Celtic Mythology. John Arnott MacCulloch
and the Fomorians mocked his distended paunch. When he rose, uneasy was his movement, but he bravely bore his huge branched fork or club, dragging it till its track was like a boundary-ditch, so that men call that "the track of Dagda's club." An obscene story follows regarding his amour with Indech's daughter, who agreed to practise magic against her father's army.16
Before the battle each chief promised Lug prodigies of val- our, craftsmanship, or magic — weapons, and armour in unfail- ing abundance, enfeeblement and destruction of the enemy, the power of satire upon them, magical healing of wounded or slain. Lug's two witches said, "We will enchant the trees and the stones and the sods of the earth so that they shall become a host under arms against the foe"; but Lug was prevented from going to the fray, because "they feared an early death for the hero owing to the multitude of his arts." Preliminary combats occurred in which the superior magic of the Tuatha Dé Danann was apparent. Weapons were restored or new ones made in a twinkling by Goibniu, Luchtine, and Creidne. Goibniu (cf. Old Irish goba, "smith") had promised that though the battle lasted seven years, he would replace every broken sword or spear-head; no spear-head forged by him would miss, and none whom it pierced would continue in life. He kept his promise, making weapons by three turns in his forge, and renewed the blunted or broken instruments of war. Elsewhere we learn that Goibniu's immortal ale, like nectar and soma, made the divinities immortal,17 so that he is the equivalent of the Greek Hephaistos, god of craftsmen, who poured out nectar for the gods at their banquet, and of the Vedic deity Tvastr, who made the cup from which the gods drank.18 Why divine smiths should be associated with the drink of the gods is not clear, but probably we have here different forms of a myth common to the Indo-European peoples. Goibniu is still remembered in Irish folk-tales.
Creidne, the cerd, or brazier, promised to supply rivets for the spears, hilts for the swords, and bosses and rims for the shields; he made the rivets in three turns and cast the rings to them. Creidne, whom euhemerizing tradition described as having been drowned while bringing golden ore from Spain to Ireland, may be compared with Len Linfiaclach, cerd of the god Bodb, who lived in Loch Lein, making the bright vessels of Fand, daughter of Flidais. Every evening he threw his anvil eastward as far as a grave-mound at Indeoin na nDése and it in turn cast three showers toward the grave, of water, of fire, and of purple gems.19
Luchta the carpenter (saer) promised to supply all the shields and javelin-shafts required for the battle. These shafts he made with three chippings, the third completing them and setting them in the rings of the spears, or he threw them with marvellous accuracy at the sockets of the spear-heads stuck by Goibniu in the door-lintels, this being precisely paralleled by the art of Caoilte, the survivor of the Féinn.20
The mortally wounded were placed in a well over which Diancecht and his children sang spells, or into which he put healing herbs; and thus they became whole.21 The Fomorians sent Ruadan, son of Bres and of Brig, daughter of Dagda, to discover the reason of these things; and a second time he was sent to kill one of the divine craftsmen. He obtained one of the magic spears and wounded Goibniu, who slew Ruadan and then entered the healing well, while Brig bewailed her son with the first death-keen heard in Ireland. Here, as so often, the origin of mourning chants and runes is ascribed to divinities.22
Before the battle Lug escaped from his guards and heartened the host by circumambulating them on one foot with one eye closed, chanting a spell for their protection—the attitude of the savage medicine-man, probably signifying concentration. Then came the clash of battle, "gory, shivering, crowded, sanguineous, the river ran in corpses of foes." Nuada and Macha were slain by Balor, who possessed an evil eye, or was a personification of the evil eye, so much feared by the Celts. Once when his father's Druids were concocting magic potions, the fumes gave his eye poisonous power, and his eyelid was raised by four men, but only on the battle-field, where no army could resist it. When Lug appeared, Balor desired it to be lifted, but Lug cast a stone at the eye, so that it was carried through his head, blasting some of his own men.23 In a ballad account of this, Balor was beheaded by Lug, but asked him to set the head upon his own and earn his blessing. Fortunately for himself, however, Lug set it on a hazel, and it dropped poison which spHt the hazel in two. The tree became the abode of vultures and ravens for many years, until Manannan caused it to be dug up, when a poisonous vapour from its roots killed and wounded many of the workmen. Of the wood Luchta made a shield for Manannan, which became one of the famous shields of Erin. It could not be touched in battle and it always caused utter rout. Finally it became Fionn's shield.24
The war-goddess Morrígan sang a magic rune to hearten the host, and the battle became a rout for the Fomorians, though not before Ogma and Indech had fallen in single combat. Bres was found unguarded by Lug and others, and made three offers for his life; but two of these—that Ireland's kine should always be in milk, and that corn would be reaped every quarter—were rejected. Life was offered him, however, if he would tell how the men of Erin should plough, sow, and reap; and when Bres said that these things should always be done on a Tuesday, he was set free.25 In another account four Fomorians escaped, ruining corn, milk, fruit, and sea produce; but on November Eve (Samhain) they were expelled by Bodb, Midir, Oengus, and the Morrígan, so that never more should their depredations occur.26 This points to the conception of the Fomorians as powers of blight; that of Bres suggests rather that they were pre-Celtic gods of fertility.
Two curious incidents, revealing the magic powers of weapons, which were worshipped by the Celts, and of musical instruments, occur here. Ogma captured the sword of the war-god Tethra, and when unsheathed it told the deeds it had done, as was the custom with swords in those days, for, as the Christian compiler adds, "the reason why demons spake from weapons was because weapons were then worshipped and acted as safe-guards." The other incident tells how Dagda's harp was carried off and was found by Lug, Ogma, and Dagda in the house where Bres and his friends were. No melody would sound from it until Dagda uttered a charm; but then the harp came to him, killing nine men on its way, after which he played the three magic strains of sleep, mourning, and laughter.27 This harp resembles that of Teirtu in the Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen, which played or stopped playing of itself when so desired.28
Thus the Tuatha Dé Danann conquered, and the Morrígan proclaimed the victory to the royal heights of Ireland, its hosts of the side, its chief waters, and its river-mouths—a reminiscence of the animistic view or the personalization of nature. Then she sang of the world's end and of the evils to come—one of the few eschatological references in Irish mythology, though it is most likely of Christian origin.29
This curious story is undoubtedly based on old myths of divine wars, but what these denoted is uncertain. Both Tuatha Dé Danann and Fomorians are superhuman. Vaguely we discern behind the legend a strife of anthropomorphic figures of summer, light, growth, and order, with powers of winter, darkness, blight, and disorder. Such powers agree but ill. There is strife between them, as, to the untutored eye, there is strife in the parts of nature for which they stand; and this apparent dualism is reflected on the life of the beings who represent the powers of nature. All mythologies echo the strife. The Babylonian Marduk and the gods battle with Tīamat and her brood; gods and Titans (or Jötuns), Rê' and 'Apop, fight, and those hostile to gods of light and growth, gods dear to man's heart, are represented in demoniac guise. If Tuatha Dé Danann and Fomorians were both divine but hostile groups of the Irish Celts, the sinister character of the latter would not be forgotten by the annalists, who regarded both with puzzled eyes and sought vainly to envisage them as mortals. Or, again, the two may be hostile sets of deities, because divinities respectively of Celts and aborigines. The Fomorians are, in fact, called gods of the menial Firbolgs, who are undoubtedly an aboriginal race, while Fomorians are described in later Christian times as ungracious and demoniac, unlike the Tuatha Dé Danann; and the pagan Celts must already have regarded them as evil. The gods of a conquering race are often regarded as hostile to those of the aborigines, and vice versa, and now new myths arise. In either case the close relationship in which the groups stand by marriage or descent need not be an Invention of the compiler. Pagan mythology Is Inconsistent, and compromise Is Inevitable. Conquerors and conquered tend to coalesce, and this Is true of their gods; or, as different tribes of one race now intermarry, now fight, so also may their evil and their friendly divinities. Zeus was son of the Titan Kronos,