Martyrdom by Passion (and a Brain-Ball): an Irish Legend

One day I was glancing through a booklet entitled "The History of St. Patrick's Parish and Church" of San Francisco printed in 1976 for the 125th Anniversary of the same.  Stained glass windows are one of my favorite decorative arts, and as the booklet features passages describing adornments of the sacred edifice, which was greatly influenced by Irish Catholic heritage, I was curious to see what I would find.

In addition to the attention given to the stained glass windows depicting Irish saints, such as St. Patrick founding his main diocese in Armagh pictured here, (Photo credit: Justin Zolli ) I discovered there are a series of Tiffany glass windows in the upper clerestory of the church that feature history and legends of the ancient pagan past of Erin, a gesture to the culture and traditions of Ireland before Christianity become the religion of the isle.

I was surprised at first, but then, this artistic nod to the ancient past in the Catholic Church is not unsual either depending on the pagans honoured by this gesture of recognition.

 It is no secret that the Vatican has masterpieces depicting the pagan past of Italy and Greece in its hallowed halls, and a handful of heathens have been given the distinction of being represented in the Sistine Chapel ~ the Nine Sybils ~ prophets and prophetesses that did not belong to the Jewish faith yet also predicted the coming of Christ.

I mention this rare honouring of the pagans because there is one stained glass window of St. Patrick's that could be described as a 'Sybil' where Irish history is concerned: the 'martyrdom' of King Conchobar (Conor) mac Nessa of Ulster.  

His story is often declared nothing more than a mythical legend, but ancient cultures like the Celts had a rich tradition of oral history that obviously morphed into legend, for as they say, myths usually have a basis in fact. Where fact ends and mythical stories and elaborate additions begin, we do not always know.  That is the delightful mystery with which the ancient tales continue to fascinate us.

Let us travel back to the ancient past of the warrior Celts: honour was won by daring feats of valour and great deeds in battle. The heads of defeated enemies were hung up as trophies displaying the number of men slain by a warrior indicating prowess in battle. Decapitating people and tossing their heads about was a manly thing to do it seems.

According to one legend, the warriors of Connacht and Ulster were staying in the home of Mac Dá Thó in Leinster as a guest. During a feast the soldiers held a contest with each other to determine who had the right to carve the hero's portion of the roast and thus commenced boasting of their mighty deeds. Cet mac Mágach of Connacht silenced them by reminding them how he had bested them all in his great exploits in battle and was about to carve the hero's portion when another warrior entered the scene, Conall Cernach of Ulster who was late to the party. Cet had to admit defeat when presented with Conall's list of deeds, but tried not to lose face entirely by claiming if his brother Anlúan was there, he would have to give him the honoured portion, for Anlúan was the best warrior among all present. What did Conall Cernach do? Reach into a sack and throw its contents at Cet ~ the head of Anlúan. End of contest. Conall got the lion's share of whatever they roasted that night.

  

However, the most fearsome and magically potent weapon a warrior could have was a 'brain-ball' to sling at his foes. A brain-ball was made using, (you guessed it), the brains of an enemy slain in battle and mixed with lime, which was then left to harden into a projectile. No doubt they were the most sought after weapon depending on whose grey matter went into the mix: the warrior Cet of Connacht re-enters our story as he dared to sneak into Ulster and steal a prized brain-ball from the King's treasury in Emain Macha. The ball was made from the brains of King Mesgedra of Leinster, and Cet kept it with him wherever he went.   A rare weapon like that couldn't be thrown at just any old common warrior you know!

King Conor Mac Nessa of Ulster mentioned earlier received that dubious honor, getting struck with his own weapon, for it was he who killed King Mesgedra of Leinster and had the brain-ball made as Mesgedra's head was too big to carry back as a trophy. One day the Connacht warriors raided King Conor's land and stole his cattle. A battle was eminent when Conor overtook the warrior-thieves in Westmeath. Conor was eager to prove himself in battle, but Cet who was lurking in ambush shot him with the dreaded brain-ball with his sling, which lodged right in King Conor's forehead.

However, he did not die. Fintan the physcian realised the best thing to do was not to touch it, for to remove it would bring on the King's death. In the end, the brain-ball was sewn into place with gold threads matching the colour of the king's hair to ensure it wouldn't move. The King was advised never to exert himself in any violent activity that could dislodge it, including horse riding, for if it moved it meant certain death.

According to the legend, the King lived for another seven years following this advice and had to forego the warring exploits he was accustomed to.  It is at this point we find a curious twist to his legend.

One mid-day the sky darkened, and troubled by the sight King Conor wished to know what this omen meant. 

He summoned his chief Druid to explain what was happening, and entering into a trance in a sacred grove the priest described a scene that horrified even the hard core, gore-accustomed Celtic king: the Druid saw a hill in a distant land upon which three crosses stood, on the three crosses there were human forms nailed, yet one of them was like unto the Immortals. In some accounts we hear the King was also allowed to see the vision.

 

The King recognised the scene was an execution and asked the Druid "if the one likened to the Immortals was a criminal?”

“Nay,” answered the Druid, “but the Son of the Living God,” and still in a trance he proceeded to relate the full details of Christ's execution.

The thought of mortals daring to kill this Immortal was too much for King Conor, and in a fury over so foul a deed he drew his sword with the cry: “Thus would I deal with His enemies!” and rising to battle-fury pitch, proceeded to hack the oak trees in the sacred grove despite the danger to his own life.

The passionate outburst dislodged the brain-ball, in some accounts we read that the ball literally burst into pieces with his exertions, and King Connor died wishing he could have defended the Christ while symbolically eradicating the hold of druid paganism over Ireland just before the Apostles began to spread the Faith.

To further seal his honour as the destined pagan, it is said he was born on the same day as Christ, (although not the same year).

Is this an early Medieval romanticised addition to the legend, or a tale of a true occurence that was rendered into myth at a later age? I will leave for the reader to decide.

As a result King Conor became honoured as the Druid pagan who ended up becoming a martyr for Christ by blood and courageous desire, and in a way, a Sybil of the new Faith brought centuries later by numerous missionaries and saints, including St. Patrick,  who would transform the Emerald Isle into the Island of Saints and Scholars.

(Image: King Conor's Vision, St. Patrick's Church San Francisco. Photo by Justin Zolli.)

Here are other St. Patrick's Day / Irish themed entries you may find interesting:

* When St. Patrick Impaled a Convert 

* O'Leary the Leering Leprechaun

* St. Patrick's Purgatory

* The Shamrock Purist (How to spot a real shamrock from the shams!)

* Poor but Blessed, an Irish Memory

Blowing Hot and Cold ~ A Classic Fable Misunderstood?

(Post originally published April 9, 2015)

 

"The Satyr and the Peasant" by Walter Crane (1887).

Illustration in Baby's Own Aesop, (London 1887).

Throughout the centuries the clever fables attributed to a freed slave named Aesop (c. 620?-560 BC?) who reputedly came from the island of Samos have entertained and instructed countless readers. Today we continue to remember stories such as the goose that laid the golden egg and its unfortunate end due to greed, also, the tale of the persevering crow that couldn’t reach the water at the end of a narrow pitcher until it raised up the water level by dropping pebbles in one by one showing that doing things little by little accomplishes the seemingly impossible. Then, we have the memorable example of the town mouse and the country mouse in which a quiet life is better and safer than a luxurious one filled with constant danger and dread. However, there is one fable and its associated lesson that puzzled me when I was child, and that is the story of ‘The Peasant and the Satyr’ from which the following moral seems to have originated: ‘Beware of those who blow hot and cold with the same breath’. In other words, be careful of those who are not steadfast and waver back and forth, the shallow flip-floppers if you will!

Of course, the fables were altered with the telling over the centuries and one often finds various versions of the same story. Sometimes the man is called a Peasant, in other accounts a Traveller. The following is one simple account I can recall that was entitled the ‘Man and the Satyr’ from my childhood reading: a Man and Satyr were very good friends until one cold windy day the Satyr noticed the Man was blowing on his hands. He asked him why he was doing that and the Man answered his breath kept his hands warm. That night the Satyr invited his friend over for dinner and couldn’t help but notice him puffing on the hot soup he had given him. He asked why he did that and the Man replied the soup was too hot, so he was cooling it down. The Satyr then parted ways with his friend saying he would have nothing to do with someone who could blow hot and cold with the same breath. To give another example of the same story, a more elaborate version was translated by a certain Mr. Joesph Jacobs for the ‘Harvard Classics’, Vol. 17, (Ed. Charles W. Elliot, P.F. Collier and Son, Corp., New York, 1963), p. 33:

“A Man had lost his way in a wood one bitter winter’s night. As he was roaming about, a Satyr came up to him, and finding that he had lost his way, promised to give him a lodging for the night, and guide him out of the forest in the morning. As he went along to the Satyr’s cell, the Man raised both his hands to his mouth and kept on blowing at them. ‘What do you do that for?’ said the Satyr. ‘My hands are numb with the cold,’ said the Man, ‘and my breath warms them.’ After this they arrived at the Satyr’s home, and soon the Satyr put a smoking dish of porridge before him. But when the Man raised his spoon to his mouth he began blowing upon it. ‘And what do you do that for?’ said the Satyr. ‘The porridge is too hot, and my breath will cool it.’ ‘Out you go,’ said the Satyr, ‘I will have nought to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.’”

Illustration from The Fables of Aesop by Richard Heighway, (1894).



At first, the Man appears to be the villain in both versions this story, the inconstant flip-flopper of whom one must be wary, while the Satyr appears to be the wise character for parting ways with the double-dealing hypocrite. The fact that the clichéd line of ‘to blow hot and cold with the same breath’ originally coined by the Dutch Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536) in connection with this story has survived for so long seems to support this view. However, there was one observation that always stuck with me when reading this narrative when I was little: the Man’s breath was always the same, it was the external temperatures of the objects he blew upon that were different depending on the surrounding environment and could be cooled or heated depending on their temperature, not the Man’s actual breath. So the poor fellow was not an inconstant flip-flopper at all! Maybe the Satyr is the true symbolic scoundrel in the tale? I’ve come to conclude that this may actually be the case and that the moral associated with this fable, ‘blowing hot and cold’, was not the intended proverb of this particular story, or at least, only part of it. I’ve recently discovered that others also noticed the strange discrepancy in the story. The controversial thinker of the Age of Enlightenment, Voltaire (1694-1778), couldn’t help but notice the irrational logical of the foolish Satyr and praised the Man, while the German philosopher and dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) conjectured that it is only an allegory: the illogical inaccuracy of the story was possibly due to an attempt to invent a narrative around an already existing proverb, but the storyteller produced a clumsy and irrational tale as a result.

As for my own observations as to the true lesson of the story, let us consider the following. What was a satyr? An ancient Greek mythological creature that was generally depicted as a man with goat’s ears, legs and a tail ~ a motley half man, half goat being that was associated with the followers of the licentious god of wine Dionysus. The Romans also believed in these creatures, which they called ‘fawns’ and were associated with Dionysus’ Roman counterpart, the god Bacchus. Therefore, these strange creatures were considered lustful and drunken individuals, especially during the celebration of the wild ribald rites associated with their deity during the spring that were called the Bacchanalia. So in Aesop’s classic we have the image of an ‘inconstant’ grotesque hybrid creature that is neither man nor goat falsely criticising a full blooded Man for not being ‘constant’. It appears that the moral of the tale is not just a case of ‘blowing hot and cold’, but rather an example of people wrongfully accusing others of the shortcomings that they themselves possess—the pot calling the kettle black! We cannot help but observe a case study of double standards hidden under the guise of an entertaining fairy tale.

In the more elaborate version of the tale presented above, we also see a few more character flaws peeking out in the Satyr. Since we could safely venture a logical guess that the Satyr’s breath is the same temperature as the Man’s, the Satyr was trying to find some pretext or ‘valid’ fault in his guest in order to excuse himself from carrying out the sacred duty of hospitality he promised, for he booted the poor Man out into the dark of night and left him wandering lost in the forest without a second thought, which is a very dishonourable thing to do to a guest. We also note that contrary to the orgiastic liberality associated with the satyrs, he provided his guest with a miserable meal, a bowl of porridge. We suspect the Satyr in this case is a miserly host grudgingly giving the bare minimum required rather than provide the best from his larder for his unexpected visitor. Maybe that’s all the Satyr had to offer it could be argued, but somehow that doesn’t seem to add up in connection with a creature not known for self control that indulged in great feasting and drinking parties. 

Bacchic Scene (c.1627) by Nicolas Poussin, featuring a Satyr giving a Bacchante a wild time.

 It would be interesting if some form of the longer rendition featuring the Man lost at night in the woods and receiving a stingy reception as an unexpected guest in need did exist in the days of the ancient Greeks and Romans for we might discern a telling criticism of certain cults. For instance, the Satyr could be representative of the Bacchantes, the followers of the Dionysian orgiastic rites as viewed by the more conservative ancient Greeks and Romans who were critical of the drunken cult. It is very probable that the Bacchantes were deemed by them to be hypocrites using piety to cover their ribald feasting. Considering that Aesop’s fables may have been one effective way to veil personal opinions when indulging in free speech was dangerous during the rule of the ancient Greek tyrants, this tale could have been one way to quietly ridicule the adherents of Dionysus when speaking against any of the cults was considered a rash thing to do. The Bacchantes were particularly adamant in defending their rites, declaring that devastation and madness would befall anyone who criticised the cult of their god. Perhaps the droll story of the ‘Man and the Satyr’ was used by the conservative element in the populace to display that the Bacchantes were not so pious as they pretended to be but were rowdy devotees using religious zeal to cover their own immoderate purposes, indulging in their feasting ceremonies and sparing no expense to do so when it suited them, yet resorted to any ridiculous pretext to escape complying with other virtuous and honourable rites, refusing to help their fellow men when it put them out of pocket or was considered inconvenient.

Of course, the proverb of the fable ‘blowing hot and cold’ will always endure, however, it is hoped that in the future the reputation of being a hypocritical flip-flopper with double standards will be credited to the character of the miserly Satyr and not the Man as previously assumed. This is one exception where I agree with Voltaire and praise the Man for cooling his food and warming his fingers ~ even fictitious characters have a right to their good name and are entitled to a defence!

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