Goídel Glas [The "Green man"]: Irish and Scottish Folklore, Founding Myth

12:07 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
According to an Irish and Scottish medieval tradition, Goídel Glas (Latinised as Gathelus) is the creator of the Goidelic languages and theeponymous ancestor of the Gaels.
The tradition can be traced to the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn. A Scottish variant is due to John of Fordun (d. 1384).

Lebor Gabála Érenn[edit]

The narrative in the Lebor Gabála Érenn is a fictional account of the origin of the Gaels as the descendants of the Scythian prince Fénius Farsaid, one of seventy-two chieftains who built the Tower of Babel. Goídel Glas was the son of Nel (son of Fénius) and Scota (daughter of a Pharaoh of Egypt).[1] Goídel Glas is credited with the creation of Gaelic (proto-Irish language) from the original seventy-two languages that arose at the time of the confusion of tongues.[2] His descendants, the Gaels, undergo a series of trials and tribulations that are clearly modelled on those of the Israelites in the Old Testament. They flourish in Egypt at the time of Moses and leave during the Exodus; they wander the world for 440 years before eventually settling in the Iberian Peninsula. There, Goídel's descendant Breogán founds a city called Brigantia, and builds a tower from the top of which his son Íth glimpses Ireland. Brigantia refers to Corunna in Galicia (which was then known as Brigantium)[3] and Breogán's tower is likely based on the Tower of Hercules (which was built at Corunna by the Romans).[4]
An interesting anecdote in the LGE tells how Gaidel Glas [Hirem Abif?], son of Nel (Keating: Niul), was cured of a serpent's sting when Moses made fervent prayer and touched his rod upon the lad's wound.[5] An inserted verse in an earlier passage says of Gaidel: "green were his arms and his vesture".[6] O'Clery's redaction of the Lebor Gabála adds that the snake bite left a green ring on the boy, from which he earned his nickname of Gaidel Glas (meaning "Green").[7] Keating also repeats this quoting a glossarial verse, although he prefaces it with an alternate derivation of the nickname from the word for lock (Irish: glas)[8][9]

John of Fordun[edit]


Scota (left) with Goídel Glas (right) voyaging from Egypt, as depicted in a 15th-century manuscript of theScotichronicon of Walter Bower; in this version Scota and Goídel Glas (Latinized as Gaythelos) are wife and husband.
A Scottish version of the tale of Goídel Glas and Scota was recorded by John of Fordun. This is apparently not based on the main Irish Lebor Gabála account. Fordun refers to multiple sources, and his version is taken to be an attempt to synthesise these multiple accounts into a single history.
In Fordun's version, Gaythelos, as he calls Goídel Glas, is the son of "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", who was exiled to Egypt and took service with the Pharaoh, marrying Pharaoh's daughter Scota. Various accounts of how Gaythelos came to be expelled from Egypt—by a revolt following the death of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, pursuing Moses, or in terror from the Plagues of Egypt, or after an invasion by Ethiopians—are given, but the upshot is that Gaythelos and Scota are exiled together with Greek and Egyptian nobles, and they settle in Hispania after wandering for many years. In the Iberian Peninsula they settle in the land's northwest corner, at a place called Brigancia (the city of A Coruña, that the Romans knew as Brigantium).


The Gaels or Goidels are speakers of the Gaelic (or Goidelic) languages; a branch of the Celtic languages comprising Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx.[1] Historically, the Gaels were a distinct ethnic group. Gaelic language and culture originated in Ireland, extending to Dál Riata in southwest Scotland. In the Middle Ages it became dominant throughout Scotland and the Isle of Man also. However, in most areas, the Gaels were gradually anglicized and the Gaelic languages supplanted by English.
Terminology[edit]
The modern English term Gael derives from the Old Gaelic word Goídel. The modern spellings are Gael in Irish and Gàidheal in Scottish Gaelic. Goídel is thought to have been borrowed during the 7th century from the Primitive Welshform which became Old Welsh Guoidel "Irishman" (attested as a male personal name in the Book of Llandaff). This may be derived from the Proto-Indo-European *weidh-(e)l-o-, perhaps meaning "forest people", partially cognate with the Old Gaelic Féni (from Proto-Indo-European *weidh-n-jo-, "forest people"; "warriors" [ROBINHOOD??]in Proto-Irish),[2][3] which is also the origin of Fianna and Fenian.
Gaelic Irish soldiers, a boy piperand a woman, c.1575
Gaelic Irish men and noblewomen, c.1575
Romanticist depictions of Scottish Highlanders in the 1840s by R. R. McIan
Early Greek and Roman authors called the Irish Ιουερνοι and Iverni, respectively, both derived from the Proto-Irish ethnic name *Iwerni "people of *Iweriū". Later Greek and Latin variants of this name included Ίερνοι, Hierni, andHiberni.[4]
Scoti or Scotti was another Latin name for the Gaels that came into use by the 4th century.[5][6] It is not believed that any Gaelic groups called themselves Scot(t)i in ancient times, except when referring to themselves in Latin.[5] This word was also adopted as Scottas (pl.) in Old English.[7] It is also conjectured that the Latin term may mean "raider, pirate" as it is widely accepted that Gaelic raiders were attacking Britain's west coast during and following theRoman occupation.


Current definitions[edit]

  • Gaels – the ethno-linguistic group
  • Gaelic – of or relating to the Gaels
  • Goidels – an alternative term sometimes used to describe the Gaels in antiquarian contexts
  • Goidelic – of or relating to the Gaels, particularly their language, in antiquarian contexts

Mythological origins[edit]

Main article: Milesians (Irish)
The Lebor Gabála Érenn, a medieval Christian pseudo-history of Ireland, says that the Gaels sailed to the British Isles (the British and Irish Isles) via Scythia and Iberia, after spending hundreds of years wandering the Earth. The Gaels fight a battle of sorcery with the Tuath Dé, the gods, who inhabited Ireland at the time. Ériu, a goddess of the land, promises the Gaels that Ireland shall be theirs so long as they give tribute to her. They agree, and their bard Amergin recites an incantation known as the Song of Amergin. The two groups agree to divide Ireland between them: the Gaels take the world above, while the Tuath Dé take the world below (i.e. the Otherworld). Other medieval texts mention a belief that the Gaels all descend from Éber Donn, who appears to have been a god of the underworld

Footnotes[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Macalister 1939, ¶140
  2. Jump up^ Macalister 1939, Vol. 2, p.13, ¶107 "It is Gaedel Glas who fashioned the Gaelic language out of the seventy-two.."; Macalister (p.5) adds "Kg(Keating) ascribes it to a different Gaedel, s.(son of) Ethor, unknown to LG"
  3. Jump up^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, "A Coruña".
  4. Jump up^ Harry Mountain, The Celtic Encyclopaedia, p. 380
  5. Jump up^ Macalister 1939, Volume II, pp. 59–61 (¶143–145)
  6. Jump up^ Macalister 1939, p.93 Poem No. XIII
  7. Jump up^ O'Cléirigh & Macalister 1916, LG, Vol. 1, p.197 "§128 Aaron went to Moses after that, and tells him the hearty welcome that Nel, son of Fenius, gave them, .. [Nel had a son, and ] a venomous serpent wound itself around him so that death was near him.. Moses made vehement and diligent prayer to God, when the boy reached him, and he struck the famous rod on the serpent till he cleft it in two. The boy was sound at once. There was a green ring on him in the place where the serpent had coiled about him, from that out to his death, so that thus Glas [" Green "] stuck to him as an extra name."
  8. Jump up^ Comyn & Dinneen 1902, vol2, p.19- (Keating, §16): "Some seanchas state that Moses fastened [his bracelet] with a lock.." etc.; the passage also seems to suggest the nickname also has to do with the word fleascach, glossed here as 'bracelet-bearer' denoting an authority figure, even though 'fleasc' normally means a staff or rod.
  9. Jump up^ Macalister's 5-volume edition of LGE, 1938–, see: Vol. 1, p. xxvii; Vol. 2, pp.4–5 (commentary, p. 35(¶119), pp. 59, 61 (¶143–145); p.123 (verse XVIII to ¶144), p.134(=notest to ¶119), p.157; Vol. 3, p. 198

References[edit]

  • Broun, Dauvit, The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of the Scots in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Boydell, Woodbridge, 1999. ISBN 0-85115-375-5
  • Ferguson, William, The Identity of the Scottish Nation: An historic quest. Edinburgh U.p, Edinburgh, 1998. ISBN 0-7486-1071-5
  • Geoffrey Keating, History of Ireland, §16
    • Comyn, David; Dinneen, Patrick Stephen (1902), The history of Ireland (google), Irish Texts Society 2, London: D. Nutt[series: ITS Vols. 4, 8, 9, 15] (ed. & tr.)
  • John of Fordun, Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, ed. William Forbes Skene, tr. Felix J.H. Skene, 2 vols. Reprinted, Llanerch Press, Lampeter, 1993. ISBN 1-897853-05-X
  • MacKillop, James, The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford U.P., Oxford, 1998. ISBN 0-19-860967-1
  • Macalister, Robert Alexander Stewart, 1870–1950 (1939), Lebor gabála Érenn: The book of the taking of Ireland (snippet) 2, Dublin: Irish Texts Society by the Educational Co. of Ireland
  • O'Cléirigh, Micheál (1916), Leabhar Gabhála: The Book of Conquests of Ireland: The Recension of Micheál, Dublin: Irish Hodges, Figgis and Company
↑