Manannán and the Shepherd

Time for something a wee bit different now, I think. This is a story I found in an article on the lore of Manannán, which I though I'd share (from 1924, so out of copyright).

Here's a bit of preamble that might be useful, too - some epithets and associations:

He is spoken of variously as the Old King, Mananan of the Flames [the least common name], the King of the Wanderers, the Sailor's Friend, and--most intimate and frequent of all the names-Himself. There are stories of his calling people away to his secret Island of Immortality beyond the western sea, or appearing to sailors or fishermen in danger and helping them-sometimes in distant parts of the world. He is the patron (sometimes openly acknowledged but oftener not) of sailors and beggars and poets and all careless wandering people; he has been seen rolling and leaping along the summits of the middle mountains in the form of a wheel of fire; and he is never very far away from the hills of his Island, or from the imaginations of his people when they speak or think of the unseen world.

The following story is called simply "Manannán and the Shepherd", recorded "from the top of Laxey glen, and relates to the same district" on the Isle of Man:

There was a man living up at the Griananes one time, and he had sheep on the Big Mountain [Snaefell]; and one day he was up after them alone on a middling thick evening in the winter. He had them all nearly gathered in a quiet corner ready for counting, and was thinking of making tracks before the dark would come on him, when he seen a big coarse-looking man and him all like in ragged clothing, coming straight for him through the mist.

"Good evening to thee, master," he says; and "Good evening to theeself," says my bold boy.

"It's a fine lot of sheep thou have there."

"Aw, middlin', middlin'. I'm just for counting them before I'll make tracks for home."

"A hard task, that," says the stranger.

"No, not hard at all when ye know the way," says the farmer - but the words weren't hardly out of his mouth till he heard a mighty big laugh and a sound like a little mocking tune. And behold ye, when he looked around him there wasn't a sign of a sheep nor man nor anything at all, only thick, thick mist going swirling around him, and a high wind blowing. And he heard a big voice shouting out in the wind:

"Count thy sheep now, master! Count thy sheep now! Do thou know the way, master?"

Well, he knew then that it was some fairy making gammon of him, but he was wild atchim [Manx: 'terror'] and started trying to find his way out of the mist. But no use at all, for it wasn't minutes till he was in a strange country altogether, and big, high rocks all standing round in the mist fit to frighten you, and all like the noise of water falling down in deep gullies and places, till he didn't know where he was at all. And the dark begun to come on, and then he knew he was fairly took, so he sat down and waited till the thing would lift off him.

But no sooner did he sit down and give in than he found the Big Ragged Fellow standing in front of him and saying:

"Didn't I give thee a fine race now, and wasn't it a hard task to count thy sheep for all? But sit you there now, and I'll make the hard task easy." And then the Big Fellow drove the sheep right past, slow and plain that he could see the mark on every one, and right into the same corner where they were before; and then the man found he was close on the track going down the glen for home.

"What sort of a wandering fairy-man art thou, playing tricks on a poor fellow that never did thee no hurt?" he said. But behold ye, when he looked at the Big Fellow again he was taller than ever, and a sort of shine around him, and like going away up the Big Mountain in the mist. And a soft, easy voice come slipping down the hill - not the same voice at all that was shouting and mocking at him before, only he knew it was coming from the Big Fellow - and it said:

"Who would I be, only the King of the Wanderers, travelling the land and playing pleasant tricks on the like of yourself for my own diversion? But thou'll be none the worse for thy race arounnd the mountain!"

And he wasn't neither, for he had great luck with all his stock from that on, and came to be the richest man in the parish.

'Mananan -The Sea God of Mann' From A Correspondent in the Isle of Man.

Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 7, No. 28, Manx Collection Part I (1924).

Next new article

This one took a while longer to finish than anticipated, but I suppose it's safe to say that once I get going it's difficult to stop sometimes. When talking about virtues, brevity and succintness aren't ones that I'd really be able to claim...These are failings that maybe I should admit to and work on, eh?

Anyway, suffice it to say, I had to split the article up into several parts:

Values - Part One
Values - Part Two
Values - Part Three
Values - Part Four

One of the good things about researching this subject is that there's quite a bit online that can be referred to. Sometimes the translations might not be too up to date, but maybe they're the best we've got. Sometimes the up to date stuff is freely available too, and that makes me happy.

I've given links where possible in the references, and maybe I've over referenced, to a certain extent, but my aim with this kind of stuff is to give as many pointers as possible to help people make their own minds up. I can't claim to have gone through all of the sources exhaustively, because I don't necessarily have them to hand, but I've tried to be as complete as I possibly can.

As ever, any questions, comments, blah blah feel free etc.

New article

It's been a while since I've had anything of substance to add to the website, but I've finally managed to get back into the writing groove for long enough to finish another article.

After finishing the series of articles on the gods, spirits and ancestors I've been feeling a little lost and aimless in terms of what else I can add to website - not so much in the sense that I'm running out of things to write (there are plenty of things I've yet to even touch on, I'm fairly sure of that) - I've just been lacking an idea of where to go from here.

There's not much I can do to force inspiration; I've found the best thing to do is just relax and let myself stumble across it as it happens, so instead I've channelled most of my energies into reworking bits and pieces, here and there; a bit of reorganising and additions. But recently I've been thinking more and more about one subject in particular, and so I decided that I had my next article to be getting on with...

As ever things haven't quite worked out as I was expecting; one article has turned into two, so I've got one of them finished, and the other is in progress as we speak. Fermenting in my head, if not literally being typed, anyway. The finished article is on:

Gessi and Buada

Or, 'prohibitions and prescriptions' (there are so many different spellings to choose from - I know geis, singular, is the Old Irish spelling but the variety of plural options is confusing, so I ended up picking one and just running with it; not being a linguist I'll make no claims about my choice of plural spelling being the best one, but if I'm wrong on either count then at least one academic is as well. And at least I'm consistent...).

Mostly I've concentrated on the geis side of things, because I didn't find much to go on for buada, in spite of the fact that they seem to go hand in hand. I've tried to be as thorough as I can, and in the process I found a good few sources are available freely online - always handy! I've listed these on the Article Downloads page already, and I've tried to give links to as many of the tales I refer to as possible. Yesterday I found a book on archive.org that will be really handy for the next article as well. I've yet to add it to the website but it's worth noting here anyway, since it's a modern translation (1999) of a wisdom text I've spent ages trying to track down:

Old Irish Wisdom Attributed to Aldfrith of Northumbria: An Edition of Bríathra Flann Fhína maic Ossu - edited and translated by Colin Ireland

There's a good discussion of wisdom texts as a whole there, so it's worth a read if that's your kind of thing.

Anyway, all that remains is a few confessions (nothing juicy, though, so don't get your hopes up for anything good). Firstly, this wasn't the article I intended to write, but it's the one that apparently had to come first before I could concentrate on writing about values and virtues, my original topic of choice. Once I get the second article finished some things might have to be tweaked or moved around with this article, so they both still make sense, and I hesitated a bit before deciding to publish it right now. For some reason, I get impatient if I have to sit on something finished, though, so my impatience won out.

I thought at first that gessi would be something that I could look at in the process, but then my research ended up concentrating more and more on gessi than anything else, and then when I started writing I ended up with four pages of an article, three of which were about prohibitions and prescriptions. So it seems they wanted their own page. Who am I to disagree?

My second and main confession is that I've stopped short of really going into any details about how gessi and buada might apply in modern practices. I can't help but feel this might be a bit of a cop out, in one sense, but I decided that it wouldn't be right for me to go on about it. I'm not sure if I've really seen much discussion of them in a modern - Celtic Reconstructionist/Gaelic Polytheist - context, even though I do see the occasional query about them. But without much to go on in that respect, I decided it would be better to leave the question unanswered than fudge it.

So errr...Enjoy...

On a lighter note...

After rambling on about fireworks so much recently, it would be remiss of me not to bring your attention to some news of a display-gone-wrong in Oban. This, you might say, is what you call a bit of an oopsie...

In brief: A Bonfire Night display in Oban was scheduled to last about 20 minutes last Friday; but instead, with the crowd eagerly gathered to enjoy the show, a technical hitch resulted in all (£6,000 worth) of the fireworks being set off within the space of less than a minute:

The result: Glorious.

Finishing up

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot...

Technically speaking, we celebrate Guy Fawkes' Night in commemoration of the successful foiling of the plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, on this day in 1605. And so, in celebration of the fact that it's business as usual, and as we've done for centuries now, bonfires, fireworks, sparklers and toffee apples all mark the day. For those of us on the peripheries of the kingdom, shall we say, such celebrations may not always be as totally enthusiastic about the historical roots of the day...

When I was a kid, the bonfires would be piled up high and the Guy - an effigy of the man himself - would be thrown on the bonfire as part of the proceedings. When I lived in Glasgow (more than ten years ago now), local kids would go round on the streets - even getting into the tenement houses and knocking on the doors - lugging the effigy around and begging for a 'penny for the guy'. It's not just Glasgow where they do that, but that's the only place I've come across it myself; it seems to be a dying tradition. The guy itself would often be an effigy of someone widely hated - sometimes an unpopular manager of a football team, say, or the Pope, but mostly (certainly in Scotland) Maggie Thatcher. Not a popular lady.

When I lived in Bo'ness, grass verges of any substantial size would end up home to huge piles of wood, piled up by the local residents, ready for the big night. I can see how Hutton might suggest that the Samhainn bonfires simply came to shift to Bonfire Night, being so close together.

For most people these days, of course, the evening is nothing more than a good excuse to go and see some fireworks. As a kid my dad used to set them off in our garden, and we'd have a big bonfire right at the bottom, but as I got older it became more common for people to go to displays put on by local charities (or fire stations) - it was cheaper, and you got more for your money, certainly. The ones I went to as a kid used to have the big bonfires, but these days in general they seem to be on the decline (obsessions with health and safety, insurance, and getting sued usually get the blame for that). Certainly the display we went to tonight didn't have one. A shame, really. But perhaps, given what people tend to throw on the piles, a bit kinder on the environment.

So anyway. We decided to take the kids off to a local display in Gourock, which was tied in with a Myth and Legend event, with traditional storytelling and song on offer, as well as a parade through the town. Parking being what it was, we missed the storytelling part, but got there in time to join in with the tail end of the parade. And then, with a hot chocolate warming my hands and an ice cream for the kids, we got to see a spectacular display:

Tom, now six, was more than impressed. He was dancing and shouting in glee. Rosie, on the other hand, stood in awed four-year-old silence.

When we got home Tom ran out into the garden to watch the neighbour's get their fireworks going, jumping up and down on the trampoline in glee before we handed both the kids their very first sparklers. Rosie wasn't too sure about that at first. But it was OK in the end. 

And now the air in the village is hanging heavy with smoke. And for me, as the air begins to clear, so the transition from autumn into winter is truly complete.

Onwards.