THE SACRAL KINGSHIP

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CENTRAL THEME OF THE VIII th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS

FOR THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

(ROME, APRIL 195 5)

Published with the help of the Giunta Centra!e per g!i Studi Storici, Rome

LEIDEN E. ]. BRILL

1959

\

LA REGALITA SACRA

CONTRIBUTI AL TEMA

DELL' VIII CONGRESSO INTERNAZIONALE

DI STORIA DELLE RELIGION!

(ROMA, APRILE 195 5)

Pubblicati col concorso

della Giunta Centrale per gli Studi Storici, Roma

LEIDEN E. J. BRILL

1959

SOME ASPECTS OF KINGSHIP IN PAGAN IRELAND

BY

MAART JE DRAAK Amsterdam

The most important problem in Irish mythological studies is the delimitation of acceptable texts. Again and again it is brought home to one that it is not the scarcity of texts that makes things difficult but their peculiar character. At no time they give straightforward evid-ence, always their data come by circuitous ways.

The pagan Irish did not write down their lore - neither did the (pagan) Celts in general as far as is known. Therefore there are no direct (pagan) religious texts, no prayers, no memoranda on ritual, no expositions of doctrine. In Ireland one has to sift secondary infor-mation from epic tales, historical tradition, etc. etc., recorded in Chris-tian times.

This state of things involves all sorts of awkward uncertainties. For instance the Christian 'recorders'1) may have tampered with the stories, they may deliberately have de-paganized them. Did they? In several of his mythological studies A. G. van Hamel has expressed the opinion that the Irish texts have not been expurgated as regards this matter, that Irish paganism only reveals itself to have been of a much more primitive kind than former investigators have been wont to ex-pect. 2)

Now it seems to me that this view of Van Hamel's is a plausible one. 1) They are no authors, as they wrote down traditional material; they are no

cop)1ists as they - originally - had no written texts to work from. 2) E.g. in Van HAMEL'S Rhys-lecture Aspects of Celtic Mythology (1934) on p. 6:

" ... gods are rare in our sources of Irish paganism, and this must not be imputed to the imperfect state of our authorities, seeing the wealth of light they shed on other sides of early Celtic religion" and in The Conception of Fate in Early Teutonic and Celtic Religion (Saga-Book - of the Viking Society - r 936): "From our sour-ces not one single instance of a mediating god can be adduced. Nor can it be suggested that they were expunged by christian scribes, who allowed so many illustrations of early Irish paganism to stand" (off-print p. 8).

M. DRAAK

It fits in. When the Irish literati came into touch with Christianity and classical literature, they did not begin to feel ashamed of their old traditional tales - otherwise not such a great number of those would have come down to us. Far from having an inferiority complex about the stories of their pagan past they seem to have appreciated them with a certain complacency, and the Irish Church must have shared this standpoint for centuries.

Therefore I do not think it necessary to assume that the 'records' have been de-paganized. But does this mean that they yield satisfactory information on the subjects we of the 20th century want to know about? Of course it does not. Not all the stories did survive. The most difficult points for us to grasp are those that any contemporary took for granted. Traditional matter is very tenacious but it selects, distorts and twists. And last but not least: can we always hope to decide where 'tradition' left off and 'learning' and 'art' began?

Entangled in the problems of material the problem of method presents itself. If the Irish texts are silent on a given subject, is one then entitled to bring forward evidence from the Continental Celts? H ere the sources are of a totally different kind - they are mostly archaeo-logical, supplemented by journalistic observations of classical writers. For this reason I believe one has no right to use Continental sources. The study of Irish religious belief and behaviour in pagan times is (at present) a field for Irish philologists, to be reconnoitred by philologic-al method. If in many instances the finding will be disappointing or inconclusive, one has to reconcile oneself to that.

In studying aspects of kingship in pagan Ireland it is unavailing to ask whether in Ireland the sacral king was thought to be a god in-carnate or the representative on earth of a god, as the Irish - to in-fer from their texts - seem to have lived without 'gods'. 3) Then can

3) On the other hand they kn_ew a great many supernatural beings. There is, how-ever, an unmistakable difference between a supernatural being and a god. A god can be approached by prayer and by sacrifice . A supernatural being holds aloof -only occasionally and as by accident he (or she) takes an interest in human affairs; he demands no worship. If one agrees to this distinction the Irish had no gods. (This view is opposed to that of T .F.O'RAHILLY in his Early Irish History1 and Mythology, Dublin 1946). .

Is it normal or perhaps even characteristic of migrating peoples to lose religious concepts en route? After all one would imagine that the Irish Celts - as Indo-Europeans - ought to have had gods!

SOME ASPECTS OF KI NGSHIP I N PAGAN IRELAN D 65 3

their kings have been sacral? And now here is another point, connected with the main problem but more or less chosen at random. There is no evidence in Irish texts for dowager-queens to have been held in special reverence. Of course Queen Medb immediately comes to mind as a person of overwhelming character and presence, but she was a reigning queen wedded to a reigning king, and she played her role of wild splendour while her husband lived.

We have to go down to rock-bottom and ask: What is the criterion which makes it justifiable to say that the pagan Irish had sacral kings? The criterion is the fact that numerous texts insist on the King bring-ing about or being responsible for the fertility of the soil, the fair-ness of weather, the absence of disaster . If the king is a real King, there are during his reign "acorns and nuts up to the knees in every autumn, wealth(?) on (the rivers) Bush( ?) and Boyne in the middle of the sum-mer-month of every year, abundance of peace so that no one slays the other in Ireland in his reign . And as sweet as 'lute' -strings is the voice of the other to everyone in Ireland during his reign. The wind does not toss the tail of a cow from the middle of spring to the middle of autumn. His reign is not thundery nor stormy."4) I have chosen this fragment because of the cow's tail, but I could quote a number of other texts. They agree in the main points. During Conchobur's kingship "there was peace and quiet and 'gentle meeting'. There was mast and game (?) and sea-produce" (beginning of Tochmarc Emire5) - the Wooing of Erner) . The gnomic compilations which consist of 'instruc-tions to princes', e.g. Tecosca Cormaic (Instructions of Cormac) and Audacht Moraind (Treatise of Morand), express the same thing.

If there is no fertility, no abundance, no fair weather, the king is no true King - or he has done some wrong. And in some stories this is no stereotype padding but a part of the frame-work (e. g. Gath Maige Tured - the (second) Battle of Moytura - and Echtra Airt meic Cuind - the Ad ventures of Art, son of Conn).

4) From the Destruction of Dci Derga' s H ostel, 17. I no rmalized the verbal fo rms to praesentia. (The text has been edi ted by E leanor KNOTT, Dublin l 936; an edition w ith translation by Whitley Stokes can be compared in Rev11e Celtiq11e XXII, l9oz) .

5) Editions and translations of all the Irish texts mentioned can be traced through the BibliograplDJ of Irish Pbilolog)' (by R.I. Br::s-r; Vol. I "down to the end of l 9 rz" appeared in Dublin 191 3, Vol. II " publications 1913-1941" in Dublin l94z) s.v.

M. DRAAK

With this as a foundation or as a core, we can try and group a cycle of motifs: I. 'Birth'-rites

The King has to be born anew, and to be accepted by a phallic stone. As a rule the Irish seem to have known who the King was, or to

have been willing to wait for the above-mentioned signs. There are, however, a few fairly striking accounts of procedure when they seem not to have known or for other reasons may have wanted to test the king. Since all three of the reports are connected with the person and entourage of king Cooaire the Great (Conaire Mor), it has been suggest-ed - by Van Hamel - that we here find customs of a Pre-Celtic people, but in the present state of our knowledge this is an open question.

On the 'election' of Conaire as king there are two narratives "so divergent" that investigators have found it "impossible to attempt to unite them."6) One is that he was chosen by the rite of the tarbfess (bull-feast, or bull-sleep), where "they killed a bull, and one man ate his fill from it and he drank its broth (and he lay down) and or firi11di (a sort of incantation?) was sung over him while he lay, and the man he would see in his sleep would be king, and he would die if he told a falsehood."7) The second is that he was chosen by ordeal(s) in Tara, after another candidate had failed. (So 'they' had not tried tarbfess!)

I want to enlarge on this ordeal-version but first I r would like to make the following point. In my opinion the two accounts might be mutually exclusiva. in the data about Conaire, yet I see nothing in-compatible in the two procedures to have followed one another. If we see the tarbfess as a method to find the king, there is nothing illogical in the idea that when found he still had to be tested.

The tests have come down to us in a very interesting and rather ar-chaic text: De Shi! Chonairi M6ir8) (Of the race of C.M.). I quote from the editor's translation. "There was a king's chariot at Tara. To the chariot were yoked two steeds of the same colour, which had never before been harnessed. It would tilt up before any man who was not

6) EriuVI (1912) p . 13 0. 7) From Togai/ Br11idne Dd Derga (Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, sec note 4)

l I. 8) Edited and translated by Lucius GwYNN in Britt VI (1912) pp. 130-143. See

note 6.

SOME ASPECTS OF KINGSHIP I N PAGAN IRELAND 65 5

destined to receive the kingship of Tara, so that he could not control( ?) it, and the horses would spring at him. And there was a king 's mantle in the chariot; whoso might not receive Tara's sovereignty the mantle was ever too big for him. And there were two flag-stones in Tara : 'Blocc' and 'Bluigne' ; when they accepted a man, they would open before him until the chariot went through. And Fil was there, the ' stone penis' at the head of the chariot-course(?); when a man should have the kingship of Tara, it screeched against his chariot-axle, so that all might hear. But the two stones Blocc and Bluigne would not open before one who should not hold the sovereignty of T ara, and their usual position was such, that one's hand could only pass sideways between them; also he who was to hold Tara 's kingship, the Fil would not screech against his axle."

Perhaps it would be necessary to 'explain' this text to historians and philologists, 9) to students of the History of Religions the character of (re-) birth-ritual of the g reater part of it must be self-evident.

How it was (or could have been) enacted is a different matter alto-gether. I think there are some indications that the 'parts' of Blocc, Bluigne and Fil were 'played' by 'magicians'. At least there is a story in which three magicians : Mael, Bloc and Bluiccnitt told Conn, the King, something about the stone Fil. And another scrap of informat-ion mentions that "the three stones" (Mael and Bloc and Bluicne) were "over them" (i.e. over the bodies(?) of the magicians Mael, Bloc and Bluicne) in Tara. Whatever this means, there appears to have been known of some connection between magicians and those stones; on the other hand the information of these younger texts can be learned in-vention : the rationalization of somebody who knew just as little about it as we do.

The part of the horses in (or before) the birth-ritual is much more difficult to estimate, unless they belong to the same 'climate' as the horses against which Macha had to run a race,10) and the mare of our next motif (II a) .

9) This has been done by R .A.S. MACALISTER in Tara, a Pagan Sanctuary of A n-cient Ireland, Londo n I 9 3 I, pp. r 3 r - r 3 4, and by A. G . van H A MEL in )'vfJ1fhe en His-torie in bet oude l erla11d, Amsterdam 1942 (Communications Royal Academy), pp. I O- I I.

10) See o n this story R. Tl-IURNEYSEN, Die irische Heiden- 1111d Kii11igsage bis z111n qten]ahrh., H alle 1921, pp . 360-363.

M. DRAAK

II. 'Marriage'-rites The King has to marry with the land (Ireland).

a. The (fertility of the ) land in animal-form. By a most happy chance there has come down to us the fossil of an

inauguration-ritual so archaic as to be quite astonishing. In his Libel/us In Topographia Hibernie Giraldus Cambrensis writes: "Est igitur in boreali et ulteriori Vltonie parte, scilicet apud Kenelcunil, gens que-dam, que barbaro nimis et abhominabili ritu sic sibi regem creare solet. Collecto in unum uniuerso terre illius populo, in medium producitur, iumentum candidum. Ad quod sullimandus ille non in principem sed in beluam, non in regem sed exlegem, coram omnibus bestialiter acce-dens, se quoque bestiam profitetur. Et statim iumento interfecto, et frustatim in aqua decocto, in eadem aqua balneum ei paratur. Cui insidens, de carnibus illis sibi allatis, circumstante populo suo et con-uescente, comedit ipse. De iure quoque quo lauatur, non uase aliquo, non manu, sed ore tantum circumquaque haurit et bibit. Quibus ita rite, non recte completis, regnum illius et dominium est confirma-tum. "11)

Gerald the Welshman 'explored' Ireland in 1183 and 1185-86 and "his first account of Ireland and its early history" was "read at Oxford in or about 1188." His work always has had a bad press in Ireland, and small wonder. His tone is so self-righteous and superior (it be-comes more so in the later recensions), he so exclusively notes down singular items of 'sensational' interest (regardless of their context!), he so often seems to have hit the nail on the head reporting them, that Irish criticism is easily understood. Even in 1932 James Hogan, writ-ing on The Irish L aJ1J of Kingship, observes : "An earlier account of regal inauguration is the well-known description of the semi-bestial cer-emonies which, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, took place in Tir Conaill; but this, I think, may in the main be dismissed as fictitious."12)

Now 'fiction' (i.e. invented statement or narrative) is exactly the one thing that Gerald does not produce here. Those circumstantial details of his he could not have 'invented' in the 12th century, since to us - in the 20th century - they make sense. To us they are the

11) I quote from the text of the first recension, ed. by],]. O'MEARA, Proc. of the Royal lr.Acad., Vol. LII, Section C, Dublin 1949, p. 168.

12) Proc. of the R oyal Ir . Acatl., Vol. XL, Section C, Dublin 1932, p. 196. What in the main means in the above sentence I do not know.

SOME ASPECTS OF KINGSHIP IN PAGAN IRELAND 657

Western counterpart of the Indian Afvamedha13), all the more authentic because the Irish and the Indian ceremonies are not identical. They are 'the same because they are a little different'. 14) In India fertility of land and people is helped along by the Queen and a dead stallion, in Ireland by the King and a living mare, but the principle of the sym-pathetic magic is the same. And likewise the Irish details of the bath and the broth and the drinking of it as a beast would, anthropologically ring true.

Remains the question whether Giraldus himself has seen or could have seen this rite. I believe that our journalist mostly relied on the talk of 'local authorities', and that in this case he was presented with a valuable piece of antiquarian lore. This is why I spoke of a fossil.

b. The (fertility? power? sovereignty? of the) land as a woman. There are two firm points of support for this 'pattern' in Irish

thought. First we have an old technical term for an essential part of the inauguration ceremonies of (Irish) Kings, viz. banais rfgi, which origin-ally must have meant 'weddingfeast (espousal) of kingship'. Secondly there runs through Irish literature a continuous thread of the motif that Ireland as a beautiful woman is waiting for a King to wed her -we can follow it from about the year Iooo A.D. to the 19th century. The motif itself changes with the times. At the beginning Ireland (or the sovereignty of Ireland) is an imperious beauty, waiting for the right King; later on she becomes a forlorn and pathetic maiden, pining for any king and appearing to poets as a figure in a dream.15)

An interlacing variant of the motif pictures the waiting Ireland as ugly and old, only to become young and beautiful again after her mating with the King. H ere in my opinion we find under the 'literary' product(s) an older religious stratum. If the King is responsible for the fertility of the soul - seep. 6 5 3 above - the waning powers of the old King leave the land arid and unproductive. The ne)}) King restores vegetation and fairness of season. grandson Cormac mac Airt (floruit third century?) offer reduced ver-

13) See: E i11 altirischer Kriil//111gsrit11s 1111d das i11dogerma11ischc Rossojifcr by F. R. Sc1rn60ER, Zs./ Celt. Philologie XV I (1927), pp . 3 ro-r 2.

H) This is an idiomat ic express ion in my fa mily, and it d eserves - in m y o pinion - tO be m ore w idely known.

15) Sec The Lad.J and the King, a theme of Iris h Literature by R. A. BREATNAC11, StudieJ 195 3, pp. 321-33 6. NuMEN, Suppl. IV 4z

M . DRAA K

At least as early as the eleventh century we beg in to have texts1il) in which the Sovereignty under a hideous and deterrent aspect tests the candidates for future Kingship. The mating with the horrible woman is then a trial of courage and 'fate' .

One of the traditions ( ?) centers on Lugaid Laigde (father of Luga id mac Con? floruit third century?), the other on Niall of the N ine H ost-ages (floruit end of fourth century?) . The frame-work of both narrat-ives is the same. Several sons of a king go on a hunt; they encounter (in a house or near a well) a loathly hag - described with all the extravagan-za Irish texts are capable of. She wants one of them to sleep in her bed (under threats to kill them all), or she wants to be 'kissed' (otherwise they will not get water). Only the future King dares to approach her. Afterwards he sees her change to a glorious beauty. She tells him: "1 am Sovereignty", and gives him advice how to outwit his brothers .

On each hero (Lugaid and Niall) we have a prose-text and a poetical one; the poem on Niall's adventure is the one we can date with some certainty, as the author it is attributed to died in 1024.17) It is more difficult to date the material, but it can be safely brought forward that the changing from ugliness to beauty of the Sovereignty must already have been an old and partly-understood conception in 1000 A.D. The Sovereignty namely explains to Niall that her changing form is in har-mony with (the course of events during his?) Kingship: rough in the beginning, smooth in the middle and peaceful at the end - an ad hoc statement if ever there was one!

I think we may assume that the literary motif goes back to a half-forgotten ritual. Then the words of the Sovereignty to Lugaid: "with me sleep the High-Kings" and "the son you will have - it is he I (shall) sleep with" stand out in full relief.

c. The motif is reduced (??) to an acceptance of the King by (the Sovereignty of) Ireland and her consort.

It is not clear - to me at least - whether two adventures of Conn of the Hundred Battles (floruit end of the second century?) and his

16) The language is Middle Irish but the material may be much (?) older. 17) Britt IV (1910), p. 9r. The texts on Niall can be traced s.v . Echtra 111am Ed1ach

(lv!11g111edrJin) (Ad ven tures of the sons of Eochu Mugmedon); rhe texts o n L uga id in Cdir Am11c11111 (Fitness of Names), nr. 70 and Dinrlshmchas (The Metrical Dincl-cnchas, vol. IV, pp. l 36- 142), part of Cam kldi!. All the texts have translat ions.

SO:\rE ASPECTS OP KINGSHIP IN PAGAN IREL:\N D 659

sions of the b .-motif, or whether they are 'propaganda'- stories ad-diti onal to the b.-motif, though I am inclined to think that the sec-ond in terpretation is right on the following grounds.

The stories in my opinion are not directly related to any inaugur-ation-ritual because both Kings have been Kings for some time before these adventures befall them. Supernatural beings allow them to reach their Other-world habitati on. In (the introduction to) Baile itJ Scdil (The Phantom's Frenzy) the lady of the house - she is explicitly stated to be Flaith ( ius) Brenn (the Sovereignty of Ireland) - gives Conn food and drink. When handing out the drink she asks the questi on: "To whom shall be given this cup with the red drink ( dergfhlaith) ?" in which there is a play on the words (f)laith = drink and Jlaith = sovereignty. 18) After the master of the house (the Scdl, the Phantom) has recited the Baile in Scdil proper, a 'prophecy' (after the events !) on the Kings of Ireland, Conn returns with the prophecy ancl the drinking-vessel as a token. Cormac in the Echtra Chormaic i Tir Taim-giri (Adventures of Cormac in the Land of Promise) finds the same sort of hospitality - he has gone in quest of his lost wife and children, the name of the lady of the house is not given, there is no special drink and no prophecy - and he comes away with valuable gifts, one of them a precious cup that will enable him to distinguish between liars and speakers of the truth (it breaks when a lie is told and is made whole again when something true is said - on this property of the cup part of the story turns )19).

Lingui stic and historical criteria seem to make it impossible to date Baile itJ Scdil before the eleventh century, Echtra Chormaic is probably a century younger still (see note 1 G), and I think they have to be studied in relation to each other. To me their point lies in the gifts brought back from the Other-world (which for the Irish definitely is Ge-ic, not Chthon-ic),20) marks of special favour on the part of the supernatural beings and as such used in learned, historical, propagandistic comment on the reigns of Conn and Cormac. 21 ) However, I include these tales

18) The Jenatedf (written/ /;) is silent in Irish. 19) A second version of Cormac's adventure has been edited (with a translation)

by Vcrnam HuLL in PMLA , vol. LX IV (1949), pp. 871-883. 20) Sec for this distinction the art. by H. J. RosE : Chtho11ia11 Cattle, N nmen, vol. I

(1954), p. 216. 21 ) I find it h ighly significant and illustrative of the tenacity of imagery in Ire-

land that this can rake such a form .

660 M. DRAAK

in c., because T. F. O'Rahilly appears to have seen in the presenting of the drink by the Flaith Brenn (in Baile in Scdit) a genuine relic from the ceremonial of the banais rfgi: "It is Jikel y that in pagan times the acceptance by the bridegroom of a draught of liquor handed to him by the bride signified mutual consent to the marriage."22)

III. The Observances of the King By observing them the King maintains the fertility of (his part of)

Ireland. a. He has to keep his 'honour' ('face'). b. He has to keep his body unimpaired.

Both a. and b. follow logically from the dogma that the King is in his person responsible for the fertility of the soil. Therefore his body ought to be without blemish. Now it he has been ungenerous, or has given a wrong decision, he calls forth the danger of being satirized by a poet, and such a satire ( der is the Irish technical term) by its verbal magic is able to dishonour the King and bring about bodily damages -often ulcers or blisters on the face. He then has to go. Either he ab-dicates, or he is dethroned. Sometimes he seeks death, but for this see IVc.

It is not always possible to keep the motifs a. and b. strictly apart, and there are so many examples that I must choose a few standard ones.

a. In Cath Maige Mucrima (The Battle of Mag Mucrime - 63-66) it is told how king Lugaid mac Con gave a wrong verdict, and how his young foster-son Cormac gave the true judgment - for all

22) In an article 011 the Origin of the Names S rainn and Sr in, in Sri11, vol. XIV ( 1943) pp. 7-28; the passage quoted on p. 15.

Because of my statement in note 3, I am opposed to O'Rahilly's lavish use of the terms Earth-goddess, Sun-god, etc., especially when he writes on p. 27 of the Eriu-article: "In Celtic belief the Sun-goddess was also the goddess of earth and of its springs and rivers; or, to put the matter in different words, the Earth-goddess shared the attributes of the Sun-god, whose consort she was. These statements may appear startling to those mythologists who cling to the old idea of strictly 'depart-mental ' deities; but the fact is incontrovertible, though naturally the matter cannot be argued om here." Why has not O'Rahilly seen that he perpetuated the wrong approach of the 'departmental' mythologists? For why speak of a Sun-goddess and an Earth-goddess if they are the same? Why differentiate them in the terminology? Why not be content with "puissances plus anciennes que lcs Dieux" (SJOESTEDT, Dimx et I-!eros des Celtes, Paris 1940, p. 36; there is an E nglish translation, London 1949)?

SOME ASPECTS OF KINGSHIP I N PAGAN IREL AND 66 I

the people to hear. "Thereupon one part of the house fell on the other, namely the part in which the false judgment was given . . . For a year after that [Lugaid] was in kingship in Tara, and not came grass through earth, nor leaf through trees, nor grain into corn. Then the men of Ireland expelled him from his kingship, for he had been an un-lawful rul er. "

The classical example of b. is N uada with the Silver Hand who lost his Kingship by losing his hand in battle. He then got a hand of silver but this was not enough. When a most clever physician by a cure mixed of magic and something that sounds oddly like a modern tech-nique of skin transplantation gave him back his hand, he was rein-stated (Cath Maige Tured) .

This unhoped for solution may set us on the track of one of the many psychological loop-holes human affairs cannot do without. It would seem that the Irish, if they wanted to get rid of an unpopular king, found his sustaining of a bodily defect of commanding import-ance, but that in the case of a respected one they were willing to await developments (and so perhaps to let 'Fate' decide by weather and harvest). And their sages must have known from long practice how impossible it was to save or shield a person - even when they want-ed to - if he knew about his fated condition. 23) At least there is a remarkable story on Fergus mac Leti which in my opinion reveals this conflicting thought. (A recent investigation24) has shown the text to be of considerable antiquity.)

King Fergus mac Leti one day saw a horrible water-monster (and now I quote the editor's translation:) "At the sight of it his mouth was wrenched back as far as his occiput, and he came out on land in ter-ror. H e said to his charioteer: 'How do I appear to thee?' 'Ill is thy aspect', said the charioteer, 'but it will be nothing more (?); sleep will take it from thee.' Thereupon the charioteer laid him down (in his chariot25) and he fell asleep.

While he slept the charioteer went in the meantime to the wise men of Ulster who were [assembled] in Emain Macha and told them of the king's adventures and his present condition. He inquired of them

23) We may compare the Ausrralian aboriginal who dies when he has been pur under ineantario ns - in our time and in spite of all modern med icine.

24) The Saga of F ergw mac L i li by D. A. BINC IIY, E'rin XVI (19p), pp. 3 3-48. 25) In his chariot forgotten in translation.

662 M . DRAAK

what king they would take in his stead, since it 1vould not be proper to /Jave a blemished king in Bmain. 26) The decision of the wise men of Ulster was that the king should come to his house, and that beforehand a clear-ance should be made of all the base folk so that there should be neither fool nor half-wit therein lest these should cast his blemish in the king's face; and further that he should always have his head washed while lying on his back so that he might not see his shadow in the water. For seven years he was diligently guarded [in this manner]." When the secret had come out the King went to the loch and fought the monster. He killed it, but died "and for a whole month the loch remained red from [l:he battle between] them."

c. He has to keep hisgeissi (i.e. magical injunctions). Geissi were demands and/or prohibitions, the violation of which

resulted in disaster. I need not say much about them here as they were not restrictions imposed on Kings only. All important people had them and certainly everybody in Ancient Ireland was involved.27)

H owever, the Kings had special geissi over and above their personal ones. A tract on those has been published by Myles Dillon in 195 1 : The Taboos of the Kings of Ireland, 28) and it is to one aspect of them I want to draw attention. Dillon has come to the conclusion that "the tract doubtless contains genuine old tradition." For all that, when we find that the king of Tara is not allowed "to travel over Mag Cuillinn after sunset", or "to strike his horses in Fan Cummair", we might be tempted to think that 'tradition' has not ended in obscurity but in non-sense. And yet - the principle behind such prohibitions can be under-stood if we start from a complex of (Irish) relig ious ideas .

T o the mind of the pagan Irish, Fate works with the dangerous reg-ularity of a well-set trap. For them no optimistic law of averages ! Because Fate has struck in a certain place and under certain circum-stances, they appear to be convinced that the disaster will happen again, given the same place and the same circumstances. To be on the safe side they must avoid either the place or one .of the circumstances in future.

26) Italics mine. 27) An enormous mass of material in The Survival of G'eis in )Vfediaeval Romance, by

]. R . REINHA RD, Halle 1933. 28) Proc. Rq)'al Ir. ACC1d., Vol. LIV, Section C, Dublin.

SOi\IE ASPECTS OF KI NGSHIP I N PAGAN IRE L AND 663

So the prohibition for the King of Tara "to travel over Mag Cuil-Ji nn after sunset" can serve an understandable purpose after al l. If he keeps clear of that place or if he keeps clear of it in the evening, there will not happen to him the terrible calamity that befell one of his remote predecessors when travelling after sunset over Mag Cuillinn.

IV. What happens JJJhen the equilibrium is disturbed ? The (sacral) King tries all his life to keep in balance with the forces

of Fate and magic, but any moment the magic of his emmies may prevail, and Fate - of course - always is stronger in the end. Then the equili-brium is disturbed and a. The King is killed in battle. That is his 'natural death', I should say. say. b. The King dies from a broken geiss. The most poignant stories are those in which the King (or Hero) breaks his ,geissi one after the other, not because he is careless, but because Fate or enemy magic manoeuvres him into doing so. Sometimes one gets the impression that Fate warns the King of his impending doom through the breaking of his geissi. c. The King loses 'face' and dies from 'shame' (?)

Under this head could be brought the death of Fergus mac Leti (see III b.), who wanted to be avenged for his disfiguration on the water-monster that caused it, and who died victorious. The most striking example still is the death of King Ca(i)er of Connacht, who was un-justly satirized by his own nephew, Nede. The satire resulted in three blisters on the face of the King "who escaped from there, that nobody might see (the) basis of reproach." Then Nede became King. The repentant successor tried to visit his uncle in the following year, but Caier died "of shame" (ar file) when he saw him. (Nede himself was magically punished after this)29) . d. Is the King ever ritually slain?

I have found no instances of this. As far as I can make out, a., b ., and c. make d. unnecessary.

20) The story (or part of it) in the different reeens ions o f Co inrAc's Glossary (Sa11as Cor111aic), s. v. GAIRE.