Old Ways, Old Secrets E-Book

Jo Kerrigan

• Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In a land like ours, the old beliefs bring pleasure and wisdom… Exploring the legends, special places and treasured practices of old, Jo Kerrigan reveals a rich world beneath Ireland's modern layers. So many of today's Irish traditions reach back to our ancient past, to the natural world: climbing to the summit of a mountain at harvest time; circling a revered site three, seven or nine times in a sun-wise direction; hanging offerings on a thorn tree; bringing the ailing and infirm to a sacred well. Old Ways, Old Secrets shows us how to uncover the wisdom of the past, as fresh as it is ancient. 'Inviting, lyrical text and beautiful, atmospheric photographs ... A fascinating read.' Evening Echo on West Cork: A Place Apart

Leseprobe

In Ireland, the Otherworld and its spirits are taken for granted. Wherever you go, you will find evidence of ancient beliefs, customs and traditions.

INTRODUCTION

SO MANY CAME: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Part One: The Keepers of Power

DRUIDS, DEITIES AND SUPERHEROES

DRUIDS: GUARDIANS OF WISDOM

IN SEARCH OF POWERFUL WOMEN

DANU, THE EARTH MOTHER

WARMTH, WISDOM & WARFARE

MAEVE, THE WARRIOR QUEEN

THE BANSHEE

BEYOND THE MIST: GODS OF OLD

CROM CRUAICH, THE EARTH FATHER

HEROIC WARRIORS

CÚCHULAINN

FIONN MAC CUMHAILL

Part Two: Nature and the Otherworld

SACRED PLACES, MAGICAL CREATURES AND THE TURNING YEAR

THE LORE OF THE SEA

SPIRITS OF THE RUNNING WATER

THIN PLACES & THORN TREES

MAGICAL BIRDS & BEASTS

CREATURES OF THE SHADOWS

THE LITTLE SHOEMAKER

SEASONAL MERRY-MAKING

UNTAMED MOON: LUNAR FEASTS

THE WINTER & SUMMER SOLSTICES

Part Three: Traditions in Story

THE THREE SORROWS OF STORYTELLING

ONCE UPON A TIME...

THREE SORROWFUL TALES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Living in West Cork, and having travelled through every corner of Ireland, I am always struck by the natural way in which the Otherworld and its spirits are taken for granted. Wherever you go, you will find evidence of ancient beliefs, customs and traditions that continue to this day. Why do we still observe practices whose origin and purpose we have completely forgotten?

Or have we? Do the people of Ireland still, deep in the sub-conscious, retain beliefs that were already old when Christianity arrived on these shores? Do we still instinctively reach towards a time when nature and the cycle of the seasons were of paramount importance, and the spirits that governed the circle of the year were honoured as they should be?

In this book, I have presented evidence that the old ways are still very much with us. Festivals celebrated with great energy and enthusiasm may now bear the name of various saints, but they can be traced back to celebrations honouring older gods or goddesses. Pilgrimages to high mountains or remote lake islands once had far more to do with druids and oracles than with Christian observances.

All you have to do is lift the bright modern overlay, just a little, and peep underneath. You will find the old ways and the old beliefs are still there, as strong as ever. Come and explore. This book will start you on a journey. How far you travel is up to you.

Lift the bright modern overlay, just a little, and peep underneath. The old ways and the old beliefs are still there, as strong as ever.

Over thousands of years, many different peoples have sought Ireland’s green land and gentle climate. Legend, folk memory and imagination are inextricably tangled with fact in texts such as the Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions). The following is a rough chronology, which may be useful as a basic guide to our history of settlement.

Over thousands of years, many different peoples have sought Ireland’s fertile land and gentle climate.

AFTER THE FLOOD

According to the Leabhar Gabhála, Ireland’s first inhabitants were led by Parthalon, arriving from Greece about 300 years after the Deluge, and landing at the mouth of the Kenmare River in Kerry. Another 300 years later, it tells us that 9,000 of his people died in a single week on Sean Mhagh Ealta Edair (modern Tallaght in Dublin). Tellingly, the old name for Tallaght translates as the ‘Plain of the Plague’, adding strength to this brief record of a long-ago calamity.

Following this virtual wipeout of Parthalon’s descendants, Ireland was apparently left empty for 30 years. Perhaps the story of disease and sudden death spread along the seaways, and it was avoided. But then, from Scythia on the borders of Europe and Asia, came Nemed and his sons. If they were hoping for peace and quiet in their new home, however, they didn’t get it. Soon after their arrival, the Nemedians were attacked by a particularly unpleasant band known as the Fomorians, who counted the terrifying Balor of the Evil Eye among their number. Balor, a kind of weapon of mass destruction who echoed the death-dealing abilities of the Greek Medusa, had only to look upon someone to kill instantaneously.

The Fomorians appear to have been sea pirates rather than settlers, descending on Ireland at regular intervals to loot and demand protection money. Legend suggests that they had an outpost on Tory Island off Donegal. Possibly early Norsemen, the Fomorians are the baddies of Irish legendary history, reappearing at intervals to create panic and havoc throughout several waves of settlers.

Discouraged by the rapacious demands of the Fomorians, the surviving Nemedians, we are told, emigrated in three separate directions: one group to northern Europe, one to Greece, and one to the neighbouring island of Britain. First to return was the Grecian group, who again settled Ireland and became known as the Fir Bolg, or Bag Men, from their sensible habit of carrying good, rich earth in woven bags wherever they went, so that they could be sure of making the land fertile. Small, dark, gentle farming folk, they cared for the land and worshipped the spirits of nature who made the rain fall, the sun shine, and the crops grow.

THE PEOPLE OF DANU

The Nemedians who had gone to the northern lands had spent their time perfecting the arts of divination, druidism and philosophy. (This does suggest that, even back in earliest times, such craft was known to be taught in the far North, in Scandinavia, perhaps even in Russia.) A couple of centuries later, these emigrants came back as the skilled, wise and powerful Tuatha Dé Danann, or people of Danu, the great earth goddess. Powerful in the arts of magic, they easily overcame the unwarlike Fir Bolg.

The time of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland was a golden age of beauty and joy.

The time of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland was a golden age of beauty and joy, music and song. Kind and generous, these tall, fair-haired people did not drive out the Fir Bolg after taking over but left them in peace to tend their crops and herds in their own remote forests and boglands. And it is the Tuatha Dé Danann who put the Fomorians out of the picture once and for all by slaying Balor of the Evil Eye.

But yet another invader was preparing to cross the sea to Ireland, this time from the south. The Celts, wandering westward across Europe for many thousands of years, had long believed that their destiny lay in green Inisfáil, the island on the edge of the world. They finally made the voyage from the coast of northern Spain, with battleships and warriors, prepared to drive out whoever already lived in this land of plenty and seize it for themselves, for the Celts were a warlike people, always ready to fight for honour and glory as well as material gain.

With them came a new attitude, in which battle skills and personal honour were regarded as more important than anything else. Their gods, both male and female, were more likely to drive a battle chariot than to ensure a bountiful crop, and it is at this time that the cult of the half-god hero-warrior, exemplified in Cúchulainn, comes to the fore, and essentially male qualities take priority over female ones.

The Celts fought ferociously for what they saw as their promised land and, to stop the bloodshed that they deplored, the Tuatha Dé Danann yielded. But, the legends assert firmly, they did not leave. They loved Ireland and cared for it far too much. Instead, they withdrew gracefully and mysteriously into the very land itself, taking up their new habitations in grassy mounds and ancient hills, beneath thorn trees and stone circles. Here, immortal, they live still, in splendid palaces amid wonderful gardens and enchanted forests, and their music and song continues as before.

Occasionally, usually at the time of the great natural divisions of the year, such as the Celtic festivals of Bealtaine and Samhain, they ride forth once more across the land that was theirs, and mingle with the human beings. The great heroes of Irish legend often have some Tuatha Dé Danann blood in their veins, and their birth may be the result of a chance meeting between a young man or woman from this world and a bright figure from the Otherworld. Many are the stories of unsuspecting men, women and children, coaxed by a beautiful princess or handsome prince to come away to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth. A wonderful world awaits those who go, but their chances of returning are slight.

The Leabhar Gabhála is a fascinating document because, underneath the decorative layers of storytelling and old legends – and the inevitable Biblical interpolations from Christian scribes – can be found the true gold seam of genuine bardic and oral memory, of real events from history. All legends possess this kernel of truth at their centre. The challenge is to submerge yourself in the wealth of poetic metaphor and discern a hint of the truth – of who came from where, who succeeded them, and what might have happened next.

Because, of course, something always happens next. Though the Leabhar Gabhála ends with the coming of the Celts, we are by this time in the realm of recorded events, and life in Ireland continued to create history.

THE COMING OF CHRISTIANITY

After the Celts, another wave of invaders came from the East. This time, they were proponents of the new Christian religion from Rome. Although few in number, their determination to capture Ireland for their own was strong. That they succeeded so well was due to a practical outlook by the first missionaries.

Perceiving that the old ways and old beliefs were immovably entrenched, they simply blended their own doctrines into these, here giving a new name to an old spirit, and there attributing a heroic event to a Christian saint rather than a pagan warrior. And so the people of Ireland combined the new ways with the old, and continued to seek aid from a sacred well or give due reverence to a powerful goddess at her shrine, not bothering too much that the names had changed.

Then came the Norsemen, searching first for plunder and slaves, and later settling to put their knowledge of seafaring and trading to use in the coastal cities they founded at Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Waterford. Although viewed with horror by the Christian monks (who, to be fair, were usually on the receiving end of their raids), the Norse beliefs, in fact, blended easily with those of earlier Ireland. The Norse Otherworld tends to be darker and more menacing than the Celtic, but Irish leprechauns are cousins to Scandinavian elves, and the Mórrígan, the Celtic goddess of battle, sister to the Valkyrie daughters of Odin.

Later still, and England casts covetous and nervous eyes on its near neighbour. Covetous because they could make good use of Ireland’s plentiful timber, crops and cattle; nervous because sea access from France and Spain was all too easy, and Ireland was sympathetic to both these southern countries. On the first wave of Norman English settlers, in the 12th century, Ireland worked her magic once more: they became, as the famous phrase has it, ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’.

The second wave, in the 16th and 17th centuries, imposed a harsher rule. Ulster in particular, which had been the most powerful of Irish provinces, had its native nobility deprived of their land and titles (leading to a tragic forced exodus in 1607 that became known as the Flight of the Earls) and was transformed into a settled, English-ruled land. Interestingly, a similar attempt at large-scale settlement in Cork, in the far south, largely failed, the settlers either abandoning their lands or becoming absorbed into local culture. Perhaps being further away from the watchful eye of London had something to do with it?

As before, the people of Ireland proved resilient and adaptable. By now forbidden to practise their Catholic religion, they simply continued in secret, often returning to do so at the old stones, circles and rocks where they had worshipped as pagans for thousands of years. Charged to speak only English and not their native tongue, they treasured the old stories and songs even more, passing them from one generation to the next.

And so it continues. Today’s invaders are more likely to descend from a tour bus than a boat, carry guidebooks and cameras rather than a broadsword, shield or crucifix. But they still seek something that only Ireland can give, something that it has retained beneath its modern layers, something that is there for the taking, for all those that have eyes to see. And like their predecessors over thousands of years, they, too, will be changed.

The people of Ireland combined the new ways with the old, not bothering too much that the names had changed.

St Gobnait’s well and penal mass rock in Co. Cork.

The druids of ancient Ireland were all-powerful and treated with reverence.

Healers blending miraculous herbal cures, and advisers sending secret messages in code. Bards reciting the proud genealogies of high kings, and poets composing scathing satires. Shadowy figures murmuring incantations in the forest, and augurers prophesying the future. Brehons explaining the complexities of the ancient laws, and fearsome figures driving war chariots through the battlefield. The druids of ancient Ireland did all this and more; they were mysterious, powerful and treated with reverence – even by those who wore a crown.

WHO WERE THE DRUIDS?

Druids were not rulers or priests in the way we would understand such roles today. They did not dictate or enforce. They were, rather, the repository of knowledge, the guardians of laws, genealogies, history, herbal healing, tree lore, and the epic tales of heroic events. They carried this knowledge in their heads, and their communities relied on their prodigious memories.

They were guides and advisers, and were at the heart of any political intrigue. Above all, the druids were that vital link with the Otherworld; beings who could pass between both realities, who could seek answers from the gods, beg a boon, influence the Fates, or even shape-change at will. As such, they were regarded as the most important people in the land. Free of the obligation to pay taxes or do fighting service, they sat at the king’s high table and were deferred to. Those who were not attached to a royal household but maintained their own schools were sought after for cures and spells, and to answer questions in desperate times.

DRUIDS IN LEGEND

The central role of druids in Irish culture is evident from earliest sources, and they are woven into a thousand legends. Parthalon, one of our earliest settlers, brought three of these wise advisers with him, named as Fios, Eolus and Fochmarc; that is, Intelligence, Knowledge and Inquiry.

The Fir Bolg had their own druids too, Cesard being the chief of them. Dian Cecht was a great healer druid of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Cathbad was the most venerated adviser of King Conor Mac Nessa’s court in Ulster. Ciothruadh, the oldest and wisest of King Cormac Mac Airt’s druids, could raise powerful spells to aid the king in battle. Finegas was the ancient sage and druid living by the River Boyne to whom Fionn Mac Cumhaill went to study poetry and wisdom, while Fear Doirche was the evil druid who turned Fionn’s great love, Sadbh, into a deer. In The Voyage of Mael Duin, Nuca is the wise wizard who not only counsels the hero on the exact day to begin building his boat, but also the precise number of people he should take with him.

The druids’ status could backfire on them. In the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), when Maeve’s army was on the march, several druids came out from Ossory to welcome it but were attacked in the belief that they were spies:

And the soldiers set to hunting them until they fled with great speed in the form of deer, into the stones at Liac Mor in the north, for they were wizards of great cunning.

DRUIDS AND THE TUATHA DÉ DANANN

The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to have learned their occult skills from four great druids in the northern lands – Morfesa, Esras, Semias and Uiscias – and brought many more, both male and female, when they returned to Ireland. It was three of their druidesses who caused clouds of darkness and mist to envelop the Fir Bolg while they were holding a council of war, and thus defeated them. The Dé Danann, however, were themselves vanquished by druidic practices from the invading Celts, which is how they came to leave the visible landscape and create their own magical Otherworld underneath the hills and fairy forts, where they still live today.

This, so the old stories say, is how it happened. The Celts, travelling from Galicia in modern-day Spain, made landfall on the Kerry coast and marched immediately on Tara. The rulers argued that they had been unfairly taken by surprise and requested that the invaders withdraw in their boats ‘beyond the Ninth Wave’ from Ireland’s shores. If they should then succeed in landing once more, the sovereignty of the land would be surrendered to them. Of course as soon as the Celts were beyond the magical ‘Ninth Wave’ (where it is deemed you are outside the boundaries of Ireland), the druids of the Dé Danann caused a thick mist to rise, concealing the land completely. At the same time they raised a ferocious tempest, scattering the ships of their enemy far and wide.

Manipulating the elements was a crucial druidic skill.

However, Amergin, poet and druid of the invading host, knew a few spells of his own and, standing on the prow of his wildly tossing boat, he pronounced a powerful declamation that lifted the mist, calmed the storm, turned the tide, and enabled the Celts to gain the land once more. That declamation survives, a very early poem indeed, with possibly some genuine druidical chanting within its lines:

I pray that we reach the land of Erinn, we who are riding upon the great, productive, vast sea.

That we be distributed upon her plains, her mountains, and her valleys; upon her forests that shed showers of nuts and all other fruits; upon her rivers and her cataracts; upon her lakes and her great waters; upon her abounding springs.

That we may hold our fairs and equestrian sports upon her territories.

That there may be a king from us in Tara; and that Tara be the territory of our many kings.

That the sons of Milesius be manifestly seen upon her territories.

That noble Erinn be the home of the ships and boats of the sons of Milesius.

Erinn which is now in darkness, it is for her that this oration is pronounced.

The druids of the Dé Danann would conjure a mist to confuse their enemies.

Manipulating the weather was a druidical skill, especially the calling down of dense fogs or magical mists for various purposes: so that their own people could pass safely through enemy territory, or so that an advancing army would become confused and unable to fight. In the Táin, a battle mist hid the advancing Ulster army from the men of Connacht, while in the Fenian Cycle, the druid Tadgh used fog to prevent Cumhall, father of Fionn, from finding his magic weapons. Even today you will find country folk saying of the grey rain clouds drifting over the hills that ‘the druids are passing’.

FORETELLING THE FUTURE

In times of peace, having enough rain to moisten the soil or enough sun to ripen the crops was a constant worry, and druids were much in demand. Whether they could guarantee the right conditions is arguable, but they knew how to read the weather signs and foretell extreme conditions. It is a talent most of us could develop to some degree if we took the time to observe wind direction, cloud formation and, of course, animal behaviour.

In times of war, it did not do to embark on any great enterprise without first consulting the druids. In the Táin, when the armies of Connacht are assembling for the great raid on Ulster, they are held back until the most auspicious moment:

Then the four provinces of Ireland were assembled until they were in Cruachan Ai. And their poets and their druids would not let them go thence till the end of a fortnight, waiting for a good omen.

Druids were conscious of the earth itself as a living being. They were also well versed in the knowledge of the skies, the stars and the moon, and could advise on the best time to undertake a particular task, or to put seeds into the ground as the moon waxed or waned. Today, many wise old country folk retain and use this commonsense knowledge for planting crops or pruning fruit trees.

Druids answered the questions of kings – Will my sons hold the crown after me? Should we ally with this neighbouring chieftain or make war on him? – but ordinary, everyday people in ancient times had their concerns too. What does life hold for me? What path should I follow? How do I make this person love me? Can I trust this friend’s advice? It is part of human nature to seek answers, to pierce the mysterious unknown that lies ahead.

THE LORE OF TREES

It is in keeping with a nature-based religion that Irish druids should use trees for the purpose of divination. With their great roots reaching deep into the earth, their arms opening to the heavens and their heads near the sky, these natural symbols of life itself were sacred, and reverenced as such by all druids, who recognised their importance in the general good health of the world.

Even the unique ogham alphabet used by the druids was linked to individual trees, each letter representing a specific species. Spirits of the Otherworld were held to inhabit trees; to damage one knowingly was to invite ill fortune. Every settlement had its own bile or sacred tree under which all ceremonials were conducted.

Old legends speak of the Five Great Trees of Ireland, which held the safety of the land in their keeping. Tortu, an ash, and Mugna, an oak, grew in Meath; Uisneach and the Tree of Dathe, both ash, in Westmeath; and the Tree of Ross, a yew, grew in Co. Carlow. The last-named, however, may well have originated in an ancient forest far to the southwest that still survives today. In an account of the creation of Tara, the seer Fintan, said to have lived in Ireland since the Deluge, recalls: