A Hittite story from the earliest Indo-European language extant, describes a human man who was "abducted" by a goddess, and who so missed his wife and children, or at least his clann and city, that she grew cross with his pining for them and tossed him out of paradise. I'd have to try to search the details out, but it wasn't a happy story.
It's also the story of Tithonus, the human lover of the dawn goddess Aurora. She asked Zeus to make Tithonus immortal, which he did, but didn't make him forever young as Aurora didn't ask that – she forgot; so here Zeus was behaving more like a lamp genie or Loki than anything else). Revolted (or perhaps feeling pity in the ancient gods' way, to the extent they could feel pity) Aurora turned him into a cicada. Cicadas are big bugs, not remotely beautiful, that feature in many mythologies, and are supposed to be carefree; the actual bugs spend most of their time underground not fully developed, and get eaten by predators – including humans – when they do show up. But the ones in the trees where I grew up somehow had a soothing sound to me. Long afternoons, late summer, especially September, conjure the memory and invoke immortal times.
Haloed in diamond gossamer
And deep summer silence,
The muddy stream meanders
In casual ebbings amongst the water grasses,
Sunlight mirrors the furnace of stars
While dragonflies hover,
Antediluvian flashes,
Live-coal emeralds hoarding aeons.
The Hittite story is the story of Oisín meeting up with Niamh, of the Tuatha Dé Danann. An Irish music group did the story some decades ago now, in a sort of pop-rock type of song that's not bad at all. (And I say that as a mostly sean-nós duine meself.) You can find a translation of it here:
http://glen_imaal.tripod.com/Legend1.html
It's one of the great tales of Éire, Scéalta na bhFear Éireann. Scéal grá. (Doesn't Irish have a great word for love? Grá?) Love, Romantic Love, never lasts, never fulfills, even when you're with one of the divine race. Physically a perfect beauty, and wise, knowing more than mere mortals know. What's not to like?
Something profound, apparently. And the Irish version had a distinct love of country that is significant for the Irish today, or ought to be. It's a story full of meaning, of how men and women will do the most profound things for one another (Oisín giving up everything he loved) and yet this Romantic love never lasts, even in Tír na nÓg.
Sir Walter Scott got in on these types of tales himself, so he did, with his Thomas the Rhymer. Go here:
http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/poetryprescription/thomas-the-rhymer.html for the full poem, but these staves are the best known:
O see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset wi’ thorns and briers?
That is the path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.
That winds about yon fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.
William Butler Yeats at least referenced the Osían story in his Hosting of the Sidhe:
THE HOST is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away....
Perhaps the most famous of these Man-Meets-Goddess was Brian Mac Giolla Meidhre (Brian Merriman's) The Midnight Court. A masterpiece of pre-Famine Ireland. But that grand poem should be the subject of another essay. Or a number of essays.
The Celtic soul seems to have that old paganism in it. Ceol na gCon, the music of the hounds. I'll never forget their "ceol" when my brothers took me 'coon hunting in southeast Ohio in the Fall, "back in the day", walking up the old canals, through the trees, moon flirting with the running clouds, hearing the hounds' song over the hills.
Or walking just in Ireland at night. What with the modern traffic, alas, that's not the best idea perhaps, but the old land comes to life then, the old world. It's still there. Though I must say my visit to the retreat at Loch Dearg is the most "Celtic" thing I've ever experienced. "Love of place", of land, ancestral-rootedness, perhaps that is the most Celtic of things. Lose that, and we'll find ourselves, what? Cast down from paradise?
I see it in the Catholic Church, too, in the sense of the iconoclasm since Vatican II: it's like so many Catholics have suddenly acquired a fatal amnesia, trashed out their ancestral house – old church buildings they grew up in, and I mean not just the buildings, but the liturgy too – and for what? Polyester and pastels. Be warned, though: Heaven is Absolute Place, rooted, filled with memory long before those of us who are going there ever get there, and if we don't know how to love place now, if we're spiritual tumble weeds, how are we going to love it then?
Anyway, Romantic Love. Ephemeral? It never is enough, or so it seems, though somehow we all long for a "True Love" story such as so immortally told in The Princess Bride. As some wrecked poet sang:
Leprosy-numbed fingers push words along
The cloudy page, etching the uncertain
Boundaries of smudged thoughts and uncaught love.
Romantic love that cannot be is my leprosy,
A catalepsy that palls the soul
And harlequins the mind.
Love leprosy stupefies the heart
With rusty shards of iron,
Breaking the fingers of poets, one by one.
A leper poet, I write of my love
With finger stumps, broken of spirit
And staved in with wine:
A banished immortal, son of Li Po,
Full of myself and the gritty dregs
Of the wild, weed-throttled vine.
Or does it? If it is "never enough" somehow yet we seek it, ever. Midir has pursued Etain (using the older spellings of their ancient names) for centuries. If that's not True Love, what is?
A forgotten poet wrote, I think, of Midir, in his modern avatar:
I waited for you,
By the window I watched;
Rain and the walnut tree's leaves applauded,
A lone sparrow began the morning rite,
And my body felt
Like coal
Without you.
An Préachán
No comments:
Post a Comment