Celtic Love – Nothing Short of Epic!
We have a new movie out, “Tristan and Isolde.” And as a storyteller who sometimes portrays True Thomas the Rhymer, one of the first writers of the Tristan and Iseult story, it gladdens my heart. The story is pretty basic: A love triangle between a hero (Tristan of Cornwall) and a heroine (the Irish princess, Iseult) and the sad but noble King Mark of Cornwall. The story itself in the original forms is very long, and has lots of twists and hand-wringing moments that would do a Harlequin romance proud. Betrayal, angst, poisoning, mortal combat, dragons, clandestine meetings, and of course, near death due to miscommunication. There are many versions of it, including a Wagnerian opera. But in it’s earliest forms, a pretty darn good read.
I think it’s important to note that Thomas De Erceldoune (Thomas the Rhymer) was attributed to having wrote his version thirteen years before Chaucer started publishing his works, making Tristan and Iseult the first romance novel ever published in the (western) common tongue. The 12th Century “True Thomas””himself reportedly goes on to have a long standing love affair with the Queen of the Fay, and for all we know, it’s still going on today.
One of the things you notice when you read about “love done Celtic” is that it is… Epic. It’s no small thing when two people choose to get deranged with each other. Early writers and storytellers write love stories as if love is beautiful, terrible, and unstoppable. Love seems almost a curse. When Naoise meets Deirdre in the Tain, she commands or be-spells him to be her lover, and he lets out a wail that is heard miles away. Mind you, they are both gorgeous beautiful people and star-crossed from the beginning. Time and time again, you hear about Fionn Mac Cumhal losing his wife, Cuchullain falling in love with three different women and needing magical spells woven to forget the first two, Diarmuid and Grainne (ends badly). And of course, we have King Arthur and Guinevere, and we all know how that ended up. In the early days, getting smitten with love was a force of nature, akin to being hit freight train, and it usually ended badly.
Of course, we need to understand that love stories where they meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after would not make the most dramatic of recitings. But Celtic love affairs seem to have three hallmarks. First, the woman are usually not just trophies. In most cases, they have very strong agendas and strong wills to boot. To quote one of my favorite Celtic legendary women, Queen Medb, “I never had a man, but I had a man standing in his shadow.” Second, both parties are usually very beautiful and remarkable. Deirdre was, “the most beautiful woman in all of Ireland.” Naoise, her lover, has hair black as a ravens wing, skin as white as snow, and lips of scarlet. Third, they almost always end badly. Strangely, to this day, this has not seemed to slow many folks down.
Even the Fairie folk get in on the act. The problem is their version of love is usually deadly or, if not deadly, definitely weird. On the deadly side we have, for example, the Love Talker and the Leannen Sidhe. The Love Talker (also called a Gancomer) is usually a handsome lad, hanging out by a bridge with a pipe. He meets a girl, she immediately swoons, and she falls in love. And then she pines to death for the love of him. On the female side, we have the Lhiannan Sidhe. She is a type of deadly muse or psychic vampire. The fairies have long loved creative energy. In her case, she feeds on the creative process. Usually some poet, painter, or musician will meet some incredibly beautiful, mysterious lady, that his friends never get to meet. For the next two or three weeks, they go into creative overload, producing work after brilliant work, neglecting food, and pretty much everything else. At the end of the time, the artist passes away, and the Leannen Sidhe moves on to find another worthy person to inspire and feed on.
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In modern folk tradition, the love songs tend to be lighter than the old myths, with songs of courting, beauty, and humor. This is probably due to the fact that with the potato famines and forced immigrations, the now American Celts probably needed a break from the “traditional viewpoint” of love.
Modern culture gives us many good romantic leads in the Celtic mold, from Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson, to Sean Connery, John Wayne, and Maureen O’Hara.
Fortunately, while we Celts may get smitten by the “big pink hammer of love” and be willing to risk everything in its all consuming passion, chances are also good that we have through the centuries learned some moderation. With our natural gifts of passion, humor, conversation, and music, we’ve become champions of another romantic art. Flirting! And I think there are few that would deny that if flirting were an Olympic event, we Celts would own the gold. For those of you smitten with epic loves, may you be legendary, in the fact that you live through it. For those of us who are between epics, flirt madly, have fun, and enjoy life as only a true Celt can.
Blessings!