Monthly Archives: October 2024

Derbriu and the Pigs of Derblinne

Posted on by
Reply

(In this post, I continue to link directly to the CODECS page for the texts that I discuss. Full bibliographical information for different editions and translations as well as other sources mentioned can be found there, along with direct links to online editions and translations, where available. Discussions of any particular Old/Middle Irish words will link directly to eDIL, the online edition of the Dictionary of the Irish Language.)

Medb, Queen of Connacht, is one of the most famous and important characters in the Ulster Cycle.  Her extended family is also very important, although not quite so famous. Her father is Eochaid Feidlech, brother of the Eochaid Airem who marries Étaíne in Tochmarc Étaíne “The Wooing of Étaine.” She also has numerous siblings, although some are mentioned more often than others. The three Find Emna, Eithne, and Clothra are fairly well-known because they and their children play important roles in other stories, but additional siblings are sometimes mentioned, including in the text known both as Ferchuitred Medba “The Husband Portion of Medb”1 and Cath Boinde “The Battle of the Boyne.”  Cath Boinde was edited and translated in 1906 by Joseph O’Neill. Ferchuitred Medba was edited in 1913 by Kuno Meyer, but not translated.

The story starts with Eochaid Feidlech taking the kingship of Ireland. There is some discussion of his ancestry, and then his children are listed. First, we are told that he has four sons.  The three Find Emna (who seem to be triplets) are named first, and we are given a brief summary of how they conceived Lugaid Ríab nDerg (Lugaid of the Red Stripes) with their sister the night before they attacked their father in the battle of Druim Criaid, during which they were killed by him.  Which sister is not specified, but Clothra is named in other accounts of Lugaid’s conception. The fourth brother is Conall Anglonnach, and we are told that he is the ancestor of the Uí Conaill in the land of Fer Brega.  The text then says that Eochaid Feidlech had many children and goes on to list six daughters. First is Ele, after whom Bríg Ele in Leinster is named.  We are told of her marriages and her son Máta mac Sraibgend and grandson Ailill mac Máta.  Mugain is listed next as wife of Conchobar and mother of Glasne mac Conchobar.  Next Eithne is described as wife of Conchobar and mother of Furbaide mac Conchobar. The story of Furbaide’s birth is told, including how Eithne drowned and Glas Berramain was renamed for her.  Clothra is next, and we are told that she is mother of Cormac Conn Longes, unless Ness, mother of Conchobar is.  Conchobar is not mentioned here, but we know that Cormac is his son.  The fifth sister is Derbriu “after whom are named the pigs of Derblinne.” Finally, Medb is named and identified as another wife of Conchobar, and we are told how she left him because of pride and went to Tara to join the king, her father.

Each of the siblings is associated with their husbands, children, and/or descendants, except for Derbriu.  The main point of this passage is to point out that four of Eochaid Feidlech’s six daughters were given to Conchobar in marriage, and the story goes on to explain why: Eochaid Feidlech killed Conchobar’s father Fachtna Fathach in battle and gave his daughters to Conchobar as restitution.  Ele and Derbriu alone are not given to Conchobar, but Ele was married twice, and her story is still important for this text because she is the grandmother of Ailill, who is Medb’s final husband.  Derbriu alone is introduced in a way that is disconnected from concerns about family and genealogy and from the main narrative of the text. 

Also, what is the story behind the pigs of Derblinne being named after Derbriu? 

I didn’t know anything about it when I first came across this reference, and finding the answer was quite interesting, so I thought I would share what I learned.  Of course I went straight to Google to find out about these pigs, and once I had convinced Google that I was indeed searching for “pigs of Derblinne” and NOT “pigs of Dublin,” as it seemed convinced I intended, I didn’t find much at all.  I was reading Kuno Meyer’s edition of Ferchuitred Medba at the time, but had I instead been reading Joseph O’Neill’s edition and translation of the Cath Boinde version of the text, I might have done a bit better. For one thing, that text refers to the “pigs of Deirbriu” rather than the “pigs of Derblinne,” which gets more hits on Google, but more importantly O’Neill provides the following explanatory note about these pigs and Deirbriu herself:

“For these pigs, see LL. 165 a 35, 167 a 30, Rennes Dind., p. 47 (Stokes’ Ed.). They were the sons of Oengus mac Ind Óc, and the foster-children of Deirbriu. They seem to be connected with the fairy pigs (of the Firbolg?) which came out of Croghan, and which no one could count. The Manners and Customs of Hy Fiachra, p. 26, contain verses ascribed to Torna Eigeas, and addressed to the great red pillar-stone at Roilig-na-riog, stating that under it lie the three sons of Eochaid, and their sister ‘Derbriu Dreac-maith’.” (177nf)

By “The Manners and Customs of Hy Fiachra,” O’Neill seems to mean the text from the
Book of Lecan edited and translated by John O’Donovan in The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach, Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country (1844).2 There, on p. 27 and 29 (Irish text p. 26 and 28) can be found the following verses, as translated by O’Donovan:

The three sons of Eochaidh Feidhleach, the fair,
Are in thy mound, as I boast,
As also is Eochaidh Aireamh feeble,
Having been slain by the great Maol.

The prince Eochaidh Feidhleach is
Beneath thee, and Derbhre of goodly aspect,
And Clothra, no small honour to thee,
And Meadhbh, and Muireasg.

O’Donovan identifies this Muireasg as “daughter of Hugony Mor, monarch of Ireland. A.M. 3619,”3 but given the placement of this name at the end two quatrains about the family of Eochaid Feidlech, I do wonder if this might instead be connected to Ailill or his mother Máta Muiresc.  While Ferchuitred Medba says that Ailill has a patronym and his father is Máta mac Sraibgend, other texts disagree. Goire Conaill Chernaig i Crúachain ocus Aided Ailella ocus Conaill Chernaig states that Ailill has a matronym and his mother was Máta Muiresc. Interesting as these verses are though, they say nothing of Derbriu’s pigs.

To answer the question of “what (or who) are the pigs of Derblinne?” we must turn to the dindshenchas.  The Dindshenchas Érenn “Dindshenchas of Ireland” is a very large and complex corpus consisting of different collections of both prose and verse (or metrical) items. Each item or “article” is a story explaining how a different place received its name and is called the Dindshenchas of that place, i.e. the Dindshenchas of Emain Macha explains how Emain Macha got its name. Some articles also contain information about what the place was named before, and some offer different stories about the current place name. The relationship between the different collections is complex, to say the least.  Charles Bowen’s article “A historical inventory of the Dindshenchas” has been a significant and very helpful piece of scholarship since its publication in 1975/6, but we now have the wonderful new book Dindshenchas Érenn (2023) by Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, which I cannot recommend enough.  A full study of all the references to the pigs of Derblinne in all the different versions of the dindshenchas would be fascinating, because there are certainly some differences between the prose and metrical passages that refer to them. For the moment though, I will mostly refer to the prose Rennes dindshenchas, which was edited and translated by Whitley Stokes in 1895 and 1896.  This collection is called the Rennes dindshenchas because the manuscript in which it is found is in a library in Rennes.

The main story is found in the Dindshenchas of Duma Selga (#71 p. 471 in Stokes’ edition).  It tells us that Derbrenn (a different form of the name Derbriu) was the first love of Óengus, of Aislinge Óenguso “The Dream of Óengus” fame.  Óengus is a prominent member of the Túatha Dé Danann, the son of the Dagda and Boand, and in Aislinge Óenguso he requires Medb’s help in winning another woman, Cáer Iboromeith. There is no mention of Derbriu in that text. The Dindshenchas of Duma Selga says that the pigs were Derbrenn’s foster children. Their mother was Dalb Garb “Dalb the Rough” and she put a spell on her three sons and their wives to transform them into pigs. Her motivation for doing this is not stated.  The sons were called Conn, Find, and Fland when they were human, and their wives were called Mel, Tregh, and Tréis. When they were transformed into pigs, the men were called Froechán, Banbán, and Brogarbán and the women were called Cráinchrín, Coelchéis, and Treilech.  Óengus arranged for the pigs to be put into the care of Buchet, the hospitaller of Leinster, who is the subject of the story Esnada Tige Buchet “The Songs of Buchet’s House.”  The pigs remained with Buchet for a year, but then Buchet’s wife decided that she wanted to eat Brogarbán.  She gathered dogs and warriors and went to hunt him, but the pigs escaped and fled to Óengus at the Brugh (na Bóinne), known to be his home in other stories, including Tochmarc Étaine and Aislinge Óenguso.

Óengus tells the pigs that he cannot help them until they have “shaken the Tree of Tarbga and eaten the salmon of Inver Umaill,” and so they go on to Derbrenn in Glascarn and hide with her for a year. They shake the Tree of Tarbga, but when they go to Inver Umail they are hunted again. This time it is not Buchet’s wife who comes after them though, it is Medb.  During the hunt all the pigs are killed except for Brogarbán. It’s not clear what happens to him. It’s possible that Medb hunting these pigs is why O’Neill suggested the connection with the pigs of the Cave of Crúachan (Croghan), which she also hunts.  In the account of that hunt in Cath Maige Mucrama “The Battle of Mag Mucrama” though, there is no suggestion that these are the same pigs and they are very specifically uncountable, whereas there are definitely six of the pigs of Derblinne.  The Dindshenchas of Mag Mucrama (#71, p. 470), which tells the same story also does not connect the pigs at Mag Mucrama to the pigs of Derblinne.

There are a few other references to these pigs in the dindshenchas.  The Dindshenchas of Loch Néill (#73, p. 473) is about Niall son of Enna Aignech who was the leader of brigands in the time of Conall Cromderg. He went hunting the pigs of Drebrenn (yet another spelling!), which are said to have come out of the síd of Collomair. He eventually found them in the forest of Tarbga (trying to shake a tree, no doubt). The pigs were then hunted until they came to a lake where Niall and his dogs drowned, thus the lake received the name Loch Néill.   The version given in the metrical dindshenchas is a bit more exciting and makes more direct reference to Drebrenn’s involvement here. In Gwynn’s translation:

Drebrenn out of her evil heart sent
a baneful drove in the shapes of red swine:
from Collomair — a noisy strife —
the hoary-bristled drove held its way.

The pigs later go on to eat the mast of the oakwood of Tarbga before moving on to drink from the lake. Here it seems that Drebrenn deliberately sent the pigs out to destroy Niall (Nel, in this version).

The Dindshenchas of Mag Corainn (# 77, p. 477) says that Corann was the harper of Dían Cecht, son of the Dagda, and that Corann or Mag Corainn was named for him, but it also says that the place was named Céis Coroinn after Coelchéis, the fifth of Drebrenn’s swine, who reached that place when they were being hunted and died there. The Edinburgh dindshenchas, which combines prose with poetry, links the two stories though, saying again that Corann was Dían Cecht’s harper, but also that “out of his harp he summoned Caelcheis, one of the swine of Drebrenn. Northwards it ran with (all) their strength of running, their hounds following them as far as Céis Coraind.” 

Finally, there is the interesting case of the Dindshenchas of Belach Conglais (# 35, p. 421), in which Glas, master of the hounds to Eterscél and his son, Conaire Mór, hunts a wild pig.  Glas, his hounds, and the pig are all killed at a certain pass (belach) which is then named after them.  There is no mention here of the pigs of Derblinne, but as Stokes points out in his note on this article, the metrical version of the Dindshenchas of Belach Conglais is different. In the metrical version, according to Stokes “it appears that there were more pigs than one, that they were fashioned by magic (mucca delbda druidechta), and that, in fact they were the Red Swine of Drebrenn (mucca derga Drebrinne).”  Just as the independent narrative texts don’t have all the answers, neither does any particular version of the dindshenchas. Only by consulting all versions of all of these different stories can we begin to approach a sense of Derbriu’s story, and the same can be said of the Ulster Cycle as a whole.

One of the things I find fascinating about all of this is that from a single reference to the pigs of Derblinne in Ferchuitred Medba/Cath Boinde, we find a whole complex of related texts by simply following the narrative thread from the Dindshenchas of Duma Selga to Aislinge Óenguso and Esnada Tige Buchet, and other dindshenchas including those of Belach Conglais, Loch Néill, and Mag Coroinn, and maybe even Cath Maige Mucrama, if we accept O’Neill’s suggestion that these are the pigs that came out of the Cave of Crúachan (although I don’t think I would at this stage).   Of course, if one’s starting point is the dindshenchas instead of Ferchuitred Medba, then that very elliptical reference to this narrative complex no doubt seems perfectly clear. In Dindshenchas Érenn, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf provides an appendix linking independent narrative texts to Dindshenchas tales. She says that “It is not to be viewed with any claim to completeness, but rather as a call to arms to investigate these literary connections further” (122).  In the story of the pigs of Derblinne (or Deirbriu or Derbrenn or Drebrenn) we get just a hint of the richness and complexity of these connections, and of just how much more there is for us to discover.

Next week I will be starting a series of posts about the earliest version of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí.”  There are a few English translations of the later and longer version of the story, but as far as I can tell no English translation of the earlier version has ever been made available. My first post will provide a translation of the text, and then I’ll have a few posts discussing certain aspects of it that I find particularly interesting.

  1. This title is usually translated into English as “Medb’s Husband Allowance,” but I do not believe that the word allowance is correct here. An allowance is something that is permitted or given, but for the most part Medb chooses her own husbands.  eDIL s.v. ferchuitred suggests that “proportion” and “complement” might be possible interpretations of this word.  The word is a compound of fer “man, husband” and cuitred, which eDIL says is close in meaning to cuit “share, part, portion.” I think that Medb having a portion or share of husbands makes more sense than her having an allowance of husbands. [↩]
  2. The translation can be found online here courtesy of CELT (the Corpus of Electronic Texts) at University College Cork. [↩]
  3. A.M.  = Anno Mundi, a system of time keeping that counts from the Creation rather than the birth of Christ. [↩]

Athirne and the Hoarding of Resources in Talland Étair

Posted on by
2

“They were in Étar for nine days then without food or drink, unless they drank the brine of the sea or ate the clay. But Athirne had seven hundred cows. That is, there were white, red‐eared cows in the middle of the fort, and neither a man nor a boy of the Ulstermen tasted a drop of their milk because it was poured over the cliff so that not one of them would experience the taste of Athirne’s food. And the severely wounded men were carried to him, and not a drop was allowed into their heads, so that they died alone from bloody sickness. And the nobles of the Ulstermen used to go to him to beg for a drink for Conchobar, but he refused.”

This is my translation of a passage from Talland Étair “The Siege of Étar” (or Howth, in English), a text that is, in my opinion, very underappreciated.  This passage occurs when the men of Ulster are besieged in Étar by the Leinstermen because of Athirne’s actions during the earlier part of the story.  If this is your first encounter with Athirne and you’re wondering if it’s ok to hate him already without learning more about him, it absolutely is.  He does not get better upon further acquaintance.  This is just one of the awful things he does, and a lot of the story of Talland Étair is about the suffering he causes.  This passage is a brutally direct description of the devastating consequences of allowing one individual to control and restrict access to a resource that should be used for the benefit of all, and it resonates as much today as I’m sure it did a thousand years ago.

Talland Étair is one of my favourite texts, but it has been generally neglected and was also quite ill-served by most of its editors and translators until recently.  The first edition and translation was produced by Whitley Stokes and published in 1887. Unfortunately, Stokes chose to leave out several passages which he felt were not originally part of the text, one of which is a long poetic passage in which the woman satirist Leborcham reports the events of the siege to the women of Ulster.  Eleanor Hull later reworked Stokes’ translation in 1889. It wasn’t until 1949 that Margaret Dobbs edited and translated the missing passage about Leborcham, although as the text’s most recent editor, Caoimhín Ó Dónaill, says, the value of Dobbs’ edition is undermined by misreadings of the manuscript and a translation that “is barely related to the text in places.”  Frank O’Connor produced a translation of part of the text in 1967, but only part, because he felt that the rest of the text wasn’t worthwhile.  (This is putting it mildly.  He seems to have hated the first part of the text and thought its author entirely incompetent.) Patrick K. Ford included a translation of the text in his 1999 book The Celtic Poets, which incorporated the Leborcham material, and so a full translation was finally available over a century after Stokes’ original work.  In 2005, Ó Dónaill’s new edition and translation of the text was published and offered a much better representation of the full text and a more useful and balanced discussion of its content.  This edition was published by the Department of Old and Middle Irish of the National University of Ireland Maynooth and is still available for purchase from curach bhán.  Unfortunately, like other publications in this series, the book is of somewhat poor physical quality with small print on slightly shiny paper, which reduces legibility, and some of the volumes also suffer from insecure bindings.  Of course, no digital version is available, and so the full text remains inaccessible to anyone who uses a screen reader or simply can’t get a physical copy of the book.  This is a shame, because it really is a wonderful text to read in its entirety and the passage with Leborcham’s report on the siege only serves to reinforce and enhance the description of the horrors of the siege expressed in the passage above. 

Before I discuss that passage and Athirne’s behaviour, I should give a summary of the story.

There is an Ulster poet called Athirne who is a genuinely awful human being. He is so awful that Conchobar, king of Ulster, convinces him to leave Ulster and go on a tour of Ireland and bother everyone else for a while.  Athirne goes off and makes an absolute pest of himself in Connacht, Munster, and Leinster. In the south of Connacht he meets the king Echu son of Luchta and demands that he give Athirne his eye, which Echu does after plucking it out of his own head.  In Munster he demands to be allowed to sleep with the wife of the king Tigernach Tétbuillech in spite of the fact that she is not only pregnant but in active labour!  Athirne is a truly nasty piece of work and next he decides to deliberately instigate war between Ulster and Leinster by insulting the Leinstermen so much that they kill will him and the Ulstermen will be forced to avenge him.  He demands a treasure from the king Fergus Fairrce son of Nuadu Necht, and when he receives that he goes on to torment another Leinster king, Mess Gegra.  He demands to sleep with Mess Gegra’s wife, threatening the vengeance of the Ulstermen if Mess Gegra does not comply. Mess Gegra allows this but makes it clear that this is for the sake of his own honour and not out of fear of the Ulstermen.  Athirne then spends a year in Leinster before leaving for Ulster with 150 of the wives of Leinster noblemen.  Athirne knows that as soon as he leaves Leinster and forfeits the protections he has enjoyed (and abused) as a guest, the Leinstermen will come after him (and who could blame them?) and so he summons the Ulstermen to meet him at the border. I can’t imagine that they were happy about this. 

The Ulstermen lose the battle that takes place then and they retreat to Étar, where they are besieged in the wretched conditions described above.  During the siege, Leborcham comes each day to provide supplies for Conchobar. She also reports back to the women of Ulster to tell them what the men are suffering but also to reassure them that those who still live will soon return.  After the nine days of the siege, reinforcements arrive from Ulster and the Leinstermen are routed.  The survivors then return home, except for Conall Cernach who stays behind when the rest of the Ulstermen leave. He instead pursues Mess Gegra because he holds him responsible for the deaths of his brothers, Mess Dead and Lóegaire, during the battle.  Before Conall catches up to him, Mess Gegra has a strange dispute about a nut with his charioteer which results in the charioteer cutting of Mess Gegra’s arm and then killing himself. Conall finds Mess Gegra and confronts him and they fight, with Conall tying one arm to his side so that, like Mess Gegra, he only has one working arm during their combat. Conall wins, but before dying Mess Gegra tells him that once Conall has beheaded him, he should place his head on top of his own to gain Mess Gegra’s honour. Conall Cernach realizes this is a trick and instead places the head on a nearby pillar stone, which is pierced by a drop of corrosive blood and then knocked over by the force of a blow from the head.  Conall then encounters Mess Gegra’s wife, Búan, and demands that she come with him. She asks to first be allowed to lament her husband, and then drops dead on the spot.  She is buried there, and Conall finds that Mess Gegra’s head can no longer be moved. The brain is removed and brought back to Ulster, where it is eventually used to kill Conchobar.  The end!

My initial interest in this text was in the death of Mess Gegra. I was working on what eventually became two articles about his death and the further adventures of his head and brain.  The first of these articles, “Dangerous Heads and Posthumous Revenge: Some Parallels for the Death of Mess Gegra in Talland Étair” was published in Celtica in 2022 and the second is forthcoming.  I was really struck by the passage describing the siege and Athirne’s hoarding though because it is such a powerful and incisive depiction of the inequality and injustice that inevitably follow when control over essential resources is given to only a few individuals. There are a lot of ways of responding to and thinking about Athirne’s behaviour throughout the text, but especially in this passage, which so starkly contrasts his wealth and wastefulness with the suffering and deprivation of the Ulstermen .

This passage certainly elicits a strong emotional response of horror and sadness and anger.  It’s upsetting to think of anyone in these terrible conditions, but these are familiar characters, including Cú Chulainn. It’s not clear exactly which of the Ulstermen are present during the siege and which come later to provide support and break the siege, but among those present are certainly characters that we like and care for and we are of course upset to imagine them suffering in this way.  This is one of the reasons that I think the Leborcham passage that Stokes rejected works so well in the fuller context of the tale. It comes when the battle has ended and the Ulstermen have suffered heavy losses but ultimately defeated the Leinstermen. Leborcham goes to Ulster ahead of them and tells the story of the siege and battle to the women of Ulster, who are anxiously waiting to hear which of their husbands and sons and brothers and fathers have survived and which have not.  Leborcham tells them who lives and who doesn’t, but also describes the terrible conditions that they have survived, saying: “I have seen it there. The Ulstermen found clay which they licked, as the honey-desirer licks honey.1 It destroys us. The brine of the great sea satisfies us, it receded across fury (?).”2  The thought of the women of Ulster hearing this as they learn of the loss of so many of their loved ones is terribly sad.  And who is to blame for all of this?  Athirne, of course.

Not only did Athirne deliberately instigate the conflict that led to the siege, he then sits in the middle of that siege with 700 cows and orders that their milk be poured out every day.  How can we not be angry? This goes well beyond selfishness. It’s not like he’s just hoarding resources for his own use, which would be bad enough. Here he’s intentionally destroying resources (milk) in order to increase the suffering of the very men who came to save him.  What kind of person does this?  The exact kind of person who insists on having sex with a woman while she is giving birth and demands that a man rip out his own eye.  And we can think “why is this allowed to happen?” and talk about rules of hospitality and the power of poets in medieval Ireland, but in the modern world grocery stores and restaurants regularly throw away or destroy food rather than giving it to those in need, artificial shortages of medications and other important goods cause suffering all over the world, and relentless and deliberate waste still co-exists with appalling levels of deprivation.  “Why is this allowed to happen?” is very much the right question, but clearly not one that we have a good answer for.  Not everyone sees the value of studying medieval literature, but just a few lines of this medieval Irish story have expressed in a crystal clear and viscerally impactful way a truth about the modern world, and exposed how long this kind of injustice has been recognized and yet not addressed.

How would the original audience have understood this passage? It’s clearly a condemnation of Athirne’s cruelty and his abuses of his power and privilege.  Is it more than that?  Is it more broadly a commentary on the unchecked power of the poet?  That’s one reading, but I think we have to consider Leborcham’s role in this text again. Like Athirne, she is a poet who is close to the king. In fact, the passage immediately following the one that I began with describes how Leborcham brings supplies to Conchobar every day and her general service to him.

“This is how Conchobar was supplied: the girl would bring it on her back from Emain Macha regularly in the evening. It is she, Leborcham, who would bring it. There were a male and a female slave in the house of Conchobar, and she is the child that was born to them, the girl Leborcham. The form of the girl was misshapen, that is, her two feet and her two knees were behind her, and the backs of her two thighs and her two heels were in front of her. It is she who used to traverse Ireland in a single day. Everything of good and of evil that was done in Ireland, she would report it to Conchobar in the Cráebrúad at the end of the day. Her little loaf, which was the size of sixty loaves, would be placed before her at the head of the fire, alongside her portion with the host. It was she, then, who carried his portion to Conchobar on her back from Emain Macha.”

I could (and perhaps will) write a whole other post contrasting the figures of Athirne and Leborcham, but it is clear that although they come from very different positions, they have achieved a similar status. There are poems in Tochmarc Lúaine ocus Aided Athairne “The Wooing of Luaine and the Violent Death of Athirne” that have yet to be fully translated and which describe Leborcham (or two different Leborchams, to be accurate). They make it clear that she holds a high position in spite of being born to slaves, is physically distorted in various ways, and consumes what might be considered more than her fair share of food, as we see also in this passage from Talland Étair.  Athirne isn’t actually consuming what he takes though, he merely prevents others from having it. His is basically a protection racket. If he is paid off, he will leave people in peace. Until the next time, of course. Or unless he just feels like enjoying the suffering of others. Leborcham, in contrast, provides an actual service. Never think that she is a tame poet though. It is always made clear that she comes and goes as she pleases, even against Conchobar’s wishes in Longes mac nUislenn “The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu,” and the fact that she is able to come and go during the siege at Étar demonstrates this again.

There’s another important aspect of Athirne’s actions to consider here, and that is his stated motivation for pouring the milk of his cows away. He very specifically does not want to share what he has. He does not want others to have the experience of tasting his food. That belongs to him and him alone. There are other stories about Athirne and his hoarding behaviour. A short text called Athirne Ailgessach has been translated by John Carey in The Celtic Heroic Age under the title “Athirne’s Greediness” and by Ford in The Celtic Poets as “Athirne the Insistent.”  There we learn that Athirne refused to eat where others could see him but instead would take his food elsewhere. A kind of jealous hoarding, sometimes at the expense of others, is not atypical of poets, but usually what they are hoarding is their skill and knowledge.  (Do I have thoughts about the hoarding of knowledge and the state of academic publishing?  Yes, yes I do.) In a story known as “Athirne and Amairgen,” also translated in both The Celtic Heroic Age and The Celtic Poets, when Athirne learns of the boy Amairgen who appears to have great wisdom, he feels threatened and tries to kill him. He is then forced by the Ulstermen to pay reparations for this, and he also takes the boy into fosterage to teach him. Amairgen then supplants Athirne as chief poet of Ulster.  In one of the poems in Tochmarc Lúaine, Leborcham herself is said to give birth to nine children each year, but she kills them immediately so that they cannot usurp her position. 

“A birthing of nine children was what she bore
each ever-bright year
to the son of Errgind Illdathach,
to the steward of Conchobar.
From the womb they roared,
from her speckled, pus-filled womb.
She crushed them under her thighs,
she beat them with her hand-striking,
her horrible, baneful children,
so that they did not gain the authority
of the function of messenger,
from the fully-active Leborcham,
messenger of the province of Conchobar.”3

If we look just a bit to the east, we can consider the Welsh story of Gwion Bach and Taliesin, also translated by Ford in both The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales and The Celtic Poets. As the boy Gwion Bach, he steals the gift of knowledge that the witch Ceridwen had intended for her son. Reborn as the poet Taliesin, he taunts the court poets of Maelgwn Gwynedd, depriving them of their ability to speak and mocking them for not knowing the things that he does.  It is not enough to simply know. These poets want to know what others don’t know, to be known to possess this secret knowledge, and to prevent others from gaining it whenever possible.  Knowledge is not diminished when shared, but they behave as if it is a finite resource and guard it jealously. It isn’t about the knowledge. It’s about the power (and profit) gained by the exclusive ownership of knowledge.   (Again, the state of academic publishing is a disgrace.)

A final thought on reading Athirne’s actions here, in the tiny microcosm of society that exists during the siege of Étar: for a society to function, resources must flow and remain in circulation. This applies to knowledge, but also to actual physical resources. Here, Athirne stops that flow. He holds back or redirects the flow of milk, a liquid needed to sustain life in this situation.  In his 1963 article “Structural Typology in North American Indian Folktales,”4 Alan Dundes pointed out that many of these folktales are centred on the movement from a state of disequilibrium to a state of equilibrium.  Disequilibrium usually consists of a lack or surplus of something, and often takes the form of hoarded resources.  Dundes describes “hoarded object tales” in which resources such as “game, fish, flood-plants, water, tides, seasons, sun, light, fire, and so forth are not available to the majority of mankind or to most members of a tribe” (122).  He also comments on a type of story called “The Release of Impounded Water,” in which a monster “keeps back all the water in the world” and must be slain in order for the waters to be released (123). This is a type of story known in many cultures. In the Into-European world the most famous example is no doubt that of the Vedic story of the serpent Vr̥tra, who holds back the waters and must be killed by the god Indra in order to allow the waters to flow again and thus restore equilibrium. What we find during the siege of Étar is an extreme state of disequilibrium. Rather than killing Athirne to allow resources to flow correctly again, instead it is the Ulstermen themselves who must be released from their containment in order to restore equilibrium.  Killing Athirne wouldn’t have ended the siege, of course, that required collective activity from both the Ulstermen at Étar and those who came to help them, but it certainly would have alleviated the suffering experienced during those nine days of drinking brine and eating clay.  The thematic similarities between stories of poets hoarding knowledge and other resources and the dragons and serpents and monsters who hold back water from the world are certainly worth further thought.

Don’t worry about Athirne, by the way. He comes to a very sticky end, although not before doing more irreparable harm.  When Conchobar decides to marry a woman called Luaine, Athirne and his sons insist that she sleep with them. When she refuses, they satirize her, causing physical blemishes and her death of shame. This, finally, is enough for the Ulstermen to decide that Athirne’s continued existence no longer has any value. When Conchobar asks how Athirne should be punished, the Ulstermen make it clear that they have not forgotten their past troubles. “The nobles of the Ulstermen said that this is the vengeance that would be fitting: to kill Athirne along with his children and his people. ‘Many times’, they said, ‘the Ulstermen have found shame in battle because of him’.”  Collectively, the Ulstermen decide that Athirne must die, and this as at least in part motivated by his actions in Talland Étair. They pursue him and wall him up inside his home with his children and household, then they burn his fortress down around him. His daughters and household did not deserve this, but the blame is entirely Athirne’s, and he certainly had it coming.

Next week’s post will consider the crucial interconnectedness of independent narrative prose texts and materials like the dindshenchas by exploring the story of Medb’s little-known sister Derbriu and the pigs of Derblinne.

  1. Milchobar, a compound of mil “honey” and cobar “desirer, one who desires” is a poetic expression meaning “bear.” [↩]
  2. Ó Dónaill doesn’t translate the last part of this line and Dobbs’ translation is spotty and unclear. The end of the line is tethrag tar cutig. I take tethrag to be a form of traigid “ebbs, recedes; causes to ebb; retreats, diminishes, exhausts” and cutig to be a form of cuthach “rage, fury, madness.”  Tar is quite flexible, but across or past or beyond could make some sense here, perhaps conveying the sense that the need to drink the brine of the sea has robbed them of their war-fury?  I would be very happy to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this! [↩]
  3. My translation based on the 1980 edition of Liam Breatnach [↩]
  4. Dundes, Alan. 1963. “Structural Typology in North American Indian Folktales,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 19/1: 121-130. [↩]

Reading the Ulster Cycle: A Blog

Posted on by
Reply

This is a blog about reading the Ulster Cycle, both as an entity and in all of its wonderful, glorious, and sometimes thoroughly weird parts. There will also be some detours along the way into other things I think about, including medieval Irish stories that aren’t part of the Ulster Cycle, medieval Welsh stories, comparative mythology, teaching, the hows and whys of academic communication, and maybe even linguistics.

My first experience reading any part of the Ulster Cycle was when I was in high school and tried to make my way through Jeffrey Gantz’s Early Irish Myths and Sagas. I had a hard time following the stories and figuring out who the characters were. I’d spend a lot of time reading Greek myths nicely retold for children, and the contrast was disorienting, to say the least. Maybe the confusion is what appealed to me though, because I decided that Celtic Studies was the thing for me, and I’ve been reading those stories and many others in different translations and in the original Irish ever since.  I still find some of the stories confusing, but I love (most of) them all the same.

In 2020 I decided to read the Ulster Cycle as a complete entity instead of focusing on individual stories or groups of stories.  I sat down with the checklist of translations of Ulster Cycle texts in the proceedings of the first Ulidia conference1 and began to make my way through it. These are some of the things that particularly stood out to me while working my way through the texts on the list:

  1. Alphabetical order really isn’t the best way to approach reading these stories, but there is (currently) no chronologically ordered list. The first 12 stories on the list are aideda “death tales,” most of which take place towards the end of the storyline of the Ulster Cycle. The last of these is Aided Meidbe “The Violent Death of Medb,” which I think might be the last (or very close to the last) story in the internal chronology of the Ulster Cycle.
  2. It doesn’t take long to reach texts that don’t have published or publicly available editions (Aided Chonlaeich mic ConCulainn “The Violent Death of Conlaech son of Cú Chulainn”) or English translations (Aided Chon Roí I “The Violent Death of Cú Roí,” version 1, Cath Leitrech Ruide “The Batlle of Leitir Ruide,” which respectively only have German and French translations available).
  3. Many of the translations aren’t easy to find, even with access to a university library. Many of the older translations are now available on the Internet Archive and are linked to directly by CODECS, but tracking down more recent translations can be a challenge, especially if they are contained in doctoral dissertations that are not available, for whatever reason.  The Internet Archive has also had recent trouble with a DDoS attacks and legal issues, so even these older translations are vulnerable and may not always be available. (If you can, I really recommend making a small donation to the Internet Archive to help keep this wonderful and essential resource up and running.)
  4. The older translations that are available online can be inaccessible for other reasons, including extremely archaic language and not being formatted for screen readers.  Many of these translations were produced for a very specific audience: late 19th and early 20th century academic readers.  Later anthologies may be targeted at more general audiences but have some of the same issues. One particular problem is that earlier editors and translators of texts would sometimes just skip difficult passages, especially poetic passages.  Many of these passages remain neglected.
  5. The Ulidia list is somewhat inconsistent in the way it separates or combines different versions of stories. There are two listed versions of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí, three of Táin Bó Cúailnge “The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge,” and two of Táin Bó Flidais(e) “The Cattle Raid of Flidais.” Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne “The Great Rout of Mag Muirthemne” (often just called “The Death of Cú Chulainn”) and Tochmarc Emire “The Wooing of Emer” are listed as single entries with subitems. In contrast, the different versions of Compert Conchobuir “The Birth of Conchobar” are listed as a single item, and the entry for Ces Noínden “The Debility (of the Ulstermen)” lists all texts that explain the debility of the Ulstermen, even where they contain completely unrelated stories. (The story of Macha’s curse vs. the story of Cú Chulainn’s encounter with Fedelm Foltchaín and her husband Elcmaire.)
  6. The list is a wonderful and essential starting point for the study of the Ulster Cycle, but it only contains independent texts.  There is a great quantity of Ulster Cycle materials elsewhere, such as in the dindshenchas,2 Cóir Anmann “The Fitness of Names,” Banshenchas “Lore of Women,” or even embedded in other independent texts that are not themselves Ulster Cycle stories, such as Cath Maige Mucrama “The Battle of Mag Mucrama,” which contains a section detailing activities of Ulster Cycle figures like Medb and Amairgen at the Cave of Crúachan.  There’s also a lot of poetry (some untranslated) about Ulster Cycle characters and stories and places that should also be included in a more detailed catalog of Ulster Cycle materials.
  7. Some stories are much more fun to read than others. Others have really interesting and important details that provide a lot of background information and sometimes crucial context to the storyline of the Ulster Cycle, but are not at all fun to read (Cath Leitrech Ruide springs to mind).
  8. The attention that stories have received, both from scholars and more general readers, does tend to correlate to availability of translations.  Most people start out reading these stories in translation. Many never read them in the original language.  Having more widely available translations of lesser-known stories would no doubt bring much needed attention to them.
  9. The question of the internal chronology of the Ulster Cycle is a very interesting one.  It’s important for understanding how the storyline of the Ulster Cycle was understood as it was being developed, along with the competing timelines that were circulating.  I think chronology is also important in terms of how we approach the stories as modern readers. The original audiences likely would have heard the stories throughout their lives, in no particular order, and assembled some ordering of the sequence of events in their own minds. Modern audiences are much more accustomed to reading stories in a linear fashion. Being able to read these stories in something closer to a chronological order might help to make them more accessible to modern readers.
  10. The interconnectedness of the stories is sometimes very obvious, but at other times it is clear that the audience is just supposed to know certain things and to bring their pre-existing knowledge to bear on individual stories.  Stories sometimes explicitly name other stories, for example when Echtra Nerai “The Adventures of Nera” says that a particular event is also described in Táin Bó Regamna “The Cattle Raid of Regamna.” In other cases, although a story is not named, its events are clearly referenced. Aided Cheltchair maic Uthechair “The Violent Death of Celtchar mac Uthechar,” Brisclech Mór Maige Muirthemne, and Goire Conaill Chernaig “The Maintenance of Conall Cernach” all involve characters seeking revenge for the death of Cú Roí, although Aided Chon Roí is never named. Even if we didn’t have the texts of Aided Chon Roí though, we could still clearly understand what was happening. Elsewhere, however, the references are harder to make sense of in isolation. Ferchuitred Medbe/Cath Boinde “The Husband Portion of Medb/The Battle of the Boyne,” for example, lists the children of Eochaid Feidlech, including Medb, with brief descriptions.  Of Medb’s sister Derbriu, we are told only that the pigs of Derblinne are named after her.  There are times when explanations for such references can be found in other independent Ulster Cycle texts, but in other cases the answers, if they can be found at all, are in the more complex corpora of the dindshenchas (as in the case of the pigs of Derblinne – there will be a post about this!) or Cóir Anmann.  Any reading of the Ulster Cycle must go beyond the independent texts of the Ulidia list and include these other materials.

What struck me most though is how much fun it is to just read these stories for themselves and together and to start really noticing all of their connections and contradictions and to wonder about all the strangeness without trying to solve or discover anything.  I decided to try writing about all of this in a blog because I wanted to be able to share and develop ideas about these stories and the Ulster Cycle as a whole outside of the constraints of academic conferences and publishing.  I also want to be able to share these wonderful stories with a wider audience. The Ulster Cycle is an incredibly important corpus for the study of Irish literature, but also for medieval European literature. Sadly, many of the stories remain relatively unknown outside of specialists because so many translations and discussions of these stories are confined to academic journals or books and aren’t available or accessible for others to enjoy.  There is so much fascinating material related to the Ulster Cycle, and the stories are strange and funny and sad and scary and beautiful.  I hope that by sharing thoughts about these stories in a public space more people might become interested in reading them. Whenever I do talk about a particular story, I’ll be sure to provide a link to its dedicated page in CODECS for anyone who wants to read the story or learn more about it.

I’m planning to post about some of my favourite stories and characters and passages of text, and also about the questions I have, the things that confuse me, the interesting connections between different stories and characters, and the problems of conflicting information found in in different sources. I’ll sometimes post about the books and articles I’m reading, and the conferences that I am able to participate in. I’m also planning to share some of my translations of the texts that currently don’t have English translations available, or only very archaic ones.  I hope there will also be some guest posts along the way from people who love the Ulster Cycle as much as I do.

I’m planing to post once a week during the academic year, but I’ll take breaks as needed. Next week’s post will be about the poet Athirne (a strong candidate for Worst Person in the Ulster Cycle) and his deliberate and malicious hoarding and squandering of resources during a siege in the text Talland Étair “The Siege of Étar.”

  1. Mallory, J. P. and Ruairí Ó hUiginn. 1994. “The Ulster Cycle: A Check List of Translations”. In J. P. Mallory and Gerard Stockman (eds) Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales. Belfast: December Publications. 291-303. [↩]
  2. The “lore of places.” The are several large collections of dindshenchas in both poetic and prose form. [↩]