1
1
A Celtic Legacy and Christian Syncretism
A Methodological Introduction
Reams have been written, mostly in the last two centuries, regarding the origin and diffusion of an immense and varied, orally transmitted narrative patrimony unique to people from every corner of the world. This narrative patrimony has followed a path that, from time immemorial, has led to us, despite innumerable accidents encountered along the way. Endless discussion has considered the possibility of tracking down, particularly in Europe, a single geographical and historical area where the original narrative themes and motifs might have been born, before they spread out across the world. Research has brought to light substantial affinities between the myths, legends, and folktales (which will be our arena of discussion) of various nations very distant from each other, and profound questions have followed these discoveries. Works such as The Types of the Folktale by Aarne and Thompson, and the ponderous Motif Index by Thompson not only give us an idea of the immense size of the narrative corpus at humanity’s disposal, but also provide us with the view of a patrimony that, as far as motifs and themes are concerned, is the common privilege of all of mankind. Many scholars have worked with praiseworthy self-abnegation in the romantic search for a place, a time, and a people in which to anchor our common roots and from which we are all born. For example, a highly influential current of nineteenth-century theorizing suggested that the Indian subcontinent could be considered the cradle of Indo-European fabulation1 (both in the proto-historical phase, as a legacy of the migrations of Indo-European peoples from India to the West, and in the historical phase, when Indian society was so extremely civilized as to allow its narrative patrimony to spread to less developed peoples). This theory is no more than a generous and forgivable attempt to discover a common origin for a universal phenomenon, one which, precisely because of its obvious universality, it would be more logical to englobe in a polygenetic theory.
In any case, here, one is dealing with a hypothesis that, albeit suggestive and often well argued, can never fully demonstrate its validity, no more so than all the others that have been elaborated in this respect. One must recognize the existence of extremely precise limits for research aimed at reconstructing a past that is far more hypothetical than historical. Historical truth is demonstrated with incontrovertible documents. Everything else is mere opinion—all the more so when one is faced with something that has no, as it were, measurable consistency. We can count the thousands of variants that exist in the world of a given tale, but we cannot enclose in a neat formula what it was that, ages ago, inspired the human mind to give birth to storytelling. This is particularly true in those tales pertaining to the faerie, whose ambit was described in the Introduction to this volume. To speak the truth, one might say that, in effect, not even the variants of a single faerie motif are truly quantifiable, neither on a diachronic level (it being impossible to recover all of those lost with the passing of time), nor on a synchronic level (since it is possible that in some far-away corner of the world there exists a storyteller who has evaded the efforts of the most zealous of tale hunters). As long as it maintains its oral nature, the popular narrative tradition—and hence the themes and motifs on which it is built—does not lend itself to being interpreted on the basis of rigid, generalizing modules. It lends itself instead to study that considers it a product arising directly from the intimacy of all mankind. When one speaks of the collective value of the oral tradition, one undoubtedly does not wish to affirm that a tale comes simultaneously from all members of a community, but rather to evince the phenomenon in which a single creator cannot be tracked down, given the tale’s transversal diffusion throughout the community. One must also emphasize the purely human factor, outcome apart, that distinguishes the creation of a tale or a simple faerie motif. This leads me to believe that the most appropriate research in this field lays aside the study of aspects extraneous to the narrative fact itself, and concentrates instead on the fundamental aspect of the issue—the play of the imagination—in which the anthropologist Franz Boas believed he had discovered the universal origin of the tale.2 If this premise is supported by an awareness that “the growth of myths and tales is extremely complex, and there have been all kinds of disintegration and accretion of foreign materials,” it is fair to conclude, and still in agreement with Boas: “The original form of any particular myth may be quite impossible to discover.”3
Considering all that has been said, it seems to me that, rather than attempting to reconstruct the genesis and origin of the entire narrative tradition, it is far more reasonable to limit the horizon of research to a determinate narrative tradition, without losing awareness that one is undertaking a partial reconstruction, conditioned, inevitably, by the material that writing has preserved in time: it is clear that oral transmission, source as it is of incessant variation, can contribute only in an indirect manner to a diachronic investigation. Furthermore, one must not undervalue the fact that the oral and written traditions have coexisted peacefully for centuries, sharing, unconsciously perhaps, a common narrative patrimony. This is true to such an extent that it is impossible to isolate a truly traditional ambit and one more specifically literary, since both have conditioned each other reciprocally, giving birth to substantially hybrid forms and themes that obscure the provenance of this or that single element. Our premises here are fundamental since the intention is to study the fairy tale, a narrative context in which, more than any other, a fusion takes place between traditions of differing origin. It is based on myths and beliefs pertaining to the sphere of folklore, or rather to a patrimony that groups together an entire people and which, therefore, is an integral part of the life of a certain community. But it is also true that this patrimony has been used always more widely and expertly in the sphere of literary elaboration: when Perrault tells the tale of Cinderella, he does nothing else but rework a narrative theme widespread in popular culture. Obviously, the writer approaches the tale with intentions far from those of the original. He elaborates it according to a form that mutates the theme into a classic of literature, and he addresses it to an élite far different from the peasants who have handed the tale down for centuries. In this way, the fairy tale demonstrates its noteworthy capacity to put into contact contexts that, from every other point of view, would have ignored each other reciprocally.
It is fair to state that, in the narrative tradition, it has never been possible to identify a real scission into two absolutely distinct sections—oral versus literary—and this is all the more so true in regard to the fairy tale. As much as it has been possible, particularly since the advent of Humanism, to develop highly elaborate forms pertaining to the ambit of the Italian novellistica d’arte (in particular, the collections of Basile and Straparola), and as much as writers have underlined their independence from a tradition considered outdated, inadequate, and suitable only to a humble and unprepared public, the fairy tale, and, with it, substantially the rest of narrative, has never managed to sever its primordial links with a patrimony originating in the lower levels of society and the past, even if it was precisely this idea that imposed itself from Boccaccio to the threshold of Romanticism.4 Due to this idea, the work of recollection that lasted throughout the nineteenth century, in every part of Europe, assumed great importance, leading hosts of writers and simple scholars to focus their attention on those traditional elements that had survived among the lower classes. Examining the stages of this European phenomenon does not enter into our field of research here. In general, however, it should be said that underlying this labor of transcription was a deeply felt need to reappropriate a heritage that was capable (in that it was a universal phenomenon) of unveiling the fundamental unity of mankind, erasing artificial barriers of nation and culture. On the other hand, this same heritage was also seen as a national phenomenon, a depository of each nation’s unique narrative tradition. This was even more the case with those nations subject to foreign hegemony,5 a discourse that in Ireland, more than in most other European countries, was an important issue.
The Celtic Heritage
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Ireland was no more than a tiny part of the immense British Empire, a dominion that had lasted for six centuries and that no insurrection had managed seriously to disrupt. However, in this highly limited and marginal context, and despite growing cultural persecution on the part of the invaders, an enormous patrimony of traditional Irish tales was conserved, unequaled in the rest of Europe. This patrimony was transmitted particularly in the cottages of the Irish countryside, where tenacious efforts were made to keep alive a glorious past and where storytelling was the only means of preserving an extremely marked sense of identity. Irish lore is all the more original in that it survived in a historically insular context; unlike the rest of Europe, the Roman legions had not occupied Ireland. In Ireland, the Celtic civilization lasted far longer than it did elsewhere, where it appeared like a meteorite and was quickly swept away by Greco-Latin civilization. Latin culture, undeniably attractive to native people, was further strengthened by the coming of Christianity; the Roman Empire eventually absorbed a multitude of weaker indigenous European cultures, thus giving the continent a highly unitary cultural physiognomy. Until the moment of the English invasion of Ireland in the twelfth century, the island nation managed to keep alive its markedly Celtic nature, and also unite it with Christianity, thus establishing a balanced, original compromise unequaled elsewhere. The surprising synthesis reached in Ireland between the new religion and ancient pagan tradition was entirely unique; in other lands, the two elements were held in decided antithesis, with Christianity favoring, if not the actual disappearance, then at least the debasement of a great part of pre-Christian tradition.6 Considering the value of the legacy of Celtic civilization in Ireland, its preservation was undoubtedly due to the intelligence and respect with which the Irish Church approached it. This cultural patrimony was too large and too original to be ignored, all the more so because it was a resource which, if carefully managed, would serve the Church’s ends. Thus, on the one hand, the Church was motivated by a recognition of the incontrovertible value of the native tradition and the need to preserve it from the risks of purely oral transmission; on the other hand, the Church wanted to appropriate this tradition in Christian terms, with a view to more successfully converting a pagan people.
The rapid spread of the Christian message in Ireland was, in my opinion, assisted by a peculiar quality of the Celtic spirit, one readily reflected by the very nature of the fairy tale. I refer to all that goes beyond mere sense-perception, to an attraction to that unreachable world lying well beyond everyday reality, to the near-devaluation of pure corporeity in the name of a striving for the absolute, the infinite; this spirit inevitably produced the visionary character and imaginative power of the entire narrative production of Celtic origin.7 It seems in no way rash to me to glimpse in such an attitude toward the world and life itself a powerful incentive to welcome and embrace a faith that laid its accent on the spiritual dimension and guaranteed the existence of another world. Maybe, because they saw in this mental disposition terrain congenial to Christian teaching, the representatives of the Irish Church were more inclined than elsewhere to tolerate beliefs deriving from a pagan past. Fairy faith and the Bible could happily coexist because, in a certain sense, they reciprocally reinforced each other.8 Moreover, without a fair dose of tolerance, it would have been impossible to preserve an entire narrative patrimony that founded its peculiarity and beauty on a belief in the fairy world itself: an extremely extensive part of the Irish tradition belonged to that transversal category in which we have defined the fairy tale.
But what exactly did St. Patrick and his successors find so precious about the island? They did not find simply a rich and varied quantity of tales, but also a society built around these tales and their storytellers. Here, they encountered a privileged ground for narrativity, in the sense that before their eyes—and above all, to their ears—they found a context that was extremely propitious for the creation, transmission, and evolution of the narrative patrimony. This patrimony formed a foundational value for every member of a community that could truly recognize and identify itself only through narration inherited from tradition. We are discussing an epoch prior to the advent of Christianity, embracing a number of centuries before and after the birth of Christ, which would be substantially obscure were it not for the tales it left behind. The difficulty of penetrating pagan Ireland is increased by a complete lack of written documents; not a single traditional tale has been transcribed. We are faced with a society in which the transmission of knowledge and the memory of the past itself were entrusted entirely to oral means and to a selected class of storytellers. Since the narrative tradition was so highly valued, it could only be entrusted to a restricted circle of professionals, selected not by right of descent but by merit. Merit was acquired and certified only after a long and rigorous training course: to aspire to achieve the rank of fili—the Gaelic word for officially recognized storyteller—no less than twelve years of intensive study were required.9 This is not surprising if one considers the mass of information that a fili was obliged to assimilate: “the conventional number was said to be seventy times fifty, which may be a way of saying as many as there are nights in the year.”10 This passage from Zimmermann allows us to understand how, on any day of the year, it was possible to find time to listen to traditional tales—and any fili worthy of the name had to be ready every day to satisfy the demand for new tales. The filid (plural of fili) were the only recognized channel through which the community could learn the senchas (literally, “antiquity”) in which were contained the norms on which society and the “categorization of the real” depended. They were also the only real element of cohesion in an island which, however small, was politically fragmented. This makes it clear that every fili had to be the depositary of the coimgne, the “complete and coordinated knowledge” of the entire narrative corpus.11 This responsibility was compensated for by the respect and honor reserved by all the people for their filid, superior even to that conceded to sovereigns themselves.
Hence, for the Celts, storytelling was a very serious activity. But it was also the principal form of entertainment at every level of society. Although on the one hand storytelling made it possible to transmit traditional knowledge and the identity of the community itself, on the other it was the favorite way of passing free time, the amusement of a society that, even today, conserves an exclusive predilection for the art of the word,12 so much so that “there is scarcely a hill, a rock, or river pool, a ruined castle or abbey which has not its own story.”13 Before a place can acquire an intrinsic value, it becomes the object of a tale, which ends by being the only value that really counts for the Irish: the genius loci is supplanted by the genius fabulae.14 This is what I mean when I refer to a terrain suited to narrativity. In Ireland, one is dealing with an attitude to reality that traditional Irish storytelling has inherited directly from its Celtic roots, an ability to make a tale of practically every element of existence, thus rendering Irish narrative tradition as rich and varied as we know it to be today. The number of tales originating from the island is far superior to those pertaining to a common transnational patrimony.15 Although to the fili was entrusted the professional and serious issue of oral transmission, a great number of nonprofessional storytellers also transmitted a patrimony of tales of a somewhat lower nature—perhaps noble subjects reworked in a comic or satirical key. These were wandering bards who lived off the generosity of those who, from time to time, shared the storytelling arts with them, and they were organized into a hierarchy based on the theme and modality of the tales belonging to their individual repertories.16
As mentioned previously, thematic richness was a dominant characteristic of the repertory of these storytellers, whether professional or amateur. In this respect, one should consider the following list drawn up by Zimmermann from the Book of Leinster, in which the entire patrimony of tale is classified according to the type of narrative event:
Destruction (murdering, ravaging), Cattle-raids, Courtships (with men as active suitors), Elopements (with women often taking the initiative), Battles, Caves, Sea-voyages (immrama: circumnavigation involving wonders), Death-tales (the manner and circumstances in which heroes died), Communal Feasts, Sieges, Expeditions and Adventures in the Otherworld (echtrai), Slaughters, Irruptions (the bursting forth of lakes or rivers), Loves, Military Expeditions, Invasions (the provenance and distribution of the tribes of Ireland, Conceptions and Births, Visions and Frenzies . . .17
The author’s ellipses suggest that one is perhaps dealing with an incomplete inventory, yet it is enough to give an idea of just how varied Irish storytelling was at its origins and of how it could adapt itself to any audience or circumstances. One should note, moreover, the perfect coexistence, or I would say, interpenetration, of the real and specifically supernatural dimensions that, as we understand now, were only vaguely separated in the Celtic worldview.
Analyzing Book of Leinster’s index more closely, one becomes aware that it may definitively be read as a group of different events that, either completely or partially, can be united within one long tale—rather as an “archetypal pattern”—in which to construct the career, and hence the tale, of a hero.18 One rarely comes across a tale that limits itself to one of the listed themes; variety is an absolutely typical aspect of Irish narration. The index, therefore, should be read as a kind of model, a reserve from which the oral storyteller could easily reconstruct those tales (or parts of tales) deposited in his memory, or from which he could elaborate new, missing elements to insert into the life tale of a traditional character. The model could be used, therefore, either in a conservative or innovative way.
It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that scholars introduced new, more functional criteria of classification for the legacy of Celtic storytelling. These criteria were based on the identification of four fundamental cycles, in which the various narrative themes are unified by their sharing the same space–time context, by the presence of given characters, and by a certain affinity of tone. The four cycles in question, ordered chronologically according to the epoch in which they are believed to be set, are:
This schematization is strictly constructed a posteriori, and the boundaries between one cycle and another should not be considered static. One should take into consideration that “characters and motifs from one cycle may turn up in another.”20 It is also possible to come across a tale that cannot be assigned with certainty to any of the four cycles: in particular, the narrative corpus relative to the first Milesian invaders comes to mind. Rolleston inserts these tales into the Mythological Cycle, committing an error I would think, since he himself says that, with the Milesians, one enters an epoch closer to history and beyond the mythical sphere pertaining to the first cycle.21 These limits, however, must be accepted, above all in the absence of more adequate solutions and in view of the deductions that the scheme makes possible.
Each cycle takes in a certain phase of Irish history, which is therefore set out sub specie fabulosa. On the one hand, the narrative tradition is classified from a more or less historical perspective; on the other, tradition, with all its weight, influences the historical reconstruction of an entire nation. The two levels interact closely, and the farther one goes back in time, the more the boundaries separating them tend to fade, particularly when the aid of a written source of native origin is lacking. It will be difficult, therefore, to draw a dividing line between the truth (or at least the verisimilitude) of historia—understood in its derivation from the Greek root ιδ, or rather the knowledge that a certain event took place because one saw it and plausibly recorded it in a document—and the probability of fabula, a term that should be understood in its derivation from the Latin for, faris, or rather “what exists in that it has been created by words,” in all their freedom of expression, and hence transmitted only by the tale. Both will necessarily be present in the mental horizon of the storyteller and his audience. The oral tradition originating from the Celtic past will therefore be present in the double guise of narrative corpus and of testimony (however open to dispute) of that past itself.
One will have noted moreover how, in the passage from one cycle to another, a chronological progression exists that implies a gradual growth in historical veracity. From a mythical, aboriginal context, filled with divinities and, preceding them, with “huge Phantom-like figures, which loom vaguely through the mists of tradition,”22 one passes to a context in which the characters have become human, although they remain far from the historical concept of humanity. We can define this epoch as legendary, halfway between Myth and History. A further progression is encountered in the passage from the mastodontic heroes of the Ulster Cycle to the more familiar ones of the Fenian Cycle, to such an extent that “the annalists of ancient Ireland treated the story of Finn and the Fianna, in its main outlines, as sober history,”23 although in effect one is dealing with adventures focused on encounters with supernatural beings. But, whereas in the preceding cycle they were identified as divinities, for Finn and his followers, these beings are changed into earthly fairy creatures. We enter into a more strictly historical phase in the fourth cycle, which is also the least unitary, since there are no dominant characters prevailing over the others to distinguish the entire narrative corpus: this reinforces the idea that we have entered into a context in which the heroes of Legend have been replaced by fully fledged men, whether they be kings or saints, but pertaining in any case to an absolutely recognizable historical era.
The fairy tale inserts itself naturally into the complex horizon thus outlined. As a narrative genre, it puts into contact characters and situations pertaining to qualitatively different contexts, builds a bridge between drastically distant epochs, and permits a comparison between more or less distinct conceptions of the world. This is possible because, despite the chronological succession of the epochs, the representatives of the past do not disappear but continue, in altered forms and in hidden places, to coexist with the representatives of the present. The fairy tale forms an ideal middle ground, in which Myth, Legend, and History can flow together and interact. In chapter 4, the exact value that this concept assumes is analyzed, as it plays a concrete function in the construction of the fairy tale. Now, however, it is time to turn our attention to the filter through which the Celtic heritage discussed above actually passed.
The Christian Appropriation of Celtic Tradition
The meeting between Christianity and the Celtic world must have been in no way traumatic, since it allowed for a synthesis of great cultural value, not only for the Irish, but also from the point of view of its consequences throughout Europe. An entire apparatus of pagan beliefs, in particular that connected to the existence of fairies, rather than being totally removed in favor of the new faith was re-elaborated by the latter and made, so to speak, usable within the Christian frame of reference: the origin of the fairies, for example, was explained as deriving from a battle in heaven between rebel angels and those faithful to God. This rereading affirms itself in folklore, but should flank, rather than substitute, the idea inherited from a pagan past, according to which the fairies were, more or less, terrestrial divinities directly linked to the mythical Tuatha Dé Danann. In substance, the old and the new learned quickly to coexist, given that the undoubtedly powerful force of attraction of the message spread in primis by St. Patrick would have been incapable (even if he wanted it to) of eradicating a traditional patrimony which, as in no other part of Europe, had sedimented itself so profoundly within the popular mentality and imagination. In the tolerant attitude of the Church should be read a fair dose of realistic pragmatism; the Church realized that it would have been pointless and damaging to undertake a full frontal assault against an enemy who did not, in any case, present an insurmountable barrier. The work of conversion could proceed with a certain rapidity precisely because one was dealing with the gradual fusion of two opposed but consonant contexts, in a reciprocal way that allowed for peaceful coexistence. The noble and warrior classes presented the greatest resistance to Christianity, in that they held themselves to be the most genuine depository of the ideals expressed by Celtic and pagan tradition. It seems plausible to me that this resistance began to vacillate when Irish monks began their work to recover and transcribe the immense narrative patrimony that was the depository of this tradition, and to secure a means by which to prevent its being swept away by the accidents connected to purely oral transmission. At that moment, the Irish aristocracy surely realized that they had an ally who, questionable motives aside, was pursuing an objective of undoubted relevance.24
One could discuss at length as to whether Christian dogma absorbed into itself pagan belief, thus rendering it inoffensive and indeed functional to its own ends, or that “the rich and widespread pre-Christian heritage indigenous to Ireland for centuries, rather than simply adopting Christian ideals, incorporated them into existing structures.”25 In this light, it would mean that preexisting tradition, made strong by centuries of sedimentation, worked to make Christian dogma its own, adapting it in such a way as not to disturb the existing status quo. It seems to me that the truth is to be found inevitably somewhere between the two, for the simple reason that, if one was really dealing with an absorption in one direction only, sooner or later the absorbed tradition would have finished by being debased entirely in favor of the other. Thus, what effectively exists, in broad outline to the present day, is a peaceful coexistence, or rather a balanced combination: Ireland can definitely be defined as one European country in which Catholicism has its most solid roots, but one cannot ignore the traditional respect shown by the greater part of the population to their pagan heritage, as witness “the survival of a great number of . . . monuments to ancient beliefs.”26 Both elements are inextricably linked in forming Irish identity.
We are most interested in more closely examining the way in which the Church approached the transmission of a narrative tradition that it found still in full flower upon arrival in the island. It has been emphasized that to speak with some authority of a historical epoch, one must wait at least until the beginning of St. Patrick’s preaching. It is believed that from Patrick himself came the first intention to preserve from oblivion a patrimony of tales that kept alive the prehistorical phase of Ireland and its people: “We are told that Saint Patrick listened with pleasure to the tales of aged survivors of the warrior Fianna and that he commended his clerics to take pen and vellum, and write down the old men’s stories lest they be forgotten.”27 Ó Danachair is referring to conversations that the Saint is supposed to have had with representatives of the Fenian legend, in particular Oisin and Keelta (Caoilte), which fascinated him to such a point that he considered it his duty to preserve them perpetually in memory. In the Acallam na Senórach (Conversations of the Ancients), a Gaelic text dating to the thirteenth century, we even read of St. Patrick exclaiming after hearing a tale: “Success and benediction attend thee, Keelta! This is to me a lightening of spirit and mind. And now tell us another tale.”28 The monks who took on the task of transcribing the narrative corpus inherited from Celtic tradition thought it opportune to involve directly the Saint par excellence, as if searching for the most prestigious guarantee for their work—which began, at least according to the testimony that has come down to us, in the seventh century and went on throughout the Middle Ages, as the quoted text shows.29
Oral transmission did not cease; instead, it may have preserved, autonomously, traditional tales that have come down to us bypassing the filter of writing and Christianity, and hence adhering to the authentic Celtic spirit. The fact remains, however, that the greater part of the tradition doubtlessly was transmitted directly or indirectly by the texts transcribed by monks during the Middle Ages. Hence, when scrutinizing these tales, one must necessarily bear in mind the influence that may have been exerted by two originally extraneous factors. This is an influence of no little importance, one that has undoubtedly altered in many points the letter and spirit of tales pertaining to preceding epochs and characters, and not only in the chronological sense. But, how can one pretend that, after so many centuries, it would be possible to preserve integrally a tradition entrusted to oral transmission? Even if the monks had not transcribed the texts, history would have taken its course, and other agents, external or internal, would have contributed to altering a large number of traditional elements. What has come down to us is the outcome of a cultural fusion that has given an absolutely specific form to a preexisting heritage. It is this that we must approach, because it is all that has materially been conserved. Despite the freedom that one can concede to the work of transcription, it still derives from an indigenous source, which, thanks to this transcription, in one way or another will remain fixed for good, liberated from the changeability intrinsic to the oral act. I am also of the opinion that a monk, however devoted to his faith, will feel it his duty as a scribe as he sits before the performance of a talented bard, not to omit anything beautiful and worthy of conservation in what he has heard. A tale can certainly be purified of elements inappropriate to the Christian spirit, it can undoubtedly undergo damage and addition, perhaps due only to the loss of memory, but it will preserve its identity, whatever attracted those who thought it worth transcribing in the first place.
The appropriation of the indigenous tradition was certainly the most effective means that the Church could employ in its preaching, and it is incorrect to undervalue the degree of re-elaboration it could have made to the oral tales. But can we produce documentary evidence to demonstrate the kind and quantity of this re-elaboration? We have only what the oral and written tradition—the pagan heritage and the advent of Christianity—has contributed to producing and transmitting to us, a heritage that must be considered in its entirety, recognizing that it is only the visible stratum superimposed on many others that have preceded it. Besides, it is not possible in the purely Celtic tradition itself to recognize “what would be specifically ‘Celtic,’ what may be part of a wider Indo-European heritage, what came perhaps from more ancient strata . . . and there is little hope of our identifying an exclusively ‘Celtic’ way of narrating.”30
Owing to the impossibility of reconstructing something which that no longer be directly obtained, it is better to concentrate on the narrative tradition as it has come down to us, without forgetting that orality is above all an open system to which all members of the community, including writers, have freedom of access and intervention.
Above all, one clue makes me think that the texts transcribed throughout the course of the Middle Ages reproduce faithfully the substance of the ancient Irish narrative tradition. I am referring to the insertion into these texts of the figure of St. Patrick and other minor saints, a presence explained by the desire to place the work of the copyists in a dogmatically correct context. Tales coming from the pagan past are set against a fictitious metanarrative background, in which appear and speak prominent characters from Christian history, charged with directing the content of the text in the right way. We have already read a passage in which the first evangelizer of Ireland displays all his appreciation for the tales narrated to him by Keelta, a character who nevertheless pertains to a field opposed to his own. In another passage, the Saint admits in front of his interlocutor: “Were it not for us an impairing of the devout life, an occasion of neglecting prayer, and of deserting converse with Good, we, as we talked with thee, would feel the time pass quickly, warrior!”31 On the one hand, St. Patrick repeats the pleasure he feels on hearing the tales; on the other, he separates it from the religious life. It is as if he recognizes the division existing between the two ambits. From this, one can deduce that the copyist in question, by means of the Saint, wished to affirm his autonomy in the narrative field. Basically, the device of inventing the baptism of Keelta, introduced before he begins to narrate, is enough to furnish a key acceptable in Christian terms. It is correct to maintain that behind the work of the Irish monks lies hidden (or clearly revealed) an allegorical reading, a re-elaboration of the past in service to the present, similar to what happened to so many texts from classical antiquity at the hands of medieval clerics. One is dealing with an interpretation that distorts the original message, but not its forms and themes. In substance, it does not seem to me that the medieval copyists felt the urgent need to alter radically a consolidated narrative patrimony.
Thus, a heterogeneous body of tales of the most varied nature was given unity and organization in the medieval manuscripts, making it also possible to create the subdivisions of the cycles discussed previously. Once the transcription of these texts was complete—the Book of Leinster, the Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Armagh, the Book of Invasions—it was possible to achieve an overview of the noblest Celtic narrative tradition. I am not using the term noble casually given that, in these texts, obviously, the entire tradition did not appear, but only those parts deemed worthy of transmittal. Perhaps no less deserving narrative threads were neglected, perhaps others did not have the good fortune of being heard by the copyists: in any case, all those that found a place in these collections became the tradition par excellence, what officially represented centuries and centuries of Irish storytelling. Writing created, in practice, a classic literature, the encompassing expression of a privileged class that had appropriated an oral and popular tradition as its point of reference, on a literary and sociopolitical level, particularly in its centuries-old battle with the English invaders
It is impossible to ascertain how much access the lower classes were given to this classic tradition. That with the passing of time it became a privileged source of inspiration for literature is an undeniable fact: to give just a few examples, one need only think of the medieval flowering of the so-called Breton Cycle, of many passages from Shakespeare’s works, of the false eighteenth-century Ossianic poems of Macpherson, and even of the recent explosion of the fantasy genre. Undoubtedly, a certain influence was exercised also on those who kept up the oral tradition. Thus, one was, in fact, dealing with two contexts persisting in the same space–time. However, the affirmation of writing could not greatly interrupt the canonical mechanisms of orality, which remained alive and vital above all in the countryside, where the narrative patrimony, freed of the conventions imposed by literature, could pursue its natural evolution. Whereas, on the one hand, the narrative tradition became conventional and standardized on models considered classical, on the other, it became the depository of values proper to folklore, a context in which conservation and innovation were in perennial conflict. The fairy tale, besides being the genre charged with the task of connecting the planes of Myth and Legend pertaining to classical and pagan tradition, also became the context in which characters of popular and historical extraction could enter into contact with a reality of mythical origin that folklore, influenced by Christianity, had re-elaborated: the gods, linked to Myth, had made their entrance into History as fairies, a tradition that remained for many centuries the exclusive prerogative of popular orality. This situation existed at least until the nineteenth century, when an intellectual orientation developed that thought it necessary to fix this, too, in writing.
Notes
1. For an overview of those theories that, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have attempted to explain the origin and diffusion of folktales, see the treatment given in Thompson, The Folktale, 367–90. In particular, for the Indological thesis of Benfey, 376–79.
2. Ibid., 389–90: “He is convinced that the origins of the narrative are due to the play of the imagination with the events of human life. But this play of the imagination in man is rather limited, so that there is every tendency to operate with an old stock of imaginative happenings rather than to invent new ones.”
3. Ibid., 390.
4. Cf. Lo Nigro, La fiaba tra scrittura e oralità, 7–8.
5. Cf. the analysis offered in Zimmermann, The Irish Story Teller, 168–70.
6. See Caoimnin Ó Danachair, “Stories and Storytelling in Ireland,” in Folk Literature of the British Isles (London-Folkestone: Scarecrow Press, 1978), 107–8: “In some parts of the world the new Christian teaching was opposed to the ancient learning. Not so in Ireland—here they blended fruitfully” (my italics).
7. Cf. Phillip Le Duc Marcus, Yeats and the Beginning of the Irish Renaissance (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1970), 22–25. A passage from an article by Yeats is particularly significant, The Poetry of R. D. Joyce, “Irish Fireside” (1886), 331: “Love of shadowy Hy Brasil (literally Island of the Blessed, synonym of an otherworldly dimension which suggests unequivocally the Christian idea of Paradise) is very characteristic of the Celtic race, ever desiring the things that lie beyond the actual; dreamy and fanciful things, unreal if you will, as are all the belongings of the spirit from the point of view of the body.”
8. Cf. Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, “The Fairy Belief and Official Religion,” in The Good People, 202: “There was no conflict between belief in the fairies and belief in the saints. Both belonged to the same popular religions and inhabited the same mythical universe.”
9. See Zimmermann, The Irish Story Teller, 34.
10. Ibid.
11. Melita Cataldi, introduction to Antiche storie e fiabe irlandesi, ed. by Melita Cataldi (Torino: Einaudi, 1985), VII.
12. Cf. Zimmermann, The Irish Story Teller, 12: “The Irish are often said to have great facility in verbal expression, to love eloquence, and to spin tales. In actual fact, verbal agility is unevenly distributed among them and there are good and bad storytellers everywhere, but it can hardly be denied that Ireland has enjoyed a highly verbal culture, that conversation and storytelling have been cultivated there as a game or a fine art, and that a good deal of the narrative exchange has been perceived as ‘traditional’” (my italics). If one agrees with all that Zimmermann affirms, one must recognize how a discourse on narrativity cannot do without an attentive examination of a context of major importance from this point of view such as that of the Irish, a people who, more than any other, incarnate the ability to descry in reality a constant narrative potential.
13. Ó Danachair, Stories and Storytelling in Ireland, 111.
14. See the brilliant analysis of the subject in Patrick Sheeran, “Genius Fabulae. The Irish Sense of Place,” Irish University Review XVIII, 2 (1988): 191–206. In particular, 197: “The nominal sense of place means, then, not only an obsessive resort to names, but also that is sufficient to name a place in order to mark one’s attachment to it.” For the Irish, therefore, it is enough to name a place, give it, that is, a merely verbal consistency, to set up an emotional relationship with it. In this way, a world emerges that is made up of words rather than the concrete elements of tangible reality.
15. See Ó Danachair, Stories and Storytelling in Ireland, 111: “Popular and widespread as these international tales were in Ireland, they were still outnumbered and outclassed by the great body of stories native to Ireland.”
16. See Zimmermann, The Irish Story Teller, 34–35, to gain a sufficiently complete picture of the “different grades among the baird.”
17. Ibid., 35.
18. Ibid.
19. See ibid., 36.
20. Ibid., 37.
21. Cf. Thomas W. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (New York: Crowell, 1911), 96.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., 252.
24. In James Stephens’ Irish Fairy Tales, specifically in the first and last tales, it is possible to assist at the progressive drawing together of the exponents of Christianity and the proud Celtic-pagan aristocracy, a drawing together that terminates in reciprocal acceptance due to a shared love for the narrative tradition.
25. Nora Naughton, “God and the Good People: Folk Belief in a Traditional Community,” Béaloideas 71 (2003), 23 (my italics).
26. Ibid., 20.
27. Ó Danachair, Stories and Storytelling in Ireland, 108 (my italics).
28. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race, 283.
29. See Zimmermann, The Irish Story Teller, 32–33.
30. Ibid., 42.
31. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race, 283.