Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race Part 11

Eochy, however, would not accept defeat, and now ensues what I think is the earliest recorded war with Fairyland since the first dispossession of the Danaans. After searching Ireland for his wife in vain, he summoned to his aid the Druid Dalan. Dalan tried for a year by every means in his power to find out where she was. At last he made what seems to have been an operation of wizardry of special strengthhe made three wands of yew, and upon the wands he wrote an ogham; and by the keys of wisdom that he had, and by the ogham, it was revealed to him that Etain was in the fairy mound of Bri-Leith, and that Midir had borne her thither.

Eochy then a.s.sembled his forces to storm and destroy the fairy mound in which was the palace of Midir. It is said that he was nine years digging up one mound after another, while Midir and his folk repaired the devastation as fast as it was made. At last Midir, driven to the last stronghold, attempted a stratagemhe offered to give up Etain, and sent her with fifty handmaids to the king, but made them all so much alike that Eochy could not distinguish the true Etain from her images. She herself, it is said, gave him a sign by which to know her. The motive of the tale, including the choice of the mortal rather than the G.o.d, reminds one of the beautiful Hindu legend of Damayanti and Nala. Eochy regained his queen, who lived with him till his death, ten years afterwards, and bore him one daughter, who was named Etain, like herself.

*The Tale of Conary Mor*

From this Etain ultimately sprang the great king Conary Mor, who s.h.i.+nes in Irish legend as the supreme type of royal splendour, power, and beneficence, and whose overthrow and death were compa.s.sed by the Danaans in vengeance for the devastation of their sacred dwellings by Eochy. The tale in which the death of Conary is related is one of the most antique and barbaric in conception of all Irish legends, but it has a magnificence of imagination which no other can rival. To this great story the tale of Etain and Midir may be regarded as what the Irish called a _priomscel_, introductory tale, showing the more remote origin of the events related.

The genealogy of Conary Mor will help the reader to understand the connexion of events.

Eochy=Etain.

Cormac, King=Etain Oig (Etain the younger).

of Ulster. Eterskel, King=Messbuachalla (the cowherds fosterling).

of Erin. Conary Mor.

*The Law of the Geis*

The tale of Conary introduces us for the first time to the law or inst.i.tution of the _geis_, which plays henceforward a very important part in Irish legend, the violation or observance of a _geis_ being frequently the turning-point in a tragic narrative. We must therefore delay a moment to explain to the reader exactly what this peculiar inst.i.tution was.

Dineens Irish Dictionary explains the word _geis_ (p.r.o.nounced gayshplural, gaysha) as meaning a bond, a spell, a prohibition, a taboo, a magical injunction, the violation of which led to misfortune and death.(128) Every Irish chieftain or personage of note had certain _geise_ peculiar to himself which he must not transgress. These _geise_ had sometimes reference to a code of chivalrythus Dermot of the Love-spot, when appealed to by Grania to take her away from Finn, is under _geise_ not to refuse protection to a woman. Or they may be merely superst.i.tious or fantasticthus Conary, as one of his _geise_, is forbidden to follow three red hors.e.m.e.n on a road, nor must he kill birds (this is because, as we shall see, his totem was a bird). It is a _geis_ to the Ulster champion, Fergus mac Roy, that he must not refuse an invitation to a feast; on this turns the Tragedy of the Sons of Usnach. It is not at all clear who imposed these _geise_ or how any one found out what his personal _geise_ wereall that was doubtless an affair of the Druids. But they were regarded as sacred obligations, and the worst misfortunes were to be apprehended from breaking them. Originally, no doubt, they were regarded as a means of keeping oneself in proper relations with the other worldthe world of Faryand were akin to the well-known Polynesian practice of the tabu. I prefer, however, to retain the Irish word as the only fitting one for the Irish practice.

*The Cowherds Fosterling*

We now return to follow the fortunes of Etains great-grandson, Conary.

Her daughter, Etain Oig, as we have seen from the genealogical table, married Cormac, King of Ulster. She bore her husband no children save one daughter only. Embittered by her barrenness and his want of an heir, the king put away Etain, and ordered her infant to be abandoned and thrown into a pit. Then his two thralls take her to a pit, and she smiles a laughing smile at them as they were putting her into it.(129) After that they cannot leave her to die, and they carry her to a cowherd of Eterskel, King of Tara, by whom she is fostered and taught till she became a good embroidress and there was not in Ireland a kings daughter dearer than she. Hence the name she bore, Messbuachalla (Messboohala), which means the cowherds foster-child.

For fear of her being discovered, the cowherds keep the maiden in a house of wickerwork having only a roof-opening. But one of King Eterskels folk has the curiosity to climb up and look in, and sees there the fairest maiden in Ireland. He bears word to the king, who orders an opening to be made in the wall and the maiden fetched forth, for the king was childless, and it had been prophesied to him by his Druid that a woman of unknown race would bear him a son. Then said the king: This is the woman that has been prophesied to me.

*Parentage and Birth of Conary*

Before her release, however, she is visited by a denizen from the Land of Youth. A great bird comes down through her roof-window. On the floor of the hut his bird-plumage falls from him and reveals a glorious youth. Like Dana, like Leda, like Ethlinn daughter of Balor, she gives her love to the G.o.d. Ere they part he tells her that she will be taken to the king, but that she will bear to her Danaan lover a son whose name shall be Conary, and that it shall be forbidden to him to go a-hunting after birds.

So Conary was born, and grew up into a wise and n.o.ble youth, and he was fostered with a lord named Desa, whose three great-grandsons grew up with him from childhood. Their names were Ferlee and Fergar and Ferrogan; and Conary, it is said, loved them well and taught them his wisdom.

*Conary the High King*

Then King Eterskel died, and a successor had to be appointed. In Ireland the eldest son did not succeed to the throne or chieftaincy as a matter of right, but the ablest and best of the family at the time was supposed to be selected by the clan. In this tale we have a curious account of this selection by means of divination. A bull-feast was held_i.e._, a bull was slain, and the diviner would eat his fill and drink its broth; then he went to bed, where a truth-compelling spell was chanted over him.

Whoever he saw in his dream would be king. So at gira, in Acha, as Whitley Stokes points out, the priestess of Earth drank the fresh blood of a bull before descending into the cave to prophesy. The dreamer cried in his sleep that he saw a naked man going towards Tara with a stone in his sling.

The bull-feast was held at Tara, but Conary was then with his three foster-brothers playing a game on the Plains of Liffey. They separated, Conary going towards Dublin, where he saw before him a flock of great birds, wonderful in colour and beauty. He drove after them in his chariot, but the birds would go a spear-cast in front and light, and fly on again, never letting him come up with them till they reached the sea-sh.o.r.e. Then he lighted down from his chariot and took out his sling to cast at them, whereupon they changed into armed men and turned on him with spears and swords. One of them, however, protected him, and said: I am Nemglan, king of thy fathers birds; and thou hast been forbidden to cast at birds, for here there is no one but is thy kin. Till to-day, said Conary, I knew not this.

Go to Tara to-night, said Nemglan; the bull-feast is there, and through it thou shalt be made king. A man stark naked, who shall go at the end of the night along one of the roads to Tara, having a stone and a slingtis he that shall be king.

So Conary stripped off his raiment and went naked through the night to Tara, where all the roads were being watched by chiefs having changes of royal raiment with them to clothe the man who should come according to the prophecy. When Conary meets them they clothe him and bring him in, and he is proclaimed King of Erin.

*Conarys Geise*

A long list of his _geise_ is here given, which are said to have been declared to him by Nemglan. The bird-reign shall be n.o.ble, said he, and these shall be thy _geise_:

Thou shalt not go right-handwise round Tara, nor left-handwise round Bregia,(130) Thou shalt not hunt the evil-beasts of Cerna, Thou shalt not go out every ninth night beyond Tara.

Thou shalt not sleep in a house from which firelight shows after sunset, or in which light can be seen from without.

No three Reds shall go before thee to the house of Red.

No rapine shall be wrought in thy reign.

After sunset, no one woman alone or man alone shall enter the house in which thou art.

Thou shalt not interfere in a quarrel between two of thy thralls.

Conary then entered upon his reign, which was marked by the fair seasons and bounteous harvests always a.s.sociated in the Irish mind with the reign of a good king. Foreign s.h.i.+ps came to the ports. Oak-mast for the swine was up to the knees every autumn; the rivers swarmed with fish. No one slew another in Erin during his reign, and to every one in Erin his fellows voice seemed as sweet as the strings of lutes. From mid-spring to mid-autumn no wind disturbed a cows tail.

*Beginning of the Vengeance*

Disturbance, however, came from another source. Conary had put down all raiding and rapine, and his three foster-brothers, who were born reavers, took it ill. They pursued their evil ways in pride and wilfulness, and were at last captured red-handed. Conary would not condemn them to death, as the people begged him to do, but spared them for the sake of his kins.h.i.+p in fosterage. They were, however, banished from Erin and bidden to go raiding overseas, if raid they must. On the seas they met another exiled chief, Ingcel the One-Eyed, son of the King of Britain, and joining forces with him they attacked the fortress in which Ingcels father, mother, and brothers were guests at the time, and all were destroyed in a single night. It was then the turn of Ingcel to ask their help in raiding the land of Erin, and gathering a host of other outlawed men, including the seven Mans, sons of Ailell and Maev of Connacht, besides Ferlee, Fergar, and Ferrogan, they made a descent upon Ireland, taking land on the Dublin coast near Howth.

Meantime Conary had been lured by the machinations of the Danaans into breaking one after another of his _geise_. He settles a quarrel between two of his serfs in Munster, and travelling back to Tara they see the country around it lit with the glare of fires and wrapped in clouds of smoke. A host from the North, they think, must be raiding the country, and to escape it Conarys company have to turn right-handwise round Tara and then left-handwise round the Plain of Bregia. But the smoke and flames were an illusion made by the Fairy Folk, who are now drawing the toils closer round the doomed king. On his way past Bregia he chases the evil beasts of Cernawhatever they werebut he saw it not till the chase was ended.

*Da Dergas Hostel and the Three Reds*

Conary had now to find a resting-place for the night, and he recollects that he is not far from the Hostel of the Leinster lord, Da Derga, which gives its name to this bardic tale.(131) Conary had been generous to him when Da Derga came visiting to Tara, and he determined to seek his hospitality for the night. Da Derga dwelt in a vast hall with seven doors near to the present town of Dublin, probably at Donnybrook, on the high-road to the south. As the cavalcade are journeying thither an ominous incident occursConary marks in front of them on the road three hors.e.m.e.n clad all in red and riding on red horses. He remembers his _geis_ about the three Reds, and sends a messenger forward to bid them fall behind.

But however the messenger lashes his horse he fails to get nearer than the length of a spear-cast to the three Red Riders. He shouts to them to turn back and follow the king, but one of them, looking over his shoulder, bids him ironically look out for great news from a Hostel. Again and again the messenger is sent to them with promises of great reward if they will fall behind instead of preceding Conary. At last one of them chants a mystic and terrible strain. Lo, my son, great the news. Weary are the steeds we ride the steeds from the fairy mounds. Though we are living, we are dead. Great are the signs: destruction of life; sating of ravens; feeding of crows; strife of slaughter; wetting of sword-edge; s.h.i.+elds with broken bosses after sundown. Lo, my son! Then they ride forward, and, alighting from their red steeds, fasten them at the portal of Da Dergas Hostel and sit down inside. Derga, it may be explained, means red.

Conary had therefore been preceded by three red hors.e.m.e.n to the House of Red. All my _geise_, he remarks forebodingly, have seized me to-night.

*Gathering of the Hosts*

From this point the story of Conary Mor takes on a character of supernatural vastness and mystery, the imagination of the bardic narrator dilating, as it were, with the approach of the crisis. Night has fallen, and the pirate host of Ingcel is encamped on the sh.o.r.es of Dublin Bay.

They hear the noise of the royal cavalcade, and a long-sighted messenger is sent out to discover what it is. He brings back word of the glittering and mult.i.tudinous host which has followed Conary to the Hostel. A cras.h.i.+ng noise is heardIngcel asks of Ferrogan what it may beit is the giant warrior mac Cecht striking flint on steel to kindle fire for the kings feast. G.o.d send that Conary be not there to-night, cry the sons of Desa; woe that he should be under the hurt of his foes. But Ingcel reminds them of their compacthe had given them the plundering of his own father and brethren; they cannot refuse to stand by him in the attack he meditates on Conary in the Hostel. A glare of the fire lit by mac Cecht is now perceived by the pirate host, s.h.i.+ning through the wheels of the chariots which are drawn up around the open doors of the Hostel. Another of the _geise_ of Conary has been broken.

Ingcel and his host now proceed to build a great cairn of stones, each man contributing one stone, so that there may be a memorial of the fight, and also a record of the number slain when each survivor removes his stone again.

*The Morrigan*

The scene now s.h.i.+fts to the Hostel, where the kings party has arrived and is preparing for the night. A solitary woman comes to the door and seeks admission. As long as a weavers beam were each of her two s.h.i.+ns, and they were as dark as the back of a stag-beetle. A greyish, woolly mantle she wore. Her hair reached to her knee. Her mouth was twisted to one side of her head. It was the Morrigan, the Danaan G.o.ddess of Death and Destruction. She leant against the doorpost of the house and looked evilly on the king and his company. Well, O woman, said Conary, if thou art a witch, what seest thou for us? Truly I see for thee, she answered, that neither fell nor flesh of thine shall escape from the place into which thou hast come, save what birds will bear away in their claws. She asks admission. Conary declares that his _geis_ forbids him to receive a solitary man or woman after sunset. If in sooth, she says, it has befallen the king not to have room in his house for the meal and bed of a solitary woman, they will be gotten apart from him from some one possessing generosity. Let her in, then, says Conary, though it is a _geis_ of mine.

*Conary and his Retinue*

A lengthy and brilliant pa.s.sage now follows describing how Ingcel goes to spy out the state of affairs in the Hostel. Peeping through the chariot-wheels, he takes note of all he sees, and describes to the sons of Desa the appearance and equipment of each prince and mighty man in Conarys retinue, while Ferrogan and his brother declare who he is and what destruction he will work in the coming fight. There is Cormac, son of Conor, King of Ulster, the fair and good; there are three huge, black and black-robed warriors of the Picts; there is Conarys steward, with bristling hair, who settles every disputea needle would be heard falling when he raises his voice to speak, and he bears a staff of office the size of a mill-shaft; there is the warrior mac Cecht, who lies supine with his knees drawn upthey resemble two bare hills, his eyes are like lakes, his nose a mountain-peak, his sword s.h.i.+nes like a river in the sun. Conarys three sons are there, golden-haired, silk-robed, beloved of all the household, with manners of ripe maidens, and hearts of brothers, and valour of bears. When Ferrogan hears of them he weeps and cannot proceed till hours of the night have pa.s.sed. Three Fomorian hostages of horrible aspect are there also; and Conall of the Victories with his blood-red s.h.i.+eld; and Duftach of Ulster with his magic spear, which, when there is a premonition of battle, must be kept in a brew of soporific herbs, or it will flame on its haft and fly forth raging for ma.s.sacre; and three giants from the Isle of Man with horses manes reaching to their heels. A strange and unearthly touch is introduced by a description of three naked and bleeding forms hanging by ropes from the roofthey are the daughters of the Bav, another name for the Morrigan, or war-G.o.ddess, three of awful boding, says the tale enigmatically, those are the three that are slaughtered at every time. We are probably to regard them as visionary beings, portending war and death, visible only to Ingcel. The hall with its separate chambers is full of warriors, cup-bearers, musicians playing, and jugglers doing wonderful feats; and Da Derga with his attendants dispensing food and drink. Conary himself is described as a youth; the ardour and energy of a king has he and the counsel of a sage; the mantle I saw round him is even as the mist of May-daylovelier in each hue of it than the other. His golden-hilted sword lies beside hima forearms length of it has escaped from the scabbard, s.h.i.+ning like a beam of light.

He is the mildest and gentlest and most perfect king that has come into the world, even Conary son of Eterskel ... great is the tenderness of the sleepy, simple man till he has chanced on a deed of valour. But if his fury and his courage are awakened when the champions of Erin and Alba are at him in the house, the Destruction will not be wrought so long as he is therein ... sad were the quenching of that reign.

*Champions at the House*

Ingcel and the sons of Desa then march to the attack and surround the Hostel:

Silence a while! says Conary, what is this?

Champions at the house, says Conall of the Victories.

There are warriors for them here, answers Conary.

They will be needed to-night, Conall rejoins.

One of Desas sons rushes first into the Hostel. His head is struck off and cast out of it again. Then the great struggle begins. The Hostel is set on fire, but the fire is quenched with wine or any liquids that are in it. Conary and his people sally forthhundreds are slain, and the reavers, for the moment, are routed. But Conary, who has done prodigies of fighting, is athirst and can do no more till he gets water. The reavers by advice of their wizards have cut off the river Dodder, which flowed through the Hostel, and all the liquids in the house had been spilt on the fires.