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9. Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth
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9 Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth ( 1 9 8 3 ) The myth of the War of the Gods, also known as the theomachy, is represented in Irish tradition by the contention between the Túatha Dé Danann and the Fomoiri, which culminated in a battle said to have been fought at Moytirra in County Sligo, in which the Túatha Dé Danann vanquished the Fomoiri. The fullest account of this contention is to be found in the early version of Cath Maige Tuired, which is preserved in the sixteenth-century British Library manuscript Harley 5280, where it is entitled Cath Maige Turedh ocus genemain Bres meic Elathain ocus a ríghe,“The Battle of Moytirra , and the birth of Bres son of Elathan and his reign.”1 This text, which has been written out in notoriously aberrant spelling,“would seem to be a composite work put together by an eleventh or twelfth-century redactor 135 136 THE CYCLES OF THE GODS AND GODDESSES mainly from ninth-century material.”2 In the present essay, all references to CMT are to the Harley text.3 The momentous battle fought at Moytirra finds its place in the schema of legendary prehistory which was shaped and propagated by the literati, and which came to be known as Lebor Gabála Érenn. According to the literati , the Túatha Dé Danann won two great battles at Moytirra, and it was in the second of these that they vanquished the Fomoiri, having already defeated the Fir Bolg in the first battle of Moytirra.4 It may be that each of these encounters rests on a foundation of ancient myth,5 but it has long been suspected that Irish tradition originally knew only one battle of Moytirra ,of which the other must in some measure be a duplicate.6 T.F.O’Rahilly held that“the story of the first battle of Mag Tuired was in existence before that of the second, to which it served as a model.”7 In O’Rahilly’s view“the second battle is merely a pseudo-historical expansion of a mythological theme, the‘slaying’of the god Balar by Lug; under the influence of the story of the first battle the duel between these supernatural personages becomes a battle between two armies.”8 The antiquity of the myth of the War of the Gods,however,has been amply demonstrated,9 so that there can be no good grounds for stripping CMT down to the centerpiece of the battle, which is the confrontation of Lug and Balar. As for the thesis that the story of the first battle served as a model for that of the second, Gerard Murphy has made a cogent case against it,10 and, on present showing, primacy must be accorded to the tradition that the battle of Moytirra was fought between the Túatha Dé Danann and the Fomoiri. Nearly half a century ago,A.G. van Hamel11 tried to establish the existence in Irish (and Celtic) tradition of what he called“exemplary myth,”explaining that “the adjective ‘exemplary’ . . . as applied to heroes or traditions, means a hero or tradition that had to be regarded by people in the early Celtic society as an example which must be imitated by them, or of whose example the deeds of other men must be regarded as a reflexion.”12 Van Hamel’s treatment of the Irish evidence is somewhat unsatisfactory, and he drew what Gerard Murphy called “rash conclusions.”13 But the notion that Irish myth could be exemplary in character is not to be dismissed merely because of the weakness of van Hamel’s advocacy of his case. On the contrary , this notion has been rehabilitated by some of the more recent work [18.234.55.154] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:03 GMT) on CMT:14 what I propose to do here is to take a fresh look at CMT with this notion in mind, and to set out the different ways in which this tale can be interpreted as an exemplary myth. It will be useful at this point to give a broad outline of the story that is told in CMT, with some commentary on the episodes which are relevant to our theme. The story begins with the coming of the Túatha Dé Danann to Ireland, and tells how they made an alliance with the Fomoiri. Núadu was at that time king of the Túatha Dé Danann, but he...