OF ALL THE WORDS now associated with Ireland and the Irish, the most familiar and hackneyed is probably the word "Celtic." Pick up any catalog selling Irish goods and the word is splashed across every page: Celtic music, Celtic spirituality, Celtic crosses—there are even "Celtic" mouse pads. This word coupled with anything Irish is now commonplace and accepted with total validity. But how valid an assumption is this? How truly "Celtic" is Ireland? This question is one of the most significant ones addressed by modern-day Irish archaeologists and historians and has some very interesting answers.
The widespread use of the word "Celtic" in its application to things Irish is actually rooted mainly in the nineteenth century, in what became known as the Celtic Renaissance. This literary and cultural movement was an attempt by Irish writers and folklorists of the period to establish a sense of identity for the Irish people at a time when both politically and socially the country was in a deep malaise. There were valid sociological reasons for this need to establish a sense of nationhood and a legitimacy to Ireland. The forced parliamentary union of Ireland and Britain in 1800 was both an economic and a political failure. The tragic Famine of the 1840s had taken its toll and the Irish landscape was a wasteland of misery and confusion. The population had declined dramatically as a result of death from starvation, disease, and emigration. The slow draining of the countryside from emigration continued for the remainder of the century. The Famine was to leave deep psychological scars on the Irish memory. As one modern Irish historian has written: "The Famine was a crisis of the mind as well as the body."
Celtic revivalists like W. B. Yeats and Douglas Hyde, working in the 1890s, deliberately set about searching out Ireland's ancient past to create a sense of identity and self-respect for the Irish people. In the wake of so much destruction they were determined to establish or re-establish national pride by seeking out the origins of Irish civilization and clearing away as much historical debris as possible. They earnestly sought to discover what Ireland and the Irish were like before the English invasion of the twelfth century and before Christian influence. As one of the protagonists of this movement said, "Ireland is appealing to the past to escape the confusion of the present." The leaders of this revival accepted at face value the writings in the ancient texts, written from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, and used these as historical foundations to create an Ireland that possibly never existed—or at least not as they saw it. They took as valid history these texts written hundreds of years after the events they describe. It was in the nineteenth century that the idealized notion of a long forgotten, homogeneous, Celtic Irish people became the accepted, popular notion of the origin of Irish ethnicity. This idea has persisted into our time, as have other cultural developments of the period.
Much of what we think of as being popular Irish culture originated in the nineteenth century. For example, Irish dance as we now know it was "developed" in the nineteenth century when set dancing was first introduced. Irish dancing masters adapted continental dances, like the quadrille, to the style of solo step dancing, which was introduced into Ireland in the eighteenth century from Europe. The first céilí was organized by the Gaelic League in 1894 as a way of gathering people together to promote a sense of Irish culture, but primarily to encourage them to speak the Irish language, which was in serious decline. The oldest known Irish music is hundreds of years old, not thousands, so it can hardly claim to be of ancient "Celtic" times. The Irish language, however, does have a long historical link to the past, and this remains one of the most valid threads in Irish history. Modern archaeological methods and linguistic evidence offer some answers about what life was actually like in pre-Christian Ireland. Through these methods we can gain perhaps a more valid assessment of Irish prehistory.
We know that prior to the 1700s the term "Celtic" was not in use in the English language. The eighteenth-century classification came about as a result of linguistic evidence, which linked the native languages of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales to the continental language of the people whom Julius Caesar described as Celtae. The word "Celtic" came originally from the Greeks who, around 600 B.C., called the people who lived to the north of Greece Keltoi. We know also from references in both Greek and Roman texts that they inhabited a large area in Central Europe. Archaeologists do not believe that the Celts were one homogeneous people but were composed of many tribes speaking a similar language. How these different tribes came to speak a common language is not known, but these various peoples, referred to as Celtic, spoke a language which was a predecessor of modern-day Irish. Thus the word "Celtic" became a way of describing the people who spoke the Gaelic language.
These continental Celtic-speaking people did not commit anything to writing. This is certainly not to say they were an ignorant people. By tradition, information was committed to memory and passed on orally. There are no written records in Ireland before the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century, but there were sophisticated schools of memory where poets, storytellers, and lawyers would memorize what their various disciplines required. So successful was this method that when writing did arrive in Ireland it merely gave form to the rich culture, which had predated it and in many ways survived for hundreds of years after the arrival of the first Christian missionaries. A form of early writing had developed and Ogham, a complicated script based on the Latin alphabet, has survived, but it was usually only used on commemorative pillar stones to identify the dead.
The Romans claimed that the Celts were elitists and would not commit anything to writing for fear that the information would become commonplace and available to all. Julius Caesar, in his description of the Celts in his Gallic War, writes that the Celts "consider it improper to commit their studies to writing," and he adds that they knew Greek letters and used these for "all other purposes." The Celtic tribes, Caesar suggests, did not trust the written word because it meant that knowledge could be dispersed and that druids and poets would lose their special status within society. But whatever the reason, it means that when we talk about this period in Irish history we rely on texts written only after the arrival of Christianity. More valid sources for information are the archaeological and linguistic evidence, but the texts reveal some interesting insights about what life might have been like in Ireland so long ago.
By tradition it was believed that the Celts first came to Ireland around 500 B.C. in one massive invasion. Few Irish scholars now accept this. This myth was based on an Irish document known as the Leabhar Gabhála, or Book of Invasions: a text first written down in Christian times by monastic scribes around the seventh century and perfected in the twelfth. This is more than a thousand years after the supposed event. Many Irish documents date from these years, which purport to describe pre-Christian life and laws in Ireland. Not only do they depict the arrival of the Gaelic-speaking people in Ireland, they also tell us much about everyday life. These documents are written in the Irish language, and in modern English translations the term "Celtic" is often used as a substitution for the word "Gaelic." The texts also include the great Irish epic, An Táin Bó Cuailgne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). But the story is believed to be older than the period it was written in, and there can be little doubt that it is a descendant of an older, oral form. With its fascinating descriptions of gods and goddesses and druids with supernatural powers, it is obviously rooted in the pre-Christian era. But how much of the original story remains and how much of it is later invention we do not know. This written mythology abounds with stories of heroes and heroines who are said to have lived in Ireland in prehistoric times. There are tales of strong women and warrior men and gods and goddesses who intermarry with mortals and produce extraordinary offspring. They give us wonderful descriptions of love, passion, cattle raiding, poets who have powers to paralyze with their words, women who train warriors for battle, and druids who can foretell the outcome of wars.
For a long time these texts were taken as being the record of actual events passed on through oral memory into historical times and then written down. In the Book of Invasions the original inhabitants of Ireland are said to have been the mythological Fir Bolg people. The Fir Bolg play a sociopolitical role in the development of Ireland. They are, for instance, credited with dividing Ireland into fifths: the provinces of Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connaught, and the royal area known as Meath. They also are said to have established the classic Irish social system of kingship and the notion of its sacred character. These first mythological people are followed by the Túatha Dé Danann—or people of the goddess Danu—who are skilled in magic and druidry. They are said to arrive in Ireland and defeat the Fir Bolg in a number of battles and take over the country. All of this long pseudo-history eventually leads up to the main event, the coming of the Gaels, the Celts.
In the Book of Invasions, the Sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Gaels, are described as arriving in Ireland on the feast of Beltine or May i. They come on shore in the southeast of the country in modern-day Kerry. Amergin, the chief poet, goes on shore first and sets his foot on the soil of Ireland. He then immediately recites a poem in which he identifies himself with the whole of creation. His very words denote the importance of the occasion:
I am an estuary to the sea
I am a wave of the ocean
I am the bull of seven battles
I am the eagle on the rock
I am a flash from the sun
I am the plant of beauty
I am a salmon in the pool
I am the strength of art . . .
This poem is similar to other "foundation" poetry uttered by the mythological founders of other peoples. The mythmakers who first wrote this story knew what they were doing. They were giving validity to the lineage of the Irish. Amergin is claiming the land of Ireland for his people and staking their legitimate claim as the rightful inhabitants. This was an important declaration at the time when the history of Ireland was first being written down.
On the purpose served by these early stories for the society of the time, Patricia Kelly, a historian from the National University of Ireland, explains that "One of the functions of the tales is to say how far back things began. Meaning that this tradition is well established, that is to say it legitimizes it and argues for its retention." A sense of belonging to the land and unity in ethnicity is important in establishing the legitimacy and lineage of a people. In claiming a long and legitimate ancestry these Irish writers were putting Ireland on par with the great classical nations of the known world. The law tracts explain that poets held the highest position in Irish society, so having a poet claim the land of Ireland would have been very appropriate. It would therefore have given a legitimate claim to the present.
The Gaels, the mythology asserts, having come on shore and claimed the land, then go on to defeat the previous inhabitants, the Túatha Dé Danann. The Gaels then set out toward Tara, the principal place of worship in Ireland in ancient times. On the way there they meet, among others, the goddess Eriu, an important deity who gave her name to the island of Ireland. She is friendly and welcoming toward them and foretells that Ireland will belong to the Sons of Mil for all time. A fortuitous prophesy. Ireland thus rightfully becomes the land of the Gael. This beautiful, romantic story remained a part of Irish thinking for hundreds of years. First written down to create and establish a notion of Irishness, it served that purpose well and became a part of Irish identity. It was common place then, as now, to trace ancestors back to some declared moment in time—it gave a sense of righteousness to social claims of nobility. Some innovative authors could trace a chieftain's or king's family back to Noah and the flood. This was not a practice unique to Ireland. Origin myths are typical of any society that wants to make legitimate claims to a noble lineage. The Romans did precisely the same thing when their early writers invented a connection with them and the ancient Greek world, giving the Romans a position of legitimacy within classical Mediterranean civilization.
With the spread of the English language in later Irish history, these stories written in Irish were largely forgotten by the educated Irish population who had become almost exclusively English speaking. So when the nineteenth-century revivalists went looking for the roots of Ireland they sought out these old texts and took them to be historically legitimate. The "invasion" of the Celtic-speaking people became a commonly accepted historical fact. It was this influence that cast such a long shadow over the twentieth century, and that continues to shape the ideas in Irish popular culture.
There is a problem with what is written in these ancient texts. In the mid-twentieth century, when Irish archaeologists went looking for evidence to support the stories, they found no material evidence in Ireland to uphold the theory of a mass invasion of Celtic people at the time claimed in the texts—or at any time for that matter.
The year of the supposed Celtic invasion of Ireland, 500 B.C., is the period known as the Iron Age. The Iron Age artifacts that have been identified as Continental Celtic were found in modern-day Switzerland and are known as La Tène style from the region they were discovered. This was an art form which developed around the middle of the fifth century B.C. The style, often described as the first nonclassical art of Europe, is full of scrolls and spirals and waves of lines which twist and turn in a complex matrix of design. The earliest artifact of this style found in Ireland is a tore (a neck ornament) found at Knock, County Roscommon, which dates to a slightly later time, around the third century B.C. Barry Raftery believes that this piece is obviously an import, but "it is an isolated piece [found] in the west of the country, so its wider cultural significance should not be exaggerated." In other words, one swallow doth not a summer make. Many more imported artifacts would have to be found to support the theory of a mass invasion and they have not. There are only a few continental La Tène artifacts from this period in Ireland, and they may have arrived for a number of reasons. They might simply be the result of trading, or they could have been brought in by a small elite group. These foreign La Tène artifacts that have been discovered in Ireland are mostly prestige objects like horse trappings, scalpels, and trumpets—not the utensils of ordinary people usually found when there is a mass movement of people into a new area. This is precisely what puzzles archaeologists like Barry who have done extensive work on this period in Irish prehistory. He believes that the few articles found in Ireland of Continental or British Celtic origin "clearly belonged to an aristocratic elite who may have traveled to Ireland and settled there alongside the already established community." He goes on to stress that "nobody believes in large-scale [Celtic] migration into the country. At best, we're talking about small-scale intrusions." Barry thinks that the total absence of what ordinary people would have used is an indication that no large Celtic invasion occurred.
About a hundred years later, native Irish workshops were producing a local version of La Tène-style decoration. When the La Tène-style of art came to Ireland, the Irish developed a native version of it, which was to remain a feature of Irish art well into the Christian period and beyond. How this importation of style happened no one knows. It is possible that it was part of an exchange pattern of elite goods between people of high status. Contrary to what the texts say concerning an invasion, for the most part there is archaeological continuity in Ireland between the earlier Bronze Age and the "Celtic" Iron Age. This indicates no shift in population type. In other words, there is no evidence for any change in lifestyle or of a major group of new people coming in. As regards burial rites for example, there is no change in how funerals were conducted between these periods, and no Continental Celtic-type burial chambers have ever been found in Ireland. Archaeologists cannot find support for any evident change in lifestyle between the older period and the period in which the Celts are supposed to have arrived.
In spite of the lack of archaeological evidence we do know that the Celtic language and culture came to Ireland. There is ample evidence to show that by around A.D. 100 Ireland was a Celtic-speaking country. One major source in support of this is Ptolemy's map of Ireland dating to about A.D. 150, which shows the country to be Celtic speaking. Ptolemy was a Greek geographer, and Professor DonnchadhÓ Corráin, medieval historian at University College Cork, believes that this is the strongest evidence for the arrival of the Celtic or Gaelic language into Ireland. This is the first absolute proof that the language arrived, and linguistic scholars feel that it must have been well established by this time. In addition, early Ogham stones bearing the Celtic script and dating to around A.D. 200 can be found scattered throughout Ireland. Written texts from the sixth century show the vernacular language in Ireland to be the Irish language, Gaelic. The pre-Celtic language, whatever it was, was gone by this time, leaving only traces behind. These old texts also describe a Celtic society similar to that found on the Continent with comparable gods and goddesses.
According to Donnchadh Ó Corráin, this transference of language could only be possible by a large number of Celtic-speaking people coming to settle in Ireland. Not just warriors but whole families must have settled, possibly over a long period of time—perhaps as long as five hundred years or more. A once-off invasion as described in the texts is not likely in the face of the lack of archaeological evidence. Donnchadh explains that it takes women with families to transfer a language: "In order to make this country Celtic speaking, a lot of Celtic speakers had to come. This is not a matter of race; this is a matter of language and speech. And if a lot of Celtic speakers had to come they couldn't be just warriors, they had to be full families because the only way to change the language of a country is [for the newcomers] to have families. You need women to rear the children speaking Celtic. Otherwise [the men] go and marry the natives, and of course they don't wind up speaking Celtic at all."
Just as significantly, he also explains that women are more phatic than men: women use language for social communication more than men do. So language tends to travel with women and not with men. Consequently, with male-only invasions the typical pattern is for them to intermarry with the local female population and wind up speaking that language and not keeping their own. This was to happen with the Viking invaders who intermarried with the native Irish women and quickly lost their own language. Similarly, in the twelfth century, when the Anglo-Normans came to Ireland, it was a male-only invasion. Soon after they intermarried into Irish families they also lost their language. Within a generation the Normans were all speaking Irish. They became, as the saying goes, "more Irish than the Irish themselves." So the Celtic language, which did impose itself on the country, could only have done so, according to Donnchadh O Corráin, by the arrival of great numbers of Celtic families. That is not to say that there was a massive invasion. The transference of language and culture could have happened over a very long period of time. Some scholars now believe that there might have been a slow trickling in of the newcomers, possibly over half a millennium, and not one huge invasion so romantically described in the texts.
Nevertheless many archaeologists argue that the transference of language could have happened without any Celtic people coming to Ireland at all. John Waddell says, "There was a prolonged and persistent pattern of [sea] contact between the peoples of Ireland, Britain, and the continent extending over perhaps thousands of years. This contact could have allowed a Celtic language to slowly emerge in these various localities." This would explain the total lack of archaeological evidence. Whatever the explanation of this puzzle, there remains no direct evidence for a presence of continental Celtic people in Ireland.
The hill of Tara was an important site in pre-Christian Ireland. For centuries it was the principal place of ritual worship and had such a status that anyone claiming the high-kingship had first to claim jurisdiction over Tara. The name Tara comes from an obscure old Irish word Temair, meaning either "a height with a view" or a "sacred place," either of which is appropriate for describing this location. It is a beautiful, open, breezy site in County Meath. It is a feature of these ancient ritual sites that they are usually on high ground, but this site is particularly imposing. It is not a steep climb to the top of the hill, so it always comes as a surprise to see how high the Hill of Tara sits above the surrounding terrain. It has a very impressive perspective and appears to dominate the central plain of Ireland, commanding panoramic views in all directions. No wonder the ancients chose it as the primary site of worship and kingship. Tara holds especially significant interest and curiosity because of the repeated references to its importance in the texts. The Celtic god Lugh and the goddess Medb are particularly associated with the site. Lugh is one of the most important of the Celtic gods, and he was the divine manifestation of the kingship of Tara. Medb was the goddess of Tara and would rule Tara herself if no suitable candidate for king was presented.
Such an important site as Tara would certainly reflect what was happening in Iron Age Ireland and yield some clues as to the demographics of the society. The results of recent excavations are indeed interesting. Edel Bhreathnach says, "During excavations in 1997 they found enough material to successfully date Rath na Rí, the enclosure of the kings, to 94 or 95 B.C. This is the large oval enclosure that circles the hilltop. When it was just newly constructed the ditch inside its earthen rampart was up to three meters deep. It would have been an enormously impressive monument." This indicates much social activity and an important presence at Tara during the Iron Age. But no evidence was found there to support a Celtic invasion. In fact there is little change between the older Bronze Age and the Iron Age according to the archaeological data. Nonetheless Ogham script of a later date has been found at the site, indicating a cultural presence of the Irish language. The presence of an elite group may explain this apparent enigma. A further piece of evidence for the theory of an elite group is indicated by the finding of prestigious Roman objects dating to the later Iron Age of the second to fourth centuries A.D. Archaeologist Helen Roach explains, "We also found exotic items like a lead seal, glass vessels—objects which are really only found in very special sites. And you can trace them back really to Roman Britain rather than a native object. But that doesn't mean that there were Roman people here. I think it means that they were a powerful elite group who had contacts with Roman Britain and were able to procure these objects which ... to an Irish family were very special and very prestigious objects to own." Tara had wealthy occupants during this period who may have traded with the Roman Empire or traveled there and returned with some prestige items. But the overall continuity between the older Bronze Age and the Iron Age suggests that if new people came in they must have been very few in number.
The idea of a wealthy elite is one that Barry Raftery also suggests for the presence of imported Roman artifacts found at Tara. Parts of a wine goblet and fragments of several flagons have been found at the site in the area known as the Rath of the Synods. These objects date to the first and second centuries A.D. As these items are not of native origin and are obviously imported, Barry thinks they are possibly "indicative of an affluent elite who held possession of Tara at this time." Such items suggest that the inhabitants could afford wine and owned goblets from which to drink it. The possibility exists that there was a cultural aristocracy here, an upper class who managed to impose their language on the native population. Edel Bhreathnach surmises that maybe "at some stage a group with whatever form of language that ultimately became Irish came to Ireland, and perhaps they took a grip on the part of the country where Tara stands. This is a key part of the country where they may have held key institutions and through their dominance and political astuteness may have managed to impose the language." The entire progression from the older language to the newer one could have taken hundreds of years.
There is much support for this theory of a process of slow, peaceful cultural penetration, as no evidence exists for a violent incursion. In this way there was more than likely a blending in of the Celtic newcomers with the older established population, and in time all became Celtic speaking. Donnchadh Ó Corráin suggests that it is also likely that the Celts "remained a minority in Ireland." They gave their language and culture to the country, but Ireland has obviously more pluralistic roots than previous generations believed. By the late Iron Age the Irish were speaking a Celtic language, but the population was made up of various different kinds of peoples who arrived over a broad space of time, many of whom were certainly not Celtic. The appellation "Celtic" as applied to Ireland can only be used in terms of the language and culture and not as a pure, homogenous, ethnic identity.
What do the texts tell us of this pre-Christian culture? The stories that were recorded probably originated hundreds of years before they were written down. There was an oral tradition of bardic learning by which stories and poems were handed down through the generations. The Roman conviction that the Celts were elitist might have some truth in it. Making the stories available to a wider audience could possibly have infringed on the special position of the poet in early Irish society. The poets enjoyed such a place of high honor and prestige that they may not have been willing to share this status or see it diminish. Their training was so rigorous that it could take up to twenty years to become a master poet, or Ollamh. They would have been very proud of their abilities to remember and embellish the stories and poems handed down to them.
An Táin Bó Cuailgne, The Cattle Raid of Cooley, is the greatest of all the ancient Irish stories and is the oldest epic written in a vernacular European language. The story is obviously pagan in ethos and origin and it tells us something about life in pre-Christian Ireland, including the religion and politics. However it is not to be taken as historical fact, and a careful reading reveals much about the mythmakers who committed this story to writing in Christian times. It is a testimony to the skill of the early Irish poets that the basic tenet of such a complicated story was probably committed to memory and passed along over many hundreds of years before being written down. Originally written in Old Irish, The Táin is now widely available in English translation and remains a popular form of entertainment. Characters from The Táin are well known in contemporary Ireland and are still a part of Irish culture. Like all grand epics, it is a great story.
The Táin is the story of Queen Medb of Connaught and a family dispute which escalates and eventually becomes a war between the provinces of Connaught and Ulster. In the story, Medb is described as a beautiful, strong, and proud woman who is used to getting what she wants and never questions her right to determine her own destiny. One night, as she and her husband Ailill lie in bed, they get into an argument over which one of them is the more important and more powerful person. Ailill starts the disagreement by his seemingly passive musings that it is well for her to be married to a rich man. "I am thinking," says Ailill, rather foolishly as it turns out, "how much better off you are today than the day I married you." Medb is somewhat astonished and more than a little angered at this statement and immediately replies that it is he, Ailill, who is a kept man and lucky to have married her. It is Medb's haughty and immediate assertion that she is the one who rules the province and has more possessions than he has that puts the flame to the kindling. Naturally enough, he is not amused at her arrogant response and becomes quite angry. This small domestic dispute would eventually escalate into a war between Connaught and Ulster. A lesson perhaps that there is nothing small about any power play.
Medb's boast is not an idle one. For one thing, she has the law on her side. The old Brehon Laws, the laws of ancient Ireland, allow her to own goods legally independent of her husband. What she brings into the marriage remains hers. Moreover, because she has inherited the throne of Connaught and other riches from her father and Ailill married her and lives in her territory, it is Medb who is legally responsible for him and for his debts. She reminds him that she is responsible for what the law calls his "honor price," the value placed on him under ancient Irish law. If he should get into any kind of legal dispute with someone or into any kind of trouble, Medb would be responsible for paying his fines. In other words, she claims, it is she who is in charge of his life and not the other way around. So it is a legitimate claim that she has to superiority. To compensate for what he probably feels is a social embarrassment, Ailill tries to prove that he has more possessions than she has.
Servants are sent to every corner of their home to painstakingly drag out all their belongings, including even their lowest possessions. Medb's goods are to be put on one side and compared to Ailil's. The descriptions of their possessions are very elaborate and quite entertaining. The ancient storytellers loved to embellish every detail and would probably have held their audience spellbound with the intricate descriptions of the beauty of each valued item. Gold rings, bracelets, great silks, and fabrics of all colors, decorated vessels, pots and washpails, are all laid out. Even livestock is included in this detailed inventory. Herds of sheep and cattle are brought in from the fields to compare side-by-side. We are left to imagine what the servants might be thinking throughout all of this, but life in Medb's household could not have been uneventful, and they were probably well used to such goings-on.
In the way the story unfolds it is evident, interestingly enough, that not only were the ancient Irish a spiritual people but they also obviously held material possessions in high regard. Their wealth and assets were plainly very important to them and to their sense of self-worth. The final "victory," in Medb and Ailil's domestic dispute will go to which one can claim to own more possessions. Medb and Ailill are as proud and possessive of their belongings as any modern-day yuppie. But because wealth was judged primarily in cattle in those days, Medb is upset by the discovery that Ailill has a beautiful white bull called Finnbennach, the white horned. Everything else between wife and husband turns out to be equal except for this beautiful bull. Poor Medb has nothing to compare with this creature. She is far too egotistical and proud to accept this inequality, and she is not to be so easily outdone. Who can blame her—her father had left her the province to rule, and she is queen. Why should she accept second place to her husband Ailill or to anyone else for that matter? So she sends her envoys throughout the whole of Ireland to find a better bull. They find it in Ulster. It belongs to Dáire Mac Fiachna who lives in a place called Cuailgne. So famous is this magnificent creature that he is known throughout Ireland as the Brown Bull of Cuailgne.
Immediately Medb sends her envoys into Ulster to ask Dáire to "loan" her the bull for one year. In exchange for this she offers him fifty yearling heifers with the return of the borrowed bull. Medb's chief envoy, Fergus Mac Roth, is known as the chief herald of Ireland and is well received. Dáire is delighted with such a generous offer, so he agrees to give the bull to Fergus who will convey it back to Medb. A large celebration feast follows this agreement, and Fergus and his servants join in the fun. The food is sumptuous and the wine flows, but it also has the effect of loosening the tongue of Medb's envoys who boast that had they not been given the bull Medb would have sent in her army to take it by force. A proud boast uttered at a moment of unintentional indiscretion, brought on perhaps by relief at getting the bull and a little too much wine. But the indiscreet words bring trouble. Unfortunately one of Dáire's household servants overhears this bragging and goes to him in fury.
There had already been some upset in Ulster at the idea of the brown bull going outside of the province. Much of Ulster's prestige rested on this magnificent creature. Dáire had tried to quiet this unease by pointing out the great deal he had struck with the queen of Connaught. But upon hearing of the boasts of the Connaught men, Dáire's reaction is instant and precipitous: "I swear by the gods my people swear by, that they will not take the brown bull away unless they take him by force." But saying no to Medb is not going to stop her. In response she gathers her sizable army together. She will march on Ulster and take what she wants by force. If diplomacy has failed, a different kind of persuasion will win the day. She intends to challenge the king of Ulster's army and defeat him with her military might. Thus starts the war between Ulster and Connaught over the Brown Bull of Cuailgne.
The king of Ulster lives in a place called Emain Macha, now known as Navan Fort, which lies just to the west of the town of Armagh. Situated on high ground, it is similar in appearance to the other royal sites in Ireland. Today all that remains of a once-thriving place is a large grass mound where long ago throngs of people gathered for ritual activities. It was here, so the sagas relate, that the king of Ulster lived, as did the greatest of Irish heroes, Cú Chu-lainn.
Cú Chulainn was the powerful champion of the Ulster army, and his memory still symbolizes nobility and physical strength. He has both human and supernatural powers as his mother was a human woman and his father was Lugh, the god of the harvest. Cú Chulainn is essentially the all-time Irish superhero, but whether he is based on any real person no one knows. Like Medb, he has been feted into a quasi-historical figure. It is possible that he was an oral memory of a great hero of long ago committed to writing in the early Christian period, but there is no evidence for this. Nonetheless, his status as an unconquerable warrior remains a powerful symbol in Ireland. The enduring image of Cú Chualainn as the invincible, superhuman warrior was to inspire Irish nationalists thousands of years after he is said to have lived and died. He was the embodiment of indomitable Irish nationalism and guardian of a righteous cause for the early-twentieth-century patriots. W. B. Yeats was to write that the ghost of Cú Chulainn "stalked through" the Dublin General Post Office in 1916 during the Irish rebellion against British rule. In present day Dublin a large statue depicting the noble death of the still powerful and young Cú Chulainn adorns the window of the General Post Office in commemoration of the 1916 Bising.
This is the hero Medb's army faces when they march on Ulster. In spite of druidic warnings against success, Medb remains determined, assembling her warriors and war chariots to meet the Ulster army. The war is nasty, with serious losses on both sides. The Ulster soldiers are seized by an ancient curse imposed on the men of Ulster, which renders them powerless in moments of crisis. The hero Cú Chulainn alone is immune to this affliction, and finds himself fighting arm to arm with the pride of Medb's army, the powerful Ferdia. Cú Chulainn finally kills Ferdia but immediately laments it bitterly because Ferdia is in fact his own foster brother. Fosterage of children was a common custom in ancient Ireland and was actually governed by rules in Brehon Law. The moment of victory is marred by the killing of a foster brother—is this an early anti-war cry? Chaos ensues with the two bulls fighting each other. The white bull is killed and the brown bull runs home to Cuailgne and dies, leaving a trail of destruction.
Bearing in mind that what we have of the story comes to us by the writings of Christian monks who lived hundreds of years after the events of the tale, a close reading of the text reveals a bias against Medb and an enhancement of the male hero, Cú Chulainn. These stories in fact are about two time periods: the times of the actual events and the period in which they were written down. Patricia Kelly is quick to point out how the Christian writers determined the outcome of the pagan story. "What they were trying to do was to use these existing legends to tell stories which pointed up morals and provided examples for acceptable or nonacceptable behavior." Medb's boldness, her flair, her sense of self-importance, and her determination to upstage her husband are all recorded but so also is her final disgrace, her ultimate failure to triumph because of her own foolishness. As Patricia says, "Cú Chulainn gets it right all the time, and Medb makes mistakes all along the line, which makes me think that they are talking about [their own] contemporary period. I think that must be one of the elements of the contemporary relevance of this tale, that the monastic scribes are making a comment about queens who take on too much and try to overreach the role that the church would like to have seen them confined to."
Perhaps in the older, oral version, which presumably predated the written form, Medb did triumph and ruled successfully and wisely, without reference to her husband. Perhaps in the pagan version she bested Cú Chulainn, the male superhero. We cannot know for sure: we have only the later Christian version of events. As Donnchadh O Corráin observed, the message of the monks would most likely have been: "This [pagan Ireland] was society before the coming of Christianity and God-saving grace, and if Queen Medb was an extremely wanton and headstrong woman, that is the way women were before Christianity got its hands upon them—so [they would have us believe] we have much to be grateful for."
Yet in spite of the obvious male overlay in this great epic, it is easy to see the pagan foundation on which it lies. Here is a woman asserting her independence and superiority over her husband and absolutely sure of her right to do so. If we set aside her eventual failure we can still see the remnants of what was most likely an older, pre-Christian story. The figure of Medb—the strong, haughty, impertinent woman who goes to war in order to assert her supremacy and have a bull better than that of her husband—is the enduring image that stays with us. She was a great pagan queen who never questioned her right to take her army into Ulster and get what she needed in order to establish her dominance over an upstart husband. Her character is so strong that she is sometimes referred to as a goddess in the texts. The Christian monks might have been uncomfortable with a woman with this much power and self-confidence—they surely did not affirm her in her quest to best her husband and prove her superiority.
One can still go today to see the area traditionally believed to be ruled by Medb. It is in the Province of Connaught in the west of Ireland. Although her legendary dwelling place in Rath Croghan in County Roscommon is long gone, the hill on which it stood is still there to be seen. Driving out the road from the town of Tulsk, the hill is on the left standing open against the sky, verdant but quite deserted, which is the charm of many of these ancient sites. Yet once, so the legend goes, it was thronged with the activity of Medb's court and army. Nowadays you might find archaeologists on the windy hill searching for traces of that ancient life. We went there in search of what we could find out about the site from the latest archaeological evidence.
Joe Fenwick and Conor Newman, archaeologists from the National University of Ireland, Galway, who have explored the hill extensively using geophysical surveying equipment, have discovered some very interesting information concerning the origins of the mound. According to their data, beneath the surface of the mound lie ridges and circles which indicate that from approximately 3000 B.C. there appears to be evidence of ritual activity continuing through the Iron Age and beyond. Yet what exactly that activity was they can only guess. The mound is man-made and is not, as was once thought, a natural hill used by the ancients. It was in fact actually created by them. This interesting discovery gives rise to further questions about the original function of the site. "It was," Conor Newman said, "an important assembly site in ancient times." Yet so far they have found very little evidence of residential life. It seems to have been a very important place for the tribe to gather and meet and conduct religious rituals.
Is the great epic an oral memory of some kind? Is the legendary linking of Medb with the site legitimate? Some archaeologists also report evidence of disturbance in the area bordering Con-naught and Ulster around the time The Táin was supposed to have taken place. Evidence, perhaps, that the story might be based on some remembered truth and that a war or struggle of some kind took place in the area at this time.
Another part of the puzzle is to be found in the mysterious cave of Oweynagat which lies 765 yards to the southwest of the mound of Rath Croghan. The ancients believed this was the entrance to the Otherworld. It has an extremely small and narrow passageway. Feeling adventurous, we went inside with John Waddell, who insisted that we wear rain suits before we entered. As we crawled along a very narrow muddy passage in total darkness, his advice was much appreciated. This is definitely not a place for the claustrophobic. After crawling for about forty feet through the entrance passage with nothing but John's voice to guide us, we came to the cave itself. What an extraordinary sight as we arrived at the end of the dark passage and stood up: our flashlights lit up the darkness to show a high narrow limestone cave of seemingly cathedral proportions. Much has been written in early Irish literature about this cave, and its association with ancient sacred rites and ceremonial festivals is clear. John described it as "one of the most remarkable monuments in the Rath Croghan complex." The cave itself is natural while the entrance passageway, the souterrain, is man-made. It was obviously a major religious site in ancient Ireland. Just inside the narrow entrance some Ogham script has been carved into the stone which translates as: "The Pillar of Fraech, son of Medb." Queen Medb had a son-in-law called Fraech. No explanation for this inscription is known. The exact date of the Ogham script is unclear, but it is estimated to be perhaps fifth century A.D. This could be further proof that these people actually existed at some time and are the remnants of incomplete memory.
While considering the archaeological evidence and admitting that some questions about these ancient sites cannot be answered, Conor Newman commented, "From an archaeological point of view, we find ourselves reaching a point very rapidly when we run out of things to say that are descriptive. We've said how big it is, we've said how deep it is. So when it comes to the nub of the questions . . . what is it? Why was it built? At that point we have to embrace things like mythology, social anthropology, cultural anthropology to find out what's going on." Perhaps embracing the story of The Táin, or the basic tenets of it, gives us clues into an Irish past which continues to haunt and puzzle us. We should consider that possibly the stories are indeed memories, however distorted by the writers, of a time when Ireland, lying outside the Roman Empire, had its own unique form of society.
Stories like The Táin would have been told and retold originally by the poets to groups of people eager to be entertained, perhaps at a large tribal get-together or even in the winter evenings as all sat around the large community fire. Craggaunowen, a reconstructed prehistoric Irish village in County Clare, brings visitors back to what life might have been like in ancient Ireland. Crannógs, early Irish homes, have been built there to emulate life as it once was. It was in places like this that Irish communities lived; it is not difficult to imagine a scene in a similar location, long ago, with the community fire lighting up the storyteller's face as all eagerly awaited the telling of the latest story or a familiar yarn told with a new twist. The darkness of night beyond the fire was territory that few wanted to venture into. There would have been comfort in the familiarity of stories told over and over again. Children listening for the first time would be told to be quiet—the poet is about to begin his tale. We can picture that storyteller of long ago, full of histrionics, telling the story in both soft and loud tones as the details unfolded and the fine points were embellished for effect. It would all be there in the telling of the saga: the exaggeration, the elaborate descriptions, and even the sometimes outlandish but often amusing hyperbole. Music would accompany the recital of the tale, giving atmosphere to it—much like some of today's movies. Maybe the storyteller would add something new to the plot or insert a detail not heard before: the brash confidence of Medb, the amazing strength of Cú Chulainn, and the very elaborate and mouthwatering descriptions of Medb and Ailil's possessions, all earnestly listened to. This story of domestic dispute taken to a wider conflict has engendered a lot of interest since its first inception way back in ancient times. Like all epics, it is a story that endures—and a marvel to know that thousands of years after the events are supposed to have taken place the images of Medb and Cú Chulainn are still alive.
The story of a large-scale invasion of Celtic warriors into Ireland might now be relegated to the arena of mythology and pseudo-history, but the legends and myths that have been left behind will probably cast their spells forever.