Warrior groups

The Gaelic ballads are unified less by their themes than by the specific group of warriors with whose adventures the majority are concerned.  It is probably true to say that about ninety per cent of the lays surviving in Gaelic tradition, in both Ireland and Scotland, describe the deeds of the Fiana, warrior bands who, under the leadership of Fionn mac Cumhaill, were reputed to have flourished in Ireland in the third century A.D.  Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the warriors who joined the roving bands called fiana were young men who chose this lifestyle before settling down to the more stable and predictable demands of manhood.  The fiana existed and flourished on the edge of ‘normal’ society, and – rather like the poems which narrate their adventures – enjoyed a freedom from conventional straitjackets and from the restrictions of normal boundaries. They could act as hunters, seducers of women, defenders of the land, upholders of status quo or dangerous anarchists, either threatening or supporting the régime of the great ‘high king’ of Tara, Cormac mac Airt, and modifying their role whenever the occasion demanded.

All of these dimensions are well represented in the poetry. The ballads, in their themes and forms, preserve a creative link with a major institutional reality of early Gaelic society in both its Irish and Scottish dimensions, since we know that fiana were found in both countries before 1000 A.D.  The fiana evidently existed as individual groups with leaders, who, in time, appear to have acknowledged the overall supremacy of Fionn mac Cumhaill.  It is nevertheless apparent that the poems reflect underlying tensions which seem to be based on the rivalry of the fian groups within the larger confederation; thus Fionn himself, who is portrayed in an early text as the champion of a fian-leader from Munster called Mac Con, came to have a strong territorial link with Leinster, and he is shown to be the rival of Goll mac Morna, who was also, in all probability, the leader of a fian which enjoyed prestige in Connacht and the north of Ireland.  Below these territorial affiliations and rivalries, it is also possible to discern ultimate mythological origins in the main personalities: thus Fionn and Goll may well represent early Celtic gods who have been given flesh and blood, and stripped of their divine attributes, in deference to the Christian faith.  The term ‘Ossianic’ reflects the fian band of principal interest to the composers of the lays, since Oisín, who is regarded as the ‘composer’ of many of the lays, was the son of Fionn.  By the mid-eighteenth century his name was represented in English as Ossian, and gained prominence in the so-called ‘Ossianic Controversy’ involving James Macpherson’s ‘translations’.

The remaining ten per cent or so of the lays are concerned with heroes from two different traditions.  One of these traditions, which focuses on the warriors associated with the early province of Ulster, is represented in a group of about six ballads.  Tales of the so-called Ulster Cycle tell of the exploits of the Ulster warriors, and especially  Cú Chulainn.  Such tales enjoyed immense prestige in Gaelic society until the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when they began to lose out to the tales and ballads about the Fiana.  At some stage certain tales about the Ulster Cycle took the form of verse which, in most technical respects, is similar to conventional lays about the Fiana.  Indeed, a poem which recounts how Cú Chulainn visited the land of Scáth and later told St Patrick of his adventures was composed in the tenth or eleventh century, and appears to foreshadow the development of the Fian lays, which was at its height after 1200 A.D.  In later tradition we find a ballad, dating from the late fifteenth century and apparently composed in Scotland, which tells how Cú Chulainn slew his own son, Conlaoch, whom he had begotten while learning feats of arms with the warrior-woman Scáthach (BDL XXIII).  Here we see, as in the Fian poetry, the re-utilisation of an old theme; the story of the death of Conlaoch was known in a Middle Irish prose-tale, and it is based on the motif familiar in the very ancient Persian tale of Sohrab and Rustum.  Heroes who were linked with the Ulster Cycle are also represented in the ballads.  For example, the Connacht warrior Fraoch, who was beloved by Fionnabhair, the daughter of Ailill and Meadhbh, king and queen of Connacht, is the tragic hero of the Lay of Fraoch (Poem XXVII), relating how his death by a water-monster was contrived through the jealousy of Meadhbh, who feigned an illness which could be cured only by berries growing on an island and protected by a death-dealing monster.

The second of the non-Fian traditions which is represented in the lays can be termed ‘Arthurian’, in the sense that it employs characters who derive from the Gaelic romantic cycle of stories about Arthur and his men.  The ethos of the Arthurian lays is quite different from that of the Fian ballads and the Ulster ballads; quests for maidens and tests of heroism are among the main themes.  Thus, a lay entitled ‘Am Bròn Binn’ (superficially meaning ‘The Sweet Sorrow’) features Arthur, the King of Britain, and his quest to find a girl who has appeared to him in a dream.  Although the poem may be no earlier than 1500, and is known only in Scottish tradition, the theme is based on an international popular motif which is found in Middle Irish tales.  Another lay in this group, ‘Laoidh an Amadain Mhòir’ (‘The Lay of the Great Fool’), tells of the adventures of the Great Fool after he has reached manhood and has embarked on a journey which takes him to a land called Lochlann (a storiolgical location, well known in the lay traditon as a whole, and pre-eminently associated with the ‘Norsemen’ of the Fian-ballads).  Both of these Arthurian lays look as if they may have been composed towards the end of the main creative phase of the tradition, sometime between 1500 and 1600.  BDL, however, does not contain any Arthurian ballads, although the influence of Arthurian literature on one poem (Poem VII) has been posited.