CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
                               * * * * * *

                           VOYAGES OF THE HEROES

  "There are three times fifty distant islands in the ocean to the west of
  us - each one of them twice or three times the size of Ireland" - say
  the bards. In our legends, the hero must undertake a journey through
  these mystical lands, usually at the instigation of a beautiful female
  of the Sidhe people, from the land beneath the waves. She appears to him
  bearing a silver bough from an apple tree and can only be seen by him.
  The hero is then transported beyond the realm of human senses aboard a
  magical crystal boat, or is seen to be taken down below the surface of a
  lake, where he finds himself in a strange unfamiliar landscape. Here his
  great adventure begins. He journeys westward through the ocean and
  visits wondrous islands, some fraught with dangerous demonic beasts that
  he must overcome, others are of indescribable harmonious beauty, of
  peace and bounty.

  We find that when he reaches the end of his travels he meets the Great
  Ones of Celtic mythology - the Gods. He is taken to meet Cessair, the
  great goddess from before the Flood, who records the histories of Her
  people. She relates to him all that has ever been up until his present
  time and, in some cases, gives prophecy of the future. He is also shown
  to a well surrounded by a copse of hazel, the boughs dropping scarlet
  nuts into the overflowing well which forms the five streams in which
  salmon are feeding on the fallen nuts. It is explained to him that these
  streams are of the five senses which flow into the world of mankind, and
  that to have all wisdom, he must drink of these waters and taste the
  flesh of the Salmon of Knowledge.

  Invariably, our hero finds himself transported back to his own world
  after performing some task in aid of the denizons of the Otherworld and
  a magical present is bestowed on him for his help. There are numerous
  examples, such as a cup that is always full of choice wine; an
  invincible sword; a cauldron which re-animates the dead and so on. He
  also finds in his many weeks of voyaging in the Otherworld islands that
  he has left his own world for only a few minutes. Or sometimes the
  reverse is the case when, after a short time away, centuries have passed
  in his own land.

  However, this state of affairs is not the case in all of the heroes'
  journeys. In the voyages of one hero, he sought these Otherworld islands
  at his own instigation and not at the invitation of the female with the
  silver bough. He, with his company of men, found after many hardships
  and loss of numbers the magical Isle of Women, and tarried there in
  feasting and lovemaking on this isle of delights and pleasures. However,
  after three years he became sad and homesick for his land and the people
  of Eire, and despite warnings and protestations from the women of that
  isle, he sailed away eastward towards home. After some time he reached
  the West coast of Ireland, where upon beaching one of the company jumped
  ashore. He started to age rapidly, died and became dust and blew away on
  the wind. Our hero withdrew the boat from the shore and sailed up the
  coast until he spied people on the beach. He hailed them, asking for
  news of his kin and friends, mentioning them by name. He was told that
  they had heard of them in legends told by the old man of the place at
  the winter's tale telling. Whereupon he understood that hundreds of
  years had elapsed in Ireland during the five years of his voyaging. He
  turned his boat west again and sailed away with the setting sun.

  These legends, though exaggerated and fanciful in language to be
  entertaining, had a far more serious purpose. To the unenlightened,
  they were the stories of the gods of the people in tune with the culture
  and sagas and religion of the tribe. To the initiated, the legends were
  full of symbolism and instruction on the nature of the Otherworld and
  its approach by the warrior-shamanistic priesthood. On a third level in
  the spiritual mode, they contained the religious ideology.

  Indeed, it was accurate for the bards to say as an introduction to the
  rendition of a legend: "I have a tale to tell. These words are not for
  all of you, it is for those who have ears to listen and know the
  language of the trees." What exactly do these islands mean? What
  connection do they have with the Celtic tree alphabet? How do the
  legends carry symbolism in story form? These are the obvious questions
  that arise from the previous statements I have made. I shall try to
  explain.

  This land, at the farthest west of the European continent, was the final
  outpost for the early Bronze Age westward migrations, halted by the wild
  expanse of the North Atlantic ocean. Indeed, the first recorded
  invaders,  Partholon, arrived in Ireland to find the aboriginal people,
  the Fir Domnu,  worshipping the Earth Mother Domnu and Her pantheon of
  lesser deities. These people had legends of a fabulous land out in the
  ocean which  represented the abode of their gods. The islands that lay
  to the west were stepping stones to this magical land that was the
  Earthly paradise and the abode of their dead. They called this land
  Hy-Bresail.

  In the legends of these people, this land was at one time above the
  waves, but was sunk by a great flood during the battle between the
  forces of order and the forces of the great Dragon of Chaos. As is
  common, the invading people of Partholon brought their gods of the
  realms of the sun with them - the Tuatha De Danann of the goddess Danu.
  In the course of time, during the cultural mix, the islands which
  represented the way to the Earthly Paradise became the island pathways
  to the realms of the sun. The Tuatha became the lords of light and
  order, relegating the Fomoire, or Fir Domnu, to the Land Under Wave,
  where they came to represent the forces of chaos and darkness.

  Each one of the islands represents a step and an achievement in each
  life or a lesson to be learned in the journeys between life, death and
  rebirth. Like stepping stones, all have to be crossed on the spiritual
  journey to the Summerlands. As each month in the year has a tree, so
  each island has a tree, also a colour, number, symbol, goddess, god,
  function and totem animal as a guide. All of these correspondences are
  carried in the legends in coded form.

  As we always quote, the Celts see things on three levels. The islands
  also have their physical counterparts and alot of the Western Isles
  still carry their original function within their Celtic names and study
  of this would be rewarding.

  In summary, the islands are on three levels or dimensions, they stretch
  through the material planes to the non-material world of pure spirit -
  the Summerlands, Tir nan Og and on another level to elemental kingdoms
  of the Earthly Paradise; "Tir fo Thuinn" - Land Under Wave. I hope that
  by now I am beginning to portray our Celtic ancestors' view of life and
  death. He saw duality of the worlds bonded by the overlying world of
  Spirit, that is the conscious, the unconscious, Spirit. Body, mind and
  Spirit. He also saw his land as a living entity and a reflection of the
  Cosmos, a paradise of flesh, the Otherworld as a paradise of the mind
  and the Summerlands as all three in perfection.

  It will be noted by the female readers that I have written this article
  from a masculine point of view. This does not in any way imply that our
  religion is patriarchal. In my two accounts of the legends, only the
  hero who travels the Otherworlds and returns to tell the tale is the
  hero who is worthy to woo the Lady and is taken by consent into Her
  femininity. He enters the waters of the womb and is consumed by the
  Sheela-na-gig. In our system, the human female stands in equality with
  the male, in the world of the Sidhe she is superior.

  I have only scratched the surface of what is a study that could run into
  several books. It is also fair to point out that most of the modern
  publications on the subject of Celtic legends are not very helpful in
  regard to identifying the correspondences that I have mentioned. To
  understand, we are dealing with an oral tradition in which the exactness
  of word accuracy was a matter of professional pride to the bardic
  priests of those times. Our first problem starts when the quills of the
  Christian monks transcribe the Gaelic into Latin, this being the written
  language of the time. Now, we must remember that however much we owe to
  these first scribes, they were not of the old ways and our legends in
  some cases suffered the first of the many losses of original content.
  This state of affairs continued right up to medieval times, when many of
  the legends degenerated to the state of becoming folklore. During the
  following centuries, owing to Churchianity and its politics on heresy,
  our much altered legends lay in dormancy until renewal of interest
  occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Here is where the
  worst decimation occurs.

  These well meaning people updated the language and style of the legends
  to a more palatable form to suit the tastes of modern times, and in
  complete ignorance of the original purpose, omitted the offensive bits
  in deference to the morality of their time. Unfortunately, it is to
  these sources of materials that most of the modern writers turn. If one
  takes a look at the ancient manuscripts such as "The Book of the Dun
  Cow" or "The Book of Leinster", both from the Gaelic tradition, and
  compare them with modern renditions, the point I make will become
  obvious. In a modern literary sense, these manuscripts would not be good
  reading, as they contain what seems to be ludicrously belaboured
  passages describing the personages involved in the sagas, at what would
  be considered the expense of the story line. It is within these
  omissions that the coded correspondences are lost. These personages were
  often Otherworld visitors and the belaboured descriptions instructed the
  shaman in the required symbolism for his ritual otherworld travel.

  Luck is still with the Celtic seeker in his link with the past, despite
  the ravages of time. Within Celtic Gaeldom, there still exist the
  original manuscripts - some have not even been as yet translated. This,
  combined with the survival of the Bardic tradition until relatively
  recent times means that the original versions have not all been lost.
  This is also true for the Brythonic Welsh people. If people of mainland
  Albion care to examine such manuscripts as those that make up the
  "Mabinogi" and are prepared to look beyond the medieval Arthurian
  romances with new vision, I am sure they will find the same underlying
  truths. After all is said, Celticism is a culture and not, as many
  people would have it, a name for an individual race of people.






              [Copyright - S. McSkimming DALRIADA MAGAZINE 1987]
.