Look, Christianity… we gotta talk. …You make my job really hard sometimes. All I wanna do is research these cool ancient
mythologies and find out how they worked! But half the time I start looking, it's like,
"oh, sorry, we've been Christian for fifteen hundred years! We couldn't possibly tell you about our nifty
pantheon of pagan gods and the sparkling tapestry of mythology they wove together, because we've
just gotten way into Big J and the Magnificent Twelve!" I just wanna learn, man! Greek and Egyptian mythology don't have this
problem too bad, since we still have the pre-Christian primary sources - and even if a translation
ends up biased, we can always just go back to the original Greek and see what Homer really
wanted us to think. But things get tricky with, for instance,
norse mythology, where, despite having a writing system as early as the second century CE,
the first written account we have of the mythology was compiled eleven hundred years later, well
after the region was fully christianized. We can learn a lot from the Eddas, but we
can't automatically tell how much of it was added later to fit with the new belief system,
or otherwise resulted from the social shift. While some additions are pretty obvious, there's
theories that everything from loki to ragnarok itself were the results of the christianization. Personally, I don't think either of those
things are true, but it's annoying that we don't know. And oh, man. Poor Ireland. Christianized as early as the 400s CE, the
oldest sources we have on the mythology were only commited to vellum two hundred years
later at the earliest, and even those earliest texts have blatant Christian additions like
references to heaven or hell. The bulk of the mythology didn't get written
down for a full six hundred years, and by then it was already so bowdlerized that there's
basically no available primary sources anywhere. While there wasn't much cultural drift and
the rich oral tradition seems to have preserved most of the core elements of these stories,
there were still some hefty rewrites, and it's very noticeable. One of the most well-known of these texts,
compiled anonymously in the early 1000s CE, was Lebor Gabála Érenn, "The Book of the
Taking of Ireland", more commonly known as "The Book Of Invasions". It describes six successive invasions of Ireland
by various different groups, what they did there and what happened to them. Originally intended as a history of Ireland,
it's now clear that it's a bit more of a pseudohistory, or a mythology, you could say - a way to preserve
a quintessentially Irish myth structure while framing it in a very historical, Christianity-approved
light. And to start us off, the first chapter is
literally just Genesis translated into Irish. Subtlety, thy name is not anything I can easily
pronounce. But we get our first deviation from Bible
canon when we're introduced to Cessair, granddaughter of the biblical Noah and leader of the first
group to set foot in Ireland. Noah, hoping that maybe the flood won't reach
the far west edge of the world, directs Cessair to take a fleet as far west as they can go. Forty days before the flood is due to hit,
Cessair and the gang arrive on the green shores of Ireland - but there's a shipwreck and most
of them are killed, leaving only Cessair, forty-nine other women, and three men, one
of whom, Fintan mac Bochra, becomes Cessair's husband. Fintan and the other two guys divvy up the
rest of the ladies between them, but then the other guys die from confusingly vague
causes, and Fintan ends up turning into a salmon and running away. Then the flood arrives and everyone else is
killed, leaving Fintan the only survivor. I mean, obviously SOMEONE had to survive,
otherwise how would we even know this happened? By the way, I'll… come back to this section
later. There's some stuff going on. Anyway, Ireland is deserted for three hundred
years until the next group arrives, led by this dude Partholón. They colonize Ireland, clear out a few plains
and experience a handful of "lake-bursts", which are this thing in Irish mythology where
a lake spontaneously blooshes into existence. Anyway, during this, Partholón and his crew
also battle the… eh. Okay, so it's spelled like this <fomoire>
and it's pronounced one of THESE ways. (And before you even THINK about getting on
me for this, I scoured the internet and nobody f*cking agrees how to pronounce it. Argue with each other in the comments because
clearly I'm not the problem here). So let's just call them the FOV-or-uh for
the sake of argument, okay? Anyway they've never been mentioned or explained
up to this point, but are generally considered a malevolent race of supernatural beings,
possibly representative of chaotic or dangerous forces of nature. I guess they don't count as "people of Ireland"
for the purposes of this narrative, because where the heck are THEY supposed to have come
from? Anyway, Partholón and his crew are doing
all right until they very abruptly aren't, and all nine thousand of them are wiped out
by a plague in a single week. All except for one guy, Tuan mac Cairill,
who also survives by turning into a fish or something. It's called self-care, look it up. An uneventful thirty years go by before another
boat rolls into town - this one helmed by this new guy Nemed. It's the last surviving ship of a pretty sizable
fleet, because everyone else saw this beautiful golden tower rise up out of the waves with
a neon sign on it reading "OBVIOUS HUBRIS TEST" and when they went to take a look-see
they obviously drowned. Anyway, Nemed has a pretty cool crew with
him, and actually does quite well for himself - he defeats the Fomoire three times and kills
two of their kings, these dudes Gand and Sengand, but unfortunately dies of plague a few years
later. Without Nemed around, the settlers get subjugated
by the Fomoire, who force them to pay an extravagant tithe every Samhain, giving up their entire
supply of milk and grain and two-thirds of their children every time. Eventually the taxation gets too extreme to
tolerate, and the people rise up with a meager force of sixty thousand warriors and succesfully
kill one of the Fomoire kings, Conand mac Febar. But unfortunately they had a second backup
king, who's my favorite because his name is Morc, which is hilarious, and he rolls up
with a whole buncha boats and everybody dies, except for one ship of like thirty guys who
say "bollocks to this" and sail away. Some of them peel off for northern lands,
some of them head over to Britain to become the first Brits, and the rest head down to
greece where they are promptly enslaved for 230 years. But after a grueling nearly-two-and-a-half-centuries
of hard labor, these guy say "bollocks to THIS" and head BACK to ireland, finding it
pleasantly deserted this time around - except for the fomoire, presumably. These guys, who are called the Fir Bolg, split
Ireland into five parts, divisions that persist to this day - the regions of Connacht, Leinster,
Ulster, and North and South Munster are each set aside and ruled by their own chief, while
Ireland overall is ruled by a High King, and in the space of a brisk 37 years, the Fir
Bolg manage to have nine of these guys. Quick turnaround time. But after 37 years of chill Fir Bolging, the
Tuatha de Danann roll into town. Now this section is basically a pre-Christian
Theogony, and you can tell the writer was a bit on-edge about it, because practically
every other line we're assured that the Tuatha de Danann were diabolical sorcerers and heathens
and definitely not gods, we swear. So anyway, these definitely not gods pack
up their four legendary sacred treaures and roll up in a terrifying black cloud that darkens
the skies for three days straight, at which point they promptly go to war with the Fir
Bolg, who want nothing to do with this whole situation. The Fir Bolg king, and thus the current High
King of Ireland, is this dude Eochu mac Ere, while the king of the Tuatha de Danann is
this dude named Nuada. They have an epic battle, and though the Fir
Bolg are defeated (and either scatter to neighboring islands or just kinda acclimate to their new
rulers) Nuada loses an arm in the conflict, which, along with probably being no fun overall,
handily disqualifies him from being High King, cuz you need to be… bilaterally symmetrical,
I guess. Anyway, with Nuada out of the running, the
Tuatha de Danann are instead ruled by this dude Bres, who's nice enough and pretty to
look at, but is half-Fomoire on his father's side, and seems to favor his Fomoire relatives
more than the Tuatha de Danann kinda like. And if you think it's kinda weird that the
Fomoire have gone from "faceless malevolent army of doom" to "kinda evil in-laws", you're
absolutely right. It would be great to have the context that
makes this make sense. …
Anyway, Bres is a lousy king, but fortunately they don't need to deal with him for long,
as after a brisk seven year recovery time, Nuada returns from his retirement sporting
a shiny new hand crafted of the finest silver. Now qualified for the position again, Nuada
becomes High King and gains a shiny new epithet, Airgetlám, or "silver-handed". But the neverending conflict with the Fomoire
shows no signs of slowing down just yet, and with the addition of the young half-Fomoire
half-Tuatha-De-Danann champion hero Lugh, the Tuatha de Danann stage a full-scale rebellion
and go to war with the Fomoire, who are currently being ruled by Balor, a one-eyed god of fiery
destruction and also Lugh's grandpa, who tried to kill Lugh as a baby to forestall a prophecy
of doom and get him out of his hair for good. During the battle, Nuada is killed off for
real, but Lugh manages to kill Balor with a sling-stone to the face, and the Fomoire
are finally defeated for realsies. Lugh becomes High King of Ireland and rules
uneventfully until he gets murdered a few decades later in what I'm sure was a canon
part of the original mythology. And now we reach the final wave of people
to colonize Ireland - the Irish. No, really, these guys are supposed to be
the direct ancestors of the contemporary population. 150 years into the Tuatha de Danann's reign,
a fleet of humans, referred to as the milesians, rolls into town, and despite the best efforts
of the Tuatha de Danann to keep them out, their resident bard/druid Amergin <av-ar-hin>
manages to get them safely ashore and causing problems. There's some battles, some negotiating, and
plenty of reassurance that these aren't gods, you guys. It's fine. They're just demons or wizards or something. Stop looking at me
At this point, Ireland is co-ruled by three high kings, Mac Cuill (no relation to Finn
Mac Cool), Mac Gréine and Mac Cecht, who killed Lugh in revenge for him killing their
father in revenge for him sleeping with Lugh's wife. It's a bit complicated. But each of these Macs is married to one of
a triumvirate of very important earth goddesses - Banba, Ériu and Fódla - and as the Milesians
travel through Ireland, they encounter each of these goddesses in turn, and each one asks
Amergin to name the island after them. He agrees, and while Ériu is the etymological
root of Ireland, the other two names get used as bynames - kinda the same way Albion gets
used to refer to Britain. But this part also contains my favorite bit,
where the story full-on orouboroses itself, loops back to the beginning and contradicts
everything else in the book. See, Amergin asks Banba to tell him a little
bit about herself, and she says that she's a descendant of Adam just like him, but she's
older than Noah, and she was already chilling on this mountain when the floodwaters first
came. WHAT THE FU-
So yea, this is what happens when you try and retroactively christianize an entire pantheon
of gods and make them fit the same timeline as the bible. The Tuatha de Danann and the Fomoire were
here before the people were, even though, according to this book, there were several
waves of people here before them, but Banba, who's one of the Tuatha de Danann, was here
before anyone, and Banba and Cessair are both supposedly the first people to set foot in
Ireland, even though the timelines absolutely do not add up. And do you wanna know why? It's because that whole first wave with Cessair
and the three dudes was a christianization of this exact story. The three surviving men were analogous to
the three Macs, their three main wives were analogous to the triumvirate of goddesses,
and Cessair, Noah's definitely-canon granddaughter, was analagous to Banba, the actual mythological
first-person-on-the-island - a role that fits a primal earth-mother goddess a little better
than it does a random human who dies six weeks later. UUGH. ANYway, the conflict drags on, and eventually
the three kings suggest they take a break for a few days to figure out their next moves,
and ask the milesians to go back to their boats and stay nine wave-lengths away from
the island. Surprisingly, they agree, but perhaps unsurprisingly,
the minute they're back on the boats the Tuatha de Danann summon a huge, cataclysmic storm
to keep them away from the shores. Amergin steps up again, and in a very nice
poem, asks Ireland itself for permission to land and make it their home. Clearly Ireland is down with this, because
the storm dies and they return. Recognizing defeat, the Tuatha de Danann agree
to divvy up the land with the Milesians - the Milesians get the surface world, while the
Tuatha de Danann retreat through the hills into the otherworld and become the Aos Sidhe,
"the people of the mounds". The book wraps up with my favorite kinda content
- a super boring list of names! It rattles off all the kings of Ireland in
chronological order. Hooray. And that's the book of invasions, handily
summarizing all the times Ireland got invaded! Yup. That's all of them. It definitely didn't happen again. Especially not nine whole times. Because that would be ridiculous.
I like that channel
Which mythology is this in
I love overly sarcastic productions. One of my fav channels.
Found this channel while cheating on classworrk about the Odyssey, been watching since 😃