Lydia Eby Conversion of the North Shelly Nordtorp-Madson Between the Earth and Sky Birds Marking Liminality in Celtic Tradition To say that animals play an important part in Celtic and Viking culture is a gross understatement. Not only did animals supply labor and food, but they were integral figures in stories, were closely connected to religion and sacrifice, Green, Miranda, Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. London and NY: Routledge, 2002 [Electronic resourse]. Pg 108 certain animals were connected to gods or to men of power, who were not only accompanied by their favorite animals but were able to speak through them and transform themselves into them. Each animal had attributes that they were valued for, whether it was the power and nobility of the horse or the alert fierceness of the goose, and these attributes guided how these creatures were viewed and treated in ritual, literature and art. One of these animals which are found often in art is the bird. Bird imagery in Celtic and Viking art is very common, though perhaps not more common than imagery of the horse or the boar or the other important animals. However, what is remarkable is the large variety of items on which birds are found; they are found on arms and armor, in depictions of processions and ritual, in depictions of war and death, in artistic representation of the old tales, on cooking and eating utensils, on bridles, on jewelry and even on coins. Birds themselves have carried a fascination for people throughout history and have been revered for their wisdom and ability to fly. March, H. Colley. “The Mythology of Wise Birds” The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 27, (1898), pp. 209 From the bird headed gods of Egypt to the wise owl of Athens and the bird masquerade dances in Africa, from the sparrow and pelican of Christianity even to the bald eagle of America, there is something about the powers of flight and of vision that captures the imagination and inspires awe. This was especially true to the Celts and Vikings who believed in mysterious powers of transformation, often blurring the boundaries between animals and men in their rituals, stories and art. The roles played by birds in Celtic life and mythology were many; however, this paper will seek to examine the role birds in relation to boundaries and liminality and to discern if this relationship changed with the coming of Christianity. The Celtic people were a culture of independent tribes that migrated through Europe, settling in Gaul and the British Isles as well as France, Spain, Italy and parts of Asia Minor. Through the peregrination of the early tribes the Celts were influenced by those cultures they came in contact with, their gods absorbing some qualities of the deities from the Greco-Roman pantheon and their spirituality being influenced by the Shamanistic religions of the North and the naturalistic rituals of the Gauls. Sharkey As the Roman Empire rose in prominence the Celtic culture was pushed out or absorbed and disappeared into Rome until the British Isles became the last bastion of the Celts. The Celtic presence lasted there through the Roman invasion and flourished in the Anglo-Saxon period and through the Viking raids. The Vikings shared much with the Insular Celts through trading and through raiding, exchanging goods, art and both the pagan and Christian religions. Through all of this, the Celtic affinity for in-between-ness, liminality, remained. Liminality The word “liminal” is derived from the Latin word ‘limen,’ which means ‘threshold.’ This term was first put into wide circulation in 1909 by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep who uses the term when speaking about the social boundaries. Van Gennep explains that it is the boundaries which define social states, such as who is a man and who is a boy or who is a priest or who is a lay person, and these boundaries establish the rules of interaction between the different groups. However, there are times when these social boundaries must be crossed and in those periods of transition, as when a youth is neither fully a boy nor fully a man, the person becomes what modern scientific parlance would call ‘a free radical’, this is, an ungrounded principle that does not follow any guidelines. Van Gennep argues that these frighteningly incomprehensible states of transition, or liminality, are what necessitate the establishment of rituals which guide the person and the community through the change. van Gennep, Arnold . The Rites of Passage. Trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960 Pg 1-13 Other scholars have developed van Gennep’s ideas about relational boundaries to boundaries between time, such the twilight that exists between the dark and the daylight: location, such as the shore line that lies between the land and the sea: and in essence, as those sometimes elusive boundaries between man and beast. When the boundaries are crossed there is a joining of two states which are normally separate, that is to say, there is a joining of two binaries. The joining of two such principles creates a tension and a suspension of the normal rules. This space of transit, of indefinition, of tension between two binaries Homen, Rui Carvalho. “Neither Here nor There”: Representing the Liminal in Irish Poetry.’ Irish University Review, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 2005). pg. 289 is liminality. The Celtic mind seems to have been fascinated, whether consciously or unconsciously, with the sense of liminality and used the uncertainty of it to describe the sacred. Though rituals were used to negotiate social changes (for example: the process of a man becoming a king consisted of many strange rituals including but not limited to the would-be-king bathing the broth made from the flesh of a white horse), their sense of in-between spaces stretched out into nature as well. From the sea-strands or marshes where they liked to bury their dead or cast precious offerings, to deities such as the antlered god Cernuous, the Celtic affinity for in-between states is apparent. The idea of in-between things is present in Celtic art where shape or form shifting is common and as is seen in images men with bird heads (or hands) or knot-work that is actually the entwining bodies of animals or men. This transitory state, where an image is neither fully one thing nor another is indicative of the Celtic interest in in-between places, the breaking down of boundaries, and states of being. Birds, being creatures that live between the boundaries of earth and sky or earth, sky and water, lend themselves particularly to the symbolic representation of transition or mediation between states or realms. Celtic and Viking art is known for its’ ambiguity. Knot-work designs and animal designs are mixed into complex grasping beast designs; Animals themselves are mixed with humans resulting in men with bird heads or horses with human heads and other strange admixtures. Sometimes these mixed creatures reference a particular god, as the horned man is believed to be Cernuous, but often the reference has been lost and it is difficult to know if the blending was regarded as symbolic or actual. Nevertheless, in a culture whose art already tends towards the liminal the addition of birds adds another layer of complexity to their images. However, as many different kinds of animals are portrayed by the Celts and Norsemen in their shape-shifting art it would be very difficult use that alone to examine how birds were regarded in relation to liminality. For this reason this paper will be drawing on the myths and legends to help determine the iconology and iconography of birds. The story-cycles and Sagas contain many tales about heroes and holy men who are able to traverse worlds, traveling between this imperfect land and a mysterious ‘Otherworld.’ This Otherworld it is reported of being in many places; in the hills around Tara, islands off the coast or in lakes, in wells and in the misty, mysterious places that belong to the gods. Time spent in this Otherworld is also strange and warriors who find their way into these mysterious halls where the feast sumptuously with beautiful women for years, then return to their own land to find that only a day had passed. Or they stay for a single night only to return years later. This Otherworld was not always very friendly and the undeserving could find themselves beating beaten or set upon by hideous monsters rather than being feasted by lovely ladies. Scholar John Carry uses examples such as these to show how this Otherworld is not limited to specific times or locations, as the Olympic counsel is limited to Mt. Olympus in Greece, but the Celtic godly realm is only loosely connected to places and not confined by time. This unpredictability heightened the Celtic sense of the fluidity of the world. While sometimes the liminal state in Celtic literature is extrinsic, serving as a doorway between the natural and the spiritual realms, in other instances the liminal state is more personal. The story of Mad Sweeny, in the Irish Suibhne Geilt, tells the tale of a king who insulted a monk who cursed him and when he later committed an act of cowardice the curse fell upon him, driving him mad. Sweeny thought he was bird. He lived in the forest and grew furry, feathery coat, he was able to fly to the tree tops to nest and understand the language of the animals. Aside from the fur and feathers, this curse might not seem so dreadful; however, this madness excluded him from the realm of men and the incomplete transformation did not allow him to fully enter the realm of the beast. He was held in a liminal state, caught between humanity and animality. This threshold was not just of his body though; he was quite mad enough to think it was alright to drink milk that had been poured on dung heap and quite human enough to compose poetry. This is an in-between state of the mind and soul which has overflowed into the body. And in Mad Sweeny the form this half-way transformation, this in-between state has taken a bird-like form. Birds in Myth, Nature and Art: Naturally Liminal The image of Mad Sweeny flapping around and roosting in the tops of trees is a slightly ludicrous one, no doubt meant to provoke laughs as well as shudders, but like most Celtic tales there are themes embedded in the story. This particular tale tells of the serious consequence of cowardliness in kings who are supposed to be brave and mighty leaders. Slavin, Bridgitte K. “Liminality in early Irish literature: the madness of Suibhne Geilt” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, Vol. 2, 2006. Pg. 209-224 In the story it is the contradiction of how he was supposed to act and how he did act that lead to his madness. This battle between what was and what should have been drew him between two binaries and caught him in a liminal state and caused him to become a bird-man. Ibid. This legend, though clearly linking liminality to birds, features monks and thus is from after Christianity came to Ireland. Though the story may have roots in older traditions, to establish the continuity of the bird being linked to liminality the pre-Christian myths need to be examined along with how the visual tradition represented the ideas contained in the legends. In the old myths birds are often seen as messengers from the gods, bearing omens and linking the realms of the gods and the realm of men. In this way birds are shown to be mediators, either enforcing boundaries or dissolving them. This idea that they are the ‘in-between-man’ for the gods is not merely an arbitrary notion but can be seen in nature as well as myth. By the very fact that they can fly, birds are placed in a whole other realm. Even in the creation story in Genesis the living things of the earth and the birds of the sky are created on separate days. It is believed that the possession of wings and the power of flight gave birds great significance to the Celts. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. Pg. 125 Though flight was not the only thing they were valued for, this ability places bird in a different sphere: that between earth and sky. Thus, by nature birds live in what the Celts considered to be liminal spaces. This natural state of liminality must have had a great effect on the minds of the Celts as it was brought out in their myth and art. Some of the earliest Celtic art from the Hallstatt period featured vessels and utensils with ducks and other water-fowl on them. Their exact meaning is obscure, but as they are often shown alongside sun symbols it has been speculated that they have a connection to the sun and to heat. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. Pg. 136 This link to the sun would make them an appropriate image to put on cooking vessels. The sun itself seems to have been very important as many ritual figures have been found that seem to have connections to the sun or the sun-disks that occasionally are found. The mystery of the duck is that it is a water-bird and thus lives in three realms: that of water, earth and sky. Perhaps that is why the duck is connected to the goddess on healing, Sequana, This name has probably been Latinized and it is difficult to know what she was originally called. who is usually portrayed riding in a boat with a duck head on its’ prow (Plate 1). This connection to the goddess of healing is another sign of liminality as the goddess guides the ill or injured from sickness in to health. In instances such as this transition, the becoming healthy could be regarded as a journey towards something. However, there is very little written evidence for interpretations such as this. A water-bird that has more written accounts is the swan. Though there are times when swans and cygnets are also found on cooking utensils, in stories the swans were valued for something other than their connection sun and water; they were valued for their sweet voice. To some this might seem very strange because the average swan, in America at least, is mute; but the cry of a non-mute swan is hauntingly sweet, and hearing their cry across a lake is an experience not soon forgotten. It is this voice made them the symbol of the goddess Caer Ibormeith, a gentle lady who could take the form of a swan. When Caer at last found a man she loved and they were married they turned into swans, flew to the middle of a lake and made such sweet music together that it sent everyone in the area to sleep for three days. De Jubainville, H. de’Arbois, trans. By Richard Irvine Best. The Irish Mythological Cycle and Celtic Mythology. Ney York, Lemma Publishing Corp. 1970. Pg. 162 This is a rather amusing tale and the potential for liminality is rich as the story deals not only in physical transformation but in sleep as well. Slumber is a state that has been compared with death; it is certainly a loss of consciousness where the mind does not seem wholly connected to the body. There are numerous stories of kings who have disappeared and are said to sleep in hidden place, but will return one day when the land needs them, not the least of which is King Arthur. The propagation of the Arthurian tales became wide-spread with the publication of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur in the 15th cen. However, as John Sharkey points out in his book, Celtic Mysteries, the stories of King Arthur seem to the be the latest in a type of tale that features things like affiliation to the sun. I am not an Arthurian expert so I am not familiar with King Arthur’s connection to the sun, but there are certainly many other legends from Scandanavia and the British Isles that tell of sleeping warriors or kings which makes it likely for that aspect of the tale to be rooted in tradition. (<http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/sleep.html>) In this way sleep might be seen as in-between life and death and that the swans’ song had the same power of sleep that the magical harpists of myth had; this illustrates not only how music can affect the consciousness, but also that these magical birds were believed to be able to act directly on people and effect a state of liminality. The idea of a fair maiden donning swan feathers is one common in the north as well. The Lay of Volund tells a story of Swan-maiden-Valkyries who transform with the aid of a swan skins. Perhaps this is where the more modern image of these shield-maidens as winged originated. However, that these women who act as intermediaries between gods and men take the shape of swans shows continuity in the bird image as a threshold, a link between two realms. Other women who were able to transform into birds were Badb and the Morrigan, goddesses of war and strife, whose favorite guises are crows. Crows and ravens have a long standing as symbols of conflict and death. This morbid affiliation is reasonable given that these birds are not very peaceable by nature and are given to squabbling amongst themselves as well as being known to attack large birds such as eagles or owls. Sibley, David Allen. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. A Chanticleer Press Edition, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York. 2003. Pg. 308. Presumably a crow in North America is not that much different to a crow in the British Isles. (I myself have seen a coven of crows attack and eagle and chase him across the sky) Perhaps even more striking and iconic however, is their affinity for dead things. They are scavenger birds and to a warrior who has survived a battle, seeing their ruffled black shapes picking and poking and tearing strips of flesh off the corpses of their fallen enemies and friends would have left a lasting and very ominous impression. It is seems very natural then that they became symbols for war and that the presence of crows was thought to be an omen of death. In death the soul leaves the confines of the body and travels freely to uncertain destinations while the body decays; in this sense death is the very last known transition that a person experiences: It is the ultimate (meaning final) transition. There is a very striking image involving crows or ravens on a standing stone in Gotland, Sweden (Plate 2). On this stone are six registers, each seeming to tell part of bloody story of death and war and there are at least four depictions of birds, probably ravens given their relative size. On one of the upper registers there is a strange scene of death (Plate 3). To the far left is a man who appears to have a rope around his neck, being hung on a tree. This is open to interpretation as his feet still appear to be on the ground and it is possible that the thing dangling from the tree is not a rope. Then there is a second figure that seems to be laid face down upon a table or altar while over him stands a man with a spear. It is a bit tricky to decipher exactly what is happening in this scene, but there is no doubt that the man on the altar is dead or dying. The symbol that that is above the man’s head is the Valknot, Odin’s triangle; it is the knot of the slain. Information on the Valknot was drown from http://www.pinterest.com/offsite/?token=975-700&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.liv.ac.uk%2F~spmr02%2Frings%2Fvikings.html&pin=573927546237558511 The dying man is surrounded by birds. With an understanding of the symbolism of ravens and those transition that they herald, the already gruesome story becomes more graphic. The birds mark the liminality of the scene, the state in which both life and death exist at once, it is a single suspended instant of life and death co-existing in the same space at the same time for one man. That struggle between two contraries and the agony the man must be feeling as he is being slain, suddenly seems of epic proportion. This image is also interesting as it is one of the artistic representations that are used to support the argument for the historical practice of that horrendous mode of execution called the blood-eagle. In some of the more lurid descriptions of this modus operandi the man being executed is placed face down and his back is cut open, ribs cut off at the spine and splayed outwards, then his lungs are taken out and placed on top of his ribs while they are still quivering with life and are left fluttering in the wind. This was supposed to resemble the spread wings of an eagle. At some point during these proceedings the person would die. Less lurid accounts speak of it merely as punishment; the person would simply have a picture of an eagle carved into his back and salt rubbed into the wounds; death was not the end result. There is a lot of controversy surrounding these accounts and whether they are to be believed or to be taken as a horror story meant to scare, however, the image a bird here is very significant. It is also curious that it is called a blood-eagle and not a blood-crow, as crows are more associated with death. Whether or not the blood-eagle was really used, the story of it was circulated and would have had an effect on those who heard it. Frank, Roberta. “Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle” The English Historical Review, Vol. 99, No. 391 (Apr., 1984), pp. 332-343. Oxford University Press. In the article Roberta Frank examines the origins of the Blood-eagle stories, tracing them back to the works of people like Saxo and Snorri Sturluson. The blood-eagle is done to a man while he is still alive, yet according the first description it is the nature of the operation that the man will end up dead; even before he dies he is dead. In this way, while the thing is being done, the man is both dead and alive. This tension of being two binaries is caused by the transformation of his body. Unlike Mad Sweeny, whose mental state influenced his physical state, in this instance it is the material transformation which is causing the immaterial transformation and death has been condensed into this winged shape. Another instance of crows or ravens being used as a direct reference to impending death is the depicted on one of the panels of the Gundestrup Cauldron (Plate 4). This panel shows a parade of warriors dressed for battle, some riding horses and some on foot. Each rider has a different emblem on his helmet but the foremost horseman sports a helm crowned with a bird. This seems like a rather bizarre thing to put on a helmet and might be considered artistic fancy, however, an actual iron and bronze helmet with a black bird on top was found in Ciumesti, Romania, that dates from the 3rd century B. C. (Plate 5). The raven figurine which sits on the helmet is a bird in flight and the wings on this bird statue are actually articulated so that they can move and flap. If, as depicted in the scene from the cauldron, the warrior wearing this helmet was mounted then as the horse galloped or loped toward the enemy the wings would flap up and down with the movement of the horse. It is the raven’s connection to death that is being directly appealed to as a means to terrify. That flapping, clanking bird would certainly make death very apparent to whomever was being attacked by the warrior wearing this. This flapping bird-helmet is very startling; however, Crows and ravens were not just birds of death. Well known even in now are the Norse god Odin’s two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who are so symbolic of Odin that in Norse art the mere presence of a raven could indicate the presence of Odin. These two birds are said to fly throughout the world and bring Odin news from every corner of the earth and for this the ravens are a symbol of his wisdom. Perhaps that is what made it reasonable to fit ravens into the visual representation of the Volsanga Saga as the wise counselors who reveal to Siguard (after he burns his thumb on the Dragon’s heart) the betrayal of Regin. This attribution of wisdom to crows played out in other ways as well. Crows and ravens are often used in augury, counting numbers to foretell how many will die in battle or simply taking their presence as a sign of coming war. In fortunetelling and augury present and future come together as the boundaries that keep those things distinct melt away. There is also an account of a harbor called “Two Crows” where there lived two black birds with white on their wings Ornithologists think that there birds were actually magpies, but they were called crows by those who wrote the account, so the effect is the same. who stood in judgment over legal disputes. The two plaintiffs would each bring a pile of cakes to place before the birds and the birds would eat one pile and scatter the other. The man whose pile was scattered was said to be the victor. Animals in Celtic life and Myth. Pg. 127 In accounts such as these, it is not the humans or gods that take on bird-like qualities, but the birds who take on the human qualities of wisdom and judgment. It is possible that this wisdom is attributed to them from the knack that ravens have of mimicking speech, like a parrot. Again the line between what is animal and what is human (or divine) has become obscured but from these stories it seems as though the cause is intrinsic to the bird and not because of anything that man has done. This intrinsic power of the natural world is a part of the shamanistic religions which influenced the Celts and would be revisited and revised with the coming of Christianity. Sharkey, John. Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient Religion. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978. In this book Sharkey makes a strong argument for the shamanistic principles in Celtic religion originating from the Sami people, who would later be called the Lapp People or the Lapplanders. Like crows, owls were considered omens of death, but owls for very different reasons; after all, they are not scavengers. Owls were considered the outcast among the birds because they are nocturnal. According to folklore it was considered very bad luck to see an owl and even worse luck to have one living near a dwelling. There is a folk-tale from post-Christian Ireland of a man whose mother died and her soul lingered on in the form of an owl who, out of jealousy of the living would keep them all awake at night with her hooting. The mean old-lady-owl was only stopped when her son lost his patience and went out and shot her. It is a strange little anecdote, but it is grounded in an older tradition that owls were the souls of the dead. Together with the nocturnal life, the owl’s silent flight and eerie call is a strong connection to the dark and ominous side of the world and the belief that an owl could be a human soul is another reiteration of the boundaries between realms blurring. Human souls are not the only things that become owls. The Welsh woman Angharad, who is sometimes said to be a goddess and sometimes a sorceress, was able to transform into the shape of an owl to travel through her land. Another strange story is the tragic account of Blodeuwed. She was also Welsh lady, but she was not human; she was made out of flowers. “Blodeuwed” means “Flower-face” in Welsh. There was a geis on the nephew of the powerful magician Gwydion stating that the nephew could not marry a woman of flesh and blood, so Gwydion created a woman from flowers to be the perfect wife for his nephew. But Blodeuwed was everything except perfect and when her infidelity was doubled by her part in the nephew’s murder Gwydion then cast a second spell on her transforming her into an owl. In this way the transformation of this woman was double and Blodeuwed is considered doubly cursed because she has not only lost her human form but she has also become the most undesirable of birds. Owls are hardly ever depicted in Celtic art, perhaps because they were considered so cursed, but the idea that a bird can be a human soul is later echoed in Christian symbolism, though with much less sinister implications. Another bird that was valued by the Celts is the crane. These enormous, beautiful birds inhabited marshes, which are very liminal places, and with their unique voice and strange courtship dances provided much stimulation to the Celtic imagination. The Irish word for crane is an corr, from which it is possible that one of the Celtic goddesses of prophecy received her name, Corra. Corra was known to transform into a crane when prophesying. Other goddesses of prophesy such as Aife and Cailleach Bheur also assumed the form of a crane and in a more modern accounts the explanation for this is that this act of transforming into a crane symbolized transcendent knowledge and transition to the otherworld. McCoy, Edain. Celtic Myth and Magik; Harnessing the Power of the Gods and Godesses. Llewellyn Publications, Woodburry, MN. E-Book edition 2013. This book seems to be direct towards neo-pagans and so some of the information contained therein might be from a mixture of ancient, medieval and modern traditions. However, I found it to be generally well researched and this statement is not in conflict with suggestions found elsewhere. Some scholars hypothesize that cranes, along with owls, were birds of ill omen and that they possed the ability to rob men of their will to fight. The cranes were guardians of the hall of the Tuatha de Danaan and any who came upon the hall uninvited was robbed of his will to fight, and was thus shamed. To the Celts, who base their society on fighting and prowess in battle (consider the tale of Mad Sweeny), this would have been a truly terrible thing. An anecdote which was passed down through Ptolemy Soter to the historian Arrian tell of an incident during Alexander the Great accepted emissaries from the Celts in the area of the Danube and Po rivers and during the course of wining and dining them he asked them what they most feared. Their reply was; "We fear no man: there is but one thing that we fear, namely, that the sky should fall on us." Quote drawn from http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mlcr/mlcr01.htm, which attributes the phrase to the historical writings of Arrian. (Supposedly Alexander whispered to those standing near him after the Celts had left "What a vainglorious people are these Celts!”) If this saying is true then even death had no fear for them, and so to rob men of their will to fight, to make their knees tremble with fear and the bellies squirm, must have been a very powerful and the most dreadful of transformations known to the Celts. However, while there are stories of the dreadful powers that cranes can have over warriors and many stories linking cranes to nasty old hags, there are also gentler stores like that that of the Irish hero Finn who, as a child, fell over the side of a cliff and would have crashed to his death on the rocks below had not his grandmother transformed into a crane and caught her erstwhile young grandson on her back and carried him to safety. Later in his life Finn becomes the owner of a bag that had been made out of the skin of a crane that had once been a woman and in the bag were certain magical items that could only be seen when the tide was in and would disappear when the tide went out. Once again a bird, the crane, is that thing which narrows the boarders between this world and the other world. Though very seldom depicted in art, the sparrow, finch, starling and other drab little birds do play a part in myth as companions to goddesses. Rhiannon in commonly spoken of as being accompanied by three birds at least one of which is some kind of songbird. The most notable of such figures is the Norse deity Eir, who is known as the goddess of healing. Eir had a chorus of songbirds who would sing the wounded into a healing sleep to aid the lady’s healing spells. As with the ducks, these birds aid in transforming the injured into the whole, but perhaps more interesting still how this idea interplays with the Christian iconology of the soul, which will be discussed below. In their own way each bird links the natural world of men and animals with the supernatural world. Monsters also were said to live in in liminal places, such as Grendal and his mother from the Beowulf saga, and the dragons from many stores, who also have wings. Though different birds carry with them different symbolism, each in some way embodies a sense of liminality, the connecting and the coexisting of two worlds or two states, and the power of that liminality to either separate humanity from the ordinary world, as in the case of Mad Sweeny or the crows that herald the coming of death, or mark the elimination of such boundaries and allow for an understanding or experience which would normally be outside the human realm, as with the story of Sigurd hearing the speech of the birds after burning his thumb on the dragons’ heart. In this way birds can represent either the enforcement of boundaries, which is the separation of one thing from another or they can represent the thinning or elimination of boundaries to allow for inter communication and relation between two realms that would normally be separate. The Holy Bird As Christianity came into the Celtic world, many aspects of the old religion were pushed out. The zealous Christian missionaries ‘defeated’ many an old gods or goddess by cutting down the sacred place associated with them and building a Christian church there instead. Some of the old practices were halted entirely while others were allowed to linger until they either faded away or were well syncretized with Christianity. One such sycretization was the old manner of telling tales in which heroic figures encounter liminal spaces and animals with supra-animal abilities, only now the heroes were the holy men of the land. The Voyage of St. Brendan is search of the Holy Isles is like the older tales of voyages in search of the Isles of the Blessed. Likewise, the old artistic systems were still used and were developed further when given the new medium of book illumination. In illumination the art itself retained its ambiguous qualities in the knot-work and spiral and animal patterns that were still used though formatted to fit different shapes. And again, bird images were frequent. In Christian stories too, the birds and beasts act as servants of God, however there is an addition the old traditions, one that is exemplified in the story of St. Malo and the wrens. It was said that this holy man was working in the fields one day and as it was hot so he took off his cloak. At the end of the day he returned to it and found that a wren had made a nest and laid her eggs in the folds of his cloak, and so, realizing that even the birds are precious to the Lord, he left the cloak there until the eggs hatched and the hatchlings flew away. In the mean time it was said that no rain fell on the cloak. Waddell, Helen, trans. Beasts and Saints. NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1934. Pg. 55 In Ireland this would be quite a miraculous feat. However, though the miraculous feat surrounds the birds, as it does in many ‘holy monk’ stories, it is actually the actions of the monk which breaks down the boundaries between the earthly order (rain in Ireland) and the divine order (the cessation of rain in a single spot). In this way the idea of liminality, the thinning of boundaries and the joining of the mortal, physical realm to a spiritual, heavenly realm is starting to shift. Again in these Christian stories animals, especially birds, Out of Celtic 33 stories contained the book Beasts and Saints, 10 were about birds directly and several other stories mentioned them as members of a mixed group of animals that would attend a saint. act as mediators between God and man, often leading the holy monk to good places to live, or serving to show the great concern these men had for all creatures, but the tales become slightly more focused on how God is acting in the lives of these holy men or how they are striving to unite themselves to God, rather than lauding or mocking the acts, heroic or otherwise, of the pre-Christian gods and heroes. It is wise to note that nearly all of the stories from pre-Christianity have been preserved because of Christianity; the monks writing them down before they were forgotten. This does draw attention to the fact that the stories might have been altered a little or subtly suffused with Christian or proto-Christian ideas, thus rendering their reliability questionable. However, there are certain myth cycles that have come to be regarded as relatively un-altared and therefore reasonably reliable given the consistency of their telling in different transcriptions or that it is possible to tell that things were not altered for the sake of orthodoxy to Christianity, because they are not orthodox. However, the transcription of these tales by monks may also have affected the inner continuity of the cycles or sagas as it is possible that the monk received these stories in fragments. This is the view generally taken of the Welsh story cycles as there are obviously parts made up by the people who wrote it down to fill in the places where something was missing. In Christian Celtic art the most iconic bird image is perhaps that of the eagle of St. John. Like the eagle who was said was to fly unblinking into the sun, White, T.H. The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. NY, Dover Publication Inc. 1984. Pg. 105 John was able to gaze with steadfast eyes at the refulgent glory of Christ. (Likewise Christ is said to be able to gaze unblinkingly at the glory of God the Father and is therefore also pictured as an eagle at times.) Though this image of the eagle and the other winged symbols of the Evangelists are from the Bible (Ez. 1, Rev. 4:7-9) this eagle and the other winged symbols of the evangelists were easily absorbed into the Celtic visual tradition. Perhaps one of the most famous illuminated eagle is the eagle from the Book of Kells (Slide 6); in this image the eagle is delightfully delineated feather patterns and abstract flowing lines and artistic swirls that mark its’ heritage in the spiral patterns of the pagan Celts. The bird itself is mainly composed of brilliant shades of blue, orange, yellow and red; but it is interesting to note that this bird’s halo is ringed with yellow and orange with a bruised purple center. This shadowed center is rather like how the sun looks when stared at it for a long time. The juxtaposition of the eagle against what could be taken as a sun image reminds those looking at this book of the matter of John gospel, which focuses on the acts of Christ as God. In this way the image of the eagle as connected to the sun was reinforced, and the spiritual significance of the sun as the glory of God, in turn emphasized the spiritual nature of this bird. Another common place to find bird images in manuscripts are the carpet pages. Carpet pages are placed in between gospels and serve as a place to pause and meditate before delving into the word of God. They are, in fact, places of transition which are meant to ease the mind and soul into contemplation of, or an encounter with, God. Many of these carpet pages are decorated with images of birds. On the carpet-page at the beginning of St. Mark’s gospel from the Lindesfarne Gospels pairs of birds sit in-between each corner, their pattern at once interrupting and joining the lines that form the boarder (Plates 7 and 8). The placement of these birds on the boarder is significant in that they are marking the transition from the blank boarders of the page to the decorated part, where images of the four evangelists surround a styled cross. The whole effect of the page is that the eye is drawn from the outside to the inside in stages and each stage is a place to pause and meditate. Placing the birds in the first stage would be a reminder that this page is meant to prepare the mind to encounter God; it is a transition to the divine. All of the carpet pages from the Lindesfarne Gospels have birds in fact, though they are not all placed on the boarders. However, not all manuscripts utilized the bird image. On some of the more abstract carpet pages such as those from the Book of Durrow there are no bird images, however, there aren’t any animal forms at visible all (Plate 9). Two other carpet pages from the Book of Durrow use animals, but only one of the pages has what could be interpreted as birds, unfortunately the paint has flaked off a bit making the already very difficult zoological interlace patterns even harder to decipher. Carpet pages are not the only places in illuminated manuscripts that use birds. In the Book of Kells the pages with the Eusabian Cannon use birds to mark boundaries and transitions (Plate 10). In the Cannon pages, in addition to the winged animals of the four evangelists, there are large birds in the top corners of the arcade as well and others at the beginning and end of the text. As with the birds on the St. Matthew carpet-page from Lindesfarne, the birds at the beginning and end of the cannon are marking transitions and boundaries. In the use of bird images in illuminated manuscripts is seems that their representation of liminality is employed to draw together elements and, as in the carpet pages, to aids in preparing the reader for an encounter with God. This idea that liminality exists in the minds as well and the physical world ties back to the tale of Mad Sweeny. The Suibhne Geilt illustrates that liminalty is not just about the relationship between the spiritual and physical realms but the actual madness is from the disunity of elements within the mind. It was the contradiction of the cowardly act and the kingly nature that drove him mad and that madness in turn affected his body. Thus it can be said that it is not just the spiritual and physical which can experience the dissolution of boundaries, but also the inner state of a person. However, while Sweeny was driven mad by disunity, the boundaries that are being traversed in these illuminations suggest unification between the mental state and the divine. Using birds to represent a spiritual state was not something foreign to Christianity. As far back as Ancient Egypt the bird has been symbolic of the soul whose winged ba is said to be able to fly thoughtout the world. In the psalms of David again is found the image of a winged soul often connecting the soul to a dove which into flies to the heights just as man’s spirit should fly to God. Later medieval scholars connected three dove images in the Bible to the human soul: Noah’s dove which was able to fly back to the ark with the green branch, the dove David speaks about in the Psalms as flying to God, and Christ’s dove (which descended upon him from the the cloud after his baptism in the Jordan), to three movements of the soul. As with Noah’s dove the soul should turn away from sin and return to God, as with David’s dove the soul should perform mighty deeds, These mighty deeds probably mean act of heroic virtue, not necessarily feats of strength. and as with Christ’s dove the soul should rest in Christ and there it will find salvation. Hugh, of Fouilloy, Trans. Clark, Willene B. The Medieval book of birds : Hugh of Fouilloy's De avibus. Binghamton, NY : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies. Digitizing sponsor: University of Toronto. Accessed Dec. 17, 2014 https://archive.org/details/medievalbookofbi00hughuoft Here is a very clear linking of the soul itself to the image of the bird, in particular the birds’ ability to fly, and that flight which places it in the air close to the sun which is considered a spiritual, or even divine, realm. The celestial spheres were part of the Medieval understanding of the world and how nature operated as the spheres had both a physical and spiritual effect on the world. One sphere was thought to be dwelling place of angels (in accord with the creation account in Genesis.) Though in literature it is quite common to find the dove symbolizing the soul, in art the sparrow is perhaps more common. There are many medieval works of art that depict the Virgin and Child where Christ is holding a sparrow in his hand (Slide 11). The sparrow, or sometimes goldfinch, it usually meant to symbolize the human soul and the power of salvation through Christ. It would be very difficult to ascertain how much, if at all, the continental tradition of using the dove and sparrow to symbolize the soul and the salvation of the soul through Christ, affected or was affected by the ideas of spiritual liminality from the insular Celts, however, the imagery itself was not foreign to the Celts and Norsemen. Songbirds, such as sparrows, Sparrows do come from the family of songbirds, Passeri which includes the Chipping Sparrow and the House Sparrow, both of which have very pleasant ‘songs.’ were connected to the Norse deity Eir as symbols of healing, a concept that is not unlike that of salvation. Another reference to the sparrow signifying the soul is found in Bede where a newly converted warrior says: ‘When we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge , it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your theigns and counsellors. In the midst is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintery world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.’ Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English Speaking People. Trans. Leo Sherley-Price. London, England. Penguin Books. 1990. Pg. 129 Though what the warrior is speaking about is the knowledge of what come before and after life, the use of a sparrow to symbolize the existence of man emphasizes the transitory nature of life. As this account was written by a monk many years after the reported event it is doubtful that thse are the exact words spoken. However, from growing up in Jarrow Bede would have been familiar with the language and symbolism of the Celts and clearly he sees this as something fitting for a Celtic warrior to say. This combined with the Christian view that this life on earth is a pilgrimage, or journey, that is meant to prepare the soul for heaven, reiterates the idea that these transitory spaces are preparatory spaces as well. In pagan times the mere presence of a certain bird in art could indicate the presence of a god, and this is particularly so with Odin and his ravens. Because of the similarities between the story of Odin and the story of Christ (both dying on a tree then rising from the dead) Christ is sometimes pictured in earlt Celtic-Christian art with ravens, as on the high-cross from Casteldermot (Slide 12). These winged companions were eventually replaced with angels (Slide 13), but the idea of using creatures to symbolize God did not entirely disappear. Perhaps aided by the tradition of depicting the Holy Spirit as a dove, the idea of symbolizing Christ with a winged animal persisted into the Middle-ages. Medieval bestiaries often made a study of how particular animals exemplify God, or man, or demons, and some creatures that were associated with Christ in particular were pelicans, peacocks, caladrius (Plate 14) (scholars are not entirely sure what bird is meant by ‘caladrius;’ it seems to be a pure white water-bird that could foretell the fate of an ill person and it is possible that it is mythical), and the mythical bird the phoenix. All of these birds have particular traits that make them suitable symbols of Christ but the caladrius in particular is interesting for the fact that its’ healing abilities became combined symbolically and visually with the brazen serpent from the Old Testament (Num. 21:4-9) which the church fathers also considered a prefiguration of Christ. This combination, which Herbert Kessler speaks extensively about in his essay “Christ the Magic Dragon”, eventually became a dragon-like figure with both snake-like and bird-like qualities and exemplifies the salvific powers of Christ (Plate 15). Though this transformation happened in the 13th century, after William the Conqueror effectively ended the Celtic period in Europe (it would last a little longer in Scandinavia and the northern lands) this mish-mashed creature is in fine keeping with the visual tradition of the Celts. This illustrates that the ideas of transformation and the elimination of boundaries were not confined in the Celtic culture but that it stayed in existence even after the Celts as a culture ceased. Sicut erat in Principio…. Birds fill Celtic and Viking art and literature, emphasizing the boundaries and liminal qualities that were important to those cultures. Indeed, birds mark the very threshold which links things that are normally separated. This liminality was not abandoned with the rise of Christianity; the visual representations changed hardly at all. Birds continued to be portrayed on secular works such as jewelry and weapons as well as gaining a new medium in the illuminated manuscripts and high-crosses. These new Christian arts provided for the development of the old ideas of in-between-ness as not just transitional but also as a preparation and an encounter with the holy so that even though the ideas behind the images were now influenced by a different spirituality, the sense of liminality was preserved. The roles played by birds in Celtic mythology and art, however many, helped to describe states of liminality and these ideas of liminality fit in well with Christianity, whose very belief in Christ as both fully human and fully God was a belief in something which was an undefinable and ineffable as that place that exists between the boundaries. Bibliography Bede. 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Llewellyn Publications, Woodburry, MN. E-Book edition 2013 O'Toole, Lorcán and Ronan O'Flaherty, "Out of sight, out of mind? On the trail of a forgotten Irish bird.” Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 13-16. Published by: Wordwell Ltd. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41206309 Sharkey, John. Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient Religion. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978. Sibley, David Allen. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Western North America. AChanticleer Press Edition, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York. 2003 Slavin, Bridgitte K. “Liminality in early Irish literature: the madness of Suibhne Geilt” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, Vol. 2, 2006. Pg. 209-224 van de Weyer, Robert, ed. Celtic Fire: The Passionate Religious Vision of Ancient Britain and Ireland. NY: Doubleday, 1990 van Gennep, Arnold . The Rites of Passage. Trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960 Waddell, Helen, trans. Beasts and Saints. NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1934 Medieval Wood, Juliette. The Celts: Life, Myth and Art. NY: Barnes and Noble Books, 2004 White, T.H. The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. NY, Dover Publication Inc. 1984 Plates Plate 1: Figure of the Goddess Sequana. Bronze. 7th cen. AD. Museé Archeologique de Dijon. Plate 2: Stora Hammer Stone. Gotland, Sweden, 700-800 AD Plate 3: Close up of the Stora Hammer Stone Plate 4: Scene from the Gundestrup Cauldron, silver, La Tène period or early Roman Iron Age, (diameter: 69 cm, height: 42 cm). Found in 1891 in a peat bog near the hamlet of Gundestrup, Denmark Plate 5: Crow Helmet. Ciumesti, Romania, 3rd century B. C. Iron and Bronze, 25cm h. Bucharest, Muzeul National de Istorie Plate 6: Eagle of St. John before the Gospel of St. John, Book of Kells. ca. 800 AD. Trinity College Library, Dublin. Plate 7: Carpet page before the Gospel of St. Mark, Lindisfarne Gospels. British Library, London. (Image from the online viewing available through the British Library) Plate 8: enlarged top portion of the Gospel of St. Mark carpet page, Lindisfarne Gospels. Plate 9: Carpet page from the Book of Durrow, ca. 650 AD. Trinity College, Dublin. Plate 10: The Eusabian Cannon from the Book of Kells (Close up of the lower left hand corner) Plate 11; Madonna and Child, school of Duccio di Buoninsegna, ca.1300. Tempera on panel, 11 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. California State Parks, Hearst Castl Plate 12: High-Cross from Castledermot, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Plate 13 High-Cross at Monasterbois, Ireland. 10th-11th Cen. Plate 14: Mauscript illumination of a Caladrius. British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 40r Plate 15: French Missale. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 12054, fol. 151r. 28