Walk between worlds

Many a tale in the repertoire of an Irish or Scottish storyteller was so long they would burn a dip candle down in the telling or even last the whole night. A far cry from a modern evening of television punctuated by commercial breaks, 
where we now move in and out of a virtual world by answering a text message or getting up to find a snack in the kitchen. Once the story-teller began: "There was, in old times, and in old times it was, a king of Ireland...” you knew you were setting sail on "perilous seas in faery lands forlorn" for a long voyage. 

For centuries, many of these fireside tales were once the property of the Celtic aristocracy, recited in hall or battle-camp by men of the highest rank, known as filidh. These men were members of a learned order within the privileged class, guardians of an oral-based culture and living repositories of its history and mythology. They underwent at least twelve years of intensive training to develop their memory and concentration, while learning hundreds of stories and verses, histories, and genealogies. While a fili had a prescribed repertoire, he was also a composer as well. He mastered the art of crafting verse in intricate metrical forms. 

Such a long education was rewarded well: on graduating, a fili wore a cloak of crimson and yellow feathers and carried a golden rod. Each year he received twenty-one cows, food for himself and twenty attendants. He could keep six horses, two dogs, and was granted immunity from arrest for any crime save treason or murder. 

The tales he told were "serialized” spread out over several evenings in a chieftain's hall, which would be in the storyteller's interest since during that time he would be enjoying his host's hospitality. 



When the written word was introduced into Ireland at the beginning of the Christian era, the "Men of Art" were forbidden to write their knowledge down. So precious was the gift of memory, it was not to be impaled on the point of a pen. Stories shifted shape like the characters within them, from extemporaneous prose to complex alliterative verse, often embellished by the harp, there settling into formulaic passages familiar to all. 

Moreover, the spoken word held the power of breath, or as we say today, inspiration, which was considered a gift from the great goddess Brigit, patron of poetry and divination. As such, the spoken word could make magic and invoke the divine. A very fine line existed between story, poetry, and incantation in early Celtic culture. The title fili, generally meaning "poet" or "storyteller" interchangeably, has also been translated as "weaver of spells."

In the high age of pre-Christian Celtic culture in Ireland, the filidh were part of a threefold division, along with the druids and bards. The bardic order like the druids, withered under the virulent opposition of the Catholic Church. Many bards took up the wandering road, telling tales and singing songs to whoever would listen in return for a meal and bed for the night. Thus the great oral legacy of high Celtic culture became intermingled with the coarser peasant stock of "Jack" tales and humorous anecdotes. 

But the filidh managed to survive and flourish, taking over many of the ancient secular and religious functions of the bards and druids. They were in fact much more than storytellers; they were teachers, royal advisors, and seers until the 17th century, when much of Celtic culture fell under English rule. And so the tapestry of story was unraveled: some of it, the high myth and hero-tale, surviving in manuscripts written by church clerics in the early Middle Ages, some in the wonder-tales and folk-legends of the countryside. 
While today we experience the old tales at a psychological distance, regarding them as fiction at worst or as containing archetypal symbolism at best, the Celtic storyteller in the early years of this century did not question the truth of the tale.  The fili made the journey to the Otherworld himself; this was an unquestioned fact to his listeners. A true walker-between-the-worlds, he knew intimately the territory of Tir na nOg and brought back its treasures in the form of stories and prophetic utterances. 

To reach the Otherworld and gain its knowledge, the filidh performed rituals to induce trance. One of these involved killing a bull whose meat and broth was eaten by the fili, who was then wrapped in its hide, whereupon he fell into a sleep or trance in which he gained access to the Otherworld. Although banned by St. Patrick, a form of this ritual was witnessed as late as the 18th century among the country-people of Gaelic Scotland.

And soon my walk between two worlds begins. I don’t see a bull hide in my future, unless it’s on the floor. But I promise to bring you stories of another world. So come take a walk with me.