Female Voices from the Otherworld: the Role of Women in the Early Irish Echtrai Karin E. Olsen This Is a Description of Bécuma

FEMALE VOICES FROM THE OTHERWORLD: THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE EARLY IRISH ECHTRAI Karin E. Olsen Is amhlaid do bi an ingin ⁊ brat uaine ændatha uimpe cona cimais dergṡnáithi dergoir ⁊ leine do sroll derg re geilchneas, ⁊ da mhælasa findruine uimpe ⁊ folt mæth buidhe fuirre ⁊ rosg glás ana cind ⁊ ded dathalaind ⁊ bél tana derg ⁊ dá ḟabra dubha ⁊ lamha dírgha datháille, ⁊ corp sneachtaighi sithgeal aice, ⁊ gluine corra ceindbeca ⁊ troi[gh]thi tana tóghaighi co mbuaigh crotha ⁊ ndenta ⁊ ndátha ⁊ ndruineachais ⁊ ba halaind eidighach an ingin sin .i. ingin Eogain Indbir. Ach mad æn-ní nirbha dingbhala dochum airdrigh Eirenn ben arna hindarba trina mígním fein. Thus was the maiden. She had a green cloak of one colour about her, with a fringe of red thread of red gold, and a red satin smock against her white skin, and sandals of findruine on her, and soft, yellow hair, and a grey eye in her head, and lovely-coloured teeth, and thin red lips, black eyebrows, arms straight and fair of hue, a snowy white body, small round knees, and slender choice feet, with excellence of shape, and form, and complexion, and accomplishments. Fair was the attire of that maiden, even Eogan Inbir’s daughter. One thing only, however, a woman was not worthy of the high- king of Ireland who was banished for her own misdeed.1 This is a description of Bécuma Cneisgel from the Land of Promise in the Middle Irish Eachtra Airt meic Cuind ocus Tochmarc Delbchaime ingine Morgain (‘The Adventure of Art, Son of Conn and the Wooing of Delb- chaim, daughter of Morgan’). Beautiful and seductive, Otherworld women like Bécuma feature prominently in the early Irish echtrai (‘adventures’). In some tales, they visit their chosen royal hero in his world and invite him to theirs, an invitation that he (eventually) accepts; in other tales, their first encounter with the hero takes place in the supernatural realm. The hero’s sojourn in the Otherworld—which may be located in a cave, mound, beneath the sea or on an island—always has a major impact on the hero’s life. In fact, in all but two echtrai he stays with his female com- panion in her world or his whereabouts remain uncertain. 1 R. I. Best, ed. and trans., ‘Eachtra Airt meic Cuind ⁊ Tochmarc Delbchaime Ingine Mor- gain’, Ériu 3 (1907), 149–73, at 152 (text), 153 (translation). 58 karin e. olsen Who are these attractive ladies? To begin with, they belong to the aes síde (‘people of the fairy mound’) and may indeed be called fairies, although this term does not do justice to their origin, which can be traced back to the sovereignty goddesses. Scholars have repeatedly illus- trated that the stock motif of the union of the Otherworld woman with the hero is a literary reflex of the mating of the king with the goddess. Since the Irish saw their land and sovereignty as feminine, the marriage of the king to the sovereignty/territorial goddess, also called banais righe (‘wedding feast of kingship’), was a prerequisite for the latter’s successful rule.2 However, the fairies in most echtrai have undergone a more or less drastic transformation. As this article will illustrate, their original role as sovereignty goddess is still intact in Echtrae Chonnlai (‘The Adventure of Connla’) and Immram Brain (‘The Voyage of Bran’) but already somewhat compromised in Echtrae Nerai (‘The Adventure of Nera’). In Serglige Con Culainn (‘The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn’), Echtrae Laegairi meic Crimhthainn (‘The Adventure of Laegaire Mac Crimhthann’) and Eachtra Airt, however, the sacral character of the desired union has either disap- peared or is openly criticised. In spite of their supernatural powers, the women in these three tales are made subordinate to human and supernatural males who determine their fate. The most straightforward manifestations of the sovereignty goddess occur in two of the earliest witnesses to the tradition. The archetypes of Echtrae Chonnlai and Immram Brain, which may date back to the eighth century but which have been transmitted in manuscripts dating from the twelfth century and later,3 tell how a mysterious woman visits the hero 2 In Lebor Gabála Érenn (‘The Book of the Takings of Ireland’), the three goddesses Ériu, Banba, and Fodla of the Túatha Dé Danann successively meet the poet Armairgin of the Gaels (or ‘Sons of Míl’), who belongs to the last population that invaded Ireland, and force the poet to name Ireland after them. Ireland still has the three names today, Érenn (< Ériu) being the most well-known one. For a discussion of the king’s marriage to the territorial goddess, see, for example, James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford and New York, 1998), sv; Patrick Ford, ‘Celtic Women: The Opposing Sex’, Viator 19 (1988), 416–33, esp. 424–27; Proinsias Mac Cana, ‘Aspects of the Theme of King and God- dess in Irish Literature’, Études Celtiques 7 (1955–56), 76–114, 356–413, and Études Celtiques 8 (1958–59), 59–65. 3 In his edition of Echtrae Chonnlai, Kim McCone uses linguistic evidence to illustrate that the closest witnesses to the eighth-century archetypes of Echtrae Chonnlai and Immram Brain are the texts in the mid-fourteenth-century Yellow Book of Lecan. McCone argues further that the texts in the early twelfth-century Lebor na hUidre derive from later, tenth-century versions of the two tales. Séamus Mac Mathúna postulates ninth- and eleventh-century dates for the two nodes of Immram Brain. Kim McCone, ed. and trans., Echtrae Chonnlai and the Beginnings of Vernacular Narrative Writing in Ireland: a Critical .

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