Celtic Mythology and the Turn of Samhain
By JAMES ACKEN
Mist and rain shrouded Burnaby Mountain for most of October, and only the full moon cleared it away in preparation for the first frost.
Walking my dog and son along the hoary paths of early morning, I couldn't keep from musing on the many associations with this time when winter begins to palpably suggest itself in the world around us.
Many well know that Hallowe'en, or Samhain, marks the beginning of the old Gaelic year. A Gaulish calendar engraved probably during the Second Century in bronze and found by a farmer ploughing his field in 1897, names the first Celtic month Samonios, and while some argue that this month should properly be considered a summer month, it corresponded most probably to our November.
The festival that began this month in the Gaelic world of early medieval Scotland and Ireland lasted for three days in which the Gael feasted, played sports and held large formal gatherings.
Early medieval Gaelic stories provide tantalizing glimpses of the tradition surrounding the festival of Samhain.
The story called Serglige Con Chulaind, "The Sick-Bed of Cu Chulainn," describes the pre-Christian warriors collecting the tongues of their fallen opponents during the year for comparison during the festival and swearing by the demons in their swords that the number was not padded by adding the tongues of butchered animals.
Echtraí Nera, "The Adventures of Nera," describe events of one Samhain when Nera, one of the many early Irish heroes, braves the horrors of that night and, assisting the talking corpse of a thief hanged at the cross-roads, gains entrance into a nearby ancient burial mound in order to avert the destruction of his people by hostile faeries.
This early tradition, conservative in nature and inclusive in character, reveals a mythology suffused with a great respect, and even love for the wilderness - even wildness itself.
The ancient kings of the Gael received their kingship only after uniting with the goddess of the land, most often encountered unexpectedly on hunting expeditions and at a well deep in the wilderness. She is always old and frightening to look upon, but transforms into a beautiful young woman at the consummation of her marriage to the king.
She is hardly tamed by marriage, and the king's death is always presided over by his queen offering him a last drink from a chalice of death. Many of the tales relating such kingly deaths take place at Samhain; their marriage taking place at Beltaine - the opposite and brught end of the year.
The king always breaks his gessa, the sacred injunctions placed on him earlier in life, and becomes, as described in the death-tale of Conaire Mór Mac Etarscél, "cursed by the spirits" and subject to death.
Conaire's enemies see his own champion named Mac Cecht as a wilderness complete with mountain ranges, vast lakes and deep forests.
Drawn from the Sídhe, the burial mounds already mentioned in connection with Nera's adventures, Mac Cecht serves to show us that the supernatural forces of the wilds supported Conaire's reign even as his kingship extended from them.
Conaire's death at Samhain, when these otherworldly forces of the wilderness were at the peak of their destructive power, aligns his reign with the natural turning of the seasons.
The famed Tuatha Dé Danann, manifesting the later Christian memory of the old continental gods, are all bound in one way or another to this very Celtic connection to the wilderness.
Their cults in many ways set the community of faith in relationship with the wilderness around them. Some gods and goddesses acted as representations of the land itself, as with the goddesses Arduinna, Sequanna or Boand, who gave their names to the forest of the Ardennes, the river Seine and the Boyne respectively.
Other gods like Taranis, with his thunderbolts and great six spoked wheel, and Sucellos, with his great lance and cauldron, represented physical processes or qualities: storms and the cycles of the year with Taranis and the fertility of the earth with Sucellos.
As we endure the wet of this, the first period of darkness in the long night of the year, cocooned in the warmth of our houses, buildings and cars, we would do well to recall the fascination and respect paid to the wilds by our forebears.
The lunacy and lawlessness of Hallowe'en night, with which almost all are familiar and to which our customs of costumes and candy only dimly pay respect, still manifests this wild quality recognized by our ancestors as a kind of divinity.
Even the difficulties of winter, reduced by our modern comforts to mere inconvenience, were part of a cycle integral to their informing mythology. Perhaps the rain, mist and even the ice of deeper winter will seem less miserable, thinking on the turning of the year through the millennia old festivals of our Celtic heritage.
Dr. James Acken is the Assistant Coordinator for Simon Fraser's Centre for Scottish Studies. Specializing in the Medieval Gaelic culture of Scotland and Ireland, Dr. Acken teaches courses on literature, history, mythology and religion for the Humanities Department. He can be reached for further information at acken@sfu.ca.
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