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AN ECHTRAL THE CELTIC DISCOVERY AND RECOVERY OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA by Rod C. Mackay Copyright © by Rod C. Mackay Illustrations and Design by Rod C. Mackay ________________________________________________________ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced except as a single reading copy and back-up for the personal use of the registered disc purchaser. This electronic book is licensed to be stored on one hard-drive but is not otherwise offered to be lent, stored in additional retrieval systems, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or the like, without the express permission of the author at Box 793, Sussex, N.B. Canada, E0E 1P0. Registered purchasers will be made aware of correct- ions, deletions, and the availability of new illustrations and textual additions. ________________________________________________________ Published in Canada by The Caledonian First Edition Before Publication ISBN 0-920546-06-4 PREFACE Echtrai is a Gaelic word, a combination of ech with traigh . The former word is an interjection, an expression of impatience; while the latter indicates the ebb-tide. Related words are achadh , a field (as the flat surface of the sea) ; achlaid the chase, the hunt or pursuit; and echtral the lands of the west. All of these voyages were considered involuntary, or god-inspired projects, thus men so ?blessed” became eachdranach , ?foreign wanderers.” All these Gaelic words confer with the Latin extraneus , which is the source of the English word ?strange.” Note also the connection with the Gaelic each , a horse, echtra , being an adventure on horseback, sailing ships being sometimes entitled ?the horses of the sea.” The lands that were sought were those our ancestors variously identified as Atlantis, the Fortunate Isles, Hades, The Islands of the Blessed, The Great Plain, The Land of Youth, The Land of Promise, The Island of Women, The Islands of Eleven Thousand Virgins, the May Isles, The Isles of the Seven Bishops, The Green Islands, The Many-Coloured Land, An Domhain, Hy Breas-il, Annwn, or the Dead Lands. (and this is the short-list). While there is no word in English like echtrai, expressing a need to travel on the ocean, there were many Englishmen as well as men of other language and nationalities who felt compelled to voyage upon the ancient ocean-seas. Traditions say that many of them were seduced to this work by God, or by a god-spirit, who promised them religious revelations. The pagan Gaels, and their counterparts in other lands, were occasionally led by the whispers of their god-spirits, but they also journeyed onto the Great Plain of the Sea following the lead of ?fairy- women” who promised them extravagant bodily pleasures in a strange and distant land. Sensible land-lubbers knew that that lands beyond the western horizon hosted spirits of the dead and were dangerous places for recreation or commerce. Notwithstanding, it was remembered that three boat-loads of mortal men went to pillage the place at sun’s end. Led by King Arthur, these privateers are spoken of in the Book of Taliesin where a short tale called 1 ?The Spoils of Annwn” speaks of their successful attempt to carry off the famed talking head which was the talisman of the dark lands. Unfortunately this event led to increased hostility between the ?under-sea people”and men. Ordinary commercial travel on the ocean was, at first, unknown. Successful voluntary voyages were often incorporated into stories known as imramae , or ?wonder-voyages.” This word is similar to imrich , to remove from one place to another, to ?flit.” It is ultimately from the verb rach , ?I go,” and resembles the Early Irish emigre , a journey or expedition to some far place. While some folk were drawn to ocean travel by theological or supernatural considerations, others were forced to go. The involuntary exile of men to the west was termed longes from the Gaelic longa which was invariably a war-ship rather than a trading vessel. The northeastern coast of America lay directly opposite Europe on the western Atlantic fringe, but for many centuries seemed unapproachable because of the prevailing southwestern winds and the Gulf Stream. The latter, a ?river within the sea,” circles in counter-clockwise fashion back to the Americas making the longer southern route (which Columbus followed) the easiest approach to the New World. Those who attempted a frontal attack on the west were almost invariably driven back. The Celtic and Viking voyagers tagged on to the northwestern branch of the stream and followed it to the point where it merges with the Labrador Current, a sea-stream which flows southwestward along Labrador, and Newfoundland finally petering out in Nova Scotian waters. In these seas, the mythic islands and lands were discovered, lost, recovered and finally dismissed as fabulous and/or uneconomic. Some of the ancient kingdoms of the west were charted in Newfoundland waters, but mariners placed many of mythic lands adjacent to, or on the mainland, which was anciently called Norumbega, Acadia or New Scotland. This last, which went under the charter name Nova Scotia, originally encompassed a much larger land area than the Canadian province that now uses this name. When the English crown claimed the place in 1626 it was mapped as including virtually all of the region south of present-day Quebec including a portion of what is now northern New England. To limit the scope of this book the ?northeast” is taken as all lands north from Cape Cod, including the U.S. region sometimes termed ?Down East”, the Canadian Atlantic provinces, and the parts of Quebec that border the ocean. The lands and creatures noted in these pages are not the stuff of fables, or made-up stories, but of myths, which were originally counted as unverifiable history. Legends, which cite the histories of men, are also peripheral to our story; myths being chiefly concerned with the business of the gods and similar wonder-workers. It has been claimed that America has no mythology . Catherine Parr Traill, an Englishwoman homesteading Upper Canada in 1838 wrote: "We have neither fay nor fairy ghost, nor bogle, satyr nor wood-nymph, our very forests disdain to shelter dryad or hamadryad. No naiad haunts the rushy margins of our lakes, or hallows with her presence our forest rills. No druid claims our oaks...we look upon things with the curious eye of natural philosophy alone." In her outback settlement Traill had need to think of her surroundings as a place "with no scope for the imagination." The lady also said, "The only beings in which I have any interest are the Indians, and even they want the warlike character and intelligence that I pictured they 2 would possess." Obviously, she did not really want them to show more aggression, and apparently did not ask them what they thought of her theory that Canada was a new world, "its volume of history as yet blank." Had she enquired, she would have found a well-developed history and mythology. Traill's sister, Mrs. Susanna Moodie made a similar dismissal of the native culture in 1852 when she wrote: "The unpeopled wastes of Canada must present the same aspect to the new settler that the world did to our first parents after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden; all the sin which could defile the spot, or haunt it with the association of departed evil, is concentrated in their own persons. Bad spirits cannot be supposed to linger near a place where crime has never been committed. The belief in ghosts (spirits), so prevalent in old countries, must first have had its foundation in the consciousness of guilt." On a visit to Canada, the English poet Rupert Brook took up this same theme from his countrymen: "The maple and the birch conceal no dryads, and Pan has never been heard amongst these reed-beds. Look as long as you like upon a cataract of the New World, you shall not see a white arm in the foam. A godless place. And the dead do not return. That is why there is nothing lurking in the heart of the shadows, and no human mystery in the colours, and neither the same joy, nor the kind of peace in dawn and sunset that older lands know. It is indeed, a new world.” He also contended that ?there walk as yet, no ghosts of lovers in Canadian lanes...Even an Irishman would not see a row of little people with green caps leaping along beneath the fire-weed and golden daisies...it has never paid a steamship company to arrange for their emigration.” Rupert Brooke encountered nothing more sinister in the New World landscape than a ?brisk melancholy,” but intending Norse settlers had been partly dissuaded from settlement by the supernatural creatures they found on the land. The French missionary, Abbe Morillot wrote: "This country is one of the most suggestive of superstition I have seen. Everything here, sea, earth and heaven, is very strange." The view of the poet is also in strong contrast to that of Charles G. Leland a long-time resident of the northeastern coast of the United States. The Wabenaki (Indian) mythology, he claims, "gave a fairy, an elf, a naiad, or a hero to every rock and river and ancient hill... When the last Indian shall be in his grave, those who come after us will ask in wonder why we had no curiosity as to the romance of our country..." 3 4 INTRODUCTION The eastern coast of North America, as it now stands, shows almost every kind of coastline, and is an almost classic demonstration of the effects of tides, surf and currents on the shoreline.