CHAPTER
TWO
The Goddesses of
Avalon
The
nine sisters placed on Avalon by Geoffrey of Monmouth are known Irish
goddesses. I have identified these sisters as follows:
Geoffrey’s
Nine Sisters Irish Goddesses
Morgen Morrigan
Moronoe Muireann, mother of
Fionn mac
Cumhail
Mazoe Macha
(Imona /
Emain)
Gliten
Glitonea
Gliton Clidna
triplicated
Tyronoe Tuireann, sister of
Muireann
or Fionn’s
sister
Thiten
Thiten
cithara
notissima,
‘lyre-famous’ Dechtine
(the –ch-
is silent),
mother of
Cuchulainn
duplicated
and wrongly
linked to
Irish tet, theoit,
teoid,
ted, ‘harp-string’
The
argument has been made for Morgen – the later Morgan le Fay or Morgan ‘the
Fairy’ – being a native Welsh goddess. However, not a single source mentions
such a goddess prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Life of Merlin. The Morgens
found in an early Welsh genealogy featuring Glast, a fictional eponymous
founder of Glastonbury,
are male princes and cannot, therefore, be Morgen.
Geoffrey
describes Morgen thusly:
“The
one who is first among them has greater skill in healing, as her beauty
surpasses that of her sisters. Her name is Morgen, and she has learned the uses
of all plants in curing the ills of the body. She knows, too, the art of
changing her shape, of flying through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings.
At will, she is now at Brest,
now at Chartres,
now at Pavia;
and at will she glides down from the sky on to your shores. They say she had
taught astrology to her sisters…”
The
bird-form assumed by Morgen is, of course, the crow aspect of the Irish
Morrigan, the ‘Spirit-Queen’. And there is now no reason to doubt that Geoffrey
merely substituted the familiar Welsh name Morgen for Morrigan. The Morrigan
was the preeminent battle goddess of the ancient Irish, but she is also known
for being present at the death of the greatest of the Irish heroes, Cuchulainn.
This last fact may have been Geoffrey’s inspiration for having Morgen appear to
ferry away the dying Arthur. ‘The Morrigan’, as she was sometimes referred to,
also tried to seduce Cuchulainn and this sexual motif may have contributed to
Morgan le Fay’s sleeping with her brother, Arthur (see ‘Anu’ in Chapter 6).
The
Spirit-Queen resided not in Emain Ablach, but in the frightful Otherworld Cave of
Cruachan at Rathcroghan near Tulsk, Co. Roscommon. Of course, all otherworlds
are Avalon, which could be a place of both dread and delight, emotions
engendered in us by our conflicting view of places of burial as both houses for
the dead and portals to the happy afterlife. For anyone who has ever ventured
into an ancient passage grave, the sensation of exposure to numinous power is
evident. Apprehension and anticipation go hand in hand when exploring these
kinds of funeral monuments.
Muireann
was the mother of Fionn and the divine wife of Cumhail, i.e. the god Camulos
(see Chapter 6). Fionn and his fiana or ‘warrior band’ are in many ways the
Irish counterpart of Arthur and his champions. The word fiana contains the same
ancient root as Latin venatio, ‘hunting’, and so we find Fionn as Gwyn the
mighty hunter in the Arthurian tale Culhwch and Olwen. In Welsh tradition, Gwyn
became the lord of the Otherworld.
Macha
(see Imona in Chapter 6) was an important Irish horse goddess. We have seen
above that Emain Ablach belonged to her.
The
goddess Clidna was worshipped in Co. Cork. She came from Tir Tairngire or the ‘Land of Promise’, a designation for the
Otherworld, and she owned three magical birds that ate apples from a sacred
tree. We may compare these birds with those belonging to the Welsh goddess,
Rhiannon.
Tyronoe
is Tuireann or Uirne, variously the sister of Muireann or Fionn’s sister, whom
has a spell cast upon her while she is pregnant which transforms her into a
bitch. She gives birth to twin hounds, Bran and Sceolang, who become Fionn’s
prized hunting dogs.
Dechtine,
the mother of Cuchulainn by Lugh Lamhfota or Lugh of the Long-hand, is said to
come from the Newgrange passage grave on the Boyne, an Otherworld house that
belonged to Aonghus Og or Mac Og, the Irish equivalent of the Welsh Mabon the
Divine Son.
What
are we to make of the fact that Geoffrey of Monmouth inhabited Arthur’s Avalon
with Irish goddesses? Some would doubtless say that this was proof that Avalon
was a concept borrowed from the Irish. Others would go even further and claim
that if Avalon has as its denizens Irish goddesses, then Avalon itself must be
an Irish island.
I
would counter both of these statements by saying that none of the Irish sources
place all of these goddesses on Avalon. In fact, only Macha (= Imona) is
expressly associated with the Isle of Apple-trees. It seems fairly certain,
therefore, that Geoffrey selected these various goddesses from disparate Irish
sources because he lacked the names of corresponding British goddesses. The
existence of the Irish goddesses was known to him and so it was convenient to
have them preside over Arthur’s Otherworld-island.
However,
having said this, it is true that Geoffrey’s Avalon goddesses remind us to an
uncanny degree of the Gallizenas of the island of Sena, modern Ile de Sein, off
Pointe du Raz on the western coast of Brittany, mentioned by Pomponius Mela in
c. 40 CE:
“Sena
in the British sea, opposite the Ossismician coast, is remarkable for an oracle
of the Gallic God. Its priestesses, holy in perpetual virginity, are said to be
nine in number. They are called Gallizenas, and are thought to be endowed with
singular powers, so as to raise by their charms the winds and seas, to turn
themselves into what animals they will, to cure wounds and diseases incurable
by others, to know and predict the future; but this they do only to navigators
who go thither purposely to consult them.”
Various
origins for the term Gallizenas have been sought, but I think none of them very
satisfactory. This is, rather transparently, a form of Old Irish caillech or
caillechan, ‘crone, elderly woman, hag, witch’, but also ‘nun’, as the word
originally meant ‘veiled one’. And if I am right, then the placement of this
island off the coast of Brittany
is likely an error for Inis Cathach, modern Scattery Island
at the mouth of the Shannon
River in Ireland.
Shannon or Sionainn is a river-goddess name. It comes from *seno-ona and means
‘Old Goddess’. Sena, the ancient name of the Ile de Sein, would appear to have
the same root (cf. Senuna, Sena, Senua, as a goddess name on votive plaques
found near Baldock, Hertfordshire).
The
island of Inis Cathach was taken over by the
Christian Saint Senan (whose own name, probably not coincidentally, is a diminutive
of the same root found in Sionainn and means ‘old’) in the 6th century. A
strict misogynist rule was imposed that no woman could ever set foot on the
island. This was doubtless a Christian reaction to the fact that pagan
priestesses or caillechan had once inhabited the place.
A
couple of interesting legends regarding pagan worship by priestesses on Scattery Island have been preserved. First in
importance is that which concerns the péist (‘beast’) ‘Cata’ or Cathach, a
water monster similar to the female Caoranach of Lough Derg. St. Senan (about
500 CE) found this monster dwelling on Scattery Island.
The Cata devoured the saint’s smith, Narach, but Senan brought him forth again
alive. In the subsequent combat between priest and péist, the latter advanced
with ‘its eyes flashing flame, with fiery breath, spitting venom and opening
its horrible jaws,’ but Senan made the sign of the cross, and the beast
collapsed, was chained and then thrown into Doolough near Mount Callan (the
black lake, ‘Nigricantis aquae juxta montem Callain in Tuamonia’). In the
oldest (metrical) Life of Senan, the péist appears as the ‘immanis bellua’ (monstrous
beast) or ‘bestia,’ while Iniscatha is rendered ‘Belluanam Insulam’ (island of
the beast). The legend is alluded to even in the late eighth-century Calendar
of Oengus under March 8th, ‘Senan of Inis Cathaig gibbeted Naroch’s foe.’ The
story is remembered widely, and among all classes at Scattery and along both
banks of the river, at Kilkee, Kilmihil, and round Doolough and Miltown Malbay.
In the fifteenth-century details of the ‘Cathedral’ of Scattery a large-eyed
dragon with crocodile jaws is conspicuous; there was another carving at
Kilrush; and a third, - the ‘pattern-stone’ removed from Scattery and until
lately at Kilkee,—showed the Cata as ‘the amphibious beast of this blessed
Isle,’ a nondescript creature with spiked back, scales, fish tail, nose curling
up spirally, and clawed forefeet.
After
Senan had expelled the Cathach, a local chieftain called MacTail, or Mactal,
hired a druid to put a spell on the saint. However, as the druid landed on a
nearby island, a tidal wave enveloped him and swept him to his death. The
island is still pointed out as ‘Carraig a Draoi’ or The Druid’s Rock. It lies between
Hog Island and Scattery, and can be seen at
low tide.
The
‘Lady’s Grave’ is found at the low tide mark to the west of Rinn Eanaigh. It is
said to cover the grave of a young lady called Connara whose advances Senan had
repulsed. Connara is described as an Irish princess or the ‘holy nun’ who
founded the convent of Cill na gCailleach (Church of the Caillech) on the side
of Poulnasherry Bay on the mainland.
In
Chapter 13, we will examine the nine Otherworld goddesses who appear in the
early Arthurian poem The Spoils of Annwn. These goddesses are the keepers of a
magical cauldron, the prototype of the later Holy Grail.
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