The Irish Parallel of Óðinn on the Windy Tree: The Trial of Fionn at Slieve Cuilinn

The Irish Parallel of Óðinn on the Windy Tree: The Trial of Fionn at Slieve Cuilinn

    Having previously compared Apollo and Óðinn with regard to the famous "Windy Tree" myth (link), we find that Irish Fionn also has a myth specifically paralleling this myth of Óðinn upon the tree. In order to analyze this parallel we will first repost the central portion of our previous analysis to refresh the readers' memories regarding the parallel between Óðinn and Apollo, and then we will bring in Fionn's myth.

Óðinn hangs on the windy tree, wounded by a spear and enduring nine "long nights," in order to gain the runes and the powers they can give access to, these runes then being one of the central elements of the spell that revives the dead. The runes themselves are sometimes speculated to have been instruments of divination and prophecy as well. Havamal 79 refers to “asking” runes, and that which is asked coming true: “All will prove true that thou askest of runes – those that are come from the gods, which the high Powers wrought, and which Odin painted: then silence is surely best.” Although such use is not directly attested otherwise, other divinatory objects or signs are attested during the period predating the use of the known runes (Tacitus, Germania, 10). Furthermore, the word rune means "secret, hidden," arguably pointing to the concealed and esoteric nature of their knowledge. The mythic parallels we present below actually further bolster the idea that Óðinn's reward relates to prophecy, as each of them, while paralleling Óðinn's myth in other details, result in a prophetic reward.

Daphne and the Windy Tree

Though on the surface it will surely seem an absurd comparison – at first – we find a similar pattern and meaning in the myth of Apollo's pursuit of the maiden Daphne. Apollo, as we have seen, a Brihaspati cognate god, is struck by Cupid's arrow (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.452), falls in love with the naiad Daphne, and pursues her. She flees, leading to a chase. During this pursuit, Apollo suffers the torment of love, and mentions his knowledge of the healing herbs and how this knowledge has not done anything for his painful love-wound. Finally, when Apollo catches her, Daphne prays to her father Peneus, or to Zeus (Parthenius, Love Romances, 15), and is changed into a laurel tree. She is described as being swallowed up and concealed in the bark of the tree. In another version (Nonnus, Dionysiaca, 33.210), Daphne is swallowed by Gaia, the earth, but is also said to become a tree (42.386). This does not halt Apollo's love, however, for he embraces the tree and makes the iconic laurel crown from her branches, claiming the laurel for his tree -- "you shall be my tree" (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.452). 

Nonnus, however, says more, spelling out the fact that "she crowned his head with prophetic clusters" (Nonnus, Dionysiaca, 42.386), and that hers was a tree with “inspired whispers.” This points us toward the answer to the central questions: why does Apollo pursue a maiden who becomes a tree, and why is this tree the laurel? We see from Nonnus that this tree was believed to bear "prophetic clusters," which is confirmed from the practice of Apollo's priestesses themselves, such as the Delphic Oracle, who chewed none other than laurel leaves in order to induce their prophetic visions. Furthermore, the laurel crown which Apollo makes has the dual symbolism of the athletic/martial victor and the poetic victor. From this we retain the title laureate today for our official chief poet, the one who has won the poetic contest and gained the laurel crown. Poets going back to antiquity, including Ovid himself, were depicted wearing laurels. Hence the laurel leaves had, among their chief symbolisms, both a prophetic and a poetic meaning, connecting them to the poetic chants and prophetic powers we have thus far examined in relation to the "Brihaspati" cognate gods. Indeed, it hardly need even be said that Apollo is known as god both of prophecy (with epithets Manticus, Iatromantis, Pythius) and the poetic art generally, mousike (companion and lover of all the muses), as well as music, the laurel combining these meanings in one. Laurel leaves also have limited medicinal powers (used for upset stomach, rashes, as an anti-inflammatory for rheumatism, and as aromatherapy), thus potentially uniting all of Apollo's central aspects. 

Thus, in the Daphne myth, Apollo, having been pierced by the sharp point of a weapon (Cupid's arrow), has an extended pursuit of a tree-maiden, during which he suffers anguish (and thinks on his healing knowledge), and finally he catches her (is said to embrace the tree while Óðinn hangs from it) and gains from this tree-form an item granting the power of prophecy (while also being related to poetry). The match to the Óðinnic pattern is striking when considered from this angle: Óðinn "pursues" knowledge on a tree (instead of pursuing the tree-maiden herself), is pierced by the sharp point of a weapon (a spear), suffers for an extended period (“long nights”) while "pursuing" this knowledge, and finally receives items (runes) which are related both to prophecy and the poetic galdr, these connecting again to the healing art. It would be just like the Greeks to turn a myth about the pursuit of esoteric knowledge into a lustful, one-sided love-and-chase story (and esoteric allegory). In fact, though the tone of the two myths seems so strikingly dissimilar, if one accepts that both gods come from a shared mythos, but reject the identification of these two myths, then one would have to say that two cognate gods, after a "pursuit" of some kind, gain the main symbol of their prophetic and poetic power from a tree, but that they are somehow different myths in essence.   

Daphne is sealed up in the tree or transported away, leaving the tree leaves as her intermediary, just as the runes themselves are "secret" symbols that point toward a greater concealed mystery, and just as language (or symbolic signs like runes and letters) itself points toward an inaccessible referent which it represents. That is, Daphne herself vanishes from Apollo's grasp, is concealed by the bark and leaves, just as Truth itself is always concealed and kept at a remove from mortals. Only by the intermediary means of the prophetic tools, whether the runes or the laurel leaves, can this concealed greater Truth be partially glimpsed. In Ovid's version, Daphne even prays to Diana, goddess of virginity, to preserve her from Apollo. Though this could simply be a late dramatic elaboration in the manner we come to expect from the Roman Ovid, it could also point toward the idea of the inviolability of Truth. The highest Truth remains unviolated, pure, and perfect despite attempts to possess it fully, and despite the mediated visions we are granted of it. Thus the meaning of this myth of Apollo's is the passionate pursuit of Truth, its perpetual evasiveness, and its final mediation via the prophetic power of the priest of the spoken word. The emphasis is on the concealed and secret nature of this truth and the pain involved in its pursuit, as the emphasis is also on the secret nature of the runes (“secrets”) in the Óðinn myth, and the same again in the myth of Dian Cecht's son, when after killing him Dian Cecht scatters the herbs that spring up so that the dangerous knowledge that they represent will remain hidden.

Supporting this reading even further is the curious portion found at the beginning of the Daphne myth in which we meet another pursuer of Daphne, Leucippus. Parthenius (Love Romances, 15) and Pausanius (Description of Greece, 8.20.2) describe how Leucippus falls in love with Daphne and dresses like a woman to get close to her. He hunts with her in this guise, but when it comes time to bathe, he is discovered, and is killed for his offense by her nymphs. Apollo pursues Daphne immediately after Leucippus' death. Read in terms of our above interpretation, this sequence of events falls in line with another Óðinnic myth. If Daphne is Truth mediated by prophecy, then Leucippus' attempt to get close to her by wearing women's clothes would be exactly the same as Óðinn's well-known practice of the female-associated prophetic art, seiðr. Óðinn is mocked by Loki, for instance, for dressing as a woman and performing this female form of prophecy, and in other texts (Gisla saga of Surssonar and the Kings' saga Olaf's saga Tryggvasonar of Oddr Snorrason) it is shown that the punishment for a man performing seiðr could be death, just as Leucippus is promptly killed when he is discovered by the nymphs. Leucippus wearing women's clothes and attempting to get close to Daphne, then, is a depiction of a seiðr-like prophetic practice, a man dressing as a woman in order to possess the prophetic Truth that Daphne signifies. Thus Leucippus' myth, though it seems like an odd anomaly in relation to Apollo's pursuit, is the important other half of the Apollo and Daphne narrative, and connects the overall myth even more closely to Óðinn, and thus to the Brihaspati mythos as a whole. Furthermore, this interpretation suggests that some kind of female prophetic practice, which was taboo for men to perform, could have been a feature of Indo-European religion going back to the time of unity of the pre-Greek and pre-Germanic peoples, or at least became common on a North-South axis in Europe at a very early date. This also potentially brings the female practitioners of seiðr (the Volvas) and the Apollonian priestesses, such as the Oracle of Delphi, into juxtaposition. 

Fionn and the Rudraic Mythos

Now: having refreshed the readers' memories, we must say that a “Rudraic” origin for this myth type in some ways seems more likely than a "Brihaspatian" one, as the Windy Tree myth does in fact have a possible analog in the story of the Rudraic figure Fionn mac Cumhaill (on Fionn as a Rudraic god). This parallel is found in a tale called “The Hunt of Slieve Cuilinn.” Whether this indicates that it is a fully Rudraic myth in origin or simply that the two deities were deeply intertwined we leave open. In this Irish parallel tale, Fionn comes across a sorrowful girl sitting by a lake (as Greek Daphne is a naiad, nymphs who are associated with all types of bodies of freshwater) while chasing a grey faun during a hunt (Daphne is hunting at the beginning of her myth in both Parthenius and Pausanias' versions). She is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and is called “woman of the white hands.” Her skin is as white as lime and eyes are like stars in the time of frost (Daphne is an archetype of virginity and also becomes “deathly pale” at the end of Ovid's account). The girl demands Fionn retrieve a ring of red gold that she has lost in the lake. He strips himself down and leaps into the lake at her command. He swims around the lake three times and searches every inch of it until finally finding the ring and bringing it back to the girl. When he does, the girl instantly leaps into the water and vanishes (Daphne's father is a river god and she ends her chase by his shore, the site where she vanishes into the tree or is swallowed by the earth). Fionn realizes that his swim in the lake has turned him into a withered old man with grey hair, weak and unrecognizable to those who knew him. When he finally deduces who this girl was – Miluchradh, daughter of Cuilinn – he goes to Cuilinn, who gives him a special drink from a vessel of red gold which returns his youth, but cannot return the color of his hair. He keeps his grey hair for the rest of his life, a mark of this trial. When he finishes drinking from this vessel, it drops into the earth, and from it springs a tree. A specifically prophetic tree. It is said that “any one that would look at the branches of the tree in the morning, fasting, would have knowledge of all that was to happen on that day” (“The Hunt of Slieve Cuilinn”). 

We can see the main features once again of the Óðinnic and Apollonian Trial of the Tree. Fionn performs a pursuit (of a grey faun), he encounters a white-skinned, virginal girl who demands a great sacrifice of him. He endures a severe trial trying to appease her (swimming the lake three times vs. Óðinn hanging for nine nights is noteworthy, both numbers being multiples of three), and grows old and unrecognizable as a result, a kind of symbolic death or ascetic transformation. As interpreters of Óðinn’s myth have long recognized, this is an initiation. The grey hair that Fionn keeps ever after is then a mark of this initiation and a symbol of maturity, considering that the initiation ritual may have been a rite of passage from youth to full adulthood, or perhaps from a novitiate state to becoming some kind of a seer. The girl, Milucradh, vanishes instantly with her treasure, just as Daphne is suddenly transported away when she is caught up to or is enclosed in the tree to preserve her virginity. Possibly of interest, Milucradh is believed by some (Tomas O'Cathasaigh, "Knowth -- The Eponym of Cnogba") to be another name of the same figure as the Druidess Birog, who makes Cian, another Óðinnic aspect, dress as a woman to perform a kind of visionary magic. If Birog and Milucradh are the same figure, this would bring us full circle and Birog and Cian's female-clothed magic could then parallel Leucippus' attempt to get close to Daphne while wearing women's clothes, which we interpreted as a dramatization of a seiðr-like practice, as Óðinn himself dresses as a woman to perform this feminine seer-magic. Fionn eventually drinks from a magic vessel given to him by Cuilinn as Óðinn also drinks from the mead vessel Odrerir given to him by a brother of Bestla just after hanging on the tree, and this revives Fionn. Finally, the tree appears which yields prophetic rewards, telling what will happen. Not only that, but this tree will only give its prophecies to someone who is “fasting” – an ascetic practice reminiscent of Óðinn's hanging on the tree. An ascetic act is explicitly required to gain the prophetic wisdom of Fionn’s tree. Moreover, Óðinn says that he is given no bread and no drink while he hangs from the tree, thus he too is explicitly fasting (Havamal 138). Fionn must swim the lake and then fast to gain prophecy from his tree, while Óðinn must hang from his tree and fast to gain the runes, and Apollo for his part must run a sort of footrace, each kind of trial possibly reflecting local variants of the initiation trial. Local beliefs hold that Fionn gained the name Fionn, meaning “white,” from the grey or white hair he acquired swimming the lake (gaining a name also being another mark of initiation), and that anyone who swims the lake at Slieve Cuilinn to this day will also have their hair turned white like Fionn. This may then be a folk remembrance of the ritual initiations that seem to have been connected to this lake. The mountain of Slieve Cuilinn/Gullion is furthermore a sacred location and a high place. It is home to the highest passage tomb in all of Ireland, called Calliagh Birra’s (aka Milucradh’s) House. The lake featured in the myth, Calliagh Birra’s Lough, is near the summit of the mountain. The region called the Ring of Gullion, in which Slieve Gullion is found, was known as the District of Poets or the District of Songs in the 18^th Century, which may connect back to the central poetic theme of the Apollo and Óðinn myths, suggesting that the initiatic myth associated with the locale may have referred specifically to the initiation of poet-prophets, ie. seers.

Interestingly, in Fionn’s myth it is the female, Milucradh, who bears an unrequited love for Fionn, and is acting out of jealousy of her sister who has had Fionn’s affections. Meanwhile in Apollo’s myth, Apollo is the one fueled by unrequited love for the nymph, Daphne, along with a noted jealousy of Leucippus. It seems that the theme of unrequited love as the motive of the trial has remained a key feature in both cases, its subject and object merely being swapped between the two figures around whom the theme centers. It is only by first aligning the myth of Óðinn and the myth of Apollo that we can finally properly see the meaning and origin of this tale of Fionn’s, as it contains some elements that are paralleled in one and other elements that are paralleled in the other of these analogues. Seen together the underlying pattern becomes clear. Óðinn's separate myth of drinking from Mimir's Well would then be closer to the “waters of illumination” myth we find in separate tales of Fionn and his parallels Gwion/Taliesin, and in the Óðinnic version these Rudraic waters and the Rudraic motif of the loss of an eye (Goll/Balor/Fintan) combine. Fionn also has a tale more specifically matching this myth, in which he too drinks the waters of a well of wisdom directly, when he has the waters of Beag’s “Well of the moon,” which grant wisdom and prophecy, thrown at him and some of it goes into his mouth. As the Salmon of Knowledge, which Fionn tastes, also originates at a well of wisdom, the Well of Segais, these two Irish tales obviously overlap in their motifs and are thematically connected.

To summarize the most important points of this triple comparison:

- First, though it is a debated topic, the runes are prophetic tools in some sense, directly or indirectly connected to prophetic power (“asking" the runes in Havamal 80, etc.).

- Óðinn is pierced by a spear, hangs from the tree, enduring nine long nights, while being given no bread or drink (fasting), undergoes a symbolic death or ascetic transformation (an initiation), receives the runes connected to prophecy and magic, and is then given a drink from the mead vessel Oðrerir right afterward.

- Apollo is pierced by an arrow of Cupid’s, pursues the virginal naiad Daphne (naiads being connected to bodies of freshwater) who is hunting. He suffers torments of love, then Daphne turns pale and then is turned into a laurel tree by a god or is swallowed by Gaia/vanishes, with the laurel tree left behind. Apollo receives the “prophetic clusters” of leaves and “inspired whispers” of the laurel tree, whose leaves were chewed by the priestess of Apollo, the Pythia, to induce prophecy.

- While hunting, Fionn sees a beautiful, pale white girl at the edge of a lake. She demands he find her ring that she has lost in the water. Fionn swims around the lake three times and searches every inch and finally finds it and brings it to her. She takes the ring, leaps into the water and vanishes. Fionn realizes he has become aged to an old man by the trial, a kind of symbolic death or ascetic transformation. He is given a magical drinking vessel by the girl’s father. He drinks from it and becomes young again, but his grey hair remains as a mark of his trial. A tree springs up from the spot where he drops the vessel, and the tree gives prophetic knowledge of what will happen that day to those who come to it in the morning while fasting (as Óðinn is given no bread or drink), an ascetic act leading to gaining the prophetic knowledge given by the tree.

- Lastly, Fionn, Apollo and Óðinn can each be shown to be connected to the “Rudraic” deity type, as we have discussed in Part 2 of our article on Apollo and Óðinn as "The High Priest of the Word."

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