THE CATTLE RAID OF COOLEY

The central tale of the Ulster Cycle is the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cúailnge), which tells of the heroic single-handed defense of Ulster by the young Cú Chulainn. The men of Ireland, led by Ailill and Medb, attack Ulster in order to obtain the Brown Bull of Cúailnge (Cooley peninsula, Co. Louth). Cú Chulainn fends them off by engaging them in single combat, tragically slaying his beloved foster-brother Fer Diad in the process. The Bull is carried off and dies fighting against the White-Horned Bull (Finnbennach) of Connacht. A number of other tales, called foretales (remscéla), purport to explain the events that lead up to the Cattle Raid, although the connection between the foretales and the Cattle Raid is often tenuous. The reason for the inability of the Ulaid to defend themselves is given in the tale Ces Ulad “the debility of the Ulaid.” The otherworld woman Macha is forced to race against the king’s horses while heavily pregnant. She gives birth to twins on winning the race, and as she lies dying she curses the Ulstermen so that they will suffer the pangs of childbirth at times of greatest danger. The origin of the two bulls is explained in De Chophur in dá Muccida (“Of the generation of the two swineherds”). The swineherds of the title transform themselves into various animals to demonstrate their magical powers. When they take on the form of worms, they are swallowed by two cows that subsequently give birth to the two bulls. Another important prefatory tale is “The Exile of the Sons of Uisnech” (Longas macc nUisnig), which explains how various Ulster warriors, most notably Fergus mac Róich, went into exile in Connacht and so accompany Ailill and Medb on the Cattle Raid.

The earliest surviving version of the tale was compiled in the eleventh century from ninth-century material, and the earliest copy is preserved in Lebor na hUidre. This version has been heavily criticized for the lack of unity that results from the presence of different linguistic strata, doublets, variants, inconsistencies, and interpolations. However, the aim of the redactor was scholarly rather literary, and it has been suggested that he deliberately juxtaposed contradictory versions in an attempt to establish the historical facts. In the twelfth century, the tale was revised to produce a more consistent narrative, and this version is found in the Book of Leinster. The story was clearly known long before this, as it is referred to in three seventh-century poems: one attributed to the Morrígain, which is preserved in the Cattle Raid, Verba Scáthaige (“Scáthach’s words”), and a poem by Luccreth moccu Chérai. A later tradition attributes the “finding” of the story to the son of the seventh-century poet, Senchán Torpéist, who supposedly obtained it directly from Fergus mac Róich.

THE DEBILITY OF THE ULSTERMEN

Macha, daughter of Sainrith mac Imbaith, was the wife of Cruinniuc, an Ulster farmer. After Cruinniuc's first wife died, she appeared at his house and, without speaking, began acting as his wife. As long as they were together Cruinniuc's wealth increased. When he went to a festival organised by the king of Ulster, she warned him that she would only stay with him so long as he did not mention her to anyone, and he promised to say nothing. However, during a chariot race, he boasted that his wife could run faster than the king's horses. The king heard, and demanded she be brought to put her husband's boast to the test. Despite being heavily pregnant, she raced the horses and beat them, giving birth to twins on the finish line. Thereafter the capital of Ulster was called Emain Macha, or "Macha's twins". She cursed the men of Ulster to suffer her labour pains in the hour of their greatest need, which is why none of the Ulstermen but the semi-divine hero Cúchulainn were able to fight in the Táin Bó Cuailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley). This Macha is particularly associated with horses—it is perhaps significant that twin colts were born on the same day as Cúchulainn, and that one of his chariot-horses was called Liath Macha or "Macha's Grey"—and she is often compared with the Welsh mythological figure Rhiannon.

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PRIMAL HARMONY

There are still a few places in the world where one can sense what Earth was like before the advent of humans. In the aisles of a tropical rainforest, such as the one that flourishes by the Rio Napo in Peru, there are so many species of trees that often one has to walk some distance before finding the same one twice, and the variety of iridescent butterflies, mantises and other insects is incredible. In a cave under the coastal cliffs of Oregon, open to the breakers of the seemingly changeless ocean, the great sea lions bark clouds of steam above pools where mussels and anemones cling amid a constantly moving throng of crustaceans. At evening in springtime around a desert water hole in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona, bright flowers spice the air as bighorn sheep lower their heads and bats dive to the surface, drinking on the wing. Earth before mankind was a place of abundant biodiversity and of dynamic balance among species and elements.

An environmental history has to begin with the environment. There is a history of the environment before the human species evolved into its present form. Indeed, the appearance of Homo sapiens came only recently in the long story of the Earth’s geology and biology, a story to which many scientists apply the term “environmental history” in a broader sense.

What is the natural state of Earth? This is a question that must be answered before it is possible to understand how the human species relates to, and changes, the natural world. Some early ecologists argued that selected areas ought to be preserved from virtually all human disturbance to show how natural living systems operate when compared with areas that have suffered from various kinds of interference. While it is even more important today to preserve habitats for animal and plant species, it is also increasingly apparent that no place on Earth is really unaffected by human activity; none has escaped such widespread effects as air pollution, intensification in the acidity of precipitation, radioactive fallout, and the penetration of ultraviolet radiation due to the depletion of the ozone layer in the high atmosphere. This means that historians must look to evidence from the deep past to find out how nature operated without humankind, and use that as a baseline or control against which to judge the changes brought about since the beginning of human history.

Contemplating the immense age that Earth had reached before humans appeared may provide perspective. The planet condensed into its nearly spherical shape, seas and continents formed, the phyla of the animal and vegetable kingdoms evolved, and living species evolved ways of interacting with the physical matrix and with each other over hundreds of millions of years. The result was an ecological balance that sustained the conditions for life. Natural laws may, according to the new views of cosmological physics, change as the universe unfolds, but they do not apparently make exceptions for individuals or species. Humans, whose written history has spanned only the last few thousand years, must live within the conditions of the physical and biological universe and take careful account of the balance that is the natural state of Earth.

Ecological balance is dynamic, not static. It operates through change. It is not rest, but harmony in movement. It is not the stable condition of block resting on block in a pyramid, nor the unstable equilibrium of scales where a weight added on one side will bring one arm down and the other up, but the poise of an eagle flying, adjusting her wings to carry her body evenly through shifting currents of air. A living creature allows for changes that come from inner states and outer forces, adapting to sustain its life.

The idea that the Earth is a living organism is very ancient. Such was the intuitive understanding of the earliest people whose thought can be fathomed, the tribal hunters and farmers. They regarded Earth as a mother, and worshipped her as a goddess. Plato and other Greek philosophers maintained that the cosmos is alive, as we, who are among its constituent parts, are alive. In the twentieth century, the atmospheric chemist James Lovelock enunciated a theory that all life on Earth acts together like a great living organism to influence temperature, atmospheric composition, and other physical factors so as to maintain optimum conditions for itself. As the name for this organism, Lovelock selected “Gaia,” the Greek name for the goddess Earth. This idea, called the Gaia hypothesis, is a seminal concept, but should be used critically and carefully. In what sense is Earth alive?

When we look at Earth as an entire planet, it does seem to be alive. Time-lapse films taken from artificial satellites show the great cycles of weather systems streaming like the currents of cytoplasm in a cell. The seas also circulate. Geologists have detected a much slower recycling called plate tectonics, in which the renewal of the sea beds, welling up from under the crust and being swallowed millions of years later by subduction back to underworld places of melting heat, moves the continental masses, splitting and joining, in ever-changing patterns. These look like living processes, and although the seas are, so far as we know, a unique feature of Earth, roughly similar atmospheric patterns appear on Venus and Jupiter, while some of the moons of the outer planets show evidence of plate tectonics, and these bodies are almost certainly not alive in the same sense as Gaia.

It can be maintained with good reason that the entire planet is alive, that just as a body includes seemingly nonliving parts like bones and blood serum, so a living planet includes air, sea, and rocks. Ecological science shows us how animals and plants interact with each other and their environments, forming larger units called ecosystems. Through reproduction, the food chain, and the cycles of elements and energy, in an immensely complex set of relationships, species increase and decrease in number, but the ecosystem as a whole continues. In this sense, ecosystems are organisms, and Gaia, or the biosphere of Earth, is the largest ecosystem. This does not mean, however, that Gaia is an organism in just the same way that the human body is an organism. To explain this, one can look at the relationship between a single cell and the body. Both are alive, but the body is not just a large cell. The body is an immense community of living cells, related to one another in myriads of ways. The whole is greater than the sum of parts. Similarly, Gaia is a community that includes billions of living bodies, but the structure of that living community is much more complex than that of the body, as the structure of the body is more complex than that of the cell. The body is a somatic organism, but Gaia is an ecological organism. Thus defined, Gaia is much more than a metaphor. The physiological processes of Gaia are the interrelationships defined and studied by ecology.

It is possible to examine the natural state of Earth in realistic ecological terms. Though it was undeniably less polluted and more profuse in living things than today, Earth before humans was not a boring Eden. There were sudden and immense changes: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, forest fires, floods and droughts. The wounds left by these soon healed, as life, often finding the devastated areas enriched by mineral and organic deposits, reclaimed them in the stages of natural succession. Great changes were wrought by the working of the ecological processes themselves. The populations of some species built up cyclically to insupportable numbers, depleting their food supplies, and then suddenly declined. Some species became extinct while others evolved. There were those that, like beavers and termites, greatly altered their environments over large areas. But changes prepared the way for new forms of life. Life was sustainable and, above all, abundant. The air thronged with billions of birds, compared to which the present avian population is a sad remnant. The plains themselves must have seemed to move with herds of herbivores, followed by their predators. Schools of fish silvered the sea, while the great whales rejoiced in numbers unseen in more modern times. Even in the late twentieth century, one could still gain an idea of what the primal state of Earth was like by visiting the savannas of East Africa or bird colonies on isolated islands. Although these regions are still impressive, they have suffered diminution, and some degree of imagination is necessary to appreciate the abundance and diversity of life as it existed before humans evolved.

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INTO THE HAUNTED FOREST

The Travelers Stop Inn stands just off the main trade route on the fringe of the Arthfell Forest. While it does not lie within any particular community, it often becomes a small settlement in its own right when large caravans stop by and attract locals from the surrounding area to view the available wares. As such an important trade site, it falls within the jurisdiction of the nearby Shire of Elberwick and is policed by that district’s sheriff to ensure the peace is maintained and taxes are collected. Despite the Travelers Stop Inn’s long tenure in the area, locals tell of an even older inn deeper in the Arthfell Forest that once served a now-abandoned trade route from the north. Nothing has been heard of that inn or its occupants for several years.

The Forest King Narven ruled over the Arthfell more than two centuries ago. Devoted to a druidic faith, this arboreal kingdom left few traces upon the land when it collapsed in a bloody coup led by the peoples of the southern moors, who sought to embrace the civilization of the surrounding lands. The only survivor of the forest king’s family fled to the depths of the primeval forest after Narven was slain on the field of battle. Generations later, the last descendant of the forest king’s line, a druid named Willowroot, sought out the ancient battlefield where his ancestor fell. He hoped to recover five unique items that once belonged to Narven—the regalia carried into battle by the last forest king, crafted by his druid advisors and supposedly imbued with the elements of nature. These legendary elemental regalia of the king were known collectively as the Panoply of Narven. The panoply consisted of the breastplate of the sacred fire, the wand of earth’s ire, the codex of the firmament, the vial of pure water, and the spirit-staff of Narven. Five years ago, Willowroot succeeded in his quest and unearthed the panoply and chose to re-consecrate it back to the elements from which the items were formed, marking their locations on the monument he raised in remembrance of his ancestor.

After placing the other four items in appropriate shrines, Willowroot carried the spirit-staff to a small inn standing at the center of the Arthfell. The inn, called Spirit of the Wood, was originally founded by a half-satyr as a way to control the encroachment of civilization into the domain of the fey in the wake of the forest kingdom’s collapse, while maintaining friendly relations with the races who sought to pass through the wood. Unfortunately, when Willowroot arrived at the inn he found a band of goblin brigands attacking it. Willowroot called forth the powers of nature to defeat the attackers, summoning a wooden protector, but even its mighty power was insufficient to the task, and the goblins slaughtered the druid and his fey allies. Their sacrifice was not entirely in vain, however, and they managed to destroy all of the goblin raiders save one. This last goblin fled from the inn, terrified of the power of nature unleashed. For years he maintained a low profile and honed his latent magical ability. Along the way, he joined up with a group of mercenaries that he slowly manipulated into trusting him. Now, he is finally ready to return to the lost inn and reclaim the loot he was forced to leave behind.

LOUGH GUR

Irish mythological site.

This small LAKE in Co. Limerick, inhabited for almost 6,000 years, is surrounded by low hills, each of them connected with a goddess or god. Site of the largest extant STONE CIRCLE in Ireland, the Grange, the lake is believed to be an entrance to the OTHERWORLD, a belief common to Celtic lands where water was seen as the dividing line between this world and that of the FAIRIES.

The many legends connected with the lake emphasize a cycle of time, usually seven years. Each time that cycle passes, distinctive events occur. The lake empties of water, and passersby see a tree growing from its bottom, covered with a GREEN cloth; beneath it, a woman named TOICE BHREAN sits KNITTING. The goddess or fairy queen Áine is similarly seen at Lough Gur each time the seven-year cycle ends, as is her enchanted son GERÓID IARLA, born to her after her affair with Maurice, earl of Desmond, who saw her swimming in the form of a SWAN and stole her cloak in order to capture her. As with other such marriages, the groom was put under a taboo by the bride, in this case to show no surprise, no matter what their son might do. Maurice forgot himself when, at a banquet, the now-grown Geróid shrank himself into a tiny being and leaped into a bottle, then out again, resuming his regular size. The moment Maurice called out in amazement, Geróid disappeared into Lough Gur, appearing on its surface as a GOOSE. Every seven years, he emerges from his fairy residence on the island named for him, Garrod Island, and takes on human form as he leaves the lake. He rides a white horse and leads the WILD HUNT across the land.

Other legends tell of a FAIRY HOUSEKEEPER who appears on the chair-shaped ancient monument called the Suidheachan or “housekeeper’s seat” near the lake. The housekeeper once fell asleep when the dwarf harper, Áine’s brother FER Í, stole her COMB (a female anatomical symbol, suggesting the theft might have been a rape), whereupon the housekeeper cursed the CATTLE of the region as well as the dwarf. Fer Í returned the comb, but to no avail, for the CURSE held and he died. The housekeeper, or another fairy woman, is believed to “steal”—drown—a human in the lake waters once every seven years. The lands around the lake are believed to be the territory of the fairy race, who frequently kidnap children from its shores.

Sources: Carbery, Mary. The Farm by Lough Gur: The Story of Mary Fogarty. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937; Croker, T. Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. London: William Tegg, 1862, pp. 167 ff; Dames, Michael. Mythic Ireland. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, pp. 73 ff; Evans- Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Humanities Press, 1911, pp. 78–79, 81 ff.

BOMARZO: THE ART OF MELANCHOLY

Bomarzo, the most instantly recognizable of Italian gardens, is also the most untypical – indeed it is unique and impossible to categorize. Its weird monsters, giants, gaping mouths and lopsided architecture would seem more at home in the paintings of Salvador Dali or the pages of H.P. Lovecraft than in the peaceful countryside of the Latium. Located near Viterbo, the palace of Bomarzo, at the town of the same name, belonged to the Orsini family, and the garden was created by one of its most eccentric members, Vicino Orsini. Born in about 1516, Vicino grew into a colourful and talented young man who sired a number of illegitimate children before marrying in 1544 the beautiful noblewoman Guilia Farnese. He had a distinguished diplomatic and military career before being captured in battle in 1553 by the forces of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and held to ransom for three years. Orazio Farnese, his closest friend, was killed in the same battle, and shortly after he was freed from imprisonment his beloved young bride also died. In his grief he became a recluse and began obsessively to build one of the world’s most bizarre gardens.

Why did he create such an extraordinary place? The explanation may have something to do with his friend Cristoforo Madruzzo, a brilliant, worldly aristocrat and Church potentate who lived not far away in the palace of Bagnaia at the town of Soriano. Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, in an essay on Bomarzo, speculates that the two men entered into a kind of competition: Cristoforo Madruzzo set out to create at Bagnaia a garden of beauty, harmony and light, while Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo created one of gloom, disharmony and weirdness, reflecting his melancholy state of mind. However, I would suggest that the explanation is perhaps more complex. There are two opposite approaches to dealing with the condition of melancholy. One is to attempt to banish the melancholy by subjecting oneself to cheerful stimuli. The other is to do the opposite, namely to surround oneself with sad and gloomy things, thus giving oneself a kind of homeopathic dose of melancholy to stimulate a counter-reaction. As an example of the latter approach, the writer Colin Wilson has described how, as a young man, when he returned home from a tedious day’s work feeling depressed, he would retire to his bedroom and read the gloomiest poetry he could find. Inevitably, after a while he would begin to cheer up and be able to put the gloomy reading aside. This method was surely known to the Renaissance, and would provide a convincing explanation for Vicino’s creation of the Bomarzo garden.

It has also been claimed that the figures at Bomarzo, most of them carved out of natural pieces of rock on the site, are alchemical images. Vicino was deeply interested in alchemy and corresponded with the French alchemist Jean Drouet, and certainly a number of the figures could be given an alchemical interpretation. Others, however, appear to have no obvious connection with alchemy.

Probably the most penetrating and detailed study of Bomarzo and its creator is Horst Bredekamp’s Vicino Orsini und der heilige Wald von Bomarzo (Vicino Orisini and the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo), illustrated with wonderfully evocative photographs by Wolfram Janzer. Bredekamp sees much of the meaning of Bomarzo as lying in Vicino’s Epicurean world view, which led him to seek solace in sensual pleasure and the joys of nature and to rebel against the Counter- Reformation orthodoxy of his day by plunging into an extravagant world of the imagination, full of weird and bizarre images. Bredekamp also explains many of the features of Bomarzo as being intended to commemorate Guilia Farnese.

An interesting fictional treatment of Vicino’s life, written in the form of an autobiography and clearly based on thorough research, is the novel Bomarzo by the Argentinian writer Manuel Mujica Lainez. As Lainez portrays him, Vicino created the garden as a kind of inner portrait of himself, a ‘book in stone’, deliberately enigmatic. Writing of the rocks before they were carved, he says: ‘Each rock contained an enigma in its structure, and each of these enigmas was also a secret of my past and my character. I only had to uncover them, to strip each rock of the crust that covered its essential image.’

The approach to the garden of Bomarzo takes one first past two sphinxes, which underline the mysterious nature of what the visitor is about to see. An inscription on one of them reads:

TU CH’ENTRI QUI CON MENTE

PARTE A PARTE

ET DIMMI POI SE TANTE

MARAVIGLIE

SIEN FATTE PER INGANNO

O PUR PER ARTE.

(You who enter this place, observe it piece by piece and tell me afterwards whether so many marvels were created for deception or purely for art.)

Here the word ‘art’ could possibly be taken to mean the alchemical art.

Passing between the sphinxes the visitor comes to a small house, built deliberately so that it leans disconcertingly to one side. Bredekamp sees this as one of the memorials to Guilia Farnese. The pictorial source for the house he identifies as a contemporary emblem book by Achille Bocchi, where a similar leaning building signifies ‘a woman who, with great steadfastness during her husband’s absence at war, preserves the family house from collapse’. More strange images follow: a huge scowling face with a gaping mouth leading to a cave (perhaps the most famous of Bomarzo’s features), an androygne (possibly an alchemical image) being held upside down and ripped apart by a giant, a mermaid with two tails (again an image found in many alchemical treatises), a dragon attacking a deer, a giant tortoise carrying a globe surmounted by a female figure with a trumpet, and numerous other marvels.

Possibly the creation of the garden served many purposes – part memorial to Vicino’s deceased wife, part therapy for melancholy, part autobiography in stone, part collection of alchemical symbols, part mannerist experiment. The sculptures lay forgotten for centuries, gathering moss, until in the twentieth century they began to attract the attention of art historians, artists and writers. The writer Manuel Mujica Lainez has already been mentioned. The artists that the garden has inspired include Niki de Saint Phalle and the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, who incorporated some of its images into his paintings and who was once photographed holding a candle and talking to a white cat in the jaws of Bomarzo’s largest monster. The spectacle perhaps drew a wry smile from the ghost of Vicino Orsini.

Occult Symbols

Symbols are employed as tools to communicate the spiritual attributes of the New Age movement and the occult. And while most of these symbols are many centuries old, their meanings have remained the same. In fact, as the public extension of ancient occult teachings, the New Age movement has placed mystical symbolism squarely in the face of our modern culture.

What makes this especially disturbing is that while the "marks" of occultism can be found throughout society, yet we no longer recognize their spiritual implications. However, just because the average person doesn’t know the meaning of occult symbols, it in no way negates their significance. As Manly P. Hall stated, "They are centers of a mighty force, figures pregnant with an awful power…."

Occult symbols have never lost their meaning. Today, New Agers and practitioners of the occult still employ their use, just as mystics have throughout the ages.

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, "symbol" can be defined as "a mark or character taken as the conventional sign of some object, idea, function, or process." The New Age movement and the occult–which, in many ways, are one and the same–have greatly employed the use of symbolism. I find it disturbing that while the historical and contemporary "marks" of occultism can be found throughout our modern culture, we no longer recognize their spiritual significance. However, just because the average person no longer knows the meaning of occult symbols, it in no way negates their significance. The fact remains that these symbols have never lost their meaning, and occultists today still recognize their power and influence.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF PART OF THE NECROPOLIS OF MEMPHIS

(PYRAMIDS OF GIZA)

The temple lying next to the Sphinx had recently been cleared by Mariette, and Prisse had assumed it was a tomb. Actually, it was the valley temple of the pyramid of Khephren, linked to it by a causeway. In drawing this detailed map of the site of the Giza pyramids, Prisse seems to have been more interested in the temples at the foot of the pyramids, drawn as architectural ground plans, than the rest, drawn as an aerial view.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED

This painting shows an episode from the German poem the Nibelungenlied: King Etzel enters the city of Vienna on horseback.

The Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs) is the great story of the Burgundian people, who had settled in the city of Worms in the 5th century, and of their tragic fate. By the start of the 13th century, this tale has been immortalized as an epic poem, popular throughout the courts of Germany.

THE MARRIAGES OF SIEGFRIED AND GUNTHER

Siegfried, a knight from the city of Xanten on the lower Rhine, hears of the great beauty of Kriemhild, sister of the Burgundian king, Gunther, and decides to woo her. Upon his arrival in Worms, only Hagen, Gunther’s most powerful vassal, recognizes him, and relates his heroic deeds: Siegfried firstly won a great treasure from the Nibelungs (two princes and brothers named Schilbung and Nibelung), by slaying them. After taking the Tarnkappe (a cloak of darkness) from Alberich, the dwarven treasurer of the Nibelungs, he rose to become ruler of Nibelungland. Hagen also tells of how Siegfried had killed the dragon Fafnir and bathed in its blood, after which his body became invulnerable. (In fact he had only one vulnerable spot, between his shoulder blades, where a large leaf had rested on his skin as he was soaked in the dragon’s blood.)

King Gunther allows Siegfried to marry Kriemhild, on the condition that he helps him to gain the hand of Brünhild, the legendarily strong queen of Iceland. Siegfried agrees, and upon their arrival in Iceland, Brünhild is most disappointed that it is Gunther, instead of Siegfried, who has come to woo her. Nevertheless, she agrees to marry Gunther if he can best her in three contests of strength. With the use of the Tarnkappe, Siegfried manages to substitute himself for Gunther in the contest, and deceive Brünhild into thinking that Gunther has bested her. Returning to Worms, a double marriage is arranged: Gunther with Brünhild and Siegfried with Kriemhild. Of these four, only Brünhild is unhappy, since she is in love with Siegfried instead. Gunther’s marriage immediately hits difficulties, as his new wife overpowers him on their wedding night and hangs him up on the wall. Siegfried again helps Gunther, and takes his place in the bedchamber, overpowering and restraining Brünhild, so that Gunther can deflower her. Brünhild loses her great strength, which relied on her maidenhood. However Siegfried also takes Brünhild’s ring and girdle, and gifts them to Kriemhild. He returns home with his new wife, where he becomes king of the Nether Lands, and they live happily for ten years.

THE DEATH OF SIEGFRIED

In Worms, Brünhild remains unhappy in her marriage to Gunther, still unaware of how he cheated to gain her hand. Siegfried and Kriemhild return for a festival, at which Gunther treats him as an equal. Brünhild, however, thinks that Siegfried is a vassal of Gunther, and treats Kriemhild as her inferior, leading to a quarrel between the two queens. Kriemhild claims that Siegfried is braver and stronger than her brother Gunther, which she proves by revealing that it was Siegfried who had overpowered her in her bedchamber. She claims (wrongly) that it was Siegfried who had claimed her virginity, and reveals the belt and girdle. Brünhild is mortally embarrassed and Gunther has no choice but to confront Siegfried. Siegfried swears that he never claimed to be Brünhild’s first man, which Gunther accepts.

Brünhild’s humiliation lingers, and she conspires with Hagen (who is jealous of Siegfried’s wealth and prowess) to kill Siegfried. Hagen persuades Gunther, with reluctance, to agree. He then deceives Kriemhild and manages to learn of Siegfried’s sole weakness. Hagen goes on a hunt with Siegfried in the Odenwald, and challenges him to a race. As Siegfried quenches his thirst at a spring, Hagen seizes his javelin and thrusts it between Siegfried’s shoulder blades, his only weak spot, and slays him. Kriemhild is inconsolable at the death of her husband. At his funeral, as Hagen and Gunther move around the bier, Siegfried’s wounds run anew, revealing the traitors.

THE TREASURE OF THE NIBELUNGS

Kriemhild stays at Worms, and after three years she is eventually reconciled with her brother Gunther. He persuades her to bring the Nibelung treasure to Burgundy, to which she has a right, as Siegfried’s widow. Thus Kriemhild becomes fabulously wealthy, but her acts of generosity do not sit well with Hagen. Hagen also fears that she will use this money to raise an army to attack him. He therefore steals the treasure, and prevents Kriemhild from regaining it by sinking it in the Rhine. Gunther does not punish Hagen for this; apart from Hagen, he and his brothers are the only ones who know of where the hoard is sunk.

KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE

Some years later, Etzel (Attila), king of the Huns, decides to seek the hand of Kriemhild, who is still the most beautiful woman in the world. She is initially reluctant to marry a heathen, and she still mourns for Siegfried, yet she sees that the marriage will finally allow her to take revenge on Hagen. Etzel and Kriemhild marry in Vienna and travel to Etzelnburg, Etzel’s capital in Hungary. After winning the trust of her new husband’s vassals, she invites her brothers to a midsummer festival in Hungary, knowing that Hagen will also attend. Hagen however persuades Gunther to take an escort of a thousand armed men. In crossing the River Danube, Hagen encounters water sprites who warn him to turn back, foretelling that they are all doomed to die, bar one (a priest). Hagen tries to disprove the prophecy by murdering this priest, but he fails and the churchman escapes. Gunther and Hagen arrive at Etzel’s court but are given a cold reception by Kriemhild. After a day, fighting breaks out, and many Huns are killed. Gunther allows Kriemhild and Etzel, with his vassal Dietrich of Bern, to leave the hall.

Hagen foolishly taunts Etzel, and the battle is renewed. Dietrich manages to overpower and capture Gunther and Hagen, but honorably offers to return them safely to their home. Kriemhild, however, confronts the imprisoned Hagen, demanding the return of Siegfried’s treasure, in return for freedom to return to Burgundy. Hagen responds with mockery, so Kriemhild has Gunther beheaded, and brings his head to Hagen. Kriemhild again demands that he tell her the location of the treasure; when he refuses, she takes up Balmung (Siegfried’s sword) and decapitates him. Upon discovering the bodies of Gunther and Hagen, Hildebrand (Dietrich’s man-at-arms) retaliates by killing the queen. Thus the tale ends in tragedy with the death of all the leading participants, and the treasure of the Nibelungs remains lost.

Cian (Kian, Cian mac Cainte) Irish hero.

Balor

When BALOR, king of the FOMORIANS, was told that he would be killed by his grandson, he thought he could outwit the prophecy because his only daughter EITHNE was still a virgin. So he locked her in a high tower, where she would never meet a man and therefore never bear a child.

Balor proved his own undoing, for he coveted the magically abundant COW, the GLAS GHAIBHLEANN, which was in the keeping of Cian, a man from the mainland. Some tales say that Cian was the cow’s owner, while others say that he was merely the cowherd, the owner being a magical SMITH. Sailing over from his home on Tory Island, off the northwest coast of Ireland, Balor stole the cow and brought her back to his distant home. Unwilling to lose such a splendid beast, Cian went secretly across the waters, where he found a greater prize: the fair Eithne. Helped by a DRUID woman, BIRÓG, he decked himself in women’s clothes and took up residence in the tower, where he seduced Eithne. She gave birth to three sons, two of whom were drowned by their grandfather; the surviving child was the hero LUGH. In variants of the story, Cian is called Kian or MacInelly; he is also said to have impregnated Eithne’s other 12 handmaids, all of whom gave birth to SEALS.

In some stories, Cian is described as a son of the physician god, DIAN CÉCHT, which would make him one of the TUATHA DÉ DANANN, the people of the goddess DANU. He died when three brothers, the SONS OF TUIREANN, ambushed him because of enmity between Cian and their father. To his humiliation, he attempted to avoid the encounter with the armed warriors, turning himself into a PIG and pretending to scour the forest floor for acorns, but the brothers saw through the SHAPE-SHIFTING and turned themselves into DOGS to bring Cian down, only permitting him to return to human form just before death. The great earthwork called the Black Pig’s Dyke is said to be his petrified body or to have been dug by him while in pig form.