Faery Tale (21 page)

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

“Yes! I love it, but—”

“Wol!” he called. “Sig'll have a full English.”

I shook my head, smiling to myself. I may not have encountered any faeries on Man as of yet, but I was pretty certain that I'd just encountered eight guardian angels.

The faery search proceeded haltingly. I'd spoken to people everywhere I could strike up a conversation, and nobody had anything significant to relate. Sure, if you asked about the faeries, any Manxman on the street would obligingly regurgitate the story about the tradition of greeting the faeries when crossing Fairy Bridge. Even my bikers never passed by without giving a nod or a salute, though it was born purely of superstition. Beyond that, I was pretty much striking out.

With very few leads, I decided a logical place to begin might be the Manx Museum in Douglas. And to make things interesting, rather than languishing at the bus stop, I decided to give the ol' Manx Electric Railway a try. After all, the Lewaigue stop was only a few hundred yards from the Venture Centre.

The “tram,” as they call it, was incredible—I was in love.You flag it down, it stops, you get on a rickety, wooden, caboose-looking thing, and sit back to watch the fabulous scenery go by. With only one stop in each town, it wasn't nearly as confusing as the bus. And the sheer abundance of enchanting glens between Maughold and Douglas was astounding. I watched as we whizzed past Ballaglass Glen, and Dhoon Glen, and fields strewn with four-horned Manx sheep and quaint thatched cottages.

It turned out that touring Man during TT was quite enjoyable, since I pretty much had the best places to myself. For example, I was one of four people in the entire, award-winning Manx Museum. My Manx Experience, as the museum called it, began in an auditorium, where I sat alone among a hundred empty seats as they showed a short film on the history of the island. Afterward I was set free to wander the exhibits with a far clearer understanding of what I'd be seeing.

The ancient roots of the Isle of Man, I learned, were Celtic. Suddenly, things were beginning to come together. England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man were all countries renowned for their faery lore. And of course, all of them were Celtic in origin. No wonder the folk stories were so similar from place to place. I found a new energy as I realized that to truly understand where faeries might have come from, I first needed to understand the Celtic culture. Moving over to the library, which was conveniently located within the museum, I lodged myself at a table with a stack of books.

Now I was getting somewhere.

—PETER BERRESFORD ELLIS,
CELTIC MYTHS AND LEGENDS

 

 

 

 

T
HE Celts were a mystical people, and as I sat there in the late afternoon hush of the library, letting the imagery of their ancient legends wash over me, their stories came to life. In a time before time, it was said that the Tuatha Dé Danann came from the north. Children of the great goddess Danu, they came from the four mythical cities of Falias, Gorias, Finias, and Murias, where they had perfected the hidden art of magic. Superior craftspeople, they were skilled beyond compare at poetry, music, metalwork, and even war. But beyond that, they had the magic at their fingertips to make themselves invisible to mortal men, travel back and forth in time and between worlds. They could change their appearance at will, and influence the weather. They could heal themselves of any wound—they had learned the secrets of immortality.

Listed as the fourth conquerors of Ireland in
The Book of Invasions
, the Tuatha were followed only by the Sons of Mil—the ancestors of both ancient and modern-day Celts. Some say the Tuatha came to Ireland by ship, others say on a cloud, still others say as a host of spirits on the wind, to take the land from the Fomorians, afterward battling the enigmatic people known as the Fir Bolgs.

The pantheon of the Tuatha Dé Danann is complex, and not without overlap, and there are volumes of texts and literature that detail their epic stories. But among the central figures was Danu, an ancient goddess of water (many believe the river Danube was named for her), mother of the Tuatha, and the goddess of all crafts. There was the Dagda, called the “All-father”; he was protector of the tribe and listed as the high king of the Tuatha Dé Danann. There was Lugh, the jack-of-all-trades: a warrior, a swordsman, a musician, a historian, a craftsman, and a sorcerer. Lir ruled over the sea. And there was Brigid. Daughter of the Dagda, she was the keeper of flame, wisdom, healing, holy wells. Later she would be so highly revered by the Celts that when Christianity gained footing, the mythos of St. Brigid was likely created to sway pagans into conversion—a saint associated with sacred flames. The Tuatha ruled in prosperity until the Sons of Mil came and ended their reign forever.

Also known as the eight sons of King Milesius, the Sons of Mil came from Spain, driving the magical Tuatha Dé Danann from their homes and thrones, and giving rise to the Celtic people. One poem in
The Book of Invasions
claims that some of the Tuatha Dé Danann chose to intermarry with the human invaders. But most chose to slip underground, into another dimension of space and time which would come to be known as Tír na nÓg, or the Land of Eternal Youth, rather than to continue living in the world of men. The gates to Tír na nÓg were within our mortal world—they were the very forts and portal tombs lived in by the Tuatha during their reign.

These places today are known as faery mounds or faery forts.

Now this is the stuff of myth, of faery tales. But it is here that the world of the gods who would become the Sidhe, or faeries, met the world of men. In an old manuscript known as
The Annals of the Four Masters
, there is an actual timeline to the rule of the Tuatha—stating they ruled Ireland from 1897 BC to 1700 BC. In fact, the Tuatha were considered a factual race of people/beings through the
seventeenth
century. I'm not kidding. And up to that point in Europe,
The Book of Invasions
was also taken as factual—it was even the basis of academic histories throughout the ages. It's interesting that
The Book of Invasions
claims the Sons of Mil were from Spain, because in
The Life of Agricola
, Tacitus writes he believed the people of southern Wales were descended from Spain due to their darker complexion and curly hair. The Caledonians (Scottish) had large limbs and ruddy hair, and he thought them to be of German or Nordic descent, which to me harkens the Tuatha, or people from the north.

But the sad truth is that we will never know the
exact
nature of many of the Celtic deities and myth. Since the ancient Celts believed the written word was sacred, they kept their historical records through oral tradition rather than written account. If words equaled power, to have the secrets of their culture fall into the hands of their enemies was akin to cultural annihilation.

We do know for a fact that at the heart of the Celtic community were the Druids and the bards. The Druids kept the collective knowledge of planetary movements, the natural world, plants that could be used for healing, judicial law, and domestic matters.They were so highly revered that if a Druid judged a battle clearly won, he could walk into the midst of the raging war with his arms raised overhead, and both sides would immediately cease fighting. The bards were the oral record keepers. Through elegant epic poetry, they cradled the stories of the Celtic people dating as far back as human memory itself. It is from their accounts that
The Book of Invasions
was first recorded by Christian scribes in the eleventh century.

It was, of course, tempered by Christian ideals, and in addition, one can imagine the stories themselves had already fallen victim to hundreds of years of embellishment while being carried through oral tradition.

So scholars and historians must rely instead on archeological findings and written texts from the Celts' conquerors: the Romans. Tacitus and none other than Julius Caesar himself told us much of what we know today about the Celtic people. When Caesar recognized that by annihilating the Druids he could bring the Celtic people to their knees, the unbridled fury of Rome was released and a massive effort was made to extinguish the Druids. Some survived for a time, fleeing to two small islands—Anglesey in Wales, and Iona in Scotland—before they were snuffed out entirely by the arrival of St. Columba, the Christian apostle of the Highlands. According to record, Druids disappeared from society entirely by the seventh century AD, but the bards . . . the bards continued on.

The Celtic religion honored nature as the giver of all things, and thus, ceremonies were conducted outdoors—in groves of trees, in stone circles. The Celtic word for a grove of trees was
llannerch
, from which the late Celtic word
llann
, or “church,” is derived.

For the Celts, known as “the fathers of Europe,” water was the gateway to the spirit world. Their votive offerings have been discovered in streambeds, lakes, bogs, and especially rivers as they sacrificed gold, ornate cauldrons, miniature statues, glittering jewels, and coins in hopes of appeasing their great gods. At its greatest height, the Celtic empire stretched from the Alps to Ireland, and east to Turkey, and from Belgium all the way to Portugal and Spain. Funnily, you may know more about the Celts than you think: their ancient custom of votive offerings has been unknowingly kept alive by the romantic—or superstitious—among us, who to this day toss coins into wishing wells and fountains.

The Isle of Man itself was named after one of the great Tuatha Dé Danann: Manannán Mac Lir, or Manannan, “son of Lir,” who inherited the post of god of the sea from his father.

I found it fascinating, this link between god, man, myth, religion, and reality.
The Yellow Book of Lecan
, an Irish text from the late fourteenth century, states Manannan was not a god, but a real man—of sorts. The first Manannan, according to this text, was a man named Oirbsen, said to have been a Druid of the Tuatha Dé Danann—he went on to bear four generations of human rulers—all called by the name Manannan. There are rumors that he was a great wizard and was buried far beneath where Peel Castle now sits on the Isle of Man. Was Manannan a flesh-and-blood historical figure or a series of rulers? Or was he a god of mythic proportions? Perhaps in every myth we can unearth a kernel of truth.

 

The librarian cleared her throat and I looked up from my books, exhilarated by the discoveries I'd made. The Celts worshipped gods who became known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, who in turn became known as the faeries. Manannan was one of these gods. And I was here on his island.

“I'm sorry, miss,” she called, “I'm afraid it's time to close.”

“Could I just ask you,” I ventured as I headed to the door, “I was looking for some information that I wasn't able to find today. Do you know anything about a woman who might have lived on the island by the name of Betsy Crowe?”

“Betsy Crowe, yes.” She looked at me curiously. “I know the name well. She was murdered, you know, in the 1800s. It was never solved, thvat murder. But you can still visit the ruins of her cottage near Ballure Glen.”

“Murdered? Wow. Thank you.”

“You know, if you wanted to come back tomorrow, we might be able to dig up a few books. But not much has been written about Betsy Crowe.”

“Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.”

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make the long trip back to Douglas again; the races shut down the roads and the tram. In fact, I wouldn't learn the real story of Betsy Crowe until I was home in South Carolina, where I received a few stunning shocks indeed.

That night at the pub John and I sat outside on a picnic table, talking about my dad, his wife and kids, Eric, and life in general. How do you explain meeting a group of people who after only a few days truly feel like family? Or the feeling of being so openly adopted that you feel entirely at home with a group of people who only days before were complete strangers? What about trying to imagine your trip without them? For the first time I realized a great risk of this journey—attachment. Over the past few days we'd shared so many laughs, so much meaningful conversation, so many stories. I knew I would miss the pool playing, walks into town, cramming into cabs to get back, watching the TT, and getting schooled in bike racing—not to mention the comfort of a shared meal between friends. I felt like I was being fussed about by seven father hens. And now that half of them were leaving soon, I felt inconsolably sad.