Previous    Next    Index    Bibliography    Alternate Spelling    Search

 

BROCELIANDE

A forest BABYLON. See: THOLOMER.

BACH BYCHAN

The page of Tristan in the Welsh romance TRYSTAN. His name means 'little small one'. # 156

BADB BADHBH

(bôv baib) # 454: Crow - an aspect of the Morrighan. She confronted CuChulain on his way to the last battle as a Washer of the Ford. She likewise appeared as a harbinger of death to King Cormac. # 166: A supernatural woman or demon who frequented places of battle; regarded by some as a 'battle goddess'. # 100: The Celtic goddess of war, who, according to Evans Wentz in THE FAIRY-FAITH IN CELTIC COUNTRIES, incorporated the three goddesses NEMAN, MACHA and MORRIGU in a single form, that of a Royston or hoodie crow. The mythology has declined into folklore, and a crow perching on a house is often the form taken by the BANSHEE or 'fairy woman'. The narrative of the battle of Moytura (q.v.) in THE BOOK OF LEINSTER gives one of the most vivid descriptions of the activities of Badb and her attendant spirits. # 100 - 166 - 367 - 454 - 548 - 711

BADGER

# 454: Famed for its tenacity and courage, the badger has entered folklore as the most unyelding animal; significantly, badgerhead sporrans keep a Highlander's loose change safe. The story of Gwawl and Rhiannon shows how an ancient game 'Badger in the Bag' was supposed to have originated, but traces of this custom, called 'Beat the Badger' in Fife, show how it may have been a form of ancient ordeal, a running the gauntlet, where the player ran between a double line of boys wielding sticks. # 225 - 439 - 454

BADON

# 156: A battle in which Arthur was said to have totally defeated the Saxons. Gildas is the first to refer to it, but he does not mention Arthur by name. The date of the encounter is uncertain, but it is generally placed between AD 490 and 516 sometimes more specifically about AD 500. In DE EXCIDIO, Gildas is ambiguous: his statement could be variously interpreted as meaning that the battle occurred in the year he was born, forty-four years before he wrote, forty-four years after the coming of the Saxons or forty-four years after the resurgence of the Britons under Ambrosius. As regards the first of these possibilities, it is worth noting that T. D. O'Sullivan in a recent study opines that Gildas wrote DE EXCIDIO as a young man. Although Gildas does not name the British commander, both Nennius and the ANNALES CAMBRIAE identify him as Arthur. So does Geoffrey, who regards Badon as identical with Bath. A recent linguistic argument, against this identification, by N. L. Goodrich betrays insufficient knowledge of the Welsh language. Other locational suggestions have been variously Liddington Castle near Swindon and Badbury Rings (Dorset). The Battle is described as a siege, though it is not clear who was beleageured by whom. See: GREENAN CASTLE. # 26 - 156 - 243 - 255 - 494

BAGDEMAGUS

# 156: King of Gore, a Knight of the Round Table and a cousin of Arthur. He seems to have been a benign character, but he took umbrage when Tor was made a Knight of the Round Table before him. His son was Meleagaunce and, when this character carried off Guinevere, Bagdemagus prevented him from raping her. At the time of the Grail Quest he took a special shield with a red cross on it, intented for Galahad, and for his pains he was wounded by a white knight. Killed by Gawain. # 156 - 418 - 604

BAGPIPE

It is a very ancient instrument-as old as ancient Persia- which was introduced into the British Isles by the Romans. While it is considered to be the national instrument of Scotland, historically it is hardly more Scottish than Irish. Each bagpipe consists of five pipes: the intake pipe, through which the player's breath enters the bag; the pipe on which the performer plays the melody; and three drone pipes, to provide a bass background. # 118 p 17

BAILE ATHA CLIATH

(bal'ye á'ha clé'ah) 'Place of the Ford of the Hurdles'. Now Dublin. # 166

BALAN

# 156: The younger brother of Balin. After killing a certain knight, he had to assume a guardian's rôle, fighting all comers in place of the knight he had slain. In this capacity he fought with Balin, neither recognizing the other. Each received a fatal wound. # 156 - 418

BALDULF

# 156: Brother of Colgrin, the Saxon leader. He was on his way to help his brother during the siege of York when his force was attacked by Cador and defeated. After this, he sneaked into York disguised as a minstrel. He was eventually slain at Badon. # 156 - 243

BALDWIN

See: BEDWIN.

BALIN

# 156: A famous knight, who was born in Northumberland. He had incurred Arthur's displeasure by killing a Lady of the Lake. However, he and his brother Balan captured Rience and became supporters of Arthur. When Pellam tried to kill him for slaying his brother Garlon, Balin struck Pellam with the Lance of Longinus. This was the Dolorous Stroke. Balin was also known as the Knight of the Two Swords. He and his brother unwittingly killed each other. Balin's name may be a variant of Brulen/Varlan who, elsewhere and long before Arthur's time, was thought to have struck the Dolorous Stroke. See: COLOMBE. # 156 - 418

BALKANS

Earliest home of mountain Celts was ranges of Balkans. # 562

BALOR

# 562: (bá'lor) Son of Net. Ancestor of Lugh; Bres sent to seek aid of Balor; informed that Danaans refuse tribute; Fomorian champion, engages Nuada of the Silver Hand, and slain by Lugh; one of the names of the god of Death; included in Finn's ancestry. # 156: A one-eyed giant in Irish mythology who seems to be related to Yspadadden in CULHWCH. # 454: King of the Fomorians. It was prophesied that his grandson would kill him and so he kept his daughter secluded on an island. But Cian mac Cainte was able to visit the island where he slept with Ethniu, Balor's daughter. Of their union Lugh was born. Balor was one-eyed because he had spied on some druids who were preparing a draught of wisdom. Some splashed out and hit him in the eye thus making the glance of this eye baleful to any he looked upon. He kept that eye-lid closed and had four attendants to raise it when he wanted to kill his enemies. At the second Battle of Mag Tuired, Lugh put out this eye with a sling-stone and killed him. Traces of Balor occur in many extant folk-stories of the British Isles. Parallels between him and Yspaddaden are so striking that it is clear they are analogous with each other. # 156 - 157 - 166 - 326 - 454 - 562

BAN

# 156: King of Gomeret or Benwick. He supported Arthur in the battle with the rebel leaders at the outset of Arthur's reign. His realm was on the Continent and, in return for his assistance, Arthur was to aid him against his foe, King Claudas. When Claudas destroyed Ban's castle at Trebes, he died of a broken heart. Ban's wife is usually called Elaine but, in the French medieval romance 'Roman des fils du roi Constant,' she is named Sabe. In that romance, he has a daughter called Liban. His son Lancelot became Arthur's chief knight. Ban also had an illegitimate son, called Ector de Maris, whose mother was the wife of Agravadan. Ban's sword was called Courechouse. He was the brother of King Bors of Gaul. It has been suggested that he was, in origin, the god Bran and that the name Ban de Benoic (Ban of Benwick) was a corruption of Bran le Benoit (Bran the Blessed; see the MABINOGION, where Bran is called Bendigeidfran, Bran the Blessed). Ban's name has also been connected with Irish BáN (white). # 156 - 418 - 496

BANBA

# 562: Wife of Danaan king, MacCuill. # 454: According to a lost early manuscript, she was the first settler in Ireland which was called 'the island of Banba of the women' - which perhaps is associated with TIR NA MBAN. She was one of the three goddesses of Sovereignty to whom Amergin promised the honour of naming the island after her. Thus Banba is a poetic name for Ireland. # 166 - 454 - 469 - 562

BANFáITH

Ancient Celtic word for prophetess. A Banfáith was exalted among her kind. Like bards they could sing and play the harp, and like bards they were able counsellors. But they also possessed an older, more mysterious power: the ability to search the woven pathways of the future to see what will be and to speak to the people in the voice of the DAGDA. # 383 p 200

BANFILIDH

A female Filidh, or harper. # 383 p 202

BANN, THE RIVER

Visited by Mac Cecht in his frantic search for water. But the Fairy Folk, who are here manifestly elemental powers controlling the forces of nature, have sealed all the sources against him. He tries the Well of Kesair in Wicklow in vain; he goes to the great rivers, Shannon and Slayney, Bann and Barrow - but they all hide away at his approach. # 562

BANSHEE

# 701: From Gaelic BEAN-SIDHE, 'woman of the fairy-mounds,' the Banshee was another form of the Goddess-voice, for she was heard, but rarely seen. Irish folklore said the voice of the Banshee was sometimes a terrifying shriek or ghastly wail that would cause any hearer to drop dead at once; or, at other times, it was a soft, comforting voice adressed to those whom the Goddess loved 'a welcome rather than a warning' of the coming passage into the realm of death. # 100: Her name may be more correctly written BEAN SI, who wails only for members of the old families. When several keen together, it foretells the death of someone very great or holy. The Banshee has long streaming hair and a grey cloak over a green dress. Her eyes are fiery red with continual weeping. In the Scottish Highlands the Banshee is called BEAN-NIGHE or 'Little-Washer-by-the-Ford', and she washes the grave-clothes of those about to die. The Highland Banshee, like the other fairies, has some physical defects. She has only one nostril, a large protruding front tooth and long hanging breasts. A mortal who is bold enough to creep up to her as she is washing and lamenting and suck her long breast can claim to be her foster-child and gain a wish from her. Since the word 'banshee' means 'fairy woman', the beliefs about her are various, and occasionally the Glaistig is spoken of as a banshee, though she has nothing to do with the Bean-Nighe. # 100 - 701 p 235

BAOBHAN SITH

(baavan shee) This Highland word is the same as BANSHEE, and means 'fairy woman', but is generally employed to mean a kind of succubus, very dangerous and evil. See: BANSHEE. # 100

BARATON

The name of the King of Russia in Arthurian romance. # 156

BARBAROSSA, KAISER

Tradition has that Finn lies in some enchanted cove spellbound, like Barbarossa. # 562

Bard

A poet, storyteller, singer. Bards were initiates in different degrees. From Penderwydd - that is the Head Druid, or Chief Bard - on to the Brehon, and further down to the Mabinog, which is a pupil or apprentice. There are many more kinds of specialized bards, like the Gwyddon who is an expert on anything to do with land or cattle, and many times have skills as a physician.

The Bards of ancient Britain always maintained that their language emanated from an otherworldly source, and from where also the modern Gaelic have its roots. The tutor syllable in modern language has to be swift for tongue-knotting syllable, and vowel for elusive vowel. - Under an intensive and imaginative instruction, the speech of ancient Britain was a valued currency, and no words rendered meaningless through overuse or cheapened through bureaucratic doublespeak. It was a language alive with meaning: poetic, imaginative, bursting with rhytm and sound, they spoke to the soul.

On the lips of a bard, a story became an astonishing revelation, a song became a marvel of almost paralyzing beauty. - As mentioned above the degrees of bardship were elaborate and formal, their roles well defined through eons, apparently, of unaltered tradition. The candidate progressed from Mabinog - which had two distinct subdivisions, Cawganog and Cupanog and proceeded up through the various degrees: Filidh, Brehon, Gwyddon, Derwydd, and finally Penderwydd, sometimes called the Chief of Song. There was also a Penderwydd over the whole, the Chief of Chiefs, so to speak. He was called the Phantarch, and was chosen by acclamation of his peers to rule over the bardship of old Albion. The lore said, that in some obscure way, the Island of the Mighty was protected by the Phantarch as if he was standing underneath the realm, supporting it on his shoulders. # 62 - # 383 pp 170-8

BARDDAS

# 628: One of the most curious and difficult documents is a chapter from BARDDAS by Edward Williams, better known as Iolo Morgannwg. The work of this brilliant eighteenth-century antiquarian has probably given rise to more argument and discussion on the question of the authenticity of the bardic tradition than any other writer of any age. Iolo's brilliance is beyond question. The problem is that we no longer know how much he translated and how much he made up on the spur of the moment, having reached a point where he could no longer fill out the gaps in his knowledge by any other means. Most of the material reprinted in 'A Celtic Reader' is clearly a forgery; yet for all that it is fascinating as an example of the way a tradition can be extended in such a way that it complements rather than contradicts the original material. Thus it is with the BARDIC TRIADS much in the spirit of the originals.

# 562: Compilation enshrining Druidic thought, although Christian persons and episodes figure in the BARDDAS. At any rate, BARDDAS is a work of considerable philosophic interest, and even if it represents nothing but a certain current of Cymric thought in the sixteenth century it is not unworthy of attention by the student of things Celtic. Purely Druidic it does not even profess to be, for Christian personages and episodes from Christian history figure largely in it. But we come occasionally upon a strain of thought which, whatever else it may be, is certainly not Christian, and speaks of an independent philosophic system. # 562 - 628 Iolo Morgannwg (ed.) Barddas pp 177, 241 ff

BARDIC

The popular conception of the Danaan deities was probably at all times something different from the bardic and druidic, or in other words the scholarly, conception. The latter represents them as presiding deities of science and poetry, which is the product of the Celtic, the Aryan imagination, inspired by a strictly intellectual conception. # 562

BARINTHUS

Called the 'Navigator' he guided Merlin and Taliesin on their voyage to the otherworld island with the wounded Arthur. He epitomizes the ferryman of the dead and may be drawn from the mythos of Manannan. He is also, in the form of St Barrind, responsible for starting Saint Brendan on his voyage to the paradise of the Blest. See:FORTUNATE ISLANDS. # 399 - 416 - 454 - 507

BARROW, THE RIVER

Visited by Mac Cecht. See: BANN, THE RIVER. # 562

BARUCH BARUC

# 562: A lord of the Red Branch; meets Naisi and Deirdre on landing in Ireland; persuades Fergus to feast at his house; # 454: The Red Branch warrior who met Deirdre and Naosi on their return from Scotland. He persuaded Fergus to leave his guarding of the runaway couple in order to feast with himself. Fergus, one of whose geise included the inability not to respond to any hospitality offered to him, complied, thus leaving the doomed couple to their fate. # 156: The Caliph of Baghdad, with whom Gahmuret took service in Wolfram's PARZIFAL. In actual fact, the potentate denoted was the Caliph of Baghdad, head of Islam in the Middle Ages, an anachronism since the Arthurian period predated Mohammed. The title Baruc seems to come from the Hebrew personal name Baruch. In the LIVRE D'ARTUS, Baruc is the name of a knight. # 156 - 454 - 562 - 748

BASSUS, THE RIVER.

The site of one of Arthur's battles was the River Bassus (# 494). It has not been identified. # 156 - 494

BATRADZ

See: SARMATIANS.

BATTLE OF CNUCHA, THE CAUSE OF THE

The parentage of Finn and the beginning of the hereditary feud between him and Goll mac Morna are related in this story. The battle is supposed to have taken place toward the end of the second century of the Christian era. The date of composition is at least as early as the eleventh century, and may be considerably earlier, for the short, dry succession of factual statements is a trait which is distintcly reminiscent of the earlier style. # 166

BATTLE OF MOYTURA, THE

The full title of THE BATTLE OF MOYTURA in the original Irish is CATH MAIGE TUREDH AN SCEL-SA SIS & GENEMAIN BRES MEIC ELATHAN & A RIGHE which translates as THIS TALE BELOW IS THE BATTLE OF MAIGE TUIRED AND THE BIRTH OF BRES SON OF ELATHA AND HIS REIGN. Note the triple aspect of this full title: a battle, a birth, and a king's reign. There are only two complete original manuscript copies extant today. The older is from the first half of the sixteenth century and was committed to writing by the scribe Gilla Riabhach O'Cleirigh, Son of Tuathal, Son of Tadhg Cam O'Cleirigh, and is in the Old Irish language. The second manuscript was written between 1651 and 1652 by David Duigenan, and is in Middle Irish. Both, however, are believed to have come from a text which was known in the ninth century, and which in turn was based on oral traditions of immeasurable antiquity. Its very longevity speaks volumes. Because these old Celtic Pagan legends were written down many centuries after their original oral telling, and because the people who wrote them down were Christian monks, it is often taken as fact that the versions we have inherited today must be corrupted or altered, perhaps even deliberately, and therefore probably bear little resemblance to their original form. On the surface this argument appears plausible and quite likely but, on closer thought and examination, it soon becomes apparent that it is an error to assume this automatically.

It has often been argued that the original oral tellings must have gradually changed and been altered and embellished by each individual story-teller over the many long years these tales were told, the result being that it is no longer possible today to say that any one version is the true and original one. This, however, assumes that the original story-tellers were incapable of remembering the full story verbatim as they had heard it, or that they wilfully changed the content of the tale for the reasons of their own. It is highly unlikely that either of these suppositions are correct. The main fault with this argument is that it is based on our modern inability to remember long spoken passages, and, secondly, upon our equally modern desire to express ourselves in our own, individual way. These assumptions do not take into account the way the ancient Celts - who after all were the ones telling the story in the first place - regarded the importance of memory; nor do they take into account the need that existed to pass on spoken words accurately and precisely.

With the invention of writing neither a retentive memory nor the ability to recall long oral pieces verbatim was so important, and gradually over the centuries we have lost the memory capacity which our forebears most definitely had. Indeed, the Celts were wise enough to see both the dangers and advantages of this new form of communication known as writing, and in order to preserve the memory abilities of their holy men, the Druids, they forbade them writing down any of their secular works. There was no such prohibition on the layman, however, as it was recognized that writing did have distinct advantages in the commercial world. It is feasible then that the legends which eventually came to be written down in the seventh-to-ninth centuries were accurate copies of the extant oral tradition. This is also borne out by the fact that for several centuries the two traditions existed side by side. The ordinary Celt did not have the luxury of books nor the ability to read and therefore still depended entirely upon the spoken word. The monks on the other hand, who wrote these spoken words down, would also have been familiar with the oral tradition, and it would have been pointless for them to set down in writing (for writing was a very laborious and expensive business), works which they knew to be inaccurate or simply wrong. It is also often argued that the written legends are not faithful reproductions of the oral legends because the Christian scribes edited or changed the very Pagan nature of the legends and deliberately altered them in an attempt to convert the common people to the new Christian religion. This again is highly unlikely for several reasons. It must be remembered that the Christian monks had originally been Pagan Celts, and these tales, as demonstrated in Steve Blamires' book THE IRISH CELTIC MAGICAL TRADITION, were not just stories or fanciful fairy-tales but the very basis on which the whole of their society was constructed (on three levels, as mentioned above), and it would have been unthinkable, even on the part of converts to the new Christian religion, deliberately to alter or otherwise tamper with such important information. This fact can be seen by the way the Irish Catholic church incorporated a very great deal of the existing Pagan religious beliefs and practices into its own teachings, much to the annoyance and eventual fury of Rome. In the case of this particular legend there is no evidence whatsoever of the text having been altered by over-zealous scribes, and although there are a couple of places where the Christians scribe did insert a few comments of his own, these do not in any way alter the sense of the story nor attempt to discredit the events being described.

It will also be seen that the text contains some very explicit sexual descriptions as well as references to some very basic bodily functions, normally not talked about even today. It seems very unlikely then that if the monks' aim was to edit and change the old Pagan legends into acceptable Christian versions they would have left in such unChristian passages. The important point about any of these ancient Celtic legends is that the information they contain goes beyond such things, and 'speaks' directly to the innermost part of the reader, who instinctively knows it is correct. They are truly timeless and they adopt and adapt themselves to the times in which they are being read. Therefore their spiritual instruction and guidance is as valid now as it was a thousand years ago and will be a thousand years hence. Blamires say in his Introduction that he have tried as much as possible to split the narrative into sections which are complete in themselves and which make sense if read in isolation apart from the rest of the main story. There are however some passages which are so archaic and obscure that it is impossible even to attempt a guess as to what they originally symbolized. This, however, does not matter. Most of the narrative can still be read and understood perfectly; the uninterpretable passages do not affect the overall outcome of our dissection of the symbolism contained within the rest of the legend. These totally obscure passages in an ironic way do serve an important function, in that they demonstrate very clearly that the physical, mental and spiritual needs of humanity have altered as our understanding of the world around us have changed.

When the legend was originally told these now obscure passages would have had an immediate relevance to the Celtic listener, and he or she would have been able to see and understand the symbolism and information which they contained. As our needs and understanding of life have altered through the centuries so the information contained within parts of the legend has lost its relevance and is of no use to us today. This is a perfectly natural function and simply reflects what happens in the Green World, the World of Nature - when something has lost its relevance or its ability to adopt to changing circumstances it is done away with or modified to suit the times. We call this evolution in the plant and animal world, and this same principle of evolution can be applied to the texts of the Celtic legends. Perhaps some of the major world religions would do well to pay heed to this important point, and to accept that parts of their teachings are outdated and need to be allowed to evolve. Evolution brings life, stagnation brings death. The author's examination of THE BATTLE OF MOYTURA begins with the first nine sections of the legend, which are probably the most important and contain within them the essence of the Celtic philosophical, religious and magical beliefs. The first chapter focus on the first six sections; Chapter 2 examines Sections 7 to 9 more fully. 1. The Tuatha De Danann were in the northern islands of the world, studying occult lore and sorcery, druidic arts, witchcraft and magical skills, until they surpassed the sages of the pagan arts. 2. They studied occult lore, secret knowledge and diabolic arts in four cities; Falias, Gorias, Murias and Findias. 3. From Falias was brought the Stone of Fal, which was located in Tara. It used to cry out beneath every king that would take Ireland. 4. From Gorias was brought the spear which Lug had. No battle was ever sustained against it, or against the man who held it in his hand. 5. From Findias was brought the sword of Nuadu. No one ever escaped from it once it was drawn from its deadly sheath, and no one could resist it. 6. From Murias was brought the Dagda's cauldron. No company ever went away from it unsatisfied. 7. There were four wizards in those four cities. Morfesa was in Falias; Esras was in Gorias; Uiscias was in Findias; and Semias was in Murias. They were the four poets from whom the Tuatha De learned occult lore and secret knowledge. 8. The Tuatha De then made an alliance with the Fomoire, and Balor the grandson of Net gave his daughter Ethne to Cian the son of Dian Cecht. And she bore the glorious child, Lug. 9. The Tuatha De came with a great fleet to Ireland to take it by force from the Fir Bolg. Upon reaching the territory of Corcu Belgatan (which is Conmaicne Mara today), they at once burned their boats so that they would not think of fleeing to them. The smoke and the mist which came from the ships filled the land and the air which was near them. For that reason it has been thought they arrived in clouds of mist.

To begin the examination of the symbolism contained within these first nine sections one should be reminded of what was said earlier regarding a change of attitude concerning linear time, and adopting the concept of the three levels (See also: IRISH CELTIC MAGICAL TRADITION, THE). This opening to the legend is the closest we can get to a Celtic creation myth. All of the world's main religions and mythologies contain some sort of creation myth, the Christian concept of the seven days of creation probably being the most familiar to Western readers, but there is no such clear-cut explanation of creation within the Celtic system. These first nine sections of THE BATTLE OF MOYTURA are the closest we shall get to such an idea, as will be explained. It will be noted that there are three separate races of beings mentioned - the Tuatha De Danann, the Fomoire, and the Fir Bolg. These three races can be equated with the three levels in the following manner:

1. Tuatha De Danann = Spiritual Level
2. Fomoire = Mental Level
3. Fir Bolg = Physical Level

There are also three separate locations mentioned: the northern islands of the world, the four cities, and Ireland. These can also be equated with the three levels, thus:

1. Northern Islands = Spiritual Level
2. Four Cities = Mental Level
3. Ireland = Physical Level

It is important to note at this point that these people and places are still all separate and have not yet united into the three-levels-in-one which we have today, and therefore the concepts we are dealing with here exist on a macrocosmic level, and therefore do not immediately apply to our own mundane level. All that has been described so far has occurred on the spiritual level. It is the beginning of creation which, eventually, will become the physical creation in which we exist today. # 75

BATTLE, EAST SUSSEX

It is said that at the Battle of Hastings, now preserved in the place name Battle, the flag raised by King Harold was painted with a golden dragon. This is almost certainly true, for this dragon appears twice on the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which was embroidered to commemorate this historic fight that so influenced the future history of Britain. This dragon is sometimes called 'The Golden Dragon of Wessex', because it was said to have been carried by Cuthred of Wessex at the battle of Burford in AD 752, yet it appears to have been originally used by Saxon tribes on the Continent. It seems that when the West Saxons invaded Britain in AD 495, they carried a golden dragon as their standard. The dragon appeared on the standards of at least four of William's successors, and in his account of the crusade undertaken by Richard I, the chronicler Ricard of Devizes mentions 'The terrible standard of the dragon...borne in front unfurled'. According to the records, the dragon on the standard of Henry III was made of red silk, 'sparkling all over with gold', its tongue like burning fires, and its eyes made of 'sapphires or some other suitable stones'. It was a dragon of this descent which was unfurled to witness the English victory at Agincourt, though it is not the same dragon which is nowadays mis-called a 'griffin' on the shield of the city of London. There are many myths and legends attached to the Battle of Hastings, almost all of them elaborations. The most famous tells how Richard le Fort, seeing William in danger, threw his own shield in front of him, thereby saving him from being killed. For this reason, it is claimed, Fort was permitted to add to his name 'escue' ('shield'), hence the modern name for the family, as Fortesque. The story is almost certainly apochryphal, though the family's motto is a pun on their name, reading in Latin 'Forte scutum salvus ducum' (A strong shield is the leader's safety). # 702

BAUCHAN BOGAN

(buckawn) or Bogan. A hobgoblin spirit, often tricky, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes helpful. # 100

BAUDWIN

A knight whom Arthur made constable of his realm at the time of his accession. He was one of the govenors of Britain while Arthur went to war with Rome. He later became a hermit and physician. # 156 - 418

BAUDWIN OF BRITTANY

One of the best of the later Knights of the Round Table, he survived the last battle of Camlan and lived thereafter as a hermit. He was also known for his skill as a surgeon. # 454

BAVE

(bayv) Calatin's daughter; puts a spell of straying on Niam. # 562

BEAN SI

(banshee) Bean Si is the Gaelic for 'fairy woman', and is commonly written BANSHEE, as it is pronounced, because it is one of the bestknown of the Celtic fairies. In the Highlands of Scotland she is also called BEAN-NIGHE, or the 'Little-Washer-by-the-Ford' because she is seen by the side of a burn or river washing the blood-stained clothes of those about to die.# 100

BEAN NIGHE

(ben-neeyeh) or 'the Washing Woman'. She occurs both in Highland and Irish tradition as one of the variants of the BANSHEE. The name and characteristics vary in different localities. She is to be seen by desolate streams washing the blood-stained clothing of those about to die. She is small and generally dressed in green, and has red webbed feet. She portends evil, but if anyone who sees her before she sees him gets between her and the water she will grant him three wishes. She will answer three questions, but she asks three questions again, which must be answered truly. Anyone bold enough to seize one of her hanging breasts and suck it may claim that he is her foster-child and she will be favourable to him. But the Caointeach of Islay, which is the same as the Bean-Nighe, is fiercer and more formidable. If anyone interrupts her she strikes at his legs with her wet linen and often he loses the use of his limbs. Is is said that the bean-nighe are the ghosts of women who have died in childbirth and must perform their task until the natural destined time of their death comes. The bean-nighe, sometimes called the Little Washer By The Ford, chiefly haunt the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, but Peter Buchan collected a washer story in Banffshire. # 100

BEAR

# 161: In Celtic myth the bear is a lunar power, emblem of the goddess Berne; it also represents Andarta -'Powerful Bear', while the 'Son of the Bear' occurs frequently in Irish and Welsh names. The dual symbolism is also apparent in the Celtic association between the Bear and the Boar, with the Boar as spiritual authority and the Bear as Temporal Power. # 454: Although no longer native to these islands, the bear has remained one of Britain's totem beasts at a deep level. An old Gaelic proverb, 'Art an neart', describes a hero as a bear in vigour. Arthur's own name derives from the British 'arth' or bear. The constellation of the Plough or the Great Bear is also called Arthur's Wain. # 161 - 454

BEARE

A princess of Spain who married Eoghan Mor. It was prophesied that her destined husband would appear to her if she went one night to the River Eibhear where she found a salmon arrayed in brilliant robes. The Beare peninsula on the south-west tip of Ireland is named in her honour. See: CAILLEACH BHEARE. # 454

BEAROSCHE

The scene of a siege in Wolfram's PARZIFAL. Its lord, Duke Lyppaut, defended it against his sovereign, King Meljanz of Liz, who had gone to war because he had been piqued when he was rejected by the duke's daughter, Obie. Gawain fought on the side of the defenders, Perceval on that of the attackers. Peace was made in due course, Obie's little sister Obilot playing an important role. # 156 - 748

BEATRICE

The wife of Carduino, rescued by him from an enchantment. # 156 - 238

BEAUTÉ

Guinevere's maid who fell in love with Gliglois, Gawain's squire. # 156

BEÄLCU

(bay'al-koo) A Connacht champion. Beälcu rescues Conall. Slain by sons owing to a strategem of Conall's. Conall slays son of Beälcu. # 562

BEBO

Wife of Iubdan, King of Wee Folk. # 562

BECFOLA, THE WOOING OF

'The Wooing of Becfola' is connected with Diarmuid, son of the wellknown high-king Aed Slane, who flourished during the first half of the seventh century after Christ. In its form retailed in Cross' and Slover's ANCIENT IRISH TALES, the story appears to consist of confused reminiscences of humanly possible events colored by Irish fairy lore. The allusion to 'bearded heroes' is to be explained by the fact that Dam Inis ('Ox Island'), in Loch Erne, associated with the famous Saint Molassa, was regarded as a sanctuary for women. # 166

BECUMA

An otherworldly woman, exiled from Tir Tairngire for an unspecified transgression. She lusted after Art, but married his father, Conn Cetchathach because he was king. The union was illfated because she did not rightfully represent Sovereignty, and the land was without milk or corn. - She made Conn banish Art, but when he returned to reign in his father's stead she challenged him to a game of fidchell (chess). Art won the first game and demanded she obtain the wand of Cu Roi. She won the second game and made Art seek for Delbchaem. When Art successfully returned with his new bride, he banished Becuma from Tara. # 454 - 548

BEDEGRAINE

A forest, the site of a major battle between Arthur and rebel forces at the beginning of his reign. Malory identifies it as Sherwood or a part thereof. There was within it a castle of Bedegraine, loyal to Arthur, to which the rebels had laid siege before the battle. # 156

BEDIVERE

# 156: (In Welsh: Bedwyr). A prominent companion of Arthur. He is one of Arthur's followers in the earliest Welsh traditions. He helped Arthur to fight the Giant of St. Michael's Mount. In Geoffrey, he was made Duke of Neustria and perished in the Roman campaign. In Malory, he was present at Arthur's last battle. He and Arthur alone survived and he was charged with flinging Excalibur into the lake. He had only one hand. His son was called Amren, his daughter Eneuavc and his father Pedrawd. His grandfather was also called Bedivere and founded the city of Bayeux. # 562: Bed'wyr (bed-weer). Equivalent, Sir Bedivere. One of Arthur's servitors who accompanies Kilhwch (Culhwch) on his quest for Olwen. # 156 - 243 - 346 - 418 - 562

BEDWIN

A bishop who appears in a number of Arthurian sources. In THE TRIADS he is described as the chief bishop of Kelliwig. He is identical with Bishop Baldwin, a companion of Gawain in SIR GAWAIN AND THE CARL OF CARLISLE. He is also mentioned by this name in SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. See: ALISANDER THE ORPHAN. # 156

BEE

In Celtic lore bees have a secret wisdom derived from the Otherworld. # 161

BEFIND

Midir's name for Etain when she was his wife in the Sidhe. # 454

BEHEADING GAME

The game in which a mysterious challenger - usually a giant, or Green Knight - enters the hall during wintertime and offers his axe to any hero who will cut off his head in return for a similar beheading blow. A hero accepts and find the challenger rises and immediately picks up the axe and demands the right to return the blow. - In the case of Gawain, he was allowed a year's grace to receive the return blow. In the case of CuChulain, he knelt immediately and was judged the bravest knight of Ulster. The game is clearly part of the midwinter festivities in which the old year enters as the giant or Green Knight, the old spirit of the forest, and is challenged by the one representing the new year in its strenght and hardiness. # 166 - 454 - 507 - 672

BEK, ANTHONY

According to the historian G. M. Cowling (# 753), it was said that, in 1283, Anthony Bek, bishop-elect of Durham met Merlin while hunting in the forest. # 156 - 753

BELAGOG

According to one tradition, a giant who guarded Arthur's castle which was nothing more than a grotto. # 156 - 753

BELATUCADROS

Celtic war-god reverenced in Northern Britain, whom the Romans associated with Mars. His name means 'Fair Shining One', and he is the horned god of the north. # 265 - 454 - 563 - 709

BELGAE

One of three peoples inhabiting Gaul when Cæsar's conquest began. # 562

BELI

# 156: A legendary early Briton, thought originally to have been a god. His daughter or sister was Penardun who, by Llyr, was the mother of Bran who was thought to have been Arthur's ancestor in both the male and female lines. According to Henry of Huntingdon, Beli was the brother of the historical British king Cunobelinus or Cymbeline (first century). See: BELINANT. # 562: Cymric god of Death, husband of Don; corresponds with the Irish Bilé; Lludd and Llevelys, sons of Beli. # 156 - 272 - 562

BELIDE

Daughter of King Pharamond of France, she became enamoured of Tristan but, as he did not requite her love, she died of lovesickness. # 156

BELINANT

The father of Dodinel. He may be, in origin, the Celtic god Beli. # 156

BELINUS

Brother of Brennius, King of Britain. He quarrelled with his brother but they were eventually reconciled and together they sacked Rome. He built many roads and established his capital at Caer Usk. He built Billingsgate in Trinovantum (London) and was buried there in a golden urn. # 243 - 454

BELISENT

In ARTHOUR AND MERLIN (a thirteenth-century English poem), a sister of Arthur who married Lot. See: BLASINE, and HERMESENT. # 156

BELLANGERE

The Earl of Laundes, he was the son of Alisander the Orphan and the killer of King Mark of Cornwall. # 156 - 418

BELLEUS

A knight wounded by Lancelot in unfortunate circumstances. Chancing on Belleus's pavilion, Lancelot went to bed there. Then Belleus came to the bed and climbed in, mistaking the slumbering Lancelot for his lover. He embraced him and the shocked Lancelot arose and wounded him but, to atone for the harm he had done, he made him a Knight of the Round Table. # 156 - 418

BELLICIES

In Italian romance, daughter of King Pharamond of Gaul; she fell in love with Tristan and, when her passion was unrequited, killed herself. # 156 - 238

BELLS

No account of the Fairy Rade is complete witout a mention of the jingling bells ringing from the horses' harness. We hear of it, for instance, in YOUNG TAMLANE and in the Galloway account of the Fairy Rade. It is never explained why the fairy bells rang, unless it be from their great love of music, but it is genarally supposed that these fairies, in spite of their general habit of kidnapping human beings and purloining human food, belonged to the Seelie Court, and it might be conjectured that these bells rang to scare away the evil creatures who made up the Unseelie Court. On the other hand, the fairies were also repelled by the sound of church bells. Jabez Allies' anecdote of the fairy who was heard lamenting: 'Neither sleep, neither lie, For Inkbro's ting-tang hangs so high' is the first of quite a number that record the fairies' dislike of church bells. # 100

BELTAINE (BELTANE)

# 438: (baalt'an - or - BAIL tin)) May Eve, time of enchantments, the beginning of summer. See also: MAY EVE. # 454: The Celtic feast of May-Eve, celebrated on the evening of April 30. It marked the beginning of Summer, when livestock was let out of winter pasture to crop the new greenness of Spring. The word means literally 'the fire of Bel', a deity related to Belinus. At this feast, all household fires were doused and rekindled from the new fire which the druids built on this night. See: LUGHNASADH, OIMELC and: SAMHAIN and: LUNANTISHEE. # 438 - 454

BELTENÉ

One of the names of the god of Death; first of May sacred to Bel'tené.

See: BELTAINE. # 562

BEN BULBEN

Dermot of the Love Spot slain by the wild boar of Ben Bulben. # 562

BEN-VARREY

(bedn varra) The Manx name for the Mermaid, of which many tales are told round the coasts of Man. She bears the same general character as mermaids do everywhere, enchanting and alluring men to their death, but occasionally showing softer traits. # 100

BENDIGEIDFRAN

(ben dig ide vran)

BENDITH Y MAMAU

(bendith er mamigh) 'The Mothers' Blessing'. The euphemistic name for the Fairies in Wales. They steal children, elf-ride horses and visit houses. Bowls of milk were put out for them. It is significant that they are associated with the triple form of the Goddess. See: MOTHERS. # 100 - 454

BENEN BENIGNUS

An early Irish saint; a contemporary of St Patrick (fifth century). # 166

BENN ETAIR

(bén ad'yer) Now the Hill of Howth near Dublin. # 166

BENWICK

The Kingdom of Ban. 'Lestoire de Merlin' (part of vulgate Version) states that the town of Benwick was Bourges. Malory points out that Benwick is variously identified with Bayonne and Beaune. An identification with Saumur has also been suggested. # 156 - 418

BEOWULF

# 454: Perhaps the most famous of all heroes, his story is told in an eight-century poem written in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. It combines three major stories, which tell of Beowulf's battle with the monster, Grendel, whom he maimed after a wrestling match. The second story tells of his struggle with Grendel's mother - watertroll - beneath the waters of a lake; and the third tells of his combat with a dragon in which Beowulf received a fatal wound. These stories were probably part of a longer cycle of hero-tales current in Saxon countries.

# 169: Beowulf is a stirring and wonderfully readable poem, and the mirror of Anglo-Saxon society. It was composed by a court poet or a monk - a man equally at home with battle action, highly atmospheric evocation of place, and grand set-pieces in the feasting-hall. Sophisticated and humane, it is both a thrilling adventure story and a deeply serious commentary on human life. The very last words of the poem (and their position indicates the importance their poet attached to them) describe its hero in these terms:

cwaedon thaet he waere wyruld-cyninga,
manna mildust ond mon-thwaerust,
leodum lithost ond lof-geornost.

they said that of all kings on earth
he was the kindest, the most gentle,
the most just to his people, the most eager for fame.
# 89 - 168 - 169 - 454

BERNARD OF ASTOLAT

Father of Elaine the White and Lavaine. # 156 - 418

BERTHOLAI

This character was the champion of the False Guinevere and her partner in deception. # 156 - 604

BERTILAK

The name of the Green Knight. - See GREEN KNIGHT. # 156 - 454 - 644 - 672

BERTRAND, A.

Author of "La Religion des Gaulois" # 562

BETHIDES

The son of Perceforest, he made an unfortunate marriage to Circe. # 156

BEUND

An important saint in North Wales. He was said to be the grandson of Arthur's sister Anna through her daughter Perferren. Beund's popularity survived the Reformation. # 55 - 156 - 216

BIASD BHEULACH

(beeast veealuch) The monster of Odail Pass on the Isle of Skye, and one of the Highland demon spirits. The distinction between demon spirits and demonic ghosts is hard to draw, and people might well have accounted for Biasd Bheulach as the ravening ghost of a murdered man, hungry for revenge. # 100

BIAUSDOUS

Son of Gawain. He managed to unsheath the sword Honoree and thereby marry Biautei, daughter of the King of the Isles. # 156 - 713

BILE

# 454: (BEE leh) The Celtic world understood an archetype roughly equivalent to the powerful lord of life and death. In British tradition he was called Bel or Belinus, but in Irish he was Bile. In some texts, he is said to come to Ireland from Spain - which is clearly intended to be the Land of the Dead. The fires of Beltaine were lit to mark his recognized feast. Very little is known of his mythos, but he, like Danu who is sometimes named as his consort, was a powerful ancestral deity to the Celtic races. # 562: (bil-ay) One of the names of the god of Death (i.e. of the Underworld), father of Miled; equivalent, Cymric god Beli, husband of Don. # 454 - 562

BIRCH

The birch tree stood for Beth, the first letter of the druIdic alphabet. It was the sacred beth of Cerridwen, representing beginnings and birth.

The whiteness of the tree's bark apparently suggested its connection with the White Goddess, who was both birthgiver and death-bringer in her Crone form as the carrion-eating white sow. Birch or beorc was also the runic letter B. # 701 p 461

BIROG

A Druidess who assists Cian to be avenged on Balor. # 562

BIRTH MYTHS IN CELTIC HERITAGE, THE

To resolve the paradox of the Celtic Birth Myths, they must be regarded as symbols of the transcendental meaning of birth, of what birth is from the point of view of the unseen world. From an earthly standpoint a child is conceived inadvertently during the course of its parents' conjugal relations, without the intervention of any other agency. But from the point of view of the supernatural world, the child's birth is destined, the parents are chosen, the time and place are ordained, and the earthly life of the child is 'pre-figured' before he is conceived.

The hostility of earthly powers cannot prevent his advent; his mother has no choice and, in a sense, is violated. And in every conception there is a third factor. The child may derive its biological inheritance from its earthly parents, but it is also the incarnation of a supernatural essence. This doctrine, that a spirit enters the womb at conception, is widespread among both 'primitive' and highly sophisticated peoples. 'Man and the Sun generate man,' says Aristotle; 'Call no man father upon earth,' says St Paul, and according to St Thomas Aquinas, 'The power of the soul, which is in the semen through the Spirit enclosed therein, fashions the body.' The myths are concerned with this third factor, symbolized by the mysterious begetter and by the fructifying substance which is swallowed by the mother. In some of the stories, the begetter is a supernatural being - Lugh, Manannan, a bird-man, or one of the sidhfolk. In others he is the king or a stranger from another race.

Traces of rituals of this kind in the Celtic lands have survived both in the mythological literature itself and in later tradition. It is said that King Conchobar, who was regarded as a 'terrestrial god', was entitled to the first night with the bride of every Ulsterman, 'so that he became her first husband. According to oral tradition, Balor's two deputies exercised the same right. The Fenians had the option on the women of the tribe and claimed either a ransom or the right to cohabit with even a princess the night previous to her marriage. Boswell refers in ERIU, VOL. IV, to a Scottish laird who insited that the Mercheta Mulierum mentioned in old charters did really mean the privilege of a lord to have the first night with his vassals wives, and that on the marriage of each of his own tenants a sheep was still due to him. In Ireland, there are still 'widespread traditions of the days when landlords excercised the Jus Primae Noctis over their tenants' wives, and one hears of leases which contained clauses governing the right. As Mrs Chadwick has argued in her study of Pictish and Celtic Marriage in SCOTTISH GAELIC STUDIES, there is a great deal of evidence which 'suggests the right of a king or his Fili to beget children ritualistically among married couples.

A belief in the fructifying potentialities of water has driven childless women throughout the ages to bathe and to drink at sacred wells in the hope of conceiving, and a belief in the embodiment of the supernatural essence in worms and flies seems to account for the fact that in Wales it is still said of a pregnant girl that she has swallowed an insect (pry') or a spider (corryn). Individual reincarnation is implied in most of the ancient tales, as there might be a hint of the rebirth of the begetter in the birthstories of Finn, Cormac mac Art, and Fiacha Broad-Crown, whose fathers were destined to die as soon as they had begotten their sons. # 173 - 243 - 548 - 714

BLACK ANNIS

# 454: A blue-faced hag, akin to the Cailleachs Bheare and Bheur, who eat people. She is supposed to live in a cave in the Dane Hills in Leicestershire.

# 100: There was a great oak at the mouth of the cave in which she was said to hide to leap out, catch and devour stray children and lambs. The cave, which was called 'Black Annis' Bower Close', was supposed to have been dug out of the rock by her own nails. On Easter

Monday it was the custom from early times to hold a drag hunt from Annis' Bower to the Mayor of Leicester's house. The bait dragged was a dead cat drenched in aniseed. Black Annis

and Gentle Annie are supposed to derive from Anu, or Dana, a Celtic mother goddess. It has also been suggested that she is MILTON'S 'blew meager hag'. # 100 - 415 - 454

BLACK BOOK OF CARMARTHEN, THE

See: BOOK OF CARMARTHEN, THE BLACK

BLACK DOGS

Stories of Black Dogs are to be found all over the country. They are generally dangerous, but sometimes helpful. As a rule, the black dogs are large and shaggy, about the size of a calf, with fiery eyes. If anyone speaks to

them or strikes at them they have power to blast, like the Mauthe Doog, the Black Dog of Peel Castle in the Isle of Man. # 100

BLACK HORSE

S. G. Wildman has propounded a theory that the black horse was the symbol of the Arthurian Britons, just as the white horse was that of the Saxons, and that is possible to find out where Arthurian influence prevailed by discovering the whereabouts of inns called the Black Horse. # 100 - 729

BLACK KNIGHT

# 562: Kymon was defeated by the Black Knight who rode away with his horse. Kymon went back afoot to the castle, where nothing was asked, but they gave him a new horse, 'a dark bay palfrey with nostrils as red as scarlet' on which he rode to Caerleon Fired by the tale of Kymon, Owain rode forth to seek for the same adventure. He wounded the Black Knight so sorely that he fled, Owain pursuing him hotly and so close that his horse was cut in two when they passed an outer castlebridge and its portcullis fell. He was by this imprisoned between the outer gate of the drawbridge and the inner. A maiden gave him a ring, which made him invisible, when clenched in his hand. In that night a great lamentation was heard in the castle - its lord had died of the wound which Owain had given him. Owain got sight of the castle's mistress, and he fell instant in love. He soon became her husband and lord of the Castle of the Fountain and all the dominions of the Black Knight.

# 156: 1. A knight with whose wife Perceval had innocently exhanged a ring. The Black Knight, furious, tied her to a tree but Perceval overcame him and explained the situation, so that they were reconciled. 2. Arthur's grandson, the son of Tom a'Lincoln and Anglitora. 3. A warrior who guarded a horn and a wimple on an ivory lion. Fergus killed him. 4. Sir Percard, who was killed by Gareth. 5. One of Arthur's knights who was defeated by the Knight of the Lantern. He was the son of the King of the Carlachs.

# 156 - 562

BLACK SAINGLEND

(sen'glend) CuChulain's last horse breaks from him minutes before he died. See: CUCHULAIN, THE DEATH OF. # 562

BLACKBIRD

The blackbird has ever been one of Britain's most melodious songsters and this is doubtless why the Birds of Rhiannon are said to be three blackbirds: they sing on the branch of the everlasting otherworldly tree which grows in the centre of the earthly paradise. Their singing entranced the hearer, ushering him or her into the Otherworld. They sing for Bran and the Company of the Noble Head, in their feasting between the worlds. The blackbird is also responsible for the finding of Mabon. # 439 - 454

BLADUD

# 628: A perpetual fire, dedicated to Minerva by the mythical godking Baldudus (Bladud), was kept burning at Aquae Sulis. Bladud reigned for twenty years and built the city of Kaerbadus, now called Bath. Baldudus was a man of great ingenuity, and taught necromancy throughout Britain, continually doing many wonderful deeds, and finally making himself wings to fly through the upper air. But he fell onto the Temple of Apollo in Ternova (London), his body broken to many pieces. # 454: King of Britain who built Caer Badum (Bath). He established the temple to Minerva at Bath and, having discovered the medicinal qualities of the waters, caused the baths to be attached to the temple-precincts. He made wings and crashed to his death from the Temple of Apollo in Trinovantum (London). His mythos is similar to that of Abaris, and he seems to embody the traditions of both priest and king in one. # 243 - 454 - 627 - 628 p 96

BLAES

One of the twenty-four Knights of Arthur's Court, possibly identical with Blaise, the master of Merlin. # 104 - 156

BLAI

Oisin's Danaan mother. # 54 - 562

BLAI BRIUGA

(blà'e broo'ha) An Ulster warrior famous for his hospitality; one of CuChulain's fosterers. # 454

BLAISE

# 156: A hermit, to whom Merlin's mother went when she was enceinte (pregnant). When Merlin was two, he dedicated to Blaise the story of the Grail. Blaise also wrote an account of Arthur's battles. He hailed originally form Vercelli (Italy). He may be identical with the Blaes of THE TRIADS in which he is called the son of the Earl of Llyclyn. # 454: The shadowy figure who stands behind Merlin. Described as his teacher, Blaise retired from Northumberland where Merlin often visited him and where his deeds and prophesies were recorded. # 104 - 156 - 185 - 238 - 418 - 454

BLAMORE DE GANIS

A Knight of the Round Table. On one occasion he accused King Anguish of Ireland of murder but he was defeated in trial by combat by Tristan. Afterwards, they became friends. When Lancelot quarrelled with Arthur, Blamore and his brother Bleoberis supported their father, Lancelot, and Blamore became Duke of Limousin. After Arthur died, he became a hermit. # 156 - 418

BLANAID BLATHNAT BLANID

The wife of Cu Roi mac Daire who came originally from the Otherworld, and who fell to him as the spoils of war. She secretly loved CuChulain and enabled him to murder Cu Roi by entangling his hair, Delilah-like, to the bedstead. She was killed by Cu Roi's poet who avenged his lord by throwing himself off a high place clasping the faithless Blanaid. Her name means 'flower' and she is analogous to Blodeuwedd. # 166 - 399 - 439 - 454

BLANCHARD

The fairy steed of Lanval, given him by his lover Tryamour. # 156 - 425

BLANCHEFLEUR

# 156: 1. The mistress of Perceval. Besieged by King Clamadeus, who desired her, she would have killed herself but Perceval defeated him in single combat (# 153). 2. In Gottfried von Strassbourg: Tristan, the sister of King Mark; she eloped with Rivalin of Parmenie. Their son was Tristan. When she heard of her husband's death, she died of grief. # 454: The name sometimes given to Perceval's sister. She gave her life to heal a leprous woman and her body accompanied the Grail Questers to Sarras. See: DINDRAINE. # 153 - 156 - 256 - 454

BLANID

Wife of Curoi; sets her love on Cuchulain; Fercartna, the bard of Curoi, avenged him by taking Blanid with him in a jump from a cliffedge, and from where they perished. See: BLANAID. # 562

BLASINE

A sister of Arthur. She married Nentres of Garlot. Their son was Galachin, Duke of

Clarence. See: BELISENT and HERMESENT. # 156

BLATHNAT

(blàh'nid) Daughter of Mind and wife of Cu Roi mac Dairi; betrayer of her husband. # 166

BLEHERIS

A Welsh poet identical with Bledhericus, mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, and with Brèris, quoted by Thomas of Brittany. # 562

BLENZIBLY

Tristan's mother in the Icelandic SAGA OF TRISTAN AND ISODD. Her lover, Plegrus, was killed jousting with Kalegras who thereafter became her lover and Tristan's father. # 156 - 355

BLEOBERIS

A Knight of the Round Table, brother of Blamore. He was defeated by Tristan when he abducted Segwaride's wife from Mark's court. He supported Lancelot, who was his relation, when the latter quarrelled with Arthur. He became Duke of Poitiers and eventually a Crusader. # 156 - 418

BLERUM, BLERUM

(bleeroom) Sound made by Taliesin by which a spell was put on bards at Arthur's court. (In the 'Mabinogion' transl. by Charlotte Guest, however, Elphin was a prisoner of Maelgwyn and not King Arthur (# 272)). # 562

BLESSED ISLANDS

The group of otherworldly islands which lie west of Ireland, wherein the worthy dead and otherworldly folk live in the Celtic earthly paradise. ># 454

BLIGHTS ATTRIBUTED TO THE FAIRIES

The word 'Stroke' for a sudden paralytic seizure comes directly from fairy belief. It is an abbreviation of 'fairy stroke' or 'elf stroke', and was supposed to come from an elf-shot or an elf-blow, which struck down the victim, animal or human, who was then carried off invisibly, while a Stock remained to take its place. Sometimes this was a transformed fairy, sometimes a lump of wood, transformed by glamour and meant to be taken for the corpse of the victim. See: KIRK, ROBERT. # 100

BLODEUWEDD

(blod AI weth) Flowerface. # 454: The Flower-wife of Llew, formed out of flowers, blossom, and nine separate elements by Gwydion and Math, in order to circumvent the geise laid upon Llew by Arianrhod. She was never asked whether she loved Llew and soon fell in love with a passing hunter, Gronw Pebr, with whom she plotted her husband's death. Like Delilah, she coaxed the destined cause of death from Llew and then entrapped him by enacting the conditions exactly. She was then punished by Gwydion, by being turned into an owl - the night-hunting bird which is mobbed and shunned by all day-time fowls.

Her story follows a well-known folk motif: that of the betraying Flower-Bride, a role she shares with both Blanaid and Guinevere. # 272 - 439 - 454 - 562

 

BLONDE ESMERÉE

Daughter of the King of Wales, turned into a serpent by the magicians Mabon and Evrain. She was freed by Guinglain who kissed her. # 156

BLUE MEN OF THE MINCH

The Blue Men used particularly to haunt the strait between Long Island and the Shiant Islands. They swam out to wreck passing ships, and could be baulked by captains who were ready at rhyming and could keep the last word. They were supposed to be fallen angels. The sudden storms that arose around the Shiant Islands were said to be caused by the Blue Men, who lived in under-water caves and were ruled by a chieftain. # 100

BOANNA

# 562: (bô'en) (The River Boyne) Angus Og (Angus the Young), son of the Dagda, by Boanna, was the Irish god of love. His palace was supposed to be at the New Grange, on the Boyne. See also: BOYNE, THE RIVER. # 454: Goddess of the river Boyne, wife of Elcmar, mother of Angus. Her name means 'She of the White Cows'. The Dagda desired her and sent Elcmar on an errand which lasted nine months, although it was made to seem like one day. # 96 - 454 - 496 - 562

BOAR

# 701: The Boar was sacred to the Celtic Goddess Arduinna, patroness of the forests of the Ardennes. He was sacrificed as the Yule pig with an apple in his mouth, and his blood begot gods both east and west, in the primitive times when men still believed that only blood could generate offspring because that seemed to be how women did it. Warriors of northern Europe crested their helmets and their swords with the boar's image. - Britain still has a number of 'Boar's Head' inns and taverns, suggesting that in pre-Christian times the heads of sacrificed animals were preserved as oracular fetishes just like the heads of deified ancestral heroes.

# 161: The boar which killed Adonis is paralleled in the Celtic myth of Finn arranging for Diarmuid to be killed when boar-hunting. Few animals are more important for the Celts than the boar; it was a sacred, supernatural, magical creature, symbolizing the warrior, warfare, the hunt, protection, hospitality and fertility. The boar's head signifies health and preservation from danger, it contains the power of the life-force and vitality. The boar and the Bear together represent Spiritual and Temporal Power. The boar is often depicted in association with the tree, wheels and ravens; it appears on the helmets of warriors and on trumpets. It is the animal of Celtic ritual feasts and food for the gods, esteemed the fitting food for gods and heroes. Bones were found placed ritually in graves, the head, again, being of special importance. Figures of boars appeared on British and Gaulish altars. In Irish myth there are divine, magical and prophetic boars, and supernatural and otherworld pigs which bring death and disaster. In Celtic saga there are also the magical Pigs of Manannan and other legends (see Swine), according to which eating the flesh restored health and happiness. The boar was ritually hunted and slain and there are many accounts of a Great Boar hunted by a hero. Twrch Trywth was a king turned into a boar who was chased by Arthur and his warriors across Ireland, Wales and Cornwall, where it disappeared into the sea. A Gaulish god is depicted with a boar and sculptures of boars are found in Celtic forts and in France and Portugal. Druids called themselves boars, probably as solitary dwellers in the forest.

# 454: The wild boar, once commonly hunted throughout the British Isles is now only to be found in remote areas of Europe. The ferocity and cunning of the animal made him a dangerous quarry, yet the art and literature of Celtic peoples attest to his importance in their mythology. Twrch Trwyth appears in the MABINOGION as a devastating foe to Arthur and his kingdom; this boar is paralleled in Irish tradition by Orc Triath. A white boar leads Pryderi into slavery in Annwn, while a similar animal is the cause of Diarmuid's death. # 161 - 439 - 454 - 701 p 365

BODACH

(budagh) The Celtic form of Bugbear, or Bug-A-Boo, literally, 'old man'. It was a Highland belief that the Bodach would creep down chimneys and steal naughty children, although in other parts it was considered to be a death-warning spirit. The Bodach Glas, or Dark Grey Man is a death token, of which Sir Walter Scott makes such effective use in WAVERLEY towards the end of Fergus MacIvor's history. # 100

BODACHAN SABHAILL

(botuchan so-will) 'The Little Old Man of the Barn'. A barn Brownie who took pity on old men, and treshed for them. D. A. Mackenzie gives us a verse about him in his Scottish Folk Lore and Folk Life:

When the peat will turn grey and shadows fall deep
And weary old Callum is snoring asleep...
The Little Old Man of the Barn
Will tresh with no light in the mouth of the night,
The Little Old Man of the Barn.
# 100 - 415

BODB DERG

(bôv dârg) # 454: A fairy king of the Sidi of Munster. Son of the Dagda. He assisted Angus in the finding of Caer Ibormeith. It was to his kingdom that Lir retired. # 166 - 267 - 416 - 454

BODBALL

(bov bal)

BODMIN MOOR

Bodmin Moor, Cornwall is littered with the visible remains of primitive man in the form of stone circles and burial grounds, and has been the unhappy hunting ground of so many thousands of superstitious miners that one is surprised it does not have far more ghosts and mythologies than it has.

Almost all the ruined mineshaft enginehouses on the moors have their resident ghosts, while the long chambers within the mine shafts still have their 'kobolds' minegoblins, who de-light in confusing the miners with acts of mimicry and the use of echoes. We learn that the name of the metal cobalt is taken from this demon's name, because the metal was considered for a long time to be useless and (because of the arsenic and sulphur with which it was found combined) harmful to health. It was therefore said to have been made by the Kobalt demon. In some Cornish mines the tinmine demon was called a Bucca, though the same name is also used for a wind-gob-lin which could foretell shipwrecks, and which was popular with the wreckers. It may be just a question of shaft acoustics magnifying underground waterfalls, but inexplicable and often deafening noises were frequently reported in the days when the tinmine shafts were still worked. Most famous was that called 'Roaring Shaft' in the com-plex of mines on Goonzion Down: the noise was described as being akin to 'a battery of stamps falling regularly with thuds and reverberated through the ground'. Such noises were probably natural in origin, but they served only to feed the dark images of spirits and demons in the minds of those who worked in those hellish corridors to mine copper, silver and gold. # 702

BOEOTIAN REGIMENT

From the ILIAD, II, 494-510: Of the Boeotians Peneleos and Leïtus were captains, and Arcesilaus and Prothoënor and Clonius; these were they that dwelt in Hyria and rocky Aulis and Schoenus and Scolus and Eteonus with its many ridges, Thespeia, Graea and spacious Mycalessus; and that dwelt about Harma and Eilesium and Erythrae; and that held Eleon and Hyle and Peteon, Ocalea and Medeon, the well-built citadel, Copae, Eutresis, and Thisbe, the haunt of doves; that dwelt in Coroneia and grassy Haliartus, and that held Plataea and dwelt in Glisas; that held lower Thebe, the well-built citadel, and holy Onchestus, the bright grove of Poseidon; and that held Arne, rich in vines, and Mideia and sacred Nisa and Anthedon on the seaboard. Of these there came fifty ships, and on board of each went one hundred and twenty young men of the Boeotians.

Homer begins the list of regiments of the Achaean army with the Boeotians, apparently out of politeness towards the population of the country playing host to the entire fleet assembled for the invasion of the Troad. The host country was in fact the present Denmark, where virtually all place-names of Regiment 1 can still be identified. That Denmark was once a Celtic country is well attested, both by archaeological finds and by the Danish language, which has a curious way of counting, different from that of its neighbours and reminiscent of the French system, where, for example, 'ninety-two' is 'quatre-vingtdouze', 'four (times) twenty (plus) twelve'.

In Old Danish this same number is 'tooghalvfemsindstyve', literally 'two and half of the fifth twenty' - a Celtic method of counting. In the north of mainland Denmark, Jutland, the Limfjord links the North Sea with the Baltic through a series of big lakes and forms the ideal place for the secret rendezvous of the great fleet of 1,186 vessels. Homer calls this place Aulis, a name preserved in that of a number of towns on the shores of the fjord, such as Aalborg (Aal is pronounced like English awl), Oland, Aalum and Aalestrup.

Other names mentioned by Homer are still to be found in the same region: Hyria (Hjørring, the region north of Aalborg), Scoinos (Skjern, a town southwest of Limfjord), Scolos (Skjoldborg, in the extreme northwest of Jutland), while in the northeast is the famous Cnossus, now Knøsen. This whole region of northern Jutland was already an important religious centre long before the Bronze Age, as evidenced by the presence of many megalithic monuments. Closely connected with Cnossus is the story of Icarus, who escaped from the labyrinth on wings that he made himself. His names is preserved in the present town of Ikast in the centre of Jutland (from Ikar-sted = town of Icarus). Homer mentions the Icarian Sea once (Il. II, 145). This must have been part of the North Sea, most probably the waters between Oslo and Jutland, where the 'south and east winds whip up the sea', against the coast, that is. It should be noted in passing that this description makes little sense in the Mediterranean, where the Icarian Sea is just off the southwest coast of Turkey, not between Crete and mainland Greece as one would expect. Homer rightly calls Denmark 'a land exceeding rich'. apparently because of its first-rate agricultural land. A region called by Homer 'spacious Mycalessus' was eastern Jutland, where we find Mygind and Mylund. He mentions Graea (Grærup), 'grassy' Haliartus (Halling), Hyle (Hyllebjerg). Other recognizable names are: Harma (Harnorup), Medeon (Madum), Thisbe (Thisted), Arne 'rich in vines' (near the river ArnAa).

The epithet is not so surprising, since there were vineyards in Scandinavia in the Bronze Age, in particular in the south of Jutland, where we find Pramne (now Bramming), where Circe got her wine from (Od. X, 235).

An interesting Scandinavian name found in Homer is Scandeia, a town and region in east Jutland now Skanderborg (Il. X, 268). Eutresis ('good' Tresis) was probably Dreslette, Copae (Copenhoved - a name also found further east: Copenhagen = port of Copae), Nisa (Nissum, but also the name of the river Nissan in southwest Sweden) and Anthedon 'on the seaboard' seems to be Andkaer, while Eilesium could be Elsø. # 730

BOGIES

'Bogies, 'Bogles', 'Bugs', or 'bug-a-boos' are names given to a whole class of mischievous, frightening and even dangerous spirits whose delight it is to torment mankind. Sometimes they go about in troops, like the Hobyahs, but as a rule they may be described as individual and solitary fairy members of the Unseelie Court. A nickname of the Devil in Somerset is 'Bogie', presumably to play him down a little, for bogies generally rank rather low in the retinue of hell. They are often adepts at shape-shifting, like the Bullbeggar, the Hedley Kow and the Picktree Brag. These are generally no more than mischievous. The well-known Boggart is the most harmless of all, generally a Brownie who has been soured by mistreatment; among the most dangerous are the fiendish Nuckelavee and the Duergar, and other examples appear under Bogy or Bogey-Beast. But even so, some bogies, like minor devils, are just simple and gullible. # 100

BOGLES

On the whole, these are evil Goblins, but according to William Henderson in FOLK LORE OF THE NORTHERN COUNTIES, who quotes from Hoog's WOOLGATHERER, the bogles on the Scottish Borders, though formidable, are virtuous creatures: 'Then the Bogles, they are a better kind o' spirits; they meddle wi' nane but the guilty; the murderer, an' the mansworn, an' the cheaters o' the widow an' fatherless, they do for them.' Henderson tells a corroborative story of a poor widow at the village of Hurst, near Reeth, who had had some candles stolen by a neighbour. The neighbour saw one night a dark figure in his garden and took out his gun and fired at it. The next night while he was working in an outhouse the figure appeared in the doorway and said, 'I'm neither bone nor flesh nor blood, thou canst not harm me. Give back the candles, but I must take something from thee.' With that he came up to the man and plucked out an eyelash, and vanished. But the man's eye 'twinkled' ever after. # 100 - 302 - 314

BOOBRIE

A gigantic water-bird, which inhabits the lochs of Argyllshire. It has a loud harsh voice and webbed feet and gobbles up sheep and cattle. J. F. Campbell thinks the Boobrie is one form taken by the water-horse, but gives no reason for thinking so. He gives an eyewitness account in POPULAR TALES OF THE WEST HIGHLANDS IV from a man who claimed to have seen it. He waded up to his shoulders in the waters of a loch in February to get a shot at it, but had only come within eighty-five yards when the creature dived. It looked like a gigantic Northern Diver, but was black all over. Its neck was two feet eleven inches long, its bill about seventeen inches long and hooked like an eagle's. Its legs were very short, the feet webbed and armed with tremendous claws, its footprints were found in the mud to the north of the loch, its voice was like the roar of an angry bull, and it lived on calves, sheep, lambs and others. # 100 - 130

BOOK OF ARMAGH

References to the Book of Armagh. The Danaans were, as a passage in the Book of Armagh names them, DEI TERRENI, earth gods. # 562

BOOK OF CARMARTHEN, THE BLACK

The BLACK BOOK OF CARMARTHEN, famous in the literary history of Wales, belongs to the town of Carmarthen, a product of St John's Priory.

In it there is a collection of pieces of mediaeval Welsh writing - in the sphere of legend and prophesy, with unique material connected with Merlin or Myrddin, and revealing the deeply devotional muse of the Welsh monks. Gwyn ap Nudd figures in poem included in THE BLACK BOOK OF CARMARTHEN.

As the name already indicates, The Black Book of Carmarthen has traditionally been connected with the ancient town of Carmarthen. It has been said to have been produced by one of the Welsh-speaking monks of the Augustinian Priory of St Johns in Carmarthen who was a bit of an amateur in the art of copying, but loved Welsh literature and wanted to anthologise poems with a Dyfed if not Carmarthen bias. He may have had to do this in an institution the members of which would have looked askance at his labour of love. What, Taffy, are you doing there? For the other monks were probably Normans and English. But then Welsh persons have had to further their beloved culture in alien institutional surroundings since then. Our Austin canon smiled and said, 'Ah' and went on copying. All we can say is that we are deeply grateful to him. Certain poems would never have survived if it were not for him. Nor would the graphic wonder of the Black Book be with us today. It may be amateurish, a bit of a manuscriptual mess according to the connisseur, what with differing scripts and letter sizes, but it is a feast to the eye, and certainly a literary beano.

Doubt has been thrown on the connection with Carmarthen. But why the book be given on conjecture to say Whitland when the only place it has been linked with is Carmarthen? When tradition has it and we have no proof otherwise then from Carmarthen it comes. Sir John Price of Brecon who did a lot of work collecting manuscripts at the time of the Dissolution said that it came from the Priory there. It got a black cover eventually and hence the name. Its contents too indicate strongly that the anthologist was from the area. The fact that the central portion of the manuscript is given up to long poems in the PERSONA of Myrddin corroborates the Carmarthen link. The legend of Myrddin is said to be in part a fictional explanation of the name of the town. Of course he may simply have come from Carmarthen. We know that the name of Caerfyrddin is derived from the Roman name of the fortress, Moridunum. Myrddin as poet and prophet was known in Wales as early as the tenth century, for he is referred to in the prophetic poem Armes Prydain which was composed by a staunch supporter of the dynasty of Deheubarth (South-West Wales). The connection made between Myrddin, a poet from Northern Britain and a contemporary of Taliesin, and the town of Carmarthen was made at least as early as the time of the composition of Armes Prydain. There are numerous references to places in Dyfed in the Myrddin poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen and they reveal a striking and emotional loyalty to the Southern dynasty of Deheubarth.

Dating the book is not without its problems, but it is generally accepted that it was produced around 1250. But a lot of material in it is far older than that. For our understanding of it we owe much to A. O. H. Jarman. # 519 - 562

BOOK OF HERGEST, THE RED

Forms main source of tales in the 'Mabinogion' but the story of Taliesin were not found in The Red Book of Hergest. # 562

BOOK OF INVASIONS

The narrative assembled under the title BOOK OF INVASIONS (or Occupations) are the literary embodiment of Ireland's own impressions regarding the history of her population. For the early Irish they served somewhat the same functions as the accounts of the wandering of Aeneas did for the Romans. To say, as some have done, that THE BOOK OF INVASIONS is a collection of Irish mythology is to give an entirely wrong impression of its contents. Some of the characters, it is true, may be rationalized gods, but the stories as they now stand belong rather to pseydo-history than to mythology. For example, Emer, Eber, and Eremon, though represented in the narrative as ancient kings, are in fact merely fictitious personages with names made up from the ancient name for Ireland, spelled in the earliest manuscripts as Ériu. Modern students of early Irish history are inclined to see underlying these obviously fictitious narratives a substratum of fact, and to regard the account as reflecting in a general way an historical record of early population groups.

The version of BOOK OF INVASIONS presented in Cross and Slover's ANCIENT IRISH TALES is preserved only in rather late manuscripts, but the ancient origin of at least some parts of it is convincingly supported by comparison with the early forms of the British-Latin HISTORY OF THE BRITONS (HISTORIA BRITONUM). The selections presented in that work are not continuous, but they form tolerably unified sections, describing the arrival of three different groups of immigrants. The first of the divisions there given is preceded in the complete text by the account of the arrival of Partholon and his people. # 166 - 562

BOOK OF LEINSTER

The Book of Leinster is an Irish manuscript of the twelfth century. It has 187 nine-by-thirteen leaves; it dates to about 1160 and includes in its varied contents complete versions of 'The Cattle Raid of Froech', 'The Labour Pains of the Ulaid', 'The Tale of Macc Da Tho's Pig' and 'The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu' as well as an unfinished and rather different 'Intoxication of the Ulaid' and a complete, more polished 'Cattle Raid of Cuailnge'. # 236 - 562

BOOK OF THE DUN COW

# 562: Reference to the 'Book of the Dun Cow.' Cuchulain makes his reappear-ance legend of Christian origin in this Book. 'Voyage of Maeldûn' is likewise found here. # 236: Of the manuscrpts that have survived, one of the earliest and most important belong to the twelfth century. Lebor na huidre (The Book of the Dun Cow) is so called after a famous cow belonging to St Ciaran of Clonmacnois; the chief scribe, a monk named Mael Muire, was slain by raiders in the Clonmacnois cathedral in 1106. Unfortunately, the manuscript is only a fragment: though sixty-seven leaves of eigthby-eleven vellum remain, at least as much has been lost. Lebor na huidre comprises thirty-seven stories, most of them myths/sagas, and includes substantially complete versions of 'The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel', 'The Birth of CuChulain', 'The Wasting Sickness of CuChulain' and 'Bricriu's Feast' as well as an incomplete 'Wooing of Etain' and acephalous accounts of 'The Intoxication of the Ulaid' and 'The Cattle Raid of Cuailnge'. # 236 - 562

BORRE

The illegitimate son of Arthur by Lionors. When he grew up, he became a Knight of the Round Table. He is usually identified with Loholt.# 156 - 243

BORS

1. The King of Gaul or Gannes and Arthur's ally in the battle against the rebel kings at Bedegraine. He married Evaine and they were the parents of the younger Bors (# 44). See: BAN. 2. Knight of the Round Table and son of the elder Bors, whom he succeeded as King of Gannes. He was a chaste knight, but the daughter of King Brandegoris fell in love with him. Her nurse forced Bors to make love to her with the aid of a magic ring. As a result, Bors became the father of Elyan the White, later Emperor of Constantinople. Bors was one of the three successful knights on the Grail Quest but, unlike Galahad and Perceval, he returned to Arthur's court and eventually died on crusade. It has been suggested that, in origin, Bors may have been a character who figures in Welsh legend as Gwri. See: TWENTY-FOUR KNIGHTS. # 156 - 418

BOSO

Ruler of Oxford, one of Arthur's vassals, who accompanied him on his Roman campaign. # 156 - 243

BOUDICCA

# 454: (d. AD 62) Queen of the Iceni. When her husband, Prasutagus, died leaving half his kingdom to the Romans, she discovered that the Romans intended to take the whole kingdom for themselves. After scourging Boudicca and raping her two daughters, the Romans were to suffer the worst native rebellion since they conquered Britain. Sacking Colchester and London, Boudicca and her tribesmen ravaged the countryside until finally she was overcome by Suetonius Paulinus, when, to avoid being paraded in a Roman triumph as a captive queen, she is said to have taken poison. She was a devotee of Andraste, the goddess of victory, to whom she sacrificed her captives. She is fondly remembered, despite the bloodiness of rebellion, as an example of liberation to captive peoples - a concept dear to the hearts of all Britons.

# 702:Undoubtedly Boudicca had been a courageous Queen, but the fight between her tribesmen and the Romans had been made inevitable by the rapacious cruelty of the Roman occupiers, and she had no alternative but to rebel. Her initial success against the Roman settlements of Colchester, London and St Albans was probably due to the fact that these places were only poorly garrisoned, the main Roman legions being occupied in advances to the west.

However, whatever the reasons for the war, and whatever the outcome, the fact remains that Boudicca entered with vigour into British mythology as the most important symbol of feminine courage and endurance. Could this have been connected with the mystery of her name, which would suggest that she was associated with a Celtic goddess? Boudicca's name meant 'Victory', and it has been remarked that the name of the goddess openly invoked by Boudicca prior to the last battle was 'Andrasta', whose name also meant 'Victory'. This suggests that the Queen's name was not a personal one at all but perhaps a religious title, which means that from the point of view of the tribesmen who followed her, she was a goddess.

Indeed, in his fascinating study of British folk heroes, Charles Kightly points out that there was actually a Celtic goddess named 'Boudiga', as proved by the fact that a Romano-British merchant of York and Lincoln erected an altar in her name as late as AD 237. 'She has close links, therefore,' writes Kightly, 'with Brigantia ('the High One'), the ruling war-goddess of the Brigantes, whom the Romans also called 'Victoria', and with the terrifying Irish Morrigan ('Great Queen'), the triple war-goddess whose three persons were Nemain ('Frenzy'), Badb Catha ('Battle Raven') and Macha ('Crow'), whose sacred birds were fed on the stake-impaled heads of the slaughtered.' Forgotten, save by specialist historians, for many centuries, Boudicca did not enter into popular British mythology until 1780, when the poet Cowper resurrected her ancient fame and created a new image of her in the form of a Druid bard's 'prophetic words' which foretold her role in the making of the coming mighty Brtish Empire:

Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Arm'd with thunder, clad with wings
Shall a wider world command.
Regions Caesar never knew
Thy posterity shall sway,
Where his eagles never flew,
None invincible as they.

It was Cowper who gave life to the mythological view of the rebel queen, and the myth grew to such an extent that towards the end of the reign of Queen Victoria (who bore the same ancient name and ruled 'a wider world'), the huge statue of the horse-drawn chariot and its fierce queen was erected at Westminster Bridge, on the north bank of the River Thames, which was itself named after a Roman goddess. As with so many folk-heroes, it is claimed that Boudicca did not die, but still sleeps awaiting the call for feminine valour when Britain is next hard-pressed. In contradiction of this belief, her ghost (as sure a sign of death as anything) has been reported in places as far apart as the two extremes of the vast Iceni territory in which she fought, and several places have been claimed as marking the site of her grave. Some have suggested that Boudicca's resting place is marked by the magnificent Stonehenge - though the fact is that this monument was at least 2,000 years old when the Iceni queen died. Others claim for her burial-place a mound on Parliament Hill Fields, in London. Some say that her ghost is still seen on the Essex hill fort of Ambresbury Banks. # 232: Finally, we may add that the rebellion had enormous loss of lives. Excavation at Verulamium has revealed the burnt debris of her destruction, and Tacitus quotes the official figure of 70,000 slain, citizenz and allies, at the three sacked towns. The Britons, he says, had no thought of taking prisoners but only of slaughter, the gibbet, the fire and the cross. It was also said that for the 70-80,000 British who fell, the loss for the Romans were only 400 slain. # 232 - 446 - 454 - 702

BOUDIN

The father of Alisander the Orphan and brother of Mark of Cornwall who murdered him. # 156 - 418

BOYNE, THE RIVER

Angus Og's palace at river Boyne; Angus and Caer at river Boyne; Milesians land in estuary of the river; Ethné loses her veil of invisibility while bathing in the river; The church on the banks where Ethné died was named Kill Ethné by St Patrick (even though she would have been about 1500 years old at that time). See also: BOANNA and PLACE NAME STORIES. # 562

BôV THE RED

King of the Danaan's of Munster, brother of the Dagda; searches for maiden of Angus Og's dream; goldsmith of Bôv, named Len; Aoife travel to Bôv, with her step-children. # 562

BRABANT

A territory sited partially in the Netherlands and partially in Belgium. See: LOHENGRIN. # 156

BRADMANTE

According to Ariosto, the female warrior of the Carolingian era was told that the House of Este would descend from her. # 21 - 156

BRAHAN SEER

(d. 1577) Coinneach Odhar was a man who had the gift of sight into the future. His prophecies concerning the Battle of Culloden, the Highland Clearances and the coming of the railways were all borne out, as was his series of prophecies concerning the Seaforth family. He informed the Countess of Seaforth that her husband was unfaithful to her and she had him hideously burned to death in a tar-barrel, but not before he foretold the dying out of the Seaforth line, which would end with a man both deaf and dumb. This was indeed fulfilled. # 282 - 454 - 717

BRAN AND SCEOLAN

(bran and shkeolawn) Bran and Sceolan were the two favourite hounds of Finn Mac Cumhal. They were so wise and knowing that they seemed human in knowledge, and so indeed they were. According to the Irish story, this was how they were born. One time Finn's mother Muirne came to stay with him in Almhuin (Allen) which was the headquarters where he lived with the Fianna, and she brought her sister Tuiren with her. And Iollan Eachtach, an Ulster man and one of the chiefs of the Fianna there, was with him at the time, and he asked Tuiren's hand in marriage from Finn, and Finn granted it, but he said that if Tuiren had any reason to be displeased with her bargain, Iollan should allow her to return freely, and he made Iollan grant sureties for it and Iollan gave sureties to Caoilte and Goll and Lugaidh Lamba before he took Tuiren away.

Now, whether Finn had any inkling of it or not it is certain that Iollan had already a sweetheart among the Sidhe and she was Uchtdealb of the Fair Breast, and when she heard that Iollan was married she was bitterly jealous. She took on the appearance of Finn's woman messenger and, going to Ulster to Tuiren's house, she said: 'Finn sends all good wishes and long life to you, queen, and bids you prepare a great feast, and if you will come aside with me I will tell you how it must be.' Tuiren went aside with her, and when they got out of sight Uchtdealb took out a rod and smote her with it, and at once she turned into a most beautiful little bitch, and she led her away to the house of Fergus Fionnliath, the king of the harbour of Gallimh. She chose Fergus because he hated dogs more than anything in the world, and, still in the shape of Finn's messenger, she led the little bitch in to Fergus and said to him: 'Finn wishes you to foster and take charge of this little bitch and she is with young, and do not let her join the chase when her time is near'; and she left the hound with him. Fergus thought it a strange thing that this charge should have been put on him, for everyone knew what a hatred he had of dogs, but he had a great regard for Finn, so he did his best, and the little hound was so swift and so clever that soon he changed his notions altogether and began to like hounds as much as he had hated them. In the meantime it became known that Tuiren had disappeared, and Finn called Iollan to account for it, and Iollan had to say that she was gone and that he could not find her. At that his sureties pressed him so hard that he begged for time to search for her. When he could not find her he went to Uchtdealb and told her in what danger he stood, and she consented to free Tuiren if he would be her sweetheart for ever. She went to Fergus' house and freed Tuiren from her shape, and afterwards Finn married her to Lugaidh Lamha. But the two whelps were already born, and Finn kept them and they were always with him. The Highland version is different. In this Bran and Sceolan are monstrous dogs, won by Finn from a kind of Celtic version of the monster Grendel in BEOWULF, who had been stealing babies from a young champion's house. There is something monstrous about them - a strange mixture of colours and great savagery in other versions. # 100

BRAN MAC FEBAL

(bran mock feval)An otherworld woman invited Bran to set sail for the Blessed Islands where he would find the Land of Women TIR NA MBAN.The hero of this legend is somewhat similar to that of Oisin and even closer to the story of King Herla. Bran was summoned by Manannan Son of Lir to visit one of his islands far over the sea, Emhain, the Isle of Women. And this was the way in which he was summoned.

He was walking one day near his own dun when he heard a sound of music so sweet that it lulled him to sleep, and when he woke he had a silver branch in his hand covered with silver-white apple blossom. He carried the branch with him into his dun. And when all his people were gathered round him, suddenly there was a woman in strange clothing standing in front of him, and she began to sing him a song about Emhain, the Isle of Women, where there was no winter or want or grieving, where the golden horses of Manannan pranced on the strand and the games and sports went on untiringly. She summoned Bran to seek out that island, and when her song was over she turned away, and the apple branch jumped from Bran's hand into hers, and he could not retain it. On the next morning he set out with a fleet of curraghs. They rowed far across the sea until they met a warrior driving a chariot as if it might be over the land, and he greeted them and told them that he was Manannan son of Lir, and he sang about the island of Emhain, inviting Bran to visit it. On the way they passed the Island of Delight and tried to hail the inhabitants, but got nothing but shouts of laughter and pointing hands. So Bran put one of his men on shore to talk to them, but he at once burst out laughing and behaved just as the inhabitants had done. So in the end Bran went on, and they soon got to the Isle of Women, where the Chief Woman was waiting for them and drew them ashore. They enjoyed every delight on the many-coloured island, but after what seemed a year Bran's companions began to pine for Ireland, and Nechtan son of Collbrain was urgent to return. The woman who was Bran's lover warned them that sorrow would come of it, but Bran said he would just visit the land and return to it. At that she warned him, as Niam had warned Oisin, that he could look at Ireland and talk to his friends, but that no one of his party could touch it.

So they sailed away and approached the shores of Ireland at a place called Srub Bruin. People on the shore hailed them, and when Bran told them his name they said that no such man was now alive, though in their oldest stories there were mentions of how Bran son of Febal had sailed away to look for the Island of Women. When Nechtan heard this he leapt out of his curragh and waded through the surf; but as he touched the strand of Ireland his mortal years came on him and he crumbled into a handful of dust. Bran stayed awhile to tell his countrymen of all that had befallen him; then he turned his fleet of curraghs away from the shore, and he and his companions were never seen in Ireland again. This story is told in Lady Gregory's GODS AND FIGHTING MEN, and a comparative study of the legend is to be found in Alfred Nutt's THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, with beautiful translations of the Irish by Kuno Meyer. # 100 - 267 - 416 - 454

BRAN SON OF FEBAL, THE VOYAGE OF

In romances as THE WOOING OF ETAIN, THE SICK-BED OF CUCHULAIN, and others, we have seen the visit to the Happy Otherworld appearing incidentally. In this tale it constitutes the main purpose of the story. Of the chief traditional characters in Irish literature, the only ones referred to in THE VOYAGE OF BRAN are Manannan mac Lir and Mongan. Its literary importance lies in the fact that it is representative of a class of Irish stories called Imrama 'voyages,' that seem to have been rather widely known in other parts of Europe. The voyage literature is also noteworthy in that it frequently appears in ecclesiastical guise; in fact, some authorities are inclined to place the ecclesiastical form earlier than the secular. THE VOYAGE OF BRAN belongs to the early period of Irish literature, being ascribed usually to the eighth century. Though reminding us of the 'Odyssey,' the Irish narrative is probably based in large part on fantastic stories brought back by sailors who had ventured far out into the Atlantic Ocean long before the discovery of America. # 166

BRAN THE BLESSED

or BENDIGEID VRAN (brarn) # 562: King of the Isle of the Mighty (Britain). Manawyddan, his brother; Branwen, his sister; he gives Branwen as wife to Matholwch; makes atonement for Evnissyen's outrage by giving Matholwch the magic cauldron; invades Ireland to succour Branwen. The wonderful head of Bran the Blessed buried in the White Mound.

# 156: A hero of Welsh legend, originally a god, who was demoted after the advent of Christianity. Some of the information we have about him suggests that part of his legend went into the formation of the Arthurian tales. For example, he had a cauldron of plenty and was wounded in the foot by a poisoned spear, suggesting connections with the Grail and the Fisher King. Tradition states that his head was buried under the White Hill in London to protect the country, but Arthur dug it up, as he wanted to be the sole guardian of Britain. Bran had a son called Caratacus who was identified with the British leader of that name who opposed the Romans at the time of the Claudian invasion (AD 43). Bran himself - though not, perhaps, in an early tradition - was thought to have introduced Christianity to Britain. His father was Llyr and his mother Penardun. In BONEDD YR ARWYR, Bran is made both of paternal and maternal ancestor of Arthur. (See also: BAN and THIRTEEN TREASURES). # 454: In Welsh: Bendigeid Fran. The Titanic-sized Bran has become deeply incorporated into British mythology. His story appears in 'Branwen Daughter of Llyr' where he is the possessor of a life-restoring cauldron. On the marriage of his sister, Branwen to Matholwch, King of Ireland, he gives up the cauldron to the Irish, in recompense for the insults they have suffered at the hands of Bran's brother, Efnissien. He subsequently has to rescue Branwen from her servitude in the Irish kitchen after he has her imprisoned there. He wades across the Irish sea, leading the British fleet and defeats the Irish who offer to depose Matholwch and make Gwern, Branwen's son, king in his place. At the feast to celebrate the truce and Gwern's accession, Efnissien throws Gwern into the fire and hostilities are resumed.

The Irish resusticate their dead in the cauldron, but neither side is triumphant; only seven Britons escape alive but Bran is mortally wounded in the heel. He requests that his head be cut off and buried at the White Tower (of London). The seven survivors do so, first bearing the head to Harlech for seven years and then to Gwales (Grassholm, Pembrokeshire) for eighty years, where the head of Bran converses with them and where they have no sense of time passing, nor of the happenings they have experienced. They are asked not to open the door of the hall. Eventually one of the company does so and they become aware of the passing of time and of their sufferings. Bran's mythos can be traced to that of Cronos, as well as becoming incorporated into the Grail legends where Brons is the guardian of the Grail - a development of the life-restoring cauldron. The Triads relate how Arthur dug up Bran's head where it had been set to fend off enemy invasion, because he alone wished to be his country's bastion. This feature can still be seen in the legend that if the Ravens leave the Tower of London Britain will be invaded ( for which reason their wings are kept clipped). Bran's name means 'raven'.

# 100: There are three Brans mentioned in Celtic mythological and legendary matter: Bran, the famous hound of Finn; Bran Son of Febal, the Irish hero who was allured away to the Isle of Women, the Western Paradise of Manannan Son of Lir; and Bran the Blessed, the brother of Manawyddan and the son of Llyr, whose story is told in the MABINOGION. It is clear that the Irish and the Welsh mythologies are closely connected in these two groups, but Bran the Blessed represents a much earlier and mythological strain of belief, obviously a primitive god. It has been surmised by Professor Rhys that he was a Goidelic or even pre-Goidelic divinity who was grafted on to later Celtic tradition. We should remember that Bran was of monstrous size, so large that no house could contain him, but he was one of the beneficent Giants and had magical treasures which enriched Britain, and chief among them was the Cauldron of Healing which came from Ireland and was destined to return to it. # 57 - 100 - 104 -156 - 272 - 346 - 439 - 454 - 562 - 589

BRANDEGORIS

King of Stranggore. One of the kings who rebelled against Arthur at the outset of his reign. It has been argued that his name means 'Bran of Gore' and that he was originally identical with the god Bran. See: ELYAN. # 156 - 243

BRANDILES

Knight of the Round Table. His father was Sir Gilbert. He is mentioned in the Second Continuation of Chrétien's PERCEVAL and the GEST OF SIR GAWAIN in which he fought with Gawain, who had defeated his father and two brothers, as well as seducing his sister. In the GEST, this fight was stopped to be resumed later, but the two never met again. In the Second Continuation, there was a second fight between the two which was haunted by Brandiles's sister. See: BRIAN DES ILLES. # 156

BRANDUBH

He was King of Leinster in the seventh century who lusted after Mongan's wife, Dubh Lacha. He tricked Mongan into giving her up, but was finally defeated by Mongan's supernatural powers. The name is also of an Irish boardgame, meaning Black Raven, played between two players. # 454

BRANGIEN

The maidservant of Iseult who, according to Gottfried, was very goodlooking. When Iseult was on her way to Mark, Iseult's mother gave Brangien and Gouvernail a love potion to administer to the couple. Unfortunately, owing to a mistake, Tristan and Iseult drank it, thus precipitating their affair. On the night of her wedding Iseult substituted Brangien for herself so Mark would not guess she had already lain with Tristan. Subsequently, Iseult tried to have Brangien murdered to ensure her silence, but the attempt was unsuccessful and Iseult repented of it. Brangien later had an affair with Kaherdin, son of King Hoel of Brittany. # 64 - 156 - 256

BRANWEN - SISTER OF BRAN

# 562: Given in marriage to Matholwch; mother of Gwern; degraded because of Evnissyen's outrage; brought to Britain; her death and burial on the banks of the Alaw. - # 454: Daughter of Llyr. She was married to Matholwch, King of Ireland, and bore him Gwern, but the Irish people had suffered at the hands of Efnissien, her brother. She was made to serve in the kitchens and was there struck by the cook. She tamed a starling to bear a message to Bran in Britain who came with a fleet to rescue her. Efnissien threw Gwern upon the fire and after the ensuing battle between the British and Irish, she died of a broken heart and was buried in a 'four-sided grave' on the river Alaw, in Anglesey. Her mythos bears a striking resemblance to that of Cordelia, also a daughter of Lear. Branwen is a type of Sovereignty, as becomes obvious if this story is investigated thoroughly. As for Ireland, all that were left alive in it were five pregnant women, And through them Ireland was repeopled,and they founded the Five Kingdoms.# 100 - 272 - 439 - 454 - 562

BRAS-DE-FER

Chamberlain of Antichrist. The poet Huon de Mery in his work LE TORNOIEMANT DE L'ANTECHRIST tells how he went to the enchanted spring in Broceliande and Bras-de-Fer rode up. They went to a battle where the forces of Heaven fought against the forces of Hell. Arthur and his knights fought on the side of Heaven. # 142 - 156

BRASTIAS

# 156: One of Arthur's Knights who was made a warden in the north of England and who fought at Bedegraine. He had originally been in the service of the Duke of the Tintagel.

# 454: Originally a knight in the service of Gorlois of Cornwall, Brastias became an ally of Merlin in the episode where Uther is changed into the likeness of his master in order to sleep with Igraine. When Arthur became King, Brastias was one of his first and most able captains, and became warden of the North. # 156 - 418 - 454

BREA

(bray) When Oisin returned to Ireland from the Otherworld, he was told that Finn mac Cumhal died in the Battle of Brea, three hundred years ago. # 562

BREAD

# 701: The plea for daily bread incorporated into the Lord's Prayer must have been a plea to the Goddess in earlier times, for she was always the giver of bread, the Grain Mother, the patron of bakers, mills and ovens. The English word Lady was derived from Hlaf-dig (hlæfdige - Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Clark, Hall & Meritt (ed.rmk.)), the 'giver of daily bread,' while Lord descended from Hlaf-ward (hlafweard), the guardian (or steward) of her storehouses.

# 100: The prototype of food, and therefore a symbol of life, bread was one of the commonest protections against fairies. Before going out into a fairy-haunted place, it was customary to put a piece of dry bread into one's pocket. # 100 - 701 p 482

BREASIL

Was considered to be the King of the World in Irish tradition and although a fortress was supposed to have been built by him in Leinster, his real dwelling was in the lands to the west, called Hy Breasil, the otherworldly place whose name was used in the mapping of South America as Brazil. # 454

BREDBEDDLE

A knight who assisted Arthur in the story of KING ARTHUR AND THE KING OF CORNWALL. When Arthur, Tristan, Gawain and Bredbeddle, went to visit the King of Cornwall's abode, Bredbeddle, with the aid of a holy book, controlled a friend whom the king had sent to observe them. # 156

BREGIA

Bregia was the great plain lying eastwards of Tara between Boyne and Liffey, which was mentioned in one of the long list of Conary's geise given to him by Nemglan. 'The bird-reign shall be noble,' said he, 'and these shall be thy geise: 'Thou shalt not go right-handwise round Tara, nor lefthandwise round Bregia,...' At CuChulain's first foray his charioteer pointed out to him, while he was looking over the plains of Bregia, Tara and Teltin, and Brugh na Boyna and the great dun of the sons of Nechtan...

Saint Patrick says to Keelta, he has a boon to crave of him - he wishes to find a well of pure water with which to baptize the folk of Bregia and of Meath. Bregia is a latinized form of Breg. See: MAG BREG. # 562

BREGON

# 562: Son of Miled, father of Ith. Tower of Breg'on perceived by Ith. # 454: Scythian noble, ancestor of the Milesians. He was exiled from Egypt and settled in Spain from whence his two sons, Ith and Bile set sail for Ireland. # 454 - 469 - 562

BREHON

One skilled in the ancient laws and legal institutions of Ireland. # 166

BRENDAN, SAINT

(c.489-583) Born in Kerry, this saint takes his place in Irish legend for his wondrous voyages to the Promised Land of Saints - a christianized version of the Blessed Isles of the West. He was inspired to take this voyage by Saint Barrind (see Barinthus) who had just returned from there. Together with seventeen monks, Brendan set sail in a skin-covered boat and spent many years travelling from island to island, including a hazardous landing on a whale, where he said mass and his monks attempted to heat a cauldron. There are many parallels and overlaps with the voyage of Maelduin. # 454 - 507

BRENNIUS

Brother of Belinus, with whom he quarrelled and fought. Both were reconciled by their mother, Tonuuenna, and together they marched on Gaul which they conquered, and then besieged Rome which Brennius sacked. # 243 - 454

BRENOS BRIAN

Under this form, was the god to whom the Celts attributed their victories at the Allia and at Delphi. # 562

BRENT KNOLL

This Somerset hill was the site of a battle between Yder and three giants who lived there. Accompanying Arthur, who sent him on ahead, Yder encountered the giants alone on the hill and, when Arthur and his followers arrived, the giants were dead, but so was Yder. # 156

BRES MAC ELATHA

# 562: (brés'moc el'ô-ha) 1. Ambassador sent to Firbolgs, by people of Dana; slain in battle of Moytura. 2. Son of Danaan woman named Eri, chosen as King of Danaan territory in Ireland; his illgovernment and deposition. 3. Bres Son of Balor (not mac Elatha); learns that the appearance of the sun is the face of Lugh of the Long Arm.

# 454: The son of Eriu, begotten of her by an otherworld youth, Elatha who was of the Fomorians. Eriu herself was of the Tuatha de Danaan. Although he was a child of mixed parentage, he was elected king on the understanding that he would relinquish sovereignty if any misdeed should give cause. But Bres treated his mother's people poorly, inflicting grave insults upon the Tuatha. He created a monopoly over the food supplies of Ireland, making the Tuatha obliged to serve him in order to be fed. He was then satirized by the Tuatha's poet. (A poet's satire could cause personal disfigurement, in the case of Bres the King, he was considered maimed and therefore unfit to reign.) Eventually the Tuatha rose against him and Bres joined the Fomorian side during the second Battle of Mag Tuired. Here he bargained with Lugh in a magical contest which he lost. He was forced to drink 300 buckets of tainted milk and died. # 166 - 454 - 562

BRES, THE BIRTH OF

Of the birth of Bres it is said in 'The Second Battle of Mag Tuired' that Ériu daughter of Delbaeth, a woman of Tuatha De Danann, was looking out to sea one morning and she saw a silver ship which brought a fair-haired youth, wearing a gold-adorned mantle, who greeted her with: 'Is this the time that our lying with thee will be easy?' They lay down together and the youth then told her he was Elatha son of Delbaeth, king of the Fomoire. He gave her a ring which she should give only to one whose finger it fitted, and he prophesied the birth of a beautiful b