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The Dumb and the Stammerers in Early Irish History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Extract
Primitive peoples judge other races strictly by the yardstick of their own virtues and capacities. Those, who do not conform to their customs, are mad or stupid. Those, who cannot communicate with them, are dumb or have an impediment in their speech. If they are obliged to admit that the foreigner with all his defects can do certain things remarkably well, they are more likely to ascribe this to magic than to superior but distinctive capacities. When the newcomers are, like the Spaniards in the New World, the Europeans in the Pacific, so dazzlingly accomplished that it is hard to disparage them, the natives welcome them as supernatural beings more readily than as a more developed race of men. They will change their gods more willingly than their good opinion of themselves as the norm of humanity. The Greek word for people whom they could not understand was βὰρβαρoι or ‘stammerers’, the Russian word for the Teutons, with whom communication was difficult, was ‘nyemets’ or ‘dumb’. A variant of this word was used by all the other Slavonic peoples. Many less familiar instances of this practice could be collected. These names were retained for centuries after the idea that mankind was divided into many races equally but differently equipped had become familiar.
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- Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949
References
1 T. F. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology. p. 89.
2 Laud, 610 (printed in Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie, vm, 312 f.).
3 Cath Maige Lena, O’Curry 1855.
4 O’R., op, cit, p. 106.
5 Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece 11, p. 545.
6 Keating, Vol. 11, 165.
7 This interpretation of Labraid’s name need not exclude other meanings. In an earlier, less anthropomorphic stage of his development, he may well have been the Thunder-God, whose speech was thunder. He would be comparable to Meldos, the Thunder-bolt God, whom O’Rahilly believes to have been the tribal deity of the Meldi. op. cit. 53. ‘ In the Sick-bed of Cu-Chulainn ‘ (Cross and Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, p. 183) there is a fairy-king, Labraid of Mag Mell (O’R. derives Mell too from the root-word ‘ thunder-bolt ‘), whose chariot was heard rattling across the waters, portending to those that listened that his spirit was gloomy.
8 O’Rahilly, op.cit. 18.
9 Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae, Vol. i, 217. But O’Rahilly in The Two Patricks, suggests that Kieran and the other pre-Patrician saints were British. Even so, his cult would have come to Ossory through the Corcu Loigde.
10 Translation by Hennessy, quoted by J. Hogan (St. Ciaran of Ossory, p. 69). Whitley Stokes in a slightly different translation interprets the crucial phrase ‘ unsilently ‘, but ‘ balbdai ‘ means literally and primarily ‘ in a stuttering manner ‘. The translation Romish for ruamach is not now acceptable.
Carthach was the son of Aengus and Ethne the Horrible. He had a brother called Faelan Balbh, who is identical with St. Foelan Amlabhair. (See note 31).
11 See Ovid, Fasti 11, 583, for a similar antithesis, which might admit of a similar explanation. Muta, the mother of the Lares or household gods, whom the Romans adopted from the Etruscans, was a nymph, who talked too much and was struck dumb by Jupiter. The Lares, on the other hand, derived their name, according to Latin philologists from λαλ∊ιυ to speak.
12 Kenney, Sources for the Early History of Ireland, p. 481, dates bulk of glosses to Felire to nth century or later.
13 Y Cymmrodor, 12-14, p. 119. ‘On account of this maiden’, says the Druid, ‘her mother’s kindred shall seize the land on which they dwell. So they reared her on the flesh of little boys . . . little boys dreaded her ... so that she would grow quickly’.
14 The King of Ossory, Conchraid, also seems to have been on the verge of an entanglement with a Dessi princess, but he was saved from it by St. Ciaran. Plummer, V.S.H., I, 224.
15 Ridgeway, op. cit, Vol. 11, 101.
16 O’Rahilly, op. cit., p. 21.
17 op. cit., p. 18.
18 For the story see Y Cymmrodor, 12-14, p. 119.
19 V.S.H., 11, 51.
20 John O’Donovan, Ordnance Survey Letter on Kilkenny, quoted in Carrigan History of Ossory, IV, 98.
21 V.S.H., 11, 50.
22 Other saints of the Dál Mess Corb were Abban and Dagan and the Kevin group of saints, who were associated with Wicklow and Wexford.
23 O’Rahilly, op. cit. 27.
24 Carrigan, op. cit., IV, 248-9. For other dog and dolmen stories, see O. G. S. Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds. The same association occurs in Wales.
25 For hostility of Ui Duach of Ossory to St. Patrick see V.S.H. 1, 222, also Kilkenny Archae ological Journal, 1876, 191-3, and John O’ Dono van, K.A.J., 1849-51, 365. For hostility in South Ossory see Joyce’s Place-names, Vol. 11, 34.
26 For the several versions of this story see Father Shearman, K.A.J., 1876-8, 354.
27 Father John Ryan, S. J. (Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries, April, 1946) thinks that the Clann Connla, the rival dynasty of Ossory, returned permanently to power soon after Scanlan’s death, but this does not seem very probable from this anecdote, which implies that Scanlan had successors of his own blood. It is, of course, possible that the story is not told of Scanlan Mor but of another Scanlan of the Clann Connla ; in that case, the dynasty of stammerers would be Lagin, not Corcu Loigde. From the standpoint of the Goidels, both dynasties, being P-Celtic, would be equally difficult to follow.
28 The anecdote has a family resemblance to that of St. Moninne’s second name (see below).
29 She and Ladran and his fifteen other female companions curiously took the same route as the Dessi, going from Ard-ladran to Milledach. Ultimately Ladran died of ‘ female persecution ‘. Lebor Gabala, Irish Texts, n, 187, 191, 207.
30 O’Rahilly, op. cit., 485, derives the name from Da To, the dumb god.
31 Watson’s Celtic Place-names of Scotland.
32 V.S.H. 11, 369, cf. also Colla Menn, ancestor of the Mugdorni, a primitive tribe, one of whose septs was Papraige, therefore, supposedly, P-Celtic. Cf. also Moen MacEtna, a poet. O’R. op. cit. 103.
33 He was also Cian, the father of Lug. O’R. op. cit. 61, 103.
34 The attribute ‘ stammering ‘ may, of course, sometimes have derived from the intercourse of the Irish with foreign missionaries or other visitors, Romanized Celts perhaps from abroad. It is a double-edged word which can be used equally well by either party to the misunderstanding. In Irish monastic circles on the continent, the names Balbus and Balbulus seem once or twice at least to have been used as pseudonyms for foreigners. Kenney, op. cit. 568 and 596.
35 ‘Story of Mac Da Tho’s Pig, trans, by Kuno Meyer.
36 ‘Sickbed of Cu-chulain’, Cross and Slover, Ancient Irish Tales, p. 178.
37 See Kenney, op. cit. 427.
38 For divine words as an archaic survival, perhaps from an older race, see Leaf on Iliad. I. 403 and XX, 74. ôυ Ξάυθоυ καλέоυσι θ∊оί, ἄυδρ∊ς δέ Σκཱμαυδρоυ.
39 Keating, in, 216-221. Charles Autran, ‘Homère et les origines sacerdotales de l’épopée grecque’, p. 76, gives many instances of this, e.g. the Gaelic of Cornwall, replaced by Brythonic, survives in ‘ The Fairy Speech ‘. In Calabria till 1910 girls sang to the goddess in Albanian, an ancient local idiom, on July 27, the day of Santa Venere.
40 Felire of Aengus, Sep. 3. Martyrology of Donegal, Sep. 3.
41 V.S.H. I, 153.
42 V.S.H. I, 167 and II, 386.
43 V.S.H. I, 157.
44 Canon Carrigan’s History of Ossory is still an indispensable work but it is marred throughout by his too great refinement. For example, he averts his mind from the curious diet of small boys on which the Dessi nourished Ethne and writes, ‘Under their assiduous care, she grew up to become eminent for ability as well as beauty’. op. cit. 1, 29.