb medhv
Táin Bó Cuailnge tan bow KUAL-nya
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
1
THE EARLIEST CELTIC GODS
THE GODS OF THE ANCIENT Celts are a mystery. Even when we know their names—and we know quite a few—we seldom can say for certain what their powers were, how they were worshiped, or what stories were told about them. Julius Caesar devotes one brief paragraph of the long history of his war in Gaul to the gods of that land, but that short description is by far the best written evidence we have of ancient Celtic religion. A few other Greek and Roman writers mention the gods of the Celts and many of their names are found in local inscriptions or in tribal names, but compared to what we know about the gods of Mount Olympus, our knowledge of Celtic divinities is sorely lacking.
