MYTHOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY

Pre-Christian Celtic mythology, as we understand it, possesses its own unique flavour in a number of ways. One of these is the way in which it does not seem to draw any firm lines between this world and the Otherworld but instead regards the natural and the supernatural as extensions of each other.

In this way, the mythological realm encountered in, for example, the Irish myths is recognizably Ireland, and the places referred to in these myths are places that people know and inhabit or frequent. A prominent example of this kind of mythological attitude to history is the Dindshenchas, which consists of a whole range of legends and associations connected to rivers, hills, lakes and other places around Ireland, explaining these places as having been created, formed or established by various deities or ancient heroes. Having said that, the term “mythological” is somewhat tricky to work with in relation to Celtic tradition as it seems that this tradition preserves very little in the way of a cosmology or a myth of creation as such, focusing instead on the pseudo-historical narratives relating to the “earliest” period of Irish history as well as on legendary heroes who are, however, human and not divine. That is not to say that a cosmology did human, in such a way that the Tiiatha De Danann inhabit the subterranean part of Ireland, while the surface is ruled by the Sons of Mil. The doorway between these two worlds is the sidh, mounds or hills in the landscape, and later folk tradition contains much material pertaining to the people of the sidh, sometimes referred to as “fairies” in English but always with the added understanding that these are not flittering, fluttering little Tinker Bell fairies, but recollections of a divine race of beings strongly attached to the land itself.

The nature of the Otherworld is ambivalent; descriptions of it vary to such an extent that they seem at times to be incompatible with each other. Some accounts describe paradise-like lands untouched by death and decay, with abundant supplies of all conceivable material luxuries as well as mental stimuli. Other accounts describe dark and ferociously hostile environments that are neither welcoming nor desirable as places for human habitation. But this is not to be regarded as an inconsistency, because the Otherworld transcends the world that living human beings know in every possible way. It is not subject to the limitations of time and what seems like a day there may be a hundred years here, or vice versa; neither is it subject to the limitations of space, and what appears like a small hill in the landscape of this world may be a sidh that on the inside contains vast tracts of land. Some narratives portray the Otherworld as distant islands across the sea, others depict it as houses or hostels that mysteriously appear and disappear around the countryside of Ireland and Wales; sometimes it is found below the waves of the sea, can be accessed through a cave or is located below the ground, and it seems to be contextually “other” at all times. The person who is granted access to this strange realm is often welcomed into some eternally joyful world, whereas the person who tries to force his or her way into the Otherworld will be met with hostility and force, so that the experience of what the Otherworld is like becomes almost a reflection of the mental state of the visitor. If a person is open to it, it will open itself to that person, but a person who approaches it with the wrong ideas in mind will have a hard time getting in. The Otherworld, thus, is both one and many (as John McKinnell [1994: 138] has said of Norse mythological traditions); conceptions of it seem to be infinite in number, yet all of these are to some extent the same; it is here, in the same place as we are, but it is simultaneously in a different dimension.

The feeling created by this attitude is that there was “a time when”, that history has its roots in a period when divine persons literally lived in the same landscape as is now inhabited by human beings. It seems to create a very close bond between people and their homeland, which is evident also in the multitude of goddesses connected to the land, to rivers and to landscape features of Ireland, and these goddesses are important figures in the tradition. They do not appear to be part of the pantheon, as it were; they are neither of the Tiiatha De Danann nor of the Fomoire nor of any other clan of divine beings. Rather, they seem to be personifications of the land of Ireland itself. Each geographical area seemingly has its own mother goddess or ancestress figure connected to that specific tract of named after the birth of her twins (the word emain sometimes being glossed as “twins”).

It is evident that Macha is strongly connected to a particular geographical area in this world, namely Ulster, while she herself is clearly otherworldly. As a sovereign, she defends her land fiercely and is able to grant prosperity to its human inhabitants, but when forced to act against her will, as she is in the horse race, she thoroughly curses the men of her own district. Her connection to horses is evident also in that it is from her that Cu Chulainn, the greatest hero of the Ulstermen, receives his favourite horse, Liath Macha (the Grey of Macha), and in this aspect she is linked to the Welsh Rhiannon and the Gaulish Epona, the latter of whom is mentioned in several continental inscriptions. We know of these stories and the many different associations of Macha, but what was involved in the worship of her as a pre-Christian goddess is difficult to say. The Epona inscriptions and Macha’s prominence in the literary sources suggest that there was a cult about which little is now known, as is also the case for many other pre-Christian Celtic characters.

Whereas female deities are often connected to the topography, it is equally characteristic of Celtic religion that the male deities are frequently connected predominantly to the people and their history (Sjoestedt [1949] 2000: 24). This apparent division between a male principle relating to the tribe and a female principle relating to the locality is reminiscent of a culture-nature division.

In ways similar to the goddesses, the gods seem to be types - manifestations of similar ideas held by culturally related tribes - rather than functionally differentiated figures, which together constitute a pantheon. Although differentiation is also found, the Celts on the whole seem to have favoured rather generalized gods who embody more or less every kind of supernatural assistance that the tribe might need: “General and complete efficiency is the character of all the Celtic gods, and we see them fighting or giving help and counsel, according to the needs of their people” (Sjoestedt [1949] 2000: 22). That is, Celtic gods typically combine many different aspects in one figure, who is then regarded as being perfect in every way, fully proficient in all skills at the same time. The prime example of this is Lug Samhildanach whose entry among the Tuatha De Danann is described in Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Mag Tuired). When he approaches Tara, the symbolic and sacred centre of Ireland, the doorkeeper denies him access until he proves that he is more skilled than anyone else in some particular craft, after which Lug proceeds to list a whole catalogue of arts that he masters. Each time the doorkeeper objects that they already have a man who is the best in that skill, but Lug is eventually granted access when he asks whether the Tuatha De Danann also have a man who alone masters all of the arts. They do not, and so Lug is admitted. It is his multi-faceted nature that is so distinctive.

Another clear example of this idea is the Dagda. While the Dagda and Lug fulfil essentially the same functional role as father, helper, provider and counsellor of their people, they also provide quite sharp contrasts to each other in certain ways, which Marie-Louise Sjoestedt interprets as a historical development with the Dagda representing an older conception and Lug a later one. Both deities bear by-names that point out their functional similarity and simultaneously the very different conceptions of that function represented by them: “The Dagda is the Ruad Ro-fh essa, the ’Lord of Great Knowledge’, knowledge one and undifferentiated; the young Lug is the Samhildanach, possessed of many skills, expert in various specialities into which the unity of primitive culture is separated with the advance of technical ingenuity” (Sjoestedt [1949] 2000: 44-5).

Goddesses of the land and gods of the tribe are not the only important mythological figures portrayed in the Irish literary sources, but they do seem to be the most common types, and the blending together of legend, myth and history can make it hard to distinguish clearly between legendary heroes and ancient deities, as is sometimes the case with the Irish-Scottish figure of Fionn MacCumhail and also with Welsh Taliesin and Arthur.

Welsh tradition is even more impenetrable in terms of distinguishing between what is mythology, what is legend and what is pseudo-history. Pedeir Ceinc y Mabinogi (The Four Branches of the Mabinogi), which are the tales of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan and Math, form the central work, with eight other tales commonly included in modern editions of the Mabinogi.

Again, there is little information about religious ideologies and activities to be obtained from scrutinizing the Mabinogi, but the collection does contain intriguing details potentially pertaining to ancient cosmological ideas. In particular, the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi, the story called Math vab Mathonwy (Math, son of Mathonwy), is interesting in this respect, as has been argued by Lyle (1989, 2006) in her analyses of what she refers to as the “deep structures” of the narrative. The Fourth Branch centres on the character of Lieu Llawgyffes (who is cognate with the Irish Lug Samhildanach; the names of these two figures have the same meaning), the peculiar circumstances of his birth and his eventual takeover as leader or king of Gwynedd. In so far as she is able to locate a number of narratives from comparative Indo-European traditions that correspond rather closely to the Welsh tale of Lieu, Lyle’s research highlights the fact that even late Celtic traditions contain some extremely archaic features.

The fact that a number of very archaic features, like those discussed by Lyle as well as Rees and Rees (1961), are found in sources for Celtic mythology and religion underlines the strength of the oral tradition, which was favoured by the Celtic peoples. When narrative material from fourteenth-century CE Wales displays significant similarities to Greek material from eighth-century BCE Greece, such as Hesiod’s Theogony (Lyle 2006: 61-6), this is an indication that the conservative nature of Celtic oral tradition ought to be taken seriously. However, one problem with the Irish and Welsh material is that it is nearly impossible to work out which features are truly archaic and which are very recent without adopting a comparative approach that will allow similarities and differences to stand out. Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that the narrative material, conservative though it may be, is hardly undiluted and that the stories preserved rarely tell us much about the religious activities that may once have accompanied them.