Celtic Myths

history.

Other Pocket Essentials by Bill Price:

Tutankhamun

Charles Darwin: Origins and Arguments

Celtic Myths

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Contents

Introduction

On Mythology

The Purpose of Myth

Mythos and Logos

Mythtime

Celtic Myth

The Celts

Introduction

Who Were the Celts?

The Story in the DNA

Archaeology, Genes and Myths

Iron Age Society

Tara and Navan Fort

Religion

The Spoken and Written Word

Oral Tradition

The Storytellers

The Written Story

The Celtic Revival

The Irish Cycles

Overview

The Ulster Cycle

The Hound of Culann

The Táin

The Fenian Cycle

The Mythological Cycle

The Cycles of the Kings

Adventures and Voyages

Tales from Wales

The Mabinogion

The Four Branches

Other Sources

And the Rest

Mythology and Folktales

Scotland and Man

Cornwall and Brittany

Notes

Bibliography

Copyright

Introduction

At some point during the 1880s the teenage Mary MacDonald left her home on an island off the coast of County Donegal in the north west of Ireland to take up a position as a maid in a convent in Birmingham. It was more than 30 years after the worst of the Irish Famine, but times were still hard in the west of Ireland and emigration to find work and escape from poverty was a common occurrence. It must have been difficult at first for Mary to adjust to a life in an industrial city, not least because, when she arrived, she didn't speak any English. Her family, like the majority of the people from that part of Ireland at the time, were Irish speakers and English, if it was spoken at all, would only have been used when talking to outsiders. Although I don't know what conditions were like in the convent, it is easy to imagine the regime being strict and the work hard. At some point in her late teens or early twenties, Mary MacDonald left the convent and got married to a young man, who also came from within the Irish Catholic community in Birmingham, and they started a family.

   There is nothing exceptional about this story, but it is important to me because Mary MacDonald was my great grandmother. It is one part of the story of my family, of how they left Ireland and established themselves in Birmingham. I have never questioned this version of events and, in writing it down now, I have not checked to make sure I have got the story straight. Other members of my family may well tell it in a different way entirely, but this is my version, this is the way I remember it being told to me.

   The story can be seen as one strand of my own personal foundation myth. It tells me something about where I am from and, to a certain extent, who I am. A fascination with our origins and ancestry appears to be a universal trait, shared throughout humanity and across all cultures, and, going back to the time before the invention of the written word, one of the ways of expressing, explaining and preserving these ideas was through storytelling. This, in essence, is what mythology is. Mythology uses stories to offer explanations for what might otherwise be inexplicable.

   Another of my purposes in telling the story is to demonstrate my own Celtic roots. I am, in a rather obvious fashion, trying to give myself some connection to the subject matter of this book, as if, by doing so, I have a more legitimate claim on the stories than someone who cannot trace their ancestry back to the west coast of Ireland. This is, of course, complete nonsense, but it does illustrate that stories can have more meanings and purposes than they might initially appear to have. Myths certainly fall into this category.They can offer explanations to the big questions (life, the universe and everything, as Douglas Adams put it in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy); they are a way of understanding the world in which we live; they can reinforce cultural ties by showing listeners their place within society; and they can act as a resource of information. Although not often discussed in great detail in the academic literature on the subject, myths can also be enjoyable and entertaining. In fact, it could be argued, their primary function is to engage and enthral. We all love a good story, whether we get all its nuances and inferences or we are simply swept along by the narrative. It would be interesting to learn, for instance, how many of the fans of the Star Wars films, which are clearly based on traditional storytelling and have storylines involving heroes, princesses and tyrants and the fight between good and evil, could really care less about any deeper meanings the films may have. Most probably viewers watch them for their entertainment value alone.

   This book is primarily concerned with the surviving mythology of the people of the Atlantic fringes of northwest Europe, collectively known as the Celts: the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Manx, Cornish and Bretons. It is a book of two halves. The first half begins by briefly considering myths in general, what they are and what they are for, before going on to tackle the controversial question of who the Ancient Celts, the people who inhabited Britain and Ireland before the Romans arrived, actually were and what the society in which they lived was like. Chapter three then deals with storytelling in general and how, and in what form, the mythic stories, generated as part of an oral tradition and in a pre-Christian culture, survived the transition to Christianity to come down to us in the modern age.

   The vast majority of the surviving myths come from Ireland and, to a lesser extent, from Wales. Because of this, the second half of the book, which concerns the myths themselves, concentrates on these two countries. This is not intended to imply that the myths of the other Celtic regions were in any way inferior to those of Ireland and Wales and, in Chapter 6, consideration is given to these. Unfortunately, for the most part, the myths of Scotland and Man and of Cornwall and Brittany have been lost and their richness can now only be inferred from folktales, the telling of which among speakers of the Celtic languages continued until quite recently. In some respects, it continues today.

   This, then, is a book about stories and storytelling, about the heroes Cúchulainn and Fionn mac Cumhaill and the heroines Deirdre and Rhiannon, about this world and the Otherworld. The stories can be tragic, romantic, intense or funny and, sometimes, they can be combinations of any and all of these.They can be magical or grimly realistic, epic in scale or highly personal, full of symbolism and allusion or entirely straightforward, brilliantly realised works of literature or, on occasion, contrived nonsense. The world was a very different place when these stories were being told by bards and storytellers and we will probably never fully understand all the hidden meanings and references they contain but, even so, they can have a relevance to the world in which we now live. Like all great art, the Celtic myths are fundamentally concerned with what it is like to be a human being and, whatever else changes, this is one thing that stays much the same.

On Mythology

The Purpose of Myth

Some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century – Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung,Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, to name but a few – have exercised their considerable intellects on the subject of mythology.Although it is beyond the scope of this book to consider the development of mythology as an academic discipline,1 it is certainly worth exploring aspects of the general thought on the subject as a means both of introducing the specific field of Celtic Mythology and of placing it within an overall framework.

   Perhaps the most obvious starting point is to define what is meant by the term myth and to consider what, if anything, differentiates myths from other similar forms of story such as legends or folktales. The main entry under myth in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary gives a clear and uncluttered definition:

A traditional story, either wholly or partially fictitious, providing an explanation for or embodying a popular idea concerning some natural or social phenomenon or some religious belief or ritual; specifically one involving supernatural persons, actions, or events; a similar newly created story.2

This is the sense in which the word myth is used in this book. As the definition makes clear, myths are first and foremost traditional stories. A great deal has been written about the purpose of these stories but, for them to have survived and to have been passed down through generations of storytellers, the stories themselves must have engaged, informed and, above all else, entertained the audience. This aspect of myths has been much less remarked upon in the academic literature, perhaps because it is self-evident that a story which bores its audience will not be one that remains in any successful storyteller's repertoire for long.

   Describing what a myth is, then, would appear to be quite straightforward, but a problem arises out of the modern usage of the word. A second definition in the dictionary states that a myth is a widely held story or belief which, on examination, turns out to be entirely untrue. An example could be the myth of the American dream, in which people in America, whatever their background or financial status, are supposed to have an equal chance of achieving whatever they set out to do through hard work and perseverance. As attractive as this idea may be, all of us know, if we are being honest, that it is no more true in America than it is anywhere else in the world.

   When someone uses the phrase, 'It's a myth', what they are saying is that whatever they are referring to is untrue. It is easy to envisage the extension of this usage to include the stories that make up a mythology, giving rise to the idea that these stories are untrue and that the entire mythology constitutes a false way of thinking. But myths, of course, don't deal with the world they describe in terms of what is specifically true and false. In the same way, novels and films are not necessarily concerned directly with reality. Nobody, for example, would think to describe Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as untrue, although the situations and characters described were invented by the author. The purpose of the novel is not to give accurate biographies of real people but to examine the actions and motivations of the characters in order to cast some light on what we may call the human condition. Myths, like modern fiction or art in general, can be seen as a way of attempting to describe what may otherwise be inexplicable and to provide, at least to some extent, meaning and understanding amidst the complexities and vicissitudes of life.

   A further problem arises through the tendency to con fuse the stories making up a mythology with the otherwise separate subject of mysticism. Presumably this confusion occurs not only because both mythology and mysticism deal with the unknown and otherworldly, although in different ways, but also because the words look and sound similar. Mysticism deals with beliefs that transcend human understanding, including those of mainstream religions, although today the word is often associated with occult and alternative belief systems. An example of the confusion arising out of the conflation of these two words is the fact that many bookshops shelve books on mythology, including highbrow academic tomes on the subject, in sections with titles like 'New Age' or 'Mind, Body and Spirit' when, in many cases,