Rosy-colored flowers without fault? The perception of women in early Irish literature

By Jeffrey Qiu

Medieval Irish journey narratives such as The Wooing of Becfola, Cormac’s Adventures, and The Voyage of Bran contain a wealth of information about contemporary thought as well as the cultural milieu in which these works were created. In particular, the coverage of women and her place in society in early Irish literature provides insight on a subject that was largely unwritten or lost during the Early and High Middle Ages.

The ossification of gender roles in contemporary Europe was tempered in Ireland partly due to its relative isolation from the continent and the well-established indigenous Celtic culture.[1] By the eighth century, Irish legal tracts indicated that women had attained numerous legal rights involving marriage and divorce, property ownership, and custody of her children.[2] There remains, however, a lack of understanding of female power and perceptions of female power prior to then, which is what this essay will explore. Nonetheless, it would be disingenuous to claim that Ireland was not a patriarchal society during this time. The journey narratives suggest that women in medieval Irish society were not deferential to men simply because of a patriarchal and male-dominated societal structure. Instead, it was a natural consequence due to the inherent differences in the societal spheres that they inhabited, rather than the inherent differences between the men and the women themselves. Making the distinction between societal norms and gender norms illustrates that women enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy and equality in an otherwise male-dominated world.

Contemporary attitudes in literature recognized and accepted the fact that women had faults. But although men monopolized the creation and consumption of these stories, the basic patriarchal concept of men exerting control over women is not paramount in these stories. At first glance, The Wooing of Becfola demonstrates aspects of gender inequality. The (male) druid names the previously unnamed woman Bec Fola after the small dowry given to her by Diarmuid, essentially reducing the woman into an object. Bec Fola, too, plays into this gender dichotomy, a dutiful symbol of the fertile woman: “I have good soil and I require suitable seed,” marrying him shortly after she met him. She is feminine: seemingly unassuming and presumably beautiful, just waiting for a powerful man like Diarmuid to take her away. But that is not how the story ends: the extent of the patriarchal milieu stops there.

Despite being a woman, Bec Fola exerts political and sexual power (even dominance) over a domain, which, in contemporary society, should not belong to her. She “continued to seduce and solicit” Crimthann (Diarmuid’s fosterling) and vexed the people of Tara when they tried to stop Crimthann from eloping with her. The king himself was unaware of the fact up to the morning of her planned departure! Even in the beginning, when the king demanded her hand in marriage, she only accepted on condition: “if I get a reward,” she says. Likewise, it is fitting that he qualified his request for her to stay – “Do not go on Sunday; a Sunday journey is not good” – and did not deny her outright. In a similar vein, when she requests to stay with Flann, he denies her request temporarily due to fears of a vengeful Diarmuid and a lack of sovereignty over his domain of Ox Island. The contracts Bec Fola enters into with men are ultimately drawn on her terms: in intentions or in practice, neither Diarmuid nor Flann could deny her what she wanted in the end. Strangely, Diarmuid does not use his power – as a man, as a king – to control her and appeared indifferent: “let her depart, the evil one; for we know not whither she goes or whence she comes.” Indeed, this statement gives the impression that he did not have power to begin with. This indifference has dangerous implications: Bec Fola’s (woman) actions can be interpreted as castrating Diarmuid (man) of his power, which would be unacceptable. But how could such events have taken place in male-dominated literature and society? Why are women portrayed as capable of exerting control over men, by men?

One explanation for this inconsistency is that The Wooing of Becfola serves as a good example of bad behavior; perhaps Bec Fola is intentionally presented as a trickster. She certainly defies conventional behavior by seducing other men without incurring punishment, and her silver chariot, “blunt shoes of white bronze,” and “diadem of gold upon her head” suggests she is a distinctive being. Yet her elaborate elemental trappings, if anything, belie her capricious nature, as the tension between her wishes and reality does not materialize, and Bec Fola’s capacity for change is not tested. No one tells the king she is unfaithful; when she defies the king and leaves, “she returned home and found Diarmuid there rising on the same Sunday.” Because she is neither particularly clever nor foolish, and her only intent seems to be her own gratification, Bec Fola does not seem to fit the trickster archetype.

A second explanation is that, as a woman, Bec Fola is an allegorical representation of something else: her objectionable behavior should be judged in the context of the societal sphere she occupies, rather than by her femininity. Ní Bhrolcháin describes the concept of the sovereignty goddess in Irish mythology as “the symbol of the land, whose union with the prospective king ensures his sovereignty,” and lacking this union with the goddess, he cannot be accepted as a king. [3] In this light, Diarmuid is not bestowing the honor of marriage upon Bec Fola (standard in male-dominated society), but rather the other way around – Bec Fola is granting legitimacy upon Diarmuid’s rule, and her favor must be earned and kept in order to maintain his rule. The people do not tell the king of her indiscretion and the king does not know what she is up to because her favor is paramount in upholding the kingdom's sovereignty. Flann, in turn, earns Bec Fola’s favor through his fighting prowess, as he “fought until all the men were gory,” the authors carefully affirming the importance of masculinity for men while allowing a “woman” (if Bec Fola can be called that) to run the show. As a plenipotentiary from the Otherworld, her societal sphere overrules her superficial role as a woman. In other words, the issue can be reconciled through a worldly/Otherworldly dichotomy rather than a man/woman dichotomy.

However, the issue of attitudes towards females appears to be more nuanced than a clear-cut dichotomy. Females in early Irish literature do take on different representations, yet they simultaneously take on feminine traits. The Bec Fola we know as a goddess is also a symbol of woman’s fertility – “I have good soil and I require suitable seed” – as well as that of woman’s chastity: after she returns from her stay with Flann, she says “Though it was with a man, there was no sin, / When we parted it was not early.” So is Bec Fola a woman? A sovereignty goddess? Both? This ambiguity arises in other stories as well. In Cormac’s Adventures, Cormac receives the “branch of silver with three golden apples” from the Otherworldly warrior in exchange for the “the three boons,” which end up being his daughter, son, and wife. In the end, Cormac journeys to bring back his family and is successful. At first glance, it seems that gender inequality dictates the women’s behavior. Not only are women subservient to men, they are used by men as a commodity: Cormac’s wife and daughter certainly do not seem to be able to voice their objections (if any) to being taken away. Yet this conclusion is intractable.

Firstly, Cormac’s son was taken away in a similar fashion as his wife and daughter were. Contemporary society – under some form of tribal kingship – would have valued the firstborn male in a family much higher than a daughter or a wife, due to inheritance and succession laws. But “that thing which Cormac could not endure” was the taking of his wife, not his son: the loss of his wife is what spurns him to reject the contract he made with the warrior, attempt to find his family, and take back the boons which he had previously offered.

Secondly, it is suggestive that the journey was a lesson for Cormac to better appreciate his family, and that his wife and children cooperated with the Otherworld to teach Cormac to avoid “‘collecting cattle and wealth which passes away into nothing,’” and to drink from the Fountain of Knowledge. The wife and daughter were simply a wife and daughter, yet they seem to be representatives, if not actual representations, of the Otherworld. Though they appeared to be taken away by a man (and perpetuating gender inequality as is commonly found in such contemporary literature), they were making a positive impact on Cormac’s life. Though the women were not active Otherworldly agents in the story, Cormac’s journey emphasizes their value as women, and their “subservience” (if it can be called that) to the warrior of the Otherworld is justified by the importance of Cormac’s lesson. The apparent gender inequality in the literature is more complex than it appears, actually unraveling upon closer inspection.

Women are not only symbols of fertility or passive agents of the Otherworld, but more importantly are active agents in their relations with men. In The Voyage of Bran, the “woman from unknown lands” tells Bran of a prophecy. In particular, she claims that “A great birth will come after ages, / That will not be in a lofty place, / The son of a woman whose mate will not be known, / He will seize the rule of the many thousands.” Not only does this statement break commonly held notions of the importance of lineage and the importance of female chastity, it also confers great power on to the woman who produces a child of questionable paternity. In addition, the prophecy-maker herself symbolically overpowers Bran and takes his branch: “there [was not] strength in Bran’s hand to hold the branch.” She actively dictated the terms of their encounter. Similarly, the chief of the women in the Land of Women was very physically active when encountering Bran’s ship: as she tossed him a ball of thread, “the thread of the ball was in the woman’s hand, and she pulled the coracle into the port.” Again, we see the woman being the more assertive one, since “Bran did not venture to go on shore” until she made the initial contact, demonstrating that women can be dominant as well as men.

At first glance, however, Bran’s stay in the Land of Women can be seen as the establishment of a male-dominant hierarchy. “The food that was put on every dish vanished not from them…No savor was wanting to them” in Bran’s journey is mirrored by “the magic halls of Circe…the feast flows on forever”[4] in Odysseus’s journey. While the women are clearly Otherworldly representations, they seem to be subservient to Bran and his men. But in light of foreign (namely Greek) cultural influences in early Ireland, these parallels can be seen as an adherence to social norms of hospitality to travelers, not of gender differences, i.e. if the Land of Women had been populated by men, it is expected that Bran and his men would have received the same treatment (though perhaps not “a bed for every couple”!). Thus the women’s passiveness can be seen as following practical as well as literary tradition: again, differences in societal spheres took precedence over the differences in gender.

Throughout the different examples in early Irish travel narratives, we have seen that subservience of women to men is often entangled in symbolism, or even nonexistent. It is telling of early Irish society that despite a male-dominated political system and literary tradition, the portrayal of women in these texts does not directly conform with contemporary gender role expectations. What we have gained by revisiting these pieces is a deeper understanding of these flaws in the perception of women, as opposed to Manannan’s understanding of those “rosy-colored flowers without fault.”

[1] Swartz, Dorothy Dilts. The Legal Status of Women in Early and Medieval Ireland and Wales in Comparison with Western European and Mediterranean Societies (Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 1993), 107-118.

[2] MacCurtain, Margaret. Women: The Historical Image (Books Ireland, Feb. 1985), 10-11.

[3] Ní Bhrolcháin, Muireann. Women in Early Irish Myths and Sagas (The Crane Bag 4 (1), Images of the Irish Woman, 1980), 12-19.

[4] Homer. The Odyssey (Trans. Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics, November 1997), 167-169.