Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [141]
With a band of his best warriors, the Fianna, MacCool sets off in pursuit of the lovers, and much of the story describes the adventures of Diarmuid and Grainne as they flee MacCool, aided by Oenghus, the god of love. The chase goes on for sixteen years until the jilted MacCool relents and pardons the lovers, who settle down at Tara, legendary seat of Irish kings.
One day, Diarmuid is mortally wounded by a magical boar on a hunt with MacCool. MacCool has the power to save his friend’s life simply by giving him water. But as he cups his hands and fills them with the water, it trickles through his fingers, and Diarmuid dies.
The tales in the Fenian Cycle also focus on MacCool’s son, Oisin, and his grandson, Oscar. In one of the most prominent of these tales, Oisin, a handsome warrior-poet, is hunting when he encounters Niamh, the goddess of the Irish otherworld. The two are smitten and gallop off together to the Land of Forever Young—a place where sorrow, pain, and old age are unknown. The lovers have a child there, but Oisin is homesick for Ireland and misses his family. Niamh agrees to let him return and gives him her magic horse. But it comes with one condition: he must not dismount.
Once back in Ireland, Oisin realizes that three hundred years have passed since he left. Stopping to help some men move a boulder, he falls from his horse and immediately ages the three hundred lost years, crumbling in the dust. In another, clearly Christianized version of the story, Oisin ages horribly but does not die. Instead, he meets St. Patrick and Oisin recounts the stories of his father, compiled in another Irish collection, The Interrogation of the Old Men (c. 1200 CE).
As legendary Irish figures, both Finn MacCool and Oisin appear in the works of writers of generations of great Irish writers, notably in the poem “The Wanderings of Oisin” (1889) by William Butler Yeats. Perhaps most famous of all, Finn MacCool is the model for the character of Finn in James Joyce’s experimental novel Finnegans Wake (1939).
What do the Celts have to do with Halloween?
In one of the legends of Finn MacCool, his first act as the guardian of the king’s palace at Tara is to rid the court of the malicious goblin Aillen, who set fire to the palace every year at the festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Celebrated from the night of October 31 to November 1, this New Year festival traditionally marked the end of summer and the harvest as well as the beginning of the dark, cold winter. It was a time of year often associated with death, when animals were brought in from the fields and slaughtered.
It was also considered a time of great danger. During the festival, the barriers between the worlds of the living and the dead were broken, “the curtain was drawn back,” and spirits from the “other world” could walk the earth. On the night of October 31, the spirits of the dead caused mischief and damaged crops. But their presence wasn’t all bad—they made it easier for the Druids to make predictions about the future.
Like many Celtic festivals, Samhain spurred the Druids to build huge sacred bonfires, sacrifice animals, and gather people together to burn crops in honor of the Celtic gods. During this fire festival, the Celts wore masks and costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.
Are you starting to get the picture? “Trick or treat for UNICEF” and “Elvira, Queen of the Night” got started two thousand years ago, at a pagan Irish bonfire.
When the Samhain celebration was over, the Celts relit their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire, to help protect them during the coming winter. Some scholars believe that the Lindow Man (see above) may have been a symbolic stand-in executed in a ritual slaying of the king, who was killed three times—by garroting, clubbing, and stabbing—during the feast of Samhain.