serpents

Serpents and dragons in British folklore

/ Atlantic Religion / 7 Comments

It is perhaps unsurprising that Britain can lay claim to a number of ‘worm’ or ‘dragon’ legends, given its lands have been settled at various times by peoples to whom the imagery of such creatures has had deep symbolic meaning, not only to the Britons, Gauls and Irish of the Bronze and Iron Ages, but also of the ‘Romanised’ continentals and Germanic peoples who mixed with them, reinforcing and modifying the indigenous ideas of that locality. Through further contact with the East via Byzantium and the Crusades, new style and detail became added to indigenous stories which changed how people imagined these creatures looked and behaved.

The folktales and legends of old Britain were, before the 17thC era when state Protestantism began to encourage widespread literacy, transmitted orally largely in the form of either stories or ballads. Many of those in song form survive because they were published from the late 1600s onward in the form of ‘broadsheet-‘ or ‘broadside-ballads’ – popular songs whose lyrics were printed in the early newspapers.

Dragons or Serpents?

What we think of today as a dragon – a quadrupedal,winged, fire-breathing giant lizard – is in fact a ‘cultural chimera’ created by the fusion of Oriental and Occidental myths. It began to appear principally in the middle ages under the influence of Byzantine contact with the east.

The word ‘dragon’ is originally Greek: The word δράκων (drákōn) means ‘gazer’, and was applied to monstrous serpentine (and usually aquatic) creatures. In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, such fantastical ‘chimeric’ beasts were created by the Titans, in the distant ‘Kronian Age’ before the Olympian gods, and typically dwelled in the mysterious places at the far reach of the world-river ‘Okeanos’ – a metaphor for the most distant place a mortal could travel. They also appear as adversaries for both gods and heroes, again typically in far-off lands: Colchis, Libya, etc. Ancient Greek dragons were exotic, monstrous and liminal. They represented the cosmic forces of destruction and chaos – necessary parts of the natural order, continually attacking new growth and life.  To the ancient Egyptians, the giant serpent Apep (Apophis) embodied the same aspect of cosmic chaos, being the challenger to the personified luminary, Ra, at the far and mysterious extent of the sun’s travels ‘beyond the horizons’ in the underworld. His depiction as the Ouroboros serpent (devouring its own tail) went on to influence the symbolism of the mysticism in the Greco-Roman world. The ‘barbarian’ Celts of Europe’s Bronze and Iron Ages were also fond of the imagery of serpents, which pervaded their art and stylization. Contrary to popular beliefs, dragon imagery as we would understand it is not readily identifiable from the artistic record of these peoples before they ‘took the king’s sestertius’ and Romanised.

St George and the Dragon:

The prototype for many British ‘dragon’ tales must surely lie in the Romance literature era, during which time popular and courtly culture in northern Europe was dominated by a strong tradition of storytelling, the most notable of which were the Arthurian cycle of tales. One of the most popular books of that era was the religiously-themed ‘Legenda Aurea’ (‘Golden Legends’) compiled by James (Jacob) of Voraigne c.1260CE. It was a collection of the tales of Christendom’s most popular religious heroes – the Saints – drawn from regions as far as Byzantium and beyond in the east to Ireland in the far west. Among these was contained an account of the legend of St George and the Dragon, originating apparently from Cappadocia (modern Turkey) and Georgia, albeit with obvious influences from the ‘Thracian Hero’ statuary traditions of the late-Roman era Balkans and Asia Minor.

Like many of the famous British dragon tales, the Legenda Aurea account of George has him battling a serpent which has emerged from a lake. True to ‘Romance’ literary form, he saves a fair damsel from the dragon. Here is an excerpt from the 15thC English version as printed by William Caxton):

“… S. George was a knight and born in Cappadocia. On a time he came in to the province of Libya, to a city which is said Silene. And by this city was a stagne or a pond like a sea, wherein was a dragon which envenomed all the country. And on a time the people were assembled for to slay him, and when they saw him they fled. And when he came nigh the city he venomed the people with his breath, and therefore the people of the city gave to him every day two sheep for to feed him, because he should do no harm to the people, and when the sheep failed there was taken a man and a sheep. Then was an ordinance made in the town that there should be taken the children and young people of them of the town by lot, and every each one as it fell, were he gentle or poor, should be delivered when the lot fell on him or her. So it happed that many of them of the town were then delivered, insomuch that the lot fell upon the king’s daughter, whereof the king was sorry, and said unto the people: For the love of the gods take gold and silver and all that I have, and let me have my daughter. They said: How sir! ye have made and ordained the law, and our children be now dead, and ye would do the contrary. Your daughter shall be given, or else we shall burn you and your house.

When the king saw he might no more do, he began to weep, and said to his daughter: Now shall I never see thine espousals. Then returned he to the people and demanded eight days’ respite, and they granted it to him. And when the eight days were passed they came to him and said: Thou seest that the city perisheth: Then did the king do array his daughter like as she should be wedded, and embraced her, kissed her and gave her hls benediction, and after, led her to the place where the dragon was.

When she was there S. George passed by, and when he saw the lady he demanded the lady what she made there and she said: Go ye your way fair young man, that ye perish not also. Then said he: Tell to me what have ye and why weep ye, and doubt ye of nothing. When she saw that he would know, she said to him how she was delivered to the dragon. Then said S. George: Fair daughter, doubt ye no thing hereof for I shall help thee in the name of Jesu Christ. She said: For God’s sake, good knight, go your way, and abide not with me, for ye may not deliver me. Thus as they spake together the dragon appeared and came running to them, and S. George was upon his horse, and drew out his sword and garnished him with the sign of the cross, and rode hardily against the dragon which came towards him, and smote him with his spear and hurt him sore and threw him to the ground. And after said to the maid: Deliver to me your girdle, and bind it about the neck of the dragon and be not afeard. When she had done so the dragon followed her as it had been a meek beast and debonair. Then she led him into the city, and the people fled by mountains and valleys, and said: Alas! alas! we shall be all dead. Then S. George said to them: Ne doubt ye no thing, without more, believe ye in God, Jesu Christ, and do ye to be baptized and I shall slay the dragon. Then the king was baptized and all his people, and S. George slew the dragon and smote off his head, and commanded that he should be thrown in the fields, and they took four carts with oxen that drew him out of the city.

Then were there well fifteen thousand men baptized, without women and children, and the king did do make a church there of our Lady and of S. George, in the which yet sourdeth a fountain of living water, which healeth sick people that drink thereof… “

The adoption of George as a national saint famed for slaying a dragon all but ensured the popularity of this mythical genre in England, leading to a slew of local versions of the tale – all generally loaded with the same allegorical intent.

When Geoffrey of Monmouth penned his ‘Prophecy of Merlin’ as part of his 12thC ‘History of the Kings of Britain’ he depicted the ancient British king Vortigern as witness to a battle between a red and a white dragon, said to represent the Britons and the Saxons respectively. The dragon from then onwards also became a national symbol to the Britons, and for this very reason the red dragon is the symbol depicted upon the Welsh national flag.

I will now discuss a few of the more famous English dragon tales:

The Lambton Worm:

This famous tale from the north of England in the vicinity of the River Wear is still an immensely popular part of local tradition. It generally tells of a young squire of Lambton who goes fishing one Sunday and is rewarded by catching a slimy wriggling thing which he tosses into a well near the river (a wishing-well later referred to as the ‘Worm Well’) thinking it no fit fish. In time this ‘worm’ grew into a mighty and fearsome beast which terrorised the neighbourhood and stole the milk and cattle of the country people. Grown to manhood, the squire returns from the crusades to find his father’s lands laid waste by the creature. He seeks the sage advice of an old witch who counsels him how he might best defeat the beast whose existence he is responsible for. He eventually confronts the beast in a heroic struggle and defeats it, casting its body back into the river Wear. Although similar to the St George myth, it contains elements of indigenous British beliefs about rivers and holy wells that were important to our Celtic ancestors.

The Sockburn Worm:

Another famous northern English dragon-slaying myth is that of the Sockburn Worm or Sockburn Wyvern of County Durham. The word ‘wyvern’ derives from the French guivre – meaning an asp, adder or wyrm. We know of this worm because of a legend attached to a medieval sword known as the Conyers Falchion, traditionally presented to each new Bishop of Durham when he takes up his position. This (actually a 12th/13thC blade) was supposed to have been used to slay the worm by the eponymous Conyers, for which favour he was supposedly granted his lands some time in the 11thC. A note on this tradition remains in a 17thC manuscript of the Conyers’ pedigree in the possession of the British museum.

“Sr Jo Conyers of Storkburn Knt who slew ye monstrous venoms and poysons wiverns Ask or worme which overthrew and Devour’d many people in fight, for the scent of poyson was soo strong, that no person was able to abide it, yet he by the providence of god overthrew it and lyes buried at Storkburn before the Conquest, but before he did enterprise it (having but one sonne) he went to the Church in compleat armour and offered up his sonne to the holy ghost, which monument is yet to see, and the place where the serpent lay is called Graystone.” British Museum MS Harleian No. 2118, folio 39. Early 17thC

It is surmised that local lad Lewis Carroll immortalised the Sockburn Worm as his fantastical and savage ‘Jabberwocky’. The sword now lives at Durham Cathedral. The Bishop of Durham enjoyed near-kingly power and a military reputation during the period of the myth’s protagonist – he was responsible for keeping the dragon of Scots power under control, sometimes even serving the same purpose to the Scots against the English when circumstance suited him.

The Worm of Linton:

Just further north in the Scottish borders we find the story of the Worm of Linton – a dragon who lived in a den on the local hill, supposed to have been defeated by a knight called de Somerville who plunged a burning lump of peat into its maw on the end of his iron lance. The writhings and death-throes of the dragon were said to have caused the unusual undulations in the ground of the surrounding countryside. Like the Lambton worm just across the border, the dragon’s den is said to be in the type of place once held as sacred by the pre-christian peoples of Britain.

The Laidley Worm:

The tragic tale of a princess transformed into a dragon by an evil witch, only to be saved by the kiss of a handsome prince is the basis for the the legend of the ‘The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heughs’, sometimes known as the ‘The Laidly Worm of Banborough’ or ‘Bamburgh’. This tale is another preserved, so it was said, from folklore in a ballad first published in 1771 (within 10 years of MacPherson’s famous renderings of the legends of ‘Ossian’). It was attributed in Hutchinson’s 1778 guide to Northumberland to an ‘old mountain bard’ called Duncan Frasier, said to have lived on Cheviot (Scotland/Northumberland borders) in 1270, from whom it was ‘discovered’ from ‘an antient manuscript’ by its supposed ‘collector’, cited as the Rev. Robert Lambe.  As it appears related to the ballads of the ‘Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea’ and ‘Kemp Owyne’, collected by Child in his book of songs, it is likely that Lambe’s claim was probably dubious – an attempt at personal aggrandisement from popular local tradition in the light of MacPherson’s dubious fame. These creatures (mackerel and serpent) both evoke the idea of ‘gazer’ expressed by the ancient Greek word ‘drákōn’.

“… ‘I was but seven year auld
When my mither she did die;
My father married the ae warst woman
The warld did ever see.
‘For she has made me the laily worm,
That lies at the fit o the tree,
An my sister Masery she’s made
The machrel of the sea.
‘An every Saturday at noon
The machrel comes to me,
An she takes my laily head
An lays it on her knee,
She kaims it wi a siller kaim,
An washes’t in the sea.
‘Seven knights hae I slain,
Sin I lay at the fit of the tree,
An ye war na my ain father,
The eight ane ye should be.’ … “

The term ‘Laily’ is understood to mean ‘loathly’. The theme of transformative humans, disguising their majesty behind monstrous identities was common in the stories of the ancient world, and a particular theme seen in the traditions of Ireland and Britain until late in the middle ages, when Chaucer employed it in his ‘Wife of Bath’s tale’.

The Dragon of Unsworth:

The northern county of Lancashire claims a dragon legend in that associated with the settlement of Unsworth, now a part of Greater Manchester. The surviving incarnation of the legend states that Sir Thomas Unsworth – lord of that particular manse – slew a dragon that had been terrorising his neighbourhood by firing a dagger from his gun into the soft spot on its throat. This selfsame dagger was supposed to have been used to carve an old wooden table once (as late as the 19thC) in the possession of the family at Unsworth House, which had a number of dragons inscribed upon it.

Like the other British dragon stories alluded to, the story attaches the slaying of a dragon to the provenance of some aristocratic family and their self-proclaimed right to rule. The same can be said of Yorkshire’s equivalent tale:

‘The Dragon of Wantley’:

Set among the Wharncliffe (‘Wantley’ or ‘Wortley’) Crags and Moors near Sheffield in South Yorkshire, this legend involved a dragon who would fly out regularly from its den in a cave (still called the ‘Dragon’s Den’) at the crags near Wortley Hall to a spring-well in the district. This dragon, according to the traditions, was eventually slain by a local hero, More of More Hall, the local magnate and presumed fore-runner of the incumbents at Wortley Hall (Wortley-Montagu of smallpox inoculation fame).

Wantleyballad

A late 17thC ‘Broadside Ballad‘ from Sheffield later recorded by Francis Child (of ‘Child Ballads’ fame) in the 19thC introduces the dragon and the spring well he was said to frequent:

…In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham,

     the Place I know [it] well:

Some two or three Miles, or thereabouts,

     I vow, I cannot tell;

But there is a Hedge, just on the Hill Edge,

     and Matthews House hard by it:

Oh! there and then was this Dragons Den,

     you could not chuse but spy it.

Some say this Dragon was a Witch;

     some say he was a Devil:

For from his Nose a Smoke arose,

     and with it burning Snivel;

Which he cast off, when he did cough,

     into a Well that stands by;

Which made it look just like a Brook

     running with burning Brandy…

The hero, Moore of Moore Hall, ambushes the dragon by hiding in its favourite drinking well cloaked in spiked armour. When the dragon comes to drink he leaps out and combat ensues. The hero, wearing spiked shoes, finishes off the dragon with a kick:

At length the hard Earth began for to quake,

     the Dragon gave him such a Knock:

Which made him to reel, and straight he thought

     to lift him as high as a Rock,

And then let him fall: But Moore of Moore-hall,

     like a valiant Son of Mars:

As he came like a Lout, so he turnd him about,

     and hit him a Kick on the Arse.

Oh, quoth the Dragon, with a deep Sigh,

     and turnd six Times together;

Sobbing and tearing, cursing and swearing,

     out of his Throat of Leather;

Moore of Moore-hall, O thou Rascal,

     would I had seen thee never:

With the Thing at thy Foot thou hast prickd my Arse-gut,

     and I am undone for ever.

The ballads and stories of the Dragon were almost as famous locally as those of Robin Hood, whose earliest surviving (15thC) exemplars such as A Gest of Robyn Hode localise Robin to areas such as Barnsdale and Loxley in South Yorkshire. In the 18thC the story of the Dragon of Wantley was very well known and was even turned into a popular Burlesque Opera.

The ballad/tale’s popularity exemplified (as in the case of the aforementioned Robin Hood) how local politics and social intrigue could be served by the appropriation of ancient legendary motifs as allegories for more modern woes. They secretly lambasted local politicians and people of power. Dragons or big ugly beasts could be used in popular oral culture as representations of disease or greed, or to characterise human opponents.

Dragons also represent the dark reaches of where we have come from – the sources of humanity’s allegorical river, for which the snake has often been used as a metaphor. That rivers arise in lakes, pools or in caves or spring wells up on mountain sides has made such sites the classical typical den of the legendary dragons of myth.

Serpents and dragons in Irish mythology

/ Atlantic Religion / 4 Comments

“… No country in Europe is so associated with the Serpent as Ireland, and none has so many myths and legends connected with the same… “ Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions – James Bonwick, 1894.

Dragons and great serpents are common themes in the mythology of countries across the world, but their roles and meaning appear to differ depending upon the region concerned. In ancient Europe, serpents (the precursors of the more oriental ‘dragons’) were connected to the chthonic otherworld and underworld, and hence to ideas of decay – the earthy beginnings from which new life grows and the diseases and poisons which caused things to return to that state (i.e. – that process called ‘putrefaction’). They were linked to meres and marshes whose mass of rotting vegetation and sourness was a metaphor for death itself. That such marshy areas were filled with tiny worms, eels and wriggling creatures must have proved evidence that the serpentine and the decaying were linked – just as maggots appear to colonise rotting flesh and intestinal worms fill the excrement of most living creatures. This earth, the dung of animals and all manner of rotting vegetation – be it from the sea or the land – was a potent source of chthonic fertility and regeneration, and therefore wealth: a characteristic resplendent in mythological dragons.

J.R.R.Tolkein 'Conversation with Smaug' (1937)

J.R.R.Tolkein ‘Conversation with Smaug’ (1937)

This ploutic (from ‘Ploutos’ or Hades: Greek god of chthonic wealth) treasure-guarding aspect of serpents and dragons is a feature of the north European mythologies, such as the legends of Sigurd/Siegfried and the Norse peoples. However, the monstrous serpents faced by mythological  ancient Greek heroes such as Hercules, Jason and Perseus also guarded treasures: The serpent Ladon, for example, was the guardian of the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides – on an island far to the west, near the setting sun and the realms of Cronos at the limits of Okeanos.

In medieval Irish mythology, such a class of beasts (where actually identifiable as dragons or great worms at all) were more often associated with tales of monstrous peril involving saints and heroes, and were (unsurprisingly) associated with the marshy aquatic realm. Usually referred to by the terns ‘piast’ or ‘péist’ – a ‘pest’ or ‘beast’ – they were often used in christian narratives of the middle ages as dangerous legendary personifications of the Old Order – linked strongly to its religious beliefs connecting water with the underworld or otherworld. Such an example is given in the Middle Irish tales of Acallam na Senórach in which the ancient hero Caeilte supposedly recounts the deeds of the Fianna to St Patrick, and explains that it was once their prerogative to rid the land of serpents and dragons… The narrative of the tale seeks to link such exploits of serpent-expelling with that typically Patrician art:

“…Eochaid Lethderg, King of Leinster, enquired of Caeilte: ‘What cause had Finn and the Fianna that, out of every other monster ye banished out of Ireland, they killed not the reptile we have in the glen of Ros Enaigh?’ Caeilte replied: ‘Their reason was that the creature is the fourth part of Mesgedhra‘s brain, which the earth swallowed there and converted into a monstrous worm.’ …” (Translation: Standish Hayes O’Grady)

Mesgedhra’s brain features in the Ulster Cycle: he was an older king of Leinster killed by Ulster’s hero, Conall Cernach, and his brain was taken and calcined in lime as a gruesome war-trophy (heads were preserved in the Celtic Iron Age as trophies of enemies, although here it may be a bardic narrative allegory). Later, the brain was stolen and used as a weapon by the Connachta warrior Cet mac Mágach, who employed it as a sling-shot against Ulster king Conchobar mac Nessa. This left Conchobar with the brain-stone buried in his head, and it eventually exploded when the wounded Conchobar became angry and (presumably – the mythology is lost) a great worm must have escaped from his cranium… The terrible worm which the Fianna were fain to battle in the Acallam therefore represented a reincarnation of Mesgedhra through the cthonic realms. In the tale, this represented an ancestral blood-feud which the Fianna were loath to disturb. This itself demonstrates a figurative aspect of dragons as an analogy for warfare and vengeance, replete with great danger as well as the chance for enrichment, and potential long-term consequences.

There were in fact many other dragons associated with the tales of Fionn as well as a number of other Irish christian culture-heroes…

In the embattled times following the Flight of the Earls in the early 17thC, Fionn mac Cumhaill was a popular embodiment of the aspirations of Irish Gaeldom: A collection of Fenian lays known as Duanaire Finn was compiled at Louvain (Belgium) in the early 17thC by Aodh Ó Dochartaigh at the behest of exiled Gaelic magnate, Captain Somhairle Mac Domhnaill: A grandson of the renowned northern Gaelic dynast ‘Sorley Boy’, he was fighting the Catholic cause in the continental 30 years war). His wish was evidently to preserve the Fenian traditions among the fading bastions of independent Gaelic culture and power. Of particular interest are his descriptions in the poetic lay known as ‘The Pursuit of Sliabh Druim’ of the dragon-slaying antics of the Fianna:

This tale starts with a description of the Fianna at peace, doing what they love best when not at war: slaughtering game animals. Sliabh Druim provides the scene of their greatest hunting triumph (a veritable ecological disaster) but on progressing on to Lough Cuan, they are accosted by a great péist who announces that he has come from Greece to fight Fionn and his band. Fionn dispatches him, by way of an introduction to a bardic celebration of his history of péist-slaying antics, which in itself reads like a catalogue of Ireland’s loughs, bogs and rivers as it accounts for his slaying of dragons living in Loughs Neagh, Cuillean, Erne, Eiach, Lein, Righ, Sileann, Foyle, Eamhuir, Meilge, Sera, Mask, Laeghaire and Lurgan, as well as river serpents on the Shannon and the Bann, and in a number of glens. It appears that most of Ireland’s waterways and loughs were once well-populated with the reptilian kind, as well as dreadful ‘phantoms’ and ‘cats’ until Fionn had his way with them.

A tympanum from Cormac's Chapel at the Rock of Cashel depicts a Centaur shooting a peist with arrows... Fionn and a dragon?

A tympanum from Cormac’s Chapel at the Rock of Cashel depicts a Centaur shooting a peist with arrows… Fionn and a dragon?

Indeed, if we look at many of the legends regarding those later culture heroes – the saints of early chrsitian Ireland – we come across a number of significant encounters with ‘beasts’: The Cathach of Inniscathaigh was defeated by St Sennan, and the Bruckee was supposedly defeated at Rath Blatmaic in Co. Clare by St MacCreehy. St Caomhin (Kevin) was supposed to have defeated a beast who lived at Glendalough. The 6thC Saint Patrick, was – like the earlier Fianna – also apocryphally famous for casting ‘snakes’ out of Ireland. Such beasts were often implied to be female in Christian tales: The hagiography of St Senán – Amra Senáin – from the Leaba Brecc manuscript (RIA MS 23 P 16), is quite explicit about the Cathach’s sex. Such tales seem designed to identify beasts, serpents or dragons with the true indigenous religion they were replacing. These saints appear, therefore, to have subsumed the role of Fionn as dragon-slayers!

A modern replica of the Cashel Crozier...

A modern replica of the Cashel Crozier…

In christian-era art, the dragon was a recurring theme: The beautiful 13thC Crozier of Cashel (manufactured in or near Limoges, France) depicts an act of serpent-battling, and the hook of the crozier itself depicts a great snake. Another great jewel of medieval Ireland – the Tara Brooch – is decorated with a pin in the shape of tiny serpent, which appears to gnaw upon the jewel’s main body. In spite of the apparent absence of the species Serpentae among Ireland’s native fauna, the ‘serpent’ was, from early times, a well-known symbol in Ireland, as elsewhere in the Atlantic world. Why should this be so?

The 'Tara Brooch' c.700AD.

The ‘Tara Brooch’ c.700AD.

Morphologically, the connection of péists to rivers is easily explained by the serpentine appearance of such streams of water, but Ireland’s interest with serpents doesn’t stop there. In fact, it wasn’t just snakes which might be considered in the class of ‘serpents’ to the ancient mind: Eels, earthworms and any number of wriggling larval creatures and amphibians gave the Irish a ready supply. However, the lack of exemplary reptiles often led to cats, boars, badgers etc taking on the traditional role of the monstrous adversary-guardian for the purposes of mythological tales.

"Why are Herons so-called? Easy to say: They are 'Heros' who kill serpents..." The Greek word for Hero is 'Heron'...

“Why are Herons so-called? Easy to say: They are ‘Heros’ who kill serpents…” The Greek word for Hero is ‘Heron’…

The origin the English word ‘reptile’ is from the ancient Greek class-designator herpeta (sing. herpeton), meaning ‘crawling or creeping animals’. The Latin word ‘serpo‘ (from which we get ‘serpent’) means the same. The study of reptiles and amphibians is thus known by the modern term ‘herpetology’. The ancient class herpeta or serpenta does not necessarily refer only to reptiles and amphibians, but any animal which had a close association with the ground. More specifically, the idea of a ‘serpent’ developed an empirical class-association with worms, maggots, larvae and even ‘serpentine’ fish such as eels – referred to generically by the Latin word vermis, from which the English ‘worm’ is derived. This concordance is indicated by the ancient association between snakes and the power of putrefaction, disease, and gnawing: It is the reason why rats, lice, cockroaches, caterpillars and mice might all be referred to as ‘vermin’. It the reason why ‘wyrm’ was a synonym for dragons as well as snakes in Old English and the Germanic languages, and why gnawing cutaneous fungal infections are still referred to by the English word ‘ringworm’.

The typical ‘péist’ of Irish hagiography – when attributed a sex – was more often than not female. The word péist is usually translated as ‘worm, beast, monster’ (O’Brien), and its variants are peist, piast and biast/biasd – generally employed in the spirit of the ancient Greek and Roman usages: for instance, the Otter was called ‘biasd dubh‘ or ‘biasd donn’ in reference to its snaky shape, movement and colour.

The Irish word péist derives from the Latin bestia, meaning ‘beast’. It also connects to the Latin word pestis, meaning either disease, plague, destruction, ruin or death! Other Latin synonyms for ‘beasts’ include ‘Belluae‘ (large fierce animals – possibly after the manner of bulls and stags) and ‘Ferae‘ (large fierce predatory animals). Belluae seems to evoke the idea of war (Bellum), perhaps because armies moved, ate, fought and crapped like a huge animal, and draconine banners and standards were a feature of warfare since ancient times – particularly among the Celtic tribes of SE Europe during the late Iron Age period. The boar replaced the dragon among the NW celts of the same period.

Interestingly, the name for the fungal skin disease ‘ringworm‘ in Middle Irish was ‘frigde’ and in Old Irish ‘frigit’, and in late spoken Manx it was ‘chennney jee‘ (‘teine dé‘, god’s fire – ignis sacer – possibly the dragon’s breath) which by a Joycean ‘commodius vicus of recirculation‘ brings us back to the word and concept of the dragon or the péist, and by a number of associations, to our chthonic mother-goddess, Brigit – she of the sacred flame and the hearth…

The connection between the hearth and the earth is an old one: For starters, the English words are both etymologically linked. It is a place where earth’s produce is burned or prepared to eat – committing it to the recycling forces of nature for another turn. Anciently (and up until fairly recently in many parts of Gaeldom), the domestic hearth was a pit in the ground, so it is no wonder that the hearth and the chthonic otherworld are linked! The hearth fire was a place associated with the spirits of ancestors, and therefore with what became known from the middle-ages as ‘elves’ or ‘fairies’. Dragons attributed with the ability of breathing fire were no doubt a part of this chthonic mythology…

Dragons in the Celtic Iron Age?

There is in fact no evidence to definitively confirm that Celtic peoples of the European Iron Age believed in ‘dragons’. The popular imagination is certainly fired by archaeologists’ descriptions of the ‘dragon scabbards’ (a term popularised by Megaw & Megaw) of the elite Celtic warriors who were so instrumental in warfare during the Hellenistic and late Roman Republican periods. These all have the appearance of serpents or snakes – hardly the chimerical hybrid-forms of ‘dragons’ as we know them, with their aquiline talons, equine heads and wings. Celtic ‘La Tene’ art certainly added a ‘serpentine’ twist to its depiction of all animals, but there are no examples ‘dragons’ in the medieval sense! It is generally accepted that these were later introductions by the migrating warlike Steppes cultures whose peoples and influences flowed into the eastern European parts of the late Roman Empire – Scyhtians, Alans and Huns being examples of such groups. ‘Dragons’ were actually not a ‘Celtic’ phenomenon, but were certainly an influential narrative vehicle used in dealing with pagan themes during Europe’s Christian literary era in the middle-ages. The Viking Edda texts bear witness to this…

The role of serpents and dragons in Norse mythology

/ Atlantic Religion / 3 Comments

Serpents and dragons are a particular feature of northern European mythology that deserve some investigation in this blog.

The ancients viewed ‘serpents’ and ‘worms’ as a whole class of creatures – not just a ‘species’ as we in modern times would conceive it, but a morphological and philosophical grouping which included many types and forms. From earthworms, to snakes, to maggots and aquatic fly larvae, to eels and millipedes – ‘worms’, ‘wyrms’, or ‘serpents’ all occupied the same functional class. In a wider sense it could as a category include all stinging and venomous creatures such as scorpions and spiders.

The idea that disease was caused by ‘worms’ was a prevalent feature of ancient and medieval medicine: From the fungal infection known as ‘ringworm’ to the idea that worms in the teeth caused toothache, all of these were common themes in ancient Atlantic medical beliefs. During the 17th and 18th centuries, for instance, the attack of Gout in the foot was attributed in the Scottish Hebrides to a worm called ‘Fillan’, no doubt on account of the worm-like congested blood and lymphatic vessels that surround the afflicted joint of the big toe… The idea of putrefaction was an important aspect of this idea: the empirical observation that rotting meat appears to generate maggots and worms, and that disease such as infection and cancer seems to be a form of bodily putrefaction are strongly related. The painful aspects of disease were seen as poisons, and ‘worms’ or ‘serpents’ were a key natural class which were known to deliver such venoms to the human body.

Worms burrowed and intruded through the soil forming tunnels, and performed the same function in rotting flesh. Another empirical observation about serpentine, wriggling creatures was that they also ‘appeared’ in stagnant water (the larvae of mosquitoes and aquatic insects) and colonised the smelly putrefying mud-flats of estuaries and on the banks of rivers. They also appear in the bodily waste of humans and animals. Snakes seemed to prefer to rest in holes in the ground, and to rely on the heat of the sun to animate their bodies. Fertile soil was always rich in earthworms… For this reason ‘worms’ or ‘serpents’ became associated with the classical ‘element’ of ‘Earth’ and the regenerative powers of putrefaction. ‘Worms’ such as caterpillars and larvae also expressed the apparently magical and mysterious power of metamorphosis, a connection also prefigured by the ‘rebirth’ of snakes who shed their skins.

There are a number of significant ‘dragons’ or ‘serpents’ who appear in the ‘Edda’ literature of the medieval Scandinavian world… The first is Níðhöggr (‘Malice-striker’) who curls around one of the roots of Yggdrasil at the well of Hvergelmir (‘bubbling/boiling pool’) and who represents the force of putrefaction at the roots of the world-tree. Hvergelmir is described as the well which receives the ‘dew’ which falls from Yggdrasil, otherwise from the sprouting antlers of the stag who grazes the topmost branches of the tree at Valhalla. Snorri’s Gylfaginning (prose Edda) says this of the roots of Yggdrasil:

 ‘…the third reaches down to Niflheim, and under this root is the well Hvergelmir; but Nídhöggr gnaws at this root from below…’

and

‘In Hvergelmir there are so many serpents with Nídhöggr that no tongue can count them…’

This is attested in the poetic Edda (Grimnirsmal) which comments upon the ravages suffered by the Yggdrasil:

‘…The ash Yggdrasil endures hardship, more than men know. A stag bites from above and its sides rot; From below Nídhöggr gnaws…’

There is a clear relationship between the earthly/watery putrefaction and serpents here in the Edda mythology. What is more, this explicitly nourishes the great world-tree. Hvergelmir is also described as the source of all the great rivers of the world (poetic Edda), so is therefore akin to the ancient concept of Okeanos – the world-river that is the destination of all streams. This means that the great serpent Jörmungandr – the ‘Midgard Serpent’ who encircles the watery extents of the world of men, biting on his tail, is cognate with Níðhöggr who coiled around the roots of the world-tree.  Jörmungandr (who happens to be one of Loki’s monstrous offspring) is encountered by Thor on his fishing trip with Hymir at the furthest extent of the ocean, and plays an important role in the mysterious apocalypse of the gods – Ragnarok. The description of Yggdrasil in the Eddas is a static construct-image ‘outside of time’, whereas the narrative tales of Thor and the gods and Ragnarok occupy a ‘temporal’ sequence. This is why Jörmungandr and Níðhöggr can be the same: they represent the primal regenerative chaos that is greater than the power of fate and the gods.

The other important ‘serpent’ of Norse mythology is the dragon in the famous story of Sigurd. Dragons are closely and curiously related to the dwarves: The Icelandic/Norse ‘Poetic Edda’ account of the creation of the world given in the Völuspá describes the race of subterranean dwarves (dvergr) being created after the gods and before the humans. Snorri in his ‘Prose Edda’ account of Norse mythology, called Gylfaginning, says that the dwarves were formed from the body of the primal giant Ymir (also probably the same being as Hymir and Gymir) and occupied his flesh as if maggots:

‘Next the gods took their places on their thrones. They issued their judgements and remembered where the dwarves had come to life in the soil under the earth, like maggots in flesh.They were maggots at that time, but by a decision of the gods they acquired human understanding and assumed the likeness of men, living in the earth and the rocks…’

This association between dwarves and maggots/worms/wyrms/serpents becomes an explicit feature of the tale of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer and his serpentine adversary, Fafnir, who was described as both a dwarf and a dragon in the various sources of the Sigurd legends found in ancient Norse literature, particularly the Völsungasaga of the Icelandic manuscripts of the 13thC, and also the Sigrdrífumál and Fáfnismál  of the Poetic Edda.

In the Völsungasaga, Fáfnir is a dwarf whose consuming thirsty greed transforms him into a dragon. He is the model Tolkein used for his famous depiction of Smaug in ‘The Hobbit’, and therefore the archetype of all dragons in the modern western mind. The connection between primordial creatures and greed seems to be based upon the observation that young animals (and humans) seek nothing but to feed and thrive from it – the ancient Norse word for giant, Thurs, is the same as the word ‘Thirst’! In the Saga of the Volsungs, Sigurd is sent to recover the gold of Fáfnir, by Fáfnir’s brother – the dwarf/dvergr Regin. The story revolves around the gold given to the dwarfs by Odinn and Loki in reparation for their slaying of their brother Ótr (‘Otter’) a dwarf who assumed the form of this fish-greedy serpentine water creature. This gold is cursed and causes the corruption and death of all who own it. In the case of Fafnir, he becomes a dragon and is slain by Sigurd, egged on by Regin. Sigurd then kills Regin and carries off the wealth on a horse given him by Odin. The story then takes a turn when he meets his ‘otherworld image’ – the warrior woman Brynhild, otherwise his personal Valykr! He lies with her in a mystical union and thereafter meets his death by murder, the result of his wife’s jealousy.

Similarities between Volsungsaga and the ‘Boyhood Deeds of Fionn mac Cumhaill’:

In the tale, after Sigurd kills the dragon and is cooking its heart for his mentor Regin, he gains magical knowledge after licking his thumb when testing the meat and suddenly understands the language of birds. In a very similar passage in the Irish Fenian tale Macgnímartha Finn (MS Laud 610  folio 118Rb-121Va), Fionn is sojourning with his dwarfish druid mentor Finneccas who has him catch and cook the Salmon of Wisdom who has fed from the hazlenuts falling into an otherworld pool. Fionn burns his finger while testing the salmon and puts it in his mouth, also learning wisdom from the otherworld. The blood of the dragon – like the juices from Fionn’s salmon – is therefore a direct link to the otherworld and its knowledge: The salmon was revered as magical as it migrates Okeanos and returns to the river of its birth, just as the dragon originates (with all serpents and rivers in the Edda cosmology) ultimately in the mysterious well of Hvergelmir… The dragon represents the burden of great power and wealth – the exploding energy of youth which propels us to death. Like Sigurd’s Brynhilda in the Volsungsaga, Fionn is also faced with a challenging and militant otherworld female, this time a fairy woman who lives in Cruachan Bri Eile.  Unfortunately for us, the Laud MS tale is incomplete, but other aspects of the Sigurd myth (also told in the medieval German lay Niebelungenlied) can be found in more medieval Irish stories…

 

 

 

 

 

Otherworld streams and rivers in Norse mythology

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I have previously discussed how the ancient Greeks and Irish believed that all rivers flowed eventually to the otherworld where they then took a mysterious course before returning to our own. The Irish medieval ‘Dindsenchas’ texts refer to this belief in regard to a number of mythologically and geographically important rivers such as the Shannon and the Boyne.

The much older classical Greco-Roman texts refer to Okeanos – the world-river composed of all the world’s waters – at whose furthest reaches the heavens begin and where there are islands such as Elysium, Erytheia/Hesperides, Ogygia etc peopled by Titans, monsters and the shades and souls of the dead. The Greek Orphic mysteries (another expression of the core pagan faith of the ancient Mediterranean world) were concerned with the transition of souls to and from this far-off watery/spiritual realm, and it appears that Irish myths entertained similar beliefs.

What about the myths of the Norse peoples of the middle ages, who were among Europe’s longest-surviving pagan cultures? Putting aside for now the various Germanic folklore elements which preserved much of the Atlantic metempsychosis myths in the form of fairy lore, I wish to focus on the Icelandic Edda mythology, recorded and written down during the Christian era in Iceland during the 13th century.

This was written down as the result of a desire among some learned Christian Icelanders to preserve as much as possible of the ancient culturally-important ‘portable’ oral mythology which had followed them on their difficult emigration from the ‘viking’ homelands of Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as Britain and Ireland. They survive in the form of a number of traditional pagan ‘theogonies’ (descriptions of the gods) detailing the construction of the universe and discussing how the dynamic interplay of spiritual forces cause time to unfold and its cycles repeat – an ancient version of what modern astrophysicists are currently trying (with more or less success) to achieve!

The Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius is the source of the important metrical verse accounts known as the Poetic (or ‘Elder’) Edda, containing the most important pieces of preserved pagan Viking theogony. These are as explicitly about actual gods as the Greek myths, in contrast to many Irish tales which are sometimes not so easy to derive a ‘pantheon’ from. They detail the cosmology of how the comprehended universe was arranged, how the world was formed and (perhaps) how the world ends and is reborn. As such, they share many similarities with ancient Greek and NW European ‘Atlantic’ myths, in particular the belief about the role of springs, streams, rivers and the journey to and from the Otherworld.

The most informative of the Poetic Edda narratives about these themes is the cryptic ‘Seer-woman’s Prophecy’, otherwise known as Völuspá. In some ways it is of a similar genre to the prophetic utterings found in a fragmented state in Atlantic Celtic folktales about the character known as Cailleach: A seeress narrates the theogony of the Norse gods from creation to ‘Ragnarok’ when the gods die. Within this narrative the seeress details the first creation of the giants and gods and the earth/sun/moon etc from the waters; she then says the gods and giants made subterranean men (dvergr – dwarfs) who then produced two supra-terrestrial trees – Ash and Elm – from which the gods made men. Then came the creation of the great ash tree Yggdrasil upon which (figuratively) the creation of the world ‘above-ground’, up to the heavens, rested…

An Ash I know stands, Yggdrasil by name, a high tree, drenched with bright white mud; from there come the dews that drop in the dales, it always stands green over Destiny’s well.

From there come maidens, knowing much, three from the lake that stands under the tree: ‘Destiny’ they called one, ‘Becoming’ the second – they carved on wood tablets – ‘Shall-be’ the third; laws they laid down, lives they chose for the children of mankind, the fates of men.

This famous passage describes the immortal ‘Norns’ who were possibly the same three giantesses who came to disturb the peace of the Aesir (apparently to mate with them) and create the dwarfs, who then helped create the sprouts of the word-tree (Ask and Embla) into which the gods infused life. The poetic Edda is vague or deliberately cryptic as to the exact points but, the picture emerges of a life-giving stream of humanity, reflected in the form of a great tree which grew from the subterranean world (of the dvergr) and which rises to the heavens. This feeds from the ‘lake’ of the Norns at the base of the tree, and it appears that the Norns ‘weave’ the wood of the tree from the water – an idea rooted (if you’ll pardon the pun) in the similarity of trees and plant-life with the branching nature of streams and rivers across the landscape. The Ash tree’s bark has the colour of clay, and has many similarities to water in its shape, form and mode of growth: its ‘raining’ seeds, and the blue-tinged flames that lick around its wood when it burns.

A ‘euhemerised’ version of the poetic Edda myths was produced in the late 13th/early 14thC by the great Icelandic scholar and politician Snorri Sturlusson, and (because it was told in prose form) became known as the Prose Edda. Although purporting that the ‘Gods’ were actually just deified real historic persons and the visions conjured of the spiritual world were illusions and hallucinations, it went on to add increased detail to the poetic Edda narratives which (because of their nature) are likely to be based on traditions that the Christian Snorri understood were important to keep. After all, paganism needed to be understood if it was to stay suppressed – a lesson perhaps learned from the experiences of the Irish… Snorri is obviously reasonably well-versed in certain Greek myths which were of interest to the European Christian euhemerist narratives – Troy, the Golden Age, etc, and weaves them into his narrative. He quotes from the poetic Edda and some Skaldic verses throughout, although he sometimes plays free and loose with the sequencing of the information – possibly to obfuscate the pagan themes from understanding. Snorri elaborates a great deal upon the Yggdrasil in part 15 of his Prose Edda narrative known as Gylfaginning. After going into great detail about the creation of the world, the gods, men and dwarves he tackles the great tree:

Then Gangleri said, ‘Where is the central or holy place place of the gods?’ High answered, ‘It is at the ash Yggdrasil. There each day the gods hold their courts.’… ‘The ash is the largest and the best of all trees. Its branches spread themselves over all the world, and it stands over the sky. Three roots support the tree and they are spread very far apart. One is among the Aesir. A second is among the Frost Giants where Ginnungagap once was. The third reaches down to Niflheim, and under this root is the weel Hvergelmir; but Nidhogg [Hateful Stikrer] gnaws at this root from below. ‘Under the root that goes to the frost giants is the Well of Mimir. Wisdom and intelligence are hidden there, and Mimir is the name of the well’s owner. He is full of wisodom because he drinks of the well from Gjallarhorn. All-Father went there and asked for one drink from the well, but he did not get this until he gave one of his eyes as a pledge…’ ‘…The third root of the ash is in heaven, and under that root is the very holy well called the Well of Urd. There the gods have their place of judgement. Every day the Aesir ride up over Bifrost, which is also called Asbru [Bridge of the Aesir]… ‘…A handsome hall stands under the ash besides the well. Out of this hall come three maidens, who are called Urd [Fate], Verdandi [Becoming] and Skuld [Obligation]. These maidens shape men’s lives. We call them the norns. There are yet more norns, those who come to each person at birth to decide the length of one’s life, and these are related to the gods. Others are descended from the elves, and a third group comes from the dwarves…’

These passages relate each root of the tree to a nourishing source of water – a well. These lie within three realms: that of primal chaos (the giants), that of the Aesir (gods) and that of the mortals who are open to fate (men) and under the destiny of the ‘Norns’ (who remained un-named in the original Völuspá).

Note: Although widely accepted as a ‘map’ of the ‘spiritual world’ of the pagan Scandinavians, the Gylfaginning text should perhaps be seen as Snorri’s attempt to reconcile some kind of ordered state upon a corpus of pagan folk-knowledge with diverse origins and traditions some 300 years into the Scandinavian Christian era. His textual ‘map’ of the ‘worlds’ and description of lists of gods, dwarves, elves and giants is probably his own interpretation and should not be accepted as canonical in understanding Norse paganism.

Later in the Gylfaginning, Snorri introduces us to Valhöll (Valhalla) – the mighty hall of the fallen warriors. He describes this as a hall of repose and reconciliation in the otherworld where warriors can still enjoy their sport (fighting) but as immortals, who can feast and enjoy each others’ company after doing battle. Snorri sites the hall (which belongs to Odin) in Asgard (‘Aesir Home’) although his poetic Edda source (one of which is Grimnismal) is less certain of the arrangement of the worlds.

To the hall is ascribed a very important pair of animals, said to dwell upon its roof and feed from a great tree called ‘Laerad‘, which seems (given the presence of the dead in the hall) to be a version or part of Yggdrasil. Although Snorri does not make this connection with Yggdrasil explicit in his prose Edda, it is more certain in the poetic Edda which places Laerad somewhere above the roots of Yggdrasil. From the tree, the goat Heiðrún feeds and her milk is the mead drunk by the heroes in Valhöll . Also up on the roof (think of it as a turf roof extending down to the ground if you want to be authentic) there is the stag named Eikþyrnir (Eikthyrnir) who too feeds upon the foliage of the great tree, and from whose antlers drips a dew which falls downwards and collects in the deepest chthonic pool of  Hvergelmir from which Yggdrasil is nourished, and from which (the poetic Edda says) all rivers arise.

The prose Edda contains other descriptions of munching stags wandering among the branches of Yggdrasil, in part 16 of Gylfaginning. Although Snorri doesn’t comment on dew coming from their antlers, he does refer to the nourishing dew supposed to drip down from the tree’s branches as described in the Voluspa. Hvergelmir was supposed in the poetic and prose Eddas to be the pool of serpents (which in ancient mythology share the winding characteristics of rivers). Níðhöggr (‘Malice Striker’) was the serpent who occupied this deepest region, and who may have been cognate with Thor’s great foe (in fishing and at Ragnarok) – the world-serpent, Jörmungandr. By the ancient reckoning ‘serpents’ included the whole class of earth-loving burrowing animals and might include earth and mud-worms, insects and larvae and even stinging insects: not just snakes. They were linked to the idea of gnawing and decay in disease, and the stings of serpents (venoms or poisons) were often blamed (figuratively or as exemplars) for diseases – mundane or magical. The dwarves or dvergr of Norse myth were sometimes characterised as serpents or worms who first burrowed in the dead body of the Earth-Giant Mimir – dead corpses were believed to generate worms by the old reckoning. The same for pools of water, in which insect larvae seem to ‘appear’ by magic. For this reason dwarves and dragons have their strange correlation in Norse mythology – none moreso than Sigurd’s opponent Fafnir who is described as both dwarf and dragon.

Conclusion:

It is evident that the Edda’s descriptions of the world tree are an important depiction of the flow of creation to and from the Otherworld. The identity of water and wood is very explicit, and the strong connection in old European pagan lore between the tree (and hence rivers) and the generations (and regenerations) of humanity is explicit. The connection with serpents, death and regenesis is also a part of this deep mythology. The connection between mead (the milk of Heiðrún) and poetry is common in the ancient northern and north-western European world. Here, in the case of Valhalla, it signifies the satisfaction given to ancestors by the telling of lays and poems in their honour – a key aspect of the Atlantic religion’s ancestor-cult. The stag Eikþyrnir fulfils the mystical recirculation of water, no doubt the reason that the pursuit of white stags so often presage the encounters between brave knights and fairy-women at fountains in the forest-pursuits of medieval lays and Arthurian Romances. The mystical process explains why northern Europe’s ancient pagans typically venerated trees in the richly-wooded forests of central northwest Europe, and perhaps why trees played a subservient role to ‘fairy hills’ in the relatively tree-denuded extents of Europe’s Atlantic seaboard. Then again… what would an Irish ‘fairy hill’ be without its attendant spring and its thorn tree?