The Mythology of All Races/Volume 3/Celtic/Chapter 10

by John Arnott MacCulloch

CHAPTER X
MYTHICAL ANIMALS AND OTHER BEINGS

THE Celts worshipped animals or their anthropomorphic representations—the horse, swine, stag, bull, serpent, bear, and various birds. There was a horse-goddess Epona, a horse-god Rudiobus, a mule-god Mullo, a swine-god Moccus, and bear-goddesses called Artio and Andarta, dedications to or images of these occurring in France and Britain.¹ Personal names meaning "son of the bear" or "of the dog," etc., suggest myths of animal descent lost to us, though they find a partial illustration in stories like that of Oisin, son of a woman transformed to a fawn. We have seen that gods and magicians assume animal forms or force these upon others; and other stories point to the belief that domesticated animals came from the gods' land.

From these we turn to tales In which certain animals have a mythic aspect, perhaps connected with a cult of them. A divine bull or swine might readily be regarded as enormously large or strong, or possessed of magic power, or otherwise distinguished; and these are the aspects under which such animals appear in the stories now to be considered.

In the Irish tale of Mac Dáthós Boar (Scél Mucci Maic Dáthó) Mac Dáthó, King of Leinster, had a dog famed throughout the land. It could run round Leinster in a day and was coveted both by Ailill and Medb of Connaught and by Conchobar of Ulster; but Mac Datho promised it to both and invited the monarchs and their retinues to a feast, hoping that he would escape in the quarrel which would certainly arise between them. The chief dish was a boar reared by Mac

PLATE XV

Epona

1. The horse-goddess Epona may have been originally a deity of a spring or river, conceived as a spirited steed. She is here represented as feeding horses (for the horse see Plates II, 1–3, III, 2, 4). From a bas-relief found at Bregenz, Tyrol.

2. The goddess is shown seated between two foals, and the cornucopia which she holds would characterize her as a divinity of plenty (cf. Plates IX, A, XIV, and p. 9). From a bronze statuette found in Wiltshire.

Dáthó's grandson, Lena, who, though buried in a trench which the boar rooted up over him, succeeded in killing the animal with his sword. For seven years the boar had been nurtured on the flesh of fifty cows; sixty oxen were required to drag its carcass; and its tail was a load for sixty men; yet Conall Cernach sucked it entire into his mouth!² The story tells nothing more of this remarkable animal, but it may commemorate an old ritual feast upon an animal regarded as divine and endowed with mythic qualities.

The Mirabilia added to Nennius's History speak of the Porcus Troit or Twrch Tnvyth, hunted by Arthur, an episode related in the tale of Kulhwch and Olwen. This creature, which was a transformed knight, slaughtered many of the hunters before it was overcome and three desirable possessions taken from between its ears.³ The Porcus Troit resembles the Wild Boar of Gulban, a transformed child, hunted by DIarmaid when the Féinn had fled before it; and tradition tells of its great size—sixteen feet long.⁴ Fionn himself chased a huge boar which terrified every one until it was slain by his grandson, Oscar. It was blue-black, with rough bristles, and no ears or tail; its teeth protruded horribly; and each flake of foam from its mouth resembled the foam of a mighty waterfall.⁵ A closer analogy to Arthur's hunt occurs in a story of the Dindsenchas concerning a pig which wasted the land. Manannan and Mod's hounds pursued it, when it sprang into a lake where it maimed or drowned the following hounds; and then it crossed to Muic-Inis, or Pig Island, where it slew Mod with its tusk.⁶ Another hunting of magic swine concerns animals from the cave of Cruachan, which is elsewhere associated with divinities. Nothing grew where they went, and they destroyed corn and milk; no one could count them accurately, and when shot at they disappeared. Medb and Ailill hunted them, and when one of them leaped into Medb's chariot, she seized its leg, but the skin broke, and the pig left it in her hand. After that no one knew whither they went, although a variant version says that now they were counted. From this cave came other destructive creatures—a great three-headed bird which wasted Erin till Amairgen killed it, and red birds which withered everything with their breath until the Ulstermen slew them.'^ It is strange why such animals should be associated with this divine cave, but probably the tradition dates from the time when it was regarded as "Ireland's gate of hell," so that any evil spirit might inhabit it.

In these stories of divinities or heroes hunting fabulous swine it is possible that the animals represent some hurtful power, dangerous to vegetation; for the swine is apt to be regarded in a sinister light and might well be the embodiment of demoniac beings. On the other hand, the animal sacrificed to a god, or of which the god is an anthropomorphic aspect, is sometimes regarded as his enemy, slain by him. Whether this conception lurks behind these tales is uncertain, as also is the question whether the magic immortal swine—the food of the gods—were originally animals sacrificed to them. Divine swine appear in a Fionn tale. The Feinn were at a banquet given by Oengus, when the deity said that the best of Fionn's hounds could not kill one of his pigs, but rather his great pig would kill them. Fionn, on the contrary, maintained that his hounds. Bran and Sgeolan, could do so. A year after, a hundred and one pigs appeared, one of them coalblack, and each tall as a deer; but the Feinn and their dogs killed them all. Bran slaying the black one, whereupon Oengus complained that they had caused the death of his sons and many of the Tuatha Dé Danann, for they were in the form of the swine. A quarrel ensued, and Fionn prepared to attack Oengus's brug, when the god made peace.⁸ In another instance a fairy as a wild boar eluded the Féinn, but Fionn offered the choice of the women to its slayer, and by the help of a "familiar spirit" in love with him Caoilte "got the diabolical beast killed." Fionn covered the women's heads lest Caoilte should take his wife, but his ruse was unsuccessful.⁹

In still another instance Derbrenn, Oengus's first love, had six foster-children; but their mother changed them into swine, and Oengus gave charge of them to Buichet, whose wife desired the flesh of one of them. A hundred heroes and as manyhounds prepared to hunt them, when they fled to Oengus for help, only to find that he could not give it until they shook the tree of Tarbga and ate the salmon of Inver Umaill. Not for a year were they able to do this, but now Medb hunted them, and all were slain save one. Other huntings of these swine, less fortunate for the hunters, are also mentioned, and in one passage Derbrenn's swine are said to have been fashioned by magic.¹⁰ Both in Irish and in Welsh story pigs are associated with the gods' land and are brought thence by heroes or by the gods. The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to have first introduced swine into Ireland or Munster.¹¹

The mythic bulls of the Táin Bó Cúalgne were reincarnations of divinities, whence enormous strength was theirs, and the Brown Bull was of vast size. He carried a hundred and fifty children, until one day he threw them off and killed all but fifty; a hundred warriors were protected by his shadow from the heat, or by his shelter from the cold. His melodious evening lowing was such as any one would desire to hear, and no eldritch thing dared approach him; he covered fifty heifers daily, and each next morning had a calf.¹² Two gifts given to Conn by a princess who was with the god Lug were a boar's rib and that of an ox, twenty-four feet long, forming an arch eight feet high; but nothing further is told of the animals which owned these huge bones.¹³

Cattle were a valued possession of the gods' land and, like swine, were brought thence by heroes. Man easily concluded that animals useful to him were also useful to the gods, but he regarded these as magical. The divine mother of Fraoch gave him cows from the síd. Flidais, "one of the tribe of the god folk," was wife of Ailill the Fair and had a cow which supplied milk to three hundred men at one night's milking; while during the Táin another account speaks of Flidais having several cows which fed Ailill's army every seventh day. Flidais loved Fergus and urged him to carry her off with her cow¹⁴—a proof of its value, which is seen also in tales of the capture of cows along with some desirable woman, divine or human. In many Welsh instances cattle are a possession of the fairy-folk dwelling under a lake and often come to land to feed.¹⁵ The cow of Flidais resembles the seven kine of Manannan's wife; their milk suffices the people of the entire Land of Promise or the men of the whole world, while from the wool of her seven sheep came all their clothing.¹⁶

Though the waves were "the Son of Ler's horses in a seastorm," Manannan rode them on his steed Enbarr, which he gave to Lug; and this horse was "fleet as the naked cold wind of spring," while its rider was never killed off its back.¹⁷ In Elysium "a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another crimson-brown" were seen by Laeg, and similar horses were given to carry mortals back to earth, whence, if they did not dismount, they could return safely to Elysium. Such a steed was brought by Gilla Decair to Fionn and his men, and miserable-looking though it was, when placed among the Feinn's horses, it bit and tore them, Conan mounted it in order to ride it to death, but it would not move; and when thirteen others vaulted on it, the Gilla fled, followed swiftly by the horse with its riders. Carrying them over land and sea, with another hero holding its tail, it brought them to the Land of Promise, whence Fionn ultimately rescued them. This forms the first part of a late artificial tale, based upon a mythic foundation.¹⁸ Other mythical horses came from a water-world, e. g. the steeds which Cúchulainn captured, one of these being the Grey of Macha, out of the Grey Lake. Cúchulainn slipped behind it and wrestled with it all round Erin until it was mastered; and when it was wounded at his death, it went into the lake to be healed. The other was Dubsainglend of the Marvellous Valley, which was captured in similar fashion.¹⁹

PLATE XVI

Cernunnos

This homed deity with torques on his horns is perhaps identical with the homed god shown in Plate XXV. He was doubtless a divinity of the underworld (see pp. 9, 104–05, 158, and for other deities of Elysium cf. Smertullos, Plate V; the threeheaded god, Plates VII, XII, the squatting god, Plates VIII–IX; Sucellos, Plates XIII, XXVI; and Dispater, Plate XIV). From an altar found at Notre Dame, Paris.

Possibly the rushing stream was personified as a steed, and the horse-goddess Epona is occasionally connected with streams, while horses which emerge from lakes or rivers may be mythic forms of water-divinities. In more recent folk-belief the monstrous water-horse of France and Scotland was capable of self-transformation and waylaid travellers, or, assuming human form, he made love to women, luring them to destruction. Did such demoniac horses already exist in the pagan period, or are they a legacy from Scandinavian belief, or are they earlier equine water-divinities thus distorted in Christian times? This must remain uncertain, but at all events they were amenable to the power of Christian saints, since St. Fechin of Fore, when one of his chariot-horses died on a journey, compelled a water-horse to take its place, afterward allowing it to return to the water.²⁰ Akin to these is the Welsh afanc, one of which was drawn by the oxen of Hu Gadarn from a pond, while another was slain by Peredur (Percival) after he had obtained a jewel of invisibility which hid him from the monster with its poisoned spear.²¹

Mortals as well as síde were transformed Into deer, and fairies possessed herds of those animals, while Caoilte slew a wild three-antlered stag—"the grey one of three antlers"

—which had long eluded the hunters.²² Three-horned animals —bull or boar—are depicted on Gaulish monuments, and the third horn symbolizes divinity or divine strength, the word "horn" being often used as a synonym of might, especially divine power. On an altar discovered at Notre Dame in Paris, the god Cernunnos ("the Horned," from cernu-, "horn".^) has stag's horns; and other unnamed divinities also show traces of antlers. Possibly these gods were anthropomorphic forms of stag-divinities, like other Gaulish deities with bull's horns.²³

Serpents or dragons infesting lochs, sometimes generically called péist or béist (Latin bestia, "beast"), occur in Celtic and other mythologies and are reminiscent of earlier reptile forms, dwelling in watery places and regarded as embodiments of water-spirits or guardians of the waters. In later tradition such monsters were said to have been imprisoned in lochs or destroyed by Celtic saints. As has been seen, a dragon's shriek on May-Eve made the land barren till Lludd buried it and its opponent alive after stupifying them with mead. They were placed in a cistvaen at Dinas Emreis in Snowdon, and long afterward Merlin got rid of them when they hindered Vortigern's building operations. Here the dragons are embodiments of powers hostile to man and to fertility, but are conquered by gods, Lludd and Merlin.²⁴

Another story of a péist occurs in the Táin Bó Fráich. Fraoch was the most beautiful of Erin's heroes, and his mother was the divine Bebind, her sister the goddess Boann. Findabair, daughter of Ailill and Medb, loved him, but before going to claim her he was advised to seek from Boann treasure of the síd, which she gave him in abundance, while he was made welcome at Ailill's dún. After staying there for some time, he desired Findabair to elope with him, only to be refused, whereupon he demanded her of Ailill, but would not give the brideprice asked. Ailill and Medb therefore plotted his death, fearing that if he took Findabair by force, the Kings who sought her would attack them. While Fraoch was swimming in the river, Ailill bade him bring a branch from a rowantree growing on the bank, and swimming there, he returned with it, Findabair meanwhile admiring the beauty of his body. Ailill sent him for more, but the monster guardian of the tree attacked him; and when he called for a sword, Findabair leaped into the water with it, Ailill throwing a fivepronged spear at her. Fraoch caught it and hurled it back; and though the monster all the while was biting his side, with the sword he cut off its head and brought it to land. A bath of broth was made for him, and afterward he was laid on a bed. Then was heard lamentation, and a hundred and fifty women of the síde, clad in crimson with green head-dresses, appeared, all of one age, shape, and loveliness, coming for Fraoch, the darling of the síde. They bore him off, bringing him back on the morrow recovered of his wound, and Findabair was now betrothed to Fraoch on his promising to assist in the raid of Cualnge. Thus Fraoch, a demi-god, overcame the péist.²⁵ In the ballad version from the Dean of Lismore's Book, Medb sent him for the berries because he scorned her love. The tree grew on an island In a loch, with the peist coiled round its roots. Every month it bore sweetest fruit, and one berry-satisfied hunger for a long time, while its juice prolonged life for a year and healed sickness. Fraoch killed the péist, but died of his wounds.²⁶ The tree was the tree of the gods and resembles the quicken-tree of Dubhros, guarded by a one-eyed giant whom Diarmaid slew.²⁷ These stories recall the Greek myth of Herakles slaying the dragon guardian of the apples of the Hesperides,²⁸ which has a certain parallel in Babylonia. A marvellous tree with jewelled fruit was seen by Gilgamesh in a region on this side of the Waters of Death; and in the Fields of the Blessed beyond these waters he found a magic plant, the twigs of which renewed man's youth. He gathered it, but a serpent seized it and carried it off. The stories of Fraoch and Diarmaid point to myths showing that gods were jealous of men sharing their divine food; and their tree of life was guarded against mortals, though perhaps semi-divine heroes might gain access to it and obtain its benefits for human beings. The guardian péist recalls the dragons entwined round oaks in the grove described by Lucan.²⁹

Such Celtic péists were slain by Fionn, and in one poem Fionn or, in another, his son, Daire, was swallowed by the monster, but hacked his way out, liberating others besides himself.³⁰ They also defended duns in Celtic story, and in the sequel to the tale of Fraoch he and Conall reached a dún where his stolen cattle were. A serpent sprang into Conall's belt, but was later released by him, and "neither did harm to the other." In Cúchulainn's account of his journey to Scáth, the dún had seven walls, each with an iron palisade; and having destroyed these, he reached a pit guarded by serpents which he slew with his fists, as well as many toads, sharp and beaked beasts, and ugly, dragon-like monsters. Then he took a cauldron and cows from the dún, which must have been in the gods' land across the sea, as in other tales where such thefts are related.³¹

A curious story from the Dindsenchas tells how the son of the Morrigan had three hearts with "shapes of serpents through them," or "with the shape of serpents' heads." He was slain by MacCecht, and if death had not befallen him, these serpents would have grown and destroyed all other animals. The hearts were burned, and the ashes were cast into a stream, whereupon its rapids stayed, and all creatures in it died.³² In another story Cian was born with a caul which increased with his growth, but Sgathan ripped it open, and a worm sprang from it, which was thought to have the same span of life as Cian. A wood was put round it, and the creature was fed, but it grew to a vast size and swallowed men whole. Fire was set to the wood, when it fled to a cave and made a wilderness all around; but at last Oisin killed it with Diarmaid's magic spear.³³ Serpents with rams' heads are a frequent motif on Gaulish monuments, either separately or as the adjuncts of a god; but their meaning is unknown, and no myth regarding them has survived.

Other parts of nature besides animals were regarded mythically. Mountains, the sea, rivers, wells, lakes, sun, moon, and earth had a personality of their own, and this conception survived when other ideas had arisen. Appeal was made to them, as the runes sung by Morrigan and Amairgen show, and they were taken as sureties, or their power was invoked to do harm, as when Aed Ruad's champion took sureties of sea, wind, sun, and firmament against him, so that the sun's heat caused Aed to bathe, and the rising sea and a great wind drowned him.³⁴ In another instance, a spell chanted over the sea by Dub, wife of Enna, of the síde, caused the drowning of his other wife, Aide, and her family.³⁵ The personality of the sea is seen also in the story of Lindgadan and the echo heard at a cliff: enraged at some one speaking to him without being asked, he turned to the cliff to be avenged upon the speaker, when the crest of a wave dashed him against a rock.³⁶ So, too, the sea was obedient to man, or perhaps to a god. Tuirbe Trágmar, father of the Goban Saer, used to hurl his axe from the Hill of the Axe in the full of the flood-tide, forbidding the sea to come beyond the axe,³⁷ an action akin to the Celtic ritual of "fighting the waves." The voices of the waves had a warning, prophetic, or sympathetic sound to those who could hear them aright, as many instances show.

As elsewhere, personalized parts of nature came to be regarded as animated by spirits, like man; and such spirits gradually became more or less detached from these and might be seen as divine beings appearing near them. Some of them became the greater gods, while others assumed a darker character, perhaps because they were associated with sinister aspects of nature or with the dead. The Celts knew all these, and some still linger on in folk-belief. Fairy-like or semi-divine women seen by streams or fountains, or in forests, or living in lakes or rivers, are survivals of spirits and goddesses of river, lake, or earth; and they abound in Celtic folk-story as bonnes dames, dames blanches, fées, or the Irish Bé Find. Beings like mermaids existed in early Irish belief. When Ruad's ships were stopped, he went over the side and saw "the loveliest of the world's women," three of them detaining each boat. They carried him off, and he slept with each in turn, one becoming with child by him. They set out in a bronze boat to intercept him on his return journey, but when they failed, the mother killed his child and hurled the head after him, the others crying, "It is an awful crime."³⁸ In another tale Rath heard the mermaids' song and saw them"grown-up girls, the fairest of shape and make, with yellow hair and white skins above the waters. But huger than one of the hills was the hairy-clawed, bestial lower part which they had beneath." Their song lulled him to sleep, when they flocked round him and tore him limb from limb.³⁹ Other sea-dwellers are the luchorpáin— a kind of dwarf, three of whom were caught by Fergus and forced to comply with his wish and to tell him how to pass under lochs and seas. They put herbs in his ears, or one of them gave him a cloak to cover his head, and thus he went with them under the water.⁴⁰

A curious group of beings answered Cúchulainn's cry, causing confusion to his enemies, or screamed around him when he set out or was In the thick of the fight. While he fought with Ferdia, "around him shrieked the Bocánachs and the Banánachs and the Geniti Glinne, and the demons of the air; for it was the custom of the Tuatha Dé Danann to raise their cries about him in every battle," and thus increase men's fear of him. Or they screamed from the rims of shields and hilts of swords and hafts of spears of the hero and of Ferdia.⁴¹ Here they are friendly to Cúchulainn, but in the Fled Bricrend, or Feast of Bricriu, one of the tasks imposed on him, Conall, and Loegaire was to fight the Geniti Glinne, Cúchulainn alone succeeding and slaughtering many of them."⁴² What kind of beings they were is uncertain, but if Geniti Glinne means "Damsels of the Glen," perhaps they were a kind of nature-spirits, this being also suggested by the "demons of the air" which were expelled by St. Patrick.⁴³ As nature-spirits they might be classed with the Tuatha Dé Danann, as indeed they seem to be in the passage cited above.⁴⁴ In one sentence of the Táin Bó Cúalnge, they are associated with Némain or Badb, who brought confusion upon Medb's host; yet on the other hand they dared not appear in the same district as the bull of Cúalnge.⁴⁵

PLATE XVII

Incised Stones from Scotland

1. Incised stone with "elephant" symbol and crescent symbol with V-rod symbol. From Crichie, Aberdeenshire.

2. Incised stone with "elephant" and double disc (or "spectacles") with Z-rod symbol. See also Plate X.

References

Chapter X

1. Holder, s. v.; cf. also MacCuUoch [b], ch. xiv.
2. E. Windisch, in IT i. 96 f.; W. Stokes, in RCel xvi. 63 (1895).
3. See infra, pp. 187–88.
4. See infra, p. 177.
5. K. Meyer, in RIA:TLS xvi. 65 (1910).
6. W. Stokes, in RCel xv. 426, 474 (1894).
7. W. Stokes, ib. xiii. 449 (1892), xv. 470 (1894).
8. J. O'Daly, in TOS vi. 133 (1861).
9. J. F. Campbell [b], i. 53.
10. W. Stokes, in RCel xv. 421, 471, 473 (1894).
11. S. H. O'Grady, ii. 574.
12. LL 69 a; LU 64 b; Windisch, Táin, pp. 184, 188.
13. O'Curry [a], p. 388.
14. Leahy, ii. 105; W. Stokes, in IT iii. 295.
15. Rhys [d], passim.
16. J. O'Daly, in TOS vi. 223 (1861).
17. W. Stokes, in RCel xii. 104 (1891); S. H. O'Grady, ii. 199; E. O'Curry, in Atlantis, iv. 163 (1863).
18. S. H. O'Grady, ii. 292 f.
19. Fled Bricrend, ed. G. Henderson, London, 1899, p. 38 (ITS).
20. W. Stokes, in RCel xii. 347 (1891).
21. Loth, Mabinogion, i. 303; Guest, ii. 269 f.
22. S. H. O'Grady, ii. 123.
23. See Plates VHI, XH, XVI, XXV.
24. See supra, pp. 24–25, 47, 107–08.
25. Text and translation by A. O. Anderson, in RCel xxiv. 126 ff. (1903); Leahy, ii. 3 ff.; G. Henderson, in J. F. Campbell [c], p. i ff.; J. O'B. Crowe, in RIA:IMS i. 134 ff. (1870).
26. Dean of Lismore^s Book, ed. and tr. T. McLauchlan, Edinburgh, 1862, p. 54 f.; G. Henderson, in J. F. Campbell [c], p. 18 f.
27. See supra, pp. 54–55, 66.
28. Cf. Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, i. 87–88.
29. See supra, p. 11.
30. N. O'Keamey, in TOS ii. 51, 69 (1855); for parallel instances of the "swallow" motif among the North American Indians see Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1916, x. 69, 79, 139.
31. LU 113; J. O'B. Crowe, in JRHAAI IV. i. 371 f. (1870).
32. W. Stokes, in RCel xv. 304 (1894); S. H. O'Grady, ii. 523.
33. S. H. O'Grady, in TOS iii. 125 (1855).
34. W. Stokes, in RCel xvi. 32 (1895).
35. W. Stokes, ib. xv. 326 (1894).
36. W. Stokes, ib. xvi. 72 (1895).
37. W. Stokes, ib. p. 77.
38. W. Stokes, ib. xv. 295 (1894).
39. W. Stokes, ib. p. 434.
40. W. Stokes, ib. i. 256 (1870).
41. LL 82 b, 86 b; Windisch, Táin, pp. 477, 547 (cf. also pp. 338, 366).
42. Fled Bricrend, ed. G. Henderson, London, 1899, p. 84 (ITS).
43. N. O'Kearney, in TOS i. 107 (1853).
44. Cf. supra, p. 34.
45. LL 76 a, 69 a; Windisch, Táin, pp. 338, 191.