Early Irish Myths and Sagas - Jeffrey Gantz [91]
Cú Chulaind and Lóeg followed the host, then, until they reached Cú Chulaind’s fort, and they slept there. Cú Chulaind entertained the Ulaid for forty nights with one feast; after that, they departed and left their blessing with him. Ailill, moreover, came north to Ulaid to visit. He was given the width of his face in gold and silver and seven cumals for each of his sons; then he returned to his own land, in peace and harmony with the Ulaid. Thereafter, Conchubur’s kingship was unimpaired for as long as he lived.
Bricriu’s Feast
Introduction
‘Bricriu’s Feast’, perhaps the most characteristic Ulster Cycle story, has just about everything: a mythic subtext, a heroic competition, visits to and from the otherworld, elements of humour and parody and a rambling, patchwork structure. The mythic subtext comprises the beheading sequence known to English literature from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; but there, even though the tale is of later date, the regeneration theme is clearer because the ritual slaying takes place at New Year (the English equivalent of Samuin) and because the earth-goddess figure (the Green Knight’s wife) is present. Irish tradition frequently presents otherworld judges as large, ugly churls in rough, drab clothing; one might also compare Cú Ruí’s appearance with that of Arawn at the outset of ‘Pwyll Lord of Dyved’. As for the Green Knight’s colour, which has led some to identify him as a vegetation figure, grey and green are not always clearly distinguished in Irish – the word glass, for example, might signify either colour.
The actual text, or theme, of ‘Bricriu’s Feast’ is much simpler: the contest among Lóegure Búadach, Conall Cernach and Cú Chulaind for the champion’s portion – that is, for the biggest and best serving at feasts and for the privilege of sitting at Conchubur’s right. The competition takes the folktale form wherein each of three brothers attempts a feat (Cú Chulaind, of course, is the youngest).
Bricriu, whose sobriquet Nemthenga means ‘poison tongue’, is a mischief-maker, an Irish Lóki; yet he seldom perpetrates any permanent or serious damage (such as the death of Baldur). ‘Bricriu’s Feast’ is, in fact, comic as well as heroic. Although Bricriu threatens to turn the Ulaid against one another, to set father against son and mother against daughter, it is not until he threatens to set the breasts of each Ulaid women beating against each other that the chieftains agree to attend his feast. The risibility of Fedelm, Lendabair and Emer racing each other to the drinking house, their suspicions raised as high as their skirts, cannot have escaped the storyteller; neither can the spectacle of Bricriu’s beautiful house left lopsided, nor that of Bricriu himself thrown down on to the garbage heap and reappearing at the door so filthy with dirt and mud that the Ulaid do not recognize him.
The structure of ‘Bricriu’s Feast’ leaves something to be desired. Doubtless the storyteller has stretched his material (and his host’s hospitality), and perhaps he has tried to reconcile conflicting traditions; still, the resultant repetitions and duplications must have sounded better in a chieftain’s banquet hall than they look in print, and it is also fair to presume some degree of deterioration in both transmission and transcription.
‘Bricriu’s Feast’ is the ultimate source for Yeats’s play The Green Helmet.
Bricriu’s Feast
Bricriu Nemthenga prepared a great feast for Conchubut son of Ness and all of Ulaid. He spent an entire year preparing this feast: he had an ornamented mansion built for the guests, and he had it erected at Dún Rudrige. Bricriu’s house was built in the likeness of the Cráebrúad at Emuin Machae, but his house surpassed the Cráebrúad as to materials and workmanship, beauty and decoration, pillars and façades, carvings and lintels, radiance and beauty, comeliness and excellence – in short, it surpassed