Sometimes Myths Are Real

It's been a rough winter in the UK--storms and floods have devastated counties like Somerset. One small positive thing that's come of it all, though, is the curious reappearance of a submerged forest of the coast of Wales:

Composed mostly of oak and pine, the forest is believed to date from the Bronze Age. It was buried under a peat bog 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, then inundated by rising sea levels until this winter's violent storms stripped away the covering of peat and sand. The high level of alkaline and lack of oxygen in the peat has preserved the wood in an almost pristine state. 

A walkway made of sticks and branches was also discovered. It's 3,000 to 4,000 years old and was built, it is believed, to cope with rising sea levels back then. "The site around Borth is one where if there is a bad storm and it gets battered, you know there's a good chance something will be uncovered," says Deanna Groom, Maritime Officer of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, who helped find the site. 

But what's really interesting about this is the location of this submerged forest: Cardigan Bay, in the area of the fabled Cantre'r Gwaelod--the "drowned hundred" of Gwyddno Garanhir, a legendary king, who may (or may not) be the same as the historical 6th century ruler Gwyddno ap Clydno of Meirionydd.

The earliest account is found in the Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin:

Seithenhin sawde allan.
Ac edrychuirde varanres
Mor. maes guitnev rytoes. 

Boed emendiceid y morvin
Aehellygaut guydi cvin.
Finaun wenestir mor terruin.

Seithenhin, stand thou forth,
And behold the billowy rows;
The sea has covered the plain of Gwydneu. 

Accursed be the damsel,
Who, after the wailing,
Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep.

Briefly, a girl named Mererid fails at her duties of keeping the floodgates closed, and the land is subsequently drowned.

There are several Celtic legends like this: Ys at the bottom of Douarnenez Bay in Brittany, Lyonesse in Mount's Bay in Cornwall, and finally Cantre'r Gwaelod in Cardigan Bay, which, as it happens, is the same area as this newly-exposed forest that's been under water for five thousand years.

But this isn't the only lost land found again; a forest was found in Mount's Bay, Cornwall. As the BBC reported:

Remains in Penzance, Cornwall, can be seen after sand was ripped from beaches by a series of storms which hit the coast in the new year.

Geologists believe extensive forests extended across Mount's Bay in Penzance between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.

The shifting sands have also revealed wrecks, an iron age settlement in Devon and wartime explosives in Devon, Somerset and Dorset.

Remains of ancient forests have also been seen on Portreath beach, Daymer Bay in Cornwall and Bigbury Bay in Devon.
...
St Michaels Mount in the bay is known in Cornish as Karrek Loos yn Koos - which means Grey Rock in the Wood.

This is the area often associated with Lyonesse, the drowned land that was home to Tristan.

On the one hand, we can't say for certain that the memory of these lost lands were carried down for thousands of years, but we do know that Britain has been continuously inhabited for at least ten thousand years, since the end of the last Ice Age. It's a leap, but not an entirely unreasonable one, to suggest that the stories later preserved by the Celts were memories of the culture that predated them, passed on, influencing their myths.

Arthur, King of the Arctic?

The Heroic Age points to an idea that I wasn't really familiar with before: that King Arthur was, at one point, credited with conquering the New World via Greenland.

According to Thomas Green, John Dee, when conjuring up precedent for a British Empire, relied not only on stories about Prince Madoc and St. Brendan, but also upon the idea that Arthur himself ruled the whole of the North. Now, Geoffrey credited him with conquering Scandinavia, but went no further--indeed, who knows what Geoffrey even knew of Greenland?  Scholars believed that Dee had invented this story, but Green points out that apparently it does predate Dee:

§7.  Mercator included a legend to his great wall map of 1569 that referred to Arthur in the following way:

Touching the description of the North parts, I have taken the same out of the voyage of James Cnoyen of Hartzevan Buske, which allegeth certain conquests of Arthur king of Britaine, and the most part, and chiefest things among the rest he learned of a certain priest in the king of Norway's court, in the year 1364. This priest was descended (in the fifth generation) from them which King Arthur had sent to inhabit these Islands

The article discusses whether this ultimately goes back to Geoffrey's Scandinavian conquest story, or whether it perhaps goes back to an even earlier tradition of a frozen Otherworld to the north. Of course, it's no surprise that anyone would connect a mythical conquest of the North with the Norwegian settlements of North America, and concoct a story of King Arthur doing the same, but earlier. And how irresistible the idea would be to an incipient British Empire.

This Could Be Gre--No, It's Probably Gonna Suck

So I come across this today:

Michael Fassbender and screenwriter Ronan Bennett are developing a feature film about the legendary Celtic warrior Cuchulain, with Fassbender set to play the leading role.

Cuchulain is the central character in the Ulster Cycle, an epic series of Old Irish legends that date from around the 8th century.

Set in the northern part of Ireland, the saga relates the story of the Ulaid tribe headed by King Conchobar, and particularly its conflict with the rival Connachta tribe led by Queen Mebh.

The most prominent figure in the legends is Conchobar's nephew Cuchulain, who has semi-divine ancestry and superhuman fighting skills. In the most famous story, known as the Cattle Raid of Cooley, he is the only man capable of resisting the vast army sent by Medb to steal Conchobar's prize white bull.

Now, this isn't meant to be a knock on Fassbender or Bennett, but it's not as if there've been many successful adaptations of mythology lately--not the dreadful remake of Clash of the Titans, nor the inexplicable Immortals, and especially not 2004's laugh-fest King Arthur.

I'm always wary of adapting mythology--which ultimately was (and still is) someone's religion. Usually in these big-budget adaptations, the gods are an evil to be defeated by mortals (which is an ugly bastardization of the meanings of those myths), or they're written out altogether (as in the otherwise watchable Troy). I can easily see this as being a "defeat the gods" film, given that the Morrigan is an antagonist, while Lugh, Cuchulain's divine father, could easily be ignored or forgotten. Really, the only film that hasn't been automatically dismissive of gods was Thor, and they aren't exactly gods, but aliens with god-like abilities.

And while ancient stories are all the rage, it's rare they aren't big, bloated, painful messes. I rather liked Tristan and Isolde--it wasn't a great film, but because the action was smaller and the conflict personal, it wasn't a terrible film, either. I dread to think of the Cattle Raid of Cooley being turned into 300.

On the other hand, the last film I saw that delved into Irish myth and history was the absolutely fantastic Secret of Kells, so it's not as if the task is impossible.

Happy Lughnassadh/Lammas!

Wheat Field with Reaper and Sun - Van Gogh

 August 1st on the traditional Irish calendar marks Lughnassadh--"the assembly of Lugh", wherein Lugh of the Long Arm, the Many-Skilled God of All Arts, is honored, along with his foster-mother Tailltiu, who first tilled the land in order to plant crops.

§59. Tailltiu daughter of Mag Mor king of Spain, queen of the Fir Bolg, came after the slaughter was inflicted upon the Fir Bolg in that first battle of Mag Tuired to Coill Cuan: and the wood was cut down by her, so it was a plain under clover-flower before the end of a year. ...and Cian son of Dian Cecht, whose other name was Scal Balb, gave her his son in fosterage, namely Lugh, whose mother was Eithne daughter of Balar. So Tailltiu died in Tailltiu, and her name clave thereto and her grave is from the Seat of Tailltiu north-eastward. Her games were performed every year and her song of lamentation, by Lugh. With gessa and feats of arms were they performed, a fortnight before Lugnasad and a fortnight after: under dicitur Lughnasadh, that is, the celebration (?) or the festival of Lugh.

--Lebor Gabála Érenn

So what's so great about Lugh? Why's he so important? We can be relatively confident he was worshiped in places like Iberia (where we have inscriptions to "the Lugoves", which means "the Lughs"), Gaul (with the city of Lugdunum "fort of Lugh", today called Lyon), Britain (where the story of Lleu is set down in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi), and Ireland (where we have lots of stories about him), and so on. So why is today, the harvest day, the day the Celts worshipped Lugh?

Simple--not only was he the MacGyver of deities, he got the secrets of harvesting food from the king of the Fomoraig, the Bad Guys of Irish mythology:

Thereafter Lugh and his comrades found Bres son of Elotha unguarded. He said:"It is better to give me quarter than to slay me."

"What then will follow from that?" said Lugh

"If I be spared," says Bress, "the cows of Erin will always be in milk."

"I will set this forth to our wise men," said Lugh.

So Lugh went to Maeltne Mor-brethach , and said to him: "Shall Bress have quarter for giving constant milk to the cows of Erin?" " He shall not have quarter," said Maeltne; "he has no power over their age or their offspring, though he can milk them so long as they are alive."

Lugh said to Bress: "That does not save thee: thou hast no power over their age and their offspring, though thou canst milk them. Is there aught else that will save thee, O Bres?" said Lugh.

"There is in truth, Tell thy lawyer that for sparing me the men of Ireland shall reap a harvest in very quarter of the year."

Said Lugh to Maeltne: "Shall Bres be spared for giving the men of Ireland a harvest of corn every quarter?"

"This has suited us," said Maeltne: "the spring for ploughing and sowing, and the beginning of summer for the end of the strength of corn, and the beginning of autumn for the end of the ripeness of corn and for reaping it. Winter for consuming it"

"That does not rescue thee," said Lugh to Bres; "but less than that rescues thee."

"What?" said Bres.

"How shall the men of Ireland Plough? How shall they sow? How shall they reap? After making known these three things thou wilt be spared."

"Tell them, said Bres, that their ploughing be on a Tuesday, their casting seed into the field be on a Tuesday, their reaping on a Tuesday." So through that stratagem Bres was let go free.

The Second Battle of Moytura

The story of Lugh wrestling the secrets of agriculture--in other words, making sure people can eat--from Bres is paralleled in Christian texts wherein St. Patrick does battle with Crom Dubh. The theme of St. Patrick winning food has many versions, the oldest of which is found in the vita found in the Book of Armagh, and other variants, as described by Máire Mac Neill:

In general, the folk-legend has the following plot: the saint comes to the distrct and begins t build a church; in a time of food-shortage he asks the pagan magnate for food for his workmen; the pagan has a fierce bull which kills all who approach it, and he offers the bull to the saint in the ope that it will kill him; the bull, however, submits quietly to being taken and slaughtered; the bull's flesh is eaten by the saint's company but the saint enjoins that the hid and bones be carefully kept; the pagan, enranged at the loss of his bull and the failure of his plan, asks the saint to give back the bull; the saint has the bones and hid put together, and the bull rises to life.

The Festival of Lughnasa, pg 393

Mac Neill's book is the go-to source on the holiday, and if you can get a copy of it, grab it--it's often very hard to find.

And it wasn't just the Irish: the medieval English knew the day as hlafmæssen-dæg, literally "loaf-mass day"¹, the feast of first fruits, when the harvest first ripens. The cereal crops come in, and are turned into such wonderful things as bread, beer, cakes, whiskey, Cheerios... Well, I think Cheerios. Pretty sure.

Anyway, the word eventually became Lammas, and was the time of year for the Lammas fairs, especially the Ould Lammas Fair, held in Co. Antrim, Ireland, for the last four hundred years.  Mac Neill maintains that Lammas--particularly given its timing on August 1st ultimately comes from Lughnassadh, and I really don't see any reason to contradict her.

In Wales, the day is called "Calan Awst", which is rather straightforward, meaning "First Day of August". And as far as I know, there's no connection made between Lleu and August 1st. Indeed, very little of the day seems to survive in Wales; Mac Neill mentions that in the nineteenth century, people would gather on the Breckon Beacons, heading for Llyn y Fan Fach, as described by Sir John Rhys, where the Lady of the Lake would make an appearance.

But Lugh shows up in Wales as well, as Lleu, the put-upon son of Aranrhod, cursed by his mother, raised in isolation by Gwydion, murdered by his wife's lover, but ultimately triumphs over all of it to become king of Gwynedd. It's unfortunate that we only have scraps left to us in the Mabinogi and the poems of Taliesin to piece together Lleu's story.

So today, Loaf-Mass-Day, the Festival of Lugh, and oddly enough the birthday of Clau-Clau-Claudius in the city of Lugdunum, I baked a loaf of beer bread, and will enjoy eating it, preferably with a bottle of beer homebrewed by a friend of mine.


On that note, I leave you with "John Barleycorn"; I wish I could find the Fairport Convention version, but Traffic will have to do.

NOTES

1. Just as Christ-mass is now Christmas, Loaf-Mass became Lammas.