Part 9 (1/2)
There is a lack of order in this composition, the ideas, fundamental and subordinate, are jumbled together without method; but there is no doubt as to the meaning: the _fil_ [poet] is the Word of Science, he is the G.o.d who gives to man the fire of thought; and as science is not distinct from its object, as G.o.d and Nature are but one, the being of the _fil_ is mingled with the winds and the waves, with the wild animals and the warriors arms.(107)
Two other poems are attributed to Amergin, in which he invokes the land and physical features of Ireland to aid him:
I invoke the land of Ireland, s.h.i.+ning, s.h.i.+ning sea; Fertile, fertile Mountain; Gladed, gladed wood!
Abundant river, abundant in water!
Fish-abounding lake!(108)
*The Judgment of Amergin*
The Milesian host, after landing, advance to Tara, where they find the three kings of the Danaans awaiting them, and summon them to deliver up the island. The Danaans ask for three days time to consider whether they shall quit Ireland, or submit, or give battle; and they propose to leave the decision, upon their request, to Amergin. Amergin p.r.o.nounces judgmentthe first judgment which was delivered in Ireland. He agrees that the Milesians must not take their foes by surprisethey are to withdraw the length of nine waves from the sh.o.r.e, and then return; if they then conquer the Danaans the land is to be fairly theirs by right of battle.
The Milesians submit to this decision and embark on their s.h.i.+ps. But no sooner have they drawn _off_ for this mystical distance of the nine waves than a mist and storm are raised by the sorceries of the Danaansthe coast of Ireland is hidden from their sight, and they wander dispersed upon the ocean. To ascertain if it is a natural or a Druidic tempest which afflicts them, a man named Aranan is sent up to the masthead to see if the wind is blowing there also or not. He is flung from the swaying mast, but as he falls to his death he cries his message to his s.h.i.+pmates: There is no storm aloft. Amergin, who as poetthat is to say, Druidtakes the lead in all critical situations, thereupon chants his incantation to the land of Erin. The wind falls, and they turn their prows, rejoicing, towards the sh.o.r.e. But one of the Milesian lords, Eber Donn, exults in brutal rage at the prospect of putting all the dwellers in Ireland to the sword; the tempest immediately springs up again, and many of the Milesian s.h.i.+ps founder, Eber Donns being among them. At last a remnant of the Milesians find their way to sh.o.r.e, and land in the estuary of the Boyne.
*The Defeat of the Danaans*
A great battle with the Danaans at Telltown(109) then follows. The three kings and three queens of the Danaans, with many of their people, are slain, and the children of Miledthe last of the mythical invaders of Irelandenter upon the sovranty of Ireland. But the People of Dana do not withdraw. By their magic art they cast over themselves a veil of invisibility, which they can put on or off as they choose. There are two Irelands henceforward, the spiritual and the earthly. The Danaans dwell in the spiritual Ireland, which is portioned out among them by their great overlord, the Dagda. Where the human eye can see but green mounds and ramparts, the relics of ruined fortresses or sepulchres, there rise the fairy palaces of the defeated divinities; there they hold their revels in eternal suns.h.i.+ne, nourished by the magic meat and ale that give them undying youth and beauty; and thence they come forth at times to mingle with mortal men in love or in war. The ancient mythical literature conceives them as heroic and splendid in strength and beauty. In later times, and as Christian influences grew stronger, they dwindle into fairies, the People of the Sidhe;(110) but they have never wholly perished; to this day the Land of Youth and its inhabitants live in the imagination of the Irish peasant.
*The Meaning of the Danaan Myth*
All myths constructed by a primitive people are symbols, and if we can discover what it is that they symbolise we have a valuable clue to the spiritual character, and sometimes even to the history, of the people from whom they sprang. Now the meaning of the Danaan myth as it appears in the bardic literature, though it has undergone much distortion before it reached us, is perfectly clear. The Danaans represent the Celtic reverence for science, poetry, and artistic skill, blended, of course, with the earlier conception of the divinity of the powers of Light. In their combat with the Firbolgs the victory of the intellect over dulness and ignorance is plainly portrayedthe comparison of the heavy, blunt weapon of the Firbolgs with the light and penetrating spears of the People of Dana is an indication which it is impossible to mistake. Again, in their struggle with a far more powerful and dangerous enemy, the Fomorians, we are evidently to see the combat of the powers of Light with evil of a more positive kind than that represented by the Firbolgs. The Fomorians stand not for mere dulness or stupidity, but for the forces of tyranny, cruelty, and greedfor moral rather than for intellectual darkness.
*The Meaning of the Milesian Myth*
But the myth of the struggle of the Danaans with the sons of Miled is more difficult to interpret. How does it come that the lords of light and beauty, wielding all the powers of thought (represented by magic and sorcery), succ.u.mbed to a human race, and were dispossessed by them of their hard-won inheritance? What is the meaning of this shrinking of their powers which at once took place when the Milesians came on the scene? The Milesians were not on the side of the powers of darkness. They were guided by Amergin, a clear embodiment of the idea of poetry and thought. They were regarded with the utmost veneration, and the dominant families of Ireland all traced their descent to them. Was the Kingdom of Light, then, divided against itself? Or, if not, to what conception in the Irish mind are we to trace the myth of the Milesian invasion and victory?
The only answer I can see to this puzzling question is to suppose that the Milesian myth originated at a much later time than the others, and was, in its main features, the product of Christian influences. The People of Dana were in possession of the country, but they were pagan divinitiesthey could not stand for the progenitors of a Christian Ireland. They had somehow or other to be got rid of, and a race of less embarra.s.sing antecedents subst.i.tuted for them. So the Milesians were fetched from Spain and endowed with the main characteristics, only more humanised, of the People of Dana. But the latter, in contradistinction to the usual att.i.tude of early Christianity, are treated very tenderly in the story of their overthrow. One of them has the honour of giving her name to the island, the brutality of one of the conquerors towards them is punished with death, and while dispossessed of the lords.h.i.+p of the soil they still enjoy life in the fair world which by their magic art they have made invisible to mortals. They are no longer G.o.ds, but they are more than human, and frequent instances occur in which they are shown as coming forth from their fairy world, being embraced in the Christian fold, and entering into heavenly bliss. With two cases of this redemption of the Danaans we shall close this chapter on the Invasion Myths of Ireland.
The first is the strange and beautiful tale of the Transformation of the Children of Lir.
*The Children of Lir*
Lir was a Danaan divinity, the father of the sea-G.o.d Mananan who continually occurs in magical tales of the Milesian cycle. He had married in succession two sisters, the second of whom was named Aoife.(111) She was childless, but the former wife of Lir had left him four children, a girl named Fionuala(112) and three boys. The intense love of Lir for the children made the stepmother jealous, and she ultimately resolved on their destruction. It will be observed, by the way, that the People of Dana, though conceived as unaffected by time, and naturally immortal, are nevertheless subject to violent death either at the hands of each other or even of mortals.
With her guilty object in view, Aoife goes on a journey to a neighbouring Danaan king, Bov the Red, taking the four children with her. Arriving at a lonely place by Lake Derryvaragh, in Westmeath, she orders her attendants to slay the children. They refuse, and rebuke her. Then she resolves to do it herself; but, says the legend, her womanhood overcame her, and instead of killing the Children she transforms them by spells of sorcery into four white swans, and lays on them the following doom: three hundred years they are to spend on the waters of Lake Derryvaragh, three hundred on the Straits of Moyle (between Ireland and Scotland), and three hundred on the Atlantic by Erris and Inishglory. After that, when the woman of the South is mated with the man of the North, the enchantment is to have an end.
When the children fail to arrive with Aoife at the palace of Bov her guilt is discovered, and Bov changes her into a demon of the air. She flies forth shrieking, and is heard of no more in the tale. But Lir and Bov seek out the swan-children, and find that they have not only human speech, but have preserved the characteristic Danaan gift of making wonderful music.
From all parts of the island companies of the Danaan folk resort to Lake Derryvaragh to hear this wondrous music and to converse with the swans, and during that time a great peace and gentleness seemed to pervade the land.
But at last the day came for them to leave the fellows.h.i.+p of their kind and take up their life by the wild cliffs and ever angry sea of the northern coast. Here they knew the worst of loneliness, cold, and storm.
Forbidden to land, their feathers froze to the rocks in the winter nights, and they were often buffeted and driven apart by storms. As Fionuala sings:
Cruel to us was Aoife Who played her magic upon us, And drove us out on the water Four wonderful snow-white swans.
Our bath is the frothing brine, In bays by red rocks guarded; For mead at our fathers table We drink of the salt, blue sea.
Three sons and a single daughter, In clefts of the cold rocks dwelling, The hard rocks, cruel to mortals We are full of keening to-night.
Fionuala, the eldest of the four, takes the lead in all their doings, and mothers the younger children most tenderly, wrapping her plumage round them on nights of frost. At last the time comes to enter on the third and last period of their doom, and they take flight for the western sh.o.r.es of Mayo. Here too they suffer much hards.h.i.+p; but the Milesians have now come into the land, and a young farmer named Evric, dwelling on the sh.o.r.es of Erris Bay, finds out who and what the swans are, and befriends them. To him they tell their story, and through him it is supposed to have been preserved and handed down. When the final period of their suffering is close at hand they resolve to fly towards the palace of their father Lir, who dwells, we are told, at the Hill of the White Field, in Armagh, to see how things have fared with him. They do so; but not knowing what has happened on the coming of the Milesians, they are shocked and bewildered to find nothing but green mounds and whin-bushes and nettles where once stoodand still stands, only that they cannot see itthe palace of their father. Their eyes are holden, we are to understand, because a higher destiny was in store for them than to return to the Land of Youth.
On Erris Bay they hear for the first time the sound of a Christian bell.