Nellie Curtin : Irish myth "Culture and psychic structure"

In the closing paragraph of the Wolfman analysis Freud refers to two problems which he says deserve special emphasis.  They are what he calls ‘the phylogenetically inherited schemata’[1] and a ‘primitive kind of mental activity’ which he compares to the ‘the instinctive knowledge of animals.’[2]  He gives a warning also: ‘I consider that they are only admissible when psychoanalysis strictly observes the correct order of precedence, and after forcing its way through the strata of what has been acquired by the individual, comes at last upon traces of what has been inherited.’[3]  While paying heed to his counsel about the primacy of the individual’s experience in psychoanalysis, it seems worthwhile to reflect on this psychological factor which he  considers significant.

Freud wrote Totem and Taboo in 1913 while he was still treating the Wolfman. He was on the one hand elaborating the complex theory of infantile sexuality based on this analysis and at the same uncovering lessons from social anthropology. In his study of anthropology he noted the comparison between the obsessional neurotic symptoms with those of collective observances of a tribe.

In the Wolfman case, as a child he becomes frightened of wolves.  In the course of the analysis, it becomes clear that the wolf was undoubtedly his father.  The fear also disguised his homosexual feelings for his father.  Freud maintains the elimination of the primal father has left ineradicable traces in the history of humanity.  The beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus Complex and that same complex constitutes the nucleus of all neuroses.  By suggesting that the original story of the primal horde involved the murder of the Father, he is postulating a cultural counterpoint  to the Oedipal Complex.

In relation to other stages of infantile sexuality he suggest different cultural counterparts – that the preoedipal stage reflects the Minoan Era, the oral stage is described as cannibalistic.  And in the Wolfman he introduces the primal scene.

All societies have stories of their origins, of changes in their culture, how they prioritize their social and economic life.  The establishment  of the incest taboo corresponds to a major cultural shift, moving towards exogamy and all that this entails in terms of social and economic organization as well as regulation of sexual relationships.  However, the existence of incestuous groupings preceded this development.  Just as vestiges of the murder of the Primal Father continue to exist in history, so also must traces of the primal scene from an endogamus era.  It seems this is evident in myths and stories.  Many stories in Irish mythology include descriptions of seasonal feasts.  Bealtine celebrations at the beginning of Summer included fertility rites.  One of these was called the Bainis – it was the inauguration of the King – not a coronation.  It means a symbolic mating with the land or the goddess of the land.

The stories from Irish prehistory are sometimes difficult to figure out because they include layers of cultures and eras that overlap and stories from the distant past that were never recorded.  One such story is that entitled ‘Altram tige dá Medar (The Fosterage of the House of the Two Goblets).[4]  It is not as ancient as the Táin Bó Cuailgne but like the Táin was very likely written by a monastic scribe who includes a layer of Christian theology.

The story is contained in a fourteenth century manuscript known as the Book of Fermoy and there is only one version of the story.  However, it seems it has its origin in a much older story and several overlaps of history and prehistory can be uncovered.  It is said to be an account of a cultural transition, the transition from druidic religion to the Christian era.  It’s a very long story and the version that follows is greatly abbreviated.

At the outset we are given a political and social context referring back to the genealogy of the then High King of Ireland whose name was Erimon, Son of Mil.  According to this story Erimon defeated the supernatural race, the Tuatha Dé Danann at Tailtiu.  He enlisted Manannán Mac Lir to get them reorganized and consigned them to the underground, the Sí-mounds, hollow hills, around the country. Though defeated, good relationships existed between the supernatural race and humans.

The most famous of these underground places was Brú Na Bóinne where Ealcmar was in charge.  Aengus Og, son of Dagda, the father God, was fostered in the Brú. The story goes that Ealcmar invited Manannán from Isle of Man for a great feast but when he arrived he put a curse on Ealcmar and ordered him to be evicted and put Aengus in charge.  Among those banished with Ealcmar were his head steward, Dichu and his wife and son.  All this happened in the context of a seasonal feast in Brú Na Bóinne at which Manannán was the chief guest.  Subsequently, Dichu, who had been banished, was received back to the Brú along with his wife who was pregnant.  She gave birth to a daughter named Eithne. At the same time Manannán’s wife gave birth to a daughter in the Isle of Man, named Curcóg.  Eithne means kernel.  Curcóg means beehive.

Both were placed in Aengus’ foster care. Eithne was one of maidens attending Curcóg.  But Eithne excelled all the women folk of Curcóg’s grianan in her charm and in her modesty and of all the maidens she was dearest to Aengus.

In this story, the Tuatha Dé Danann enjoyed three magical characteristics:

a)      The Feth Fiada – a mist of invisibility  which meant they could not be seen by humans.

b)      The Muca Mhanannáin – the swine of Manannán: these pigs if killed today were alive again tomorrow, so there was no shortage of food.

c)      The Fleadh Goibhnean – the wine of Goibhniu which conferred eternal youth – so there was no death.  This was Tír-na- nÓg.

Curcóg and Eithne lived in this mystical environment in Brugha na Bóinne.  Because of the fame of the women folk at the Brugha many nobles came visiting from other Sí-mounds, among them one called Fionnbarr Meadha, a son of the Dagda and brother of Aengus.  The women were brought into his presence and he looked intently at Eithne: he referred to her as the gentle stately swan but he also named her “Suí salach” – translated “heel-sitting”, and also as “dirty seat”.[5]   There is a lot of debate about what this means but it was an insult or a curse.  And Eithne reacted quite strongly ‘her face became white and red and she went sorrowfully, wet-cheeked, flaming in countenance to the grianán in which she dwelt.’[6]

There followed a feast – all ate and drank and were merry except for Eithne.  Aengus, Fionnbarr Meadha and Curcóg pleaded with her to partake of the food but she refused.  Fionnbarr left after three days but Eithne continued her fast.  She had lost her taste for the food of the Tuatha Dé Danann – Muca Mhanannáin.

Aengus was at his wits end and eventually offered Eithne the milk of the dún Cow – one of two very special cows, (the other being the speckled cow which Manannán had in the Isle of Man).  She milked the cow herself and drank the milk for every meal – and it tasted of honey and wine.

Eithne’s refusal to take food was upsetting Aengus and he consulted druids and magicians everywhere but to no avail.  Even Manannán who was renowned for his remedies could not find a solution.  He did however come up with an explanation.  ‘When Fionbarr Meadha gave  the insult to the maiden her accompanying demon left her and she parted from her magic.  Instead an angelic spirit came into her that does not let our food into her body.  She is not of our people and she will worship the one true God’.[7]  So Manannán gives a theological as well as a cultural explanation of what was happening.

This story is then picked up in a different era – a thousand years later – the time of Laoghaire.  In the meantime, during all these hundreds of years Eithne continued to drink the milk of the dún Cow which she herself milked in a golden mether  and refused the food of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

The time of Laoghaire was the time when the Tailginn came to Ireland.  Eithne, Curcóg and her women folk are still in Bru na Bóinne.  It is Summertime and on one occasion they are out on the lawn and decide to go for a swim in the Boyne.  Afterwards when they had left the river Eithne did not notice that her companions had left:   she could not see them.  She had lost another trait of the Tuatha Dé Danann – the Feth Fiada, the cloak of invisibility, had departed from her:  she was no longer invisible.  She went looking for her companions and could not find them.  As she walked along the banks of the Boyne she came across a cleric, named Ceasán.  He was reading from a book of Psalms.  He introduced himself as being of God’s people and of Patrick.  Eithne said:  ‘I have been of the Tuatha Dé Danann until now but in future you and I will be of the same people.”[8]  She asked for a lesson in the psalter which she learned to read without delay.

When it came to mealtime the cleric caught an unusually big salmon which they cooked and ate.  Eating of the salmon – a different food to the Muca Mhanannáin of the Tuatha Dé Danann – was a   significant step.

Meanwhile up at the Brugha there was consternation because Eithne could not be found.  Aengus goes off on his horse with Curcóg and they search all over Ireland for her.

Eventually they find her at the oratory door with the cleric, they see her across the river.  They plead with her to return.  Sorrowfully she chooses to remain.  The cleric tries to convert Aengus but he’s not interested and decides to return to the Brugha without Eithne. He is heartbroken, as is Eithne. Aengus and his people gave a heartrending cry, lamenting Eithne. When she heard it ‘her heart leapt in her bosom and a pang of woe passed from one breast to the other’.  She subsequently became ill and after two weeks she knew she was going to die.  And she repeated, ‘though I am of the Tuatha De Danann, I am not one of them’.[9]  She died and with death she lost the third gift of the Tuatha Dé Danann – Fleadh Goibhnean, immortality. 

Marion Dean states that ‘Ancient and modern social contract theory have in common the recognition of the need to have an origin story that appears to move in the direction of chronological time.  It implies a before and an after that are separated by a crucial date or action…  the moment of transition.’[10] 

The author of the Fosterage story is describing a cultural transition.  Within it are references to older stories and transitions.  The Feast for Manannán was very likely a Bealtine feast – or a bainis and Curcóg was born as a result of a mating ritual, as was Eithne.  As said already the phrase “Bainis Rí” is used to describe the inauguration of a King – it means “the wedding of the King” or the “woman –sleeping of the King”.  This ritual continued even into Christian time.  Some sexual practises survived into the nineteenth century and it was believed these rituals would facilitate the fertility of the soil.  The highly sexualized nature of the ancient religion is to be expected from a people close to the land and dependent on the fertility of humans and animals as well as the soil.

All of this sounds primal.  Freud was hesitant about introducing the notion of the primal scene.   In the analysis of the Wolfman, he invites the reader to join him ‘in adopting a provisional belief in the reality of the scene’.[11]  He proceeds to study ‘the relations between this primal scene and the patient’s dream, his symptoms and the history of his life’.[12]  He establishes that ‘it was not only a single sexual current that started from the primal scene, but a whole set of them that his sexual life was positively splintered by it.’[13]

The impact of his early experience surfaces in various ways throughout the detailed analysis.  Freud repeatedly puts it in context.  At age one and a half the child receives an impression to which he is unable to react adequately.  He has a certain understanding of it at the age of four but it is only in analysing as an adult that he can make sense of it retrospectively.  He emphasises the child’s confused perceptions of the sexual act.  He also says that scenes from infancy are not reproduced as recollections but as products of construction.  For him, the phylogenetic disposition can be seen at work behind the ontogenetic process.

In Totem and Taboo Freud comes to the conclusion that we all carry phylogenetic memories within us, which undoubtedly has a part in producing the construction.  This concurs with Levi Straus’s view that the origin of society is in the individual psyche.  These archaic memories would include the incest taboo, the primal father, the primal scene, the Oedipus Complex – memories which are passed on in our psyche from one generation to the next, though as yet we cannot explain how this occurs.

So much about myth and culture; what has psychoanalysis to say about Eithne?

She lives in the Brugha and is handmaid to Curcóg.  Curcóg is the daughter of a powerful God, Manannán.  Aengus the foster father is son of the father-God, the Dagda.  Eithne is the daughter of Dichu, the Steward at the Brugha.  She is described as the maiden ‘who excelled them all in form and charm and modesty.  No one ever saw her but gave his soul’s love to her and she was dearest to Aengus of the maidens.’[14]  

What happened for Eithne when she was insulted by Fionnbarr Meadha when she was called “suí salach” – “dirty seat/dirty buttocks”?   Her refusal to take food was immediate and persistent.  It seems the insult evoked a repressed trauma associated with weaning that made it impossible for her to come to terms with later psychic crises.  Lacan says ‘The weaning complex is the most primitive in psychic development - the one that must come to terms with all the complexes that come later’.[15]

We know nothing of Eithne’s early childhood or how long she lived with her mother before being fostered.  Lacan emphasizes the role of the mother and the imago of the maternal breast.  He says ‘It is the refusal of weaning that gives the complex its positive basis as the imago of the nursing relationship that it tends to re-establish.’[16]  Eithne eventually drinks the milk of the dun cow which she herself milks and which tastes of honey and wine – her way of re-establishing the nursing relationship where she remains.

Can this be referred to as the birth of an oral subject?  Gerard Amiel describes the anorexic as ‘someone who refuses the oral demand to construct on that orality something of an oral desire’.[17]  Perhaps becoming visible could have possibilities for Eithne in terms of desire.  She meets Ceasán, the cleric; she learns to read, she eats the salmon.  But within two weeks she dies. She could stay alive in an oral way of being but having entered into culture, she dies: is it that she cannot survive the symbolic? This bears out Lacan’s position that ‘The imago must be sublimated so that new relationships can be introduced with the social group and new complexes integrated into the psyche.  To the extent that it resists these new exigencies…the imago which is salutary in its origins becomes death bearing.’ [18]  The stories in Irish mythology conceal and reveal cultural advances and corresponding rituals.  The changes take place through limits in the same way that individual psychological development progresses or not through limits.

In the Eithne story one of the things that Patrick in his very long eulogy says at Eithne’s funeral is: ‘if you tell this story to the captives of Ireland, it will be the same as if were opened their locks and their bonds’.[19]  There is still a lot to be unlocked in this story, but there are hints as to what the “kernel” is about.

Nellie Curtin

Address for Correspondence:  nellie.curtin@yahoo.ie