This is Jonathan Feeshel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone, I
am back here with another episode of Universal History with Richard Rowland. As you
know, we have just wrapped up our Dante class. You know, it
was an amazing it was amazing. I just have to say Dante's Inferno class.
Like we say Dante Class. That sound like we did the whole thing,
which we did. Definitely did not. But yeah, we spent six
with six three hour tracks, five five three hour tracks through the Inferno.
It was amazing for me discovering all kinds of things that I had forgotten that
I didn't realize was there. It was. It was just great and we're
looking forward to also a purgatory and heaven and Paradise. So now today we
are here to talk about Ireland. So people have been asking for a long
time when are you going to do the Universal History of Ireland? And to
be totally honest, I've been scared of it and putting it off. The
reason I am scared of it is that when you bring Ireland into the conversation,
people go a little crazy. I mean really specifically Americans go a little
crazy. You know, there's this sort of I don't know, like,
does everybody turn Irish on Saint Patrick's Day in Quebec. I'm gonna assume no,
No, we don't. We don't. You don't like turn your life
river, you don't turn your local river green or anything. No, we
don't. We don't. Yeah, we don't, because they do that in
Chicago, you know, like and in some other places, like they for
a ton of green dye. You know, I don't know what the long
term envices mental consequences of that ar I'm sure somebody's figured that out, but
we've decided it's worth it. Yeah, And and all of the every single
uh, every single uh store and you know, like like liquor stores,
grocery stores, et cetera, will will sell like all the schlocky Irish stuff,
Irish foods. Obviously they sell a lot of guinness, they sell a
lot of Irish whiskey at that time, et cetera. And and yeah,
so this is kind of like, uh, there's something about it. There's
something about it, and and the thing is like it's not inaccurate. Like
almost every you know, person in America has some amount of like Irish DNA
or blood or like however you want to say it. I myself, you
know, and like most of my ancestors are from Scotland and Ireland, so
so there's something about it. But but it's it's, it's it's it's weird.
Like it's almost difficult to quantify a similar thing with Scottish culture. But
I think not quite as much. I think quite as much, although I
think there were probably that did get a bunch bump from Mel Gibson's Brave Heart,
yeah for sure. Yeah, but okay, so there's something about Irish
culture, Irish history that is like that is simultaneously when it's presented, especially
kind of like in a North American context, it's simultaneously like very kitsch but
also somehow is compelling enough to kind of like hold on. So here,
I'll tell on myself for a minute. I've only ever been to two concerts
in my entire life. I mean, you have to remember that I grew
up like fundamentalists. It's true, you know everything, so we didn't listen
to rock music. As you play it backward, you can hear the words
the demons are saying, which is a real thing that I was actually told.
I'm not just that's not just a joke. That's a real thing that
I was told it probably should play anything backwards. You can hear the words
of the demons. They're say, because why you play why are you playing
it backward? In the first I don't know, like like uh and like
what did what did like you know, did how did CDs mess with the
Devil's planned? Like how do you play a CD of backwards? I don't
know? But anyway, okay, all right. So also the biggest complicated
thing is also because why do you listen to backwards when listening to doing it
straightforward? You can already hear the Dean and speaking also that like like who
was like I'm gonna play this backwards? Yea? Anyway, okay, I
listened to Mega Death backwards. You know, I have all these weird things's
like, dude, just listen to it for you're good, like you got
enough demo? Man? Oh boy? Okay, who had derail this one?
Okay? So so uh you know, so I've only been to two
concerts. One was you know, dirt Poor Robins with you guys, Like
really yeah, like literally that's what. That's the only time, the only
time in my life I've ever been in front of an actual rock band playing
actual music. Yeah, and and yeah, so horribly sheltered everything else here.
But you also also understand it when I in my family going to a
concert mean you were going to the symphony. Like so going to the concert
literally meant you put on a tuxedo and you went to the symphony. And
if I say I'm going to a concert, that is still what I mean,
Like, you know, I'm still a giant snob or whatever. But
anyway, okay, so the only other time that I've been to a concert
was when the band Celtic Woman came to ame to grit My town and performed.
Yeah, there's there's like a band or like a group called Celtic Woman
or Celtic Woman. But it's like it's a bunch of bunch of tall blonde
ladies singing, you know, vaguely Irish music, like vaguely irish. You
know, you get to your obligatorio Danny Boy and everything else is kind of
new age and whatever. But uh, my wife and I really like them,
so we went like, I mean, this is like this is like
this would be more embarrassing a big deal for you, This would be more
embarrassing if I didn't own literally every album Enya has ever made, but anyway,
that's a different conversation. It's a different conversations, so right, so
I just I say all of us to say, like there's something about that,
like the Celtic Woman of it all, that is really kitch and yet
continues to remain like interesting or compelling on some level enough that like all kitch
things like it it like you know, there's there's got to be something to
it or people wouldn't still be doing it. Right, So what I'd like
to do in the next few Universal History of Videos will be to take a
look at some things in the British Isles because the other reason I'm scared to
talk about this is because there's so much and and and there's really the end
of the world, so you know, there's gotta be a lot exactly.
But but also like there is like this much stuff about other cultures. But
I'm you know, this is my native language for one thing, so that
makes it easier. But also like this is the thing I've I've dedicated my
entire academic life to study. Really is is Anglo Saxon and Saxon and medieval
Kiltic cultures, and so there's just like so much to choose from. It's
really difficult to it's really difficult to kind of know where to start. So
what I thought we'd do today, what I thought we'd do today would be
to start with a book which is sometimes called the Book of Invasions. The
Book of Invasions is a it's a work of it's also called like the Book
of the Conquest of Ireland is literally what the Irish named Court means, but
it's a it's an eleventh century work of universal history. And so here we're
on pretty firm footing in terms of kind of what we've come to expect and
in terms of medieval universal history and what they What it tries to do is
it tries to take the pagan history of Ireland, and specifically the lineage of
the High Kings of Ireland, which is like the main source of the pagan
prehistory of Ireland. Tries to take that and merge it with the biblical and
classical narratives, and so basically you get a sense of well, it starts
with Genesis, it starts with God made the heaven and the earth at the
first and he himself hath no beginning nor ending. That's the beginning of the
book, so we find uh. I'll read a little bit from the creation
narrative here actually because it's it's kind of interesting to see how they interpreted certain
things from the Genesis account. He made first the formless mass and the light
of angels. That's the light. They'll let there be light. That's the
angels. Which is which is? Uh? This is actually a common medieval
debate, by the way, people, You know, when were the angels
created? Were they created on the first day or were they created on the
same day as the stars? The sun and the stars. So he made
the form first, the formless man, in the light of angels. He
made firmament. On the Monday, he made earth and seas. On the
tuesday. Did it say he made the formless ten? Uh, the formless
mass. I'm sorry, nice mass, but basically like what a formless mass
of matter? Right, that's the shape stakes the formless man would have been
insane, adam crazy. He made the firmament. On the Monday, he
made the earth and the seas. On the Tuesday, he made sun,
moon and the stars of heaven. On the Wednesday he made birds of the
air and reptiles of the sea. On the Thursday, he made beasts of
the earth in general, and Adam to rule over them on the Friday.
Thereafter, God rested on a Saturday from the accomplishment of a new creation,
but by no means from its governance. Thereafter, he gave the bailiffrey,
that is, like the jurisdiction of Heaven to Lucifer, with the nine orders
of the angels of Heaven. He gave the bailiffrey of Earth to Adam and
to Eve with her progeny. Thereafter, Lucifer sinned so that he was leader
of a third of a host of angels. The king confined him with the
third host of angels in his company in Hell. And God said, unto
the foe of Heaven HAUGHTI is this Lucifer. Thereafter, and Lucifer had envy
against Adam, for he was assured that this would be given him, that
is Adam the filling of Heaven in his room. So this is a very
common idea by way that you run into in I can't remember if I read
this already in our series from the Anglo Saxon Genesis, but there is a
very common kind of a thing where you have this idea that the humanity is
created or humanity's destiny is to take the place of the angels that fell.
And this is implicit, by the way, even in the Book of Revelation,
like you have four and twenty elders, because that's a third of the
number the traditional number of the divine council. Right, so let's see.
So thereafter lucirette envy against Adam free he was assured that this would be given
to Adam, the filling of heaven in his room or that is his place
of jurisdiction. Wherefore he came in the form of a serpent and persuaded Adam
and Eve to sin in the manner of eating the apple from the forbidden tree.
Wherefore Adam was expelled from Paradise into common Earth. So, uh,
most of this is the way, you know, happens, the way that
we would expect it to happen. But there are some kind of additional details
that are very basically like nothing unusual for the Middle Ages here, but they
are kind of interesting blosses on the Genesis text. So the story goes on
to trace the the lineage of the Gaelic peoples through the line of Noah.
So you have Jith, Jafith of course being in in the genesis account and
in the kind of medieval understanding, Jafith is the father of the father of
the medieval of like medieval Europe, for the new European peoples. And so
it says that Maygog, the son of Jafifth, of his progeny are the
peoples who came to Ireland before the Gaddy to it the the part Tholins,
and it goes on and list a bunch of tribe names, including the including
the progeny. It says a Mnemed of the fear Bolt and the two epidanin
which are the These are important groups of essentially what we now think of Asperis.
That will come back to a minute. So descendants Megad, they're descendants
of Magod. So I thought you would like that, Well, yeah,
I do like that. Yeah, So yeah, they're decendce of make So
Magog is of course a giant. He's a monster. He's a giant.
There's kind of different how do I say this. There's there's like sort of
different magog Uh legends, and sometimes it's like Gog and Magog are like two
monsters and giants. Obviously, they're they're sort of like the names of countries,
you know, on the edge of the world. I mean, we've
talked about this in a previous video. It's been a minute though, so
maybe people should still back then and revisit that it. Sometimes they're they're kind
of cannibal type monster that live on the end of the world. That they're
the people that Alexander locked out, right, locked out with the gates of
Yeah. Well, in another legend, they came to the island of Albion,
Yeah, which is that is the island of Britain, and we're kind
of actually the first people to settle there. And so in for instance,
like the history of the Kings of Britain and the Brutus legend, which we've
talked about way back the very beginning of the series, and we are going
to revisit that stuff. But in the Brutuist legend, that's who Brutus fights,
like basically, you know, they fight the giants when they come to
the island, right. So that's interesting that that the Irish or the Gaelics
see themselves as descendants of Magog. So it's like the idea that they're the
ones who were chased out of So this is going to get even more interesting
in a certain way. So to kind of to kind of summarize, to
kind of summarize this, the the Book of Invasions or the Book of the
Invasions of Ireland basically identifies six major waves of invasions, right and so in
the way that same way that we talked about Ethiopia being kind of like the
symbolism of the nest, right the thing that's made of leftovers, right of,
and then sort of but then it kind of collects things and becomes a
place where life can be sheltered. Ireland is similarly. Ireland is similarly a
it's a it's a catch all, it's on the end, it's sort of
the It doesn't quite have the same nest imagery that Ethiopia has, but it
does have the sense of being, you know, the literally the edge of
the world. I mean, it is the edge of the world for most
of the history of medieval Europe that you can't go any farther west Ireland.
Yeah, that makes sense, and that's why you know there are some legends
that find themselves there and you don't know why. Like a good example is
the Saint Christopher legend. So Saint Christopher is a dog man in the East
and then he's usually a giant in the West. But then in Ireland for
some reason, they caught that, Like they have these legends of Saint Christopher
as a dog headed man, even Gog and Magog. Right, they're they're
supposed to be off in the East, you know, shut out by Alexander's
skates, but then they show up in the British Isles. Like it's like
yeah, yeah, yeah, So so basically what happens. What would you
have in the Book of Invasions, is this idea that these groups keep invading
the island of Ireland. When they invade, they usually wipe out the previous
peoples or the previous people are left there, but they kind of go into
hiding. Yeah, and the previous peoples that are left there and go into
hiding have the names or identities or culture that modern scholarship, like I'm talking
about archaeology and history and things like that here would associate with like this this
Stone Age culture or this brondza Aid culture or whatever, but also with the
different pantheons, pantheons of gods that are worshiped by that group of people.
And it's sort of like, I mean typically speaking, when you like if
you drive a people out of the land, you know, so you push
them out, they go somewhere else. They take their gods with them.
And it's relatively unusual for the gods of a conquered people, or let's say,
like of four conquered peoples ago to sort of like still hang around in
the hills, right, But it's kind of like the idea is like in
Ireland, there's nowhere else for them to go, right the edge of the
world already at the edge of the world, and so on. On an
archaeological level, this is happening. But also you could say on the level
of principalities and powers, right, this is also kind of happening. Like
there are there's a reason that Ireland is so strongly associated. It's not the
only place in the world, but it is probably the place in western the
western like you know, like the anglosphere is probably the place most strongly associated
with ferries. Yeah, and there is some aspect of fairies that are something
like a like a splinter or a piece that's broken off of or kind of
like leftover hierarchiece, and I that's that is something that's it's hard to like
even say that out loud because it's like yeah, but thense because that's that's
how they function. You know. They're they're kind of like the gin,
right, we talked about this before, because they're they're very ambiguous and they're
they're you know, why is it why would they want to like trick you,
Like what the idea that principalities kind of want to get your attention or
trick you and all of these things. It means that they have they have
to be uh, and of wandering. They're they're they're wandering in the desert.
They don't have they're not attached to to the right order. You know,
if you read I wouldn't account of fairy stories or or like fairy encounters
rap, I wouldn't account of fairy encounters. These are people who were like
walking along, usually in Ireland or Wales where most of these things happen.
And we'll talk about Wales in a future episode, I think, but people
people so walking along and you meet a fairy right. Very often it's like
the bishop is walking along or like a priest is walking along and they meet
a fairy, and the fairies are always concerned with a question of whether or
not they can be saved. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, And
so there's like all kinds of like strange things like where where Like the priest
or the bishop will say, you know, well, can you say the
potter and oster? And like the fairy can't say our father, and you
can't say that, and so then it's like so that, by the way,
the answer is always that can't be known until the day of judgment.
That's alwayeah answer like and so there is this sort of thing like where and
maybe some of this is tied to the idea that you also find in the
Legends of jin Oh way, right now I'm reading rereading for the upteen time
a wonderful novel called Declare by Tim Powers. You should read this at some
point because it's, uh, it's but it's all about it's all about gin
and also like Cold War spycraft and and stuff. Anyway, great book,
great book. But uh but they but but Powers digs into Powers is a
is an amazing Actually, you should have him on the channel. He's he's
an amazing He's a Roman Catholic, amazing contemporary author, probably probably for money
money. He's like the best current fiction author. Okay, he's great,
but anyway, uh, he's got a great book about this and and uh
but what he but he he like he's really deeply researched, like all of
these different legends about the Gin and the fairies and so on, and it
kind of incorporates them all into kind of this thing that makes a lot of
sense. But anyway, all that to say, in the legends of the
fairies and the Gin, one of the theories of where they come from is
something is that they're basically like angels who only fell halfway, or that they
they didn't join Lucifer's rebellion, but they didn't side with God either. So
they're cast out of heaven, but they're not cast all the way down,
right, So that's one kind of medieval theory about where fairies come from.
There also seems to be something though, like as I was saying, like
they're the sort of the remnant or like like a sort of a fractal,
like a piece that's broken off of an older hierarchy, and Ireland just sort
of collects these things. Yeah, it collects these hierarchies, collects these these
stories of invasions, and so this is important. I think this is at
this little point that you made is really important people to understand kind of how
it works. And so how it works is that there are traces of this
at every level. Right, So you have a story, like you said,
of the idea of these gods that have been kind of chased away,
that they that they are, you know, in ambiguous spaces, they haunt,
you know, places that are unclear and that they're or like we saw
in Dante, like we do actually have in Dante a place in Hell where
these ambiguous spirits are where they didn't take a they didn't take position in the
war between Heaven and Hell. And then that will then reflect itself at the
lower level. So, like Richard said, it also means that there is
an ancient civilization that was there that was maybe broken up, and the residues
of that were not fully you know, assimilated into the next into the next
civilization. And therefore it leaves these these these little parts of stories, parts
of rituals, maybe superstitions, all these types of behaviors and things that are
actually residues from a world that is now over, but that are still kind
of haunting the margin of a story. So then and then you can have
that several layers of that, like you said, and then you end up
with these odd spaces of remainder that that are part of your of your culture.
And so when the archaeologists and the modern historian, they'll that's they just
see that level. So they'll say, oh, this weird story is a
trace of an older story that the age of people that were there before,
you know, and and it's not really well integrated into the new mythology.
And the answer is yes, yes, but it also is it also means
that the principalities that we're ruling over those people, they're also kind of there
but not there, you know that the effect they still affect the world,
but in a in an indirect in an indirect way. Yeah, that's exactly.
It like like that that whole well, this is just like this is
probably just a leave over from a previous civilization. That is what a fairy
is like, you know, and and and the the and of course like
when people historically came across those like the burial amounts from those people, they
say, oh, that's a she mold, right, that that's the Irish
work for a fairy. It's a much better word than ferry. By the
way, a fairy comes from the French. You guys know how if you
know, I'm kidding, just but I just I want to press one left
thing because I think it's really important. So it's like, I know,
it's hard because we talk about these things and sometimes they just soundjust mythological.
They are, but it's important to understand that. Like when for example,
people build computer system this is an example, they create a program, like
they create a language, or they create a a what do you call it,
like a platform for something to run on, and then if they want
it now add another platform. Sometimes they can't completely destroy the one that was
underneath. They tried to like press it down and it's a word. You
had Windows running on doss and then dots is like this weird thing that it's
kind of lingering in the background that you don't know. But sometimes the effect
of doss would peek itself into Windows and then you'd have all these weird things
happen because it's basically running layers of things running on top of each other.
So this idea of this problem of how to create a new world without like
on a place that already exists creates these residues that will infect sometimes the systems
that are built on top of it. So it's not just like a like
we're just not to talking about like weird mythological stories, like this is actually
how you build systems of meeting and that this is how it works. So
in the Book of Invasions, the first people to settle in Ireland before the
flood, before the Flood of Noah is a woman and the people with her
who come from Egypt. I know, you just hate it when stuff comes
from Egypt, but here we are true. The reason we haven't done a
universal history of Egypt yet, you guys, is because Jathan's always like,
well, nineteenth century Egyptologist in no, it's a it's a but we are
going to do it at some point. You could do it. The symbolism
of Egypt is important in the Bible, but also like the symbolism of egypt
pology, like the way that just like took over the British cultural consciousness for
one hundred years, I mean is really crazy. But anyway, okay,
so they come from Egypt with a great, great plan for perpetuating civilization,
here fifty women and three men. And depending on the story that you read
the accounts here is that is that it's just that's kind of a lot of
women. And the first two men kill themselves, it's just higher themselves out.
And the third man, the third man, a guy named Fintan.
He throws himself into the sea. And when he throws himself into the sea,
he changes into a salmon. On discip a lot of shape shifting in
Celtic myth, and turning yourself into salmon is one of the main things that
you would turn yourself into. It turns himself into a salmon, and then
leader on into a bird, and so on and so on. And it's
because of this that Fintan survives the Great Flood, survives the Flood Noah.
Not only does he survive the Flood of Noah, but he survives every single
successive invasion, every single successive generation. And he's the sort of the one
who tells about it all, like in kind of the the idea you know,
when he, you know, is able to tell the story to the
first High King of Ireland of all the generations that came before and so all
the way back, like even there's this idea of like a residue from before
the flood, right, which is which is? Which is something that shows
up in a lot of world cultures. Right Obviously it's there in Gilgamesh is
there and other things. But this idea of a residue before the flood,
something like a seed, something that survives before the flood. Like even even
it's it's difficult now in a time, in an age where people are so
widely divorced from their food to understand how incredibly important the salmon were not just
for like so that people could live and eat in in the you know,
in ancient Britain and in Ireland, but also the way that the salmon,
the the place that it took in in the the sort of the my mythological
consciousness right as the as a thing that goes out and returns, right and
the thing that you know, like it the salmon. The salmon come back
to the river, like and they always they always home back to the place
that they're from. They always home back to the place they're from. They
come back to the river they're in to spawn and then to die, right,
and there's like out of that death is gonna this new life is going
to come. So it's it's and uh and and somehow like this this figure
of fintam Is is related to that. And there are other really similar figures
in later Irish myths that are basically the same idea, like this this this
this residue or this guy that's leftover from a previous age. He's usually got
cheap shifting powers. He's usually a poet, and and he's able to remember
the stories of what happened for because he was actually there. Yeah. So
then the next group that come along are the are the Parthlons, and you're
going to really enjoy this. Uh. So they came from They basically came
from either like Sicily or maybe Greece, and actually most of the most of
the early groups are usually said to have come from Greece or Egypt or somewhere
in the old kind of the biblical lobe. And they do a bunch of
different things. They are the ones who originate cattle husbandry, that the first
people to like keep cattle in Ireland, which becomes like the main thing that
you do with Ireland later on. In fact, the Great Irish Epic,
basically the Irish Iliad. If you will Is called the catl Rate of Kolie,
And you're going to talk about it at some point because it's it's one
of my favorite things to read as a kid, Like it's one of those
books somebody gave me as a kid, probably because they didn't know what was
in it, and and then as a kid I read this and I was
like, oh boy, this is us some good stuff. I see,
Yeah, it's pretty spicy. They also or it's in a cooking, drinking
and dueling three things. As everybody knows, the Irish love stereotypes are really
old. I don't know what to say. So they are eventually either white,
I doubt, by a flag or by the invasion of dog headed apes.
Right. I don't have a lot more to tell you about that right
now, but I thought that was a very little interesting. Yeah, it
definitely is interesting. There is a whole connection between the dog headed men and
also the dog headed apes. And you know, this is one of the
theories obviously of the matern type scholars. They talk about how the dog heed
man are basically are bad boons really, I mean people the encountered with baboons.
I think it's boring. It's a way I mean, my main problem
with that is, like you act like nobody in the ancient world ever saw
a monkey, but like half of half of the Roman Empire was in Africa,
man like, like people saw baboons like anyway, So then the next
the next wave or the next invasion is is by a guy named Nemod who
also comes from Greece with his four sons. There's a whole kind of an
interesting thing about them. Let's see if I can find this several of them.
Basically, uh, man, there, the reason I'm paused, people
is because there's so many weird things here. I'm like, they're they're trying
to all get out of my mouth at once, and it's a little hard
to prioritize. So Nemed he comes and comes from Greece with his four sons.
A bunch of his sons actually drown trying to seize a tower of gold
in the sea. So there's like this undersea kingdom and a tower of gold
and everything. I think we'll come back to this and uh and Nemed is
the one who clears the planes and builds the royal force. So basically you
have kind of these iterative things that explain why Irish culture is the way that
it is in mid In the Middle Ages, Irish culture was was basically uh
organized, as was much of the culture of Northern Europe, organized around like
these networks of hillforts and then eventually that's those are where the monasteries will be
built later on, and so we got cattle husbandry, cooking, drinking,
dueling, we get the network of forts that comes, you know, is
established by the successive generation, and basically basically they are they come into conflict
with this group known as the Formorians. Formorians are not one of the six
traditional invasions, but they seem to be sort of like basically the Irish or
the Celtic equivalent of the of like Titans or the Giants. Okay, right,
there are these really monstrous kind of spirits that you know, like cathonic
spirits that have to do with the like uncontrolled nature something like that, and
so they mostly get killed. About thirty of them flee back to Greece,
and there's this idea later on that the uh that the next group that comes,
which will be the fear Bulg, that they're going to be, you
know, basically they're the survivors of those guys and they're coming back trying to
take take back. So this is the fourth invasion. These guys also come
from Greece, where they've been slaves. That might be what the word fear
bulg means. It means might mean something like it's like the men of pouches
or the men of breeches. But also, uh, there's this this word
bolg uh. Funnily enough, same word in Dante, like the bolgia in
uh in in in circle eight of of Inferno. Right, this is an
old Indo European root that means like something is swollen, and so it could
also have the that that like it can have the idea of like a pocket
or a pouch or like some you know, kind of compartment that swells out.
It might also, in the case of the fear of bulg, it
might have something to do with them being like swollen with rage. That's a
pretty that's that's one possible etymology. There are some people about that they're actually
related to, like the bell guy, like the Belgians, and maybe if
there's a relationship between the two of them there, but they're swollen with rage
all the time. It's soon see ah, Yeah, everybody has somebody else.
They joke, the English pick on the French. The French very okay,
it's cool, all right. So yeah, so they come and they
divide Ireland. They're the ones who divide Ireland into the traditional fifths. And
the interesting thing about them is that the fear Bulk don't fight against the Fomorians.
In fact, they seem to fight alongside them. Later on they seem
to make some kind of rapprochemont with the with the like these these monstrous nature
spirits. So the next group that comes and invades Ireland after the Fear Bulk
is uh and there these are the ones who are the most probably well known,
would be the Tuafta Done. And they were told unlike the one,
unlike unlike everybody else who comes from like Greece, ories which or whatever.
We're told that they come from the north of the world, and that they
that they're and and they're experts in magic, like these are the fairies.
These are the old Celtic gods. That's basically who they are the most,
you know, Lug being like the main the main you know, they're their
main champion, who is also like the main Celtic war god, right and
so so they come and they show up, and there's a whole bunch of
battles with the fear of bulk of the Fermorians, and basically eventually Tadan win
all of these battles, drive everybody else and take over Ireland. And these
are the sort of like the most strongly sort of the group that we most
strongly associate with fairy traditions later for a reason I'll explain in a moment,
But the but they, I mean, one of the things that's really interesting
to me is this idea that gets developed kind of in parallel, gets developed
in in Celtic, like British Celtic, like in other words, like Welsh
uh lore, is the idea of like the great treasures of the land.
So the two at the don have four great treasures, and then later on
there are you know, the things developed into there are twelve treasures of the
the the twelve treasures of the island of Britain. You know, later on,
you know this idea that Merlin or somebody else like cultivates these twelve treasures,
and the treasures are always items that are important to kind of like the
Bronze Age or like early Iron Age, civilization in some way. So I
mean, as for for for uh an example, that the the four treasures
of the two at the Don are the stone of fall. And I'm not
I'm not a kelp cissis. So if I'm mispronouncing some of these these old
Irish words, everybody, you're gonna have to forgive me. I'm sure I
know somebody out there, you know, Martin Shoff if nobody else will correct
me later. But uh so this is the uh the stone of fall is
the is the the stone that cries out beneath the king who takes the sovereignty
of Ireland. Right. And so it's like and this is something that shows
up again in lots of like even today, like like the Blarney Stone,
right, you have this this idea like this is of like this magical stone
which might be related to some like the later on the the later rail stuff
and the connection between the Grail and the Stone of Preparation in Jerusalem, which
we talked about earlier in the series. But this the stone that cries out
beneath the king who takes Ireland, like whoever's the high king? Right?
And so this is how you sort of know there's the uh and and and
each of these treasures, there are four treasures. Each of the treasures comes
from these four legendary islands called the four Jewels, that are like supposed to
be in the very north of the world. So, you know, his
you know, historians might try to like tie that to like the hebrides or
something like that. It doesn't really matter for our purposes, like for mythological
purposes. But the idea that there are these four islands, and each of
these four islands had this beautiful has this beautiful like city on it, and
the two of tadan As as powerful magicians or gods or whatever they are.
They when they come to Ireland, they come by the way. They don't
arrive on ships. They arrive on burning clouds right and invade the island,
and they bring with them they bring with them each of these four They bring
with them each of the you know, these four treasures, one from each
of the islands. So there's a stone of Fall, There's a spear of
lug. This is basically, you know, just an invincible weapon. There's
also a sword. No one ever escapes from it. Once it is drawn
from its sheath, nobody can resist it. And it glows like a bright
tort so like it's a magic sword probably you know, close to the original
magic sword basically, I mean, like as the idea of like a magical
sword that shines with light and that's completely irresistible. There's a ton of other
stuff downstream from this, like caliber and or ex caliber you know, art
King Arthur's sword and so on. Like there's a ton of there's a ton
of uh you know, examples of this all the way down to Tolkien,
right, But this idea of like a blade that shines brightly and that nothing
can resist is a very celtic idea. And then there's also a cauldron,
a magical cauldron which basically you know, produces unlimited amounts of food and drink
like this would. And this is like about half the magical items are that
kind of thing, like a horn of plenty or like a mystical molder or
something like that nowadays. A stone, a cauldron, a sword, and
a and a spear a spear, yes, yeah, very I mean like
very evocative, very kind of the word for this if but like the fundamental
things that you need for civilization, that's the idea here, right, because
the conflict between the two ep the Don and the Fomorians, is something like
the conflict between the gods of civilization versus the god like the Cathonic you know,
it's like the Olympians versus the Titans, right, it's that kind of
a thing, and or the Olympians versus the Giants. It's that kind of
a thing. And the interesting thing is that the Irish trace themselves to the
people who sided with the monsters, which is I think pretty awesome. So
the it says the fear of Bulk, who fight along with the Fomorians against
the TuEF the Don. And then later on the final group that comes,
and this is the group that the Irish, the medieval Irish, trace themselves
back to, is the Sons of mill Or the Milesians. And the sons
of mill Or the Milesians. They come from Spain. This is not like
an accident. By the way, Spain was Celtic. Uh. During the
you know, the ancient world, it was Celtic. Everybody remembered that,
by the way. Uh and uh and so he shows up uh so so
uh so so the sons of mill they show up at Ireland. Uh.
There's there's a ton of amazing stories. Uh, there's a ton of amazing
stories here, which we will maybe go into in the kind of a future
thing. There's there's a bunch of stories that I want to kind of abstract
it. But but most of the time, medieval Irish writing is like it's
just like sometimes just a wall of names and then like these little these little
like excerpts of story or these long poems things like that, and so it's,
uh, it's rather hard reading for modern people. And so what you
have to what I want to do reading numbers in the Bible. It's like
that, but worse. You know, maybe maybe maybe only because I grew
up with with with numbers, like and I grew up with this and and
so I'm used to it. But but yeah, it's like these like here's
a wall of names that you can pronounce anyway, and then somewhere at the
end of that wall of names you get a little, uh you get these
little like vignettes of like weird things that happen, like the Tua Don when
the Milesians are coming to Ireland and they're they're basically coming because they're they're they're
they're coming for a good Irish reason to do anything which is revenge, right,
And so they're there are they're headed towards Ireland, and the Tuta don
like they disguise the land to make it look like a like a pig swimming
in the in the ocean, and there's all this other stuff. Eventually they
fight these battles uh uh the oh and the they're the ones who basically invent
druid Is, like Druidic magic and Druidic just and things by the way,
And so they fight some battles and the Theta say we like like a three
day ceasefire, and then Mylesians say fine, they agree to it, and
so they say, and you have to wait like a certain number of hours
off the coast in a boat, right. And then while they're waiting off
coast in the boat for three days, the two did call up all these
storms and tried to kill them. But then the Harper, the main harper
of the Milesians, he sings a song that calms the storm, right,
and so then the two are like, all right, well, we can't
really we bet our broken piece. So they say we'll divide the land between
us and the uh the the Harper, I think, uh I think his
name is Aramon, but that might be wrong. I can't remember right now.
But he he They they all looked at him and they say, well,
this is he's the smartest guy. So he can he can divide the
land. And the idea is again, this guy is like a sort of
a bard in the Celtic tradition, right, And so they say, we
can. You can divide the land fairly between us, and so it's got
to be exactly even. You will take half and and they'll take half.
And he says, yeah, no problem at all for the Milesians. They
can have the upper world and the tu de don can have the underworld.
It's half and half. And so it was like a little bit of trickery
there. And so then the Tuta don all go down into like they go
into the sea, the she mound, they go into the earth, they
come into like the the other world. And that's that sort of like explains
why is Ireland the way that it is now? Right? Is that?
Uh? And so again it's there's something interesting to me about the Tua de
Don being associated so strongly with civilization and the sort of like the arts of
civilization, Right, what are the things that you need to found, uh
you know a civilization in the Middle Ages. Well, you need stones and
you need a king, and like the idea of a stone of kingship.
Those two things go together because who rules over the city, right, and
then you need you need weapons, and you need the ability to like provide
for feed everybody, right, even in their treasures like these are the fundamental
treasure of civilization. But then those are the those but then basically they get
like civilizations stolen from them by this trek and then they have to go down,
they have to go into the other world. Yeah. Interesting, I
mean it's interesting because in some ways this is the duality of civilization I think
is being represented very well here. Right, we have the same situation the
sort of Cain, which is it's reversed, but it's that Caine gets ejected
and it becomes a wanderer and then because of that then he found the city.
And so you have and you have this image right in antalocal mythology that
the idea of hiphestos or these underworld gods that are the origin of technology and
weapons and all of this stuff. So, you know, the the duality
of it might actually it might seem contradictory, and in some ways it is.
But it's contradictory in the sense that there's a relationship between you could say,
the underworld, the world world of death, and civilization because they play
off each other, right they they kind of they act as you know,
civilization is a way to prevent to protect ourselves from that world. So it's
not surprising that you find this this relationship at stories like that as well.
Yeah, so there's there's a lot of I mean this this particular work,
the Book of Invasions, which you can find art of online. It's kind
of hard to find out a full English translation, but is full of just
very strange, wonderful things that we haven't even talked about today because it's like
it's too much. But I will try to h for our next video.
What I'm going to try to do is to kind of exert these, you
know, like some vignettes so you get a so people get a sense of
the storytelling style and things like that. Actually a lot of it is just
poetry. It's about this guy and how famous his cows were, and you
know, stuff like that. So it's like this, this this sort of
thing maybe would be more important to you if you you know, like if
you like cattle, if that was your whole life, you know, But
what the interaction between the different So so is there this idea that all of
these people like the ape, the ape, dog headed apes and stuff like
that, like that they're still kind of lingering. Yeah, I mean,
so this is the this is the thing like that, Like some of these
earlier groups, like the Fearable, they'll come back later on in like the
Ulster cycle, which is like again that's like the big that's one of the
big main Irish mythological cycles. Like, so a lot of these groups will
come back, and as throughout later Irish and earlier Irish stories like you'll you
come across people who were like uh and it's it's is very kind of common
thing. One of the main stories that I want to look at in our
series on Ireland is going to be a book that's sometimes called The Colloquy of
the Ancients. This is a hugely important work of universal history. Basically,
it's a book that explains the place names in Ireland, why the places in
Ireland are called what they are. But actually it's a story about Saint Patrick
meeting and baptizing the last giant and then he travels around with him, and
the giant tells the stories of like, hey, what about this great and
by the way, I mean, this is really sad. I have I
had an extensive book of notes on the Colic by to be Ancients that I've
been studying for months and months and months, and it got left out in
the ring. Oh no, I was so sad. But anyway, it's
okay. I have most of it in my mind, but I'm working out
reconstructing my online for those videos. But we'll probably spend more than one on
it because it's it's got so many important details about kind of like early Indo
European civilization, and so many important details about how did Christians in Ireland where
they where they encountered the stuff in kind of a different way, like we've
talked about all along, like there's always what CSOs referred to as like a
Christian right and a Christian left, and the left is always trying to get
rid of things right, So that's actually the more extreme rigorous who are trying
to like urge all the paganism and everything, and there's a right that's like,
no, there's good stuff that we need to hang on to here and
most of the Irish, most of the Irish fell into the second category.
So they're always trying to figure out how to say things. But this is
actually it's dealt with explicitly in the story. We'll come back to this,
but I'll just tease it. In the story, Saint Patrick, everybody knows
Saint Patrick has two guardian angels, by the way, you know, like
maybe the rest of us only rate the one, but Patrick of Ireland,
the Salmon of Heaven, as he's called, he has two guardian angels,
by the way. This is awesome metathet but anyway, and so he's sitting
there and he's listening to basically the last Irish hero, the last Irish giant,
right telling. And he saw these guys, there's two of them.
He saw them coming towards him, like with a cloud of demons over them.
So like he baptizes them and all the demons go away, and then
they sit down to head dinner, and he says, you know, tell
me about like what was the greatest horse you ever saw? Or who was
the great who had the best talents back in the old days, and all
these different things. And at some point Patrick is like, maybe it's not
good for me to think about these things because it is keeping me from prayer.
And so he prays about this and as the Guardian angels come to them
and they basically tell them something to the effect of it's okay, all of
this stuff in this that's harmful is going to be forgotten. Wow. Right,
And so there's this idea that like the stuff that's like when it comes
into contact with Christianity, the stuff in paganism that's like that's like harmful or
it was a detrimental, it's going to be sort of like it'll be left
behind. But the stuff of the remnant. And again, this is what
this is really like the main idea in Irish you could say like Irish mythology
or folklore like whatever. I don't know, there's not a good name for
it actually, but let universe. That's why we've been using universal history.
But like the main idea at Irish universal history is the idea of the of
the remnant from whatever came before, like some before the flood, from the
previous civilization, right, and the way that that remnant carries forward and it
carries forward through the medium of story, right, it carries forward. It's
always it's always poets is always poetry, right, That's the thing that you
always when you sit down with like one of these people, if you were
ever, if you're ever, you know, like you run into you know,
a man who can change into a salmon and then into a hawk,
and he remembers the life before the flood. Dear listener, Like, if
you ever run into this guy, the thing you need to ask for is
the poetry. Yeah, you know, like you know what what who were
the great who had the seven greatest sounds of Ireland? Right? Who had
the best horse? Who had the you know, these are the kinds of
things that you want to know. And so that's what the that's what the
Colloquiy of the Elders of Ireland is. By the way, Martinshaw has done
an amazing retelling of it on his sub steck. Wow, we should really
have him on to talk about it. But he's done an amazing retelling of
it on the sect and of course like it's got this this fancy you know,
scholarly titled the Colloquiy of the Ancients, which he's readin into old men
talking, which is what it is, just old men talking and anyway.
So I have a question about these Do the Irish have a connection to Troy?
Did they, did they trace, did they develop that story? Or
they only have this idea that they are connected to people before the flood.
So the health of Britain have an explicit connection to Troy. And that's that's
the Brutus story that we talked about. Of course, that's we'll revisit again
in at least in this particular book, at least in the in the the
the Invasions of Ireland. There there is not an explicit connection to Troy.
There's there are there are other connections to see here. There are other connections
to kind of uh important locations in Italy but are not Italy in Western Europe,
mainly Spain and Egypt and Greece. But I think the idea is that
all of this is kind of like before that. Yeah, and it's interesting.
I find it so interesting, the whole Egyptian connection also because the the
Egypt really is considered in a lot of stories as the strange culture. Like
it's a strange culture, but it's also the oldest culture. It's the one
that is the is the oldest. It's like a it's somehow connected to like
pre flood world, and that sounds like it seems to be continuation of the
of the pre flood world. But they also is the one that's least connected
to all the others, and so it has this particular function. But interestingly
enough too, is that Irish monasticism seems to Egyptian. That's right. Yeah,
so this will be something that we're going to talk about in a future
video. But again to just tease it a little bit, the there's a
there are are lots of indications that the Christianity that came to the British Isles
and particularly to Ireland probably came from the Egyptian desert. And there's there's plausible
historical reasons this could have happened, and there's like different archaeological evidence as you
can point to. This kind of gets us into the messy world of talking
about Celtic Celtic Christianity, which, as I've said before, is kind of
a wax nose. People like to shape it into whatever they want it to
be. And yeah, so a lot of times, like it's like it's
just like shorthand for New Age. Yeah, and the things you have to
understand that's what they do with the egypt too. But yeah, yeah,
you're right, you're right that. But the thing you have to understand about
both Egyptian Christianity and then also Irish Christianity, and to me this is as
good evidence as anything that they're related, is that these are actually the most
hardcore, most rigorous versions of Christianity that existed in the in the the medieval
world. So I mean, as you know, for I mean, most
of the rigorous heresies basically come out of come out of the Egyptian desert or
you know, Britain Ireland, right, Like that's you know, it's like
I mean, Palagianism. People forget Pelagianism was a rigorous heresy, right and
bess Donatism, Like there are two opposites, but they're both, you know,
founded in this rigorism in Irish monasteries in the Middle Ages. Okay,
so just get a sense of how hardcore they were in Irish monasteries in the
Middle Ages. A newly baptized monk, so like they baptize you and they
make you a monk. So this is not just like a lay person like
you and me living the world, raising a family, an early baptized monk,
somebody's dedicated their entire life to like living the sasthetic experiences life of holiness,
was not even allowed to receive full communion in both kinds until three years
after they've been baptized. So like they were like really hardcore, like took
things really seriously. And I do plan like on doing four or five episodes,
and we're going to talk about mythological stuff, and then we're gonna talk
about the conversion of the British Isles. And one of the things that we'll
see is that this rigorism is one of the problems that the Celtic Church or
like that you could call it the British Church or the Irish Church at that
time. It's one of the problems that they ran into with the the the
Augustinian Mission when Santa Agustine of Canterbury comes to comes to England and he's there
and he's got basically let us from the pope that says we're gonna, you
know, let's reunify the whole church here in the British Isles. And the
British bishops were not into it at all. And and one of the reasons,
one of the reasons is that that that British Christianity had kind of taken
this sort of weird turn on its own and it had to be sort of
brought into line with the rest of the church, you know. And this
is symbol you know, symbolized by you know, the way they're doing the
taunture and also like the day the celebrity Easter and things like this, and
those things seem trivial to us in retrospect. You got to think about,
like if you put yourself in the place of a like a medieval pagan right,
you know, in the sixth century, and you see there's two groups
of people and they're all like, this group over here cuts their hair one
way, this group over here cuts their hair another way. And then you
see that the rights of initiation are different because the Celtic Church got to doing
baptism kind of weirdly talk about this, so the rights of initiation are different,
and they don't even have the same feast days, but they're not even
celebrating on the same day. You could be forgiven thinking these are two completely
different religions. I mean, why not you know, like you don't know
about all the like ecclesial politics and everything going on, and so anyway,
so that the Celtic Church actually got out of light. And this is this
is the other thing that I'll say is that you have to be very careful
ideal. Why taken the side of Rome in this question here? I mean,
I mean, I'll be up I'll just say up front, I do
take this light light light, like the sin of senative would be did what
it was supposed to do, like like like you know, they needed to
be like in line with the rest of the church as far as the date
of Pasca and under obedience. And the pope at the time was Pope Saint
Gregory the Great, who's you know, as as as bishops go, you
know, kind of wrote literally wrote the book on it. Actually, his
book on pastoral care was like the handbook for how to be a pastor in
the Middle Ages. So anyway, and of course he's he's very important in
our own Orthodox tradition. He wrote, uh, he's he's the he's the
person who is credited for writing down the liturgy of the presanctified gifts. So
and anyway, so all that to say all that to say, yeah,
I I I'm mentioning all of this because it's important that we don't over idealize,
uh that say, I'm getting ahead of myself on like two or three
videos at even even trying to talk about Ireland is like like yeah, like
it's just like it's one of those things where symbolism happens. Like even trying
to like make notes or make an outline and for today's video was just like
so impossible because I had all these little things kind of popping up as I
was trying to write. But the thing, the thing that I would say
is it's important not to when it comes to kill the Christianity things like that.
First of all, we know almost nothing about it because it didn't survive.
And the second thing is that it's important not to over idealize these things
of them because there is a kind of one of the things that comes with
the symbolism of being on the edge is that you are you do tend towards
certain kinds of extremes. Yeah, and those extremes are very often unhealthy.
But what's beautiful about it, what's what's really wonderful about it is its capacity
to preserve right so that you can have these these things like what's good from
the previous ages, even the celt the pagan past, like the things that
are good about that have this capacity to be carried forward in a way that
they weren't, for instance, in medieval France. And to pick something that's
at the center. Yeah, yeah, because medieval civilization is mostly French,
so give them their do there. So so maybe that's a good place to
think. So, I mean, it's a great introduction. Yeah, And
again I apologize that this is so scattered, like it is difficult to talk
about like it is. It is truly like there's partly because there's so much
material and it's just so all over the place. It's just all over the
place. But what I want to do in future videos is we're going to
do another video or two looking at some specific examples from Irish mythology. I
want to look at the and then look at the colloquy of the ancients,
and then introduce the Ulster cycle, which is like the big again, this
is like the like the Irish Iliad, and then uh and then after that
we'll move on to looking at the kind of the ways that the British Isles
were converted, starting with the which happened in like multiple happened multiple times,
like you know, Christianity, the religions and Ice they did it twice,
Like it's going to be there's going to be you know, there's like the
Celtic conversion, and then there's multiple waves for the Anglo Saxon conversion. And
I'm going to look at all of that in a lot of details. So
that's probably gonna be like five videos. So everybody just like, you know,
buckle and be patient. We're going to get to all of it,
and hopefully by the end you'll understand why I'm so terrified of talking about about
all of this stuff. But at the same time, like there's something about
it that that is really like like I said, I mean, there's something
about even the kitchen. There's something about even the kitch that's like really durable.
And you know, especially as Americans, when we so often don't have
a sense of where we're from or for who we are, I think that's
part of part of you know, the Celts as like the sort of the
perpetual underdogs and you know the only people who who have ever you know,
well not the only people, but like one of one of the few people
groups who have ever become famous through losing, you know, like like you
know, over and over again, you know. But there's something there's something
about that that that took root here in American soil, like very early on,
very early on. So my ancestors I on one side of the family
it's sort of like English Quakers, and the other side of the family it's
like Scotch Scotch Irish. And the funny story that I'll end with is that
when the Quakers were settling, they were settling too close to the the the
the Indians, the Native Americans. They were settling too post on the worse,
Quakers are pacifists and Native Americans less so and so and so they said,
what can we do about this? And so that's when you have these
massive waves of immigration from Ireland and Scotland coming and because what they figured out
was we could get all of these Scotch Irish. And there there's a group
called the Ulster Scots who are basically Scotts who settled in Ireland for a little
while and then came over to the US. And that's my family basically.
And they basically said we're going to get them to come and settle between US
and the Native of Americans between US, so that so that they I think,
we won't have to deal with it. And so you know, very
fast for us. That's basically why Appalachia here in the US, like,
that's why it is what it is, that's why it exists. And uh,
and we just got back from a trip through Appalachia, you know,
as a family. And and the the fun thing is that geologists will tell
you that that range of mountains is the same as the Scottish Islands, like
back when all the continents were all together. It's like one contiguous range ranch
of mountains that split off. And Appalachia is the that is deep place in
the United States where you can still run into ferries. Well that is the
best place to finish for sure. So I'm going to stop right there,
all right, everyone, And so get ready we're going to have several episodes
of the University and then I am definitely already crazy, guys. It's going
to be crazy, all right everyone. And so it was wonderful. Thanks
Richard again, thanks for taking us on these trips. I love it and
I know everybody else does, so thanks a lot. Yep. If you
enjoyed these videos and podcasts, Please go to the Symbolic world dot com website
and see how you can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers
with perks. There are apparel and books to purchase, So go to the
symbolic world dot com and thank you for your support.