Woman in Irish Legend, Life and Literature ed. by S.F. Gallagher (review)

414 LE'ITERS IN CANADA 1983 reminds me of the sort of essay one receives from ambitious undergraduates who have not yet learned the art of properly limiting their research topics. To add to the confusion Henighan's language is often disastrously vague. Pseudo-technical terms such as 'biomes' and 'proto-phases' and 'man's vertebrate eyes' compete for the reader's attention with ponderous and stale references to ' the power of words: 'the quest for selfknowledge : 'the flux of life: and 'the perennial and ever-new human landscape: Henighan rarely uses one word when two will do: he does not speak, for example, of 'Romantic poems' but rather of 'the language structures which we classify as Romantic poems: Here is the second sentence in the book: 'Literature, I believe, is one distinct strand of psycho-social evolution, but it is important to recall its connections with those other systems of knowledge man has created in making himself what he is: Once one recovers from the pomposity of 'psycho-social evolution: one is struck with how unnecessarily confusing this is. In what sense is literature 'a distinct strand' of evolution? What is meant by 'system of knowledge'? And exactly how is literature connected to 'those other systems'? But the real problem with this sentence, as, indeed, with so much of the book, is not that it raises difficult questions it does not answer but rather that it advances so many propositions so obvious that one could not possibly want to refute them. (JOHANNE CLARE) S.F. Gallagher, editor. Woman in Irish Legend, Life and Literature Irish Literary Studies 14. Colin Smythe. '57. $16.00 The first invasion of Ireland, according to Lebor GaMla Erenn (The Book of Invasions), was by Cessair, the female leader of a predominantly female expeditionary force. With three men and fifty women, denied admission to Noah's ark because they were robbers and thieves, Cessair began the succession of invasions which, after flood, plague and innumerable battles, climaxed with the establishmentofa Gaelic society under the Sons ofMil. While the Milesian myth is a clearIrishing of the genesis, captivity, exodus and arrival at the Promised Land of the Israelites, the story of Cessair is older, more primordial, even arguably more authentically Celtic in its elevation of woman. The first man, Ladra, died, according to one version, of sexual excess; Cessair's father, Bith, moved north and died in the Flood; the remaining man, Fintan, survived the fifty women's appetite by hiding in a cave until after the Flood. Cessair thus joins that formidable regiment of Irish women, whether in legend, life, or literature, who have captured the imagination over the centuries, many of whom reappear in this collection of papers of the Fourteenth International Seminar of the Canadian Association for Irish HUMANITIES 415 Studies. Curiously enough, Cessair's distinctive contribution to Irish culture remains unnoticed, although other women epitomizing Ireland are recorded here - Queen Maeve (whose name means 'drunkenness' or 'the intoxicating one')' Deirdre, the Irish Helen; the Hag of Beare; the nun Lfadan' the triple Brigid; Gnlinne O'Malley, the pirate queen; down to more recent Cathleen ni Houlihans such as Maud Gonne or Countess Markiewicz. Triplicity as well as duplicity distinguishes many of them: before the Sons of Mil could succeed, they first had to placate the triple goddess, Ireland, in the form of Eriu, Fodla, and Banba. At least two other women deserve inclusion: Sybil Feiritear, who threw herself from her castle battlements after Cromwellians hanged her husband-poet-Iord, Piaras; and Eibhlin Dhubh Ni Chonaill, whose 'Lament for Art 6 Laoghaire' is one of the great Gaelic poems. The grossly erotic figure of Sile-na-Gig also is surprisingly absent. Neither the archaeological nor the legal record suggests evidence of a matriarchal society existing in early Ireland. Yet Maire Cruise O'Brien is surely right, in 'The Female Principle in Gaelic Poetry: one of the most stimulating papers collected here, when she argues for 'a dynamic element, specifically felt as feminine, at work in the generating of Irish literature, of Irish poetry in particular.' For what this collection vividly iIIustrates is the persistent presence of the White Goddess and her archetypal variants...