Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Jeffrey Gantz [46]
Conall Cernach escaped, though three fifties of spears had gone through his shield hand; he went to his father’s house, bearing fragments of his sword and his shield and his two spears in his hand. He met his father at the entrance to the courtyard at Tailtiu. ‘Swift the dogs that have chased you, my son,’ said his father. ‘It was a combat with young heroes, old warrior,’ said Conall. ‘Have you news of Da Derga’s hostel? Does your lord live?’ asked his father. ‘He does not,’ Conall replied. I swear by the god my people swear by, it is a coward who would come away alive and leave his lord with the enemy,’ said the father. ‘My wounds are not white, old warrior,’ said Conall. He showed his father his shield arm and the three fifties of wounds that had been inflicted upon it. His shield had protected that hand, but it had not protected his right hand. That had been attacked over two thirds of its length; it had been hacked and cut and wounded and riddled, but the sinews had not permitted it to fall off. ‘That hand injured many tonight, and it was much injured,’ said Amorgen. ‘True, old warrior,’ said Conall Cernach. ‘There are many to whom it served drinks of death at the entrance to the hostel tonight.’
The Dream of Óengus
Introduction
‘The Dream of Óengus’ is a continuation of the opening episode of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’, wherein Bóand and the Dagdae sleep together and Óengus is born. Although the story survives only in a relatively late source, the fifteenth-century Egerton 1782 manuscript, it is mentioned in the Book of Leinster, in a list of preliminary tales to ‘The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’.
Even so, ‘The Dream of Óengus’ does not appear to be especially old. The themes are familiar to Celtic literature: love before first sight (as in the Welsh tale ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’), the initiative of the otherworld woman (as by Rhiannon in ‘Pwyll Lord of Dyved’ and by Macha in ‘The Labour Pains of the Ulaid’), the wasting away of the mortal lover (Gilvaethwy in ‘Math Son of Mathonwy’, Ailill Angubae in ‘The Wooing of Étaín’), the unwillingness of the woman’s father (as in ‘How Culhwch Won Olwen’ and ‘The Wooing of Étaín’) and the transformation of the lovers into swans (Mider and Étain). And Bóand and the Dagdae are scarcely recognizable as people of the Síde: Bóand is unable to help her son at all. and the Dagdae has to ask assistance from the king of the Síde of Mumu. The meeting and transformation of Óengus and Cáer Ibormeith at Samuin, a time of changes, does evince a genuinely ancient Celtic motif; and the tone of the story, while romantic, is still restrained. The link to ‘The Cattle Raid of Cúailnge’, however, is pure artifice.
One puzzling feature of this story is Óengus’s failure to reveal the cause of his illness. In the Welsh story ‘Math Son of Mathonwy’, Gilvaethwy falls in love with Math’s virgin footholder; in the second section of ‘The Wooing of Étaín’, Ailill falls in love with his brother’s wife. Both men fall ill from love, but neither will reveal his guilty secret, and it may be that this idea of silence was transferred, inappropriately (since Óengus has no cause for guilt), as part of the overall theme of wasting sickness.
‘The Dream of Óengus’ is the ultimate source of Yeats’s poem ‘The Dream of Wandering Aengus’.
The Dream of Óengus
Óengus was asleep one night when he saw something like a young girl coming towards the head of his bed, and she was the most beautiful woman in Ériu. He made to take her hand and draw her to his bed, but, as he welcomed her, she vanished suddenly, and he did not know who