Coire Sois, The Cauldron of Knowledge: A Companion to Early Irish Saga

12. “The Wooing of Étaín”

12 “The Wooing of Étaín” ( 2 0 0 8 ) Irish has a long history, stretching from the ogam inscriptions of the fifth century up to the present day. In a colloquium devoted to the study of Irish, Modern Irish language and literature may well be accorded pride of place. But Early Irish also offers a very rewarding field of study, as Calvert Watkins (2008) shows.What I want to do is to say a little about the splendid heritage of myth and saga that survives in Irish, and specifically in Early Irish, which can be taken in this context to include Old and Middle Irish, the language respectively of 600–900 and 900–1200. I should point out that we also have some accomplished tales from the later period—Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne ‘The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne’1 may be mentioned as an especially fine specimen—but for the most part it is the tales of the Early Irish period that appeal to us today. Much of what I have to say in what follows will focus on Tochmarc Étaíne‘The Wooing of Étaín,’2 a trilogy of tales 173 174 THE CYCLES OF THE GODS AND GODDESSES that tell how the god Midir sought and, after many vicissitudes, ultimately won the hand of Étaín. This is one of the most remarkable works of Irish storytelling, and it is my hope that readers will be inspired to look at it for themselves, and also seek out some of the other tales that have come down to us in the manuscripts. Early Irish narrative literature was one of the products of a powerful intellectual and artistic elite that combined the energy and resources of ecclesiastical scholars, authors, and artists with those of traditional Irishlanguage poets, jurists, and storytellers. The accommodation of the clerical and native learned classes in Ireland was made possible by the circumstances in which the country was converted to Christianity. Early in the fifth century—in the year 431, to be precise—Pope Celestine sent a bishop to the Irish“who believed in Christ.”The fact that there were Christians in Ireland at that time indicates that there was some degree of Latin literacy in the country. As Ireland never became part of the Roman Empire, the churchmen had to come to terms with a political structure and an intellectual tradition that were very different from those of Rome. At a very early stage, the clerics began to use and write the vernacular, and it was not long before they took an active interest in the native storytelling tradition. The earliest surviving tales date from the seventh century and they must have been written—and in some sense composed—in ecclesiastical settings. On comparative grounds, the content of many of these tales can be shown to be indebted to an oral tradition stretching back to the Common Celtic era, and even beyond it, to that of Proto-Indo-European. The manuscripts do not name the authors of these tales, but we must be thankful to them for what they have given us. The narrative literature is extensive, and inevitably somewhat variable in quality. At its best, it is robust, vibrant, and exuberant. It can also be subtle and ingenious in its use of language, and very rich in its thematic content. It has become conventional in modern times to classify the material in cycles.The so-called Mythological Cycle—which I prefer to call the Cycles of the Gods and Goddesses—recounts the adventures of the Túatha Dé,“The Peoples of the God(s)/Goddess(es),” also known as Túatha Dé Danann, “The Peoples of the Goddess Danu.”These adventures have to do with the relations of the Túatha Dé among themselves, with other divinities or quasi-divinities such as the Fomoiri or Fomoreans, and even on occasion with the human inhabitants of Ireland. The Ulster Cycle has to do with the martial activities of a warrior aristocracy centered at the court of King Conchobor at Emain Macha (Navan Fort in County Armagh), and subsisting in a state of endemic warfare with the Connachta, who are ruled by Ailill, with more than a little help from his wife Medb,and centered at Crúachu (Rathcroghan in County Roscommon). The great hero of this cycle is Cú Chulainn, and its centerpiece is...