Celtic Mythology

Voyages of the Heroes

"There are three times fifty distant islands in the ocean to the west of us -each one of them twice or three times the size of Ireland" - say the bards. In our legends, the hero must undertake a journey through these mystical lands, usually at the instigation of a beautiful female of the Sidhe people, from the land beneath the waves. She appears to him bearing a silver bough from an apple tree and can only be seen by him. The hero is then transported beyond the realm of human senses aboard a magical crystal boat, or is seen to be taken down below the surface of a lake, where he finds himself in a strange unfamiliar landscape. Here his great adventure begins. He journeys westward through the ocean and visits wondrous islands, some fraught with dangerous demonic beasts that he must overcome, others are of indescribable harmonious beauty, of peace and bounty.

We find that when he reaches the end of his travels he meets the Great Ones of Celtic mythology - the Gods. He is taken to meet Cessair, the great goddess from before the Flood, who records the histories of Her people. She relates to him all that has ever been up until his present time and, in some cases, gives prophecy of the future. He is also shown to a well surrounded by a copse of hazel, the boughs dropping scarlet nuts into the overflowing well which forms the five streams in which salmon are feeding on the fallen nuts. It is explained to him that these streams are of the five senses which flow into the world of mankind, and that to have all wisdom, he must drink of these waters and taste the flesh of the Salmon of Knowledge.

Invariably, our hero finds himself transported back to his own world after performing some task in aid of the denizons of the Otherworld and a magical present is bestowed on him for his help. There are numerous examples, such as a cup that is always full of choice wine; an invincible sword; a cauldron which re-animates the dead and so on. He also finds in his many weeks of voyaging in the Otherworld islands that he has left his own world for only a few minutes. Or sometimes the reverse is the case when, after a short time away, centuries have passed in his own land.

However, this state of affairs is not the case in all of the heroes' journeys. In the voyages of one hero, he sought these Otherworld islands at his own instigation and not at the invitation of the female with the silver bough. He, with his company of men, found after many hardships and loss of numbers the magical Isle of Women, and tarried there in feasting and lovemaking on this isle of delights and pleasures. However, after three years he became sad and homesick for his land and the people of Eire, and despite warnings and protestations from the women of that isle, he sailed away eastward towards home. After some time he reached the West coast of Ireland, where upon beaching one of the company jumped ashore. He started to age rapidly, died and became dust and blew away on the wind. Our hero withdrew the boat from the shore and sailed up the coast until he spied people on the beach. He hailed them, asking for news of his kin and friends, mentioning them by name. He was told that they had heard of them in legends told by the old man of the place at the winter's tale telling. Whereupon he understood that hundreds of years had elapsed in Ireland during the five years of his voyaging. He turned his boat west again and sailed away with the setting sun.

These legends, though exaggerated and fanciful in language to be entertaining, had a far more serious purpose. To the unenlightened, they were the stories of the gods of the people in tune with the culture and sagas and religion of the tribe. To the initiated, the legends were full of symbolism and instruction on the nature of the Otherworld and its approach by the warrior-shamanistic priesthood. On a third level in the spiritual mode, they contained the religious ideology.

Indeed, it was accurate for the bards to say as an introduction to the rendition of a legend: "I have a tale to tell. These words are not for all of you, it is for those who have ears to listen and know the language of the trees." What exactly do these islands mean? What connection do they have with the Celtic tree alphabet? How do the legends carry symbolism in story form? These are the obvious questions that arise from the previous statements I have made. I shall try to explain.

This land, at the farthest west of the European continent, was the final outpost for the early Bronze Age westward migrations, halted by the wild expanse of the North Atlantic ocean. Indeed, the first recorded invaders, Partholon, arrived in Ireland to find the aboriginal people, the Fir Domnu, worshipping the Earth Mother Domnu and Her pantheon of lesser deities. These people had legends of a fabulous land out in the ocean which represented the abode of their gods. The islands that lay to the west were stepping stones to this magical land that was the Earthly paradise and the abode of their dead. They called this land Hy-Bresail.

In the legends of these people, this land was at one time above the waves, but was sunk by a great flood during the battle between the forces of order and the forces of the great Dragon of Chaos. As is common, the invading people of Partholon brought their gods of the realms of the sun with them - the Tuatha De Danann of the goddess Danu. In the course of time, during the cultural mix, the islands which represented the way to the Earthly Paradise became the island pathways to the realms of the sun. The Tuatha became the lords of light and order, relegating the Fomoire, or Fir Domnu, to the Land Under Wave, where they came to represent the forces of chaos and darkness.

Each one of the islands represents a step and an achievement in each life or a lesson to be learned in the journeys between life, death and rebirth. Like stepping stones, all have to be crossed on the spiritual journey to the Summerlands. As each month in the year has a tree, so each island has a tree, also a colour, number, symbol, goddess, god, function and totem animal as a guide. All of these correspondences are carried in the legends in coded form.

As we always quote, the Celts see things on three levels. The islands also have their physical counterparts and alot of the Western Isles still carry their original function within their Celtic names and study of this would be rewarding.

In summary, the islands are on three levels or dimensions, they stretch through the material planes to the non-material world of pure spirit - the Summerlands, Tir nan Og and on another level to elemental kingdoms of the Earthly Paradise; "Tir fo Thuinn" - Land Under Wave. I hope that by now I am beginning to portray our Celtic ancestors' view of life and death. He saw duality of the worlds bonded by the overlying world of Spirit, that is the conscious, the unconscious, Spirit. Body, mind and Spirit. He also saw his land as a living entity and a reflection of the Cosmos, a paradise of flesh, the Otherworld as a paradise of the mind and the Summerlands as all three in perfection.

It will be noted by the female readers that I have written this article from a masculine point of view. This does not in any way imply that our religion is patriarchal. In my two accounts of the legends, only the hero who travels the Otherworlds and returns to tell the tale is the hero who is worthy to woo the Lady and is taken by consent into Her femininity. He enters the waters of the womb and is consumed by the Sheela-na-gig. In our system, the human female stands in equality with the male, in the world of the Sidhe she is superior.

I have only scratched the surface of what is a study that could run into several books. It is also fair to point out that most of the modern publications on the subject of Celtic legends are not very helpful in regard to identifying the correspondences that I have mentioned. To understand, we are dealing with an oral tradition in which the exactness of word accuracy was a matter of professional pride to the bardic priests of those times. Our first problem starts when the quills of the Christian monks transcribe the Gaelic into Latin, this being the written language of the time. Now, we must remember that however much we owe to these first scribes, they were not of the old ways and our legends in some cases suffered the first of the many losses of original content. This state of affairs continued right up to medieval times, when many of the legends degenerated to the state of becoming folklore. During the following centuries, owing to Churchianity and its politics on heresy, our much altered legends lay in dormancy until renewal of interest occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Here is where the worst decimation occurs.

These well meaning people updated the language and style of the legends to a more palatable form to suit the tastes of modern times, and in complete ignorance of the original purpose, omitted the offensive bits in deference to the morality of their time. Unfortunately, it is to these sources of materials that most of the modern writers turn. If one takes a look at the ancient manuscripts such as "The Book of the Dun Cow" or "The Book of Leinster", both from the Gaelic tradition, and compare them with modern renditions, the point I make will become obvious. In a modern literary sense, these manuscripts would not be good reading, as they contain what seems to be ludicrously belaboured passages describing the personages involved in the sagas, at what would be considered the expense of the story line. It is within these omissions that the coded correspondences are lost. These personages were often Otherworld visitors and the belaboured descriptions instructed the shaman in the required symbolism for his ritual otherworld travel.

Luck is still with the Celtic seeker in his link with the past, despite the ravages of time. Within Celtic Gaeldom, there still exist the original manuscripts - some have not even been as yet translated. This, combined with the survival of the Bardic tradition until relatively recent times means that the original versions have not all been lost. This is also true for the Brythonic Welsh people. If people of mainland Albion care to examine such manuscripts as those that make up the "Mabinogi" and are prepared to look beyond the medieval Arthurian romances with new vision, I am sure they will find the same underlying truths. After all is said, Celticism is a culture and not, as many people would have it, a name for an individual race of people.

[(c) Dalriada Celtic Heritage Trust]

[Author: S. McSkimming DALRIADA MAGAZINE 1987]

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