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Cúchulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhall were Comets!
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In a new book by Patrick McCafferty and Mike Baillie (The Celtic Gods, published by Tempus), the authors make the startling claim that many characters in myth, such as Cúchulainn, Lugh, and even King Arthur and Beowulf were in fact comets that appeared in the sky over Ireland, and made their way into our myths. At first glance, this seems like a bizarre and rather ridiculous suggestion: how on earth could a young hurley-playing lad like Cúchulainn possibly be a comet? How could a comet possibly be mistaken for Arthur, now thought by historians to be simply a local hero in post-Roman Britain?
Like many characters in myth, the stories about Lugh, Cúchulainn, Fionn and Arthur portray super-humans, men with human desires and failings and extraordinary, unnatural abilities. Their amazing abilities have led some scholars to conclude that these characters were once gods, perhaps sun-gods, who were turned into human characters after the arrival of Christianity. On the other hand, historians generally take the attitude that at the heart of the tales lie the life of a human, whose deeds are so exaggerated after death that they sound almost god-like. The authors of this new book take a completely different approach: they argue that the characters were in the sky, not on earth, that they became portrayed as human by the society scared by what was happening, and that the myths are, in fact, real records of events that were seen to happen by people on the ground.
Their explanation goes something like this: once upon a time, a large comet, made of ice, rock, dust and organic chemicals, left its orbit, way beyond planet Pluto, and went on a journey towards the sun. As it reached the inner solar system, its surface started to heat up and give off jets of gas and dust. This gas and dust was caught by the solar wind and streamed behind the comet, forming an immense and beautiful tail. The comet came close enough to the planets to have its orbit changed – and it ended up travelling around the sun on a 3.3 year orbit. It also travelled in much the same plane as the planets, running the risk of hitting them. With time, the comet split into various pieces, and as its gassy material evaporated, the pieces that remained were rocky, not icy. These pieces stopped giving off a tail, looking remarkably like asteroids. Today, what’s left of this material includes Comet Encke, a small, dim comet; about 6 asteroids that cross the path of the earth; and the Taurid meteor stream, which is known to contain large chunks of material and which gives rise to meteor showers in June and November each year.
This material goes around the sun every 3.3 years. Every year, the earth can go through the orbit of the comet, resulting in meteor showers, when shooting stars all seem to come from the same point in the sky (in Taurus). Sometimes, when it crosses the comet’s orbit, the comet is close, and there is much more material than usual in the meteor shower, with millions of shooting stars in a single night – an event known as a meteor storm. At other times, earth and the comet are not so close. In general, every seven or ten years or so, one can expect a much larger event than at other times – with a really huge event every 33 years.
Thousands of years ago, the earth and this material came closer than it is today; the comets were brighter in the sky; and people had no idea what was happening. As characters appeared in the sky, millions of shooting stars fell from the heavens, and objects exploded as fireballs in the air, devastating the ground below, the druids and poets invented tales to explain to the people what was happening.
One of the authors, Professor Mike Baillie, is world-renowned for his work on tree-rings. Having completed Ireland’s tree-ring record, stretching back seven thousand years, he noticed that there were certain years when the trees were suffering, when it seemed that they were being starved of sunlight. Initially, it was thought that these years may have been caused by volcanoes but gradually it became clear that this was not the reason: there were no records of volcanoes in the ice cores for these events. Something else was happening. Then Mike took a look at the historical record to see if there were any clues to these events, and he noticed something odd: all of the events coincided with times when mythical characters were active. For example, one event around AD 540 occurs just when Arthur is dying at the Battle of Camlann, just after his campaign against Rome that devastated much of Europe. Meanwhile, in Ireland, churches are being founded at locations marked out by saints flinging their crosiers twelve miles through the air.
Other events have similar concentrations of myth: when the Tuatha de Danaan are fighting the Fomor at the Battle of Moytura, the Danaii are fighting the Trojans at Troy. Just after these battles, in which most of the action took place in the sky, Europe descended into a dark age. At Moytura, Lugh of the Long Arm rises in the West, his face shining as bright as the sun. At the same time, the Chinese tell about the Divine Archer shooting magic arrows across the sky.
In some of the Irish tales, there seem to be stories of objects hitting the ground. For example, in one tale, Manannan was ‘buried standing up, and where he was buried, a great lake sprung up where there had been a red bog to that time’. This sentence suggests that somewhere in the Irish landscape, there may be impact craters. The authors have identified a couple of sites that may prove to be Ireland’s first known impact craters: the Kings stables in Armagh, Dun Manann in Monaghan and Portmore Lough in Co. Down. Sooner or later one Irish ritual pond will be proven to be an impact crater; such craters are known in Estonia, Poland and Germany so there is no reason why there shouldn’t be examples in the Irish landscape.
So when we hear in a story that Fionn mac Cumhall was a visited by a huge giant from Scotland, there may be truth to this tale. When we hear that Fionn reached his hand down to take up a piece of ground and threw this through the air, forming Lough Neagh and the Isle of Man, we can now imagine that people saw a lake being formed and saw huge pieces of material flying through the air. Indeed, right beside Lough Neagh, there’s a circular lake, one mile diameter and only one metre deep – a lake that should have filled up thousands of years ago – a lake that should not be there.
In conclusion, the authors have put forward a new explanation of myth that allows us to understand what was happening in tales such as Toraigheacht Diarmada agus Grainne (the Hunt for Diarmaid and Grainne). Furthermore, with this new key to understanding, it becomes apparent that in the past in Ireland, and across the world, the skies were busy and people were witness to some extraordinary, and scary, events. This book is likely to send shockwaves through the fields of mythology, astronomy and archaeology – with Irish mythology placed at the centre and forefront of this novel, exciting approach.
About the authors:
Patrick McCafferty, who grew up in Donegal, worked as a chemical engineer for years in Germany, Dublin and Cork. He recently completed a Masters in Archaeology in Queens University Belfast and is currently pursuing a PhD at Queens and Armagh Observatory, examining Irish myth and astronomy.
Mike Baillie is a world-renowned dendrochronologist, who developed a record of Irish oak trees that stretches seven thousand years into the past, a record that has proved invaluable to archaeologists seeking to date pieces of wood from excavations, or more accurately calibrate the carbon dating method, by comparing carbon years with real, tree years. Recently, Mike has concentrated on catastrophic environmental events in the tree-ring records. He is the author of “From Exodus to Arthur (1999)” and “A Slice Through Time; dendrochronology and precision dating (1995)” .
Contact Details: pmccafferty03@qub.ac.uk and m.baillie@qub.ac.uk |
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