CHAPTER XXIV THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE—CUCHULAIN

The mythological tales that we have been glancing at deal with the folk who are fabled as having first colonised Erin; they treat of peoples, races, dynasties, the struggle between good and evil principles. The whole of their creations are thrown back, even by the Irish annalists themselves, into the dim cloud-land of an unplumbed past, ages before the dawn of the first Olympiad, or the birth of the wolf-suckled twins who founded Rome. There is over it all a shadowy sense of vagueness, vastness, uncertainty.

The Heroic Cycle, on the other hand, deals with the history of the Milesians themselves, the present Irish race, within a well-defined space of time, upon their own ground, and though it does not exactly fall within the historical period, yet it does not come so far short of it that it can be with any certainty rejected as pure work of imagination or poetic fiction. It is certainly the finest of the three greater saga-cycles, and the epics that belong to it are sharply drawn, numerous, clear cut, and ancient, and for the first time we seem, at least, to find ourselves upon historical ground, although a good deal of this seeming may turn out to be illusory. Yet the figures of Cuchulain, Conor mac Nessa, Naoise, and Déirdre, Mève,[Pg 294] Oilioll, and Conall Cearnach, have about them a great deal of the circumstantiality that is entirely lacking to the dim, mist-magnified, and distorted figures of the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh the Long-handed, and their fellows.

The gods come and go as in the Iliad, and according to some accounts leave their posterity behind them. Cuchulain himself, the incarnation of Irish ?ριστ?ια, is according to certain authorities the son of the god Lugh the Long-handed.[1] He himself, like another Anchises, is beloved of a goddess and descends into the Gaelic Elysium,[2] and the most important epic of the cycle is largely conditioned by an occurrence caused by the curse of a goddess, an occurrence wholly impossible and supernatural.[3] Yet these are for the most part excrescences no more affecting the conduct of the history than the actions of the gods affect the war round Troy. Events, upon the whole, are motivated upon fairly reasonable human grounds, and there is a certain air of probability about them. The characters who now make their appearance upon the scene are not long prior to, or are contemporaneous[Pg 295] with, the birth of Christ; and the wars of the Tuatha De Danann, Nemedians, and Fomorians, are left some seventeen hundred years behind.

This cycle, which I have called the "Heroic" or "Red Branch," might also be named the "Ultonian," because it deals chiefly with the heroes of the northern province. One saga relates the birth of Conor mac Nessa. His mother was Ness and his father was Fachtna Fathach, king of Ulster, but according to what is probably the oldest account, his father was Cathba the Druid. This saga relates how, through the stratagem of his mother Ness, Conor slipped into the kingship of Ulster, displacing Fergus mac Róigh [Roy], the former king, who is here represented as a good-natured giant, but who appears human enough in the other sagas.[4] Conor's palace is described with its three buildings; that of the Red Branch, where were kept the heads and arms of vanquished enemies; that of the Royal Branch, where the kings lodged; and that of the Speckled House, where were laid up the shields and spears and swords of the warriors of Ulster. It was called the Speckled or Variegated House from the gold and silver of the shields, and gleaming of the spears, and shining of the goblets, and all arms were kept in it, in order that at the banquet when quarrels arose the warriors might not have wherewith to slay each other.

Conor's palace at Emania contained, according to the Book of Leinster, one hundred and fifty rooms, each large enough for three couples to sleep in, constructed of red oak, and bordered with copper. Conor's own chamber was decorated with bronze and silver, and ornamented with golden birds, in whose eyes were precious stones, and was large enough for thirty[Pg 296] warriors to drink together in it. Above the king's head hung his silver wand with three golden apples, and when he shook it silence reigned throughout the palace, so that even the fall of a pin might be heard. A large vat, always full of good drink, stood ever on the palace floor.

Another story tells of Cuchulain's mysterious parentage. His mother was a sister of King Conor; consequently he was the king's nephew.

Another again relates the wooing of Cuchulain, and how he won Emer for his wife.

Another is called Cuchulain's "Up-bringing," or teaching, part of which, however, is found in the piece called the "Wooing of Emer." This saga relates how he, with two other of the Ultonians, went abroad to Alba to perfect their warlike accomplishments, and how they placed themselves under the tuition of different female-warriors,[5] who taught them various and extraordinary feats of arms. He traverses the plain of Misfortune by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him by an unknown friend, and reaches the great female instructress Scathach, whose daughter falls in love with him.

An admirable example occurs to me here, of showing in the concrete that which I have elsewhere laid stress upon, namely, the great elaboration which in many instances we find in the modern versions of sagas, compared with the antique vellum texts. It does not at all follow that because a story is written down with brevity in ancient Irish, it was also told with brevity. The oldest form of the saga of Cuchulain's "Wooing of Emer" contains traces of a pre-Danish or seventh-century text, but the condensed and shortened relation of the saga found in the oldest manuscript of it, is almost certainly not the form in which the bards and ollavs related it. On the contrary, I believe that the stories now epitomised in ancient vellum texts were even then told, though not written down,[Pg 297] at full length, and with many flourishes by the bards and professed story-tellers, and that the skeletons merely, or as Keating calls it, the "bones of the history,"[6] were in most instances all that was committed to the rare and expensive parchments. It is more than likely that the longer modern paper redactions, though some of the ancient pagan traits, especially those most incomprehensible to the moderns, may be missing, yet represent more nearly the manner of the original bardic telling, than the abridgments of twelfth or thirteenth-century vellums.

In this case the ancient recension,[7] founded on a pre-Danish text, merely mentions that Scathach's house, at which Cuchulain arrives, after leaving the plain of Misfortune,

    "was built upon a rock of appalling height. Cuchulain followed the road pointed out to him. He reached the castle of Scathach. He knocked at the door with the handle of his spear and entered. Uathach, the daughter of Scathach, meets him. She looked at him, but she spoke not, so much did the hero's beauty make her love him. She went to her mother and told her of the beauty of the man who had newly come. 'That man has pleased you,' said her mother. 'He shall come to my couch,' answered the girl, 'and I shall sleep at his side this night.' 'Thy intention displeases me not,' said her mother."

One can see at a glance how bald and brief is all this, because it is a précis, and vellum was scarce. I venture to say that no bard ever told it in this way. The scribes who first committed this to parchment, say in the seventh or eighth century, probably wrote down only the leading incidents as they remembered them. They may not have been themselves either bards, ollavs, or story-tellers. It is chiefly in the later centuries, after the introduction of paper, when the economising of space ceased to be a matter of importance, that we find our sagas told with all the redundancy of description, epithet, and incident with which I suspect the very earliest bards embellished all those sagas of which we have now only little more[Pg 298] than the skeletons. Compare, for instance, the ancient version which I have just given, with the longer modern versions which have come down to us in several paper manuscripts, of which I here use one in my own possession, copied about the beginning of the century by a scribe named O'Mahon, upon one of the islands on the Shannon.

In the first place this version tells us that on his arrival at Scathach's mansion he finds a number of her scholars and other warriors engaged in hurling outside the door of her fortress. He joins in the game and defeats them—this is a true folk-lore introduction. He finds there Naoise, Ardan, and Ainnlè, the three sons of Usnach, celebrated in perhaps the most touching saga of this whole cycle, and another son of Erin with them. This is a literary touch, by one who knew his literature.[8] Learning that he is come from Erin, they ask news of their native country, and salute him with kisses. They then bring him to the Bridge of the Cliffs, and show him what their work is during the first year, which was learning to pass this bridge.

    "Wonderful," says the saga, "was the sight that bridge afforded when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as narrow as the hair of one's head, and the second time it shortened until it became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew slippery until it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the fourth time it rose up on high against you until it was as tall as the mast of a ship."

All the warriors and people on the lawn came down to see Cuchulain attempting to cross this bridge. In the meantime Scathach's grianán or sunny house is described: "It had seven great doors, and seven great windows between every two doors of them, and thrice fifty couches between every two windows of them, and thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls, in scarlet cloaks, and in beautiful and blue attire, attending and waiting upon Scathach."

[Pg 299]

Then Scathach's lovely daughter, looking from the windows of the grianán, perceives the stranger attempting the feat of the bridge, and she falls in love with him upon the spot. Her emotions are thus described: "Her face and colour constantly changed, so that now she would be as white as a little white flowret, and again she would become scarlet," and in the work she was embroidering she put the gold thread where the silver thread should be, and the silver thread into the place where the gold thread should go; and when her mother notices it, she excuses herself by saying beautifully, "I would greatly grieve should he not return alive to his own people, in whatever part of the world they may be, for I know that there is some one to whom it would be anguish to know that he is thus."

This refined reflection of the girl we may with certainty ascribe to the growth of modern sentiment, and it is extremely instructive to compare it with the ancient, and no doubt really pagan version; but I strongly suspect that the bridge over the cliffs is no modern embellishment at all, but part of the original saga, though omitted from the pre-Norse text which only tells us that Scathach's house was on the top of a rock of appalling height.

It was during this sojourn of Cuchulain in foreign lands that he overcame the heroine Aoife,[9] and forced her into a marriage with himself. He returned home afterwards, having left instructions with her to keep the child she should bear him, if it were a daughter, "for with every mother goes the daughter," but if it were a son she was to rear him until he should be able to perform certain hero-feats, and until his finger should be large enough to fill a ring which Cuchulain left with her for him. Then she was to send him into Erin, and bid him tell no man who he was; also he desired[Pg 300] her not to teach him the feat of the Gae-Bulg, "but, however," says the saga, "it was ill that command turned out, for it was of that it came to pass that Conlaoch [the son] fell by Cuchulain."[10]

I know of no prose saga of the touching story of the death of this son, slain by his own father, except the résumé given of it by Keating,[11] but there exists a poem or épopée upon the subject which was always a great favourite with the Irish scribes, and of which numerous but not ancient copies exist. This is the Irish Sohrab and Rustum, the Celtic Hildebrand and Hadubrand. The son comes into Ireland, but in consequence of his mother's command, refuses to tell his name. This is looked upon as indicating hostility, and many of the Ultonians fight with him, but he overcomes them all, even the great Conall Cearnach. Conor in despair sends for Cuchulain, who with difficulty slays him by the feat of the Gae-Bolg, and then finds out when too late that the dying champion is his own son. So familiar to the modern Irish scribes was this piece that in my copy, in the last verse, which ends with Cuchulain's lament over his son—

"I am the bark (buffeted) from wave to wave,
I am the ship after the losing of its rudder,
[Pg 301]I am the apple upon the top of the tree
That little thought of its falling."[12]

instead of the text of the third line stands a rough picture of a tree with a large apple on the top!

Another saga[13] tells of Cuchulain's geasa [gassa] or restrictions. It was geis or tabu to him to narrate his genealogy to one champion, as it was also to his son Conlaoch, to refuse combat to any one man, to look upon the exposed bosom of a woman, to come into a company without a second invitation, to accept the hospitality of virgins, to boast to a woman, to let the sun rise before him in Emania, he must when there rise before it, etc. There is in this saga a graphic description of the pagan king's retinue journeying with him to be fed in the house of a retainer.

    "All the Ultonian nobles set out; a great train of provincials, sons of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair ringleted ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and splendid, fully-developed women were there. Satirists and scholars were there, and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of Ulster. There came also with them from Emania historians, judges, horse-riders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback. They all went by the same way, behind the king."[14]

Dismissing Cuchulain for the present, we pass on now to another personality of the Red Branch saga—the Lady Déirdre.
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[1] See "Compert Conculaind," by Windisch in "Irische Texte," t. i. p. 134, and Jubainville's "Epopée Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.

[2] See the story of Cuchulain's sick-bed, translated by O'Curry in the first volume of the "Atlantis," and by Mr. O'Looney in Sir J. Gilbert's "Facsimiles of the National MSS. of Ireland," and by Windisch in "Irische Texte," vol. i., pp. 195-234, and by M. de Jubainville in his "Epopée Celtique," p. 174, and lastly, Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii., p. 38.

[3] This is the periodic curse which overtook the Ulstermen at certain periods, rendering them feeble as a woman in child-bed, in consequence of the malediction of the goddess Macha, who was, just before the birth of her children, inhumanly obliged by the Ultonians to run against the king's horses. The only people of the northern province free from this curse were the children born before the curse was uttered, the women, and the hero Cuchulain. It transmitted itself from father to son for nine generations, and is said to have lasted five nights and four days, or four nights and five days. But one would think from the Táin Bo Chuailgne that it must have lasted much longer. For this curse see Jubainville's "Epopée Celtique," p. 320. I was, not long ago, told a story by a peasant in the county Galway not unlike it, only it was related of the mother of the celebrated boxer Donnelly.

[4] Except in one place in the Táin Bo Chuailgne, where his sword is spoken of, which was like a thread in his hand, but which when he smote with it extended itself to the size of a rainbow, with three blows of which upon the ground he raised three hills. The description of Fergus in the Conor story preserved in the Book of Leinster, is simply and frankly that of a giant many times the size of an ordinary man.

[5] The female warrior and war-teacher was not uncommon among the Celts, as the examples of Boadicea and of Mève of Connacht show.

[6] "Cnámha an tseanchusa."

[7] Rawlinson, B. 512.

[8] For Déirdre in her lament over the three does call them "three pupils of Scathach."

[9] Pronounced "Eef?." The triphthong aoi has always the sound of ee in English. The stepmother of the Children of Lir was also called Aoife.

[10] I quote this from my paper version. The oldest text only says that "Cuchulain told her that she should bear him a son, and that upon a certain day in seven years' time that son should go to him; he told her what name she should give him, and then he went away."

[11] P. 279 of John O'Mahony's edition, translated also by M. de Jubainville in his "Epopée Celtique," who comparing the Irish story with its Germanic counterpart expresses himself strongly on their relative merits: "Tout est puissant, logique, primitif, dans la pièce irlandaise; sa concordance avec la piece persanne atteste une haute antiquité. Elle peut remonter aux époques celtiques les plus anciennes, et avoir été du nombre des carmina chantés par les Gaulois à la bataille de Clusium en 295 av. J.-C. Le poème allemand dont on a une copie du huitième siècle est une imitation inintelligente et affaiblie du chant celtique qui a d? retentir sur les rives du Danube et du Mein mille ans plus t?t, et dont la rédaction germanique est l'?uvre de quelque na?f Macpherson, prédécesseur honnêtement inhabile de celui du dix-huitième siècle."

[12] "Is mé an barc o thuinn go tuinn,
Is mé an long iar ndul d'á stiúr.
Is mé an t-ubhall i mbárr an chroinn
Is beag do shaoil a thuitim."

See Miss Brooke's "Reliques of Ancient Irish Poetry," 2nd ed. p. 393. See also Kuno Meyer's note at p. xv of his edition of Cath Finntragha, in which he bears further evidence to the antiquity and persistence of this story.

[13] See the Book of Leinster, 107-111, a MS. copied about the year 1150.

[14] Thus translated by my late lamented friend and accomplished scholar Father James Keegan of St. Louis.