Others are concerned with the great King Conor mac Nessa, and the most known and beautiful of these is the sorrowful tale of Deirdré. There are many others of the various heroes and noble women who belonged to the courts of Conor and of his enemy Queen Maev of Connaght. The Carving of mac Datho's Boar, the story of Etain and Midir, and the Vengeance of Mesgedra, contained in this book belong to these miscellaneous tales unconnected with the main saga of Cuchulain.
The second cycle is linked to the first, not by history or race, but by the fact that the great personages in the first have now become the gods who intervene in the affairs of the wars and heroes of the second. They take part in them as the gods do in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lugh, the Long-Handed, the great Counsellor of the Tuatha De Danaan, is now a god, and is the real father of Cuchulain, heals him of his wounds in the Battle of the Ford, warns him of his coming death, and receives him into the immortal land. The Morrigan, who descends from the first cycle, is now the goddess of war, and is at first the enemy and afterwards the lover of Cuchulain. Angus, The Dagda, Mananan the sea-god, enter not only into the sagas of the second cycle, but into those of the third, of the cycle of Finn. And all along to the very end of the stories, and down indeed to the present day, the Tuatha De Danaan appear in various forms, slowly lessening in dignity and power, until they end in the fairy folk in whom the Irish peasants still believe. They are alive and still powerful in the third—the Fenian—cycle of stories, some of which are contained and adorned in this book. In their continued presence is the only connexion which exists between the three cycles. No personages of the first save these of the gods appear in the Heroic cycle, none of the Heroic cycle appears in the Fenian cycle. Seventeen hundred years, according to Irish annalists, separate the first from the second, more than two hundred years separate the second from the beginning of the third.
The third cycle is called Fenian because its legends tell, for the most part, of the great deeds of the Féni or Fianna, who were the militia employed by the High King to support his supremacy, to keep Ireland in order, to defend the country from foreign invasion. They were, it seems, finally organized by Cormac mac Art, 227 A.D.(?) the grandson of Conn the Hundred Fighter. But they had loosely existed before in the time of Conn and his son Art, and like all mercenary bodies of this kind were sometimes at war with the kings who employed them. Finally, at the battle of Gowra, they and their power were quite destroyed. Long before this destruction, they were led in the reign of Cormac by Finn the son of Cumhal, and it is around Finn and Oisín the son of Finn, that most of the romances of the Fenian cycle are gathered. Others which tell of the battles and deeds of Conn and Art and Cormac and Cairbre of the Liffey, Cormac's son, are more or less linked on to the Fenians. On the whole, Finn and his warriors, each of a distinct character, warlike skill and renown, are the main personages of the cycle, and though Finn is not the greatest warrior, he is their head and master because he is the wisest; and this masterdom by knowledge is for the first time an element in Irish stories.
If the tales of the first cycle are mythological and of the second heroic, these are romantic. The gods have lost their dreadful, even their savage character, and have become the Fairies, full often of gentleness, grace, and humour. The mysterious dwelling places of the gods in the sea, in unknown lands, in the wandering air, are now in palaces under the green hills of Ireland, or by the banks of swift clear rivers, like the palace of Angus near the Boyne, or across the seas in Tir-na-n-Óg, the land of immortal youth, whither Niam brings Oisín to live with her in love, as Morgan le Fay brought Ogier the Dane to her fairyland. The land of the Immortals in the heroic cycle, to which, in the story of Etain and Midir in this book, Midir brings back Etain after she has sojourned for a time on earth, is quite different in conception from the Land of Youth over the far seas where delightfulness of life and love is perfect. This, in its conception of an unknown world where is immortal youth, where stormless skies, happy hunting, strange adventure, gentle manners dwell, where love is free and time is unmarked, is pure romance. So are the adventures of Finn against enchanters, as in the story of the Birth of Oisín, of Dermot in the Country under the Seas, in the story of the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacar, of the wild love-tale of Dermot and Grania, flying for many years over all Ireland from the wrath of Finn, and of a host of other tales of enchantments and battle, and love, and hunting, and feasts, and discoveries, and journeys, invasions, courtships, and solemn mournings. No doubt the romantic atmosphere has been deepened in these tales by additions made to them by successive generations of bardic singers and storytellers, but for all that the original elements in the stories are romantic as they are not in the previous cycles.
Again, these Fenian tales are more popular than the others. Douglas Hyde has dwelt on this distinction. "For 1200 years at least, they have been," he says, "intimately bound up with the thought and feelings of the whole Gaelic race in Ireland and Scotland." Even at the present day new forms are given to the tales in the cottage homes of Ireland. And it is no wonder. The mysterious giant forms of the mythological period, removed by divinity from the sympathy of men; the vast heroic figures of Cuchulain and his fellows and foes, their close relation to supernatural beings and their doings, are far apart from the more natural humanity of Cormac and Finn, of Dermot and Goll, of Oisín and Oscar, of Keelta, and last of Conan, the coward, boaster and venomous tongue, whom all the Fenians mocked and yet endured. They are a very human band of fighting men, and though many of them, like Oisín and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in these their ordinary human nature. The Connacht peasant has no difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, of Dermot and Grania, and of many others, are quite in harmony with a hundred stories, and with the temper, of Irish lovers. A closer, a simpler humanity than that of the other cycles pervades the Fenian cycle, a greater chivalry, a greater courtesy, and a greater tenderness. We have left the primeval savagery behind, the multitudinous slaughtering, the crude passions of the earlier men and women; we are nearer to civilization, nearer to the common temper and character of the Irish people. No one can doubt this who will compare the Vengeance of Mesgedra with the Chase of the Gilla Dacar.
The elaborate courtesy with which Finn and his chief warriors receive all comers, as in the story of Vivionn the giantess, is quite new, even medieval in its chivalry; so is the elaborate code of honour; so also is, on the whole, the treatment of women and their relation to men. How far this resemblance to medieval romance has been intruded into the stories—(there are some in which there is not a trace of it)—by the after editors and re-editors of the tales, I cannot tell, but however that may be, their presence in the Fenian cycle is plain; and this brings the stories into a kindlier and more pleasurable atmosphere for modern readers than that which broods in thunderous skies and fierce light over dreadful passions and battles thick and bloody in the previous cycles. We are in a gentler world.
Another more modern romantic element in the Fenian legends is the delight in hunting, and that more affectionate relation of men to animals which always marks an advance in civilization. Hunting, as in medieval romance, is one of the chief pleasures of the Fenians. Six months of the year they passed in the open, getting to know every part of the country they had to defend, and hunting through the great woods and over the hills for their daily food and their daily delight. The story of the Chase of the Gilla Dacar tells, at its beginning, of a great hunting and of Finn's men listening with joy to the cries of the hunters and the loud chiding of the dogs; and many tales celebrate the following of the stag and the wild boar from early dawn to the evening. Then Finn's two great hounds, Bran and Sceolaun, are loved by Finn and his men as if they were dear friends; and they, when their master is in danger or under enchantment wail like human beings for his loss or pain. It is true Cuchulain's horses weep tears of blood when he goes forth to his last battle, foreknowing his death; but they are immortal steeds and have divine knowledge of fate. The dogs of Finn are only dogs, and the relation between him and them is a natural relation, quite unlike the relation between Cuchulain and the horses which draw his chariot. Yet Finn's dogs are not quite as other dogs. They have something of a human soul in them. They know that in the milk-white fawn they pursue there is an enchanted maiden, and they defend her from the other hounds till Finn arrives. And it is told of them that sometimes, when the moon is high, they rise from their graves and meet and hunt together, and speak of ancient days. The supernatural has lessened since the heroic cycle. But it is still there in the Fenian.
Again, the Fenian cycle of tales is more influenced by Christianity than the others are. The mythological cycle is not only fully pagan, it is primeval. It has the vastness, the savagery, the relentlessness of nature-myths, and what beauty there is in it is akin to terror. Gentleness is unknown. There is only one exception to this, so far as I know, and that is in the story of The Children of Lir. It is plain, however, that the Christian ending of that sorrowful story is a later addition to it. It is remarkably well done, and most tenderly. I believe that the artist who did it imported into the rest of the tale the exquisite tenderness which fills it, and yet with so much reverence for his original that he did not make the body of the story Christian. He kept the definite Christian element to the very end, but he filled the whole with its tender atmosphere.
No Christianity and very little gentleness intrude into the heroic cycle. The story of Christ once touches it, but he who put it in did not lose the pagan atmosphere, or the wild fierceness of the manners of the time. How it was done may be read in this book at the end of the story of the Vengeance of Mesgedra. Very late in the redaction of these stories a Christian tag was also added to the tale of the death of Cuchulain, but it was very badly done.
When we come to the Fenian cycle there is a well-defined borderland between them and Christianity. The bulk of the stories is plainly pagan; their originals were frankly so. But the temper of their composers is more civilized than that of those who conceived the tales of the previous cycles; the manners, as I have already said, of their personages are gentler, more chivalrous; and their atmosphere is so much nearer to that of Christianity, that the new Christian elements would find themselves more at home in them than in the terrible vengeance of Lugh, the savage brutality of Conor to Deirdré, or the raging slaughterings of Cuchulain. So much was this the case that a story was skilfully invented which linked in imagination the Fenian cycle to a Christianized Ireland. This story—Oisín in the Land of Youth—is contained in this book. Oisín, or Ossian, the son of Finn, in an enchanted story, lives for 300 years, always young, with his love in Tir-na-n-Óg, and finds on his return, when he becomes a withered old man, St Patrick and Christianity in Ireland. He tells to Patrick many tales of the Fenian wars and loves and glories, and in the course of them paganism and Christianity are contrasted and intermingled. A certain sympathy with the pagan ideas of honour and courage and love enters into the talk of Patrick and the monks, and softens their pious austerity. On the other hand, the Fenian legends are gentled and influenced by the Christian elements, in spite of the scorn with which Oisín treats the rigid condemnation of his companions and of Finn to the Christian hell, and the ascetic and unwarlike life of the monks.[[4]] There was evidently in the Fenian cycle of story-telling a transition period in which the bards ran Christianity and paganism in and out of one another, and mingled the atmosphere of both, and to that period the last editing of the story of Lir and his Children may be referred. A lovely story in this book, put into fine form by Mr Rolleston, is as it were an image of this transition time—the story or How Ethne quitted Fairyland. It takes us back to the most ancient cycle, for it tells of the great gods Angus and Mananan, and then of how they became, after their conquest by the race who live in the second cycle, the invisible dwellers in a Fairy country of their own during the Fenian period, and, afterwards, when Patrick and the monks had overcome paganism. Thus it mingles together elements from all the periods. The mention of the great caldron and the swine which always renew their food is purely mythological. The cows which come from the Holy Land are Christian. Ethne herself is born in the house of a pagan god who has become a Fairy King, but loses her fairy nature and becomes human; and the reason given for this is an interesting piece of psychology which would never have occurred to a pagan world. She herself is a transition maiden, and, suddenly finding herself outside the fairy world and lost, happens on a monastery and dies on the breast of St Patrick. But she dies because of the wild wailing for her loss of the fairy-host, whom she can hear but cannot see, calling to her out of the darkened sky to come back to her home. And in her sorrow and the battle in her between the love of Christ and of Faerie, she dies. That is a symbol, not intended as such by its conceiver, but all the more significant, of the transition time. Short as it is, few tales, perhaps, are more deeply charged with spiritual meaning.