Ireland’s Immortals: Part 3

Ireland’s Immortals Chapter 5:

Vulnerability and Grace: The Finn Cycle

The main focus of Ireland’s Immortals, Part 3 (Chapter 5 in the book) is literature of the early thirteenth century. (To read about the gods of Irish Myth before this, see Ireland’s Immortals, Part I and Ireland’s Immortals, Part 2.) Whereas the works of the eleventh century were written post-Viking Wars during a period of stability, the period that followed was full of political and literary changes. By the twelfth century, Ireland experienced internal violence–and then turmoil generated from outside as the Anglo-Normans arrived in 1169 and England claimed sovereignty over the island.

Williams reminds the reader that the Anglo-Normans and their descendants never completely took over Ireland. But it did divide Ireland into two nations, two cultures, and “at least” two languages. Important to Irish literature was that the continental Church became influential and monastic orders were “far less interested in the production and preservation of vernacular literature than had been the case in the native monastic establishments … literary production shifted from the hands of the ecclesiastical elite and became the task of secular learned families (195).”

Ireland’s Immortals: Part 3, the Finn Cycle

The most famous literature of thirteenth-century Ireland was the fíanaigecht or fenian tales also known as the Finn Cycle. Their subject was the warrior-poet Finn mac Cumaill and his band of fighting men, the fíana. Williams finds these works full of  lush imagination and pageant emotion (195). The Túatha Dé Danann appear throughout the works as a supernatural, magical race. They have come back from their death in the pseudohistorical period and are the hidden immortals in sid-mounds that they once had been. Now they encounter the Christian faith and some become converts.

There really were fían-bands between the fourth and ninth centuries in Ireland. They were composed of physically mature aristocratic youths too young to inherit property. It was accepted that they would hunt and raid outside settled society for a while. (The church didn’t approve of this and labeled the members “sons of death”) (197). 

Although Finn may have been seen as a god prior to this period (like with a lot of Irish mythological characters, this point is unclear), he is a human being, one who is a combination of a Leinster poet and a warrior.

Ireland’s Immortals in the Acallam na Senórach

Williams describes the Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Elders), composed 1200-1220, as the Finn Cycle’s “palpable centre of gravity” (199). He describes this work as a novel length crossweave of a frame-tale of (the now saint) Patrick and the remains of Finn’s fíana and about two hundred embedded stories. The Túatha Dé Danann are “legion” rather than a small group of gods. They look like stunningly beautiful people, and are probably, like the fíana, about thirteen feet tall.

Patrick is close with the síd-folk and, at the prompting of angels, insists that the stories of the fíana be recorded. (This allows Christians to write these tales.) The Acallam indicates that Patrick “will soon shut the sid-mounds and seal the Túatha Dé Danann inside forever; the access to the numinous and imperishable which they had provided will henceforth belong to the church alone” (202). Meanwhile, the fíana are able to visit the síd.

The Genealogy of Ireland’s Immortals

The ‘Land of the Ever Young’ depicted by Arthur Rackham in Irish Fairy Tales (1920). Public domain.

I keep trying to avoid genealogy because we don’t have background on the many peoples in the works mentioned in Ireland’s Immortals. However, it matters in the relationship between the ancient peoples and the ancient gods. Williams notes that specific passages of the Acallam indicate that the two tribes should be balanced and that the people of the síd will “take drastic measures if mortals overstep the mark (203).” Nevertheless, the children of important mortals are sometimes fostered by the people of the síd, and the two peoples sometimes intermarry. In fact, Finn’s father’s first wife was of the Túatha Dé Danann; Finn’s mother is a granddaughter of a Túatha Dé Danann; Finn’s wife is the granddaughter of the Dadga (“the Good God”–chief of the Tuatha dé Danann).

Dagda, o bom deus, by Jordan Brito – Public Domain 

The Life of Ireland’s Immortals in the Acallam

On the Acallam, Williams concluded that the gods are so humanized “that they are represented as pagans, though we are given no insight in the Acallam as to the nature of the gods they are imagined as worshipping” (210-11).

This iteration of the gods-now-human is of creatures who live out lives of human wish fulfillment–gold, silver, music, advanced knowledge. They also have crystal chairs that reflect a “mysterious light source” (213) as well as enslaved personages. What they don’t have is a surreal atmosphere and “uncanny timeslips” (211). The síd is the source of their powers. Sometimes these powers include knowledge of the outside world and sometimes they don’t. 

The way Williams describes life in the síd as portrayed in the Acallam reminded me of cartoons I’d seen as a child: a person wandering the desert walks into a tent and inside is a boundless palace. It’s not a going up to heaven or down to hell. 

Aengus, illustration by Beatrice Elvery in Violet Russell’s Heroes of the Dawn (1914). Public domain.

Bodb the Red is the son of Dagda and replaces Óengus (now spelled Aengus) in importance. He becomes the king of the Túatha Dé Danann after they are defeated by the Sons of Míl. 

The Decline of the Túatha Dé Danann 

The Acallam is a complex text with three timelines and an array of characters. Generally, the power of the Túatha Dé Danann declines “catastrophically” and they “submit themselves to Patrick’s authority” (229). They move from exemplary figures to something like the opposite. So, importantly, human potential becomes greater than that of the Túatha Dé. Williams makes the point that the Túatha Dé are even more fallen than humanity, having no guardian angels. 

The Fosterage in the House of Two Vessels

Williams selects an important scene from “The Fosterage in the House of Two Vessels” to show this degradation. “Finnbar, the lord of Síd Meda (Knock Ma, near Tuam in Co, Galway) and elder brother of Aengus, comes to the Bruig in order to ogle its women” (238). He fixes on Eithne, who is sitting on her heel. He makes an obscure joke that may imply she has one foot crossed under her in order to sexually stimulate herself. Her face goes white, green, and red (colors that represent the three martyrdoms of the early church) and then she cries. 

After this, Eithne can’t eat the food of her people and has to be nourished by two cows from India. She lives for centuries this way. The god Manannán tells us what is going on:

“‘She is not of the people of Aengus at all, nor of our people either. For when Finnbarr gave the insult to that girl her accompanying demon (a deman comuidechta) went from her heart and an angel took its place, and that does not allow our food into her stomach, and from now on she will put no faith in magic or devilry, and therefore she drinks the milk of that cow … and it is the … Trinity in three persons which will be the god whom the maiden will worship,’ he said.” (240)

So, here a person of the síd is not a demon, but has a body and a soul, and is only assailed by a demon. When the demon is replaced by an angel, Eithne becomes fully human. In this new state, she is “blessed with hyperlexia–the gift of instinctive, voracious reading” (245). 🙂

Some Interesting Ideas and Circumstances in Irish Myths

• A useful idea for someone using old Irish myths: Erotic suffering may be redemptive in human-síd love matches. (Spiritual purification through suffering: Waiting for the loved one to be free of another match, being made a better being through the loss of the beloved, etc.)

• Though previous works included shape-shifting characters, in the Acallam, shape-shifting is a “richly elaborated theme,” a mark of a character being otherworldly (208).

• Mortals who eat gods’ food (the Feast of Goibniu) may stay very young or even become immortal.

• Humans who were fostered in the síd can easily enter it afterwards. The fíana enter quite easily. 

Fun details from the Acallam to be used in reimagining the myths:

• síd-mounds have magical devices that convert water into mead and wine (events in the síd are independent of nature)

• After Caílte mac Rónáin, (nephew of Fionn mac Cumhaill, warrior and member of the fíana) labors for the síd folk of Ilbrecc of Assaroe, they give him two gifts: a cloak that will cause anyone to fall in love with him and a fish hook that will always come up with a fish attached. (Caílte takes charge of a battle and personally kills Lir of Síd Finnachaid. With help of two others–Cas Corach and Fer Maisse–destroys three man-eating ravens, negotiate a settlement with the sons of the King of Ulster [who have been raiding síds]), and destroy three does that eat the Túatha Dé’s grass down to bare rock.)

• Lug has a magical chain or net found nowhere else in Irish tradition. It can bind 800 warriors; the first can’t be released until the last is. After it is recovered from the grave-mound of a fían-warrior, Caílte gives it to Patrick (who has the power to bind and loose, as apostles do). 

Coming Up

I think I may stop here and read some modern tellings of Finn and the fíana. I want to see what the superhuman heroes are up to while the gods are losing their position in the mythical world.