After the evening meal Cormac informed me that we were to attend the Comoradh as Filidh—the Gathering of Druids—and I would accompany them as cook and fire keeper. Gatherings of one sort or another were common enough, but this one was particularly important. “Every third year after Lughnasadh,” he said, “the filidh gather to hold trials of skill and feats of recitation. It lasts seven days, and druids from every part of Éire take part.”
“Lughnasadh?”
“It is the Festival of First Fruits,” he explained. “Have you never heard of it?”
“Never.” I told him that my father and grandfather would rather have had their tongues torn out than be seen creeping off to the forest to offer sacrifices to a heathen idol.
“Well, you need have no fear for your tongue. There will be no pagan sacrifices at the gathering.”
“I makes no difference to me,” I replied. “I am done with all that mumbling in the dark.”
He gave me that look of his he used whenever I said something he considered outlandish—a peculiar blend of interested yet abashed astonishment. “Would it surprise you to learn that there are but few pagans among the Learned Brotherhood?”
“Perhaps,” I replied, unimpressed by this revelation. “Truly, Cormac, I could not care less.”
“Keep your eyes open, Succat. You will see wonders to charm and amaze you.”
The next days were given to preparations for Lughnasadh, which the filidh would celebrate at the ráth with King Miliucc. As this did not involve me greatly, my chores continued much as before. I practiced making bread so that I would not forget all that Sionan had taught me. I enjoyed baking, because I thought of her while I worked the dough and tried thinking of ways by which I might sneak away with her.
“Prepare whatever provisions you think we will need,” instructed Datho. “It is a fair distance, remember, and we will require supplies for seven days once we arrive.”
“Of course, Ollamh,” I said. “But if I take that much, how are we to carry it?”
“The king will give us a horse or two if I ask.”
This echoed what Cormac had told me, but I wanted to be certain. “Ollamh,” I asked, “is it true that a king is bound to grant a druid’s request?”
“True?” he mused. “In what way do you mean?”
Trust a druid to turn a simple question into a philosophical inquisition. “Cormac told me that no king would refuse a druid anything he asked, so long as it was in the king’s power to grant. Is this the way of it, or have I misunderstood?”
“Kings receive their sovereignty through the authority of the filidh,” Datho explained. “Thus, for a king to refuse the request of a druid would be to renounce his own kingship. No king could do that and remain king; it would be an offense against nature. The realm and the tuatha would bear great suffering.”
As with much of what the filidh said, I did not understand the close-pared logic of his assertion. I accepted that it was so, however, and thanked him for enlightening me on this matter. Confirmed in my plan, I renewed my resolve to increase the druids’ indebtedness to me, so that when I asked Datho to request my freedom from the king, the chief druid would be more than happy to comply.
That night I made a fine supper for them, and the next day I helped Cormac and Iollan prepare for the Lughnasadh festival, which was, I learned, only the first of the two-part harvest observance. The second part took place at the conclusion of the harvest season and was called Alban Elved.
Of the two, Lughnasadh was much the more elaborate. There were sacred fires to be kindled, cattle to be blessed, ceremonies of earth and sky to be enacted; there was also dancing, feasting, drinking, and games of strength, cunning, and endurance. For many it was the most keenly anticipated festival of the year. For many, I say, but not for all.
“It is of course an important feis,” Cormac confided. He wrapped the special fire-making utensils in a piece of soft deerskin. “But there are those among the Learned who have come to despise the festival and think it should be abandoned.”
The way he said it made me ask, “Are you one of them?”
He considered his reply for a moment. “No,” he answered at last, “I do not despise it.” He tied a strap of thin leather around the bundle he had made. “But I think our people abuse a very ancient and holy rite and in their ignorance pervert what is good.”
My grandfather, never one to suppress his disapproval of the more popular pagan rites, might easily have said exactly the same thing. “If you think it perverse,” I suggested, “why not change it?”
Cormac frowned and straightened. “This is what some of the Brotherhood have been saying—that the rites have grown into a mockery and should be changed. I agree, but it is not so easy.”
“How not?” I asked. “You are the ones who control the festival.”
“No.” He shook his head. “We have no such authority. As always, the power of these rites derives from the belief of the people. If the filidh wish to change even the smallest feature of the observance, we must first change the hearts and minds of the people to accept a new way.”
“Then do that,” I said. The thing was perfectly simple after all.
Cormac shook his head again and chuckled. “And do you not think that is the very thing we are doing?”
“Well?”
“Only the most shallow-rooted weeds grow up overnight, Succat. You must know that. We are not about planting a weed which is here today and gone tomorrow. We are about growing a mighty yew under whose spreading limbs the land will shelter for all time.”
I heard in his voice something I had never heard before. Pride was there, certainly, and defiance, too—but also a quality I could not readily identify. For, despite hints and insinuations, great and small, which he had dropped from the very moment I first met him, he had never put a name to this mysterious group to which he obviously belonged. I sensed he was very close to doing this now, so I said, “You make it sound like the work of many hands, Cormac. Is anyone to help you with this great tree-planting work?”
“I am not alone, if that is what you mean.”
“No,” I told him, “that is not what I meant. But if you do not wish to tell me, I will understand.”
“But will you understand if I tell you?” He regarded me intently, his dark eyes weighing me against the worth of his secret.
“I can but try.”
“Within the ranks of the filidh,” he answered, “there are many who believe as I do, and our numbers are growing. We are the Ceile De,” he said, savoring the name with evident pride, “and one day soon our influence will stretch across Éire from one end of this island to the other.”
I accepted his assurance. “Ceile De,” I mused. “A good name. What does it mean?”
“I have said enough,” replied Cormac, tapping me on the chest with his finger. “The rest you must discover for yourself.”
TWENTY-TWO
THE FESTIVAL OF Lughnasadh is one of the more enjoyable of the many interminable and inexplicable celebrations the Irish perpetrate. There is food and drink and music, as at every celebration, combined with some extremely peculiar rites, the purpose of which I could not grasp: Queen Grania sprinkling beer over two young boys who were holding mice while the smiling king looked on, for example. In another, a harvest cart drawn by an ox and festooned with pine branches was paraded three times around the well, whereupon a great loaf of bread shaped like a maiden was pulled from the well and laid in the wagon bed; Cormac said that the maiden loaf would be kept in the king’s hall wrapped in one of the queen’s robes until the harvest was complete, and then it would be broken into pieces and distributed to each family.
The concluding ritual came when the ollamh produced a small golden knife shaped like a scythe and cut the first sheaf of grain. This was bundled, tied with a specially braided rope made of hair from the heads of all the women of the tuath, and carried in triumph to the ráth, where it was hung on a silver hook above the door to the king’s hall. Then the feasting
commenced, along with its attendant revel. Clothed like a druid, I passed among the people without incident or comment and found myself warming to the raucous proceedings immensely.
But all else paled in comparison to Sionan, for when the revel began in earnest, we crept away to the stables and a deserted stall. There, in the dry, sweet-smelling straw, we indulged ourselves in our own private celebration. I lost myself in her warm, delicious flesh and exulted in the way her body moved with mine. Sionan made love with zeal and an abandon which delighted even as it astonished; she provoked a passion in me to match her own and left me sweating and exhausted in her wake.
Spent with pleasure, we crept from the stable. No sooner had we rejoined the feast, however, than Cormac informed me that it was time for us to go. “So soon?” inquired Sionan, giving me a sideways glance.
“Might we stay just a little longer?” I asked.
“We leave for the council in the morning,” he replied, “and it is a long way to travel. Make your farewells and come along. The king has given us the use of a horse. Go to the stable and see that it is ready.”
With a last furtive kiss, I took my leave of Sionan and hurried off. The grooms, as I knew, were enjoying the feast like everyone else, and since there was no one about to tell me otherwise, I selected the finest-looking animal from among the three in the stable, slipped a simple halter around his neck, and led him out.
Cormac was waiting for me at the gate; the others had gone ahead. He nodded with satisfaction when he saw me, and then he turned and led the way out across the moonlit valley. We went back to the druid house for a too-brief sleep, and when sunrise was yet a distant rumor in the east, I rose and loaded our provisions onto the horse. We departed shortly after, walking through the still-dark forest—Iollan, Buinne, Cormac and myself with the horse, and Datho leading the way along paths I could not see: druid roads, Cormac called them, and he explained how these unseen pathways stretched through the land in an invisible web, connecting each of the five sacred realms of Éire: the northernmost lands of the Ulaidh, Mumhain in the south, western Connacht, Laighin in the east, and, in the center, little Mídhe, formed, it was said, of portions taken from all the others.
Mídhe, he told me, was our destination. By the time the sun was up, we were already well on our way.
As we went along, I observed what a fine and splendid land was Ireland, blessed with lush, low hills; wide, inviting meadows watered by gentle streams; and, everywhere, mature forests of oak and ash, beech and elm filled with wild pigs and deer. The clouds sailed through a clean, wind-scoured sky, and the fertile ground was warm beneath our feet.
“Tara,” Cormac continued, “is where the high king reigns.” Druids, as I say, cannot resist teaching anyone they suspect might be ignorant of one thing or another. They love nothing more than teasing the least triviality into a daylong lesson. “The Hill of Tara is the omphalos—the sacred center of the island.”
“Are we going to Tara, then?”
“No,” the big druid answered. “A small distance away from Tara is Cathair Bán, a temple of ancient origin, and that is where the gathering of bards takes place.”
“And will there be Ceile De at the gathering?”
Cormac’s lips twitched into a fleeting smile at my clumsy attempt to draw him out. “You shall see.”
We walked on, and he told me about the various orders of druids I might encounter in the days ahead. All filidh, he said, were students of history, medicine, law, and the hidden order of the natural world; in short, nothing passed beneath the gaze of a druid that did not in some way concern him. Kingship and its privileges and obligations, farming methods, trade between tribes and nations, the lineages of noble houses, philosophy, the movements of heavenly bodies, religious rites and observances—in all these things and more, they were masters.
Even so, not all filidh were equal. Within what they called the bardic orders were particular, sometimes subtle, distinctions. “Foremost among all druids are the fáidh,” Cormac told me; they were the most learned and accomplished of all, possessing great powers of mind—including the ability to control the natural elements and discern, through various means, the shape of forthcoming events. Next came the bards, those well skilled in recitation, song, and the power of the spoken word. These were followed by the druids themselves, who excelled in healing the ills and wounds of the body, whether in man or beast, and the ability to converse with the myriad inhabitants of this world and the Otherworld.
All filidh were bards, he said, but not all bards were fáidh. Nor was this all, for within the ranks were further divisions, mostly pertaining to the interests of the individual filidh. Some, for example, made it their habit to inquire into the mysteries of wind and rain and fog, while others delved into the properties, uses, and creation of fire, water, air, and light. Yet others charted the heavenly realm and everything in it, much as sailors chart the seas of the world, and still others gleaned the lore of plants and trees and animals and all living things.
In their perpetual quest for knowledge, the druids were indefatigable, searching everywhere for wisdom and sparing neither expense nor hardship in its acquisition. As a result, no obscure or hidden thing remained obscure or hidden from them very long, for they would pry and pry until they forced the object of their attention to yield up its secrets.
“Any king worthy of the name keeps at least one druid,” Cormac said. “The high king maintains nine. It would be a poor king indeed who had no bard to be his advisor.” The druid kind, he said, were held to be faithful and trustworthy beyond reckoning, and so were often called upon to act as judges in legal disputes and matters of justice. “The word of a filidh is to be trusted in all things concerning the kingdom and the protection of the tuath.”
This assertion put Cormac in a contemplative mood, and we gradually lapsed into a companionable silence. As for the others, Iollan held his own council, and Buinne ignored me with a stiff and ugly silence, for which I was grateful; I had no use for the rancorous lump and would sooner address a poison-spitting viper as talk to him. Thus, as the day progressed, I followed along, letting my thoughts flit where they would. Mostly I thought about Sionan, and experienced a delicious ache in the pit of my stomach whenever I brought her to mind.
The next day was much the same as the first. The pace was not demanding. Much to my relief, my strength held good—although I welcomed every stop and rested whenever I could. On the third day we passed Mhag Fál, and I saw Tara in the distance, the mounded hill crowned by its double-ringed timber palisade. We moved on, meeting a road that we followed for a time. “There are four roads in Éire,” Datho told me, “one to each of the four realms, joining at the Hill of Tara. They are sacred highways by which the king maintains the order of the land.”
We ascended a ridge of low hills and crossed over into a long, shallow valley through which a deep river pushed its sluggish way. “Behold!” said Datho. “The Boínn, Mother of Waters, nourisher of the land. And there”—he pointed to a low, rounded hill which seemed to rise from the river—“is Cathair Bán.”
Looking where he indicated, I saw only what appeared to be a smooth hump rising from the roundness of the hill. As we came closer, however, this unassuming hump slowly took on a more commanding aspect. We walked along the path beside the river, losing sight of our destination for a time, so that when at last we turned away from the river and started our ascent, I was surprised that the hill seemed to have grown inexplicably and that what had first appeared to be a lowly hump was in fact an enormous earthen mound. Two other, smaller earthworks stood a few hundred paces behind the first and, just below it on the right side, a tall, slender standing stone.
The sun-facing side of the mound was flattened and lined with course after course of spherical white stones rising to double the height of a man; black stone balls were set in among the white to form a loosely curved, rising pattern. In the center of this white expanse was a low, dark door, blocked by an enormous oval-shaped stone car
ved with curious swirls and spiral designs and laid sideways before the entrance.
“Where is the temple?” I asked, looking around.
“This,” said Cormac, indicating the hill and mound and standing stone altogether, “is the temple. As I say, it is very old.”
It looked like no holy edifice I had ever seen—with neither roof nor walls, open to the wind and sky. “Who built it?”
“The Tuatha DeDanaan,” explained Cormac as we slowly mounted the hill, where there were perhaps sixty or more filidh gathered in groups around the hilltop and standing stone. Ollamh Datho gave out a shout of greeting and hastened to join his friends.
The top of the hill was flattened and, on the ground a short distance in front of the entrance to the mound, a fire pit had been dug, and several pigs were roasting on spits over the flames. A number of women in green robes stood nearby talking among themselves while watching the men who were cooking the meat.
There were a fair number of younger children—boys and girls of no more than six or seven summers—running here and there, playing about the perimeter of the circular mound; others climbed to the top, where they shouted and pushed one another at the summit, filling the air with exuberant shrieks. Clearly they were enjoying the fine summer day; nevertheless their presence seemed incongruous to me, so I asked, “Why are there women and children here?”
“Women and children?” Puzzled, Cormac looked around, trying to determine what I meant. “Those women?” He lifted a respectful hand to them and said, “They are filidh. The children you see are filidh-to-be.” At my expression of disbelief, he chuckled. “Did you think only men could be druids, Succat? As for the young ones, there is much to learn before one can become a bard, so it is best to begin early, when the mind can be properly trained.”
The rest of the day was taken up with preparing a suitable camp for my filidh masters. Many of the druids had established their camps at the foot of the hill; I chose a place among these, unloaded the supplies, and led the horse to the river to drink. There were other servants watering their pack animals or fetching water for their masters, and I noticed that, unlike myself, they were not slaves. Indeed, there was not a slave collar to be seen anywhere.