Two weeks ago I posted a translation of Version 1 of Aided Chon Roí “The Violent Death of Cú Roí. In the introduction to my translation, I quoted R. I. Best’s statement that this version is “quite independent” of the other versions of Aided Chon Roí, and, indeed, the same is true for all other texts dealing with Cú Roí’s death. One of the most unique and distinctive features of this text is that Cú Roí’s soul or life (the Irish word ainimm can mean either or both) is hidden in a golden apple, which itself is hidden in the belly of a salmon that only appears every seven years. Cú Roí can only be killed if the apple is cut with his own sword. This means that Cú Roí is virtually invincible, at least until he makes the mistake of revealing this secret to Bláithine, his wife, who betrays him to Cú Chulainn. No other version of Cú Roí’s death makes any reference to his soul being hidden, although it is always his wife (elsewhere Bláthnat) who betrays him to Cú Chulainn, and in some versions his sword is stolen. Interestingly, in this version there is no mention of his sword being taken to use to cut the apple.
There are two intertwined motifs here: first, that Cú Roí’s soul is hidden outside of his body, and second, that he is tricked into revealing the secret of his invincibility to his wife. I can think of a few parallels for each of these motifs off the top of my head, but when I want to find parallels for particular stories, I turn to Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, T. P. Cross’ Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature, and of course the Aarne-Thompson and Aarne-Thompson-Uther index of Tale-Types. The main motifs in question here are E710 “External Soul” and K975 “Secret of Strength Treacherously Discovered,” which can be found together in the tale type 302 “Ogre’s (Devil’s) Heart in the Egg” or “The Giant Whose Heart Was in an Egg.” I won’t go through every example of these motifs, of course, but they will be a great place to start for a longer study of this story at some point. In this week’s post, I’m going to focus on Cú Roí’s “External Soul,” and next week I’ll take a closer look at how he is tricked into revealing its secret.
I always prefer to start with local examples, so if I’m looking for parallels to something in a medieval Irish text, I want to look for other Irish examples first. Cross’ Motif-Index is very useful for this. Each motif is listed with a description and a list of examples. For E710, Cross gives the following:
E710 External soul. A person (often a giant or ogre) keeps his soul or life separate from the rest of his body. E VII 202f.; IHM 321n.; MAR III 151; LMR 20; RAC 140, 162, 270; S XXIII 121; Beal IV 226f., VII 10, VIII 97f., 100.
E765 Life dependent on external object. F408.2* Spirit in heart of man (fairy).
The structure here is: motif followed by description followed by references followed by related motifs. The next step is to track down all those references using the Bibliography and Abbreviations section and then hope that you can actually get access to them and that they’re not all just the story that you started with.
E VII 202f. is an article called “Cúrói and Cúchulinn” by J. Baudiš from Ériu 7 (1914) which discusses our story but also a number of later folktales with the motif of the hidden soul and that the secret of the hero’s hidden soul is “drawn from him by the wiles of a woman” (201). This is a useful article for identifying later folktale parallels, but has nothing to offer in terms of medieval ones, and is very speculative about the “origins” of Cú Roí’s story in ways that I don’t think most people would agree with.
IHM 321n. is T. F. O’Rahilly’s Early Irish History and Mythology, where he notes the presence of this motif in the story of Cú Roí’s death. He points to a parallel for the “Secret of Strength Treacherously Discovered” motif, but none for the “External Soul” motif. He also comments that:
“Thurneysen’s view (borrowed from Henderson, ITS I, 197, and approved by Baudiš) that he [Cú Roí] was ‘in origin a sea-demon’ (ZCP ix, 233) is absurdly inadequate. Thurneysen was interested in many branches of learning, but Celtic religion was hardly one of them.”
O’Rahilly goes on to comment that Baudiš’ article is “devoid of value” and that in some of his interpretations he is “merely writing learned nonsense.” He concludes his evaluation of Baudiš article by calling it “a useful illustration of the way in which folklorists grope in the dark when they come to discuss the ultimate origins of certain types of folk-tales.” I cannot help but be reminded of Kim McCone’s statement that “O’Rahilly’s attempts to distil ‘pure’ myth from saga often involve reducing separate narratives to a single common prototype by what can only be termed uncontrolled intuition.”1 As much as I enjoy scholars sniping at each other, especially for things that they are very much guilty of themselves, we still only have Cú Roí as a medieval Irish example of the “External Soul” motif.
In fact, after going through all of the sources listed above, I have found no other example of this motif in medieval Irish sources. Most of the sources either lead back to Cú Roí’s story or to modern folktales. Going through related motifs doesn’t provide much new information either, although E711 “Soul Kept in Object” leads to the story of Cano in Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin “The Story of Cano mac Gartnáin.” When he was born, Cano’s mother dreamed of two Otherworld women approaching and saw his life coming out of her mouth in the form of a stone. She snatched it away from the women and protected it until Cano was old enough to protect it himself. Later, Cano gave the stone to Créd, daughter of Guaire and wife of Marcán, and promised that he would return and marry her. He explained that his life was in the stone. They would meet once a year, until one year he was attacked before their meeting. Seeing his face – presumably covered with blood – and thinking he was dying, Créd killed herself by dashing her head against a rock. As she died, she dropped the stone holding Cano’s life, which shattered. Cano then died as well. The other refences for this motif all point to Cú Roí again. Likewise, E711.7 “Soul in Stone” only leads back to Cano again, while E711.8 “Soul in Golden Apple,” E711.9 “Soul in Golden Ball,” E713.1 “Soul hidden in apple (ball) in a salmon which appears every seven years in a certain fountain,” and E714.2 “Separable Soul in Fish” all lead only to Cú Roí.
I think it is safe to say that the “External Soul” motif is, in fact, quite rare in medieval Irish literature, although seems to be somewhat more popular in later Irish folk tradition. On this point, Reidar Th. Christiansen’s “Towards a Printed List of Irish Fairtytales: II” in Béaloideas 8.2: 97-105 may be of interest. He discusses Tale Type 302 “The Ogre’s Heart in the Egg” and the “Hidden Life” motif and lists, among the usual motifs found in variants of this tale:
“The Life of the giant is hidden in: (a1) tree, (a2) block of wood, (a3) chest at the bottom of the sea, (a4) in a ram in a well – in which is: (b1) duck, (b2) ram, (b3) fox, (b4) mouse – in which is: (c) egg. The egg is to be (G2) crushed, (G3) rubbed against a spot (mole) on giant’s body, (G4) thrown at his head – which is duly done, grateful animals assisting” (100).
(Christiansen goes on to list and describe the published versions of this story.)
This does point to several ways in which the Cú Roí story has more in common with these folktales than with the story of Cano. One difference is found in how the containment of the soul is treated. There is, in fact, another motif for that: E713 “Soul hidden in a series of coverings,” with references only Cú Roí and variants of tale type discussed by Christiansen. Cú Roí’s soul is not only hidden in an apple – that apple is hidden in a salmon, which itself is hidden in a spring and which only appears every seven years, meaning that in a sense Cú Roí’s soul is hidden in time and only becomes vulnerable to attack at a specific moment.
The more important difference though is how the motif of the “External Soul” is actually used in the stories. Cano’s life is hidden in a stone that he keeps in his possession and protects until he gives that stone away as a token of love and commitment. His death comes about through what appears to be a tragic misunderstanding, with the stone holding Cano’s life breaking as Créd uses another stone to take her own life. Cú Roí’s soul is much more deeply hidden, as is that of the giant in the folktales. It is not even accessible to him, but he does know of its location. Cú Roí is then tricked into revealing how his “External Soul” can be reached. In the folktales there is some variation on how the hero locates the soul. Sometimes animals help him, sometimes it is his wife, who has been abducted by the giant, or the daughter of the giant who reveals the secret. The idea of the “External Soul” as a secret that is revealed is not found in the story of Cano, but it is a crucial part of the story of Cú Roí and in the later folktales.
Looking at E710 in the Thompson Motif-Index shows over 20 different references cited, so there is a lot of potential here for further comparative work and to see how the motif is used in ways that are similar to or different from Cú Roí’s story. These are again primarily secondary sources that then refer to or offer retellings of primary sources. One parallel that I am particularly interested in is that of the Greek hero Meleager, whose story is found in several sources, including Apollodorus’ The Library of Greek Mythology, which tells us that:2
When he was seven days old, it is said that the Fates appeared and announced that Meleager would die when the log burning on the hearth was fully consumed. In response, Althaia snatched it from the fire and placed it in a chest (40).
Because of the continued existence of this hidden log, Meleager was essentially invincible. Later in life, he participated in the Calydonian boar, which Atalanta also joined. Because Atalanta struck the boar first, Meleager awarded her the skin. His uncles were angered by this, and Meleager killed them. His mother was so upset by the loss of her brothers that she relit the log containing Meleager’s life and let it burn so that he died.
Thinking about Meleager’s story raises some interesting points about Cú Roí’s. Firstly, how did the situation with his “External Soul” arise in the first place? In the stories of Cano and Meleager, their life-force is placed into a secondary vessel at or soon after their birth. As someone who has spent a LOT of time thinking about stories about extraordinary births, and especially those of medieval Irish heroes, I wish so much that we had some form of a Compert Chon Roí “The Birth of Cú Roí” out there somewhere! I’m going to go ahead and speculate though that his soul was hidden at or soon after his birth, and that there was a prophecy about how he could be killed which was told to him when he was old enough to understand. But why an apple inside of a salmon?
In theory, an “External Soul” should offer some protection. It is a way of placing the life-force in a vessel stronger than the human body. We see that with Cano, whose life is in a stone. A partially burned log seems far less secure than a stone, and it works only so long as it is protected, but it can be hidden and protected in a way that a living body cannot. Like Cano’s, Meleager’s “External Soul” is initially protected by his mother, but unlike Cano he is never given the responsibility of protecting it for himself. In the end, it is his mother who is his main vulnerability. If we look at Cú Roí’s story, we have his soul in a golden apple. It may also be a golden ball, but golden apples certainly have a strong position in medieval Irish literature as symbols of the Otherworld, with its endless fertility and its undying people. The golden apple is the symbol of a land with no death. The apple is then hidden inside of a salmon, a symbol of wisdom and supernatural knowledge. That salmon then is hidden and can be found only every seven years. This does seem like a very secure hiding place for a soul. Cú Roí is also the keeper of the secret knowledge of his hidden soul, giving him control over his invincibility. In the stories of Cano, Meleager, and Cú Roí, the destruction of the vessel is what causes the destruction of the soul and the death of the individual. Only in Cú Roí’s case does this involve killing another living being – the salmon.
I think it’s worth considering another motif here: E765.2 “Life bound up with that of an animal. Person to live as long as animal lives.” A very striking example of this can be found in Toruigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne “The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne.” A child called Cian is born with a caul, a kind of membrane that covers the face and head of the baby. Cauls are quite rare and there is a lot of folklore surrounding them in most cultures. In Cian’s case, the caul seems to contain a worm, a sort of “twin.” It appears first as a bulge on his head that grows as he does. Cian keeps his head covered and refuses to allow anyone near him. When he is in adult, the bulge is finally cut open and the worm emerges. It continues to grow until it is the size of a house, develops 100 heads and eats people. Cian’s mother will not allow it to be killed though, because she believes that the worm was conceived and carried in her womb alongside Cian and that if it is killed, Cian will also die. The worm is eventually killed, but we are not told what happens to Cian.
There is an Irish word comáes that eDIL defines as “contemporary, coeval; of the same age as, coeval with.” It is used in Aided Conchobair to describe the relationship between Conchobar and Christ, who were born at the same time. Conchobar says that Christ is mo comalta-sa ⁊ mo comāis “my foster-brother and my coeval” because they were born on the same night. The bond created by being born at the same moment is broken when Conchobar learns of Christ’s death and then dies himself. Like Cian and the worm, their lives and life-spans are linked. There is a suggestion of this concept also in the story of Cú Chulainn and his two horses. Twin foals are born at the moment of his birth and later given to him. His two famous horses, the Líath Macha and the Dub Sainglend, have their own origin stories, but are in some ways at least conceptually equivalent to the horses that were born at the same time as Cú Chulainn, and the Líath Macha is wounded and killed along with him. So as a further piece of speculation, I wonder whether the salmon that protects Cú Roí’s soul is also, in some sense, connected to his own life-span? Cú Roí tells Bláithine that his soul is in the apple and it can only be cut by his own sword. In this version of the story, at least, there is no mention of Cú Roí’s sword being stolen or the apple being cut. Instead, when Cú Chulainn kills the salmon, Cú Roí loses his strength and his valour and is then killed by Cú Chulainn. Now this text certainly leaves things out and may have simply skipped over the cutting of the apple, but it is clear that the death of the salmon weakens Cú Roí, whether or not the apple is then also cut.
For all the stories about heroes or other beings whose lives are protected through devices like the “External Soul,” there are just as many, if not more, who receive their near-invincibility in other ways. The question then is how to weaken that near-invincible hero so that he can be killed, and in many stories this involves the discovery of the source of his strength and the revelation of that secret to his enemies. Next week I’ll take a look at this second aspect of Cú Roí’s death: the revelation of the secret of his strength and the betrayal of that secret.