The most complete compilation of these stories is Lebor Gabála Érenn, The Book of the Taking of Ireland, also known as The Book of Invasions.
It contains six immigration stories. The first three stories finish by saying everyone died. However, after the first story, the rest of them say the next wave of people met people already living in Ireland. So entire Book of Invasions is an example of the both/and Hiberno-consciousness.
Scholars believe monks compiled The Book of Invasions in an attempt to reconcile their belief in the Bible as history with the obvious fact that Ireland is never mentioned in it. The Bible’s Noah story was familiar to them because like so many cultures, the Irish already had a story of flood, escape by boat, and settling in a new land.
People around the world tell Flood stories because when the glaciers of the last Ice Age melted, sea levels rose, sometimes quite suddenly. Some of the Flood stories of Europe might be related to an event that happened around 5500 BCE.
At that time, the Black Sea, north of modern Turkey and south of modern Ukraine, was a freshwater lake, fed by long rivers surrounded by fertile plains. People made the lake shore their home for thousands of years. At some point the ocean waters of the Mediterranean catastrophically flooded the lake with sea water, killing the fish and poisoning the land. (I think this event is why that body of water is called “black,” which in many languages also means “sorrow.” The Greek name was “Inhospitable Sea.”
Survivors of the Black Sea flood–we might call them climate change refugees–fled their ancient homeland in boats laden with seed and small domesticated animals: the inventions of the Neolithic that feed us to this day.
Archeological and linguistic evidence indicate they settled everywhere: eastern Europe, Asia Minor, both shores and all the islands of the Mediterranean, and up the west coast of Europe all the way to Britain and Ireland. They traveled east too, but land travel is harder. All of these people told stories of a flood survived by clever people who knew when to get hell out.
The Flood story in the Book of Invasions goes like this, as retold on Herstory.ie.
Cessair was the daughter of Bith, a son of the Biblical Noah. In one of several different versions of the story, Noah tells her to take her people and sail to the western edge of the world to escape the oncoming Flood, because there is no more room on the Ark. And so Cessair leads 150 women and just three men out of Egypt along the River Nile, across the Mediterranean Sea, up the west of coast of Europe and, after losing two ships and a hundred women in a storm, lands with the survivors in the south-west of Ireland just forty days before the Flood. Cessair takes Fintán as a husband, Barrfhind takes Bith, and Alba takes Ladra; the rest of the women divide themselves up evenly among the three men. But after Bith and Ladra die, Fintan finds himself left alone with all the women, and flees. Cessair then dies of a broken heart, and when the Flood comes, Fintán is the only one to survive.
A longer version of the story recounts the voyage with confused geography, saying that Cessair and her followers began in Egypt at the confluence of two rivers, sailed the Caspian Sea (which is east of the Egypt we know), then west over the Sea of Azov, to “Asia Minor” (geographically this might mean the Black Sea). They then sailed up rivers past “the Alps,” to Spain, and finally arrived in Ireland.
In this version the monks tell us how many days each leg of the trip took, and what day of the month one last remaining ship arrived in Ireland. The most dramatic part of the story would be the voyage and struggles that destroyed two ships and 100 women, but the monks left that part out. All we know is that fifty women and three men arrived in Ireland forty days before the Biblical Flood. The monks then spend the rest of the story detailing how the fifty women were assigned to the three men, and then when one man died, how the fifty women were reassigned to the remaining two guys. The story ends with everyone drowned in the Flood except a seven year old boy, who turns himself into an immortal salmon, who lives until centuries later when he is eaten by superhero Fionn mac Cumhaill.
Nothing to that story but the fantasies of a celibate brotherhood.
A pre-Christian Irish version of the Flood story survives, which names the first person in Ireland as Banba. She arrived her two sisters, Fódla and Ériu, with their husbands Mac Cuill (son of hazel), Mac Cecht (son of the plow), and Mac Gréine (son of the Sun). Banba, Fódla, and Ériu lead fifty women, whose names represent the world’s ancestral mothers: “Alba” (British), “German” (Germans), “Espa” (Spanish), “Triage” (Thracians), “Gothiam” (Goths), among others.
In other words, the first wave of immigrants to Ireland came from everywhere, just like climate refugees now.
The story of Cessair has long attracted me for its cast of female characters. A few months ago I visited Knockma in Mayo, where Cessair is said to be buried under a cairn. I’ve been thinking about her ever since, so I wrote my own version of the story. The medieval monks’ tale reflects their homosocial world, and so does mine.
The First People in Ireland and Where They Went
Once there was a Lake at the Center of the World.
Around the Lake lived people who never knew hunger or war. The Lake and the fertile shore provided everything the people needed. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide.
Around the lake were three villages named Banba, Fódla, and Ériu. The women of these villages lived exactly like their neighbors, gathering fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. But they did not choose husbands, and the women lived together without male supervision. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that we do not remember.
People lived around the Lake at the Center of the World for thousands of years.
One day, the lake water lost its sweetness, and day by day the water rose. Shoals of dead fish rotted on the beach. Grain wilted to the roots along the shore. Orchards flooded, grain stored in cool caves under the earth molded.
The people of the Lake at the Center of the World knew hunger for the first time. They needed a story to explain this calamity and so told themselves they had sinned, and brought it upon themselves. But they did not know what the sin was.
They only knew that they must leave the lake of their ancestors and find a new land where they could live in peace as before.
Although starved and sorrowful, they worked to build great boats, and filled them with seeds and the animals of the barn yard. They would sail across the lake to the rivers, find new lands and restore their peaceful life. As they toiled, heartsick and mind-muddled, they argued, they blamed, and for the first time, they stole and hoarded food. They no longer lived in peace, but feared the ghosts of the ancestors they would leave behind, and feared for their children who would live in a new and dangerous land.
When the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu attempted join the exodus, the people’s heartsickness and mind-muddle formed a lie that poisoned them forever.
“Two-by-two we leave this place, two-by-two we we must go forth and multiply. Your sin brought this Flood upon us, you women who refuse to live with a husband. Join us two-by-two with husbands, or stay here and die.”
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu said, “Women are not born to be mothers and wives. Women are born to befriend, to invent, to create and enjoy the life we are given. Women who live together without husbands are not sinners, but necessary to a peaceful life. This is how it has been and how it always shall be.”
“That world is ended in Flood, “ their neighbors said. “In our new lands, no woman will live without a husband, else her sin destroy the world again.”
And so the People of the Lake at the Center of the World sailed away. They told their children a story about a woman who refused male authority and so brought sin and suffering to the world. And women never again knew peace.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu knew it was not they who sinned. But they refused to starve on the shore of a salt-flooded lake. So they built their own three ships, each carrying the fifty women. They elected a leader, who changed her name to Cessair, Sorrow, because their exile was sad and unnecessary. Like their neighbors, they loaded their ships with seed and the animals of the barnyard.
Cessair’s little fleet sailed the western sea for weeks. When they came to the Alps, they met some of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They asked to join them, and live as before, offering a village for women who preferred to live without men. They were turned away of course, but fifty women of one of the ships came ashore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
The two remaining ships sailed on, passed through the strait at the end of the western sea, and sailed north on the great ocean. When they reached the warm coast of Spain, they found more of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They offered to build a village for the women who preferred to live without men. But they too refused. So the second ship of fifty women came shore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
At last, far north beyond Spain and Gaul, Cessair and the remaining fifty women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu found the island that had only recently shook off its icy winter cloak. Here no one had ever lived, and here no one could sin.
Cessair and fifty women from Banba, Fódla, and Ériu became the first people of Ireland, and the names of their ancient villages became the names of Ireland’s sovereignty.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu divided themselves into three villages. One they built at the place of the three rivers, where the grain grows tall and strong. One they built in Kerry and lived under the bounty of the forest. Cessair and her sisters built a third village, in the west, between the plains of Mayo and Galway Bay, with its gifts of the sea.
Cessair’s people lived in peace for many years, living in kinship with the earth. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. They never knew hunger or war. They lived as friends, inventing, creating, and enjoying the life they were given. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that has been forgotten.
One by one the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu grew old, and died, beloved and revered. Their bones rest to this day in hilltop cairns. At last only Cessair was left. When she knew she was about to die, she entered a temple of bones on a mountain in Mayo. You can see her cairn today, at Knockma, also known as Hill of the Fairies.
No where else in the world was there a place for women who would not choose husbands. But into every village, every day, are born women who prefer to live without husbands. And these women still build secret villages, and no one knows the word for women gathered together without men.
No comments:
Post a Comment