Ritual Details of the Irish Horse Sacrifice in Betha ... - Clarkriley.com

338 David Fickett-Wilbar
site’s use as an inaugural mound in the sixteenth century,
Elizabeth Fitzpatrick considers it probable that it was used
in the late thirteenth century to inaugurate the Maguires.
In “Sgiath Gabhra” we therefore have an inauguration site
near the time and place of our story that includes the very
word I am suggesting the composer of BMD was confused
by. (Fitzpatrick herself (2001: 74) pondered the possibility
of a connection between Sgiath Gabhra and Gerald’s
sacrifice, but without the scene from BMD.)
The significance of our scene now becomes clear. In
the middle of a foundation legend cast in terms of an
inauguration ritual we find horses attached to a tree with
the name “Oak of the White Mare,” a clockwise/eastward
turning, a declaration of lordship, the detaching of the
horses, and their death by drowning, near an inaugural
mound called “Fort /Shield of the White Mare.” And all of
this not only not far from the Kinellcunill of Gerald’s horse
sacrifice, but in a territory ruled by a single king at least as
early as 1333, only slightly over a century after Gerald
(Annals of Connacht 1333.3).
Gerald’s sacrifice can be outlined thus:
A. A white mare is brought forward.
B. Among the assembly.
C. The king professes himself a beast.
D. The King has intercourse with the mare.
E. The mare is killed.
F. The mare is butchered and its meat boiled.
G. The king bathes in the broth, surrounded by his
people.
H. The king and his people eat the horse meat.
I. The king drinks from the broth with neither a cup
nor his hands.
Our story can be dropped into Gerald’s almost
seamlessly, producing this ritual sequence:
1. A ritual fire is lit.
A. A white mare (or mares) is brought forward.
B. Among the assembly.
2. There is a chariot “race”
3. to an oak tree with the name “oak of the white
mare.”
The Journal of Indo-European Studies