Celtic Myth in the 21st Century

The Gods and their Stories in a Global Perspective

University of Wales Press

Contents

GOD AND GODS IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY: TÍRECHÁN ON ST PATRICK AND KING LÓEGAIRE'S DAUGHTERS

Elizabeth Gray

Stories about the gods of pagan Ireland lie barely below the surface of Tírechán's account of the meeting between Patrick and two daughters of King Lóegaire on the slopes of Cruachan. Composed in the second half of the seventh century, Tírechán's description of St Patrick's missionary travels establishing churches that will form his patrimony reflects contemporary claims by Armagh and by leading branches of the Uí Néill that placed much of Ireland under the actual or aspirational control of an intertwined spiritual and secular aristocracy. The passages under consideration here include an extended anecdote describing the conversion of the sisters, fair-haired Ethne and red-haired Fedelm, and an earlier reference to efforts by the girls' druid foster fathers to keep Patrick away from their charges.

To prevent Patrick from entering Mag Aí, lest he influence the girls to 'make the ways of the holy man their own', the girls' druid foster fathers had generated darkness and fog that took Patrick and his bishops three days of fasting and prayer to disperse. Resuming his missionary journey, Patrick reaches the well of Clebach before sunrise, where he and his companions are met by the king's daughters, arriving there to wash. Ethne and Fedelm do not know 'whence they were or of what shape or from what people or from what region'. The sisters' first thought, Tírechán tells us, is that Patrick and his companions are men of the síd (viros side), 'men of the otherworld', or alternatively, in Latin, 'of the earthly gods' (aut deorum terrenorum). The girls also consider a third possibility, that what they see is an 'apparition' (fantassiam).

Aware that the strangers may be deities, the girls address Patrick, their first words seeking literally to place him: 'Whence are you and whence have you come?' To know who and what the strangers are, the sisters ask a double question that offers Patrick the opportunity to identify his country and people of origin as well as the starting point for his journey to Cruachan. Ethne and Fedelm are not simply curious. They need information to know how they should respond to the strangers, whatever they might be. Personal identity and legal standing in the early Irish context depended upon an individual's territorial origin and family affiliation. Status influenced the style and quality of clothing as well as hairdressing and personal ornaments – Patrick and his bishops would be wearing the unfamiliar Christian tonsure, and perhaps unfamiliar garments. To recognise a stranger's shape is both to see the physical person clearly and to understand the significance of what one sees. Identity in these terms, once established, determines appropriate interpersonal behaviour.

Patrick's failure to reply to the sisters' questions is significant for the tale's fundamental strategic contrast between pagan and Christian perspectives. As narrator, Tírechán indicates what his pagan characters – the two princesses and their druid foster fathers – are thinking, while Patrick is known solely through his words and deeds. While the girls wonder silently about Patrick's possible supernatural status, Patrick, directing attention away from whatever the girls may suppose, proclaims his 'true God' as the appropriate object of their devotion. In the parallel version of this encounter in the later Vita Tripartita, the girls ask Patrick directly whether he and his company are from the síd, from the gods. He does not reply there either.

For these two princesses, fostered by druids, the realm of the gods is not unfamiliar territory. Ethne's rapid-fire questions to Patrick about his God document her fifth-century beliefs about the deities she knows – as imagined by Tírechán in the seventh century.

The first maiden said: 'Who is God and where is God and whose God is he and where is his dwelling-place? Has your God sons and daughters, gold and silver? Is he ever-living, is he beautiful, have many fostered his son, are his daughters dear and beautiful in the eyes of the men of the earth? Is he in the sky or in the earth or in the water, in rivers, in mountains, in valleys? Give us an account of him; how shall he be seen, how is he loved, how is he found, is he found in youth, in old age?'

Irish society was still in the process of integrating elements of its cultural inheritance into a new Christian order. Druids, for example, retained legal status and were entitled to sick maintenance equal to that of a bóaire, the free landholder whom Fergus Kelly compares to the twentieth-century Irish 'strong farmer', a person of wealth and standing in his community, although well below the rank imagined by Tírechán, whose fifth-century druids serve as advisers of kings and fosterers for royal children.

What can we learn from Patrick's dialogue with Lóegaire's daughters about Tírechán's imagined pre-Christian world of belief? First, it is polytheistic and preliterate. For the sisters, there are many gods, not one, and Ethne's questions reflect characteristics of deities she knows from oral tradition. Before the arrival of Christian literacy, to know about the gods was necessarily to have heard stories about them: someone must have spoken about them, detailed their genealogies and family histories, identified them as supernatural patrons of particular peoples, and associated them with specific places in ways that mapped the world of the gods on to the Irish landscape.

We know from the girls' initial reaction to Patrick and his companions that gods may appear in human form and turn up unexpectedly at dawn. One by one, Ethne's queries reveal further 'default assumptions' about the nature of the gods she knows. When she asks Patrick where God is and how he shall be seen, she reflects her understanding that gods can be located and perceived through deliberate but unspecified human actions. In asking the location of God's dwelling-place, she indicates that specific sites can be identified as the abode of deities. That individuals or peoples claim certain gods as their own particular gods is implied by her question 'whose God is he?'

Among themselves the gods' relationships are intimate and familial, and like mortal parents they are concerned about the upbringing of their sons and daughters. They foster their many children in other households, a practice that in early Irish society created networks of personal and familial ties and produced strong emotional and contractual bonds among the families in question. The gods have great wealth in precious metals, both silver and gold. Young or old in appearance, they may be both beautiful and immortal.

Ethne expects a god's son to have many fosterers, although she does not indicate whether they might include human families. That possibility appears in later literature: one version of the birth tale of Cú Chulainn, identified as a son of the god Lug, features competition among leading Ulster nobles to serve as Cú Chulainn's foster parents that results in a multitude of fosterers, a matter of boasting for him when he woos his wife Emer. As Edel Bhreathnach points out, 'Royal dynasties depended on fosterage to build alliances, and in many cases multiple fosterages of royal families were effective in creating networks of alliances.' Such advantages were evidently not lost on Ethne's gods, their practice of multiple fosterage underscoring their similarity to mortal Irish aristocrats.

Ethne wonders aloud whether the daughters of Patrick's God are dear and beautiful in the eyes of men, and a little later asks in what way Patrick's God is to be loved. Her first question might imply the existence of seventh-century vernacular tales addressing relationships between mortal men and supernatural women. In different ways both questions may foreshadow the girls' ready acceptance of Patrick's offer of marriage to the divine son of his 'true God'.

Within the framework of Tírechán's narrative, the phrasing of Ethne's questions both purports to reflect pagan belief and dovetails neatly with the dominant structure of the Christian message set forth in Patrick's responses. The point-by-point juxtaposition of pagan and Christian perspectives provides a brief exposition of Christian belief that leads directly to the princesses' conversion. At the same time, the structure of Tírechán's narrative implicitly claims accuracy for the girls' knowledge of pre-Christian religious traditions as well as the importance of what they know.

Curious about where Patrick's God dwells, Ethne thinks primarily in terms of earthly terrain and terrestrial scale: her gods may be found in sky or earth or water, rivers, mountains and valleys. In presenting these surmises, Tírechán may have had in mind the numerous sites bearing síd place names, such as Síd in Broga (Newgrange) and Midir's síd of Brí Léith (Ardagh, Co. Longford). Hogan's Onomasticon includes well over one hundred síd sites, and he adds 'many are the Sheeaun tls. [that is, sídán townlands]', illustrating the high frequency of these intensely localised supernatural places. Irish rivers are also associated with deities, typically feminine. Tírechán knew – and crossed – the Shannon as Bandea, Irish for 'Goddess'.

Patrick's responses to Ethne and Fedelm reveal how far the nature and actions of his God transcend those of the deities of pagan Ireland. God's dwelling reaches far beyond earth and sky to encompass the entire universe, which he not only inhabits but has created and continues to sustain. Patrick emphasises God's role in bringing into being all that exists. His God is present throughout the universe, including the reaches of interstellar space. He makes all things live.

Patrick goes on to describe his triune God in terms that constitute a basic Christian creed. He explains that the coeternal Son of his God is similar to his Father, neither being older or younger, with the Holy Spirit breathing in them, and the three not being separate. Patrick then proposes a royal marriage: 'now I wish to join you to the heavenly king since you are daughters of an earthly king, if you are willing to believe'. The Latin word coniungere, translated 'join', is the customary word for 'marry', and the girls 'as with one voice and with one heart' accept the offer. As Ethne has already indicated, in whatever way a god is seen or found, love is the appropriate response.

As young unmarried Irish women of high rank, Ethne and Fedelm would expect to be bestowed in marriage, not to select husbands themselves. Their ready acceptance of Patrick's proposal without consulting parents or fosterers is legally transgressive, but the offer might well seem to them one no father or family would refuse. Given Patrick's account of his 'heavenly king', it might well seem to Ethne and Fedelm that there could be no nobler husband for them both, no more fortunate marriage alliance for their people, and they embrace sisterly polygamy in light of the transcendent royal status of their divine spouse.

Patrick's proposal is expressed plainly, without elaboration or nuance, and at this point in the narrative the sisters' understanding and acceptance are literal, not figurative. They are not pursuing Christian virginity. Viewing the proposed marriage as marriage in the usual sense, Ethne and Fedelm ask 'Teach us with all diligence how we can believe in the heavenly king, so that we may see him face to face. Tell us, and we will do as you say.'

In the dialogue that follows, what the sisters learn of their new faith is left largely to the reader to infer. When Patrick, for example, begins the baptismal catechism by asking whether the girls believe that 'through baptism you cast off the sin of your father and mother', the text provides no frame of reference that would identify Adam and Eve or describe their original sin.

In comparison with the Order of Baptism in the seventh- or early eighth-century Bobbio Missal, Tírechán's treatment of Patrick's catechism and the sisters' responses is abbreviated. Patrick's account of his God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for example, which functions as the credal statement supporting the girls' baptismal commitment, makes no reference to Christ's birth, passion, descent into hell, resurrection from the dead, and coming to judge both living and dead on the day of judgement. Exorcism, as an element of the baptismal rite, occurs in the Bobbio version both as a general exorcism and as a specific requirement that the candidate renounce Satan and his works. Tírechán's baptismal catechism contains no exorcism, and does not mention Satan.

Patrick proceeds to ask Ethne and Fedelm, 'Do you believe in penance after sin?' 'Do you believe in life after death?' 'Do you believe in the resurrection on the day of judgement?' concluding with 'Do you believe in the unity of the church?' The Bobbio Missal brings these topics together in a single question, asking the baptismal candidate to affirm belief in the Holy Catholic Church (with no added emphasis on unity), as well as the communion of the saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body and life after death.

Once baptised, Ethne and Fedelm demand to see their bridegroom. Learning from Patrick that they must leave their present life to do so, they approach the transition in practical terms, explicitly choosing death after receiving the sacrament in order to meet their new spouse face to face. The girls' voluntary death is the crux of the tale, challenging the reader to consider the meaning of death and the nature of continuing life. Throughout the tale, by juxtaposing the perspectives of pagan and Christian characters, Tírechán contrasts aspects of their respective belief systems, raising questions of meaning and value inherent in each system.

From a Christian perspective, the death of Lóegaire's daughters marks their entry into larger life, their journey to paradise. For their pagan friends and relatives, however, the girls are simply dead. They will never fulfil the promise of their lives as future queens and mothers of princes, the social roles laid out for them at birth. Patrick has not only usurped their father's right to select husbands for Ethne and Fedelm, but also figures paradoxically as supernatural abductor and psychopomp. The sisters are lost to their kinfolk as surely as the heroines (or victims) of later otherworld abduction tales, in which young women are taken into síd dwellings, sometimes with the indication that their conscious spirit has been separated from the body, with a corpse (or simulacrum) left behind to be mourned.

Their uncomprehending family and friends lament them according to pagan custom, building a grave mound (Irish ferta) to mark their burial site. Discussing continuity and change in relation to pre-Christian Irish burial customs, Bhreathnach describes the ongoing social role of the deceased:

At another level, the dead are often active ancestors who have their own cults and who become important in a genealogical tradition. This tendency was very prevalent in medieval Ireland, where genealogies were powerful tools for legitimizing dynastic or ecclesiastical power, and for the ownership of land. Like genealogies, certain grave mounds, fertae, 'ancestral graves', were used as boundary and territorial makers.

Making reference to Tírechán's account, Bhreathnach points out that such pagan burial sites, which were sometimes employed in the formal legal process of establishing a claim to land, were often appropriated as focal points for a cult of relics over which a church was built. The king's daughters are interred inside the ancient royal ceremonial complex of Rathcroghan. Christian or pagan, Ethne and Fedelm remain as guardians of a supernatural place linked to legitimate authority over a land and its boundaries. Eventually their burial site does become the locus of a new Patrician church: 'And the ferta was made over to Patrick with the bones of the holy virgins, and to his heirs after him for ever, and he made an earthen church in that place.'