Eigse Paged 2004 - National University of Ireland

ENCOUNTER AT THE FORD 15
and the Celts appear generally to have conceived of rivers as goddesses.
14
Yet another significant element in the Cesair story, rendered
explicit in some of its versions, is that of the threat posed by the
women’s sexuality. Ladru, the first of the men to die, is said to have
succumbed to robanach ‘excessive womanising’, 15 and the second
recension of Lebor Gabála says that when Fintan retired to his cave
he ‘escaped, fleeing before all the women.’ 16 The most vivid evocation
of this dimension of the tale is to be found in two pages, written
in an unknown hand, preserved among the manuscript notes of the
Elizabethan scholar Meredith Hanmer. It must remain a matter of
speculation whether the writer had access to an older source
unknown to us, or whether his own imagination was stimulated by
the general outlines of the story. Like Lebor Gabála, he says that
Ladru was dissatisfied because he received one consort fewer than
the other two men when the women were divided. For what follows,
however, no close precedent can be cited.
The two others being wiser graunted him leaue to doe his will
with their owne parte of the women as often as he would, and
by meanes of that he dyed shortely after wardes and soone after
that, the second dyed, so that at last FIONNTAIN that survived
being affrayed to dye as his felowes thought with him self to
eschew the sight of all the women except the chiefest onely, &
calling hir aside told the secret of winde vnto hyr, which was
that she should flye away prively with him self & leaue the
company of the rest of the women for that if it were he should
be able to provide other necessarie thinges for them, it was
impossible for him to satisfie the lust of their bodyes, & consequently
desireth hir to keepe secretly this counsell from all the
women.
14
Thus Joseph Vendryes, La religion des Celtes ( 1 1948; 2 Spézet 1997) 49-50;
Bernhard Maier, Die Religion der Kelten: Götter – Mythen – Weltbild (Munich,
2001) 81. The Rhine (< *Rēnos; cf. Irish rian ‘sea, Rhine’) is the most conspicuous
example of a river to which Celts gave a masculine name.
15
This statement is already found in a poem by Gilla Coemáin (fl. 1072): text in LG
V 486 l. 3856. See the explanation of Ladru’s death, as coming do fhuráil banaich
‘from too much womanising’, in the second and third recensions ibid. II 188, 204; or
do dul chuca ‘from going to them’ in the poem Cethracha tráth don tur tind (ibid.
222 l. 817).
16
LG II 192: Élaid iarom Fintan for teched riana mnaíb uile. Cf. ibid. 206.