DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

CORMAC’S ADVENTURE IN THE LAND OF PROMISE

In Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise, there is again a magic silver branch with three golden apples on it:–’One day, at dawn in May-time, Cormac, grandson of Conn, was alone on Múr Tea in Tara. He saw coming towards him a sedate (?), grey-headed warrior. . . . A branch of silver with three golden apples on his shoulder. Delight and amusement to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded, or women in child-bed, or folk in sickness, would fall asleep at the melody when that branch was shaken.’ And the warrior tells Cormac that he has come from a land where only truth is known, where there is ‘neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness’. On his promising the unknown warrior any three boons that he shall ask, Cormac is given the magic branch. The grey-headed (p. 341) warrior disappears suddenly; ‘and Cormac knew not whither he had gone.’

‘Cormac turned into the palace. The household marvelled at the branch. Cormac shook it at them, and cast them into slumber from that hour to the same time on the following day. At the end of a year the warrior comes into his meeting and asked of Cormac the consideration for his branch. “It shall be given,” says Cormac. “I will take [thy daughter] Ailbe to-day,” says the warrior. So he took the girl with him. The women of Tara utter three loud cries after the daughter of the king of Erin. But Cormac shook the branch at them, so that he banished grief from them all and cast them into sleep. That day month comes the warrior and takes with him Carpre Lifechair (the son of Cormac). Weeping and sorrow ceased not in Tara after the boy, and on that night no one therein ate or slept, and they were in grief and in exceeding gloom. But Cormac shook the branch at them, and they parted from [their] sorrow. The same warrior comes again. “What askest thou to-day?” says Cormac. “Thy wife,” saith he, “even Ethne the Longsided, daughter of Dunlang king of Leinster.” Then he takes away the woman with him.’ Thereupon Cormac follows the messenger, and all his people go with him. But ‘a great mist was brought upon them in the midst of the plain of the wall. Cormac found himself on a great plain alone’. It is the ‘Land of Promise’. Palaces of bronze, and houses of white silver thatched with white birds’ wings are there. ‘Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which are in the fountain sever them, and send their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than any music that [men] sing.’ 1 (p. 342)

Cormac having entered the fairy palace at the fountain beholds ‘the loveliest of the world’s women’. After she has been magically bathed, he bathes, and this, apparently, is symbolical of his purification in the Otherworld. Finally, at a feast, the warrior-messenger sings Cormac to sleep; and when Cormac awakes he sees beside him his wife and children, who had preceded him thither to the Land of Promise. The warrior-messenger who took them all is none other than the great god Manannan Mac Lir of the Tuatha De Danann.

There in the Otherworld, Cormac gains a magic cup of gold richly and wondrously wrought, which would break into three pieces if ‘three words of falsehood be spoken under it’, and the magic silver branch; and Manannan, as the god-initiator, says to Ireland’s high king:–’Take thy family then, and take the Cup that thou mayest have it for discerning between truth and falsehood. And thou shalt have the Branch for music and delight. And on the day that thou shalt die they all will be taken from thee. I am Manannan, son of Ler, king of the Land of Promise; and to see the Land of Promise was the reason I brought [thee] hither. . . . The fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is obtained (?). And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams. The folk of many arts are those who drink of them both.’

‘Now on the morrow morning, when Cormac arose, he found himself on the green of Tara, with his wife and his son and daughter, and having his Branch and his Cup. Now that was afterwards [called] “Cormac’s Cup”, and it used to distinguish between truth and falsehood with the Gael. Howbeit, as had been promised him [by Manannan], it remained not after Cormac’s death.’ 1

This beautiful tale evidently echoes in an extremely poetical and symbolical manner a very ancient Celtic initiation of a king and his family into the mystic cult of the mighty god Manannan, Son of the Sea. They enter the (p. 343) Otherworld in a trance state, and on waking are in Erin again, spiritually enriched. The Cup of Truth is probably the symbol of having gained knowledge of the Mystery of Life and Death, and the Branch, that of the Peace and Joy which comes to all who are truly Initiated; for to have passed from the realm of mortal existence to the Realm of the Dead, of the Fairy-Folk, of the Gods, and back again, with full human consciousness all the while, was equivalent to having gained the Philosopher’s Stone, the Elixir of Life, the Cup of Truth, and to having bathed in the Fountain of Eternal Youth which confers triumph over Death and unending happiness. Thus we may have here a Celtic poetical parallel to the initiatory journey of Aeneas to the Land of the Dead or Hades.

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