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THE BENEATHERS: the Fomoire As a Cultural Baseline to Formulate Irish Identity in The

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THE BENEATHERS: the Fomoire As a Cultural Baseline to Formulate Irish Identity in The THE BENEATHERS: The Fomoire as a Cultural Baseline to Formulate Irish Identity in the Lebor Gabála David Morledge University of Arkansas 1 The Irish, the self-proclaimed Míl Espáine, or the “men of Spain,” are the sixth in a line of invaders and conquerors of Ireland according to the literary tradition of the Lebor Gabála, the “Book of Invasions.” 1 Describing the academy’s current critical edition of Lebor Gabála, such as it is, as an edition may be something of a misnomer. Though valiant, R.A. Stewart MacAlister’s work, spread across three decades and five separate volumes, is disjointed and incomplete.2 It is, however, the best available. I cite it here for the sake of unity. Moreover, it is not contained in one singular volume. With MacAlister’s editions in mind, the text, if that word is indeed applicable, is not a singular text per se but something more transcendent. According to R.A.S. MacAlister, “every monastery of note possessed a copy which the monks constantly emended.3 Less a singular text and more of a textual tradition, the Lebor Gabála is loosely patterned from St. Augustine’s Sex Ætates Mundi and Isidore’s Etymologiae though the tradition describes only the story of Ireland and the peoples who invade and conquer her.4 It is structured in six epochs as is Sex Ætates Mundi. The Lebor Gabála functions as a Derridean recentering against an Other, the Fomoire, as a means to establish an Irish identity that is filled with military, political, and geological prowess. This paper seeks to offer a beginning overview of the general 1 See R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 1, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1938). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 2, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1939). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, ed., Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 3, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1940). See also R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 4, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1941). Finally, see R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking or Ireland, vol. 5, 5 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland, Ltd., 1956). 2 See R. Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part I: The Growth of the Text,” Ãriu 38 (1987): 81–142 and R. Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition,” Ãriu 39 (1988): 1–66, who I briefly address later, for a thorough treatment of MacAlister's editions of the Lebor Gabála. 3 John Carey, “A New Introduction to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, Edited and Translated by R.A. Stewart MacAlister,” in Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. R.A. Stewart MacAlister, Irish Texts Society Subsidiary Series 1 (Dublin: CRM Design + Print Limited, 2006), 21. 4 Augustine of Hippo, “On Catechism of the Uninterested,” in On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatise, Moral Treatises, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. S.D.F. Salmond, vol. 3, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 605–7. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney et al. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For arguments linking Isidore to the Lebor Gabála, see Rolf Baumgarten, “A Hiberno-Isisdorian Etymology,” Peritia 2 (1983): 225–28. 2 pseudohistorical trends of the text to both preface and invite further study and critique within the lens defined here. Perhaps most striking about the Lebor Gabála is its pseudohistorical nature, a term I borrow from John Carey in a 1995 essay.5 Though Ireland does suffer from Pictish pirates in the early medieval era, Norse raiders from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, and a continued Hiberno-Norse presence in places such as Dublin and Ossory, there are no true cultural, linguistic, or political interruptions in the way the island of Britain experiences just to the east.6 The island remains, mainly, Irish—culturally, linguistically, and politically. Yet, the Lebor Gabála manufactures a series of these interruptions in its pseudohistorical account in order to define a cultural identity. What is most striking is the presence of an Other who interacts with each of the invading peoples: the Fomoire. The Fomoire are not confined to only the Lebor Gabála. They appear throughout the medieval Irish corpus, such as Tochmarc Étaíne, and Cath Maige Tuired in addition to the centrally considered text here, the Lebor Gabála, evoking a question: are they another cultural and another language group that was present on the island with the Irish?7 Alternatively, were the Fomoire created by the Irish literati to create a textual space for a real, physical need on the island. Some investigation of the timeline of all three Irish texts at hand; Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath Maige Tuired, and Lebor Gabála; could prove useful to establish a framework.8 Many scholars; O’Rahilly, Carey, MacAlister, Scowcroft and others; argue the Lebor Gabála traces its origins to 5 John Carey, “Native Elements in Irish Pseudohistory,” in Cultural Identity and Cultural Integration: Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages (Portland, Oregon: Four Courts Press, 1995), 45–60. 6 For a thorough historical and archeological analysis of exactly when and where the Hiberno-Norse peoples were on the island, see the recent collection of published essays Howard B. Clarke and Ruth Johnson, eds., The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond: Before and after the Battle of Clontarf, Pathways to Our Past (Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2015). 7 See Osborn Bergin and R.I. Best, “Tochmarc Étaíne,” Ériu 12 (1938): 137–96. 8 Elizabeth A. Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure,” Éigse 19 (1982): 1–35. 3 as early as the seventh century.9 Gray places Cath Maige Tuired’s origins before that, she argues the sixth century, finding echoes, originally from Cath Maige Tuired, within the Lebor Gabála.10 Tochmarc Étaíne is dated to either the eighth or ninth centuries by MacKillop.11 Tochmarc Étaíne appears last in the framework, with the Lebor Gabála as a tradition beginning between it and Cath Maige Tuired. All but Tochmarc Étaíne have origins before archeological evidence of the longphuirt of the Norse presence in Dublin, Ossory and other places.12 Amid the sixth century origins of this framework, there is no space for the Fomoire to signify an actual cultural, political, or language group on the island. Certainly, all three texts are well established long before 1014 and the Battle of Clontarf. Though, the Acallam na Senórach, the Fenian cycle, dated to roughly the twelfth century by Cana and others, may ascribe an Othered presence and role to the Norse by equating them to the Fomoire and the Otherworld in the Fenian cycle, none of the texts at hand can, at their origins, be considered to have a physically proven, extant Other cultural or linguistic people at their center. 13 In the three texts, the Fomoire are not Norse, not Vikings, not Picts, and not raiders from another island.14 They 9 O’Rahilly’s book is indispensable for any significant study of the Irish mythological cycle and serves as a foundation for scholarship surrounding it. See Thomas F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957). See Carey, “A New Introduction to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, the Book of the Taking of Ireland, Edited and Translated by R.A. Stewart MacAlister.” See Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and transl. R.A.S. MacAlister, 5 vols (Dublin 1932-56). See also both Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part I: The Growth of the Text.” and Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála Part II: The Growth of the Tradition.” 10 Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure.” 11 See Elizabeth A Gray, Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired (London: Irish texts Society, 1998). See also James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998): 359-61. 12 Clarke and Johnson, The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond. 13 Cana and other members of the first International Congress of Celtic Studies thoroughly examine and discuss the influence of the Hiberno-Norse and other Nordic peoples on the medieval Irish literary tradition. See P. Mac Cana, “The Influence of Vikings on Celtic Literature,” in The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celtic-Speaking Peoples c.800-1100 A.D. : Introductory Papers Read at Plenary Sessions of the International Congress of Celtic Studies, Held in Dublin, 6-10 July, 1959 /: The Influence of Vikings on Celtic Literature (International Congress of Celtic Studies, Dublin, 1959), 78–118. For a current critical edition, complete with arguments on its dating, see Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, eds., Tales of the Elders of Ireland: Acallam Na Senórach, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 14 For a thorough investigation of some of those raiding peoples, see Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba, 789 - 1070, New Edinburgh History of Scotland, v. 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007). 4 are a textual invention created to serve a purpose for the Mil Espáine and other “Irish” conquering groups introduced in the various invasions the textual tradition of the Lebor Gabála and others use to build towards a final Irish victory and solidify, legitimize, and glorify the Irish people, if such a unified term may be applied to the disparate groups on the island who shared, at the least, a language.15 How then, are we to read the Fomoire within the manuscript corpus of the Lebor Gabála? I contend that the Fomoire are a Derridean re-centering to establish an axis around which a people might define themselves, their identity, and the land which they occupy, the Other against which the Irish define and redefine themselves in the discourse of Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath Maige Tuired, and the Lebor Gabála.16 By centering the discourse of Irish cultural identity throughout a corpus of texts—Tochmarc Étaíne, Cath Maige Tuired, and the Lebor Gabála—the Fomoire become the locus, the center, of the cultural conversation occurring across time and place in Ireland.
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