HILE we have learned much about Celtic kingship from the classical authors, from archaeology, and from the chroniclers and historians of the Middle Ages and beyond - in other words, from all the usual historical sources - there is one other rich and fascinating source of information, namely the body of Celtic literature written in the vernacular Celtic languages. Since so much of the material is mythological or folkloric, it tells us very little about historical kings and queens, and what little it does tell us is highly suspect. However, while studying the literary sources may not tell us much more about real individuals, it does tell us a great deal about kingship in Celtic society in general.
There are two Celtic literary traditions, the Goidelic and the Brythonic, which, generally speaking, might just as easily be called the Irish and the Welsh. Some tales and legends were obviously generated in other Celtic countries - for example, the story of Tristan and Isolde in the Arthurian cycle is almost certainly Cornish in origin - but the vast majority of the material is either Irish or Welsh. Moreover, there are definite and easily observed correlations between the Irish material and the Welsh material, and even some story lines in common, so that we can meaningfully use phrases like ‘the Welsh version of the tale’, and so on. Speculation about which versions came first is fairly pointless, since all the material, from both sides of the Irish Sea, suffers from the identical problem: these tales were carried by oral tradition for many centuries before ever they were written down, and the date of the writing down does not necessarily tell us much about the date of the story’s origin. Some of the stories are of the purely mythological type, and, therefore, timeless, while others contain references to (supposedly) historical personages, although these references can be so jumbled or obscure that they tell us very little and, of course, many of them are later interpolations. One of the most curious aspects of the vernacular literature is the clashing of warrior-society material, clearly pagan and archaic in style and content, with later Christian glosses or interpolations: because the writing down was done by Christian clerics, we find a curious jumble of dragons, warriors, saints, gods, demons, Celtic paradises and a Christian Hell, goddesses, fighting queens and invocations to Jesus Christ.
The Irish material is usually classified into four groups. The Mythological Cycle, set largely in the Boyne Valley, concerns the earliest gods and tribes, the Fomori, the Tuatha de Danann, and so on, and the faery folk or tuatha sidhe; this is probably the oldest of the four. The Ulaid or Ulster Cycle is set around the time of Christ, and tells the stories of the Ulaid or Ulstermen; some of the material must be historical, but it is very difficult to separate the fact and the fiction. The Kings Cycle contains that amorphous collection of tales about the earliest (supposedly) historical kings, like Bres, Conn, Eochaid, and so on, whom we met in Chapter Nine. The fourth cycle, which did not become popular until the twelfth century and may indeed be more recent in original composition also, is the Fenian or Finn Cycle, which describes the exploits of the hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool). While these classifications are helpful, they are also artificial. The same characters sometimes appear in more than one of the cycles, and frequently - as one would expect from material generated by a long oral tradition - there are cross-references to characters or incidents that the original storyteller would no doubt have expected his audience to understand without difficulty. If World War III were to happen tomorrow, and the descendants of the survivors five hundred years from now had pursued an oral tradition, that tradition would contain a jumble of references to Mickey Mouse, John F. Kennedy, Superman, the Pope, and so on, and sorting out the real from the mythological would be very difficult.
We think that the Irish stories were first written down some time in the eighth century. There are references to a text called Lebor Druimm Snechtai, which included versions of The Wooing of Etain, The Destruction of Da Derga*s Hostel and The Birth of Cu Chulainn. Unfortunately, the Vikings - who were not great readers - destroyed most of the early manuscripts. Lebor na Huidre (The Book of the Dun Cow), dating from the twelfth century, contains some of the same stories, plus Bricriu*s Feast and partial versions of The Intoxication of the Ulaid and Tain Bo Cuailnge (pronounced Toyn Baw Koo-ling-uh) or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, but the manuscript is only a fragment. We know that the scribe was a monk named Mael Muire, who was killed by raiders in the Clonmacnoise cathedral in 1106. The Book of Leinster dates to about 1160. It contains versions of some of the same stories, including a more complete Tain, as well as additional material like The Labour Pains of the Ulaid and The Tale of Mac Da Tho's Pig. The Yellow Book of Lecan, which includes the most complete account of The Wooing of Etain, dates to the fourteenth century.
The Welsh material is found mainly in two texts: Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (The White Book of Rhydderch), which dates from about 1300, and Llyfr Coch Hergest (The Red Book of Hergest), which dates from about 1400. As with the Irish material, the composing of the tales was much earlier than the writing down. To judge by content, the oldest of the stories appears to be Culhwch hag Olwen, and the subjea matter of these tales may well go right back to the very beginnings of Celtic society. When Lady Charlotte Guest put together an edition of these stories in 1838, together with the poem Hanes Taliesin, she mistakenly took the Welsh word mabinogi (‘story, tale’, derived from mabinog, a boy or apprentice bard) and invented a plural for it, mabinogion, intending to mean ‘tales’, and gave her collection that title. Even though the name is actually a mistake, it has stuck, and the tales have been known collectively ever since as the Mabinogion.
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