The transformations of "Celtic" mythologies (note 1) is a fascinating process, from their heyday of being passed by the bards orally, through the quills of Christian monks, and down to the bookshelves of today. Each time one of these myths is told again, written by a new author, or used as reference material for newer stories, that myth is retold. Myths change subtly with each retelling, according to their reteller-- reflecting the reteller's values, their understanding of the culture represented in the tale, or what modern culture needs from the past.
Over the years, three types of retelling have come into common usage.(note 2) One is what I call the loyal translation, any near word-for-word relation of the tale or the essence of its plot. Another is the retelling, a relation of the story beyond its plot, but with minor changes, with details the reteller filled in, or a combination of several versions of a tale that an author synthesized into one story. The third is the revision, where the reteller has taken elements of the myth and fashioned them into a new plot or setting which bears little to no historical or traditional value.
The three forms came into being chronologically in the above order; each form first used to fit the needs of the time. This study will sketch this progression and some of its causes as I present each of the methods, outlining the basic effects of the retelling on the myths. Then it will examine the effects of these modes on our broader understanding of Celtic cultures, and what they say about our approach to understanding the past.
Celtic mythology first comes into literary history in the twelfth century, when Christian monks first recorded the tales of the Irish peoples. It is suspected that transcriptions began in the seventh century, but surviving copies date back only to the twelfth century. We are not entirely sure why the Christian monks recorded pagan tradition. Popular theories hold that one goal was the assimilation of pagan religion, a theory supported by many clearly Christian elements in the myths. For instance, several tales of transformation such as the myth of the Children of Lir, tell of the protagonist(s) transforming into animals and wandering the land for years until a monk (sometimes St. Patrick himself) comes across the creature, offers it salvation with the New God, and it accepts baptism, whereupon it dies and goes to Heaven. The ending was almost certainly added onto an older traditional story, and retold in the hopes of making Christianity more attractive to the pagans.
While these appropriations themselves most closely fall under the category of retellings, they come to us today most often in the form of loyal translations of manuscripts. Examples of the loyal translation are Jeffrey Gantz' Early Irish Myths and Sagas, and Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson's A Celtic Miscellany (1951). As many Celtic tales were originally recorded in either Latin or dialects of Old Irish, translation is necessary, and this has been one of the prime motivations of retellings. Loyal translations are exactly that, near-word-for-word relations of what was recorded in the manuscripts.
The foundation of this approach is that in translating almost word-for-word what the monks recorded, we can form the most accurate picture of what was recorded, what was intended, what was happening around the recording. In large part, this is an accurate view- word-for-word detail does give us insight into the monks' thought processes, and convey word usage, colloquialisms, and the attendant cultural knowledge. Passages such as the following from "The Settling of the Manor of Tara," from The Yellow Book of Lecan show the usefulness of such attention:
The kings and ollaves (sages) used to be placed around Diarmat (Diarmuid) son of Cerball, that is, kings and ollaves together, warriors and reavers (thieves?) together. The youths and maidens and the proud foolish folk in the chambers around the doors; and his proper portion was given to each one, that is, choice fruit and oxen and boars and flitches for kings and ollaves, and for the free noble elders of the men of Ireland likewise: stewards and stewardesses carving and serving for them. Then red meat from spits of iron, and bragget and new ale and milk water (?) for warriors and reavers: and jesters and cup-bearers carving and serving for them. Heads-and-feet (?) next and . . . of all (kinds of) cattle to charioteers and jugglers and for the rabble and common people, with charioteers and jugglers and doorkeepers carving and dispensing for them. Veal then and lamb and pork and the seventh portion . . . outside for young men and maidens, because their mirth used to entertain them . . . and their nobility(?) used to be awaiting them (?). Free mercenaries and female hirelings carving and dispensing for them (Matthews 99-100).
While such repetition and long-winded detail seems tedious to the modern reader, to the historian or anthropologist it is a font of first-hand knowledge: there are the foods that the people ate, the fruit, boars, and "milk-water"; the orders that they sat at the table in and the possible power-structures that such formalities imply; there as well is some clue as to what was important to the teller. We know from these sources, for instance, that repetition was common, probably to "buy time" for the teller to recall the next portion of the story, possibly to help the listeners remember the story better, possibly to simply entertain all the better for stacking the story with all the rich detail the audience would bear. Other passages list names and lineages for pages on end, suggesting that lineage was an important part of social status (Gantz 225).
We must, however, suspect the viability of even a loyal retelling when it was first recorded with clear motives against its tradition. As noted above, remnants of Celtic mythologies show clear alteration by the monks. Nor are we sure about the reliability of the recording act itself-- experts believe that some of the recordings were made in private performances by the bards who maintained the knowledge (Rutherford 36-39), but they may also have been mere retellings from memory by the monks, further distorted by the monks' aims. We come to a quandary: these sources are as loyal as we are going to get, yet they are incredibly suspect.
Also, loyal translations are not terribly interesting to the modern reader. The syntax is often difficult for the modern ear, the word use archaic, and colloquialisms out of context. One solution is interpolation in the form of the retelling.
Celtic literature, then nearly disappeared for several hundred years. Most books pick up tracing the literary history of the myths with Yeats and what is commonly called the Celtic Revival or the Irish Renaissance. The revival, in the late 1800s was a sort of nationalist, or perhaps culturalist movement to bring back traditional "Irish" culture and folkways.
In doing so, the retellers gathered the multiplicitous versions of myths and composed synthesized versions that seemed "most" loyal, or had the elements found in the broadest base of traditions. I have christened this the retelling. Another type of retelling is the most common type today, the retelling of a myth with details added to make it more palatable to the modern expectation of a narrative. Characters' feelings are added, details about the surroundings, possibly even more specific geography is presented than was in the source text; all of which amount to the mythological version of a sort of interpolation.
It is important to make clear that many retellings falling under this heading are very careful about their details. Often such retellings will have a substantial bibliography , listing either the body of sources the presented version was synthesized from, or other, frequently archaeological sources for details of the time. Examples of such retellings are Michael Scott's anthologies Celtic Folk and Fairy Tales Omnibus and Irish Myths and Legends. A passage from "The Boy Setanta" in from Scott's retelling of the Cuchulain is a fine example of this form:
He had patiently bided his time, waiting a year before bringing his complaint back to Conor: he had given his support to the king in return for a position of honour and a bride. Conor had enjoyed all the advantages of Sualtim's support ... but Sualtim had received nothing in return. The old warrior hadn't been expecting Conor to agree to go in search of the missing women, he had been quite prepared to trade for cattle or gold. (59)
Such details as the intent of the characters, did not come from translations of manuscripts, nor did the easily read syntax. The clearest effects of the retelling form are of clarity and accessibility. Michael Scott's books are far easier to read than Gantz's version, loyal as it may be. The reader must again be wary, however, of the reteller's approach. Such interpolation is in part creative, and we have no way of knowing whether details omitted were vital, as in the case of the lists of lineages (often omitted in retellings), or if the details added are in any way true to tradition.
The revision could be said to have begun with the first fantasy novel, The Wood Beyond the World, by William Morris. The archetypal revision is J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings Saga. The series drew heavily on Celtic and Nordic mythology-- the tall, thin elves of the Irish Sidhe interact with Norse Dwarves, in a setting where they have ceded the land to the human race, also as in Irish mythology. (note 3) The languages follow Celtic patterns, and social structures are similar.
Another excellent example of the retelling is Patricia Kenneally's Keltiad. The series follows the basic plot that when Christianity came to the British Isles, the Tuatha de Danaan , who had once been the people of Atlantis, fled Earth and re-established their culture in another solar system. While the plot sounds more like a science-fiction novel than a mythological tale, the primary figures come from mythology, the culture is as authentic as possible to what is known of the Irish peoples, and the questions that the series answers (those of Atlantis and the identity of the Tuatha de Danaan) follow some currently popular anthropological theories.
A different sort of revision is the adaptation of Celtic themes into a modern form or even plot. These commonly take the form of Arthurian adaptations, like the movie First Knight, or Michael Scott's original stories in his Celtic Folk and Fairy Tales Omnibus, or The Last Rainbow by Godwin Parke, a romance set around St. Patrick's arrival among the "Prydn", a tribe of Picts.
The revision, then, is a sort of revision of mythology in either content, form, or context, yet which maintains elements of the tradition largely intact. Such retellings are creative and popular, but are mainly the creative work of the author, and can hardly be looked to for new historical insights. Revisions, however, can be seen as maintaining the spirit of the tradition more than either of the other forms of retelling, as I will discuss in the next section, about the broader effects and meanings of retellings.
Each of these forms of retelling developed in response to the needs of their students at the time, and each serves different purposes and maintains different parts of the tradition. Each outlines a radically different approach to the meaning and value of myth compared to the other two, however, and it is important to examine the implications of a single-minded study of any of these forms.
Loyal translations maintain historical and cultural facts in the closest way. As established above, when taken with a grain of salt, exacting study of the content of the myths will often provide cultural insight which archaeology cannot; study of the form tells of the oral culture, modes of description and the thought structures which lie behind them. But with such loyalty it is necessary to wade through many copies of the same story, all in archaic styles, to achieve an understanding of even one story.
And devotion to such an approach assumes the veracity of the originals that we have, an assumption which is by no means safe. The stories were recorded by monks with agendas of their own, in some cases contrary to the traditions they were recording. The Book of Invasions, for instance, claims that the first settlers of Ireland were directly descended from Noah, and that all but one died in the Deluge. The third invasion was from Egypt, and gave Scotland its name, from Scota, the daughter of a Pharaoh in the time of Moses. The point is not whether these "histories" are true (though it is interesting to note that current evidence shows that the Scots did arrive in Scotland from Ireland), but that they are inextricably combined with Christian influences, casting doubt on the foundation of the loyal approach.
What, then, is the use of mythology? And what are the merits of the other approaches? Many of Lloyd Alexander's characters were taken wholesale from myth, or their names and positions borrowed, as in the case of Arawn, and new stories made of them. While it is easy to disclaim this as disloyalty to tradition, Alexander in a way is truer to tradition than purists who simply translate or retell. The recorded myths, by virtue of being part of the oral tradition, were certainly in a constant state of flux. Some tales show clear signs of being combined with other myths, with episodes switched, while other tales with similar elements were combined to make a richer story, or to be more easily remembered.
In other words, the myths have never been static, and the very idea of a "right" version of an excerpt of the narrative of human imaginative history is flawed. The revision's contemporary relevance and vitality is almost necessary. An example from Rutherford's Celtic Mythology helps illustrate this point. He relates the story of a Welshman in Cardigan Bay who told him of a house called Castellmarch where an incredibly mean landowner lived. A disgruntled servant escaped and joined a man-o-war, and convinced its captain when passing by once to fire on the house. The landowner, it had been said, and this the teller did not believe, had ass's ears. Rhys, hearing the story, quickly connected the landowner with the cuckolded king, King Mark, in the Arthurian myth "Tristan and Iseult," who supposedly had equine ears. "Mark," it was believed, was a misreading of "March," meaning "steed." The Welshman, though he probably knew nothing of the myth of Tristan and Iseult, had retold part of the story as though the character had lived down the road (Rutherford 14-15). Though drastically different from its likely origin, the myth remained alive and close to the villagers, and so was more likely to be continued, at least in part, than a static, "official" version.
It is hard to accept such flexibility in "tradition", especially one which we depend upon for knowledge of the past. Alexander significantly does not pass his stories off as mythology, and even distantly connecting the Prydn of old Wales with the Prydain of The Book of Three is dangerous to our understanding. By frequently being more publicized, Alexander's retelling threatens to displace true tradition and the information (however suspect) that it provides. For instance, the following passage from Legends of the Celts, by Frank Delaney, introduces Arawn, King of Annuvin:
As the dogs' muzzles grizzled and dripped on the fresh venison, squabbles breaking out, Pwyll cracking his whip to break up their fights, a huntsman rode at top speed into the clearing, spurring his horse out from under the overhanging hazels. Dressed in grey, on a grey horse with a brown leather saddle, he saluted Pwyll, saying, 'I do not know who you are, whether you're king or commoner, and therefore I have no intention of offering you more than a cursory greeting.' This fell only a little short of insolence. . . . He could not let this pass. 'Perhaps it is the case that you do not have sufficient rank to greet me as an equal?' 'Not a matter of rank,' . . . 'a matter of bad manners.' (Delaney 136)
While Arawn is presented rather differently in The High King, the climax of the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander:
A horrified gasp came from Eilonwy. Taran looked up at the cloven serpent. Its body writhed, its shape blurred. In its place appeared the black-cloaked figure of a man whose severed head had rolled face downward on the earth. Yet in a moment this shape too lost its form and the corpse sank like a shadow into the earth; and where it had lain was seared and fallow, the ground wasted, fissured as though by drought. Arawn Death-Lord had vanished. (Alexander 256)
Which is right? In this case, we can safely say the former is more loyal, and is more useful in looking for what the tellers believed. This is not to say that there is no basis for Alexander's version, nor that there is no "legitimacy." Arawn was king of Annuvin, a kingdom of the Sidhe, which, being the underworld, was seen as hellish by Christian retellers. Arawn was then either a demon or the Lord of Darkness himself, as found in Alexander's Prydain. There is a powerful argument for the derivation of Alexander's interpretation as the continuation of the tradition in our "new" culture. The danger is not so much in the revision, then, but in the loss of the older information. This is hardly a danger today, however, with the ease of publication and storage of cultural data in books, articles, and other media.
Historical study does stress word-perfect loyalty, yet the fluid spirit of the tradition would almost require change and reinterpretation for "survival" of the process of the mythological tradition. Where does the "better" route lie? The proper approach for what the student is seeking to learn from myth is the heart of the issue of retelling, revision, and translation of mythology and of the relation of knowledge of past cultures in general, and so forms the core of my discussion on the next topic, the validity of these approaches.
Very simply, there isn't one. Alexander's approach keeps myth alive, vibrant, while still maintaining the flavor of the old stories and some of their cultural information; strict loyalty preserves more of the irreproducible cultural information which is at the heart of the mytho-historic oral tradition. While researching this topic, and teasing out the intricacies of the three methods (once I found them), I began to form a bias toward the retelling, a bias which shows itself most clearly in the naming of the methods. In some ways, it is the most useful in the broadest range of circumstances. The retellers are often careful in presenting information that is as accurate as possible, and yet it is more accessible to more readers than the language of the loyal translation.
Yet each of the books used for this paper were successful; they were simply read by different audiences, or for different purposes. For information on eating habits that might illuminate archaeological findings, Kenneth Jackson and Jeffrey Gantz were the safest route, as the practiced the least "selection" of material to relate. For pleasure reading and creativity, Lloyd Alexander is difficult to best; indeed it was the Chronicles of Prydain that first got me fascinated by Celtic culture. Michael Scott's retelling helps in gaining a quick understanding of the core of Irish mythology, and allows the reader to decide which direction to move in in any further study. With the luxury of being able to use all of these methods, the "best" method depends on the purpose of the research.
One assumption that underlies all three methods that bears consideration is the assumption common to all three methods regarding the nature of myth. Rutherford considers that "a rough and ready definition of mythology is that it is history told in other terms" (21). This is the assumption underlying searches for loyal translations. This fairly scientific "study" of myth seems to have risen first in the late 1800s, coming into literary history with Sir John Rhys' Celtic Heathendom in 1886. Sir John Rhys was the first professor of Celtic studies at Oxford and "helped take the study of Welsh and Irish traditions out of the hands of eccentrics." He showed that Celtic myths came from suppressed pre-Christian figures and deities (MacKillop 40). Since then, mythology has been viewed through a somewhat scientific, skeptical lens. 'Myth is skewed history. Myth preserves, in fragmentary and inconclusive terms, the cultural practices of a people, assuming it isn't polluted by inheritors of the tradition.'
But this view, dominant in Celtic mythological study until recently, sets ancient myth as a static body of information on an antiquated world-view. On the other hand, C.G. Jung's theory of the Collective Unconscious suggests that myth works within a hidden body of symbolism and cultural material (Rutherford 22). This second approach, while more difficult to apply to concrete study, takes a more humanist view that, like the other forms of retelling, seems to stay more true to the animus of Celtic mythology.
This is exemplified in the revision form, drawing on the symbols and soul of myths to lend potency to new creative endeavors. A growing number of retellings of Celtic mythology have been done in a framework where the "life-span" of a god, or race, is dependent on belief in it. Michael Scott's anthologies include original retellings of tales of modern belief in fairies, properly the Sidhe, or Faerie Folk, who relate that their race fled the land because of the decline of their strength with the 'coming of the One New God.' As modern development builds roads and high-rises through faerie rings in Ireland, the faeries dwindle in number and strength as belief in them is "debunked." (Omnibus 210) While this is an approach as old as the myths themselves (as we know from passages like those about St. Patrick's arrival in Tara, where he announces that his god is stronger than the pagan gods, and has come to drive them away, i.e. win over their adherents), there seems to be a renewed interest in this view in the field, larger perhaps than any since the coming of Christian monotheism to the British isles.
Striving to take the middle road, this acceptance of this more polytheistic potential seems to be healthy for the field, paralleling as it does the multiplicitous philosophies behind the retelling and revision forms and allowing a broader range of perspectives on the working of myth and religion on society.
In conclusion, I will not advocate one method of retelling over another, but simply present the loyal translation, the retelling, and the revision as three methods of retelling mythological traditions. The accuracy of each method depends on the goal of the researcher: translation maintains cultural information most intact; retelling offers possibly greater accuracy through interpolation (without possibility of verification), while making the body of literature more accessible and manageable; revision remains true to less tangible aspects of the process of retelling myths, the culture of mythology. With either approach the researcher engages himself with history and past cultures, while simultaneously forming the mythology of the future.
*Alexander, Lloyd. The Chronicles of Prydain. New York: Dell Publishing, 1968.
Delaney, Frank. Legends of the Celts. London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.
*Early Irish Myths and Sagas. Trans. Jeffrey Gantz. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
Godwin, Parke. The Last Rainbow. New York City
Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone. A Celtic Miscellany. London: Penguin Books, 1971.
*MacKillop, James. Fionn mac Cumhaill: Celtic Myth in English Literature. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1986.
*Matthews, Caitlin and John. The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom. Shaftesbury, Dorset, G.B.: Element Books Ltd, 1994.
Morris, William. The Wood Beyond the World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969.
Osborne, Linda Barrett. Song of the Harp: Old Welsh Folktales. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976
Rutherford, Ward. Celtic Mythology. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.,1990.
Scott, Michael. Irish Folk and Fairy Tales: Omnibus Edition. London, G.B.: Warner Books, 1984.
Scott, Michael. Irish Myths and Legends. London, G.B.: Warner Books, 1992.
McCulloch, J. A. Celtic Mythology. London: Constable and Company Limited, 1992.
Yeats, W.B.. The Celtic Twilight: Myth, Fantasy, and Folklore. Bridport, Dorset, G.B.: Prism Press, 1992.
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