The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends (6 page)

At the death of their leader, the Children of Danu wavered and became fearful.

It was then that Lugh Lámhfada, Lugh of the Long Arm, approached the battlefield. Now Lugh was the son of Cian, which means “Enduring One”, who was in turn son of Cainte, the
god of speech. Now the council of the Children of Danu had forbidden him to come to the battle, for Lugh was all-wise and all-knowledgeable and it was thought that his life was too valuable to risk
in battle, for his was the wisdom needed to serve humankind.

Indeed, so wise was Lugh that Nuada had let him become ruler of the Children of Danu for thirteen days, in order that they might receive his wisdom. Therefore the Children of Danu had him
imprisoned, for his own safety, during the battle, with nine warriors to guard him. But on hearing
Nuada was slain, Lugh escaped his prison and his guards and, leaping into his
chariot, he hurried to join his brothers and sisters on the Plain of Towers.

Bres was standing triumphantly with his Fomorii warriors when he saw a great light in the west.

“I wonder that the sun is rising in the west today,” he muttered, scratching his head.

One of the Fomorii shamans approached Bres, trembling. “It is not the sun, mighty Bres. The light stems from the countenance of Lugh Lámhfada! It is his radiance.”

Lugh, with his weapons sheathed, drove his chariot out from the lines of the Children of Danu; straight he drove up to the tightly packed lines of Fomorii champions. “Where is
Balor?” he cried. “Let him who thinks himself a great warrior come forward and be taught the truth!”

The lines of Fomorii parted and the great figure of Balor was seen, seated on a gigantic chair. His one mighty eye was closed.

Lugh’s challenge rang out again.

This time Balor heard it and said to his attendants, “Lift up my eyelid, that I may gaze upon this prattling little man.”

The attendants began to lift Balor’s eye with a hook. They stood well out of range: for anyone on whom that eye fell upon would perish immediately.

Lugh was ready with a sling and in it set a
tathlum
, a slingshot made of blood mixed with the sand of the swift Armorian sea. As the lid was lifted, Lugh hurled his shot into the eye. It
struck it, went through the brain and out the back of Balor’s head. The great Fomorii champion’s eye was knocked out and fell on the ground. In its dying glint, thrice nine companies of
Fomorii warriors were destroyed, for they saw its malignant gaze.

Balor fell screaming to the ground in blindness.

A great anxiety fell on the Fomorii.

Lugh now raised his sword, and the Mórrígán set up a paean of victory, “Kings arise to the battle . . . !” And so the Children of Danu took heart and, echoing
the song, they began to move forward. Great was the slaughter now as they pressed back on the Children of Domnu. It is said that more
Fomorii were killed on the Plain of Towers
than there were stars in the sky or grains of sand on the seashore, or snow-flakes in winter.

And Lugh came upon Bres, who was fleeing for his life from the battlefield.

“Spare my life, Lugh, great conqueror,” cried the son of Elatha, sinking to his knees, for he no longer had the strength nor spirit to fight. “Spare it, and I will pay whatever
ransom you require.”

“What ransom?” demanded Lugh, his sword held at the throat of the Fomorii leader.

“I will guarantee that there will be no shortage of milk from the cows of this land,” offered Bres.

Lugh then called the Children of Danu to him.

“What good is that if Bres cannot lengthen the lives of the cows?” they demanded.

Bres could not grant longer lives so he offered, “If my life is spared, every wheat harvest in Inisfáil will be a good one.”

“We already have enough good harvests. We need no other guarantees.”

Finally, Bres agreed to instruct the Children of Danu as to the best times to plough, sow and reap and for this knowledge, which they had not, they spared his life.

And when the battle was over, when the Fomorii were pursued back into their undersea fortresses, and they accepted the right of the Children of Danu to live in peace in the Island of Destiny and
rule over it as gods and goddesses of goodness and light, the Mórrígán went to all the summits of the highest mountains of the island and on each summit she proclaimed the
victory of the gods and goddesses of light and goodness. And she sang in triumph a paean to the Mother Goddess, Danu.

And while Danu smiled on the victory of her children, her sister Domnu scowled from the depths of the earth and she chose the goddess Badh the Crow as her
mouth to utter a prophecy to Danu and her children.

“All life is transitory. Even your children are not immortal, my sister. The time will come when they will be defeated. The time will come when no one will want gods and goddesses to
nurture them, when they will be driven into the darkness, like my children have been this day.

“The time approaches when the summers of Inisfáil will be flowerless, when the cows shall be without milk, and the men will be weak and the women shall be shameless; the seas will
be without fish, the trees without fruit and old men will give false judgments; the judges will make unjust laws and honour will count for little and warriors will betray each other and resort to
thievery. There will come a time when there will be no more virtue left in this world.”

Indeed, there came that time when the Children of Míl flooded into the Island of Destiny and when the Children of Danu were driven underground into the hills, which were
called
sídhe
, which is pronounced
shee
, and in those mounds they dwelt, the once mighty gods and goddesses, deserted by the very people who they had sought to nourish. The
descendants of Míl, who live in the Island of Destiny to this day, called the Children of Danu the
aes sídhe
, the people of the hills, and when even the religion of Míl
was forgotten, when the religion of the Cross replaced that of the Circle, the people simply called the
aes sídhe
by the name of fairies.

Of the greatest of the gods, the victor of the battle on the Plain of Towers, Lugh Lámhfada, god of all knowledge, patron of all arts and crafts, his name is still known today. But as
memory of the mighty warrior, the invincible god, has faded, he is known only as
Lugh-chromain
, little stooping Lugh of the
sídhe
, relegated to the role of a fairy craftsman.
And, as even the language in which he was venerated has disappeared, all that is left of the supreme god of the Children of Danu is the distorted form of that name
Lugh-chromain
. . .
leprechaun.

Ireland [Éire]

Ireland: Preface

T
he consequence of having an Irish father, and one who was a writer – indeed, who was the third generation of the family to take to the
scribal art – was that, as a child, I never lacked being told legends and fairy tales. Indeed, in my early years, or so it seemed, there was almost a competition in the family as to who would
tell the tale. For it was not just my father who was the storyteller; my mother was equally adept, as befitted someone from a family who had a long history of literary endeavour.

One of the first of the family whose works went into print was the brother of my mother’s 11x great-grandfather. He was Thomas Randolph (1605–35), the poet and dramatist and friend
of Ben Jonson. Her family also had Breton, Scottish and Welsh branches, so the Celts were well represented in my youth.

If that was not enough, I was the youngest of six, of which five of us (three girls and two boys) had survived through childhood. The eldest boy had died as a baby in a hospital during a flu
epidemic. My elder sisters and brother also felt it their duty to “perform” and tell tales with me as their, often unwilling, audience.

For three years or so, when I was between five and nine years old, my father had moved us to a fairly isolated country cottage where he pounded on a large black Remington Standard typewriter,
which was so heavy that I could not even begin to lift it. He produced short stories, some serials and articles for a variety of newspapers and magazines. There
was no
electricity in the cottage and I grew well acquainted with the warmth and light of oil lamps.

To reach the nearest village, it was a stroll across three fields and a bridge over a gushing stream, and then a walk of about three miles along a narrow country road, for the bus passed only
once every hour. I walked it often, sometimes insisting on being allowed to carry the empty “accumulator” – the glass battery which ran the radio – and then trying to avoid
carrying back the full one. So there was plenty of time for telling tales on such walks as well as on the dark winter’s evenings.

Myths and legends were a staple fare. I remember one of my sisters adapting stories into little plays, which we would put on in a nearby disused barn for the entertainment of the other local
children.

This is a long way round to saying that when I grew up, being the youngest, I had no one, in my turn, to tell the stories to and this is probably why I turned to writing them instead.

Because of my father, I grew up with stories of Irish myth and legend as part of the staple fare, so that retelling them is second nature. Our home was also full of books of such tales. I
suppose Thomas Crofton Croker (1790–1854), from my father’s home county of Cork, made retelling of Irish myths and legends in English popular. He produced
Researches in the South of
Ireland
(1824) and
Fairy Legends & Traditions of South West Ireland
(1825), which caused the famous Brothers Grimm to translate the latter into German as
Irische
Elfenmärchen
.

Lady Jane Wilde, the mother of Oscar, was an assiduous collector and her
Ancient Legends
,
Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland
was published in 1887. Jeremiah Curtin’s
Myths and Folklore of Ireland
(1890) was always a popular book on our shelves, but never replaced Lady Augusta Gregory’s
Cuchulain of Muithemne
(1902) and
Gods and Fighting
Men
(1904).

Perhaps the most qualified and capable folklorist was Douglas Hyde, who became the first president of the Irish Free State in 1937 under its new constitution. His collections of oral traditions
have become classics, such as
Leabhar
Sgeulaigheachta
(1889),
Beside the Fire
(1890) and
Love Songs of Connacht
(1893). His
magnum opus
was, however,
a
Literary History of Ireland
(1899), the first general survey of Irish literature from ancient times.

Dr Hyde laid the groundwork for many who came later and who have added important contributions to such studies. Myles Dillon’s
The Cycles of the Kings
, Oxford University Press,
1946, and
Early Irish Literature
, University of Chicago, 1948. The impressive Professor Thomas O’Rahilly’s
Early Irish History and Mythology
, Dublin Institute of Advanced
Studies, 1946. Alwyn and Brinsley Rees’s
Celtic Heritage
, Thames and London, 1961. These were some of the many titles which impressed me in sorting out the original fabric of the Irish
tales.

The following stories are an amalgamation from many sources and varied versions. The first two are in the
Leabhar Gabhála
, The Book of Invasions. It contains the stories of the
mythical invasions of Cesair, before the Deluge, through to the invasions of Partholón, Nemed, the Firbolg, the Tuatha Dé Danaan and finally the Milesian ancestors of the Gaels. It is
regarded as the “national epic” of Ireland.

To this “Mythological Cycle” belongs the stories of
The Sons of Tuirenn
and
The Children of Lir
.
The Sons of Tuirenn
appears as
Aided Chlainne Tuirenn
and
there is much spelling confusion of the name, which appears as Tuireall and Tuirill, and also uncertainty as to the identity of Tuirenn. In one text he is described as Danu’s father; in
another, her husband; while the goddess Brigid is also placed in this role. The narrative
Oidheadh Chlainne Lir
(The Tragic Fate of the Children of Lir) survives from a fifteenth-century
text and has always been one of my favourite tales.
The Love of Fand
is based on
Serglige Con Culainn
, belonging to the Red Branch Cycle, also known as the Ulster Cycle; this is
heroic myth comparable to the
Iliad
in theme and heroic tone, of which the most famous story is the saga of the
Táin Bó Cuailnge
(The Cattle Raid of Cuailnge).

Lochlann’s Son
belongs to the Fenian Cycle, sometimes called the Ossianic Cycle, concerning the deeds of Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his Fianna warriors, whose first bold synthesis
appeared as a cohesive whole in the twelfth-century
Accamh na Senórach
(Colloquy of the Ancients). The stories are dated to the third century
AD
. Next to the
Táin
, the Fenian Cycle is one of the longest medieval compositions and became very popular with ordinary people during that period.

It was from the Fenian Cycle that many Arthurian stories were later embellished. Although there are nearly a dozen original Arthurian sagas in Irish, the Arthurian stories never displaced
stories of Fionn Mac Cumhaill in medieval Irish popular imagination.

The Poet’s Curse
concerns historical personages in Mongán and the poet Dallán Forgaill. A discussion of the earliest surviving medieval texts of the story was made by
Dr Eleanor Knott in Eriu 8, pp. 155-60. Dalian Forgaill is, by tradition, the author of Amra Choluim Chille, composed c. 600
AD
, and is considered one of the oldest
survivals in Irish literature.