Celtic Mythology

I

Introduction

Celtic Mythology, the mythology of the ancient Celtic peoples of continental Europe and the British Isles in pre-Roman times. Like the mythologies of other Indo-European language groups, Celtic mythology tells of such divine figures as a sky god associated with the day and the Sun, who wields a thunderbolt. It contained such commonly occurring features as a theomachy, or “battle of the gods”, in which a new set of gods challenged an older pantheon. It presented the stories of its gods and heroes according to the pattern of the internationally recurrent heroic biography. In common with the mythologies of other races, it had its own account of the beginning and end of the world, and of the constituency and articulation of the universe of the present time. It also contained a range of myths reflecting a highly developed sense of social stratification, whose purpose was to define and explain class differences associated with caste, rank, or stage of life.

II

Reconstructing Celtic Mythology

Because the mythology of the ancient Celts was never committed to writing, the best starting point for an exploration of Celtic mythology is offered by the medieval Celtic literatures of Ireland and Wales, which contain a wealth of mythological material, including many literary or expository texts that are recognizably mythic in import or at least in theme.

The identification and elucidation of this mythological material was keenly pursued in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but then suffered something of an eclipse among Celtic scholars, as the quest for factual history became more pressing, and the findings of the earlier mythologists came to seem embarrassingly outmoded. Popular curiosity about Celtic mythology was satisfied by accounts of Celtic religion based on the material record, coupled with uncritical regurgitation of older scholarship. However, over the last two decades or so, a fresh wave of scholarly interest in Celtic myth has emerged. In general, Celtic scholars today make a greater allowance for the intellectual input and motivation of the medieval clerics and literati to whom it fell to accommodate a pagan belief system within a Christian environment. Their output, in literary form, is now seen as continuing, rather than curtailing, a myth-making tradition.

However, it is important to bear in mind that these medieval Celtic literatures do not materially preserve the substance of Celtic mythology in its unadulterated, original form. These texts were written in the climate of a robustly Christian milieu, in which mythological material of an overtly non-Christian character can hardly be expected to have survived unaltered. Allowance for distortion must also be given on account of the fact that this mythology was recorded in times and places remote from the Iron Age world of the ancient Celts. Nevertheless, medieval writers enabled certain sorts of pre-Christian material to survive, albeit in changed or fragmentary form. As a result, certain themes, motifs, and characters present in the medieval literature can be identified as having their origin in the mythology of the ancient Celts.

Various other points of reference aid this process of identification. First, linguistic or literary points shared by the Irish and Welsh traditions may argue a common Celtic, and hence ancient, origin. Second, philological analysis of names of characters, places, and themes in the literature can suggest points of contact with other Indo-European cultures, which again may indicate an inherited, and hence ancient, feature in Celtic mythology. Third, the archaeological record can contribute insights into ritual matters with mythological implications, especially where epigraphic or iconographical evidence is present, as in coinage, or where statues of divinities are labelled with their names in the Roman fashion. Lastly, the remarks of Classical authors are often suggestive, though explicit commentaries on Celtic religion are mostly flawed by brutalizing or romantic misconceptions and a tendency to rationalize according to Greek or Roman norms: thus, in a few instances, what appear to be Celtic myths are retailed as facts by Classical historians.

III

Themes in Celtic Mythology

By far the most important single medieval Irish mythological text is Lebor Gabála Érenn (“The Book of the Taking of Ireland”, or “The Book of Conquests”), a sprawling account of the beginnings and mythological past of Ireland since Creation (in which are narrated the conquests of a series of invading races), and the coming of the Goídil, or Gaels, to the West, to become the last set of invaders to “take” Ireland. This account, which is known to have existed in at least a simple form by the 7th century ad, and which was hugely elaborated thereafter, is strategic in the sense that its framework is presupposed by, and often explicitly underpins, the rest of early Irish literature.

A

The Invasions

The pre-Gaelic invasions are presented as a flashback in the text, at the moment when the Gaels are approaching Ireland. The first invasion, which was led by Cessair (sometimes described as a granddaughter of the biblical patriarch Noah), took place before the Flood and was ended by it. The next, led by Partholón, was also doomed to extinction, by plague in this case. The third was led by Nemed, and was successful although, after his death, his people were subjugated by a grotesque, demonic, seaborne people known as the Fomoire, who first appeared as adversaries of the Gaels in the time of Partholón, and continued to provide a formidable opposition during the course of later “takings” of Ireland. The sons of Nemed attempted an uprising; all were massacred except for one boatload of men who sailed away to the Mediterranean and to the north of Europe. During the time of these early invasions, Lebor Gabála Érenn tells that important geophysical changes were taking place, whose net result was to bring into existence the land as we know it. Thus we read of mountains erupting out of a primeval, tree-covered plain, and rivers bursting out of the sides of those mountains, and man’s intervention as the early clearer of plains for cultivation.

The next invaders were the Fir Bolg, or “bag-men”, remote descendants of the survivors of Nemed’s people. The developments that took place during their occupation included political arrangements (for example, the division of the country into five “fifths”, or provinces), and social institutions such as kingship. The rule of Nemed’s people was eventually challenged by the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann (“tribes of the Goddess Danu”), who were descended from another party of survivors from the destruction of the Nemedian occupation. They defeated the Fir Bolg, who were forced to retreat to the Scottish islands and the Isle of Man, but later on had to face a renewed challenge from the Fomoire. At the climactic battle of Mag Tuired, the threat of the Fomoire was eventually extinguished forever, and the Tuatha Dé Danann ruled the land until they in their turn were subjugated by the Gaels. The settlement that resulted from that victory gave the “upper half” to the Gaels, and the “lower half” (an underworld reached via fairy mounds and caves, or located offshore, like the territory of the Fomoire) to the Tuatha Dé Danann.