Gods and Goddesses of Ireland

• Leabhar Ghabála Érenn
• /v/ /v/
• Book of the taking
• Book of Invastions
  • A number of recensions exist -- versions compiled at different times by different scribes.
  • Known to exist by the 8th century
    • Nennious — 800 AD
      • Historia Britorum
      • outline of text ~ 800
      • elaborated over time
  • By 12th centurey, 1150, Leinister
  • Course pack
    • 1916 version
    • every single word is translated
    • literal translation
      • oxiput
• Idea of the taking of Ireland
  • How Gaels came into possession of the land.
  • Attempt to show how they came to Ireland, what they found there, who was there before them.
• Monastic literati — Irish Christian monks
  • pseudo historians
  • trying to sort out various histories of those in Ireland before the Gaels

History

• In pre-Christian Ireland, time is a cyclical thing.
• The history the Irish scribes knew was as written down the the church fathers
  • linear time
  • creation, fall, the further away we move from the fall, the worse things are
  • they had no creation-fall-creation cycle of the Celtic tradition
  • Jerome Iucibius
  • parallel history
• History of the Jews, Greeks, Trojans
  • Where were the Irish?
  • The scribes took traditions and put them into a linear structure, unraveling the skeen of history and setting it out as several events.
  • Connected the native geneologies to Biblical one
    • grafted themselves onto.
  • Semitic, Hametic
  • Gomer — ancester of the Gaels

Aithech = unfree

• All who came to Ireland descended from the unfree
• This validates that the Gaels are entitled to Ireland
  • The are teh descendents of the free.
• We can see the outlines of a ntive cosmogeny
  • how the wold came into being

Cessair

• 1st to inhabit Ireland
• daughter of Bith, son of Noah
• 1st inhabitand of Ireland was a womn
  • 3 poetic names for Ireland depicted as women who represent the land
    • Eiriú
      • Banbha
    • Ireland is a woman
• Cessair is the one who comes 1st
• Another version
  • leader called Banbha
    • Banbha = little pig

1st age

• Creation to the flood

Coming to Ireland makes a clean break with the God of the New Testiment

• Marks them as 'pagans'
• Cessair — take idol
• Consulted seers
  • neither sin or evil in Ireland
  • free from rep.
  • safe fromtohe flood

50 women, 3 men

• 16 for Lathra
  • Complained that he only got 16, but dies anyway of a surfit of women
• 17 for Bith the father
  • Lathra's 16 are split up and given to him and Fintan, giveing them 25 each.
  • Bith eventually dies, too
• 17 for Fintan the consort
  • After Bith dies, he's got all 50
  • He leaves and cessair dies of grief
  • Fintan survives and is consulted in the future
    • seen as a salmon, eagle, or hawk.
  • Fintan = the ancient white/pure/holy one

Cessair and the companies of women take Ireland for the 1st time

• Later, fairy mounds (sídh)
• some mounds are inhabited entirely by women
• Posedonius speaks of a sanctuary of women
• women of special, even piestly ability, well known.

Partholan

• 278 years after the flood
• Came from native land
• Killed his mother and father so his brother could take over
• Bunch of 1sts
  • 1st building, mill, cauldron, churning, ale.
• §24 & 25
• Culture established
• land takes shape
  • lakes form
  • land clears
• Now people in Ireland are all men and establish different kinds of things
• Is this a hint that power was taken away from women?
  • Female idea of sovereignty
  • Dominated by women/goddess?
  • Later invested by males?
  • Why no impact of the cosmogeny?
  • Middle age mysogyny?
  • Monks taking it away?
• Cultural activities
• Also, adultry 1st committed, p. 37 §26
  • Partholan went out fishing
  • wife and attendent left behind
  • Partholan comes back
  • spirit tells him what's happened.
  • Drinking tube
  • transaction between two
  • §38
    • He: trouble, evil
    • She: 1st verdict in Ireland. I deserve recons.
      • You inflicted unjustness
      • "It's your fault"
      • The right of his wife against Parthelan
      • Nature — examples.
  • Partholan is having none of this
    • smacks her dog and kills it
    • 1st jealousy

Partholan fights vs the Fomhoire

• Fomoraig (Fomorians)
  • Chthonic people
    • spring up out of the earth
  • belong to the soil, earth, land
  • give trouble to all who come to land
  • singularity
    • 1 armed
    • 1 eyed
    • 1 legged
    • half of what ordinary mortals are like