The Morrigan

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After a battle, when the victors had gone off to feast their triumph with meat and mead, and the bodies of the dead lay strewn upon the battlefield, the ravens would descend upon the scene to rip and pick at the bodies of the slain. The descriptions of these European vultures are many in the early poetry of Britain. In the Anglo-Saxon Finnsburg, they are the “birds of battle’ singing for joy at the start of the battle, and wandering “swart and dark-hued” at its conclusion. The famous elegy attributed to the Coelite chieftain Llywarch Hen describes how the poet takes the head from the body of his beloved cousin Urien and carries it away from the battlefield to deprive the ravens of their feast:
“This head I carry, close to my side,
The head of Urien, generous leader of the war bands,
And on his breast, there sits a carrion crow....”
After such warring confrontations, the fields of battle must have grown black with their wings.

In early Celtic poetry, the raven was believed to be a dead soul in the service of the Underworld; and anyone who has ever seen ravens arriving to devour a carcass will understand something of the reason for this belief. They arrive as if by some unseen signal, gliding effortlessly to the place of the kill. Their presence seems almost inevitable: a force of Nature, messengers from Hades arriving to claim a new subject to their dim domain. The mere presence of blood was thought to attract them and it was commonly believed that they knew in advance if any battle was about to take place:
“The eagle knows where it can find food, but not when.
The raven knows the place, but not the time.” (1)
The personification of the raven that devoured the bodies of fallen warriors on the fields of battle was Morrigan (pronounced Mo-reg-ghan), the Irish goddess of war and queen of demons (2). In the eighth century Ulster tale Tain Bo Cuailnge, she arrived on the battlefield before the warriors in the form of a giant raven and shrieked with joy at the thought of the inevitable carnage:
The armies are gathering for their certain slaughter.
The ravens know it and cry it out aloud...
The warriors are baring their youth like blossoms
I see the hungry ravens wandering among the dead.
There will be pain and mourning,
Everlasting war screaming over Cuailnge.
Sons will die. Husbands will die.
All will be death. Death’(3)

Together with her two hideous sisters, Badb (scald crow) and Nemain (panic), the Morrigan was said to inhabit a dim cave in Connacht from where she often let loose a flock of pestilential birds to wither the land with their breath, or a herd of boars to trample down the crops. (4)

In addition to her usual form as a bloody raven, the Morrigan could, with equal ease, transform herself into a beautiful maiden or an ugly one-eyed hag. The Tain Bo Cuailnge tells how she once fell in love with the Ulster hero CuChulainn. She appeared to him as a young noblewoman, offering herself to him along with all her cattle and riches. CuChulainn had no time for her, however, and spurned her in a most vulgar manner. Angry and revengeful, the Morrigan plagued him for the rest of his life .It was she and her two sisters, in the form of three old crones, who tricked him into eating dog-meat hence bringing about his death. Dog-meat was “geis” for CuChulainn, a prohibited thing; his own name derived from the word for dog, and therefore consumption of that animal meant for him his certain death.

Morrigan entered the Arthurian legends as Morgan le Fay, the sorceress and arch-enemy of Arthur. After a lifetime of plotting and scheming to bring about his downfall, it is she, as goddess of Death who finally claims his bleeding body on the battlefield of Camlann and carries it to the other world of Avalon (5). In a sense, she is the end that awaits all heroes; the embodiment of dissipation and decline into age. The relationship between her and Arthur has often been compared to that between the Morrigan and CuChulainn. It has even been suggested that there may have existed at some time a story in which Arthur spurned the advances of the sorceress, for her hatred of Arthur is never satisfactorily explained in the existing legends. There is one episode in the Suite du Merlin (1230 A.D.) in which Arthur slew Morgan’s lover and this appears to be one of the few rationalizations of the woman’s hatred of Arthur. The story describes how Morgan managed to steal Excalibur, the peerless sword Arthur had received from the Lady of the Lake, and replaced it with a perfect copy. She then had Arthur sent, under an enchantment, into the dungeons of a castle belonging to a wicked king named Damas. This king offered him his freedom if he would fight a knight called Accolon, and Arthur agreed. Now Accolon was Morgan le Fay’s lover; and it was to him that she had given the real Excalibur. During the contest, Arthur’s sword broke, and Accolon was about to behead the hero when the Lady of the Lake appeared and caused Excalibur to fly out of Accolon’s hand and into Arthur’s. Morgan’s lover did not survive the wounds that the war-leader subsequently dealt him. His lifeless body was delivered to the door of Morgan’s castle as a bitter present from Arthur. Morgan’s anger became more enflamed than ever at this and she declared war upon the entire complement of the Round Table. (6)

Thereafter, her time was spent plotting the downfall of the court of Arthur; tempting its knights to their death or ruin. She created a supernatural trap for the warriors of the Round Table: a valley of enchantment where anyone who entered its precinct would be powerless to leave of his own accord and compelled to dance without rest in a maddening circle for all eternity. It claimed many of Arthur’s men before Lancelot broke the enchantment. At other times, she resorted to brute force, kidnapping Lancelot as he lay asleep beneath an apple tree. But most of all, her influence was subtle and gentle. Once, she invited Arthur to stay with her at her castle and gave him the room in which she had kept Lancelot prisoner. During his months of captivity, Lancelot had painted upon the surface of the walls scenes from his past relationship with Arthur’s wife Guinevere; and Morgan knew that Arthur would be enflamed to anger. It was her most successful scheme. Arthur’s subsequent war with Lancelot finally brought about the dissolution of the fellowship of the Round Table.

There is little need, however, to account for Morgan’s enmity towards Arthur, for she is clearly not a human being at all. She is a personification of all the destructive and sorrowful elements of life: age, sterility, winter, and death. Chaucer (7) knew her as the “blew meager hag”, and even today, in the remoter areas of the Western Isles of Scotland, she is as alive as she was in the days of Arthur. People still talk of the Beantuiream, the Woman of Tears, weeping in the lonely mountain places of the north; of the Woman of the Crossroads; the figure seen standing by pools (8) at night. She is the “8esn-Nighe~’, the Washer at the Ford, singing the death-dirge (Seis-Bhais) as she washes the shrouds of those who are about to die: an image which goes back to the Welsh Arthurian legends. In the Lady of the Fountain, Owain, the son of (9) Urien, discovers the maidens of the Black Oppressor sitting “as sad as death” sewing the silk-white mantles for the shrouds of the dead.

There are many names for this deity of Sorrow, but the most common - at least in Scotland - is Cailleach Bheur (Cal’yach Vare), the old lean woman with the blue-black face who wanders the higher places of the mountains followed by her deer. She is the deity of Winter, the Snow Queen, ruler of the world from All Hallows to Spring, during which time she goes about cursing the earth or crushing its life with her giant hammer. Up until the last century, bowls of milk were left for her by the sides of corpses; and cups of stone on the hillsides were filled with milk to appease her. (10)

Water, the primal element, was particularly associated with her, for the Cailleach was also the guardian of takes, pools and wells. She could often be identified, when she walked abroad among men, by the water dripping from her clothes; and her links with water are evident even in the oldest Gaelic tales (11). The Dagda of Irish legend discovered the Morrigan in Connacht, bathing in the river Unius, and mated with her there (12). In the tale of Da Choca’s hostel, Cormac found her sister Badb in a river, washing the armor of a king who was destined to die. When she lowered her hand into the water, it turned into blood; and when she raised it into the air, the river parted to form a path for the king and his entire army to cross safely. Outwith the Gaelic areas of Scotland and Ireland, the Cailleach retained these associations with water even after many of her other attributes had been forgotten or suppressed (13). Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that Morgan le Fay lived with her eight sisters in the middle of a lake. In Wales, the Morgan was a lake creature who used to steal children. In Brittany, Morgens were mermaids who used to lure sailors to their deaths: stretching out their arms as if to embrace them, and dragging them down into the depths of the sea. The Fata Morgana of Sicily was a mirage often seen in the straits of Messina, attributed to the powers of Morgan le Fey.

The reign of the Cailleach was believed to last from (14) All Hallows (Nov. lst.) to Beltane (May lst.), and after that time, her place was taken by the gentler goddess of summer. Several tales account for her fate at the coming of spring. One of the commonest has it that on May Day’s Eve she throws her staff of power under a holly tree and turns herself into a dull, gray rock by the side of a lake or fountain: a tale which has an echo in the Arthurian Romances. Morgan, in the Suite du Merlin, managed to steal the magic scabbard of Excalibur while Arthur slept and she ran off with it as quickly as she could. The king set out in hot pursuit of her when he awoke and soon managed to catch up with the thief. To elude him, Morgan threw the scabbard into a nearby lake and turned herself and her entire entourage into rough, gray statues. Arthur returned home, believing that he had dealt finally with the wicked sorceress; but Morgan quickly revitalized herself and escaped unharmed.

Another of the stories has a similarity to the Greek myth of Persephone. It tells how, during the long winter months, the Cailleach keeps the goddess of Summer a prisoner on one of the high mountain tops :Ben Nevis or Ben Cruachan. However, the old woman’s son Angus, or sometimes the god Manannan, finds her and brings her back to the world with flowers and with song whereupon the earth begins to live again. The most common tale of all, however, has it that the Cailleach herself turns into the beautiful maiden of Spring on the morning of the 1st of may by drinking water from a clear lake fountain: for like the Morrigan, the Cailleach could with equal ease assume the form of virgin or of hag. One of the oral legends (15) recorded by Campbell in the W. Highlands describes how the Cailleach arrived one night, cold and dripping wet, at the door of the fianna and begged to be allowed to warm herself by the fire. Finn refused, but Diarmaid spoke up for the old woman and seated her in a corner of the fire. During the night, she crept into Diarmaid’s bed, and although he was repulsed by her ugliness, he allowed her to remain there, placing only a fold of the blanket between them. To his surprise, the old hag turned into a beautiful woman and she left as a reward the celebrated love spot on his brow for which he became famous.

© Ryszard Antolak

NOTES

1. Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales (1188), II, ch.9

2. The language of the earliest (12th century) manuscript of the lain dates to the eighth century; but certain verse passages may date from the sixth century.

3. From the Lebor na hUidre ext (c.1100 A.D.)

4. Badb is pronounced “Bive”; Nemain, “Nev-in”; Tain, Toynt; Cuailnge, “Koo-ling-e”.

5. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Morgan Le Fay is actually given the title “Goddess” (ln.3/452). The first writer to mention the divinity of Arthur’s enemy was Gerald of Wales.

6. Most other traditions make Guinevere the chief object of Morgan’s hatred. Some sources state that Morgan’s opposition was first instigated by Guinevere, who exposed Morgan’s affair with the knight Guiomar.

7. Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

8. This was the specific function of the Badb in early Irish tales: washing the clothes or the weapons of those who were about to die. In the tale of Da Choca’s Hostel, Cormac came across the Badb in a river washing the chariot of a king. The river turned to blood when she plunged her hand into it.

9. In several Arthurian tales, Owain is the son of Morgan le Fay and Urien.

10. In Leicestershire she is known as Black Annis: a cannibal who eats children; in Ulster, Cally Berry; in Eire, Cailleach Bera; in Ross and Cromarty, Gentle Annie. The Western Isles of Scotland are the most fertile area in Britain for legends of this deity. The most terrible form of the Cailleach is the Highland muilearteach (moolyarstoch). She had a blue-black face, long boar-like tusks, and a single eye. An apple dangled from her waist. She was particularly associated with the sea.

11. Dagda,the “Good God”, father of Brigid and Aengus. He was the owner of a magical cauldron which could feed whole tribes.

12. In another tale, she turned Odras into a pool of water.

13. Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Life of Merlin.

14. She completely loses her power on the first of May. Between February 1st and May lst, her power is challenged by the young goddess of Spring: a period in which both sunny and wintery weather may be had.

15. Campbell, J. F., Popular tales of the West Highlands Vol.III

© Ryszard Antolak