Gods and Fighting Men Part 50

"The larger Irish legendary literature divides itself into three cycles--the divine, the heroic, the Fenian. Of these three the last is so well-known orally in Scotland that it has been a matter of dispute to which country it really belongs. It belongs, in fact, to both. Here, however, comes in a strange contrast with the other cycles. The first is, so far as I am aware, wholly unknown in Scotland, the second comparatively unknown. What is the explanation? Professor Zimmer not having established his late-historical view as regards Finn, and the general opinion among scholars having tended of recent years towards the mythical view, we want to know why there is so much more community in one case than in the other. Mr O'Grady long since seeing this difficulty, and then believing Finn to be historical, was induced to place the latter in point of time before Cuchulain and his compeers. But this view is of course inadmissible when Finn is seen not to be historical at all. There remains but one explanation. The various bodies of legend in question are, so far as Ireland is concerned, only earlier or later, as they came into the island with the various races to which they belonged. The wider prevalence, then, of the Finn Saga would indicate that it belonged to an early race occupying both Ireland and Scotland. Then entered the Aryan Gael, and for him henceforth, as the ruler of the island, his own G.o.ds and heroes were sung by his own bards.

His legends became the subject of what I may call the court poetry, the aristocratic literature. When he conquered Scotland, he took with him his own G.o.ds and heroes; but in the latter country the bardic system never became established, and hence we find but feeble echoes of the heroic cycle among the mountains of the North. That this is the explanation is shown by what took place in Ireland. Here the heroic cycle has been handed down in remembrance almost solely by the bardic literature. The popular memory retains but few traces of it. Its essentially aristocratic character is shown by the fact that the people have all but forgotten it, if they ever knew it. But the Fenian cycle has not been forgotten. Prevailing everywhere, still cherished by the conquered peoples, it held its ground in Scotland and Ireland alike, forcing its way in the latter country even into the written literature, and so securing a twofold lease of existence ... The Fenian cycle, in a word, is non-Aryan folk-literature partially subjected to Aryan treatment."

The whole problem is extremely complex, and several other writers have written upon it. Mr Borlase, for instance, has argued in his big book on the Dolmens that the cromlechs, and presumably the Diarmuid and Crania legend, is connected with old religious rites of an erotic nature coming down from a very primitive state of society.

I have come to my own conclusion not so much because of any weight of argument, as because I found it impossible to arrange the stories in a coherent form so long as I considered them a part of history. I tried to work on the foundation of the Annalists, and fit the Fianna into a definite historical epoch, but the whole story seemed trivial and incoherent until I began to think of them as almost contemporaneous with the battle of Magh Tuireadh, which even the Annalists put back into mythical ages. In this I have only followed some of the story-tellers, who have made the mother of Lugh of the Long Hand the grandmother of Finn, and given him a shield soaked with the blood of Balor. I cannot think of any of the stories as having had a modern origin, or that the century in which each was written down gives any evidence as to its age.

"How Diarmuid got his Love-Spot," for instance, which was taken down only a few years ago from some old man's recitation by Dr Hyde, may well be as old as "Finn and the Phantoms," which is in one of the earliest ma.n.u.scripts. It seems to me that one cannot choose any definite period either from the vast living ma.s.s of folk-lore in the country or from the written text, and that there is as good evidence of Finn being of the blood of the G.o.ds as of his being, as some of the people tell me, "the son of an O'Shaughnessy who lived at Kiltartan Cross."

Dr Douglas Hyde, although he placed the Fenian after the Cuchulain cycle in his _History of Irish Literature_, has allowed me to print this note:--

"While believing in the real objective existence of the Fenians as a body of Janissaries who actually lived, ruled, and hunted in King Cormac's time, I think it equally certain that hundreds of stories, traits, and legends far older and more primitive than any to which they themselves could have given rise, have cl.u.s.tered about them. There is probably as large a bulk of primitive mythology to be found in the Finn legend as in that of the Red Branch itself. The story of the Fenians was a kind of nucleus to which a vast amount of the flotsam and jetsam of a far older period attached itself, and has thus been preserved."

As I found it impossible to give that historical date to the stories, I, while not adding in anything to support my theory, left out such names as those of Cormac and Art, and such more or less historical personages, subst.i.tuting "the High King." And in the "Battle of the White Strand," I left out the name of Caelur, Tadg's wife, because I had already followed another chronicler in giving him Ethlinn for a wife. In the earlier part I have given back to Angus Og the name of "The Disturber," which had, as I believe, strayed from him to the Saint of the same name.

III. THE AUTHORITIES

The following is a list of the authorities I have been chiefly helped by in putting these stories together and in translation of the text. But I cannot make it quite accurate, for I have sometimes transferred a mere phrase, sometimes a whole pa.s.sage from one story to another, where it seemed to fit better. I have sometimes, in the second part of the book, used stories preserved in the Scottish Gaelic, as will be seen by my references. I am obliged to write these notes away from libraries, and cannot verify them, but I think they are fairly correct.

PART ONE. BOOKS ONE, TWO, AND THREE

THE COMING OF THE TUATHA DE DANAAN, AND LUGH OF THE LONG HAND, AND THE COMING OF THE GAEL.-- O'Curry, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_; _MSS. Materials_; _Atlantis_; De Jubainville, _Cycle Mythologique_; Hennessy, _Chronic.u.m Scotorum_; Atkinson, _Book of Leinster_; _Annals of the Four Masters_; Nennius, _Hist, Brit._ (Irish Version); Zimmer, _Glossae Hibernacae_; Whitley Stokes, _Three Irish Glossaries_; _Revue Celtique_ and _Irische Texte_; _Gaedelica_; Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_; _Proceedings Ossianic Societ_; O'Beirne Crowe, _Amra Columcille_; Dean of Lismore's Book; Windisch, _Irische Texte_; Hennessy and others in _Revue Celtique_; _Kilkenny Archaeological Journal_; Keatinge's _History_; _Ogyia_; Curtin's _Folk Tales_; _Proceedings Royal Irish Academy_, MSS. Series; Dr Sigerson, _Bards of Gael and Gall_; Miscellanies, _Celtic Society_.

BOOK FOUR

THE EVER-LIVING LIVING ONES

I have used many of the above, and for separate stories, I may give these authorities:--

MIDHIR AND ETAIN.-- O'Curry, _Manners and Customs_; Whitley Stokes, _Dinnsenchus_; Muller, _Revue Celtique_; Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_; De Jubainville, _Epopee Celtique_; Standish Hayes O'Grady, MS. lent me by him.

MANANNAN AT PLAY.-- S. Hayes O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_.

HIS CALL TO BRAN.-- Professor Kuno Meyer in Nutt's _Voyage of Bran_; S. Hayes O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_; De Jubainville, _Cycle Mythologique_.

HIS THREE CALLS TO CORMAC.-- Whitley Stokes, _Irische Texte_.

CLIODNA'S WAVE.-- S. Hayes O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_; Whitley Stokes, _Dinnsenchus_.

HIS CALL TO CONNLA.-- O'Beirne Crowe, _Kilkenny Arch. Journal_; Windisch, _Irische Texte_.

TADG IN THE ISLANDS.-- S. Hayes O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_.

LAEGAIRE IN THE HAPPY PLAIN.-- S.H. O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_; Kuno Meyer in Nutt's _Voyage of Bran_.

FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR.-- O'Curry, _Atlantis_.

PART TWO. THE FIANNA

THE COMING OF FINN, AND FINN'S HOUSEHOLD.-- _Proceedings Ossianic Society_; Kuno Meyer, _Four Songs of Summer and Winter_; _Revue Celtique_; S. Hayes O'Grady, _Silva Gaedelica_; Curtin's _Folk Tales_.

BIRTH OF BRAN.-- _Proc. Ossianic Society_.

OISIN'S MOTHER.-- Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions Irish Celts_; Mac Innis; _Leabhar na Feinne_.

BEST MEN OF THE FIANNA.-- Dean of Lismore's Book; _Silva Gaedelica; Leabhar na Feinne_.

LAD OF THE SKINS.-- _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_; Larminie's _Folk Tales_; Curtin's _Tales_.

THE HOUND.-- _Silva Gaedelica_; Whitley Stokes, _Dinnsenchus_.

RED RIDGE.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

BATTLE OF THE WHITE STRAND.-- Kuno Meyer, _Anec. Oxonienses_; Hanmer's _Chronicle_; Dean of Lismore; Curtin's _Tales_; _Silva Gaedelica_.

KING OF BRITAIN'S SON.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

THE CAVE OF CEISCORAN.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

DONN, SON OF MIDHIR.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

HOSPITALITY OF CUANNA'S HOUSE.-- _Proc. Ossianic Society_.

CAT-HEADS AND DOG-HEADS.-- Dean of Lismore; _Leabhar na Feinne_; Campbell's _Popular Tales of the Western Highlands_.

LOMNA'S HEAD.-- O'Curry, _Orc. Treith_, O'Donovan, ed. Stokes.

ILBREC OF ESS RUADH.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

CAVE OF CRUACHAN.-- Stokes, _Irische Texts._

WEDDING AT CEANN SLIEVE.-- _Proc. Ossianic Society_.

THE SHADOWY ONE.-- O'Curry.

FINN'S MADNESS.-- _Silva Gaedelica_.

THE RED WOMAN.-- Hyde, _Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach_.

FINN AND THE PHANTOMS.-- Kuno Meyer, _Revue Celtique_.