The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 25

'Who is it that fares before us?' asked Conaire. 'It was a taboo of mine for those Three to go before me--the three Reds to the house of Red. Who will follow them and tell them to come towards me in my track?' 'I will follow them,' says Le fri flaith, Conaire's son. 'He goes after them, las.h.i.+ng his horse, and overtook them not. There was the length of a spearcast between them: but they did not gain upon him and he did not gain upon them.' All attempts to come up with the red hors.e.m.e.n failed.

But at last, before they disappeared, one of the Three said to the king's son riding so furiously behind them, 'Lo, my son, great the news.

Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach (?) from the elfmounds. Though we are alive 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 in hours after sundown. Lo, my son!' Then they disappear. When Conaire and his followers heard the message, fear fell upon them, and the king said: 'All my taboos have seized me to-night, since those Three [Reds] [are the] banished folks (?).' In this pa.s.sage we behold three hors.e.m.e.n of the _Sidhe_ banished from their elfmound because guilty of falsehood.

Visible for a time, they precede the king and so violate one of his taboos; and then delivering their fearful prophecy they vanish. These three of the Tuatha De Danann, majestic and powerful and weird in their mystic red, are like the warriors of the 'gentry' seen by contemporary seers in West Ireland. Though dead, that is in an invisible world like the dead, yet they are living. It seems that in all three of the textual examples already cited, the scribe has emphasized a different element in the unique nature of the Tuatha De Danann. In the _Colloquy_ it is their eternal youth and beauty, in the _Echtra Nerai_ it is their supremacy over ghosts and demons on _Samain_ and their power to steal mortals away at such a time, and in this last their respect for honesty. And in each case their portrayal corresponds to that of the 'gentry' and _Sidhe_ by modern Irishmen; so that the old Fairy-Faith and the new combine to prove the People of the G.o.d whose mother was Dana to have been and to be a race of beings who are like mortals, but not mortals, who to the objective world are as though dead, yet to the subjective world are fully living and conscious.

O'Curry says:--'The term (_sidh_, p.r.o.n. _shee_), as far as we know it, is always applied in old writings to the palaces, courts, halls, or residences of those beings which in ancient Gaedhelic mythology held the place which ghosts, phantoms, and fairies hold in the superst.i.tions of the present day.'[230] In modern Irish tradition, 'the People of the _Sidhe_,' or simply the _Sidhe_, refer to the beings themselves rather than to their places of habitation. Partly perhaps on account of this popular opinion that the _Sidhe_ are a subterranean race, they are sometimes described as G.o.ds of the earth or _dei terreni_, as in the _Book of Armagh_; and since it was believed that they, like the modern fairies, control the ripening of crops and the milk-giving of cows, the ancient Irish rendered to them regular wors.h.i.+p and sacrifice, just as the Irish of to-day do by setting out food at night for the fairy-folk to eat.

Thus after their conquest, these _Sidhe_ or Tuatha De Danann in retaliation, and perhaps to show their power as agricultural G.o.ds, destroyed the wheat and milk of their conquerors, the Sons of Mil, as fairies to-day can do; and the Sons of Mil were constrained to make a treaty with their supreme king, Dagda, who, in _Coir Anmann_ (-- 150), is himself called an earth-G.o.d. Then when the treaty was made the Sons of Mil were once more able to gather wheat in their fields and to drink the milk of their cows;[231] and we can suppose that ever since that time their descendants, who are the people of Ireland, remembering that treaty, have continued to reverence the People of the G.o.ddess Dana by pouring libations of milk to them and by making them offerings of the fruits of the earth.

THE PALACES OF THE _SIDHE_

The marvellous palaces to which the Tuatha De Danann retired when conquered by the race of Mil were hidden in the depths of the earth, in hills, or under ridges more or less elevated.[232] At the time of their conquest, Dagda their high king made a distribution of all such palaces in his kingdom. He gave one _sid_ to Lug, son of Ethne, another to Ogme; and for himself retained two--one called _Brug na Boinne_, or Castle of the Boyne, because it was situated on or near the River Boyne near Tara, and the other called _Sid_ or _Brug Maic ind Oc_, which means Enchanted Palace or Castle of the Son of the Young. And this Mac ind Oc was Dagda's own son by the queen Boann, according to some accounts, so that as the name (Son of the Young) signifies, Dagda and Boann, both immortals, both Tuatha De Danann, were necessarily always young, never knowing the touch of disease, or decay, or old age. Not until Christianity gained its psychic triumph at Tara, through the magic of Patrick prevailing against the magic of the Druids--who seem to have stood at that time as mediators between the People of the G.o.ddess Dana and the pagan Irish--did the Tuatha De Danann lose their immortal youthfulness in the eyes of mortals and become subject to death. In the most ancient ma.n.u.scripts of Ireland the pre-Christian doctrine of the immortality of the divine race 'persisted intact and without restraint';[233] but in the _Senchus na relec_ or 'History of the Cemeteries', from the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_, and in the _Lebar gabala_ or 'Book of the Conquests', from the _Book of Leinster_, it was completely changed by the Christian scribes.[233]

When Dagda thus distributed the underground palaces, Mac ind Oc, or as he was otherwise called Oengus, was absent and hence forgotten. So when he returned, naturally he complained to his father, and the _Brug na Boinne_, the king's own residence, was ceded to him for a night and a day, but Oengus maintained that it was for ever. This palace was a most marvellous one: it contained three trees which always bore fruit, a vessel full of excellent drink, and two pigs--one alive and the other nicely cooked ready to eat at any time; and in this palace no one ever died.[234] In the _Colloquy_, Caeilte tells of a mountain containing a fairy palace which no man save Finn and six companions, Caeilte being one of these, ever entered. The Fenians, while hunting, were led thither by a fairy woman who had changed her shape to that of a fawn in order to allure them; and the night being wild and snowy they were glad to take shelter therein. Beautiful damsels and their lovers were the inhabitants of the palace; in it there was music and abundance of food and drink; and on its floor stood a chair of crystal.[235] In another fairy palace, the enchanted cave of Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann, had sway; 'and so soon as he perceived that the hounds' cry now sounded deviously, he bade his three daughters (that were full of sorcery) to go and take vengeance on Finn for his hunting'[236]--just as nowadays the 'good people' take vengeance on one of our race if a fairy domain is violated. Frequently the fairy palace is under a lake, as in the christianized story of the _Disappearance of Caenchomrac_:--Once when 'the cleric chanted his psalms, he saw [come]

towards him a tall man that emerged out of the loch: from the bottom of the water that is to say.' This tall man informed the cleric that he came from an under-water monastery, and explained 'that there should be subaqueous inhabiting by men is with G.o.d no harder than that they should dwell in any other place'.[237] In all these ancient literary accounts of the _Sidhe_-palaces we easily recognize the same sort of palaces as those described to-day by Gaelic peasants as the habitations of the 'gentry', or 'good people', or 'people of peace.' Such habitations are in mountain caverns like those of Ben Bulbin or Knock Ma, or in fairy hills or knolls like the Fairy-Hill at Aberfoyle on which Robert Kirk is believed to have been _taken_, or beneath lakes. This brings us directly to the way in which the _Sidhe_ or Tuatha De Danann of the olden times _took_ fine-looking young men and maidens.

HOW THE _SIDHE_ 'TOOK' MORTALS

Perhaps one of the earliest and most famous literary accounts of such a _taking_ is that concerning Aedh, son of Eochaid Lethderg son of the King of Leinster, who is represented as contemporary with Patrick.[238]

While Aedh was enjoying a game of hurley with his boy companions near the _sidh_ of Liamhain Softsmock, two of the _sidh_-women, who loved the young prince, very suddenly appeared, and as suddenly took him away with them into a fairy palace and kept him there three years. It happened, however, that he escaped at the end of that time, and, knowing the magical powers of Patrick, went to where the holy man was, and thus explained himself:--'Against the youths my opponents I (i. e. my side) took seven goals; but at the last one that I took, here come up to me two women clad in green mantles: two daughters of _Bodhb derg mac an Daghda_, and their names _Slad_ and _Mumain_. Either of them took me by a hand, and they led me off to a garish _brugh_; whereby for now three years my people mourn after me, the _sidh_-folk caring for me ever since, and until last night I got a chance opening to escape from the _brugh_, when to the number of fifty lads we emerged out of the _sidh_ and forth upon the green. Then it was that I considered the magnitude of that strait in which they of the _sidh_ had had me, and away from the _brugh_ I came running to seek thee, holy Patrick.' 'That,' said the saint, 'shall be to thee a safeguard, so that neither their power nor their dominion shall any more prevail against thee.' And so when Patrick had thus made Aedh proof against the power of the fairy-folk, he kept him with him under the disguise of a travelling minstrel until, arriving in Leinster, he restored him to his father the king and to his inheritance: Aedh enters the palace in his minstrel disguise; and in the presence of the royal a.s.sembly Patrick commands him: 'Doff now once for all thy dark capacious hood, and well mayest thou wear thy father's spear!' When the lad removed his hood, and none there but recognized him, great was the surprise. He seemed like one come back from the dead, for long had his heirless father and people mourned for him. 'By our word,' exclaimed the a.s.sembly in their joyous excitement, 'it is a good cleric's gift!' And the king said: 'Holy Patrick, seeing that till this day thou hast nourished him and nurtured, let not the Tuatha De Danann's power any more prevail against the lad.' And Patrick answered: 'That death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained is the one that he will have.' This ancient legend shows clearly that the Tuatha De Danann, or _Sidhe_, in the time when the scribe wrote the _Colloquy_ were thought of in the same way as now, as able to _take_ beautiful mortals whom they loved, and able to confer upon them fairy immortality which prevented 'that death which the King of Heaven and Earth hath ordained'.

Mortals, did they will it, could live in the world of the _Sidhe_ for ever, and we shall see this more fully in our study of the Otherworld.

But here it will be interesting to learn that, unlike Aedh, whom some perhaps would call a foolish youth, Laeghaire, also a prince, for he was the son of the king of Connaught, entered a _dun_ of the _Sidhe_, taking fifty other warriors with him; and he and his followers found life in Fairyland so pleasant that they all decided to enjoy it eternally.

Accordingly, when they had been there a year, they planned to return to Connaught in order to bid the king and his people a final farewell. They announced their plan, and Fiachna of the _Sidhe_ told them how to accomplish it safely:--'If ye would come back take with you horses, but by no means dismount from off them'; 'So it was done: they went their way and came upon a general a.s.sembly in which Connaught, as at the year expired, mourned for the aforesaid warrior-band, whom now all at once they perceived above them (i. e. on higher ground). Connaught sprang to meet them, but Laeghaire cried: "Approach us not [to touch us]: 'tis to bid you farewell that we are here!" "Leave me not!" Crimthann, his father, said: "Connaught's royal power be thine; their silver and their gold, their horses with their bridles, and their n.o.ble women be at thy discretion, only leave me not!" But Laeghaire turned from them and so entered again into the _sidh_, where with Fiachna he exercises joint kingly rule; nor is he as yet come out of it.'[239]

HILL VISIONS OF _SIDHE_ WOMEN

There are many recorded traditions which represent certain hills as mystical places whereon men are favoured with visions of fairy women.

Thus, one day King Muirchertach came forth to hunt on the border of the Brugh (near Stackallan Bridge, County Meath), and his companions left him alone on his hunting-mound. 'He had not been there long when he saw a solitary damsel beautifully formed, fair-haired, bright-skinned, with a green mantle about her sitting near him on the turfen mound; and it seemed to him that of womankind he had never beheld her equal in beauty and refinement.'[240] In the Mabinogion of _Pwyll, Prince of Dyvet_, which seems to be only a Brythonic treatment of an original Gaelic tale, Pwyll seating himself on a mound where any mortal sitting might see a prodigy, saw a fairy woman ride past on a white horse, and she clad in a garment of s.h.i.+ning gold. Though he tried to have his servitor on the swiftest horse capture her, 'There was some magic about the lady that kept her always the same distance ahead, though she appeared to be riding slowly.' When on the second day Pwyll returned to the mound the fairy woman came riding by as before, and the servitor again gave unsuccessful chase. Pwyll saw her in the same manner on the third day.

He thereupon gave chase himself, and when he exclaimed to her, 'For the sake of the man whom you love, wait for me!' she stopped; and by mutual arrangement the two agreed to meet and to marry at the end of a year.[241]

THE MINSTRELS OR MUSICIANS OF THE _SIDHE_

Not only did the fairy-folk of more ancient times enjoy wonderful palaces full of beauty and riches, and a life of eternal youth, but they also had, even as now, minstrelsy and rare music--music to which that of our own world could not be compared at all; for even Patrick himself said that it would equal the very music of heaven if it were not for 'a tw.a.n.g of the fairy spell that infests it'.[242] And this is how it was that Patrick heard the fairy music:--As he was travelling through Ireland he once sat down on a gra.s.sy knoll, as he often did in the good old Irish way, with Ulidia's king and n.o.bles and Caeilte also: 'Nor were they long there before they saw draw near them a _scolog_ or "non-warrior" that wore a fair green mantle having in it a fibula of silver; a s.h.i.+rt of yellow silk next his skin, over and outside that again a tunic of soft satin, and with a _timpan_ (a sort of harp) of the best slung on his back. "Whence comest thou, _scolog_?" asked the king.

"Out of the _sidh_ of the Daghda's son Bodhb Derg, out of Ireland's southern part." "What moved thee out of the south, and who art thou thyself?" "I am Cascorach, son of Cainchinn that is _ollave_ to the Tuatha De Danann, and am myself the makings of an _ollave_ (i. e. an aspirant to the grade). What started me was the design to acquire knowledge, and information, and lore for recital, and the Fianna's mighty deeds of valour, from Caeilte son of Ronan." Then he took his _timpan_ and made for them music and minstrelsy, so that he sent them slumbering off to sleep.' And Cascorach's music was pleasing to Patrick, who said of it: 'Good indeed it were, but for a tw.a.n.g of the fairy spell that infests it; barring which nothing could more nearly than it resemble Heaven's harmony.'[243] And that very night which followed the day on which the _ollave_ to the Tuatha De Danann came to them was the Eve of _Samain_. There was also another of these fairy _timpan_-players called 'the wondrous elfin man', 'Aillen mac Midhna of the Tuatha De Danann, that out of _sidh_ Finnachaidh to the northward used to come to Tara: the manner of his coming being with a musical _timpan_ in his hand, the which whenever any heard he would at once sleep. Then, all being lulled thus, out of his mouth Aillen would emit a blast of fire.

It was on the solemn _Samain_-Day (November Day) he came in every year, played his _timpan_, and to the fairy music that he made all hands would fall asleep. With his breath he used to blow up the flame and so, during a three-and-twenty years' spell, yearly burnt up Tara with all her gear.' And it is said that Finn, finally overcoming the magic of Aillen, slew him.[243]

Perhaps in the first musician, Cascorach, though he is described as the son of a Tuatha De Danann minstrel, we behold a mortal like one of the many Irish pipers and musicians who used to go, or even go yet, to the fairy-folk to be educated in the musical profession, and then come back as the most marvellous players that ever were in Ireland; though if Cascorach were once a mortal it seems that he has been quite transformed in bodily nature so as to be really one of the Tuatha De Danann himself.

But Aillen mac Midhna is undoubtedly one of the mighty 'gentry' who could--as we heard from County Sligo--destroy half the human race if they wished. Aillen visits Tara, the old psychic centre both for Ireland's high-kings and its Druids. He comes as it were against the conquerors of his race, who in their neglectfulness no longer render due wors.h.i.+p and sacrifice on the Feast of _Samain_ to the Tuatha De Danann, the G.o.ds of the dead, at that time supreme; and then it is that he works his magic against the royal palaces of the kings and Druids on the ancient Hill. And to overcome the magic of Aillen and slay him, that is, make it impossible for him to repeat his annual visits to Tara, it required the might of the great hero Finn, who himself was related to the same _Sidhe_ race, for by a woman of the Tuatha De Danann he had his famous son Ossian (Oisin).[244]

In _Gilla de_, who is Manannan mac Lir, the greatest magician of the Tuatha De Danann, disguised as a being who can disappear in the twinkling of an eye whenever he wishes, and reappear unexpectedly as a 'kern that wore garb of yellow stripes', we meet with another fairy musician. And to him O'Donnell says:--'By Heaven's grace again, since first I heard the fame of them that within the hills and under the earth beneath us make the fairy music, ... music sweeter than thy strains I have never heard; thou art in sooth a most melodious rogue!'[245] And again it is said of him:--'Then the _gilla decair_ taking a harp played music so sweet ... and the king after a momentary glance at his own musicians never knew which way he went from him.'[246]

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND WARFARE AMONG THE _SIDHE_

So far, we have seen only the happy side of the life of the _Sidhe_-folk--their palaces and pleasures and music; but there was a more human (or anthropomorphic) side to their nature in which they wage war on one another, and have their matrimonial troubles even as we moderns. And we turn now to examine this other side of their life, to behold the _Sidhe_ as a warlike race; and as we do so let us remember that the 'gentry' in the Ben Bulbin country and in all Ireland, and the people of Finvara in Knock Ma, and also the invisible races of California, are likewise described as given to war and mighty feats of arms.

The invisible Irish races have always had a very distinct social organization, so distinct in fact that Ireland can be divided according to its fairy kings and fairy queens and their territories even now;[247]

and no doubt we see in this how the ancient Irish anthropomorphically projected into an animistic belief their own social conditions and racial characteristics. And this social organization and territorial division ought to be understood before we discuss the social troubles and consequent wars of the _Sidhe_-folk. For example in Munster Bodb was king and his enchanted palace was called the _Sid_ of the Men of Femen;[248] and we already know about the over-king Dagda and his Boyne palace near Tara. In more modern times, especially in popular fairy-traditions, Eevil or Eevinn (_Aoibhill_ or _Aoibhinn_) of the _Craig Liath_ or Grey Rock is a queen of the Munster fairies;[249] and Finvara is king of the Connaught fairies (see p. 42). There are also the Irish fairy-queens Cleeona (_Cliodhna_, or in an earlier form _Clidna_ [cf. p. 356]) and Aine (see p. 79 above).

We are now prepared to see the Tuatha De Danann in their domestic troubles and wars; and the following story is as interesting as any, for in it Dagda himself is the chief actor. Once when his own son Oengus fell sick of a love malady, King Dagda, who ruled all the _Sidhe_-folk in Ireland, joined forces with Ailill and Medb in order to compel Ethal Anbual to deliver up his beautiful daughter Caer whom Oengus loved. When Ethal Anbual's palace had been stormed and Ethal Anbual reduced to submission, he declared he had no power over his daughter Caer, for on the first of November each year, he said, she changed to a swan, or from a swan to a maiden again. 'The first of November next,' he added, 'my daughter will be under the form of a swan, near the Loch bel Draccon.

Marvellous birds will be seen there: my daughter will be surrounded by a hundred and fifty other swans.' When the November Day arrived, Oengus went to the lake, and, seeing the swans and recognizing Caer, plunged into the water and instantly became a swan with her. While under the form of swans, Oengus and Caer went together to the Boyne palace of the king Dagda, his father, and remained there; and their singing was so sweet that all who heard it slept three days and three nights.[250] In this story, new elements in the nature of the _Sidhe_ appear, though like modern ones: the _Sidhe_ are able to a.s.sume other forms than their own, are subject to enchantments like mortals; and when under the form of swans are in some perhaps superficial aspects like the swan-maidens in stories which are world-wide, and their swan-song has the same sweetness and magical effect as in other countries.[251]

In the Rennes _Dinnshenchas_ there is a tale about a war among the 'men of the Elfmounds' over 'two lovable maidens who dwelt in the elfmound', and when they delivered the battle 'they all shaped themselves into the shapes of deer'.[252] Midir's sons under Donn mac Midir, in rebellion against the Daghda's son Bodh Derg, fled away to an obscure _sidh_, where in yearly battle they met the hosts of the other Tuatha De Danann under Bodh Derg; and it was into this _sidh_ or fairy palace on the very eve before the annual contest that Finn and his six companions were enticed by the fairy woman in the form of a fawn, to secure their aid.[253] And in another tale, Laeghaire, son of the king of Connaught, with fifty warriors, plunged into a lake to the fairy world beneath it, in order to a.s.sist the fairy man, who came thence to them, to recover his wife stolen by a rival.[253]

THE _SIDHE_ AS WAR-G.o.dDESSES OR THE _BADB_

It is in the form of birds that certain of the Tuatha De Danann appear as war-G.o.ddesses and directors of battle,[254]--and we learn from one of our witnesses (p. 46) that the 'gentry' or modern _Sidhe_-folk take sides even now in a great war, like that between j.a.pan and Russia. It is in their relation to the hero Cuchulainn that one can best study the People of the G.o.ddess Dana in their role as controllers of human war. In the greatest of the Irish epics, the _Tain Bo Cuailnge_, where Cuchulainn is under their influence, these war-G.o.ddesses are called _Badb_[255] (or _Bodb_) which here seems to be a collective term for _Neman_, _Macha_, and _Morrigu_ (or _Morrigan_)[256]--each of whom exercises a particular supernatural power. _Neman_ appears as the confounder of armies, so that friendly bands, bereft of their senses by her, slaughter one another; _Macha_ is a fury that riots and revels among the slain; while _Morrigu_, the greatest of the three, by her presence infuses superhuman valour into Cuchulainn, nerves him for the cast, and guides the course of his unerring spear. And the Tuatha De Danann in infusing this valour into the great hero show themselves--as we already know them to be on _Samain_ Eve--the rulers of all sorts of demons of the air and awful spirits:--In the _Book of Leinster_ (fol.

57, B 2) it is recorded that 'the satyrs, and sprites, and maniacs of the valleys, and demons of the air, shouted about him, for the Tuatha De Danann were wont to impart their valour to him, in order that he might be more feared, more dreaded, more terrible, in every battle and battle-field, in every combat and conflict, into which he went.'

The Battles of Moytura seem in most ways to be nothing more than the traditional record of a long warfare to determine the future spiritual control of Ireland, carried on between two diametrically opposed orders of invisible beings, the Tuatha De Danann representing the G.o.ds of light and good and the Fomorians representing the G.o.ds of darkness and evil.

It is said that after the second of these battles 'The _Morrigu_, daughter of Ernmas (the Irish war-G.o.ddess), proceeded to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory which had taken place, to the royal heights of Ireland and to its fairy host and its chief waters and its river-mouths'.[257] For good had prevailed over evil, and it was settled that all Ireland should for ever afterwards be a sacred country ruled over by the People of the G.o.ddess Dana and the Sons of Mil jointly. So that here we see the Tuatha De Danann with their war-G.o.ddess fighting their own battles in which human beings play no part.

It is interesting to observe that this Irish war-G.o.ddess, the _bodb_ or _badb_, considered of old to be one of the Tuatha De Danann, has survived to our own day in the fairy-lore of the chief Celtic countries.

In Ireland the survival is best seen in the popular and still almost general belief among the peasantry that the fairies often exercise their magical powers under the form of royston-crows; and for this reason these birds are always greatly dreaded and avoided. The resting of one of them on a peasant's cottage may signify many things, but often it means the death of one of the family or some great misfortune, the bird in such a case playing the part of a _bean-sidhe_ (banshee). And this folk-belief finds its echo in the recorded tales of Wales, Scotland, and Brittany. In the _Mabinogi_, 'Dream of Rhonabwy,' Owain, prince of Rheged and a contemporary of Arthur, has a wonderful crow which always secures him victory in battle by the aid of three hundred other crows under its leaders.h.i.+p. In Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_ the fairies very often exercise their power in the form of the common hoody crow; and in Brittany there is a folk-tale ent.i.tled '_Les Compagnons_'[258] in which the chief actor is a fairy under the form of a magpie who lives in a royal forest just outside Rennes.[259]

W. M. Hennessy has shown that the word _bodb_ or _badb_, aspirated _bodhbh_ or _badhbh_ (p.r.o.nounced _bov_ or _bav_), originally signified rage, fury, or violence, and ultimately implied a witch, fairy, or G.o.ddess; and that as the memory of this Irish G.o.ddess of war survives in folk-lore, her emblem is the well-known scald-crow, or royston-crow.[260]

By referring to Peter O'Connell's _Irish Dictionary_ we are able to confirm this popular belief which identifies the battle-fairies with the royston-crow, and to discover that there is a definite relations.h.i.+p or even identification between the _Badb_ and the _Bean-sidhe_ or banshee, as there is in modern Irish folk-lore between the royston-crow and the fairy who announces a death. _Badb-catha_ is made to equal 'Fionog, a royston-crow, a squall crow'; _Badb_ is defined as a '_bean-sidhe_, a female fairy, phantom, or spectre, supposed to be attached to certain families, and to appear sometimes in the form of squall-crows, or royston-crows'; and the _Badb_ in the three-fold aspect is thus explained: '_Macha_, i. e. a royston-crow; _Morrighain_, i. e.

the great fairy; _Neamhan_, i. e. _Badb catha no feannog; a badb catha_, or royston-crow.' Similar explanations are given by other glossarists, and thus the evidence of etymological scholars.h.i.+p as well as that of folk-lore support the Psychological Theory.

THE _SIDHE_ IN THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF, A. D. 1014

The People of the G.o.ddess Dana played an important part in human warfare even so late as the Battle of Clontarf, fought near Dublin, April 23, 1014; and at that time fairy women and phantom-hosts were to the Irish unquestionable existences, as real as ordinary men and women. It is recorded in the ma.n.u.script story of the battle, of which numerous copies exist, that the fairy woman Aoibheall[261] came to Dunlang O'Hartigan before the battle and begged him not to fight, promising him life and happiness for two hundred years if he would put off fighting for a single day; but the patriotic Irishman expressed his decision to fight for Ireland, and then the fairy woman foretold how he and his friend Murrough, and Brian and Conaing and all the n.o.bles of Erin and even his own son Turlough, were fated to fall in the conflict.

On the eve of the battle, Dunlang comes to his friend Murrough directly from the fairy woman; and Murrough upon seeing him reproaches him for his absence in these words:--'Great must be the love and attachment of some woman for thee which has induced thee to abandon me.' 'Alas O King,' answered Dunlang, 'the delight which I have abandoned for thee is greater, if thou didst but know it, namely, life without death, without cold, without thirst, without hunger, without decay, beyond any delight of the delights of the earth to me, until the judgement, and heaven after the judgement; and if I had not pledged my word to thee I would not have come here; and, moreover, it is fated for me to die on the day that thou shalt die.' When Murrough has heard this terrible message, the prophecy of his own death in the battle, despondency seizes him; and then it is that he declares that he for Ireland like Dunlang for honour has also sacrificed the opportunity of entering and living in that wonderful Land of Eternal Youth:--'Often was I offered in hills, and in fairy mansions, this world (the fairy world) and these gifts, but I never abandoned for one night my country nor mine inheritance for them.'[262]

And thus is described the meeting of the two armies at Clontarf, and the demons of the air and the phantoms, and all the hosts of the invisible world who were a.s.sembled to scatter confusion and to revel in the bloodshed, and how above them in supremacy rose the _Badb_:--'It will be one of the wonders of the day of judgement to relate the description of this tremendous onset. There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad, inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious _badb_, which was shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them.'[263] It is said of Murrough (_Murchadh_) as he entered the thick of the fight and prepared to a.s.sail the foreign invaders, the Danes, when they had repulsed the Dal-Cais, that 'he was seized with a boiling terrible anger, an excessive elevation and greatness of spirit and mind. A bird of valour and champions.h.i.+p rose in him, and fluttered over his head and on his breath'.[264]

CONCLUSION

The recorded or ma.n.u.script Fairy-Faith of the Gaels corresponds in all essentials with the living Gaelic Fairy-Faith: the Tuatha De Danann or _Sidhe_, the 'Gentry', the 'Good People', and the 'People of Peace' are described as a race of invisible divine beings eternally young and unfading. They inhabit fairy palaces, enjoy rare feasts and love-making, and have their own music and minstrelsy. They are essentially majestic in their nature; they wage war in their own invisible realm against other of its inhabitants like the ancient Fomorians; they frequently direct human warfare or nerve the arm of a great hero like Cuchulainn; and demons of the air, spirit hosts, and awful unseen creatures obey them. Mythologically they are G.o.ds of light and good, able to control natural phenomena so as to make harvests come forth abundantly or not at all. But they are not such mythological beings as we read about in scholarly dissertations on mythology, dissertations so learned in their curious and unreasonable and often unintelligible hypotheses about the workings of the mind among primitive men. The way in which social psychology has deeply affected all such animistic beliefs was pointed out above in chapter iii. In chapter xi, ent.i.tled _Science and Fairies_, our position with respect to the essential nature of the fairy races will be made clear.

SECTION II

THE RECORDED FAIRY-FAITH

CHAPTER V