Salvaging old files (again)

Having grown weary of scanning and transcribing old journals (from the pre-electronic era), for poems and journal entries, since mid-October I mosied on over to my MFA papers, and collections folders, where I found lots of material I'd forgotten about. A few of my missing poems from 2000-2003, for starters. The beggars!

I also found a treasure trove of folklore collections for Alan Dundes, and book synopses from my Celtic Romanticism class at UC Berkeley. Wish I had discovered them when I was prepping for my Celtic bard talk at Sacramento Poetry Center last month.

Some of those lean middle years of little writing posted on my blog, suddenly swelled to respectable numbers. But alas, there were few poems, and a few pieces I was hunting down an electronic copy of, were corrupt beyond belief. I took a few screen shots. Ugh. (See below.) The worst culprits seem to be from the Works 2, and Word 4 era; they were updated to Word 5, and beyond, but they ghosted themselves into ASCII oblivion anyway. Word 5 docs also didn't fare well.

The early pre-electronic years on this blog have gained many entries. It makes for an interesting timeline. I did that then? So while some writers are deep into NaNoWriMo, I'm spelunking the past for treasure, and revising some pieces. My NaRevWriMo.

In order to rescue corrupted files, I experimented with different applications, and discovered that sometimes those blank docs would reveal some of their secrets if I used other word processing programs (not Word, itself), and I opened them in TextEdit, RTF, etc.) Usually cracking a document open, revealed all the corrections as well as random ASCII bits. In other words, hodgepodge.

I am constantly correcting and updating my work. That's what writers do. Revise, revise, revise. Imagine every iteration you ever wrote, saved all in one doc., in fragments, like an old laundry pile. That's what lurks behind the scene on your Word.doc. (What you see is but a shell hiding the messiness of writing, rewriting, and endless saving—not to mention your printer's vital stats.) In other words, it's a word salad. Not useful. More like electronic cuneiform. In my attempt to salvage some of those docs, I've rewritten poems, so are they new poems, or old poems?

And since I've backed up all my old files onto new hard drives, I've merely copied the corrupted files there too. Yiii! I do have some old work on CDs, from 2000-2003, so that's my last hope, other than finding hard copy.

My advice to you all: don't assume your old files from the last century, are safely backed up on old hard drives and floppy disks. Open them up and air them out, then transcribe them to a new format before it's too late. Otherwise the cybergods will find them and eat them up—like moths to cashmere sweaters deep in the closet of time.

MY SULLEN CRAFT, OR PURSUING MADNESS

MY SULLEN CRAFT, OR PURSUING MADNESS
. . great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art...... the only trustworthy one is the last.
—John Ruskin

Maureen Hurley
CW 881, Chernoff
Poetics of Indeterminacy
Dec. 9, 2002 (this was not the final draft I turned in, 'tis lost.)

It is safe to say that I am obsessed, driven by my craft, and because of my avocation, that much of that time I am at war with myself. If I am lucky, the muses line up like so many planets and the basis for a work of art is produced. Then the agony of revision begins. The obsession that requires my undivided attention to polish it into art is more than the sum total of the act of creation.

I was ten when I first heard the muse—either that, or I was displaying early signs of madness. I prefer the Graeco-Roman tradition where madness and inspiration are linked to direct contact with the gods rather than with modern scientific explanations. I was gazing west, daydreaming some small pre-Joycean Epiphany in late summer. I don’t know why, it was as if time itself was suspended from a thread of sky. Then, out of the blue, a voice like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, announced: “Remember. Remember everything about your childhood—because someday you’ll need to remember, because you’re going to be a writer.”

“Oh?” I nearly jumped out of my skin. Not a being, except for my cat Winky who wandered up to greet me; surely he didn't suggest that I become a famous writer. Besides, he was a soprano, and though brilliant with diphthong vowels, he had trouble articulating fricative and plosive consonants. The resonant voice immediately amended that statement: “Well, maybe not exactly famous, of course, but well-known...” and then it mumbled something under its breath about “maybe in small, but important circles. I felt insulted: I was going to be famous, why was this friggin’ disembodied voice reneging? I tried to ask it: “Important to whom?” But I was holding audience with a puzzled cat in a landscape of long ridges articulated by ravines of dark oaks and bay trees, iron dust, horse manure and dry summer grasses seething in late afternoon. Panic and guilt set in because at a tender age—somewhere in that eternity that stretched between the ages of three-and-a-half and four—I had promised myself to become a visual artist just like my mother.

One of my earliest memories is of watching my mother make black India-ink lines on creamy paper that magically transforming into a three-dimensional object even I could recognize: a broken Christmas ornament, a guilty cat. Much to her annoyance, I literally drooled on her drawings, I was hooked on illusion. All through school I declared myself to be an artist—even though I was informed that one didn't major in a given field until college—as my school counselor so aptly pointed out. It took nearly twenty years before the prophesy of the pen took root, and another twenty years to hone my craft.

The Tangle-Coated Horse & Other Tales: Episodes from the Finn Saga

Klar, Celtic Romanticism CS 170
Final Paper

THE TANGLE-COATED HORSE & OTHER TALES: EPISODES FROM THE FINN SAGA

Glory O to the bold Fenian men.
—Irish Rebel Song


Utilizing Celtic Revival translations of medieval Irish texts and ballads, Irish folklorist Ella Young retells a richly embellished, but streamlined version of the youthful deeds and the coming of age of a super heroic warrior-hunter, Finn mac Cumail, in her third collection of tales based on Irish mythology, The Tangle-Coated Horse and other Tales from the Finn Saga. 

In her foreword she wrote, “The Fionn saga is one of the oldest of Gaelic sagas: it is also one of the best-remembered… Finn McCool is a household word.” Like the patriot-hero, William Wallace, in Scotland, Finn’s name also survives everywhere in the place names of Scotland and Ireland. According to her colleague, Padraic Colum, Ella Young’s collection departed from tradition in that: “…the Fionn saga was originally the hero-lore of dispossessed men who hunted and hired themselves out as fighting men, and looked back to where they had good hunting or pleasant shelter as places of romance and charm.” (Ella Young, an Appreciation, p. 10).

Whether intentional or not, the timing of Ella Young’s ancient tales published on the eve of Irish nationhood in 1929, contained many parallels with Ireland’s modern-day struggle. The concepts of nationhood and freedom must have been forefront in Young’s mind. She referred to Finn as “The Big Man” (perhaps a reference to the Irish rebel leader, Michael Collins?)... though the Fenians adopted the mythology of the Ulster Cycle and CúChulainn, not Finn, as their national symbol of freedom. However, Finn’s resemblance to CúChulainn is overwhelming. 

In Ella Young’s own story, we also glimpse the quintessential Celtic story of the good fight, heroes overcoming great obstacles, and betrayal—within a modern context. According to Florence Jury, “During the Irish Rebellion she lived in houses where ammunition and rifles and mausers were hidden. She rode horseback at night, carrying messages to hidden units of revolutionary soldiers. She earned a place on the English blacklist.” (Everything Opposite the Golden Gate, p. 319). And Ella herself, “a figure out of romance,” was something of a dispossessed Fenian warrior trying to gain entrance to the modern Tír-na-nÓge, America, and ultimately, to what was to become the Celtic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

Set in the Golden Age of First Century Ireland, the Fenian Cycle saga unfolds with an introduction to Finn’s childhood troubles: his lack of a homeland, the usurpation of the inheritance of his father’s chiefdom and Fianna band, and how the Clann Baiscne came to be disgraced, outlawed and homeless, betrayed by the clan steward, bearer of the treasure wallet—tribal sovereign treasures. 

And of the regaining of his inheritance and the restoration of his ancestral tribal lands. (The idea of the Fianna, already an outlawed troop, being doubly outlawed, was stiff sentence to bear in a shame-based society.) 

It is a tale of redressing past wrongs, of restoring tribal rights—with a warrior-elite army upholding a chivalrous moral code akin to that of Maloroy’s King Arthur and his court at Camelot. 

These traditional Celtic tale-type motifs are rife with regnal, warrior, and hound lists. The stories include boyhood deeds, namings, coming of age, wooings, abductions, hunts, raids, battles and enchantments—replete with larger-than-life warriors who overcome insurmountable obstacles at great odds; their half-faery dogs, horses; the prophecies of gods, druids and druidesses; and a host of otherworld characters including hags, giants and monsters. 

Young’s Fenian landscape is unspoiled and bucolic (no flies syndrome), the parallel otherworld is positively jewel-toned, the sky is made of sapphires, and flowers are vermilion rubies; the dúns of mortals and faery alike are spacious shining abodes all aflutter with silken banners art and music.

The second half of The Tangle-Coated Horse is comprised of several tales associated with the Fianna, where Dairmid, representing youth, is the main protagonist, and bald Connan/ Cunnaun is the aging storyteller recounting the band’s past deeds. 

The final tale is of Finn’s son, Oisín’s return to Ireland from Tír-na-nÓge. But the heart and soul of the book is the story of young Finn. Because the foretales of Finn’s birth are omitted from Young’s story, I looked to other sources for motivation. In Eileen O’Faolin’s 1950s redaction of “The Young Finn,” which is closest in tone to Ella Young’s version, we learn there was rivalry between the Cumal and the clan of Morna “wishing to get the headship for one of their own family, rose in revolt against Cool…” (Irish Saga and Folk-Tales, p. 126).

I found that Young’s main story closely parallels the medieval text, “The Boyhood Deeds of Finn,” as recounted in Ancient Irish Tales. Young doesn’t furnish the backstory as to why the Clann Morna, at the request of Finn’s grandfather, and Conn, high king of Tara, killed Finn’s father, Cumal for abducting Muirne/Moorne. 

But in an older version of the tale, “The Battle of Cnucha,” we learn of a hereditary blood feud. “Cumall was slain…. by Goll mac Morna.” (Ibid p. 358). The reasons are at best, convoluted: King Conn’s Fianna warrior—Goll, the one-eyed—at Conn’s request, slew Finn’s father, Cumall, who was also Conn’s uncle, at the Battle of Cnucha, for abducting Muirne, a druid’s daughter, from Conn. 

So we really have a story of homicide within the familial derbfhine, an abduction and cross-age love triangle, not mere clann rivalry. And like CúChulainn’s mother, Muirne, rejected by her druid-father, is forced to give birth outside the tribe; Cumal’s sister Bovemall/Bodball, is her midwife.

Young omitted critical portions of the tale which foreshadow events Finn is destined to repeat—the sins of his forefathers. Is it because Young claimed to have collected her stories from the oral tradition and these subtle, complex relationships were too abstract to preserve? 

In the ancient tales, to win back his name, family honor and lands, Finn demands an eric honor price or blood-fine of his maternal grandfather Tadg, for being the cause of his father Cumal’s death. In retribution, Finn is given the palace of Almu, or Allen in Kildare. Cumal means “the equivalent of one slave” and erics, or fines, were rendered in cumals: three cumals equaled one milch-cow (this is still a cattle herding society). So there’s clever word-play in the old stories. It’s possible that medieval audiences didn’t attach significance in a character’s name but I suspect naming was important as it plays a significant part in the Finn saga.

With the additional help of the two versions of Finn’s boyhood in Ancient Irish Tales, we get a more in-depth picture of Finn, a CúChulainn type figure, where we learn his mother’s sisters, druidess Bovemall/ Bodball who controls weather, and her sister the leech/healer Liath. Both “natural philosophers” are also his foster-mothers. They, like Scathach, CúChulainn’s teacher, are women-warriors. Bovemall teaches him forest craft and hunting. She reads him his future. 

His aunts are literally forced to abandon him to the wolves (after introducing him to the king of wolves, making a pact of fealty—a touch of totemic animism as Finn is the hunter king of men), because they’re hunted by the Clann Morna. 

Finn literally goes into the wilderness in order to become a man. His being raised in the forest, which is pure and primeval, is soft primitivism at its best. He is the Noble Savage. The clann scatters to the wilds of Connacht (Cromwell’s line, to hell or Connacht, comes to mind) living like hunted wolves. In Finn’s story, on a subtle level, we also have a supremacy battle erupting between Leinster and Connacht. Professor Eoin McNeill calls the Finn epic “the epic of a subject race.” (Ancient Irish Tales, p. 356).

In Young’s story, “A Night of the Nights,” she weaves a story within a story not related to the Finn Cycle, a theme included in her first book, Celtic Wonder Tales. The story Bovemall tells Finn of the Shining Ones in a parallel Heaven World who created the earth, is stunning in its use of poetic prose. Young’s rich language worthy of the sub-plot where Finn gains eloquence, wins his warrior career, and vows that all prospective Fianna warriors of his band must be equally adept at poetry. Here, Young borrowed from the Leabor Gabala, the Book of Takings, to create a multiple worlds.

Triple Goddess Sive/Sadb looked into the Pool of Fec, where every Samhain Eve, Fintan the Salmon of Knowledge, grazed on the Hazelnuts of Wisdom. Dissatisfied with the beauty of her reflection, Sive slid down into the darkness of the pool and into the abyss. 

Out of that darkness, the earth was created. Partholán joined her, as did Nuada, the ethereal Tuatha Dé Dannán, and lastly, the Milesians, or Men. The Shining Ones, the Tuatha Dé Dannán, are equated with the stars throughout the story—related to quantum mechanics. They gave to the Clann Basiscne the four jewels, and the treasure wallet, talismans of sovereignty and luck which the clann loses due to treachery from within the clann. The treasure wallet bearer Lia Luachra tells Cumal the wallet is lost, and thinking the luck of the clann is lost, Cumal is killed. Goll mac Morna takes over Cumal’s Fianna band and home.

A I previously mentioned, naming, whether secret, or true, plays a prominent role in the Finn saga. Finn means “the white/fair” or “chosen” one, (“gwyn” in Welsh), whose real name is Demna. When Finn’s abandoned by his tribe, he apprentices himself to Finngas, the exiled court druid-poet of the Clann Baiscne, where he learns poet-craft (eloquence). 

Padraic Colum wrote that The Tangle-Colored Horse “is a book… about youth, and in this it has an affinity with another book of Celtic stories, Lady Charlotte Guest’s The Mabinogion.” (Ella Young: an Appreciation, p. 10). In the preface to The Misfortunes of Elphin, the editor (?) compares Elphin/Taliesin to Finn: “They have obviously a common origin with the Gaelic legend of how Finn MacCool got his gift of second sight by scalding his thumb and clapping it into his mouth when cooking the magic salmon for his master. (The Misfortunes of Elphin, p. 550). 

And like his Welsh counterpart, the poet Taliesin, Finn too accidentally gains druid-wisdom from eating the Salmon of Knowledge that was meant for Finnegas—or so Finnegas thought. There is a confusion of names with Finnegas’ own name, because the prophecy naming Finn or Finnegas. But Finn gave Finnegas his birth name, Demna. When it’s all sorted out, Demna is officially re-named Finn. 

To further confuse things, the salmon’s name is Finntan. All these favored ones converging in the same pool is positively blinding! But Finn refuses to name his father or his clann until he’s avenged them, and secured oaths of reward. He proves to be shrewd and clever. 

Only after Finn perfects his poet-craft is he armed. Finn’s warrior arming is unusual in that the marsh [bog] seems to take the responsibility upon itself to present him with a bronze sword of the Tuatha Dé Dannán, the symbol of his dual-world warrior sovereignty. Finn’s father’s warrior, Fiachra, arms him with a faery spear that Cumal had stolen. 

Finn becomes a warrior-hero by saving his tribe and Conn’s Tara from the Tuatha Dé Dannán youth, Allyn mac Midra, who, every third Samhain, burns Tara with his breath because Finn’s father, Cumal once stole a faery spear. The spear keeps him from falling asleep when the faery music begins. By killing Allyn, Finn asks his boon of Conn for the restoration of his clann to its rightful status.

How does a half-mortal hero obtain a mate/ sovereign goddess? from the otherworld, but the caveat is that he can’t keep her. We learn of Finn’s otherworld marriage to Saba, the Tuatha Dé Dannán girl enchanted as a pale otherworld fawn, and how he breaks the enchantment only to lose her when he fights the Vikings. 

The hunter carried his quarry Saba, across his threshold/sanctuary which broke the Dark Enchanter’s evil spell. But while Finn was gone seven days, the Enchanter appeared in his guise (shapeshifting) thus tricking her across the limnal boundary of her own free will. The reason for Finn’s stronger magic was because he is righteous. Seven years later, still grieving, he finds his child Oisín raised in the forest by his mother who once again is a deer. We learn of Finn’s otherworld adventures, and beyond, as he tries to forget his sorrow and loss. The lamenting begins in earnest.

Young’s version of the episodic stories of Finn’s heroic boyhood deeds are intended for young audiences, as the stories of Finn’s middle, and old age are significantly missing from this collection. Padraic Colum wrote: “…in olden times the saga dealt with the life of a hero from childhood to old age, from Fionn’s first boyish feats to the time when he weeps over Oscar, his grandson, slain at the battle of Goura, and see Usheen, his son…go to the Land of Youth.” (Ella Young: an Appreciation, p. 8). In the following stories, Finn is mentioned by reference in the second half of the book, where Diarmid, one member of his band, suddenly becomes the main protagonist.

Most of these stories are told within a framework of storytelling and have to do with the context of retelling the story for posterity, themes of hospitality and of previous right action reaping its just rewards, with an emphasis on maintaining a medieval chivalrous warrior code. 

In one story, the recount the creed of their fellowship—the noble rules of life: generous, hospitable, courteous, and valiant—protecting the weak and under enfranchised. Very Robin hood. University of Chicago professors Cross and Slover wrote:

According to the Irish annals, Finn flourished during the third century…, but the earliest references to him in literature do not appear until several hundred years later, and the vast majority of the tales about him are found in manuscripts dating from the twelfth and later centuries. (Ancient Irish Tales, p. 355).

One group of tales represents Finn as the head of a national militia; in another group of tales, he is powerful enough to oppose the high-king; and the third group “elevates him to a position superior to all opponents, portraying him as a slayer of monsters, a general benefactor of his country, and above all, a national defender of Ireland against foreign invaders, especially the dreaded Vikings.” (Ibid p. 355). 

Cross and Slover concluded that the Ulster epic was “the literary property of the aristocracy, while the Finn material was … from the beginning the literature of the folk…modernized by each succeeding generation.” (Ibid, p. 356) I don’t know some of the original tales that Young draws upon to comment on them—except that they do have a ‘Robin Hood” quality, and are rife with the traditional motifs we associate with Celtic mythology: abductions and enchantments; battles and allegiances with otherworld folk—especially involving Manannán mac Lír’s realm under the sea. 

The title story of “The Tangle-Coated Horse” is about Manannán’s own faery horse who whisks the Fianna off on his back to the Land Under Waves. When otherworld folks are in need of rescue, they seek help from the mortal world. Diarmuid’s wooing is similar to Finn’s story, except that the resent his going off with a faery woman and are instrumental in the destruction of his match with the King Under Waves daughter, Storm.

The penultimate tale in Young’s book, “The Nuts of Knowledge” is about Finn’s double death in the otherworld on Samhain. Finn muses that the sword game is better than old age. Young picks up the lost threads and weaves a samite cloth for the hero’s death. In the first story, Finn wanted to see the shadow Sive/Sadb the triple goddess who created the earth. It’s Samhain. From Sleive-na-mon, Sive comes to draw water from the well of wisdom for the Gods of the Dana. Finn waits for the shadow of the goddess Sive. By naming her, he earns the right to see her, and is changed into Fintan, the Salmon of Wisdom, for his troubles. 

But her terrible beauty and the knowledge is too much for him so he dies twice: once for her Shiva-like beauty and once for her profound knowledge. When he awakens the next morning on the grass outside Tara, he retains some otherworld knowledge, he understands the speech of the birds and grass. 

The final tale is not in the heroic tradition because Finn’s son, Oisín, dies of old age, though the Rip van Winkle theme is archaic. Oisín returns 300 years later from Tír-na-nÓge, the Land of the Ever Young, to tell the stories of Finn to St. Patrick, therefore recording the story we are reading—creating a mirrored Möbius strip much like the motifs recounted in Tales of the Elders of Ireland. In Young’s version, the monks tell Oisín of Finn and his band asleep in a cave, waiting to be wakened like Arthur—when the time is ripe.

How does the story fit the framework of Celtic romanticism? We have issues of nationalism, issues of land, we’ve lots of fighting: with just causes to fight for (usually saving maidens), head-taking, we have treachery from within the tribe. Finn has a divine parent, he gets knowledge from the otherworld (salmon, water, goddesses, druids, druidesses, mists and white animals). 

We assume Finn died a hero in battle though we have no story of it (I looked up “The Death of Finn,” and the battle of Gabra sounds like the battle of Clontarf, with Finn/Brian Boruma fighting the Vikings.) We have feasts galore. Major events happen on Samhain, and at water/fords. There are thin boundaries at Samhain; “To-night a mortal could enter there: could drink, ungrudged—from vats of mead and hydromel—the golden heady drink of immortals.” (The Tangle-Coated Horse, p. 163).

Other Romantic motifs include the quest to save ancient knowledge. From reading Ella’s writings, one gets the sensation that just in the nick of time, she single-handedly saved the stories from oblivion, from a lost tradition, when in reality, many of the stories were already published by the Celtic Revivalists. 

Young (1867-1956) wrote the introduction to The Tangle-Coated Horse from Halcyon, shortly after Samhain eve...1928, the stock marked hadn’t yet crashed; I suspect that cataclysmic event had a profound negative effect on her career. 

However, after the publication of The Tangle-Coated Horse, she was appointed a UCB lecturer from 1931 to 1936. Young is better known for her first book, Celtic Wonder Tales, (1910). Young wrote that she learned many stories as a child in the village of Feenagh, County Antrim, Ireland. We learn from the Dover edition jacket page of Celtic Wonder Tales, that:

Irish poet and mythologist Ella Young recalled hearing as a child, “Tales of ghosts, banshees, haunted castles, mischievous and friendly sprites…” Later in life, she realized what a splendid heritage awaited her in Celtic literature…Celtic Wonder Tales… was the product of her fascination with ‘lost inheritance.

Young was well-acquainted with Dr. Hyde and the Celtic Revival movement. She immersed herself in Gaelic Language, literature and culture. On the Floris Books edition jacket page of The Winder Smith and His Son: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World, Ella Young wrote:

The stories were told to me in Gaelic at times, at times in English. I heard them in cottages by turf fires, I heard them in brown-sailed fishing boats and on rocky hillsides. They are mixed in my mind with sunshine and sweet air and wide empty spaces: with lakes in Donegal, where faery horses are said to hide, with pools in Connemara, where crested serpents called Piasts, lift their heads and with glittering inlets of the sea and mountains in Kerry.

Young clamed to have collected her stories in Ireland, and later, in California, she wrote them down. Young stated: “The stories were told to me in Gaelic at times, at times in English.” She named stroyteller Patrick Gallagher as her main source. She wrote, “I have amplified the tales but I have not altered any incident.” But she also liberally borrowed from earlier Celtic Revival authors.

Not only did Ella Young describe the collecting of her stories in glowing romantic terms. Indeed, lore about her life itself could be rendered in romantic terms: she is variously described as a druidess, a seanachie, a Fenian, a deva. “One did not feel she was human or on our plane,” wrote Rosaling Sharpe Wall (A Wild and Lonely Coast, p.186). 

I remember my best friend Micaela’s parents telling us stories of bohemian California in the 1930s and ’40s—especially of Carmel and Big Sur, where they then lived. We grew up on boozy stories of Doc Ricketts, Jaime de Angulo, and Henry Miller. Even stories of Ella Young. We were kids, more interested in horses, and didn’t pay too much attention, but the stories left resonances. 

It was Micaela’s father, Patrick Wall, who whimsically named the Big Sur coast the “Second Celtic Twilight” because of Ella Young. Micaela’s mother, Rosalind Sharpe Wall, a native of Big Sur, practiced bits of her M.A. thesis on me. Rosalind recalled that Ella made quite an impression with her purple druidic or bardic robes, her long flowing white hair and flashing blue eyes: like her otherworld counterparts. Rosalind said that she was super humanly beautiful—an ageless being as shining as the legendary figures she so deftly portrayed:

Ella Young, the extraordinary Irish woman who held a seat in Celtic lore at the University of California… was active in the Irish movement in Dublin and was closely associated with Lady Gregory, Yeats, George Russel, Synge, and Maude Gonne, came to America when she felt the magic had left Ireland, or rather, as she put it, “when its guardians changed.” 

She felt some of the magic that had left Ireland could now be found in America; that is why she decided to come here. The authorities detained her at Ellis Island when she first arrived here because they heard she believed in fairies… They did not want this crazy Irish woman to enter the country. (A Wild and Lonely Coast, P.185).


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cross, Tom P., & Slover, Clark Harris, Ancient Irish Tales
Henry Holt & Co., Ltd., © 1936; reprinted by Barnes & Noble Books, © 1996

Colum, Padraic, The King of Ireland’s Son
Henry Holt & Co., Ltd., © 1916; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., NY, © 1997

Colum, Padraic, Ella Young: An Appreciation
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1931

Dooley, Anne, & Roe, Harry, translators, Tales of The Elders of Ireland (Acallam na Senórach)
Oxford University Press, NY, © 1999

Gregory, Lady, CúChulain of Muirthemne, (also) Gods and Fighting Men
Colin Smythe Ltd., Gerrards Cross, GB, © 1902, Coole Edition, © 1970; PB ed. © 1973

Jury, Florence, McArdle, Phil, ed., Everything Opposite the Golden Gate
(PUBLISHER?)

Kinsella, Thomas, The Táin Bó Cuailgne
Oxford University Press/ & Dolman Press, Dublin, © 1969.

O’Faolain, Eileen, Irish Saga and Folk-Tales
Oxford University Press, London, © 1954

Peacock, Thomas Love, The Misfortunes of Elphin
(PUBLISHER ?) © 1829

Sharpe Wall, Rosalind, A Wild and Lonely Coast: Big Sur Pioneers
World Wide Publishing/Tetra, San Carlos, CA, © 1989.

Young, Ella, The Wonder Smith and His Son: A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1927; reprinted by Floris, Edinburgh, Scotland, © 1992.

Young, Ella, Celtic Wonder Tales
Maunsel & Co., Dublin, Ireland © 1910; reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., NY, © 1995

Young, Ella, The Tangle-Coated Horse and Other Tales: Episodes from the Finn Saga
Longmans, Green & Co., NY, © 1929 (soon to be reprinted)

Finn’s son Oisín returns 300 years later to visit with St. Patrick sometime in the 4th or 5th century.

I’ve reverted to traditional spellings of character names as Ella Young’s phonetic orthography makes it harder to identify who’s who, as the original meaning of the name is lost: 

Moorna/ Muirne, Finn’s Tuatha Dé Dannán mother is “Of the Sea”; 

Uail/Cumal, Finn’s father, means “Slave”; 

Usheen/Oisín means “Little Deer.” 

Goll mac Morna, a.k.a Eichaid “Horse” is “The One-Eyed”. 

Clann Bassa is Baiscne, Sive/Sabd, 

Bovemall/Bodball, etc. I suspect a meta-tale is hidden beneath the name-types, as so many stories have to do with the sea and water, and naming is a central theme. 

University of Chicago Professor T.P, Cross (1879-1951), one of the editors of Ancielt Irish Tales, was a contemporary of Ella Young’s. He and Professor C.H. Slover first compiled the book for their students; it was later published in 1936. Unfortunately he didn’t list his original sources, but I suspect it’s Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Silva Gaedelica.

As the central Finn Cycle story of Finn’s less-than-glamorous love triangle, the Pursuit of Dairmuid and Grainne, is omitted—where, like in the Táin Bó Cuailgne, Conchobor pursues the Sons of Uisneach for abducting Deirdre, he pursues his own man Diarmuid who has run off with Finn’s young intended bride, Grainne.

To her credit, Young gives us her sources for the Fenian Cycle in The Tangle-Coated Horse: Silva Gaedelica (Standish Hayes O’Grady); Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (Kennedy); Leabhar na Feinne (MacInnis); The Red Woman (“The Shining Beast”) in Sgealuidhe Gaedhealach (Dr. Douglas Hyde) Fionn and the Phantoms (“The House in the Valley…”) in Revue Celtique (Kuno Meyer); The Daughter of the King Under Wave in Popular Tales of the Western Highlands (Campbell); and excerpts from Gods and Fighting Men (Lady Gregory).

The Hounds of the Mórrígan by Pat O’Shea. Summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE HOUNDS OF THE MÓRRÍGAN
by Pat O’Shea

Pidge and his little sister Brigit go on a quest to save both this world (Galway) and the otherworld from the evil grasp of the battle goddess, the Mórrígan and her two other selves, Bodbh and Macha, who wish to reinstate a reign of terror. After Pidge finds an ancient manuscript in a bookstore, he inadvertantly sets the story of the hunt in motion.

This is a story of the ancient battle between good and evil, a medieval wild hunt where the hounds of the Mórrígan tracking the children through the soft boundaries between this world and the otherworld (replete with mists, gods, heroes and evildoers) to find one of the three drops of blood of the Mórrígan once spilled by CúCulainn at the Battle of the Ford. 

The triune goddess Mórrígan wants Olc-Glas, the evil snake that St Patrick imprisoned between the parchment pages: if she succeeds, her power will be tremendous and the apocalypse as we envision it, will truly be at hand. My heart is an ice well, said the Mórrígan. Soon I shall have one drop of my own strong blood. With it, I will dissolve Olc-Glas and swallow him into my cold heart. I shall add his poison to mine. Only Pidge (who is Patrick’s namesake) with faery helpers, can bring back her blood and save the world.

This clever story, written in three books, utilizes traditional fairytale motifs with specific rules: a previous good action pays off its reward in times of need.. . I was enraptured by the story-within-a-story motif (the 3-day journey through Tír-na-nÓg takes little more than an hour, our time), and I loved all the talking wee beasties: especially the frogs, the earwigs, the ducks, and Cú Rua, the fox. 

But the way Pat O’Shea wove the afterstory of the Cattle Raid of Cuailgne into Pidge & Brigit’s story was most satisfying, and the ending where the children couldn’t quite remember what happened, was also ingenious. We have the full pantheon of Irish gods and heroes: The Daghda and Brigit in their many (good) disguises, the druid, Cathbad, a repentant Queen Medbh and Ailill, their sons, the seven Maines, the entire hosting of the sídhe. . . We have a nasty half-Fomirii GIANT-smith who likes his neggs, the threatening hounds, and lots of delicious treachery all culminating in a glorious mother of battles.

Larry Niven was reputed ot have said that fairy tales were written for adults, not children. One could read a bit between the lines. Adults are dolts, and then there’s the English-Irish dilemma. 

There are some hilarious moments as the Mórrígan and her sisters mistaken for bad-ass English punker hag-chicks riding into town on—of all things—a Harley Davidson—who set up a command post in Galway, fits nicely into time present. (In 1996, a gaggle of British lesbians seeking refuge in Amsterdam, proclaimed to me that Galway was the new dyke heaven.) 

Representing the authority of the adult world, we have the poor misguided Garda sergeant who falls in love with the Mórrígan in her maiden aspect, and calls her his Angel (more like avenging angel, but then, Lucifer was said to be the most beautiful of God’s fallen beauties). And a stone of destiny, the Lía Fáil,

The King of Ireland’s Son by Padraic Column, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary


THE KING OF IRELAND’S SON
by Padraic Column

In these seven inter-related tales within tales within tales—closely resembling Celtic knotwork—The King of Ireland’s Son learns how to become a hero (and some wisdom along the way) and saves his father’s kingdom from the evil enchanter’s curse of barrenness. In a sub-plot, base-born orphan Gilly the Goatboy also breaks a curse, finds his parents, and is named. Together, the boys break spells, find wives and become men (or maybe it’s really the other way round).

In a nutshell: Conall, the King of Ireland had three sons: the eldest, the King of Ireland’s son, is the main protagonist. We never do learn his name, but he naively played three card games with an enchanter-king, Conall’s great enemy, who wins the third game. The Enchanter-king of the Black Bad Lands puts a geas on The King of Ireland’s Son who now must find his kingdom and pluck three beard hairs within a year and a day, or forfeit his father’s kingdom.

We have the usual archetypical fairytale motifs. The good king and stepmother, brave princes and suffering heroines who undergo trials to win their true loves back from evil.

The King of Ireland’s Son (Caintigern is his stepmother) goes questing and meets Fedelma the Enchanter’s youngest daughter. She and her two sisters help The King of Ireland’s Son to complete the seemingly impossible tasks their enchanter-father, but only Fedelma’s help is true. She is spirited away by the King of the Mists and The King of Ireland’s Son must find her. 

He loses and regains his true love by completing many tasks including gaining the sword of light, the crystal egg and the entirety of the Unique Tale (what came before and what followed after), thus breaking the enchantment. 

The King of Ireland’s Son’s vain and somewhat shallow half-brothers, Dermott and Donall, also have parallel adventures and find justly deserving brides. They all meet their unknown sibling, a long lost kidnapped child of King Conall (who is really the Hunter King) and his wife Caintigern (who is really Sheen/storm)—the childwho must be named in order to become a man. His love too is put to the test, ugly Morag’s love is true and she gains beauty. 

And all’s well that ends well. Gilly, who is really a prince, gains a name—Flann—and is reunited with his family. Conall and Canitigern have their own unfinished story cycle resolved when their children, by saving themselves, save the parents (and the kingdom) as well. And when the King of Ireland went to the Isle of Destiny, his two sons equally ruled over his kingdom; one had rule over courts, towns and harbors, the other ruled over the wastelands and villages where masterless men walked. 

This story is peopled with triads of princesses and hero-princes who must perform all manner of tasks in order to break enchantments. Celtic motifs include feasts, and giants, mists, bogs, and fords where battles are fought, red-eared animals and enchantments, all signifying the Otherworld. Good deeds and right formulae (done in the right order) are what is necessary to signify success.

The Wild Hunt, by Jane Yolen, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE WILD HUNT
by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen’s The Wild Hunt is about boy as hero. In this Celtic-flavored fairytale, Yolen explores the uneasy boundaries and perceptions in this story of opposites in a hunt, as personified in the yearly cyclical battle between a divine couple.

In this story within a story, the medieval wild huntsman, Lord Herne (Cernunnos) as winter, and Robert Graves’ archaic White Goddess (a white cat of the hearth) representing summer—are continually at war. 

Herne, with his horses and hounds, is dark, evil, cold—and like most men, he wants to dominate with brute strength, to make winter a permanent season. Yearly, his wife, the White Goddess (she of many names) must find an innocent boy to become a hero and thus break cruel winter’s grasp so that the thaw may come.

Yolen writes that this is a story about magic, the wild hunt, power choices and names. . . (but heroes have two names). . . There are parallel worlds with twin houses with two boys who live in different dimensions: Jerold and his alter-ego Gerund. As Jerold reads a picture book entitled The Wild Hunt, the story begins to unfold around him. 

Luckily the houses are protected from Lord Herne’s evil vassals by a magic ring of rowan trees. When Gerund is kidnapped by Mossman and renamed “Bait” by Lord Herne, which he becomes, the two boys meet up and must resolve the dilemma. Language and naming plays an important part of the story. 

When Jerold writes his name on the window pane it is seen (backwards)by Mossman and used as a weapon against him. Lord Herne, must name and capture Jerold, and though married to the White Goddess, doesn’t know her true name either, and so, can never dominate her. 

She is portrayed as an aloof enigmatic talking cat/kitten who can’t be governed like dogs or men alike. Gerund’s dog, Mully, with the flatulent brainpower of a matchead, provides comic relief to the cat’s conundrums, and becomes sacrificial fodder.

The 15 tripartite chapters are almost and sort of clever, and the language, with its aphorisms and puns is well crafted to engage an adult reader, though the tale itself is sketchy. I emailed Jane Yolen to ask about her sources, and she said she has a whole wall of books on folklore that she draws from. 

Though no stranger to Celtic legend, she claims her story was based on Germanic (not Celtic) myth; and Mossman came from forestlore. She said the house itself in the story is based on her home in St Andrews, Scotland, where she spends half the year (presumably as the White Goddess).

The Wallace, Nigel Tranter, summary

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Summary

THE WALLACE
by Nigel Tranter

Tranter’s modern historical fiction based on the apocrypha surrounding William Wallace weaves together stories of Wallace’s ’s many skirmishes, historical or otherwise. Interesting to see how different the movie, Braveheart was from this novel.

A compelling read it wasn’t; this tedious four-part novel really was ‘homework.’ Give me Mel’s version, or should I say, dramatist Randall Wallace (who relied on Blind Harry)—even though John Balioll wasn’t dead in 1290, the French Princess was 5 or 6 years old, and at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, there was no bridge depicted. 

I love Randall Wallace’s ribald comment: “I try not to let facts get in the way of truth.” (History’s Mysteries, 11/29/00, The History Channel.) “As a dramatist, you need to know why you should tell the story before you decide how to tell it. . . . Blind Harry and I are both dramatists. . . . History is far more than scholars, history lives in storytelling.” Tranter manages to fit in most of the stories of Wallace, but they seem stilted, a chore to read. This is a manly story, no bodice ripper, with incredible attention paid to battle details. He occasionally forgets himself and writes well when it involves scenic descriptions.

Tranter’s story opens with the slaughter of the nobles of Ayr, as does Braveheart, except Wallace is an adult. Wallace and 50 men (commoners) with boulders for weapons, seek revenge on the English captain responsible, Fenwick, who is Wallace’s father’s murderer—with a guerrilla strike at Loudon Hill. This incident is the catalyst to overthrow English oppression. 

With English weaponry, and encouragement from the clergy, John Blair, Thos. Gray, Bishop Wishart and William Lamberton of Glasgow, they continue their guerrilla tactics from their base, Ettrick Forest, Wallace’s “capital.” We read of their taking of strategic cities: Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh (without a blow taken), Aberdeen, etc. Sir James Steward, Wallace’s overlord, and an official for the English crown, is an example of the crossed allegiances between English and Scots nobility, of which, The Bruce, vacillates the most. 

A nice twist on the tale is when The Bruce knights Wallace when the Privy Council members refuse to accept Wallace as Guardian at Selkirk because he is of lesser rank. The way Tranter handles the council scenes and the way he portrays Wallace’s astute political decisions, makes for a good read. He depicts Wallace as a leader of bands, not a general of an army: his greatest weakness and character flaw is unveiled at Falkirk. 

Tranter does not neglect the significant role the Church of Scotland played in Scotland’s struggle for freedom from the English (spiritual warriors). A tidbit on the drawing & quartering: medieval man was preoccupied with burial for a good reason: he needed an intact body, buried facing east in a churchyard—in order to be resurrected. Edward’s attempt to literally send Wallace to hell only served to make a martyr of him.

Tranter seems unaware of Celtic motifs. However, we can overlay Celtic stereotypes: the clergy function as druids and warriors; Wallace is literally larger than life, warriors are nearly undefeatable (but they’re commoners), they’ re betrayed by nobles (warrior class), and kings. 

Rival Edward is a combination of druid (lawmaker, arbitrator), greedy king (Caesar), and warrior. But Wallace (a Vercingetorix/CúChulainn character), a commoner, is his primary target in an enormous game of chess/fidchell with live knights, bishops, and pawns. In Tranter’s story, we learn of the historical background of the principal players, and their motivations—the visual story of Braveheart is painted more imagistic. 

BUT with the advent of Braveheart, we’ve literally witnessed romanticism in action. Time past and time present. Braveheat resurrected the Wallace icon as a symbol for freedom. A catalyst, it reawakened nationalistic feelings in Scotland and galvanized it into rethinking its political identity. In May, 1977, the Labor Party wins 3:1 on the “Braveheart ticket” (freedom!) 

On Sept. 7, 1997, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, the Referendum for Devolution was signed, and in July, 1999, a new Scottish Parliament was called to order. Today is St Andrew’s Day, Scotland’s patron saint. Alba go Bragh! Wallace needs no tomb for resurrection, he has risen again in celluloid format. Arthur must be waking.

The Bruce, by John of Barbour, summary

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Summary

THE BRUCE
by John of Barbour

As I previously mentioned in my review of Blind Harry’s Sir William Wallace, I had trouble reading and (comprehending) the Lowland Scots texts. Prelate John of Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, then the richest city in Scotland, wrote in 15 “buiks” The Bruce, ca. 1376, within living memory of Bruce’s reign. Celtic motifs: heroic battles, superhero, kings, druids/priests, soothsayers, treachery, revenge, freedom! This story contains more traditional Celtic elements: most battles happen at fords, between worlds, there are mysterious mists.

Robert the Bruce is portrayed as a super hero with no equal rival, save his knights: brother Edward and the black James of Douglas. Though more powerful than the Scots, the English suffer greatly under his hand, especially at Bannockburn.

The story opens with an envoi proclaiming the tale’s veracity, and sets the scene with the interregnal origins of Scotland’s oppression: the competing claims of John Balioll and The Bruce (surely he means the father?) to the throne; Edward Longshanks is invited to arbitrate and gives the crown to Balioll, a puppet king who, in effect, gives Scotland to England. 

The Lowlands are planted with (English) Norman noblemen who don’t rule wisely. Scots are hung for the merest offenses and yearn for freedom in a marvelous rallying speech: A! Fredome is a noble thing! ...all solace to man’s giffis.... And sould think fredome mar to pryss/ Than all the gold in warld that is.

William of Douglas is seized, slain while his son James lives in exile in France for three years. He lands at St Andrews to reclaim his lands and is compared to Ector of Troy. Bishop William of Lamberton presents him to The Bruce as knight. Bruce is betrayed by familial enemy and arch rival to the crown, John of Comyn. Bruce is summoned to London, escapes arrest and returns to Scotland to slay the traitorous Comyn at Dumfries. 

He is crowned at Scone, defeated at Methven, and Dalry by John of Lorn, where he is compared to Hannibal and Charlemagne. A chivalrous scene and feast with the queen, who are made prisoners at the Girth of Tain. Neil Bruce is betrayed, Edward I consults a fiend as to the time and place of his death (shades of Homer!). 

The Bruce returns to Arran and rallies forces with James of Douglas and Edward, his brother, lands at Carrick, holds a council of war. A woman accosts him on the beach and prophesies his victory. Percy abandons Turnberry, the queen is captured, the king attacked by traitors, and fights his way out single-handedly. The Galloway men attack, he routs them. 

A portrait of English Warden Sir Aymer de Valence (worthy opponent?), who attacks; but John of Lorn attacks form the rear, and pursues the fleeing king with bloodhounds. The Bruce slays his trackers, his foster-brother slain. As Edward Bruce makes some headway in Gallwoay, Bruce engages in single-handed combat with Valence and like Arthur, is wounded, and carried in a litter.

He rises again ad routs his enemies (the mist cleared suddenly)s; Perth falls. Douglas overhears plans to betray The Bruce, and attacks. Edward II marches, we get the four battles of Bannockburn in full detail; the taking of Edinburgh castle; Edward Bruce lays siege to Sterling, the governor capitulates.

Bruce address his troops like Caesar, Scottish archers destroy the English Horse, camp followers, some 15,000 strong, come to see the battle. The English mistaken them for enforcement troops and capitulate. Bruce reunites with his queen and daughter traded as hostages. Engram with the king and a laundress (weird—oblique reference to the washer at the ford  = death motif? ) followed by the death of Bruce.

As James Goldman, author of The Lion in Winter said "Historians and storytellers don't have much in common, but they do share this: the past, once it gets hold of you, does actually come alive. For scholars, this is troublesome. For writers, it's the good stuff."

Sir William Wallace, by Blind Harry (Henry) the Minstrel, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE
by Blind Harry (Henry) the Minstrel

I found the fascinating stories of Sir William Wallace and The Bruce to be both a technical challenge. I was not prepared for the differences in between Chaucer’s Midlands Middle English and Lowland Scots (tho I read Robert Burns without difficulty). Reading aloud helped somewhat, but I was so distracted, I forgot what I was reading. Without the modern interpretation I was lost.

Interesting to note, in the modern novels of Nigel Tranter and Randall Wallace (Braveheart), the apocryphal stories have all but blurred and the heroes Wallace/Bruce have become divine twins. We have the usual Celtic motifs: heroic battles, larger than lifesuperhero, kings, druids/priests, soothsayers (women), treachery, revenge, freedom!

A traditional romance written in heroic couplets ca. 1460—a century and a half after the death of William Wallace—Blind Harry’s 9 “buiks” opens with A Love Adventure where an amorous outlaw Wallace, disguised variously as a monk or a woman, evades the archvillan English—Butler laid a trap for him on the 3rd night but despite bribes, the maid told Wallace of the plot. 

Wallace, a commoner, is nearly caught slaying the son of Selby, the English Governor. His father and brother are slain; he seeks refuge with his uncle but runs afoul over fish with some Englishmen, whom he slays. He is captured and thrown into prison; near death, he is cast out: his old nanny retrieves and nurses him with her daughter’s breast-milk. 

He rises to rout Lord Percy at Loudoun Hill, ambushes Fenwick, and avenges his father’s murder. Men flock to his fugitive band in order to fight the English, including the brigand traitor Fawdon. In the Forest of Gask, as Wallace is tracked by bloodhounds, Fawdon feints fatigue. Wallace, suspecting treason, smites him, throwing the dogs off his scent He escapes his enemies, swimming the Forth, finds refuge on Torwood, and sends a woman back to spy, and is joined by his uncle.

In Lanark, he meets Marion Braidfute, marries her and has a daughter. Grim scene where the English cut off the horses’ tails (emasculation?) More skirmishes and Marion is put to death aiding her husband’s escape. Wallace seeks revenge. Edward Longshanks, alarmed at the uprisings, journeys to Scotland and is defeated in the fictitious Battle of Biggar and sues for peace and a one-year truce. But two months later, 18 Scottish nobles are killed at the Burns of Ayr. 

Wallace is named Warden; he has a vision of his future, and avenges the deaths of the slain noblemen. In Glasgow he routs Percy and Beck; with The Campbell’s help, he slays Macfaydon, another of Edward’s men. Malcolm of Lennox takes Stirling for Wallace; English strongholds Perth and Dunotar also fall. 

At Dundee, he hears of Edward’s arrival with Cressingham. At the Battle of Stirling Bridge, the English are routed, Wallace’s most extraordinary victory: outnumbered 5:1, he drove the English Horse into the Forth. Most of Wallace’s noblemen are named in this section including Andrew Moray.

Wallace convenes a Parliament at Perth, but Cospatrick refuses to join, so he routs him along with The Bruce and other Norman nobles who’ve sworn allegiance to Longshanks. Wallace invades England, Edward sends the queen and 50 ladies and priests to sue for peace, but Wallace declines, revealing English atrocities; she weeps (and declares her love for him?) It sounds like he also raids London? 

Edward sues for peace; three years later Wallace goes to France, captures Longueville’s pirate fleet, and fights in French wars. Edward invades Scotland (again), Wallace returns to reclaim Lochleven and Dundee. Edward fans fire between Comyn & the Stewart; at the Battle of Falkirk, Stewart is killed, Wallace is wounded by The Bruce, who is fighting for the English. He laments this and the death of John Graham. He resigns as Guardian and returns to France but once again is called back to free Scotland. Bruce finally becomes king, Wallace is betrayed by a servant and is executed in London, a martyr for Scottish freedom.

The Táin, tr. by Thomas Kinsella, summary

Klar, Celtic Romanticism 170
Summary

THE TÁIN
from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cuailnge
translated by Thomas Kinsella

Kinsella’s 1969 translation of The Táin, the “oldest vernacular epic of Western literature,” was 15 years in the making and long overdue, as the other translations were hopelessly antiquarian, whether Lady Gregory’s Kiltartan paraphrased rendition, Dunn’s 1914 translation, or editors Cross and Slover’s (Standish Hayes O’Grady translation? not notated) 1936 edition.

These Celtic Revival translations utilized the 12th c. Lebor Leinster (LL) manuscript while Kinsella used the older 12 c. Lebor na hUidre (LU: Book of the Dun Cow) version, supplementing it with the 14th c. Yellow Book of Lecan where text was missing. (Some language dates to the 7th c.) 

Kinsella includes remscéla to supply the modern reader with foreknowledge necessary to understand the plot and motivations of The Táin—stories that 5th to 15th c. audiences would have already known. His translation is very much a product of the 1970s, more muscular than the fin de siècle versions written in “...a florid adjectival style, running at times to an overblown decadence....” But this is not a literal translation: he also reorganizes and deletes material as he sees fit, especially inconsistencies and repetitions, for the mindset of the modern reader.

Written for an aristocratic Ulster audience of a thousand years ago, The Táin looks back another thousand years to the Celtic Heroic Age. Often cited as “a window on the Iron Age,” this cattle raiding tale of betrayal, intrigue, magic and love—is of, and for the nobility. A tale within a tale, with the aes dána, poets, seers and bards as witnesses, it is peopled with gods, goddesses, half-mortal heroes who rush naked into battle, giants, and monsters. 

Events are set in motion when Connaught’s Queen Medbh and her consort Ailill, compare their possessions and she comes up a bull short. To even things out, they decide to raid Ulster for King Conchobar’s bull. But the bulls are really magic shape-shifting swineherds, enemies since time began: “Two pig-keepers were friends once—now crows will drink a cruel milk.”

The Táin begins with a tropos like the Mahabarata: a king-making tale lost in the antiquities of time, retrieved through magic. A great mist formed around the druid Senchán Torpéist’s son and pupil, the poet Muirgen (of the sea), who for three days and nights, disappeared as the dead Ulster king Fergus mac Roich, a demigod and a protagonist, recited the Táin in its entirety from the grave on Samhain. 

However, the redactor/scribe embellished hard romantic elements to satisfy his medieval Christian audience. The action takes place from Monday (Doomsday) after Samhain to Spring’s beginning (Easter). In other versions (which the scribe refers to),Conchobar, the self-made king, brought down by his own lust and greed, will later die of a brainball lodged in his head by Ulster’s hero, CúChulainn, when he hears of the death of Christ (thus dating the story-frame to the birth of Christ). 

Grave names are written in Ogham, dating it to the 5th c.; but no one in the story (or in the 7th, or 12th Cs. for that matter) actually knows Ogham; Fergus is called in to read the Ogham warning on CúChulainn’s spansel hoop of challenge.

The Táin, AKA the Irish Iliad, preserves elements of Iron Age society—full of intrigue and betrayal. It includes seemly and aberrant behavior and appetites of kings and princes, druids (and -esses) and heroic warriors (and women); it gives genealogical, and naming data for demigod, warrior/hero and king lists. 

 The story offers formulaic, or sympathetic magic, battles and betrayals take place in water at the liminal boundaries of fords, and the heroes are denied success by their gessa. It explains placenames (though they don’t match up). Like the other heroes, Connaught’s Queen Medbh, a landed goddess, with appetites larger than life; she even pees prodigiously, creating gorges and canyons. Its hard romantic elements include in extraordinary detail, the battle accouterments and clothing of every troop as well as the battles. Even the anachronism of chariots, though chariots never existed in Ireland.

One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy, summary

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Summary

ONE BRIEF SHINING MOMENT:
Remembering Kennedy
by William Manchester

William Manchester’s poetic tribute to, and documentation of the Kennedy legend—written twenty years after his death—paints JFK as an Arthurian martyr-messiah. He begins his essay with facts of the assassination and then maps the nation’s psyche. A segue to the official mourning period and the forecast of its rapid passing, versus the nation’s protracted grief, becomes the focus of his essay.

Manchester weaves a scant biography of Kennedy: how Jack, as a child, read about the knights of the roundtable, of his youth as a knight in training, of his political career as king, and of his death as heroic exemplar. He reminds us of how time erased the man, thus replacing him with a legend as old as humanity. 

In the epigram from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur: “There thou lyest...” he evokes the death of Launcelot and of the roundtable, he compares it to the death of an idyllic era that never was: America in the ’60s. Though it was the age of the antihero, of victim, it was a kinder, gentler nation that might have been. 

 He writes of how we incorporated/ appropriated images of Kennedy into our lives. We are inside Bobby and/or Jack’s heads via the cosmos: “You ...recall...the Southern Cross.... ” Jack as a rising star. Text and sub-text. ... “When he shall die./ take him and cut him out in little stars...” This astral theme is no accident: Jack/Arthur-as-constellation. The title evokes Camelot, the brief star we wish upon.

Manchester retells the historical origins of the Arthurian story through the ages (1500 years!) and of its accretions through the oral tradition. He paints his constellation of a latter-day Camelot with Kennedy as all aspects of the dream: as Arthur, as Lancelot, as Gwenivere (well, maybe, Marilyn/Jackie), as Excalibur, as a messiah, as martyr, etc. 

He evokes the manuscripts of the pseudo-historians: Gildas, Nennius, Geoffrey, Jesus... Manchester’s thumbnail sketch of social commentator David Brinkley as rational versus emotional prophets, seers and oracles is a base form of druidic function, as are the literary agents and pollsters. 

We have many aspects of Le Morte d’Arthur: shrines & pilgrimage, quests & holy relics, pageantry & idolatry. Interesting to note the tchotchkii industry of Kennedy memorabilia (holy relics) was spawned by prolonged national grief. 

Death of a hero-king (whether or not the facts be true) is good for business. How public works were rechristened worldwide, even a section of Runnymede where the Magna Carta was signed, became a Kennedy shrine. “Once a leader becomes a martyr, transformation naturally follows.” 

 Kennedy is endowed with a nimbus, clothed in raiment so that we have no choice but to look up and see him as a part of the firmament, and identify him as star of the first magnitude.

Manchester begins his essay in typical journalistic fashion—basic reportage— he jousts with personal perspective so that the reader is both inside and outside the text. Through a misted lens, personal and collective memory and fact blur and merge. Not quite yellow journalism, this filmic essay is in the camp of Gonzo (I, myself & I feel, therefore I am) journalism. 

Don’t get me wrong: I loved the piece but it is personal narrative masquerading as factual journalism. (I can hardly believe that this is the same author who wrote so dark a picture of the Dark Ages., but I digress...)

Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory, summary

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Summary

LE MORTE D’ARTHUR
by Sir Thomas Malory

Malory’s 1471 version of the story of King Arthur, said to be the first great prose epic to be written in English (I guess Beowulf doesn’t count), is probably the most enduring version of Arthurian legend.

His story follows that of Geoffrey’s but incorporated many motifs of the French Lays. How much is Malory’s own invention, as with Geoffrey’s version, is still under speculation as we don’t know what was still circulating in the oral tradition. 

Said to be written while Malory, a roughish knight and politician of Warwickshire, while he was imprisoned for many civil crimes during the reign of Edward IV, the tale ends with a plea for the prayer of his soul, so, once again, who was his audience? 

Let us look at the motifs: like Geoffrey’s story, this tale focuses on the conception, birth, life, love and death of King Arthur and his knights. A tale of, and for the nobility with adventure, honor, courtly etiquette, chivalry and jousting central to the story—which gives some clue to 14th c. mores and preoccupations. 

Sir Lancelot, a Cú Chulainn figure, is Arthur’s foremost champion. But because of his enduring love for Gwynevere, is impure, he cannot seek the Grail (the Celtic cauldron)—said to be a holy relic brought by Jesus’ father!—only a pure and virtuous knight. 

The only three (pure) white bulls of the Round Table: Sir Gareth, Sir Galahad and the third bull with the black spot (= one sexual adventure) King Pelles. The rest are with blemish. So they find the Grail in the Waste Lands, but since the clergy knew where it was all along, why couldn’t they either help/or get it themselves? 

Does the Grail shrive the knights from their sins or save anybody? Not really. Lancelot repents for his behavior in the end, but it seems to have little to do with the Grail itself. 

Gawain’s revenge (avenging murdered kin is a central motif) upon Lancelot hastens the destruction of King Arthur’s court—with a little help from Sir Mordred, Arthur’s incestuous stepson, who seizes the throne and Gwynevere while Arthur is fighting Lancelot in Brittany. In this blood feud we have the House of Arthur versus the House of Lancelot, in short, we have the War of the Roses in allegorical format with Marcher Lords and the fickle populace switching sides at will.

The role of the ultimate victory and power of the church is a strong story element, much stronger than in Geoffrey’s story, and he, a bishop! The stories of Tristram and the Holy Grail are so allegorical, they seem to be written (or edited) by someone other than Malory—perhaps he was appealing to the clergy? 

Saving souls and repentance play strong roles. The might of the church aside, many of the age-old Celtic motifs are present throughout: the three “F”s (feasting, fighting, and, er, swivving.) 

We have godlike heroes fighting the enemy and in times of peace, each other. We have betrayals, brother killing brother, false identities, incest, magic swords stuck in rocks, feasts, funeral barges, numerology (three days and nights, 15 days, a year and a day, seven years); apple trees, visions, miracles and allegory (seven knights/hermits = the seven deadly sins), 

We have questing beasts, monsters magic wells and rivers where noblewomen ride by on white palfreys, where heroes enter into the otherworld, where battles are fought, where all women are beautiful and are either sorceresses or virtuous. A preoccupation with noble blood, virginity and sex. 

Few commoners mentioned; oblique references to the common soldier, a woodsman, some foresters and hermits but most of these characters seem to have magical powers. As with Geoffrey’s story, Merlin doesn’t play a big role in the story. So many characters are imbued with druidic powers, it’s hard to categorize them. 

Only the clergy can correctly interpret dreams (how did they get this powerful?) Blood magic is a strong element throughout. Naming (or withholding of a name—sometimes with dire consequences—as with Cú Chulainn and Connla ) also prevalent. A virtual crescendo of miracles occur as the clergy take a stronger role toward the heavily moralized end of the story where Lancelot and Gwynevere repent and join monasteries. So many masses are said, I lost count! But God wins in the end.

The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, summary

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Summary

THE HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN
by Geoffrey of Monmouth

Whether it be fact or fantasy, Geoffrey’s History is a very readable, gossipy text. Because it is a modern translation from the Latin, it is harder to judge the voice/tone of the text—though Prof. Lewis Thorpe insists he was faithful to the original text—whatever that was.

There were several different texts including a pseudo-Geoffrey text. Geoffrey, who was probably Welsh, claims an earlier text, now lost, for his source material which in 1136, he also claims to have translated into Latin from the British. So we might have a 6 - 11th c. text translated from Welsh/British into Latin in 1136, and then into English in 1966. 

During the 12th c., monks were churning out manuscripts and there already was a tradition of pseudo-historical Latin texts in Britain: Gildas (6th c.), Bede (8th c.) Nennius (9th c), So Geoffrey’s claim is possible. 

Though the text covers 1900 years’ worth of the pseudo-history of British kings, it reminds me of the Irish Lebar Gabala, which is referred to: “Their leader, whose name was Partholoim,” Geoffrey’s dynastic book was meant to be read silently, not aloud after feasts—where everything needs to be repeated—who was his audience? 

If Shakespeare owes much to Geoffrey’s story of King Lear, then Geoffrey owes much to his fellow chroniclers and to Caesar. We have the usual Celtic leitmotifs—battles, single-hand combat, berzerker frenzy, fosterage, revenge, crossed-fealty, broken oaths, treachery, shape-changing. 

We have giants, magic burial stones transported from Ireland, sacred fires, feasts, potlatches, fords and hazel woods, etc. We have new elements of chivalry—though it could be construed that chivalry is merely an extension of Celtic Heroic society. 

Geoffrey’s main characters are the Trojan Brutus (this story stretches credulity but there really were Celts in Asia Minor) who founded and named Britain (“the best of islands”) after himself; his son Kamber who named Kambria/Wales; Brutus’ ancestors, the infamous brothers Belinus and Brennius who sacked Rome (he knows Hellenic writings but not historic dates) who ravage the Franks! 

Cassivelaunus who fights Caesar, and Arthur, who occupies much of the text. Interesting to reread Caesar through a Geoffrey-colored lens. Shades of interpretatio Gaufrido who does wicked things to historical timelines!

Arthur is modeled after Caesar—conquering the Islands, Europe and even Rome. Much of the story is hinged on the prophecies and magic of Merlin and Pallatius, druid winds, etc.; a Druid college is mentioned. 

The Prophecy of Merlin is the weirdest text I’ve read: all those animals—totemic, tribal or kinglists? Merlin disappears after Gorlais’s death and never even meets Arthur! The British are almost always spoken of in a favorable light—though Geoffrey repeatedly reminds us their arrogant and quarrelsome nature works against them—and indeed it eventually is the source of their God-ordained downfall. 

Geoffrey paints the Saxons, Irish, Scots & Picts in a malevolent light—as he does the kings of the East (who were probably Christian!) and of course, evil Mordred. Interesting change of tone with the final chapter on the Saxon as the true inheritors of Britain after it was ravaged by civil wars and plagues—partially due to the introduction of a bad seed? Malgo’s line. 

Geoffrey owes much to Bede here. Interesting to see the doings of Edwin, Cadwallo and Penda fleshed out so. Throughout, the clergy are portrayed in cloying favor—obviously they are of the nobility. Even St Patrick is mentioned. God is wrathful, more akin to the Wheel of Fate than to Reason. 

Once again, this is a story for the nobility, not for the peasant or craftsman. The ultimate insult is that the surviving Britons get demoted to Welshmen.

The Wonder Smith & his Son, Ella Young, summary

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Summary

THE WONDER SMITH AND HIS SON
A Tale from the Golden Childhood of the World
Longman, Green & Co., NY, © 1927; Floris, Edinburgh, 1992
(In lieu of Celtic Wonder Tales, which I couldn’t find)
by Ella Young

Another book by Ella Young, in the same genre as Celtic Wonder Tales, is a collection of stories about the “Gubbaun Saor, whose other name was Mananaun, whose other name was Cullion the Smith...” Young writes in her foreword, “He was a maker of worlds and a shaper of universes.”

Young learned many stories as a child in Co. Antrim, Ireland. Born in 1867, Young was acquainted with Dr. Hyde and the Celtic Revival, and she collected her stories in Ireland. Later, in California, she wrote them down. “The stories were told to me in Gaelic at times, at times in English.” Patrick Gallagher was her main source. She wrote, “I have amplified the tales but I have not altered any incident.”

The first time I read the stories I thought them pointless. I had trouble recognizing Irish words as her transliteration is pre- Modern Irish. Dún is written as “dune,” which had me wondering why on earth anyone would be building a sand dune city! 

Upon second reading, I was better able to enjoy her extraordinary use of Hiberneo-English, rich imagery and metaphor: To the Gubbaun’s feast came king’s sons on white stallions with bells and apples of gold on their reins, their tails and manes “dyed a crimson-purple...” and the land of Ireland was so glad at his home-coming, the four directions played a music so wild that “...the white bulls of the forest moved to it, tossing their moon-curved horns...” 

 The backdrop of poetry is central to the story. One recognizes echoes of Amergin’s Mystery in it. As a cross-check, I also read Irish Fairy Tales (by Crocker, MacManus and Jacobs), they seemed dull and pedantic by comparison.

The loosely joined incidents, intended to “shorten a road,” do form a cohesive story about the Gubbaun. They are chock full of Celtic references as a dragon’s lair is filled with golden treasure: triads, blessings, spells, gessa, ogham, trees, white hounds, white bulls, pookas, piasts, ever-full cups, red capes, shape-shifters, a betraying giant: Balor of the One Eye, a Formorian King, and other gods (Angus, Midir), The Hag at the Ford, The Chief Poet, Tír na n-Óge...

The Gubbaun Saor, the cleverest wonder smith in the world, got his trade from a magic bag of tools dropped by three ravens who were once djinn craftsmen building a fairy city of stone, but a red-polled woman peeked and broke the spell.... 

The Gubbaun Saor became an inventor and builder of things. He had a crackerjack daughter Aunya, as wise as he, whom he traded (in fosterage) with an old woman for her son, Lugh, who was next to useless but played a mean fairy flute. 

Unable to teach Lugh anything, he regretted his bargain, and when Lugh was of marriageable age, The Gubbaun Saor interviewed many woman; only one was as clever as he, but she outwitted him over a sheepskin and mysteriously left. 

He sent Lugh in search of the cleverest woman in Ireland, with the sheepskin, saying: bring back both the skin and its price. Lugh was flummoxed but met a beautiful girl with hair of spun gold who took the sheepskin, plucked it of its wool and gave him back the skin with its price. Lugh sent the hound home and the Gubbaun made ready a feast for Aunya. But she drove a hard bargain for the Gubbaun’s forgiveness.... For the rest, you’ll just have to read the story yourself!

The Lay of the last Minstrel, Sir Walter Scott, summary

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Summary

THE LAY of the LAST MINSTREL
by Sir Walter Scott

Scott’s long poem in 6 cantos is a story within a story written in heroic couplets, and it utilizes antique language so characteristic of the corpus of the Romantic poets.

The framing device is the last bard, or minstrel, who recounts the deeds of her illustrious ancestors to the lady of the manor born—the Duchess of Buccleugh at Newark Castle. 

Like the Táin, this tale is of and for the nobility, and the story is nearly lost but the minstrel holds the memory of her Clan’s deeds. However, time has left him behind. Noble families have no need of his services. 

I don’t know when the Lay was written (ca. 1800, during Mad King George’s reign?), however, the story takes place in the mid-1600s with the decay of the Bardic Order (the inter-regnal period?) with references to the Civil- and Border Wars. 

But the tale harkens back two generations to the end of the 1500s (Eliz I). Scottish society, both pastoral and warlike, was changing, becoming literate, if we can trust Dr. Johnson’s observations. “They said a great family had a Bard and a Senachie who were the poet and historian of the house... but that neither Bard nor Senachie had existed for some centuries.”

The action begins Michaelmas Eve, and ends three days and three nights later, culminating in a great feast—as told by the harper/historian who rustily resurrects the past. 

The story is filled with episodes of skirmishes, single-hand-combat, heroic boasting and honor code—many elements seemingly right out of the Táin—as are the extensive detail of battles and of dress. We have chivalry and pageantry bestudded with wronged knights, an illicit love tryst between the children of rival families (and nations: Scots Lady Margaret “the flower of Teviot” of Branksome Hall and English Lord Henry Cranstoun).

 We’ve got a wizard, Michael Scott, restless in his tomb at St Mary’s Abbey, a midnight raid to steal his treasure, his magic book that wouldn’t open for unChristian hands (remember: sitting on a grave gets you otherworld information!), a monk struck dead for fulfilling his Clan duties, a goblin page/changeling (and the kidnapping of young Buccleogh, hell hounds, a Robin Hood-ish hunter-rescuer yeoman), dead warriors brought back to life, shape shifters, druid shades, ghosts and fairies from the sidhe/barrows—even Arthur, as a constellation, is evoked. 

Did I mention spells gone awry? This is a wild wooded landscape (unlike Johnson’s 1773 landscape where he bemoaned the serious lack of trees throughout Scotland).

We’ve got jumbled historic references: St George, and the Crusades? (red cross) are thrown in for good measure. Lady Margaret of Branksome Hall (Scott’s relation?) of French origin (Picardie) ties this tale in with the French Romances—there’s something of the Provençale trouvere style hinted at as well. She’s a bit druidic herself as she has some influence with the weather. And she can heal mortal wounds—or is that her mother? 

Even with Scott’s prologue explaining the action, I was hopelessly unhorsed by Canto 3. I climbed back into the saddle. But by Canto 5, I was stirrup-less, and by Canto 6, I was beneath the belly of the beast—or maybe I was a head dangling from the Night-mare’s mane! HELP! Who are all those knights? 

I gleaned little other than bardic rivalry after the triumphant final feast—many ballads were pastiched into the text. Is Albert Grahaeme the Last Bard? But I do know that the Minstrel lived happily ever after in a little hut on the estate of Newark Castle. I’m afraid the Romantic poets try my patience.

NB: Weirdly enough, I sometimes have curious dreams of poetic lines and obscure words I’ve not heard of: Heriot (p 87,) baffled me for ages. I dreamt it appeared in bold Gothic letters superimposed on the woods of north Britain—I was dressed in a filmy white gown, my feet not quite touching the dewy grass, I was keeper of the woods, for what, or where, I knew not. I later racked my brain trying to figure out if, and where I previously saw the word, to no avail. Unfortunately Scott sheds no light on the subject either.

The Bard, by Thomas Grey, summary

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Summary

THE BARD
by Thomas Grey

The Bard is a poem written in 3 parts set at the time of the 1282 Conquest of Edward the First, when he invaded the kingdom of Llewlyn ap Griffith, “the last Welsh prince.” Edward the First “Longshanks” (“Cambria’s curse”) ordered all the bards be put to death. “

Politically the Conquest brought to the bardic order a diminished status...” A. H. Dodd writes of a vanishing social order (A Short History of Wales); future bards “soft-peddled warlike and political themes.” He recounts a bard’s tale of a 15th c. bard executed under the crabbed “law of London” for pursuing a family feud. The Statute of Rhyddan didn’t help either, but I digress...

Romantic poet Thomas Gray, a contemporary of Johnson and Goldsmith, opens his poem evoking the majestic Snowden range. He sets in the midst of a tempest, his protagonist, the haggard-eyed Poet, who totters the banks of the raging river “Conway” [Conwy], where he “Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.” Gray weaves a pageantry of kings: Hoel, Llewellyn, Cadwallo, Urien, Mordred?...who was Plinlimmon? “Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries—” 

Gray weaves a warp of ravens, eagles and revenge upon “Edward’s race. The characters of hell...” the succession of Edwards- I, II, and III; the sumptuous—nearly neoclassic—funeral scene in II, 2., must be Richard II?, a beloved (and maligned) hero, obviously well mourned. 

Gray’s tapestry reveals the Henrys- IV, V, VI; Edward IV; a reference to the War of the Roses in symbolic language, and the very, very short reign of Richard III, “The Boar.” After four Edwards, who is evoked in III, 1? 

A segue to the Once and Future King preparing us for the Tudor line? Gray is sympathetic to The Virgin Queene: “Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-Line.” We take a great leap from the 6th c., of the Great Poet Taliesin—who like Arthur, rises again—to the last bard, who speaks in a allegorical Spenserian style (the Red-Cross knight?) as he leaps to his death into the roaring tide.

The landscape is painted majestic—somewhat parallel to the paintings of Constable (too bucolic) or Turner (too industrial), or even Bierstadt who made the American landscape so famous. But David Lloyd showed us a fabulous painting of the last bard leaping to his death, so perhaps my vision is colored by art. “Hark how each giant oak, and desert cave/ Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!” 

The poem (low on plot) has a two king lists, and a plethora of warriors and damsels. And the endgame: a bard (or warrior) would rather commit suicide rather than face surrender, is an age-old Celtic motif. Thomas Gray's poem kicked of the Romantic Movement as well as becoming the impetus for the founding of the Celtic Twilight movement.

THE BARD: a Pindaric Ode —Thomas Gray 

“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho’ fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,
Nor e’en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!”
Such were the sounds that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance:
“To arms!” cried Mortimer, and couched his quiv’ring lance

On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o’er cold Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air)
And with a master’s hand, and prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
“Hark, how each giant-oak and desert-cave
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.

Enough for me: with joy I see
The diff’rent doom our fates assign.
Be thine Despair and sceptred Care;
To triumph and to die are mine.”
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night.

                               —Thomas Gray, 1757

see also, for an interesting parallel:
Hungary celebrates legendary tale of Welsh bards' slaughter

Cuchulain of Muirthemne, by Lady Gregory, summary

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Summary

CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE
by Lady Gregory

In her dedication to the people of Kiltartan, Lady Gregory’s disclaimer of how she took the best of the ancient Irish stories and fitted them together again—clues the reader in that this too is an author’s redaction, not authentic translation.

I found the statement patronizing: “I left out a good deal I thought you would not care about for one reason or another, and I put in nothing of my own that could be helped, only a sentence or so now and again to link the different parts together. I have told the whole story in plain and simple words, in the same way my old nurse Mary Sheridan used to be telling stories from the Irish long ago, and I a child at Roxborough.” 

In her end Notes, L. Gregory further elaborates that she has condensed many passages, and has given a 19th c. context to obscure (medieval) formulae. She used some 24 translated sources of the stories including Scots-Gaelic versions—but no original Irish material. Which makes this book a Victorian paraphrase of secondary and tertiary translations from the German, French, English, and perhaps even Latin—each with their own linguistic flaws—for, to borrow an Italian aphorism: to translate is to assassinate. 

Like with MacPherson, we can no more hold L. Gregory’s text to be an authentic translation as we can the King James version of the Bible—though we continue to swear the whole truth by it. Which brings me back to an idle thought: nurse Mary Sheridan—is L. Gregory making a claim that she understands Irish—or not? It is a romantic notion to have been brought up by an Irish-speaking nurse. I am aware that Gregory and Yeats collaborated on many projects and that he based his plays on her interpretations of the Ulster Cycle.

We get a glimpse of the 1890s mindset from excerpts of Yeats’ review of L. Gregory’s CúChulain. He stated: “...no story has come down to us in the form it had when the storyteller told it in the winter evenings. Lady Gregory has done her work of compression and selection at once so firmly and so reverently that I cannot believe that anybody, except... for a scientific purpose, will need another text than this,.... When she has added her translations from other cycles, she will have given Ireland its Mabinogion, its Morte d’Arthur, its Nibelungenlied.” 

He added: “Lady Gregory has discovered a speech as beautiful as that of Morris, and a living speech into the bargain. ... Irish, and to understand that it is as true a dialect of English as the dialect that Burns wrote in. It is some hundreds of years old, and age gives a language authority. [it is] tender, compassionate, and complaisant, like the Irish language itself. “

With that said, we have a medieval text referring back to the epic/classical past, modernized to Victorian standards, which includes a newfound reverence for Irish exotica, the concept of Hiberneo-English as an art form, and the validation of genuine oral tradition. 

Hard romanticism based on the Classical tradition with many landscapes converging: mythic,/epic, medieval and neoclassic/ romantic. A pastoral landscape peopled with aristocratic heroes, kings and druids. Prophecy, gessa, pathos, hero-death lists, liminal boundaries. 

Synopsis: CúChulain bids his mother goodbye, vessels bleed (3 x); he and Cathbad the Druid see a washer at the ford (washing C’s. guts), eats dog with 3 hags (becomes crippled on left side). At the battle, he does his feats, throws his spears, which are lobbed back, killing kings as prophesied, Lugaid mortally wounds Cu, who is tied up to a stone pillar in order to die standing. Even in death he manages to maim. 

Battle head count with Cu’s wife Emer (who sounds like Hamlet at he gravesite), she falls into Cu’s grave and dies, where he was resurrected into the sky by a druid chariot. (Shades of Apollo!)

Celtic Twilight, by WB Yeats, summary

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Summary

CELTIC TWILIGHT
by WB Yeats

Yeats, while in his late 20s, published collections of Irish peasant folklore in two volumes of Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902)—many pieces which previously appeared in journals, in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888), and in Miscellanies (1902?).

 I found Yeats’ comments on collecting folklore intriguing as it had become a science by the late 1800s. But Yeats criticized his predecessors: “...collectors of Irish folk-lore ...have made their work literature rather than science... The impulse... came from a class that, did not... take the populace seriously, .... What they did was not wholly false; they merely magnified an irresponsible type,.....” 

Yeats lauded: “But the best book since Croker is Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends.” (FFTIP 1888). However in a later review, Yeats complained of L.Wilde’s lack of methodology. Sir Wilde “... threw all his gatherings into a big box,... Lady Wilde has quarried the materials of her new book: a farrago of spells, cures, fairy-tales, and proverbs... districts seldom specified and the dates of discovery never. I ... wish they had been... more scientifically treated, but I scarce know whom to blame: Lady Wilde, Sir William Wilde, his collectors, or the big box.” 

In another review Yeats wrote: “Dr Hyde is by far the best Irish folklorist by the right of his incomparable skill as a translator from the Gaelic (Miscellanies). 

According to Yeats, the collector of folklore should take the tales down in the native language, and to document his informants. But Yeats didn’t speak Irish, and didn’t document his collections in CT either (though one may presume he documented the stories in his journals? In a 1924 edition, he added more documentation). 

Yeats wrote “If a poet cannot find immortal and mysterious things in his own country, he must write of far-off countries oftener than of his own country,...” (Miscellanies). But Yeats didn’t have to go as far afield as that: Paddy Flynn of Sligo was his main informant as was Mary Banner, his maternal uncle’s maid in Mayo. 

Yeats also collaborated with Lady Gregory, collecting tales from her servant Biddy Early. The landscape is pastoral (hard romanticism), the stories, an admixture of ancient tales, folk belief in the Aes Dána as shrunken faeries; other classes of spectres and inexplicable phenomena. Echoes of saint’s lives and heroic epics with a smattering of Classicism. Homer, Finn and Ulster tales, snatches of the Danu cycle.

Yeats’ writing style is very readable. I loved the Blind Raftery stories—since there is some doubt as to whether or not he was real or made up. A criticism later applied to Wentz, is that Yeats, desiring to believe in the occult and supernatural, might have colored his spectral lens with imagination.

One wonders how much he shaped the stories to fit his own cultural agenda? Somehow I am left with the feeling that their servants were also having one off on the gentry...

However I did recognize bits of stories that my grandmother was always afther telling me...except she was more earthy: the púca pissed on the berries on Samhain. And the ghost lore is familiar as well. We have the knocking at the door in the middle of the night before a family member dies—even I have answered the door only to find no one there, except once, the Morning Star bright as a moon in the predawn sky.

The Poems of Ossian, by James MacPhearson, summary

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Summary

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN (sic)
by James MacPhearson


I am flummoxed, my flabber is ghasted by this primo-genital Celtic Ur-“tale” that sparked off the Romantic Movement. were they nuts? Since I can’t seem to retain any of the elements of the storyline except lots of swords and blue-eyed heroes named Fingal, Ossian, Cuthullen, Morva, Gaul and Orla, I am at a loss as to what MacPherson was actually writing about—his storylines and even his so-called summaries left me in the dark.

When the footnotes are longer than the so-called poems, it spells trouble. Their only purpose, as far as I can see (which isn’t very far at all), is to give an “authentic” and learnéd flavor to the texts, which I consider to be badly written archaic diction, and certainly NOT poetic. Is there a decent metaphor in the house? 

I’m sorry, but I’m a VERY tolerant reader, prone to reading cereal boxes and junk mail, but this text stretches my very patience (and dyslexia). For the record, I HATE exclamation marks!! (she said!!!) And O when thou speakest in sacred tongues—a Romantic notion of ancient language and diction—it simply makes me want to smack MacPherson in the gob.

How could Napoleon have carried a copy around with him, ere he saw Elba, during his campaigns—no wonder he was imprisoned. The Moscow mud was a just punishment for bad literary judgment. But then again, did he really know English? (Was he holding the book hidden in his jacket front all that time?).

The errata page prefacing the opening lines of Fingal, with its hyper-minute corrections of prepositions and articles set the (anal) tone. Poor Fingal, the hero, only gets two lines in edgewise before the author MacPherson interjects an “apologia” in both first- and third-person perspective, rendering some 15 lines of footnotes of disclaimer, which continues onto the next page another 35 lines about finding the “fragments,” and the orthography of CúChulainn’s name, thus merging him with the 3rd c. Fingal. Strange anachronisms indeed. 

The story isn’t about Fingal at all, it’s about what MacPherson, the scholar, knows, he’s wanking off. His spear is a blasted pine, all right. OK, so he professes to know Greek, makes textual comparisons to Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeniad, Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shakespeare, Pope’s Homer and Iliad, Dryden, Himself, Thompson, Gray, et al., in order to perhaps authenticate and place his own work with that of the great English poets, and to demonstrate a Scots-Celtic link with ancient Greece. 

Methinks the author doth protest too much. Does Toland’s book actually exist? Check out footnote 2 on p. 185/6 about his explanation of a “false translation” as to why the ancient Celts couldn’t have been drinking beer or wine...or the author’s “review on p. 206. Perhaps the author himself imbibed, if not in spirits, then in Robert Grave’s favorite hallucinogen, the amanita?

“The poet teaches us the opinions that prevailed in his time...” (p62, footnote 9) holds true for MacPherson: this is a hopelessly jumbled, deluded text. I’m surprised anyone ever took it seriously. 

OK, like B-movie commentator Joe-Bob Riggs, I will attempt to describe the action which takes place mostly in the Scottish Highlands and to the West, perhaps Scandinavia and Ireland as well: lots of battles, ghosts, spears, grimsome deaths, slaughters, heroic combat, suffering fair, lovesick damsels, Viking-like heroes, brave and stately in tall ships, chieftain-kings, druids, and bards, warring tribes...the mighty have fallen in battle indeed, and this author succumbed to sheer verbiage, a fallen warrior on the battlefield of muddled words.

Suggested reading order: 1) read footnotes, 2) read chapter summaries 3) read story—if you are able.