‘Geasa’ – the
magical prohibitions or tabus laid upon Irish heroes such as Cú Chulainn – must
have been very difficult and frustrating to endure, especially since it seems
to have been the fate of most heroes eventually to violate them. (Difficult to pronounce as well, for the non-Irish among us. I'm indebted to a recent Facebook discussion in which an expert offered an approximate pronunciation for geas as 'gash'.)
You remember how the young Setanta, son of Sualtim, gained
the name Cú Chulain (‘Chulain’s Hound’), after killing the fierce guard-dog
belonging to the smith Chulain? When Chulain complains of his hound’s death,
the boy offers to make it up to him:
“If there is a whelp of the same
breed to be had in Ireland,
I will rear him and train him until he is as good a hound as the one killed,
and until that time, Chulain,” he said, “I myself will be your watch-dog, to
guard your goods and your cattle and your house.”
(Trans. Lady
Augusta Gregory, ‘Cuchulain of Muirthemne’,1907)
After that, Cú Chulain was laid under two geasa: never to refuse a meal offered to
him by a woman, and never to eat the flesh of a dog. At the end of his life, when he is riding out
to fight against Maeve’s great army, these geasa
are used against him by three witches at least as deadly as those in 'Macbeth':
After a while he saw three hags,
and they blind of the left eye, before him in the road, and they having a
venomous hound they were cooking with charms on rods of the rowan tree. And he was going by them, for he knew it was
not for his good they were there.
But one of the hags called to him,
“Stop a while with us, Cuchulain.” “I
will not stop with you,” said Cuchulain.
“That is because we have nothing better than a dog to give you,” said
the hag. “If we had a grand, big cooking
hearth, you would stop and visit us, but because it is only a little that we
have, you will not stop.”
…Then he went over to her, and
she gave him the shoulder-blade of the hound out of her left hand, and he ate
it out of his left hand. And he put it down on his left thigh, and the hand
that took it was struck down, and the thigh he put it on was struck through and
through, so that the strength that was in them before left them.
It couldn’t be more ominous, and presently, in forlorn
battle against the odds, Cú Chulain is mortally wounded and straps himself to a
pillar-stone, or standing stone, west of the lake of Muirthemne, so that he
will not meet his death lying down: and his horse, the Grey of Macha, defends
him with its teeth and hooves, until at last the hero dies and the crows
descend upon him. Fans of ‘The
Weirdstone of Brisingamen’ will notice that Alan Garner has used this scene for
the death of the dwarf Durathror, who straps himself to the pillar of Clulow on
Shuttlingslow, defending Colin and Susan from the morthbrood.
In ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’, which is another
part of the Ulster cycle, King Conaire, whose father was a magical
bird-man, is placed under a truly startling variety of geasa:
“Do not go righthandwise round Tara and lefthandwise around Bregia. Do not hunt the evil
beasts of Cerna. Do not go out beyond
Tara every ninth night; do not settle the quarrel of two of your own people; do
not sleep in a house you can see the firelight shining from after sunset; do
not let one woman or one man come into the house where you are after sunset; do
not let three Reds go before you to the House of Red.”
But of course, one by one Conaire breaks all the geasa. He goes out to make peace between
two of his subject lords, and travels the wrong way around Tara
and Bregia to avoid raiders; he hunts the
beasts of Cerna without realising what they are.
And it was the Sidhe that had
made that Druid mist of smoke about him, because he had begun to break his
bonds.
At last, on his way to find shelter in the hostelry of his
friend Da Derga of Leinster, with its seven
doors, Conaire sees himself preceded by three horsemen clad in red:
Three red bucklers they bore, and
three red spears were in their hands: three red steeds they bestrode, and three
red heads of hair were on them. Red were they all, both body and hair and
raiment, both steeds and men.
(Trans. Dr Whitley Stokes, ‘The Destruction of Da
Derga’s Hostel’, 1902)
Knowing another geas has
been broken, Conaire sends his young son Lefriflaith after the men to ask who
they are. Lefriflaith calls out to them
three times, and the third time one of them calls back that they are three of
the Sidhe, banished from the elfmounds:
Lo, my son, great the news. Weary are the steeds we ride. We ride the steeds of Donn Tetscorach from
the elf-mounds. Though we are alive we are dead. Great are the signs:
destruction of life: sating of ravens: feeding of crows: strife of slaughter:
wetting of sword-edge, shields with broken bosses after nightfall. Lo, my son!
This passage too was taken up and adapted by Alan Garner in the chapter
called ‘The Horsemen of Donn’ of ‘The Moon of Gomrath’, when Colin and Susan
kindle fire on the mound. King Conaire’s last two geasa
are broken when a lone woman comes to the door of Da Derga’s hostel (or inn): she has the Druid sight, and ill-wishes the
king:
“It is what I see for you,” she
said, “that nothing of your skin or of your flesh shall escape from the place
you are in, except what the birds will bring away in their claws. And let me
come into the house now.”
With great unwillingness the king allows the woman to enter,
though not unnaturally “none of them felt easy in their minds after what she
had said.” Finally, firelight from the
hostel is spotted by Conaire’s enemy, Ingcel the One-Eyed and his army of
reivers. They attack the hostel, great
destruction is wrought, and Conaire dies.
A last example, just as ill-fated, is the geasa placed on Diarmuid by Gráinne,
daughter of King Cormac and the promised bride of Finn MacCool. At the wedding
feast Gráinne is put off by Finn’s age (older than her father!) and falls in
love with one of his warriors, young Diarmuid.
After sending Finn a cup that makes all who drink of it fall asleep, she
asks Diarmuid to marry her, and when he refuses, she says,
I place thee under geasa, and under the bonds of heavy
druidical spells, that thou take me for thy wife before Finn and the others
awaken.
(Trans. P W
Joyce, ‘Old Celtic Romances’, 1879)
Diarmuid replies:
Evil are those geasa thou hast put on me, and evil, I
fear, will come of them.
He asks those of his friends whom Gráinne has not put to
sleep what he should do, and they all agree he must follow the geas even if it results in his
death, which of course it eventually does, though not before many others have
died first. Wounded by a boar, Diarmuid explains to Finn that Gráinne ‘put me
under heavy geasa, which for all the wealth of the world I would not break,’
and begs Finn to save his life with a drink of water cupped in his healing
hands. But, thinking of Gráinne, Finn
spills the water three times and Diarmuid dies.
So what on earth were they all about? There’s a note by PW Joyce at the back of his translation of 'Old Celtic Romances’ in which he comments,
Geasa means solemn vows,
conjurations, injunctions, prohibitions.
It would appear that individuals were often under geasa or solemn vows
to observe, or to refrain from, certain lines of conduct – the vows being
either taken on themselves voluntarily, or imposed on them, with their consent,
by others. It would appear, also, that
if one person went through the form of putting another under geasa to grant any
reasonable request, the abjured person could not refuse without loss of honour
and reputation.
Interesting as these comments are, they don’t seem quite to
cover the range and quality of all geasa. Was it a ‘reasonable request’ when Gráinne asked one
of Finn’s faithful warriors to marry her under Finn’s nose at a wedding feast
that had been arranged partly to settle an old enmity between Finn and her
father? It’s true that Diarmuid doesn’t have to agree, but the unanimous decision of all is that though
Diarmuid may decline Gráinne’s geasa, he will lose all honour if he
does.
Thus there seem to me to be different types of geasa.
Gráinne’s geas on Diarmuid is
an almost insuperable injunction to do something he would never
otherwise have dreamed of doing, and it involves him in loss of honour no matter what action he takes. The fact
that he chooses to obey the geasa
rather than keep faith with his lord shows how incredibly powerful the
injunction was considered to be. (So: not at all something you’d use to get the children to tidy up their rooms! Not
something you’d use lightly!)
Gráinne had given her father her consent to be Finn’s bride, but casually,
‘without giving much thought to the matter’:
“I know not whether he is worthy
to be thy son-in-law; but if he be, why should he not be a fitting husband for
me?”
When she sees Finn, however, she changes her mind. She uses the power of the geas
as an extreme, last-minute measure: her only chance of escape.
Other geasa,
however, are more in the style of prophetic warnings or tabus. King
Conaire is not to shoot birds, for
example, because his father was a bird-man, the male equivalent of the
swan-maidens of many folktales who can cast off their feathery skins and
appear in human form. This is a
straightforward tabu: you don’t kill the animal which is your totem, to which
you are ‘related’ by spiritual bonds and by blood.
But the complicated geasa
about not going righthanded (sunwise) about Tara or lefthanded (widdershins)
about Bregia, or following three Reds to the House of Red, or sleeping in a
house from which firelight can be seen at night, these are prophetic
warnings. They are not, perhaps, quite
as inescapable as the prophecies of Greek myths. When the oracle at Delphi
tells Oedipus he will slay his father and marry his mother, you know it’s a
done deal. No matter what Oedipus does, no matter how hard he tries, this is what will happen. The event is foretold. In the case of the Irish King Conaire,
however, the geasa merely indicate unlucky actions which ought to be avoided;
and although the assumption is that some
kind of bad luck will follow, they don’t spell out exactly what the consequences will
be. Also, the prohibitions laid down by the geasa seem arbitrary: they are in themselves innocuous
actions. We would all want
to avoid killing our fathers and marrying our mothers. But most of us could ride clockwise around Tara, or sleep in a house with firelit windows, without
coming to harm.
The geasa
piled upon Conaire spell out a sequence of actions and omens which will lead to
his death; but he cannot know this in advance. For the reader, or for the
audience hearing Conaire’s tale told or sung aloud, the geasa are a highly effective literary, poetic
device for building up tension and the sense of approaching doom. And in the same way, the two geasa laid upon Cú Chulain – not to eat
the flesh of a dog, and never to refuse an offer of food from a woman – having
lain dormant for much of the tale, snap together like the jaws of a trap as
the old hags call him to turn aside from his journey towards the army of Maeve
to taste the meat of the hound they are cooking. It’s a signal
that the end is coming, a sign of doom. And Cú Chulain
cannot escape it, although the tale makes it clear that he has the opportunity
– he may refuse, but not without
dishonour, not without falling short of his own greatness. “A great name
outlasts life,” he says – like Achilles.
Cú Chulain has already seen the Washer at the Ford:
A young girl, thin and
white-skinned and having yellow hair, washing and ever washing, and wringing
out clothing that was all stained crimson red, and she crying and keening all
the time.
“Little Hound,” said Cathbad, “do
you see what it is that young girl is washing?
It is your red clothes she is washing, and crying as she washes, because
she knows you are going to your death against Maeve’s great army. And take the warning now, and turn back
again.”
“I will not turn back” [says Cú
Chulain] …”And what is it to me, the woman of the Sidhe to be washing red
clothing for me? It is not long till there will be clothing enough, and armour
and arms, lying soaked in pools of blood, by my own sword and spear. And if you are sorry and loth to let me go
into the fight, I am glad and ready enough myself to go into it, though I know
as well as you yourself I must fall in it.
Do not be hindering me any more then,” he said, “for, if I stay or if I
go, death will meet me all the same.”
(Trans. Lady Gregory)
I can’t confidently answer the question of whether geasa were ever truly used in real life, outside the tales and the
epics, but I would hazard a guess that they were, just as we know that the oracles were
regularly consulted in ancient Greece and in Rome. I’m willing to bet that there were geasa - prohibitions, tabus - against
the killing or eating of various animals associated with ancestry and with
luck, like Conaire’s bird/spirit father, and Cú Chulain’s iconic struggle with
the hound which gave him his name. Once
Cú Chulain had – effectively – become a
hound, as he did when he offered himself to Chulain the smith in exchange for
the dog he had killed, then in a sense all dogs became his kin. Of course he could not eat them.
I’m willing also to believe there were geasa or prohibitions concerning all kinds of other omens and lucky
or unlucky actions or directions, because after all they still exist
today: feng shui, not walking under ladders, not having thirteen at a
dinner table. But the geas that one person could lay upon another, to compel them to do something even against their will and honour - that's something else again, and as far as I know doesn't seem to appear in other mythologies. Did it ever exist? Was it a metaphor for what we now call emotional blackmail? Or was it something far more fearsome and holy, reserved perhaps for special occasions, for religio-political purposes? Was it a remnant of Druidical power?
Picture credits:
Cuchulain in Battle by Joseph Christian Leyendecker, Wikimedia Commons
Grainne - artist unknown, image from this link http://www.squidoo.com/diarmuid-and-grainne where you can find more Irish and Celtic stuff from http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/susannaduffy - if anyone recognises the artist please let me know and I will gladly credit him or her.
Statue of Cuchulainn by Oliver Sheppard in the window of the GPO, Dublin - commemorating the 1916 rising.
Source: Wikipedia, under Creative Commons License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cuchulain_at_GPO.jpg#filelinks
Statue of Cuchulainn by Oliver Sheppard in the window of the GPO, Dublin - commemorating the 1916 rising.
Source: Wikipedia, under Creative Commons License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cuchulain_at_GPO.jpg#filelinks
I have always thought that geasa are every bit as unavoidable as those oracles in Greek mythology - just as in a folktale, when a character is warned not to do something and invariably does, unintentionally, and you just KNOW that they won't have a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic post, Kath! I have always felt Grainne's geas on Diarmuid was unfair. It's the same story as Tristram and Yseult of even, in my opinion, the ur-legend of Gwnwyfhar and Mordred (Madron).But this version takes all agency away from D. just as the later love potion motif does for Tristan and Isolde.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post, Kath. It took me right back there to the middle counties of my childhood (County Laois) and the wonderful tales around the fire. I LOVE the painting of Grainne, the russet-haired beauty in white.
ReplyDelete