The Worth of an Epic

The Worth of an Epic

Wes Howard

12/15/2010

Bards have been entertaining audiences for millennia, and the most powerful piece in the performance arsenal of the bard was the epic poem. According to Webster, an epic is “a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero”[1]. This definition can be easily applied to the Iliad and the Táin Bó Cúailnge, poems from Greece and Ireland which center on the events of two legendary wars. The similarities continue farther than that for these two stories; both were obviously entertaining and exciting, both were designed to play to their audiences, both were reflective of their respective cultures, and it is because of these common elements that both were popular enough to survive for centuries in the oral tradition before being recorded on paper, and have continued to survive as classics.

In both the Greek and Irish traditions, the bard was required to maintain an immense amount of knowledge, since the bard performed songs in both cultures completely from memory. This meant that being a bard required years and years of practice and training, and could be quite a powerful profession. Bards were valuable to cultures and societies alike because they spread acts of repute across the land; many powerful individuals owed their reputations to the praises or satires of a poet. For these reasons, a bard was considered a very valuable commodity for any King’s court. In fact, in early medieval Ireland, a poet was considered to be of nemed status, which granted him privilege, rank, and honor price which could even equal that of a king[2]. There were several classes of poets, an in order to achieve the higher ranks of fili and ollamh, an individual had to study for many years and be raised in a family of poets. In Ireland at that time, the community was very self-sufficient, and people generally stayed in their own tuath for fear of violent repercussions from neighboring communities, but poets were allowed to freely cross boundaries between tuatha and kingdoms, spreading their poetry and song about the recent deeds of note from other lands. In addition to bringing word of the recent goings-on of the world, and with more relevance to this topic, the bards enjoyed the role of storyteller, which was a very important role in those times before more diverse methods of entertainment. It was through the need to entertain their audience that bards developed the epic poem, which came to have great cultural importance due to the prevalence and influence of the poet.

At the time, an epic poem was a device which would be instantly recognizable by many member of society, comparable to today’s pop culture iconography. Homer’s epics were often quoted by scholars and masters of rhetoric such as Socrates[3]. The fact that the epics, which are both hundreds of pages long in written form, survived through centuries of spoken-word transference is in itself testament to their cultural power and influence. In order for them to be remembered for so long, it was of course necessary that they be exciting.

The Táin is the story of a cattle raid, performed in prose rather than verse. While that may not sound as amazing or exciting as the Iliad, it is important to remember that this Irish epic follows the exploits of one Cú Chulainn, a teenage boy who single-handedly fights an army of thousands, halting their progress and killing countless men. The poem opens with a dispute between the High (most powerful) King of Ireland, Ailill, and his wife, Medb. The two are arguing over which of the two of them was better off before they married. This was actually a worthy argument in that culture; if an individual entered into a marriage as a member of a higher socioeconomic class than their spouse, they would have significantly more legal power to make decisions and to possess mutual goods should a divorce occur. They compared possessions, and found each other equal in everything save one; Ailill possessed an almost unnaturally magnificent and fertile bull named Finnbennach, which Medb simply could not match. There was a bull which could match or even surpass him, called the Donn Cúailnge, which Medb decided that she simply must have, but which was in the possession of the Ulsterman Dáire Mac Fiachna4. Naturally, when he refused to trade it to Medb, she decided to lead Connacht in a campaign against Ulster, the northernmost region of Ireland.[4]

The Ulstermen are in terrible shape to meet the men from Connacht on the field of battle. Not long before the lovers’ tiff, a curse had fallen over Ulster, which left all of the men of Ulster sick and unable to do battle. There was only one man immune to the curse; the teenage warrior Cú Chulainn. He rode out with no company save his charioteer Láeg, and waged a guerilla war against the men of Connacht, killing dozens of them, before holding his position at a certain ford. At this location, he was convinced by his foster-father? Fergus to only fight and kill members of the army in single combat, because Fergus and Medb were convinced that this would limit the number of casualties their men would sustain. Even with the implementation of this strategy, Cú Chulainn managed to hold off the army single-handedly for many months. He was even forced to fight his foster brother and best friend, Fer Diad, and the two were so evenly matched that Cú Chulainn only won by using his gae bolga, and after he won, he was too badly injured to continue. As he recovered, the men of Ulster who were recovered from the curse rose up and met the men of Connacht in combat, winning the battle but losing the bull Donn Cúailnge. The poem ends with Donn Cúailnge killing Finnbennach in single combat, then wandering the countryside before collapsing and dying of exhaustion.

The Iliad is the story of the last year of the legendary decade long Trojan War, fought outside the walls of Troy between an assembled army of Greeks under Agamemnon and the Trojan army under King Priam. The story goes that the war was started by a beautiful woman named Helen, said to be half divine, who was married to a Greek king named Menelaus. A prince of Troy named Paris fell madly in love with her, and she in turn fell madly in love with him. She left her husband, and the two of them fled to Troy together. They were followed by an entire army of Greeks, assembled from all the nations of Greece, led by dozens of heroes. The war goes back and forth for nine years, until a conflict arises between Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, and Achilles, the most powerful Greek warrior who ever lived. Agamemnon stole his favorite slave girl, so he refused to fight. Without his strength, the Trojans began to overwhelm the Greeks, driving them all the way back to their ships, and it seemed that an end to the war was finally in sight. The warrior’s cousin and closest companion, Patroclus, whom he had trained to fight, stole Achilles’ armor and weapons and led his soldiers, the Myrmidons, into battle. The rest of the Greeks rallied around their supposed leader, and successfully drove the Trojans back, almost to the walls of Troy. During the battle, Patroclus was slain by Hector in single combat. Achilles discovered what had happened, went to Troy, and killed Hector in a raging fury. The poem ends with the funeral of the Prince of Troy.

Obviously, both of these stories were very exciting when told properly. If they hadn’t been exciting, neither one of them would have survived as long as they did. If the Táin hadn’t been engaging to the audience, poets would have stopped telling it by the 11th century, because their audience would have lost interest, and they would have stopped being paid for their services. Likewise, if the people didn’t find the Iliad appealing, they would have stopped paying bards to sing it. A poet was responsible for more than just singing the praises of the noble or satirizing the unjust; the most important thing that a poet needed to do was entertain his audience. That was what separated a good poet from a bad one. According to the Irish law codes, because there are different classes of poet, a poet’s honor price was based off of a combination of his training and his skill.[5]

Additionally, both of these stories are made to be performed rather than read, in a fashion. What I mean by that is that when all the versions of both epics were compiled until there was a complete version of each yarn, it became apparent that each story made an effort to actively engage, and to a greater extent appeal to, potential differences in the audience. Each work of literature spends an inordinate amount of time listing individuals who were present at the battle which will be described, many of whom will have absolutely no significant role to play in the upcoming events. Half of the second book of the Iliad consists of a listing of all the princes and chiefs of both the Greeks and the Trojans, the regions they came from, and the quality and characteristics of the forces that they commanded. While some of these princes are chief players in the story to come, many are simply placeholders, seemingly there to preserve historical accuracy. In the Táin Bó Cúailnge, there are several instances in which an occurrence or happening is described simply to explain why the place at which it happened is currently called what it is. To a draw a more striking parallel, there is a passage near to the end of the epic, specifically in part XII, which describes all of the kings of Ulster (almost all of whom will not be mentioned later in the story) who rose up against the forces of Connacht, down to the details of the armor and equipment they wore. These passages, which are often painfully long, do little to advance the plot or the development of the principal characters whatsoever, so why do they exist?

Remember that bards and poets of both the ancient Greek and early medieval Irish cultures performed all of their pieces from memory, and that their livelihood depended on successfully entertaining their audience. It is a basic principle of perception that attention will be more focused on something when it is personally relevant to the viewer.5 Therefore, some people have suggested that rather than cite every king or every prince or every warrior that was present at the battle, the poet or bard might simply select a name from the list which would resonate with the audience, possibly an individual from that community. For example, instead of describing every one of the kings who followed Conchobar into battle against Medb, the poet might simply state “and so it was that among the men of Ulster, there was one Eoghan Mac Durthacht, King of this very land of Fernmag”[6]. The same would be said in Book 2 of the Iliad, where the bard might instead only mention the warriors of the land he is currently performing in, in addition to the principal players of the epic.

This tactic would be especially effective in Ireland, because Irish society at that time was so thoroughly based on familial ties. Binchy described early medieval as “familiar”[7]. Homes were too far apart from each other for families to not be a huge part of daily life. Family was everything at that time; Kingship was always passed within the derbfine, or extended family within four removals, and only the continued success of a family through three generations would enable a member of that family to move up to a higher socioeconomic class.[8] The basic idea was that for a family to move up in the world, the living memory of the community had to be such that the family had always been that successful. Because relatives were so close at that time, a reference to an ancestor in an epic poem would have had much more effect on an audience than it would today. In fact, it was probably a big contributing factor to the consistent popularity of the Táin throughout the Dark Ages.

There is a trend in the Táin Bó Cúailnge which does not appear in the Iliad; the explanation of place names. Dozens of times throughout the book, events occur at certain places, which are then named for those events. For example, after Donn Cúailnge killed Finnbennach, he wandered the countryside, creating six separate place names before he eventually collapsed of exhaustion.[9] Oftentimes, the event makes no difference in the story whatsoever, literally none. For example, we’ll use one of the place names created by the wandering Donn Cúailnge: “Then he went by the Midluachair Road to Cuib, where he used to dwell with the dry cows of Dáire, and he tore up the ground there. Hence the name Gort mBúraig, Trench Field.”[10] There are two possible reasons for this technique: the poet could be trying to explain common known Irish names using mythology, or he could be trying to engage the audience by making references to familiar landmarks. The first seems somewhat less likely, given that many Irish stories are concerned with conveying societal and moral guidelines than explanation, contrary to many other genres of myth, such as Aesop’s fables or Native American mythology. The second seems relatively likely, given the importance of the performer needing to relate to and appeal to his audience, as discussed above.

There is a definite difference between the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Iliad with regard to the number of references addressed to the audience. In all likelihood, this was because Greeks were more appreciative of art, and needed less additional motivation to enjoy a poetic performance. The Iliad is thought to have been composed sometime in the 8th century BC[11], in a time when Greece was coming out of the Dark Ages and art, poetry, and theater were becoming increasingly popular. In a time where different types of art were being expressed and explored, it must have been refreshing to return to the oldest art form of all – storytelling. Conversely, the entirety of Europe had just entered into the Dark Ages at the time when the Táin Bó Cúailnge was thought to have been composed. That is something of a misnomer, given that Ireland wasn’t a part of the general lack of cultural and technological progress during this time, but it didn’t develop too thoroughly as far as art forms. Therefore, it was important for poets to spice up the material they did have somewhat, to ensure it wouldn’t get too stale or familiar. This shows us one of the first differences between the Táin and the Iliad; the cultures from which they originated.