The Celtic Dragon Myth

INTRODUCTION-3

"Iseult and her mother afterwards found Tristan, and drew him out of the water, whereupon the dragon's tongue fell from his breast. And when all the folk came together to know the end of the seneschal's matter, Tristan spake—

"'Lords all, mark this marvel, I slew the dragon, and cut this tongue from out the jaws, yet this man afterwards smote it a second time to death.'

"And all the lords said, 'One thing is clear, he who came first and cut out the tongue was the man who slew the monster.' And never a man said nay."13

Wales, too, has its legends of dragons, serpents, and snakes. It seems to have been an old Welsh belief that all lizards were formerly women.14 Every Welsh farmhouse had two snakes. They never appeared until just before the death of the master or mistress of the house; then the snakes died." Parallel with this, perhaps, is the number of river names within the Celtic area that seem to contain the names of goddesses or nymphs of the stream. Such are met with in Lōchy, the Nigra Dea (black goddess) of Adamnan; in Affric, both a lake and river name, also a personal female name, from aith bhric (root), as in breac (spotted); in Nevis, where Dr MacBain rightly detected some nymph name like Nebestis; Aberdeen, Gaelic Obair-dhea’oin, with a strongly trilled r, showing that dh of old deuona (goddess, etc.) has been assimilated to the preceding word for estuary, deuona itself being a divine name, and exemplifying in a river name what Ausonius tells us was the case with sacred springs in Gaul—fons addite divis (they were dedicated to the gods) . To be included in the number is the name of the river Boyne, which under the form Bofind (white cow) yields Boyne, the name of Fraoch's mother's sister from the Sídh (Shee) or Faëry. The form Boand (genitive Bóinde), also that in the phrase in (h)ostio Boindeo (at the mouth of the Boyne) goes back on some such form as Boouinda (white cow). This

13 From Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan and Iseult, by J. L. Weston, I., 89, 98, 123. Cf. also Bedier's French retelling, Englished by Mr Belloc.

14 Trevelyan, Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales, p. 165.

recalls an Irish name for the Milky Way—bóthar bó finne (the way or path of the cow of whiteness) . But in Uist I met with the name Sliochd Uis (Milky Way), meaning seemingly "the path or way of whiteness or brightness," the root of which recurs again in Uisne (Uisnech).

But the survey of the theme would not be complete in the form in which the more modern tradition leaves it. I have therefore given the story of Fraoch from the Book of the Dean of Lismore, and also the first part of the old and important tale known as the Táin Bó Fráich, of which the following manuscripts exist: The Book of Leinster;

The Yellow Book of Lecan; Edinburgh Advocates’ Library Gaelic MS. XL.; Egerton 1782 (British Museum). This old story has been edited with all the important variants, with his wonted care and skill, by Professor Kuno Meyer in the Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie for 1902. In making my translation I tried to select from among the best of the variant readings. The last seven sections of the Táin Bó Fráich I have not translated here: they are apart from the Geste of Fraoch, and bring the hero of the narrative on further adventures elsewhere. This tale is one of the oldest of our secular narratives in Gadhelic: it belongs to about the ninth century, a period when the Scoto-Celtic idiom of Alba was one with the language of Erin. A translation was made by the late Mr J. O’Beirne Crowe, which appeared in the Royal Irish Academy Proceedings for 1870, but subsequent studies have necessitated many changes.

The name Fraoch (Fraech) is very ancient. It survives in the place name Clonfree

(Cluain Fraeich), Strokestown, Roscommon. On an Ogham stone it occurs in Netta Vroicci maqi muccoi Trenaluggo at Donaghmore, Kildare; also in Vraicci maqi Medvi on an Ogham from Rathcroghan, Roscommon. In this last it stands for (the stone) of Fraoch, son of Medb.15 Another account of the death of Fraoch than that given in what I term the Geste of Fraoch is met with in the Táin Bó Cuailnge, where he meets his death at the hands of Cuchulainn. It is noticeable that his fairy origin is pointed to, and that his death is associated with water. This episode is at a later stage in his story than that in Táin Bó Fráich, which gives the serpent encounter. He had by this time accompanied Mève's forces as recounted in the Cattle-Raid of Cuailnge (Táin Bó Cuailnge), and his healing at the hands of the folk of Fiery is to be presupposed: here again they intervene, and we hear of Fraoch's fairy-mound. Here is the Táin Bó Cuailnge version of the death of Fraoch, or Fraech:—

"They are there till next morning; then Fraech is summoned to them. 'Help us, O

Fraech,' said Medb (Mève). 'Remove from us the strait that is on us. Go before

Cuchulainn before us, if perchance you shall fight with him.'

"He set out early in the morning with nine men, till he reached Ath Fuait. He saw the warrior bathing in the river.

"'Wait here,' said Fraech to his retinue, 'till I come to the man yonder; not good is the water,' said he.

"He took off his clothes, and goes into the water to him.

15 MacAlister's Irish Oghams, pt. 3, p. 213; Journ. Roy. Soc. Antiq. Ireland, 5 ser.

"'Do not come to me,' said Cuchulainn. 'You will die from it, and I should be sorry to kill you.'

"'I shall come indeed,' said Fraech, 'that we may meet in the water; and let your play with me be fair.'

"'Settle it as you like,' said Cuchulainn.

"'The hand of each of us round the other,' said Fraech.

"They set to wrestling for a long time on the water, and Fraech was submerged. Cuchulainn lifted him up again.

"'This time,' said Cuchulainn, 'will you yield and accept your life?' "'I will not suffer it,' said Fraech.

"Cuchulainn put him under it again, until Fraech was killed. He comes to land; his retinue carry his body to the camp. Ath Fraich, that was the name of that ford for ever. All the host lamented Fraech. They saw a troop of women in green tunics16 on the body of Fraech mac Idaid; they drew him from them into the mound. Sid Fraich was the name of that mound afterwards."

Ailill's plan in compassing the death of Fraoch recalls his episode with Fergus, son of Rōg. Keating17 tells how, when Fergus was in banishment in Connaught, it happened that he was with Ailill and Mève in Magh Ai, where they had a fortress; and one day, when they went out to the shore of a lake that was near the lios (or outer court), Ailill asked Fergus to go and swim in the lake, and Fergus did so. While swimming, Mève was seized by a desire of swimming with him; and when she had gone into the lake with Fergus, Ailill grew jealous, and he ordered a kinsman of his to cast a spear at Fergus, which pierced him through the breast; and Fergus came ashore on account of the wound caused by that cast, and extracted the spear from his body and cast it in the direction of Ailill; and it pierced a gray hound that was near his chariot, and thereupon Fergus fell and died and was buried on the shore of the same lake.

Rhys points out that Ailill (written Oilill in Keating) seems cognate with

Welsh ellyll (an elf or demon), and that Mève's Ailill belongs to a race which is always ranged against the Tuatha Dé Danann. Mève he associates with the goddesses of dawn and dusk, who are found at one time consorting with bright beings and at another with dark ones, and they commonly associate themselves with water. Curious too that Mève's sisters Eithne and Clothru are associated the one with the river Inny (Eithne) in Westmeath, the other with Clothru's Isle (Inis Clothraun) in Loch Ree.

Eochaidh Feidhlioch, monarch at Tara, was Mève's father. He had three sons and three daughters—namely, Breas and Nar and Lothar, the three sons; Eithne Uathach,

16 W. Faraday's translation of The Cattle-Raid of Cuailnge, in Nutt's Grimm Library, p. 35. Fraech was descended from the people of the Sid, his mother Bebind being a fairy woman. Her sister was Boinn (the river Boyne).

17 Ed. Dinneen, ii., 209.

Clothra, and Mève of Cruachan, the three daughters, as the poet says in this quatrain:—

"Three daughters had Eochaidh Feidhlioch, Fame on a lofty seat:

Eithne Uathach, fair Mève of Cruachan,

And Clothra."18

O’Curry remarks of Mève that she seemed more calculated to govern many men than to be governed by one man. She soon abandoned Conchobar, and returned to her father, the monarch Eochaidh Feidhlioch, to Tara, who shortly after set her up as the independent queen of the province of Connaught. Through jealousy and hatred, fierce war raged between her and her former husband, Conchobar, who finally was killed by a Connaught champion, Cét Mac Magach. This Conchobar, King of Ultonia, is spoken of as being a terrestrial god among the Ultonians. His mother's name was Ness, hence he is known as Mac Nessa. This goddess name is connected with that in Loch Ness, and points to her as having been conceived of at first as a water-nymph.

This does not prejudice what reflex of historic movements these stories may imply.

Curiously, the death of Mève, no less than that of Fraoch, is associated with water. Keating's19 account is as follows:—

"When Olill had been slain by Conall Cearnach, Mève went to Inis Clothrann, on

Lough Ribh (Ree), to live; and while she resided there, she was under an obligation (ba geis di, i.e. under a taboo or gessa) to bathe every morning in the well which was at the entrance to the island. And when Forbuidhe, son of Conchobar (her former husband) heard this, he visited the well one day alone, and with a line measured from the brink of the well to the other side of the lake, and took the measure with him to Ulster, and practised thus: he inserted two poles in the ground, and tied an end of the line to each pole, and placed an apple on one of the poles, and stood himself at the other pole, and kept constantly firing from his sling at the apple that was on the top of the pole till he struck it. This exercise he practised until he had grown so dexterous that he would miss no aim at the apple. Soon after this there was a meeting of the people of Ulster and Connaught at both sides of the Shannon at Inis Clothrann; and Forbuidhe came there from the east with the Ulster gathering. And one morning, while he was there, he saw Mève bathing, as was her wont, in the forementioned well; and with that he fixed a stone in his sling and hurled it at her, and struck her in the forehead, so that she died on the spot, having been ninety-eight years on the throne of Connaught, as we have said above."20

Of Fraoch's mother Boand, elsewhere spoken of as from the Sídhe, the Bodleian Dindshenchus gives the following account: 21—

18 Dinneen's Keating, ii., 215. 19 Ed. Dineen, ii., 213. c

20 But see Book of Leinster, 1246, 125a, where the story differs considerably from that given by O’Curry, who evidently quoted Keating.

21 Trans. by Stokes, p. 34 of reprint from Folk-Lore, iii., 1892. Bóann p. xxxv now the river Boyne, which rises at the foot of Síd Nechtain, a hill in the barony of Carbury, co. Kildare. The story is versified in the Book of Leinster, 191a. See also Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 123, 556. The origin of rivers and lochs is often ascribed to mortals intruding upon secret wells. Truth lies deep at the bottom