Adrian Radu
Imagination to / and Feminism
Celtic imagery and a modern case in point
Is cé hiad pátrúin bhunaidh
na laoch is na bhfatach
munar thusa is mise?
And who are the original patterns
of the heroes and giants
if not you and I?
(Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill)
The aim pf this paper is to show how two important products of early Gaelic imagination, Queen Medb and the legendary Ulster hero Cú Chulainn, evolve in the hands of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, outstanding feminist poet of today who writes in Irish, in her attempt to establish a fresh and almost innovative aspect of gender identity. In the process of re-forming her readership, besides other devices, she re-visits one of the oldest and most famous sagas of the Ulster cycle An Táin Bó Cuailnge / The Cattle Raid of Cooley – well-known and trodden ground, borrowed and processed by Nuala for specific purposes in her five parallel poems, The Atáin of the 1988 edition of her Selected Poems (Dublin, Raven Arts Press).
In the ancient saga An Táin Bó Cuailnge Queen Medb appears as an outstanding result of creative imagination. It was the epoch of a sort of matriarchal pantheon, when strong women were feared and many of the Celtic divinities were of feminine gender acting as figures of fertility, ancestresses of peoples and members of the divine family of father, mother and son. It is enough to mention Macha, who incarnates the Celtic horse-goddess; she is the embodiment of fruitfulness, but also the battle-goddess. The sovereignty myth centres around the feminine triad Ériu, Fódla and Banba, with the ruler having to accept a drink and to mate with the goddess. Brigit (‘the exalted one’) is patron of poetry, healing and craftsmanship.
Obviously, Medb could not stay out of this construction. She is the legendary queen who leads the Connachta against the Ulaid to seize the great bull of Cooley, but also attains status of goddess. Her name actually means ‘the one who intoxicates’ or ‘the intoxicated one’, linking her with the drink that the king had to consummate at his inauguration, by which he attained kinship with the woman in the role of goddess, as her perspective husband.
Conventionally, she is depicted as a beautiful long-faced woman with pale complexion, with long flowing hair and always wearing a red cloak and holding a flaming spear in her hand. Her sight is enough to deprive all men of two-thirds of their strength. Medb dominates men, both by force of personality and by sexuality. Likewise, she, ‘never without one man in the shadow of another’, had numerous sexual partners, including the phenomenally virile Fergus Mac Róich, while nine kings had to accept her as wife before being crowned in Tara.
In The Táin Medb is rather the catalyst than the heroine, greedy, powerful and responsible for the destruction of Ulster. She is unscrupulous, masterly dominates her husband Ailill and serenely cuckolds him with Fergus, while other men are often punished with menstrual cramps at times convenient to their enemies. Her formidable presentation of her own soldiers at the beginning of the Táin may adds a lot to her substance:
“I outdid [my six sisters] in grace and giving and battle and warlike combat. I had fifteen hundred soldiers in my royal pay, all exiles’ sons and the same number of freeborn native men, and for every paid soldier I had ten more men, and nine more, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one.” (The Táin, pp. 52-53)
Though she is a construct of imagination, she is also the product of an epoch were women had a well-defined place in society and were regarded as equally significant constituents of human or godly establishments. In this respect, this is what Medb tells her husband Ailill during their famous ‘pillow talk’:
“If I married a mean man, our union would be wrong because I’m so full of grace and giving. It would be an insult if I were more generous than my husband, but not if the two of us were equal in this. If my husband was a timid man, our union would be just as wrong because I thrive myself, on all kinds of trouble. It is an insult for a wife to be more spirited than her husband, but not if the two are equally spirited. If I married a jealous man that would be wrong too: I never had one man without another waiting in his shadow. So I got the kind of man I wanted.” (The Táin, p. 53)
Very unprincipled, always governed by her own will, she never had any scruples about what she did to attain her goal. In many such cases the imagination of the begetters of the text turned limitless in the display of any lack of restraint – like, for instance, when Medb, in an unparalleled and rather bizarre early demonstration of feminism, gushes huge quantities of her menstrual blood in order to prevent the advancing of the enemy.
The other main hero of the Táin saga is Cú Chulainn, fathered by the god Lug on Deichtine, the daughter or perhaps sister of Conochobor, King of the Ulaid (Ulstermen), but brought up as Sétanta, son of Sultaim. He is then a half-god and the only man untouched by the terrible misfortune – the pangs of childbirth – cast upon all Ulstermen by Macha, according to which, whenever they were most wanted, they would turn into helpless creatures just like women in labour. Cú Chulainn grew up to be a brave and wise young man, dissimilar to anybody else, impressive to those around him. This is how he takes shape in the words of Fergus, when the latter talks to Connacht king, Ailill. Remarkable in the extract below is the power of imagination, the keen skill at establishing comparisons and the undeniable sense of gradation and of rhetorical re-petition:
“You’ll find no harder warrior against you – no point more sharp, more slashing. No raven more flesh-ravenous, no hand more deft, no fighter more fierce, no one of his age one third as good, no lion more ferocious, no barrier in battle, no hard hammer, no gate of battle, no soldiers’ doom, no hinderer of hosts, more fine. You’ll find no one there to measure against him – for youth or vigour; for apparel, horror of eloquence; for splendour, fame or form; for voice or strength or sternness; for cleverness, courage or blows in battle; for fire or fury, victory, doom or turmoil; for stalking, scheming or slaughter in the hunt; for swiftness, alertness or wildness; and no one with the battle-feat ‘nine men on each point’ – no one like Cú Chulainn.” (The Táin, pp. 75-76)
The hero’s physical appearance was rather weird, but obviously made to impress. He was a short, dark, beardless man. His hair was of three colours, brown at the roots, blood-red in the middle and blond at the crown. He had seven pupils in each eye, seven toes and seven fingers, each with the grip of a hawk. In spite of these fearsome traits he is described in many tales as handsome and attractive to women, chiefly for his sexual qualities…
A very interesting aspect of the no less overemphasized portrait of the hero is his depiction when going to battle. Then he was seized by his battle frenzy (ríastrad ) – terrible, destructive spasms of excitement – which took away any sense he possessed. When this happened, something hard to imagine came about: he became a terrifying figure, every particle of him quivered, he underwent monstrous bodily transformations, his calves and heels shifted to the front, his feet and knees were shifted to the back, his neck stood out, the beats of his heart sounded like the roar of a lion dashing against his prey and a column of dark blood spurted from his scalp and scattered in four directions forming a mist of gloom. No wonder, that nothing could resist him as well.
As such, The Táin is the representation not only a confrontation of the two armies, that of Connacht led by Medb and that of Ulster dominated by Cú Chulainn in their attempt to defend their precious bulls and, indirectly, territories, but the depiction of a clash between their two leaders’ deliberately and powerfully overstated strong personalities.
In Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s twentieth century re-vision, The Atáin, Medb is a reconstruction of the image of the woman, in which all mystification has been removed form the former patriarchal constructions of womanhood. She is now not only the embodiment of supreme and awe-full womanhood, but also turns into a sort of spokeswoman for a whole generation of rebellious victimized modern women:
Fógraim cogadh feasta
ar fhearaibh uile Éireann,
ar na leaids ag na cúinni sráide
is iad ina luí i lúib i gceas naíon,
a bpilibíní gar liúdar
is gan éileanmh acu ar aon bhean
ach le teann fearaíochta is laochais
ag maíomh gar iníon rí Gréige
a bhi mar chéile leapan aréir acu,
is fógraím cogadh cruaidh feasta.
War I declare from now
on all men of Ireland
on all the corner boys
lying curled in children’s cradles
their willies worthless
wanting no woman
all macho boasting
last night they bedded
a Grecian princess –
a terrible war I declare.
(Labhrann Medb / Medb Speaks,
in Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta, pp. 110-111.)
Obviously the voice of Medb transposes the voice of the victim risen from powerlessness, of the common woman determined to no longer accept her former state inflicted on her by lustful male oppressors:
a shuífeadh ar bhinse taoibh liom,
a chuirfeadh deasláimh faoi mo sciortaí
gan leathscéail ná gan chaoi acu
ach iad ag lorg iarraim cúis
chun smacht a imirt ar mo ghéaga,
is fógraím cath gan truamhéil orthu.
[against those] who sit on seats beside me
who nicely up my skirts put hands
no apology or reason
just looking for a chance
to dominate –
a merciless war I declare!
(ibid.)
On the other side of the battlefield is the once superior male hero, Cú Chulainn, recurrent figure for later Irish and Anglo-Irish writers endowed in The Táin with supernatural powers, as shown above. But, in Nuala’s poetry the terrible man of the saga is only a man who needs the drink from Medb to keep him going. Now there is nothing heroic in his birth and childhood of an abandoned motherless child throwing stones at a train when she goes to the pub and is obsessed with his status of bastard and with the question ‘Cé hé m’athair / Who is my father’ to which Deichtine, his mother’s rendered reply is:
D’fhéach Deichtine, a máthair,
idir an dá shúil air.
D’oscail sí a béal chun rud a rá
ach dhún aríst é is ní dúirt sí faic.
Deichtine his mother
stared at him
opened her mouth to speak,
closed it again, wordless.
(Cú Chulainn II in Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta, pp. 114-115.)
By and by all Cú Chulainn’s heroic qua-lities are withered down and parodied, leaving him with the supreme wish of legitimation through union with the powerful sovereign goddess, as the legendary kings had to submit themselves to an initial hierogamy with the local goddess to bring about renewal of life and fecundity. But – as O’Connor remarks (1991: 9) – the sacred act is denied to him: in Nuala’s reworking the hero cannot be legitimised as long as the woman cannot have what she needs on her own terms. Accordingly, her only logical scream is:
Ná hagair t’óige orainne níos mó
a fhir bhig, bhoicht, dhorcha,
a Chú Chulainn.
Don’t threaten us again with your youth again
small poor dark man
Cú Chulainn.
(Cú Chulainn I in Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta, p. 112-113.)
Medb literally dominates him in every respect, spiritually and sexually above all. The hero’s sexual virtues of the old saga have become here utter impotence and fear of emasculation:
Ní ghlacfá liomsa nuair a thángas
i mo ríon álainn, mar phósae phinc archrann.
Bhí mo chuid banúlachta róláidir duit
a dh’admháis ina dhiaidh sin do chara
is tú ag ól ina theannta.
Eagla, siúráilte, go gcoillfí tú
go mbeach fiacla bréige ar mo phit,
go meilfí tú idir mo dhá dhrandal
mar a dhéanfaí le coirce i muileann.
You would not accept me when I came
a queen like a tree be-garlanded.
My womanness overwhelmed you
as you admitted after to a friend
over a mutual drink.
Fear, certainly, of castration
fear of false teeth in my cunt
fear my jaws would grind you
like oats in a mill.
(An Mhór-rion ag Cáiseamh na Baidhbhe le Cú Chulainn / The Great Queen Berates the Badhbh to Cú Chulainn,
in Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta, pp. 122-123.)
The image of Cú Chulainn’s demystification and surrender is complete as he finally crumbles under Medb ‘sitting on his shoulder’. The initial oversized image has been reduced to almost wretched and loathsome dimensions.
The original construct of imagination has gone full way towards achieving the poet’s goal of establishing identities: a national identity by using Irish as medium of transmission and a gender identity by the singular treatment of the apparently pristine material. Consequently, Nuala faces two important challenges: the usage of the national language and feminism and a subsequent new perspective. If myth is basically regarded as serving cosmogonic, existential and religious purposes, then we must remark, beyond any doubt, that, in this particular instance, the myth was profitably turned to good use, since we are in the presence of a successful modern re-presentation.
Apart from the test of the language, Nuala’s version brings about the breaking from centuries-old oppressions and expectations – of Irish as national language and li-beration of (Irish) women. The status wheel has gone full circle: if formerly and in the Táin Gaelic was the language and women were central members of society, now and in The Atáin Irish is constitutionally the national language of the Irish state and women share equal rights and responsibilities with men. The transformation obviously comes from shared human dignity.
Bibliography
Kiberd, Declan and Gabriel Fitzmaurice (1991) (eds.) Crann faoi Bhlath. Dublin: Wolfhound Press.
Kiberd, Declan (1991) Inventing Ireland. London: Vintage.
MacKillop, James (1998) Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ní Dhomhnaill, Nuala (1988) Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta. Dublin: Raven Arts Press. [translations by Michael Hartnett].
O’Connor, Mary (1991) ‘Sex, Lies and Sovereignty: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill’s Re-Vision of the “Táin”’. In Irish Studies Working Papers 1991 / 2-4. pp. 2-9, Boston, MA.: Northeast University.