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First published 2018
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PRINT ISBN: 978-1-78664-770-2
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-78755-258-6
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Contents
Foreword by Jake Jackson
Publisher’s Note
Celtic Mythology: Introduction
The Invasions Cycle
Introduction
The Quest of the Children of Tuirenn
The Tragedy of the Children of Lir
The Wooing of Étain
The Ulster Cycle
Introduction
The Birth of Cúchulainn
How Setanta Won the Name of Cúchulainn
The Tragedy of Cúchulainn and Connla
The Combat of Ferdia and Cúchulainn
The Story of Deirdre
The Fenian Cycle
Introduction
The Coming of Finn mac Cumaill
The Rise of Finn to Leadership of the Fianna
The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne
Oisín in Tír na N-Óg (The Land of Youth)
The Mabinogion
Introduction
The First Branch of the Mabinogi: Pwyll Prince of Dyved
The Second Branch of the Mabinogi: Branwen the Daughter of Llyr
The Third Branch of the Mabinogi: Manawyddan the Son of Llyr
The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi: Math the Son of Mathonwy
Peredur the Son of Evrawc
The Dream of Maxen Wledig
The Story of Lludd and Llevelys
The Lady of the Fountain
Geraint the Son of Erbin
Kilhwch and Olwen
The Dream of Rhonabwy
The Tale of Taliesin
Tales of Witchcraft and Magic
Introduction
The Brownie
The Three Knots
The Daughter of Duart
The Cauldron
The Horned Women
The Story-Teller At Fault
Paddy O’Kelly and the Weasel
Morraha
The Greek Princess and the Young Gardener
Smallhead and the King’s Sons
The Wisdom of the King
The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows
Tales of Giants
Introduction
Conall Yellowclaw
The Battle of the Birds
The Lad with the Goat-Skin
The Shee An Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire
A Legend of Knockmany
The Leeching of Kayn’s Leg
How Fin Went to the Kingdom of the Big Men
The Ridere of Riddles
Tales of Fairies and Sea-Folk
Introduction
MacCodrum’s Seal Wife
The Fairies and the Blacksmith
The Fairy Changeling
The Thirsty Ploughman
Wee Johnnie in the Cradle
The Fairy Dancers
A Dead Wife Among the Fairies
The Shepherd of Myddvai
Brewery of Eggshells
Guleesh
The Field of Boliauns
Connla and the Fairy Maiden
The Sea-Maiden
The Black Horse
The Legend of Knockgrafton
Elidore
How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery
Tales of Ghosts
Introduction
The Fiddler of Gord
MacPhail of Uisinnis
Tarbh Na Leòid
The Sprightly Tailor
Andrew Coffey
Origin and Didactic Legends
Introduction
Dubh a’ Ghiubhais
The Pabbay Mother’s Ghost
Luran
The Hugboy
The Three Questions of King James
King O’Toole and His Goose
The Tale of Ivan
Hudden and Dudden and Donald O’Neary
Beth Gellert
The Vision of MacConglinney
The Story of the McAndrew Family
The Farmer of Liddesdale
Legends and Fables for Children
Introduction
The Little Bird
The Fox, The Wolf and The Butter
The Ainsel
Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree
Munachar and Manachar
Jack and His Comrades
Fair, Brown, and Trembling
Jack and His Master
The Russet Dog
Jack the Cunning Thief
Dream of Owen O’Mulready
Biographies & Sources
Foreword
We reach for the Celts through the parchments of Christian monks, and Roman historians but still we grasp at phantoms of truth. The mythic invasions, cycles of life and death, war and famine, the tales are the history of a people spread across Europe, trying to understand their world, and take command of it.
Unlike the Greeks, with their great epics, or the Norse with their Eddas the Celtic tradition remained oral so we see their beliefs through the writings of others, stripped of their religious meaning and reduced to animalistic wonder, so it is often difficult to see the form of Celtic belief, as they would have understood it themselves.
Originating in Europe, they were probably the Keltoi, just north of the Ancient Greeks, and their artifacts have been found further East in what was then known as Anatolia, now modern Turkey, before mass migration through Europe brought them to Gaul. At their height they had spread across the continent of Europe, and sacked Rome in 390 bc, but by 84 ad The Romans empire had pushed them back, subjugating them in Gaul, destroying their culture, forcing them further West, into Spain then up to Ireland.
Although the disparate nature of the Celts creates some difficulty it is clear that many legends and deities were common to all tribes. In various guises gods were closely associated with the functions of the world, usually representing cycles of life. Amongst the many, Dagda appears to be the god of life and death, approximating the head of the pantheon, such as an Odin or a Zeus. Lugh, or Lug, was a sun god with skills in the arts, war and healing. Morrigan was essential to the harvest, but a terrifying trio of deities in the heart of war.
The Celts indeed were war-like but also great lovers of music, with many ballads to tell of their great deeds of conquest. They w
ere united by their language, and broad beliefs, without focusing on an earthly nation, or nation-state, or a city. This drives significant differences between their mythologies and those of the Greco-Romans, or further back to the Egyptians and the Babylonians whose own supernatural beliefs were bound into their monolithic settlements.
The Celts were farmers and soldiers, they build forts and traded extensively, but at their core were sophisticated, knowledgeable spiritual forces, the druids. These teachers, lawmakers and gurus, were said to possess magical powers, offering a connection back to the mythical invasions, cities and treasures of the past.
The supernatural, as magic, played a powerful role in Celtic thought. The battle between the light and the dark, the day and the night, life and death, preoccupied them. Their mythic invasions of ancient Ireland brought the Tuatha de Danaan, whose magical powers, while no match for their successors, the Milesians, heralded a vision of the otherworld in the mounds and the hidden castles of Ireland, into which the people, at their death, would drift. The de Danaan, the worshipers of the fertility Goddess Dana are the origin of the fairy folk, and thus the fairy stories of the Victorian era, which combined with the Teutonic tales of the Northern Europe to become a powerful source of inspiration in modern literature.
For the Irish Celts, with their four mythic cycles of gods, kings and warriors – the Mythological, Ulster, Historical and Fenian Cycles – their tales are full of heroism, romance, courage and fearlessness. But the Mabinogion, with its interpretations of the Welsh canon, and tales from Brittany in France, The Isle of Man and Cornwall have their own variants. The Mabinogion has a particular interest though because it teases us with the origins for the Tales of the King Arthur, with its sorcery, love-torn feuds and places beyond (The Isle of Avalon), an otherworld common throughout Celtic mythology. This is not an underworld as such, but lives alongside, as the de Danaan did, in the rivers and the trees, the bogs and the mists, in castles and isles that ghost through the light, disappearing with the morning dew. This is the other world, the Land of the Forever Young, Tir na Nog, with its four magical cities, and their talismanic treasures.
Another theme is worth highlighting: the intimate sanctity of the land and the people, manifested in the sacred marriage between the mythic kings and Queens, the renewal of the land by the harvest, and the harvest of slaughter in battle by Morrigan; here the land and the people are bound in the imperative of destiny, and the dire consequences of betrayal.
The lure of the otherworld, the totemic significance of marriage and harvest, these powerful Celtic themes influenced the Tales of Arthur and were adapted by Christianity in the late Middle Ages into the notions of chivalry, the godliness of royal marriage, and the just cause of war, influencing much of western thought during a crucial period in history.
For all the disputes about their origin, the confusion of the names, the tortuous translation by conquering Romans, and Christian monks, appropriation by Victorian fairy storytellers, the fugitive ghosts of Celtic mythology remain vital and thrilling today, as you’ll see in the pages this new selection of Celtic myths and tales..
Jake Jackson,
London, 2017
Publisher’s Note
Celtic mythology is an enigma, handed down to us through the tradition of oral storytelling, reported through the lens of Classical Greek and Roman commentators and written down originally by Christian scribes. This collection aims to present a body of Celtic tales to be enjoyed bearing this in mind – the stories may vary from version to version in their length and choice of words and some details, but they retain the essential narratives, characters and potency that have cautioned and entertained the Celtic peoples for centuries.
Here we gather together texts drawn from a variety of sources, from versions of the original Irish mythological cycles to Lady Charlotte Guest’s influential translation of the Welsh Mabinogion, to fairytales collected and adapted by folklorist Joseph Jacobs (1854 –1916) and a couple of stories from the Irish poet who lived and breathed the Celtic spirit, W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). We want you to enjoy the texts uncluttered, to appreciate their inherent masterful storytelling, but occasionally where deemed useful you will find notes to explain some elements. A general introduction to Celtic mythology precedes the stories, which, should you choose to read it, will give you a better understanding of the history and religion of the Celts and thus set the scene for the stories.
Celtic Mythology
Introduction
The Celts left a rich legacy of myths, legends, customs and folklore, which are among the oldest and most enduring in Europe, though they did not form an empire and their kingdoms comprised a wide variety of countries and cultures. Perhaps because of this their identity remains controversial, and our image of them is reworked by each new generation of Celtic scholars. The mystery of the Celts arises from the fact that they left no written accounts of themselves. Consequently, our knowledge of them is based on indirect evidence provided by archaeology, linguistics and Classical commentaries.
The Mystery of the Celts
Celtic material culture emerged in Central and Western Europe in the first millennium bc. It is first encountered in the artefacts of the Halstatt period (700–400 bc), so-named after an important archaeological site in upper Austria. The origins of the culture are much earlier, however, in the later Bronze Age settlements of non-Mediterranean Europe and probably even earlier still in the first Neolithic farming communities c. 4000 bc. The La Tène period (fifth century bc to the Roman occupation c. ad 45), which is named after a site on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland, represents the full-flowering of the culture. Finds have been made over much of Europe from northern France to Romania and from Poland to the Po Valley. This evidence portrays a heroic and hierarchical society in which war, feasting and bodily adornment were important. In many respects this confirms the picture of the Celts painted by Classical writers from the sixth century bc onwards.
Hecataeus of Miletus and Herotodus, writing in the sixth and fifth centuries bc, recognized a group of peoples to the north of the Greek port of Massalia (Marseilles) as having sufficient cultural features in common to justify a collective name, ‘Keltoi’. By the fourth century bc commentators had accepted the Celts as being among the great Barbarian peoples of the world, along with the Scythians, and Libyans; they were said to occupy a large swathe of Western Europe from Iberia to the Upper Danube. Later, Mediterranean writers such as Livy and Polybius report that in the fourth and third centuries bc Celtic tribes spread south into Italy and east to Greece and Asia Minor, where they settled as the Galatians. The same writers record heavy defeats for the Celts by the Romans towards the end of the third century bc and the subsequent occupation of their heartlands in Gaul by the mid-first century bc. Nowhere do the ancients refer to Britain as a Celtic land and debate continues over the precision with which the label ‘Celt’ was applied by Classical writers.
Without their own accounts it is impossible to say whether the Iron Age tribes of Europe, including Britain, saw themselves as collectively ‘Celtic’. It is true to say, however, that Caesar recognized similarities between Britain and Gaul, and there is ample evidence of the La Tène culture in the British Isles. In the absence of archaeological evidence to show a migration of peoples from Gaul to Britain, it seems likely that it was the culture which spread; the indigenous peoples simply became Celtic through social contact and trade. Thus, when we refer to ‘the Celts’ we are not referring to an ethnic group but a culture adopted across non-Mediterranean Europe between the sixth century bc and the fifth century ad. It is ironic that the Irish and Welsh literature to which we owe so much of our understanding of Celtic mythology originated among peoples who may not have seen themselves as Celts.
Gods and Heroes
The Celts were polytheistic. The names of over 200 gods have been recorded. It is likely that individual deities went under several titles, so there were proba
bly fewer than this. The scene remains complex, however, and attempts to reduce the Celtic pantheon to a coherent system have met with varying degrees of success.
The Celts had gods for all of the important aspects of their lives: warfare, hunting, fertility, healing, good harvests and so on. Much of the difficulty in classifying them arises from the fact that very few were recognized universally. In much greater numbers were local, tribal and possibly family deities. Our knowledge of the Celtic pantheon is based on the interpretations of contemporary observers, later vernacular literature (mainly from Ireland and Wales) and archaeological finds.
Very little iconography in the form of wood or stone sculptures has survived from before the Roman conquests, although a vast amount of perishable material must have existed. The earliest archaeological evidence from this period is from Provence and Central Europe. At Roquepertuse and Holtzerlingen, Celtic deities were represented in human form as early as the sixth and fifth centuries bc. Roman influence witnessed the production of many more permanent representations of the gods; dedicatory inscriptions reveal a huge array of native god names.
Caesar identified Celtic gods with what he saw as their Roman equivalents, probably to render them more comprehensible to a Roman readership. He said of the Gauls that the god they revered the most was Mercury and, next to him, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva. Lucan (ad 39–65), a famous Roman poet, named three Celtic deities: Teutates (god of the tribe), Taranis (thunder) and Esus (multi-skilled). Other commentators identify Teutates with Mercury, Esus with Mars and Taranis with Dispater (the all father). Inscriptions on altars and monuments found across the Roman Empire, however, identify Teutates with Mars, Esus with Mercury and Taranis with Jupiter.
It is to Christian monks that we owe the survival of the ancient oral traditions of the pagan Celts and a more lucid insight into the nature of their deities. Very little was committed to paper before the monks began writing down Irish tales in the sixth century ad. The earliest written Welsh material dates from the twelfth century. Informative though they might be, however, the stories are influenced by Romano-Christian thinking and no doubt the monks censored the worst excesses of heathenism.
The stories are collected in sequences which follow the exploits of heroes, legendary kings and mythical characters from their unusual forms of conception and birth to their remarkable deaths. Along the way we learn of their expeditions to the otherworld, their loves and their battles. Many of the Irish legends are contained in three such collections. The first, known as the Mythological Cycle or Book of Invasions, records the imagined early history of Ireland. The second, the Ulster Cycle, tells of Cúchulainn, a hero with superhuman strength and magical powers. The third is the story of another hero, Finn mac Cumaill, his son Ossian and their warriors, the Fianna. This is known as the Fenian Cycle.