Wars of the Irish Kings (3 page)
Read Wars of the Irish Kings Online
Authors: David W. McCullough
Reading much of this book should be like looking at a primitive painting. The genius is in the small details. Look, for example, at the version of the fourteenth-century battle fought outside Athenry in Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles of Ireland.
It was a terrible slaughter, and the author dutifully lists the names of some of the celebrity casualties, but the story he tells in detail is about a young soldier. He is sent back onto the field after the battle is over to see if his officer’s enemy is indeed dead. The enemy—his name is O’Kelley—appears and, in effect, offers the young soldier a job. As a result there is more bloodshed. It is a curious tale, but
the details bring the battle statistics alive. In
The Book of Howth
some soldiers cannot believe that their officer, a Scot, probably a gallowglass, is indeed dead, so they bring by a woman and then some food to see if he will revive, and in the end they still cannot bear to bury him.
Of course some of the writing here is highly sophisticated.
The Tain (The Cattle Raid of Cooley)
is one of the masterpieces of medieval literature, although it is a work that probably evolved over centuries, while
Buile Suibne (The Frenzy of Sweeney)
seems certain to have been consciously written as a work of literature. Gerald of Wales probably wrote of the conquest of Ireland with a politically influential London audience in mind, while three hundred years later, an archdeacon from Aberdeen wrote an epic poem that included the Scottish invasion to glorify the Bruce family back home. And in the seventeenth century, Philip O’Sullivan Beare could write about the Nine Years War in Latin and make it sound like pages torn from
The Lives of the Saints.
If one theme seems to run through the book, it is what a divided history Ireland has had. One of the most popular Irish patriotic songs has a impassioned refrain that goes, “A nation once again, A nation once again!” Again? The sad question that comes to mind is: When was it ever one nation? Among the earliest stories of the kings is how Conn of the Hundred Battles, from the north, and Owen the Great, from the south, draw a line across the center of Ireland—just about where the road today goes from Dublin to Galway—to divide the island between Conn’s half and Owen’s half. It was a line that was referred to for centuries to come. Centuries later in their annals, the Four Masters list, along with the reports of death of kings, the landing of Vikings, and damage done by high winds, the news that in year 808 a band of O’Neills from the north met a party of O’Neills from the south, but that “through the miracles of God … they separated from each other at that time without slaughter or one of them spilling a drop of the other’s blood.” The fact that nothing happened was worth recording for the ages.
The accounts in this collection are almost always the stories of noblemen and their families. The stories of the common people (or even the kings’ wives) are of limited interest to those keeping track of history. There are exceptions. We hear of Alice of Abervenny, a widow, who after the first battle of the Norman invasion was called in to do some grim work, and of the harp player whose head was mistakenly sent to the king of England after the Battle of Faughart, and of the unnamed soldier who discovered the dangers of gunpowder at the Battle of Yellow Ford. Their appearances are so rare they are memorable. More often than not, this is the story of kings and their sons.
Yet the great destruction and violence that are so common in these tales were often felt by the poorest, who always remain nameless. In fact, they were frequently the targets when it was too expensive or too time consuming to attack those wearing the crowns. There were refugees even then, and it is worth remembering this rare, brief, glimpse we get of them in
The Annals of Connacht.
The year is 1225. The place is in what is now County Mayo. One faction of the O’Connor clan is warring against another and its foreign allies:
They plundered Coolcarney and wrought destruction of its cattle and folk on that day, for as many of them [the fleeing people] as reached the level plain without being drowned [in the river] were plundered and slain; A pitiful thing: all who went to Ballycong were drowned and the weirs [dams] were found to have their wattles full of drowned children. Some of the refugees of Clonn Tomalhaig who evaded the Galls and escaped drowning went into Tirawhey, where O’Dubda fell on upon them and left them without a single cow.
—D.W.McC.
Cuchulainn, Cu Cnulaind, Cuchulain, and Cuculan are all different ways of writing the same name. Malachy and Mael Sechnaill are the same eleventh-century high king. The O’Neills are sometimes the Ui Neills. When it comes to early Irish proper names, there is little uniformity of spelling. Names are sometimes kept in their original Irish form, sometimes not. One writer’s Suibne may well be another’s Sweeney. Each generation might have its own version. Each writer—or translator—might have a preferred spelling all his own.
Since this is a collection of early writing with nothing more recent than the seventeenth century, idiosyncratic spellings of names have been retained to respect the spirit and feeling of the individual texts. The variations are usually as obvious as those in the case of Cuchulain, but introductions and notes throughout the book make it clear, when necessary, just who in fact is indeed who.
MYTHICAL WARS
AND
WARRIORS
A
S MONKS IN THE MONASTERIES
of medieval Ireland compiled their yearly records of what was happening (or what was said to be happening) in their land, they were also collecting ingenious stories about the past, a long and complex catalog of tales about gods and goddesses, wars and warriors.
No one presumed that Adam and Eve had dwelled in Ireland, but beginning with the remaking of the world after Noah’s flood, the Irish envisioned a series of fantastical invaders conquering Ireland and each other. Wave after wave of them arrived. After Noah’s granddaughter was sent to Ireland to escape the flood, the Partholonians fought and won the first battle in Ireland against an army of one-legged, one-armed monsters, only to be wiped out by a plague. Then came the Nemedians, the dark Fir Bolgs, the mystical Tuatha De Danann, and finally came the western European Milesians, the supposed ancestors of the Irish. All of this was collected into the twelfth-century
Lebor Gabala (The Book of Invasions)
, with its allusions to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, Greek mythology, and local gods. Some of these stories were indeed based on historical incidents, most made use of actual geographic locations, and all of them may reflect a very real fear of Viking invaders.
The tales about Ireland’s first great hero, Cuchulain, date from the seventh and eighth centuries and are probably older than the invasion accounts. The stories are set in Ulster—the general term for them all is the Ulster Cycle—and Cuchulain is usually presented as having two fathers, an earthly one (Sualdam, king of Cuailgne or Cooley) and an otherworldly one (Lug, often described as the Celtic sun god). Cuchulain’s name was originally Setania, but as a boy—while training with the knights at Emain Macha (now called Navan Fort, near Armagh)—he killed the dog of a blacksmith named Culann. To make amends, he took a name that meant “hound of Culann.” Throughout the tales he is affectionately called “hound” or “little hound,” perhaps because he is described as being
short, an unusual quality in a mythic hero. But he has another unusual quality. He can write. In
The Cattle Raid of Cooley
, the epic account of his defense of the champion bull of Ulster, he is depicted leaving written warning messages on stone for the cattle raiders from Connacht. He is often a terrifying figure of towering rages who usually fights alone, armed only with a spear and a sword.
The Fenian Cycle—stories about Finn MacCool (Fionn mac Cuimhaill), the other major mythic hero—is not quite as old as the Ulster Cycle. And most of the stories are set in a medieval Ireland that has been converted to Christianity by St. Patrick. Some folklorists have argued that Cuchulain and Finn are two versions of the same mythic figure, but they are actually very different men. Cuchulain is a northerner. Finn’s adventures take place in the south or southwest, in Leinster or Munster. Cuchulain is often alone. Finn (his name means “fair” or “light”) is usually surrounded by a royal court worthy of King Arthur. Moreover, Finn has a son and grandson to carry on his line and play major roles in the cycle.
The fourth genre to come out of this period of mythmaking is called the Historical Cycle, which can be seen as a precursor of the modern historical novel. Fictional tales built around an actual historical figure or event proved to be a popular form of writing in Ireland for years to come. Often it was done for political purposes to advance the reputation of one family or to defame another. But one of the earliest examples,
The Frenzy of Suibne
, the story of Sweeney, a seventh-century king who went mad, seems to have been written solely as literature, not propaganda. As such, it is probably the most lyrical writing to come out of early Ireland.
The two battles of Moytura (Mag Tured)—the first between the Tuatha De Danann and the Fir Bolgs and the second between the De Danann and the Fomoire—were first described in
The Book of Invasions
and then later retold in greater detail. This version, based on earlier Old Irish versions, dates from a vellum manuscript that seems to have been written (or copied) in the first half of the sixteenth century by a scribe named Gilla Riabhach O’Cleirigh.
The name Mag Tured can be translated as “the plain of towers” or “the plain of weeping,” and the mythic battles—the first may have been based on an actual battle—occurred in two different places. Oscar Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde, a distinguished amateur archaeologist who named his family’s summer home Moytura, believed the first battle to have taken place south of Sligo near Cong and Lough Corrib. Most historians accept a plain near Lough Arrow, north of Sligo, as the supposed site of the second. In any case, the De Danann, a clan well steeped in the arts and in magic, won both battles. After the first, the sinister Fir Bolgs fled to the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, where they are credited, in legend at least, with having built many of the stone forts there. The Fomoire, defeated in the second battle, were a Scandinavian seagoing tribe who—at one point—are said to have invaded Ireland on a bridge of ships.
Gods and mortals mix freely in Irish mythology. Lug Lamfhota (“the long armed”), the Irish god of sun and light, first appears in this account as “a handsome, well-built young warrior” who seeks admission to Tara’s banqueting hall. Unrecognized by the doorkeepers, he undergoes a long cross-examination that ends with a game of chess or
fidchell.
Later, he becomes commander of the De Danann forces. As for that game, a medieval scribe added a primly pedantic parenthesis to the text: “(But if
fidchell
was invented at the time of the Trojan war, it had not reached Ireland yet, for the battle of Mag Tured and the destruction of Troy occurred at the same time.)” Other gods who appear in the tale include a rather comic Dagda (who combines qualities
of Zeus, Jupiter, and Odin and in some accounts is called the “father of all”) and Ogma (Dagda’s son, a poet, orator, and inventor of writing).
The account, which ends with prophecy and song, also makes clear how dangerous it was to be an Irish king. One king is killed in battle, another is removed from his throne because the loss of an arm makes him ineligible, and a third is driven off because he is inept.
THE TÚATHA Dé DANANN
were in the northern islands of the world [Greece], studying occult lore and sorcery, druidic arts and witchcraft and magical skill, until they surpassed the sages of the pagan arts ….
[They] came with a great fleet to Ireland to take it by force from the Fir Bolg. Upon reaching the territory of Corcu Belgatan (which is Conmaicne Mara today), they at once burned their boats so that they would not think of fleeing to them. The smoke and the mist which came from the ships filled the land and the air which was near them. For that reason it has been thought that they arrived in clouds of mist.
