Review : The Celtic Myths (II)

In this concluding review of Mark Williams' The Celtic Myths That Shape The Way We Think, I revert to my usual strategy. Last time I gave an overview of some of the stories I thought just had to be shared with the world. Here and try and extract some of the broader conclusions form the book overall. Let's begin with a look at some of the recurring stories, some of them really quite specific, common to so many early European peoples.

Common themes : shaping or shaped by the way we think ?

While precious little enough survives of the original "Celtic" myths, what we do have has some striking similarities to other pagan myths. In Ireland the Book of Invasions tells of an almost cosmic-scale war between different gods before an order was established, much as the Greco-Romans had the Gods against the Titans, or the Norse own Gods vs. Giants. Unfortunately, virtually nothing survives of the original Celtic ideas of the origin of the Universe; this slightly later stage of the ordering of creation is all we have to go on.

The style in which the stories are told also has some notably similar methods. Everywhere in myth is replete with "Chekhov's Gun's" : magic cauldrons that must not be spilled in Irish fable, giants with very specifically one eye in Greek stories. In other respects the narratives are constructed using radically different approaches (see next section) but this aspect at least seems to be common. That is, myths focus very heavily on seemingly-minor details, almost at a technical level. They construct a world that works in a very particular, very precise way, often for the sole purpose that the characters can break it, exploring what happens when the rules (which are usually much easier to grasp than in real life) are violated. Sometimes they can be outlandish, even incoherent, in the extreme, but in other ways they can be remarkably self-consistent and take their own rules very seriously. As with sci-fi and modern fantasy, considerations of how things work are front and centre of a good myth.

Another common feature, as Williams points out, is that many cultures feature a so-called "heroic age", set in a distant but not unimaginable past. Here right and wrong are often solved not through complex philosophy but by a big burly man hitting things with a sword, or perhaps an enchantress sending wave after wave of warriors to their deaths. The key point is the extreme, routine violence. The Heroic Age may have featured lots of genuinely heroic heroes, brave and self-sacrificing to a fault, but often presenting only the simplest of simple solutions to problems they encounter. Nobody here ever stops to re-imagine a brave new world or questions the underlying social order. 

That's part of their appeal, of course : everyone can understand the basic messages. Complex politics are all well and good, but even those with the most cerebral tastes sometimes want to switch off and want to listen to stories of people stabbing each other. It's a very base, primal appeal, but usually associated with important (if simple) moral messages as well.

There are also some highly specific similarities of detail between Celtic and other mythological systems. The Celtic god Dagda is known as the Supreme Father, who has a mighty brood of squabbling and powerful children. Like Zeus battling Typhon or Thor fighting the world-serpent, Dagda too fights a sea monster, albeit a giant cuttlefish (weird, but all those tentacles would be as formidable as any kraken). And some actions feel truly universal. Finn can heal his dying friend through magical water in his hands, but fails twice until he's threatened with violence, by which time it's too late. The confusion of a reluctantly-broken friendship and an uncertain desire for reconciliation is not especially Celtic, or Norse, or Greek, but simply human.

These common themes might give some hope that when we posit what the earliest versions of the stories may have been, we may not be able to ever know for sure but we can probably do better than idle guesswork. What's appealing to us was likely appealing to them (at least in points of detail). These may be myths that didn't so much "shape the way we think" but express something very deep about our own natures. That's why they've got staying power.

Narrative techniques

But perhaps not so much in in the particulars of storytelling. Details of the narrative may have universal narrative appeal but the structure of the literature itself varies radically. Arthur's enormous court and his unfulfilled tasks come to mind, as does the complexity of the story : plot piled atop plot, all constructed of very simple narrative elements but overwhelming in their collective detail. There's very little character development in the early stories. Rather the skill of storytelling is all about structure, plot devices, clever ways of drawing comparisons.

It all reminds me of a holiday many years ago, visiting a castle somewhere at some medieval event. Part of the schedule was a storyteller. He told a very simple story of a man who, seeking shelter from the rain for a night, calls upon a friendly-looking house. An old man answers the door and would like to help, but can't, declaring, "my son, I am not the master of this house." So he goes in search of the master, and finds a series of ever older and older men who reply in the same way. The storyteller waxed lyrical at the details, especially of the decreasing size and increasing age and fragility of each man in turn, lavishing the voices with ever more and more wizened croaks. This goes on, I stress, for some considerable time : probably a good 15-20 minutes at least. The final man, who is the size of a mere baby, answers, "Yes my son, I am the master of this house, and you shall have a bed for the night." The sheer sense of relief was palpable among the audience.

The story wasn't at all complicated, but it was designed to show the speaker's tremendous oratorical skill. To make a story like that compelling you have to be very good at your job – it really is all in the delivery; what's being said becoming less important than how. Likewise, the repetitive motifs in the early Arthurian legends, the enormous number of tasks and vast size of the court, fulfil a similar role : here's a chance to show off your speechcraft, not your literary talents.

Some styles of storytelling simply hadn't been invented yet, or their full potential not yet realised. The idea that you could give the audience direct emotional insight into what the characters were experiencing and thinking wasn't wholly unknown, but used extremely sparingly. The stories :

... have on the whole an emotionally austere narrative style : no matter how bizarre or grotesque the events being described, the author maintains a steady pace and constant sobriety.

All the same, literary talents of the early tales abound if we abandon modern notions of how a story should go. Today the default mode of storytelling is to give the plot a clear beginning, middle and an end in which most of the plot points are resolved. Character development seems to be considered of overwhelming importance to the critics, a process which has become highly refined. And there are, to be fair, many excellent stories in which very little happens at all but are nevertheless absolutely compelling solely because of the character interactions.

Myths don't do this. The Iliad starts midway through the Trojan War and doesn't see its end, instead beginning and ending with petitions : one refused, which brings disaster, and one accepted, which brings a measure of solace and closure. Likewise, the story of Branwen sets out good and bad rulers in opposition, with Bran the Blessed listening to his councillors but ultimately making his own decisions, while his counterpoint Matholwch is craven and cowardly, unable to do anything except that which others tell him. Even the most superficial reading gives a clear and important moral message, with the simplicity of the narrative being more a feature than a bug. 

In marked contrast, in the later (medieval) versions of Arthur, everyone knows the moment of Camelot's "brief perfection" : it's somehow abundantly clear that Arthur is a good and rightful king, despite the fact he does essentially bugger all in terms of actually ruling anyone. Arthur exists mainly to rise and fall, not to actually provide a model of kingship. Quite unlike Branwen, this was high drama, not instruction. The point is not that one technique is better than another, but that good stories can be told in a myriad of different ways.

There are more sophisticated literary devices used as well. Repetitive themes abound, sometimes obvious (such as in the Book of Invasions – well, you can guess what happens there) and sometimes not so much (such as the patterns of "concealment and disclosure" in the Second Branch of the Mabinogion). Patterns of "call and response" are used to literary effect : provocation repeatedly answered with a rebuttal. Animals are used much like Tolkien's elves : older and independent of the world of men, and used to symbolise not a Disney-style world of family fun times, but a deeper connection to a more primeval era. This, says Williams, is why early Arthurian stories feature a whole array of talking woodland creatures, to connect Arthur with the most basic forces underlying the world. Much other symbolism that would have been easily understood to the first audiences has been lost.

Celtic literature can seem rather rambling to the first-time reader. In the way way that sentences in the text tend to be joined with "and" after "and", events in the narrative follow on from one another without the kind of logical structure one might expect in a novel or television series. But this is a false impression : the different parts of each branch are connected by a subtle play of theme and variation, an ironic pattern of similarities and contrasts.

I tried reading both the Mabinogion and the 1001 Arabian Nights years ago and found them equally bewildering. Maybe it's time to give them another go. 

Celtic magic

One thing I especially like about the stories presented here is their use of magic as an unashamed plot device. They're acts of pure creativity, unconstrained by rules of any kind. The early Arthur's war band, for example, have one member who is so hot that rain evaporates from him and can hold his breath underwater for nine days and nights, as well as making himself "as big as a large tree"; another is a human GPS*; another, like Orpheus, can speak to animals. The deepest magic of all is one who "never returns home without achieving the goal of his quest". How does this work ? 

* Sadly, and unforgivably, his name isn't Thomas.

There's an undercurrent to the magical elements as though they embody things fundamentally incapable of being embodied. Similarly vampires come to mind : they can't enter a home uninvited, but what counts as a home ? How can something which has no physical reality whatever (for a "home" is nothing but a label) have a tangible physical effect ? How can this affect them even when they don't know somewhere is a home ? And how can one of Arthur's knights always accomplish his goals even if they require radically different abilities ? 

This is further developed in the geis : a very general sort of curse, a supernatural compulsion against (rather than towards) highly specific activities. Conchobor is forbidden from refusing an invitation to drinking parties, not because he's a drunk but because of his geis (well, there's an excuse for you at any rate). Characters can suffer multiple geis (geises ? geese ? gooses ?), often conflicting, giving a brilliant way to short-circuit the powers of the protagonists. Cú Chulainn is forbidden from eating dog and from not eating from cooking places, which, when he finds one where dog is the only thing available, ultimately results in his death : not directly as a result of the dog meat*, but in a more mysterious cursey-fashion.

* Was it so common to eat dog that Williams doesn't even need to mention this ? 

Geis also work well as a plot device. They carry a strong Chekhovian element of delightful predictability. You can tell straight away that something is going to happen relating to the oddly-specific issue (because why else mention it ?) but have no idea what, or what the penalty for the violation will be, or how the characters will respond. It's a hook that draws the reader into the story. The geis shares a lot in common with mythical prophecies, which can seem highly improbable until after they've been fulfilled. There's a joy in the anticipation of knowing the predicted (often bizarre) situation must somehow come about, and in experiencing the very unlikely series of events constructed in a logical and natural way to make this happen. It's a lot like solving a puzzle.

Other kinds of magic are more visually impressive, but are more straightforwardly just enhanced physical abilities. Sometimes that goes to an extreme. "Suck son of Sucker, for example, 'would suck up the sea where there were 300 ships until it was just a dry beach'." Clearly he'd either have to of stupendous proportions to manage this, or else able to compress the water somehow, but there are definite physical processes one could point to and say "that's how he does it". Bran is a giant large enough to act as a bridge for his own warriors, the symbolism of good kingship being obvious. Shapeshifting is common, not only into owls but more bizarrely into incestuous pigs. There are even transplanted arms made of silver covered in flesh a la Terminator. And Cú Chulainn has a Hulk-like "warp spasm", in which :

... he temporarily becomes a monster : his knees snap back the wrong way, his jaw gapes so wide that his internal organs can be seen pulsating, and his whole body twists inside his skin. One eye becomes very small, while the other grows very large, and a strange light shines from his head.

Most sorts of Celtic magic appear to be somewhere between the two extremes of the dramatically physical and the more subtly manipulative. Cauldrons are common, with one being able to resurrect warriors (but without the ability to speak) while another bestows knowledge. Invisibility features too, as does time travel : Taliesin either visits or sees both the future and the past, while fairyland* features the common device whereby time runs much faster there than in the human world. The head of Bran (who is inexplicably a giant despite the rest of his family being normal-size) remains alive and dispensing wisdom to his people after being severed, and is eventually buried pointing out to sea to somehow ward off would-be invaders. And to usher in the next section, there are two brothers whose singing increases milk yields by two-thirds and calms everyone down. The milk thing may be surreally specific but the calming effect is important : when they're outcast, their singing has the opposite effect of inducing pandemonium. 

* Interestingly, early fairies appear to be a big bunch of racists who "hate the Irish". Presumably they'd hate everyone else as well if they ever met them, but I think racist fairies surely have some obvious potential value in modern storytelling.

The bizarre

Probably my favourite parts of all the stories are the absolutely baffling. I'm sure some of these made more sense of the time, having a contextual symbolism which is now lost. But I'm also sure that some of them were always there for pure comedy value. So before I wrap this one up, I have to mention a few of these sudden moments of being utterly blindsided.

I mentioned Ysbaddaden last time, the giant that features in the early stories of Athur. What I didn't mention was that Arthur is trying to help a young man marry the giant's daughter, who he's never even set eyes on. Ysbaddaden, murderer though he is, is understandably reluctant to agree to this, given that he's prophesised to die if his daughter is given away, but such is Arthur's influence that he's eventually persuaded – but only if Arthur promises to give the giant a shave. He's got to look his best for the wedding, after all. Odder still is that for this Arthur needs to retrieve a set of shaving equipment tucked between the ears of a boar so fearsome and so powerful that it wreaks actual genocide throughout the land. And Ysbaddaden's physical nature is bizarre as well, having eyebrows which "are so heavy that they have fallen over his eyes and have to be held up with pitchforks."

Arthur retrieves the shaving equipment but the fate of the boar is unclear. The story twists through turns both comic and dark, with the giant starting off as a sinister murderer but given comedic dialogue. The finale returns the tone to a much grimmer but still bizarre moment, with Ysbaddaden getting altogether too close a shave : removing his "beard, ears, skin and flesh to the bone".

Other Celtic imagery is also disturbing despite its weirdness. Two brothers are so superhumanly gluttonous that they "gobble the heads of insects" even while sleeping; in another myth, a king becomes enamoured of an unborn girl on learning that she will grow up to become a great beauty.

Fortunately, most of the WTF-did-I-just-read moments are more straightforwardly comic. One particular warrior is unassailed in battle because "he is so ugly that everyone takes him to be an attendant demon." William's own favourite bit of surrealism, quite understandably, is someone whose favourite knife has the unfortunate attribute that no handle will stay attached, leading to such despondency in its owner that he dies. There's also a warrior who develops such a craving for berries that he fights a giant to get them. Probably my own favourite incident, though, is a magic dog belonging to some of the fairies :

The dog vomits fine wine on request, but when the fairy men are interrupted they reveal that their dog has another property : one of them points it the other way, and it unleashes a blast of destructive magical wind from its rear end.

All of those illuminated medieval drawings of knights fighting snails are starting to make a lot more sense.

I mean... the dangerous farts, I kindof get that. But who in the hell wants to drink dog vomit even if it's a fine vintage wine ???

Conclusions

Regardless of where they come from, the stories Williams presents are rich, colourful, complex, and often enormously entertaining. They have every claim to the sophistication of any of the Norse or Greco-Roman tales, but with quite the added doses of the surreal. And this, I think I can safely stress, is everywhere, from the cow-obsessed Medb to more local legends like the lady of the lake near Pen Y Fan.

If at times the myths are frighteningly patriarchal, indeed downright misogynistic, then on occasion they're practically modern in their feminism, even bordering on woke. After fighting over who gets the bold warrior Cú Chulainn, two women :

"are all set for a violent showdown, but here the narrative modulates unexpectedly into a powerful show of female empathy. Both women express their feelings, openly and honestly. Extraordinarily, each recognises the other's unselfish love and requests that Cú Chulainn take the other... The Druids give Cú Chulainn and Emer a drink of forgetfulness, so that they can put the entire affair behind them."

Of course the women are fundamentally at odds because of a man, which is not a very feminist aspect to the situation at all, but the resolution certainly is. It stands out among the wanton violence of the Heroic Age for its exceptional level of equitability : instead of the usual fight-to-the-death struggle of an exciting orgy of bloodletting, it completely subverts expectations. Its exceptionality gives it potency*, but the wider prevalence of active, self-controlled female characters in Celtic myth is less unusual.

* It would be extremely boring if all stories ended in unprompted peaceful resolutions. But to do this occasionally gives enormously powerful shock value.

Not though, it should be stressed, that there were any Celtic peoples in anything like the modern way in which we might refer to "the French" or "the Swiss". They were in no sense whatever a nation-state but a collection of broadly-similar-minded peoples who were equally happy to battle each other as they were the incoming Saxons. Williams makes this point abundantly clear, and the idea that we as Celtic peoples should all be unified against the supposedly hated English oppressor is a relatively modern one... an idea that's probably a mere thousand years old or so, or probably a good deal less than that.

Though when Williams describes it as "astonishing" that Celtic nationalists should have got on board with the idea of external thinkers labelling us as being "heroic failures", I'm less surprised. The sheer difference in population size alone between the Celtic nations of the British Isles and the English makes any resistance at all pretty darn heroic – and not in the least surprising to be ultimately doomed. In my experience we Welsh are pretty content to being, let's say, very much the junior partners in the whole "British" enterprise. Oh, we might not always like to admit it openly. But we know it deep down, because we're just very, very small. We're enormously proud of the resistance we did offer, and of our cultural distinctiveness that still survives to this day (even if much of it is inevitably manufactured and often self-referentially consists of loudly stating that we're not English). But we aren't stupid enough to think we, a nation with 6% of useful arable land, should be left to our own devices, whatever Plaid Cymru might say.

The rich literary devices used in the stories is also, I think, a very valuable point, one which the other books didn't cover. Certainly there are plenty of modern stories (of all formats) which use clever techniques and stylistic choices to make themselves appealing, but by and large, we have an story-industrial complex that does things in rather predictable ways. This is by no means necessarily a bad thing, but in the Celtic era, it seems as though everyone was an indie developer. There were no rules, only guidelines, no publishers to appease, though presumably less scope of a sustainable career as well.

The appeal of Celtic myths hasn't led, thankfully, to their inappropriation by the far right in the way that the Norse myths have. Somehow, despite both featuring frequent and extremely brutal violence, yet also deep connections to nature and equality, the latter aspects have become far more associated with the Celtic and the former far more with the Norse. Perhaps the scale of the Viking achievement was their undoing. To imperial-minded Victorian antiquarians, it was more natural to pick up on the ultra-violence and attribute that barbarian strength as the cause of their success; for the heroic failures of their own native peoples, it was more important to highlight their spiritual side : laudable, perhaps, but not really any sensible way to run a country, still less an empire.

The boundary between whether the myths genuinely influence or only express what we think is not clear. Williams describes a late 19th century lunatic who murdered his wife because he thought she was a fairy. Thankfully the resulting criticism of folklorists, who were briefly out of favour among certain concerned citizens, doesn't seem to have done any lasting damage to the movement to preserve and understand these old stories. They remain wonderfully weird, charming, disturbing, patriarchal, feminine, heroic, magnificent tales, with abundant scope for rediscovery. Concludes Williams : "There is clearly life in them, and in the tradition, yet."