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An Introduction to Celtic Tattoo Mythology page 3
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What we know about Celtic Mythology is largely gleaned from the books and manuscripts of medieval Ireland and Wales. These literary sources can be supplemented by the iconographic and archeological record from the pre-Christian Iron Age Celtic world itself, alongside external observations about the Celtic peoples and their druidic religion by contemporary witnesses such as Posidonious, Plutarch and Julius Caesar.
From these diverse
sources we can develop a fascinating picture of a magico-religious system which in some
ways parallels practices and beliefs evident from elsewhere in the Indo-European world in
the last millenium before Christ. In other respects however, it is also possible to
discern within this tradition an unusually sophisticated aesthetic and metaphysical
conception which possibly owes something to the more indigenous elements of the
prehistoric West - including the megalithic cultures of the Late Stone Age and Early
Bronze Age background (3500 -1500 BC).
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The Celtic mythological
universe is essentially animistic, in which the tutelary goddess, representing the life
and fertility of the kingdom occupied a significant position. The male god is the consort
of this numinous being, and was related more intimately to the human world of the tribe
and its diverse ancestors. Animal symbolism, perhaps a legacy of totemistic religious
forms, also plays an integral role in the Celtic articulation of the sacred. Finally, the
Celtic mythological universe is permeated by a multitude of parallel realities, known
collectively as the Otherworld - which sometimes intersects with the mundane world,
creating a point of entry for the magical beings and wondrous phenomena which populate
these ambiguous dimensions.
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Early Celtic people were
surrounded on all sides by the natural world. They were continually aware of its presence,
and their utter dependence on its balance and fertility for their basic nurture and
comfort. Even for the most powerful king a harsh winter or a blight on the soil was a
serious and sometimes life-endangering issue. Animal life was also ever-present: cattle,
dogs, sheep, geese and swine surrounded men and their homesteads; while wolves, bears and
wild boar stalked the wilderness beyond. Animate and inanimate nature teemed throughout
this all-encompassing rural landscape and loomed large throughout the mind of
pre-industrial man, on all its levels. It would have shaped his days, filled his dreams:
and underpinned almost every one of his hopes and fears.
The spiritual reflex to
this state of affairs has produces a distinctive universal pattern of beliefs, known to
anthropologists today under the name of 'animism'. Put simply, this is a recognition of
the essential aliveness of nature, not just in a biological sense but as a community of
sentient entities, of which the human world was an integral part. Hence, the behavior
of the river, the thundercloud, the flock of birds or the solitary stag (for example)
would all be explained in social, emotional or psychological terms. A vivid example of
this is to be found in the early Irish law tracts. This summary of a myth in these sources
describes the origin of the laws of satire, as practiced in Early Medieval Ireland:
A bard
was fishing in a certain river one day long ago. Not having much success in this
endeavour, he sang a poem, scathingly saterising the river for having failed to provide
him with the feast to which he felt himself entitled. Enraged, the river rose up from its
banks, towering over the poet and threatening to engulf the whole plain. The hapless bard
turned tail and ran, while the furious river pursued him over land. Finally, once the bard
had offered appropriate recompense, the river abated and returned to its banks.
This was held to have been the first ever satire, and the first ever compensation of this kind. Like many events in this mythical dreamtime it established a precedent: in this case for all future negotiations in cases of satire and reconciliation in the Gaelic world.
In the British Celtic
tradition, the most vivid example of animistic thinking is found in the Book of Taliesin
in the form of a poem known as Cad Goddeu, or the 'Battle of the Trees'. Here, in a
mythical battle at Caer Nefenhir, fought by the Sons of Don against the forces of the
chthonic underworld, the mythical wizard Gwyddion was said to have transformed a forest of
trees into a writhing, hostile army:
This development is also interpreted
by the Christian as words of the 'Lord' who 'spoke through the land'. But in reality,
behind these euhemeristic interpretations, we have a genuine recollection of an animistic
vision - of the land as a mobile, sentient community - analogous to that of the human
world.
A certain mutability was the hallmark of the dreamtime, animistic universe. It was not only, as suggested above, the time when the land acquired its features, names and customs: it was also a time in which all things were less stable, yet to acquire solidity of external form. People were also more changeable: one might become mutated through anger or desire, or gain some feature or habit through a particular formative experience. But most characteristic, however, of dreamtime mythologies throughout the world as a whole, is the strange and somewhat inscrutable mystery relating to the instability of boundaries which existed between men and the rest of the natural world, the animal world in particular.
We have already explained
the world-view known as animism above, and in some ways the literal kinship which was felt
to exist between groups of humans and a particular species of animal or plant can be
understood in similar terms. Traces of a belief system known to anthropologists as totemism
is all but universal amongst pre-industrial man, and can be seen to have played a role in
the development of almost every culture throughout the human world. Celtic culture is no
exception: and through the mythological lore of the bardic schools an interesting variant
of this belief seems to have persisted well into the medieval period and beyond.
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Totemism is thought to
have originated in the Paleolithic era, and seems to have persisted in hunter-gather
cultures wherever small human bands are engaged in a subsistence existence in a primarily
wilderness environment. Its traces can be found in every corner of the globe: from
Australia to America, Africa to Scandinavia. With the introduction of the arable and
pastoral agricultural practices, these beliefs would tend to be replaced by more
seasonally-orientated, anthropomorphic beliefs. But such was the power and persistence of
the totemistic system, that elements of its influence can be detected in a number of
cultural contexts long after this time.
The basic totemistic myth seems to have presupposed a distant foretime when the characteristics dividing the categories of nature had not yet become fully distinguished. It is thought that misshapen ancestors combining human and animal features populated this mysterious time of beginnings. Slowly, distinctive groups began to began to emerge from this chaos: notably particular clans of humans linked (by common decent from one of these primitive ancestors) to a given class of animals or (more rarely) natural features such as rocks and trees. Thus there might be bird-people, cattle-people, wolf-people, oak-people, river people. Each of these clans would feel a kinship with the animal or feature involved: and it was taboo for them to harm to harm these totem creatures in any way. The ancestral spirit protected the clan from disease, violence or hunger: and to harm any member of the clan or its kindred species would provoke the wrath of this daemonic spirit.
As Freud, Lang, Frazer
and others have established, exogamy was another feature of totemism: it is thought that
the incest taboo and other features or human family life might have grown up alongside
these zoomorphic beliefs. It seems to be through the totemistic period of development that
homo sapiens became truly what we would think of as human. As other social forms
began to replace the wandering hunter-gatherer band, totemistic beliefs became absorbed
into other systems of spiritual and social reality. None the less, this animistic view of
the zoological world continued to haunt the human imagination for many centuries to come.
As suggested above, reflexes from this system of magical thinking can be discerned in
cultures throughout the human world: stories of talking beasts, were-wolves, shapeshifting
magicians and ancestral animal spirits proliferate globally in one form or another.
The rationalisation of
these zoomorphic fantasies would vary considerably, and each area might have its own
tradition. In some places, for instance, it might be believed that those skilled in
witchcraft could send their spirits forth in animal form. Elsewhere, people believed their
ancestors lived on in the bodies of animals. Other cultures might contain a mixtures of
these beliefs, and many more besides. All that we know is that the natural (i.e.
pre-rational) perspective drew a much thinner line between the worlds of beast and man.
Many anthropologists and prehistorians have argued that the earliest god-forms in every
culture, at a certain stage in its development, were invariably of animal, rather than
human form. Human gods such as those that typify the classical mythologies of Greece,
Egypt or Rome were a relatively recent development.
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In the Medieval Celtic world such totemistic beliefs were integrated piecemeal into the composite mythical vision of the neo-druidic bardic schools. The motif of shape-shifting in something of a hallmark of Celtic mythology, as has been noted by a number of observers. It is far from uncommon for a deity to bear zoomrphic associations of at least one species of animal. The great Irish goddess Boanda, for example, is associated with her beautiful white-coated, red-eared cattle. The psychotic warrior-hero Cúchulainn exhibited strong signs of an affiliation to a canine totem: he had a taboo on the killing of dogs and his name literally meant 'The Hound of Culann (the smith)'. Conal Cernach, like the ancient Gaulish horned-god Cernnunos (Herne the Hunter of English mythology), was associated with both the snake and the stag. A horse-goddess cult plays an important role throughout the Celtic world, being exemplified in the Welsh tradition by the figure of Rhiannon. The name of the great hero Arthur literally means The Bear. Lleu is the ruler of birds. Culwch was 'the slender boar'. The iconography of the pagan British world of Iron Age and Roman Britain also indicates that this totemistic zoomorphism was very much a part of the divine iconography of the native, druidic mythology.
The animal
characteristics of these mythical figures were clearly so strongly part of the tradition
involved that they never fully disappear, even long into the Medieval Christian period.
Instead, as suggested above, they were rationalised in a number of ways. A dominant
interpretation of these shape-shifting dreams in the Celtic world can be related to the
famously druidic belief of reincarnation: or more specifically magical transmigration,
evidence for which is frequently found in the medieval writings of Ireland and Wales. In
Irish tales such as Tochmarc Étain ('The Wooing of Étain') and the some of the remscela
or 'fore-tales' of the Tain Bó Cuailgne ('The Cattle-Raid of Cooley'), magical figures
from the distant past play an active role within the action set in the narrative present.
In Tochmarc Étain 'The Seduction of Étain', the heroine is first transformed by a
jealous rival into a magical fly, and then buffeted from coast to coast by storms of
druidic sorcery. Centuries later, she is swallowed by a noblewoman at the court of
Conchobur in the Iron Age kingdom of the Ulaid, and reborn as a princess there. In her
adult life she is pursued by Otherworld lovers from her previous existence amongst the
Sídhe and the Tuatha dé Danaan. The action of the Tain Bó Cuailgne, on the other hand,
hinges on the rivalry of two ancient bulls, whose conflict becomes inexorably projected
onto the two tribal regions, Ulaid and Cruachu. One of the remscela of this epic
traces the history of this rivalry back to two megalithic swine-herd druids, Ochall and
Bodb whose magical conflict was pursued through a successsion of physical forms -
including those of ravens, water-beasts and 'screeching spectres' - before they were
eventually devoured in the form of grains of wheat by a herd of cattle, and reborn as the
two great bulls Finn ('The Light One') and Dub ('The Dark') respectively.
In the Welsh tradition,
we find the story of Gwion, the young cauldron-keeper of the legendary sorceress Ceridwen.
The latter transgresses his mistress by accidentally tasting her magical elixir of
omniscience: giving him instantaneous knowledge of all things past, present and future. He
is immediately aware as a result that she is now his mortal enemy, he starts to flees her
wrath, transforming himself into a hare. She pursues in the form of a greyhound. He then
takes the form of a fish, and she continues to hound him, in the shape of an otter. This
transmigratory sequence continues until the pursued finally transforms into a grain of
corn, in which form he is finally devoured by Ceridwen in the shape of a hen. He is later
reborn to her as a baby boy, before being eventually cast adrift and discovered in the
court of the Dark Age British king Elfin, as the child-wonder and chief bard Taliesin. The
experience of multiple incarnations is related at the beginning of the Cad Goddeu :
In all three of these anecdotes the
device of shape-shifting sequences was used as a bridge between the distant mythological
cycle of the pre-historic dreamtime and the proto-historic heroic cycles of the Irish and
Welsh traditions, which lay closer to the horizons of living historical memory. Other
interesting similarities also emerge: in all three stories the transmigrant shape-shifter
is actually devoured; twice as grains of corn, and once as a tiny fly; before being reborn
to their devourer in a later age. If Caesar and other classical observers are to be
trusted on such issues, the druids of ancient Gaul believed that the 'souls of men would
be reborn after a fixed period of time' (perhaps the period that was understood to elapse
between one cycle and the next?). More specifically than this, a belief is also described
in which the druids were said to hold that the human sacrifice of criminal prisoners would
be said to result in a 'bounty of corn' for that year. Could it have been that corn grains
or other small objects were the lowest end of the transmigratory journey: the bearest
manifestation of the soul in its cyclic journey?
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Before moving on to the next stratum
of the Celtic mythological thought-world, it is worth considering a few other aspects of
the native animal mythos, which lie outside the confines of the dogma of druidic
transmigration. First of all, shape-shifting might be take one of two basic forms. It
might either be imposed involuntarily by an outside agency whose magical power was greater
than that of the victim or occur at a disruptive momment (such as at the point of death),
or the animal form might be assumed voluntarily by a magician (such as Gwion or Ochall) in
possession of sufficient knowledge or druidic power to control their external appearance
in this way.
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An example of a more voluntary
change, used as an aggressive form of magic, can be seen in the Irish Ulster Cycle: wherin
the hero Cúchulainn is harried by the dark goddess Morrigan, whose sexual advances he had
rejected as he stood guard at the ford of Áth Tarteisc during the Cattle Riad of
Cuailgne:
'...an eel flung three coils about
Cúchulainn's feet and he fell back in the ford. Cúchulainn rose up...cattle stampeded
madly through [surrounding] army...next a she-wolf attacked Cúchulainn and drove back the
cattle westwards upon him...she [then] came in the shape of a hornless red heifer and led
the cattle dashing through the ford and the pools...'
Examples of involuntary change,
imposed by an outside agency, can be found from both sides of the Irish Sea. From the
Ulster cycle we find the aforemention myth of Étain, in which the eponymous heroine
suffers at the hands of a jealous rival, endowed with the druidic power to transform her
into the shape of a fly. From the British tradition, we have example of Gilfaethwy and
Gwydion, in the Fourth Branch, who are transformed into a succession of animals and made
to bear each other's young in punishment for the rape his virginal footbearer, Goewin
daughter of Dol Pebin.
The integration and preservation of
both the animistic and totemistic perspectives with the Celtic mythological tradition
contribute to its distinctively fantastical and magical atmosphere. The Celtic tradition
is characterised by its ability to absorb and retain different elements from both its own
past and the subsequent influences from neighbouring cultures. The end result of this
process, however, was a melodic, integrated whole, despite its diverse cultural origins.
The Celtic world-view was underpinned by a rhythmic sensibility and an eye for the teeming
beauty of the natural world. They continued to respect and appreciate the clamorous
ecstasy of birdsong at dawn, the wild fury of the charging boar, the blissful mirth of the
sparkling stream and the silent grandeur of the looming mountain: even after the
surrounding land and non-human life had been largely tamed and appropriated to their
needs.
As human life achieves greater ascendancy over its environment; domesticating cattle,
cultivating cereals, clearing the ever-present forest or bush and consolidating their
society into larger and larger population groups; the instinctive superstition of
totemistic animism will tend to become replaced by a more seasonal, anthropomorphic form
of spirituality, in which a specialised group of men or women will tend to preside over
calendrical rites, and god-forms will show increasingly human characteristics. In Britain,
this process probably began during the Megalithic era, and continued into the Iron Age,
even up into medieval times and beyond, integrating and rationalizing the more archaic
elements as it evolved.
Unlike some other
Indo-European traditions, the Celtic mythological universe was not dominated by a fixed
pantheon of named functional deities in the way that, for instance the Roman or Greek
mythologies had universal gods and goddesses for specified areas of life (e.g, Mars the
god of war, Venus the goddess of love, Hermes the god of magic and intelligence etc.).
Instead, each tribe had its own ancestral heroes and deities - to whom a whole range of
fabulous deeds were frequently attributed, whose (esoteric) names their descendants would
repeatedly invoke for protection and support in all areas of their lives. These deities
were as numerous as the stars in the sky, and for the vast majority we can glean very
little in the way of the individual identities of each (beyond a distinctive feature on a
carved stone head here, or the bombastic inflections of a folktale there).
Be this as it may, there
are certain common associations which defy this regional diversity. There were certain
forms which seem to have haunted the Celtic imagination - archetypal entities into which
the identities of local heroes, heroines or ancestors would necessarily become subsumed.
Most clearly pronounced
is the goddess - whose associations with the land and its fertility were pronounced
throughout the Celtic world. The goddess might bear the name of a region or territory -
such as Eriu for Ireland, Cailliech Beara for the Southwestern districts or the great
Boanda, spirit of the River Boyne and goddess of the valley of that name. In other
circumstances, this tutelary relation might be more figuratively implied - such as the
motif wherein the ruling king of that land is always depicted as the consort of this
sovereignty goddess.
In the embrace of a true
king, the goddess would yield warmth and bounty; from a false king the elements would
recoil - leaving impoverishment and misery for his subjects until a more fitting consort
could be found. Under a good king, the harvests were plenteous, the weather was mild,
people and animals gave birth fecundly. Under a bad king, the seasons were harsh and
irregular, harvests were thin, and births were infrequent or deformed in the human and
animal world.
There is clear evidence
that such beliefs were held well into the medieval period and beyond: as can be seen by
the entries in Medieval annalistic records such as Brut y Twysygion or Chronica
Scottorum. Irish sources were especially explicit about this relationship, with one
early treatise, Audact Morainn, being entirely concerned with the Fír Flathemon, 'the
Rightful (practice of) Sovereignty'. This was an essentially Indo-European cult, in which
the king or *rig-s ('the extender') was primarily a religious as well as a
political/military function. The king, therefore, was a high-priest as well as a warlord
and chief: the human embodiment of the divine on whom the well-being of the tribe was
magically dependent.
Likewise, the fortunes of
the goddess herself were a mirror of the fate of the land: she might become desolate,
threadbare or withered if the land is neglected or abused: or she might blossom and regain
her youth if the land is restored by a rightful king. She had both a light and a dark
aspect: she could appear the demure and radiant damsel 'the treasure hard to obtain' when
the youthful king was at the height of powers. As he aged, and his hour drew near, she
might manifest as a hideous witch or dark priestess: ready to preside over his killing and
replacement at the hands of a more suitable rival.
Many myths throughout the
Celtic world would tell of how a prospective king was approached by a mysterious,
otherworldly lady (typically while lost in a desolate wilderness), who turns out to be
this tutelary goddess: the coupling with whom ensures the future ascendancy of this king
and his heirs. Again, it is within Ireland that the most explicit revelations of this
mystery are clearly delineated. Nonetheless Brythonic sources (including the Mabinogi),
can also be seen to include this kind of otherworldly encounter, with a numinous lady in
whom the powers of sovereignty seem to abide.
The Sacred Cauldron
Closely associated with the goddess archetype is the symbol of the cauldron, chalice or
grail. The signification of this particular symbol seems closely related to that of the
fountain or spring, at the heart of river-goddess cults of the Ancient Celtic world.
Cauldrons of regeneration, cauldrons of inspiration and cauldrons of endless bounty all
feature in the annals of Celtic mythological lore. But besides this, the cauldron also
must have occupied a central role in mundane world of Celtic tribal life. It was the
source of food, drink and nurture in the household, and perhaps the hub of that most
consummate of Celtic social activities: the chieftain's feast. Traditionally, this would
involve the slaughter of a pig and its boiling in the tribal cauldron. Warriors would then
be given portions therefrom in strict order of heroic merit, followed perhaps by the cup
of mead served by the queen. So strong was the feeling and depth of significance aroused
by this ritual that it was not unknown for violence to break out in the Celtic feasting
hall, over this contested 'hero's portion'.
The cauldron; while being
a symbol of the reproductive, nutritive and inspirational qualities of the feminine; was
often portrayed in pagan Celtic iconography in the hands of a the tribal god, a tutelary
patriarch with pronounced chthonic characteristics. In the Irish tradition, the guardian
of the cauldron is simply known as Ind Dagda, 'The Good God'. He is characterised by
primitive, phallic attributes: his crude and violent copulations with the dark goddess
Mórrigan being responsible in one story for shaping some of the plains, ridges and
earthworks of Ireland... His belly and appetite were vast, and his garb was that of the
stone-age peasant: a course brown tunic from which his buttocks protruded. In Gaulish
iconography, we find a god known as Sucellos 'Good Striker' whose elemental hammer was
undoubtedly associated with the virtues of thunder and lightening, while his bowl, carried
in the other hand, signalled (like the cauldron of the Dagda) his mastery of the bounty of
nature (i.e. his conjugal relation to the Great Goddess). The Penn Annwfn, with his
cauldron and associations with the chthonic underworld appears to have been one
significant bearer of this archetype in the British Celtic mythological universe of the
Mabinogi. The Arthurian manifestation of this archetype is to be found in the Grail King,
whose health and vitality is mysteriously linked to the state of the land; equally in the
sinister axe-bearing 'Green Knight' encountered by Gawain in the poem of that name.
The Hero and the God
There were numerous manifestations of these matriarchal goddesses and patriarchal gods in
the Celtic world. Notable among the former we find Rhiannon 'The Great Queen' among the
Welsh, who was almost certainly among the Three Matriarchs or Tri Rieni mentioned
at the beginning of the Second Branch. Across the Irish Sea, the mythological cycle is
dominated by the ever-present goddess of the Boyne valley, Boand(a) by name, queen of the
faery-like tribes of the Sídhe. She is the lover of Ind Dagda and the mother of numerous
otherworldly heroes. She is mysteriously associated with the River Boyne, a river which
was known to medieval bardic traditions as The Roof of the Ocean.
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The titanic figures of Bendigeidfran, Beli Mawr and Casnar Wledig from the Mabinogi alone show characteristics of this Patriarch/Chieftain archetype, just as do Ind Dagda, Manannan and later figures such as Finn MacCumhail and Diamairt MacCerbhall in the Irish tradition. Famous historical British kings Arthur, Coel Hen ('Old King Cole') and Rhydderch Hael developed similar characteristics as their legends grew. Often such figures were to be found at the very hub of a narrative cycle. Their generosity and kingly qualities were often seen as the axial force of a diverse retinue of warriors and heroes, many of whom would have had legendary exploits of their own.
The Kilduncan Stone the most important Pictish carved stones to be found in Scotland in the last 100 years.
Some degree of variance
within these basic male and female archetypes certainly did occur within the Celtic
mythological tradition. Most obvious is the dichotomy involving the archetypes of hero and
chieftain, already alluded to above. The hero-youth archetype was essentially itinerant
and perigrinatory, representing the unstable forces of evolution, development and change.
He offered his skills and services at the court of an established chieftain-king: who
represented the principle of mature mastery, continuity and proprietal responsibility,
with his domestic and political status affirmed through his symbolic marriage to the
goddess-figure.
However, despite the relatively junior position of the hero, it is the deeds and adventures of this younger figure, rather than those of the chthonic-god or chieftain-king archetype, which command the most narrative interest. Indeed, this is the pattern throughout the world, where the aspirant progress of the hero through difficult birth, childhood miracles, trials of youth, out of which the winning of the hand of the bride represents the final accession into the full adult status, is universally represented. The role of the chieftain-king in these stories is more often than not to provide a wider context - defining the era ('in the time of Arthur' etc.) or the place (e.g. 'at the court of Rhydderch Hael'), the political milieu involved. Click for Celtic Tattoos Photo Gallery
An interesting feature of
Celtic tradition is the phenomena of 'aging' of individual characters, which often sees
them progress through the roles of hero, king and chthonic deity as their memory passes
from history into legend, and from legend into the realm of mythology. An actual
historical figure, the Belgic warlord Brennus appears to have assimilated a number of
mythical motifs, finally ending up as Bran vab Llyr or Bendigeidfran in the British Celtic
tradition of medieval Wales: where his role is somewhere on the threshold of the legendary
patron-king, and the titanic deity of whose chthonic presence exercises a protective
influence over the land of his people. As a general rule: the older and more established
such figures grew, the more pronounced became these chthonic and tutelary characteristics.
Like the Great Queen, the Great King eventually would become a larger-than-life
mythological figure: typically abiding in a magical paradise under a giant tumulus
surrounded by his retinue, perhaps in a mysterious state of suspended animation, but
always ready to return to the world and fight back the enemy if the tribe was faced with
irreversible dangers. The British king Arthur is another example. The tradition of Arthur
began (it would seem) with an actual historical figure, a Romano-British general by the
name of Artorius, in the sixth century AD. By the tenth century this figure had absorbed a
cluster of hero legends, many of a fantastical, supernatural nature. By the eleventh
century, he seems to have become a king, with his own retinue of heroes, each with their
own body of legendary exploits. By the twelfth century, Arthur had become a tutelary
figure, slumbering in suspended animation, surrounded by his retinue of knights, ready to
rise from 'the hollow hills', to defend his people in their hour of need.
Alongside the
hero-chieftain dichotomy, there are numerous other subsets within the basic god-goddess
duality outlined above. Some signs of the Indo-European influence on Celtic Mythology can
be seen in the emergence of functional types. Existing deities acquired specific
associations: with magic, with war or with farming, for example. The female figures too
became more diversified: the pan-Celtic deity Brigit, Brigid or Bride having a
particularly strong associations with (paradoxically) both purity and virginity on one
hand and fertility and childbirth on the other. She was very much the daughter goddess -
female equivalent of the equally widespread hero boy-gods Lugus or Oengus Mac Oc. Her
counterpoint within the female pantheon might be seen as the strongly maternal figures
such as Modron or Boanda; or the dark goddesses Badb and Morrígan, who stand for the
principles of war and wanton destruction.
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As has already been
noted, however, it was this archetypal role which tended to absorb the name or identity of
a historical individual in the Celtic world. This is possibly due to a strongly cyclic
view of reality: which may have been part of the Megalithic intellectual legacy to the
culture of the British Isles. This histiographic perception is suggested in medieval
Celtic literature by the habitual classification of stories, actions or persons into
perennial, archetypal events or phenomena. Irish scribes catalogued their narrative
tradition into such narrative archetypes, including Tana (Cattle-Raids), Coimperta
(Conceptions and Births), Immrama (Voyages) etc. The Brythonic tradition includes numerous
classificatory notiae known as 'The Triads of the Island Britain': groupings of recurring
events such as 'The Three Quests', character types like 'The Three Enchanters' or other
phenomena: 'The Three Bull-Spirits' 'The Three Lover's Horses' etc. On a psycho-linguistic
level, the very grammar of Celtic languages accentuates a proclivity towards this
timeless, perennial perception of events: with the verbal noun (e.g. 'an arriving' 'a
promise' 'an increasing' etc.) often defining the nature of activity within a given
narrative sentence structure, where a finite verb might usually be expected.
One should understand
Celtic Mythology as a continual reworking of these basic archetypal characters and themes.
Every tribe, every clan, possibly even every family or homestead had its own traditions
relating to its (usually male) ancestors and their deeds and descent; as well as the local
(usually female) figures representing the life and fertility of the river, valley or plain
on which they lived. Out of this diversity there can nonetheless be found a series of
universal archetypes and perennial themes. It is this stock of characters and story-forms
- endlessly spun around a myriad of localised figures - which forms the very substance of
the Celtic mythological tradition.
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No discussion of Celtic
mythology is complete without some reference to what is often referred to as 'The
Otherworld'. A distinctive body of tradition has emerged from the Celtic world about this
realm and its inhabitants which have infused, via the Arthurian lore and related
traditions, into the narrative cultures of Western Europe as a whole. The familiar genre
of the 'fairy tale' - found from Ireland to the forests of Russia, owes much to beliefs of
this kind.
Commentators have tended
to speak of the 'Otherworld' as unitary entity. In fact the Celtic cosmos was no less
fragmented or hetrogenous than the tribal world consciously inhabited by the early Celtic
peoples themselves. Even a neighbouring clan could, in the eyes of these people, exhibit
degrees of 'otherness' - a quality which in itself served as a magnet for a whole variety
of fantastical projections.
Be this as it may, the
Celtic Otherworlds often share a peculiar set of distinctive characteristics. Their
inhabitants tend to be either beautiful in the extreme - or grossly misshapen and hideous
of aspect. The Otherworld is a source fantastical animals and powerful magical objects.
The seizure of such wondrous treasures is a frequent goal of Otherworld quests undertaken
by heroes from the world of men: 'the traditional feat of greatness' as one commentator
accurately described it. Sometimes, a mortal might even become the lover of a faerie
mistress from 'The Land of the Ever Living', 'The Plain of Delights' or other such
Otherworldly paradise locations. Likewise, it was also not unknown for an Otherworldy
lover to abduct or seduce a mortal princess and spirit her away to 'The Land of Summer',
or wherever his magical kingdom might be.
Otherworld beings were
neither divine, nor wholly 'mortal' (in the broadest sense of the word). They were
magically powerful, yet also prone to strange weaknesses. Sometimes, a clever mortal hero
would exploit such weaknesses, and obtain famous magical concessions from these Otherworld
denizens. Their relation with the world of men could be friendly as well as hostile:
marriages and other forms of alliance between the worlds were not unheard of in the Celtic
world.
Mortals might abide in
Otherworld locations, returning to find that generations have passed in their absence - or
after what has seemed like decades in the Otherworld reality, little more than a few hours
of mortal time have elapsed. Sometimes the Otherworld itself appears to be little more
than another dimension of time - but one not normally perceptible to the mortal eye.
Otherworld settings were
often paradoxical in their location: typically situated in liminal settings such as tidal
islands or fog-laden hill-tops, or in other more fantastical settings: glass towers,
rotating rocks etc. Another tradition tells of a land which can only be seen while
standing on a certain patch of turf, at a certain time. A popular tradition recalls a
magical underworld, accessible via certain points on the megalithic landscape: i.e.
tumuli, standing stones and other sacred earthworks. There are strong suggestions that
this Chthonic Otherworld is ultimately rooted in ancestor cults and the calendrical
rituals of Megalithic Britain.
As has been implied above, Otherworld characteristics were often projected on outsiders of one kind or another: aboriginals, foreigners, merchants: even those from different social backgrounds. However, the nature of the Otherworld was not confined to physical or cultural distance: it could exist within the blink of eye, the space of a dream, or the experience of any other form of altered consciousness. As seen through the druidic eye, the world was thronging with a multitude of invisable realities - all of which could exert any manner of influence over the world of men, and any of which could be entered: if the time, place and circumstances were correct.
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