A fundamental element in the structure of traditional Irish
culture was the complementary opposition of, on the one hand, the settled,
civilized, human world, and, on the other, the Wild. This is a pretty obvious
split and occurs in many cultures, but it played a particularly important part
in the Irish understanding of existence.
The Wild was the primal reality on which the Human was
founded, but human society could not exist in unmediated connection to the
Wild. The Wild--uncreated raw Being -- was the source, but it was too powerful,
too fluid and unconstrained for ordinary everyday life. After all, it is
difficult to build a house on the sea: for that, you need solid ground Traditional
Irish culture and the social structure that arose from it provided that ground,
but a tension between Human and Wild: light and dark: Summer and Winter: the Otherworld and the human world: Lucht Sí
and the human: the spoken and unspoken rules of settled life versus
unconstrained life in the wild:
etc., etc., is often expressed in
the literature
And not just in literature: until maybe 1600 in most parts
of Ireland and the Highlands, the Wild was always there out beyond the common
arable fields and pastures and could not be disregarded in the same way our
society ignores, trivializes and disregards it. The Wild was not just pretty
flowers and sunsets: it was dangerous for those who did not know how to deal
with it.
The traditional Irish/Celtic quarter days (Halloween, St. Bridget’s Day, May Day and the first of August) provided occasions when the human community either ventured into the Wild, or received representatives from it, as it were, on Halloween and St. Bridget’s Day. In the Summer half of the year, the human community celebrated “out there.” In the Winter half of the year, on Halloween and St. Bridget’s day, bands of young men or women disguised themselves and symbolically brought the Wild into the human world.
Some individuals went to live out there, either
intentionally (Christian hermits, na Fianna etc.) or because they were ejected
from human society through some trauma or dislocation. Just as the ancient God
Lugh obtained the secrets of farming etc. from a dark chthonic figure in the
Otherworld and brought them back to the human community, and as Nera brought
knowledge of the future, and innumerable others brought gifts, the
Otherworld/Wild could be generous. It could also be deadly. It all depended on
if one knew the proper attitude with which to approach it.
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One well-known “ejectee” was Suibhne, a king of Dál nAraidh in what is now County Antrim who went mad in the historical battle of Moira, County Down (Mag Roth), 637 A.D.: a battle in which the rising Ỏ Neill dynasty once and for all defeated the Ulaidh, the ancient kings of the North. The king lists of the Dál nAraidh don’t actually list Suibhne, however, and, on the common pattern, a historical or presumed-historical figure has simply been used to compose a tale exploring cultural issues of importance.
In the story, he shows massive vainglorious disrespect to a
saint in the lead-up to the battle, and the saint cursed him. He went mad
during the battle and ran away and lived in the woods and mountains for many
years. The story – Buile Shuibhne – explores themes like “fallen greatness” and
so on, and vain attempts to regain his sanity, but it mostly evokes a life in
the woods and mountains, set apart from the human community. It is, in outline,
a tragic story, but his time in the Wild was traditionally accounted as one of
the three virtues of the Battle of Moira. It is not his madness that was
prized, but all the poetry he left behind or was believed to have left behind.
It is great poetry. Seamus Heaney, the well-known
contemporary Anglo-Irish poet did versions which he published as Sweeney Astray,
but the originals and translation are easily available in Gerard Murphy’s Early
Irish Poetry along with a great vocabulary and notes. (No surprise there.) The
tale itself, containing some of the poetry is available in the Dublin Institute
for Advanced Studies Medieval and Modern Irish Texts series. (no translation.)
The unattached poetry survives in only one old manuscript,
and the tale in really only one written by Daibhidh Ỏ Duibhgheannain in the
late 17th century. (There is a slightly later copy of his text, and
also a summary of the tale, not deriving from Daibhidh’s text, in an Ỏ Cleirigh
manuscript.) If Daibhidh had not happened to copy the text or write it down,
and had not his manuscript survived, we would only have tantalizing allusions
to Suibhne and a few stray poems.
Daibhi was a very interesting person who lived in
“:interesting” times, and I will write about him next week.
Meanwhile, here are snippets of the poetry taken from Early
Irish Lyrics, along with Murphy’s translations because they cannon be improved
on. (Note that this is Middle Irish spelling.)
From “The Cry of the Garbh (Barrow estuary)” composed about 1150
Cairche cíuil at-chluinimse I hear melodious
music in the Garb
‘sin Gairb go nglúaire geimrid: at the time of its
winter splendor:
Ra muirn móir con=tuilimse I sleep to the
sound of great revelry
I n-aiche adúair eigrid on a
very cold icy night.
Éoin chalaid co céolchaire, Musical birds of
the shore,
Céolbinne a ngotha gnátha: music-sweet
their constant cryings
Impa rom-geib éolchaire, Lonely
longing has seized me to hear
‘má ceilebrad cech trátha. Their chanting
as they sing the hours
(pages 114-115, Early Irish
Lyrics)
A béicadáin binn, you
of the melodious cry.
Is binn linn in cúicherán we
love to hear the sound
Do-ní tú ‘sin glinn. Which
you make in the glen.
A dair dosach duilledach, Bushy
leafy oak
Ar ard ós cinn chruinn you
are high above every tree:
A cholláin, a chráebacháin, little
hazel, branchy one,
A chomhra chnó cuill. Coffer
for hazel nuts.
(pages 122-123)
Suibhne in the Snow
that
is not pleasant)
Rom-thúairg Snechta ar Sléib Meic Sín: Snow
has beaten on me on the Kerry Stacks
In-nocht rom-geguin in gáeth Tonight
the wind has wounded me
Gan fráech Glenna Bolcáin bil. Far
from the heather of pleasant Glenn Bolcáin
volume 14,. part 3, 1972, pp.179-206
Gearóid Ỏ Murchú (Gerald Murphy) was also a
northerner, a Monaghan man who fell in
love with Irish as an adolescent and did a man’s
work for the culture, between collecting
folktales in west Cork and Kerry, founding the great
periodical Éigse, editing Volume Two of
Duanaire Finn, Early Irish Lyrics, and other books, as well as innumerable articles.
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