The Morrigan

After a rather depressive section about the tragedy of a hero we arrive to the most grief filled figure of Irish mythology, the goddess called the Morrigan. The Morrigan (or Morrigu, Mórrigna, etc.) is one of the unique Irish goddesses who were worshiped as a single entity or a triple, forging together three aspects into one. Mainly the Morrigan can be attributed as a war goddess who is absent from the fight itself but comes to harvest the souls of the dead,

512 "Tied on a stone, he's born as hero / Died on his feet, he's known forever / Born, with a halo of frenzy, you black-browed // Cú Chulainn, Cú Chulainn / Mighty Cú Chulainn, even death you defy / Cú Chulainn / Still he stands where the raven lands / With Emer as his bride. // Small and youthful, (the) son of Lugh and Deichtine / (He) Killed the guard-dog, killed the monster of Culann / Yes, kill the monster of Culann in warp spasm [...] Cú Chulainn / Still he stands where the raven lands / With Emer as his bride. / (The) Legend of Cú Chulainn flies across the land / Like the spear of your fate" Therion, Sitra Ahra, Nuclear Blast, 2010.

148 therefore visualized as a crow or raven.⁵¹³ She is also connected with prophecy (as one who knows the dead she knows the time of one’s own death). Initially arriving with the Tuatha De Danann she was a singer for his tribe in the battle against the Fomorians. Three other goddess figures are called together as “The Three Morrigans” 1) Badb, a crow goddess; 2) Nemain, the spreader of panic; and 3) Macha, who is the horse of battle in haste.⁵¹⁴ The three aspects all indicate not the heroic and triumphant war worshipped by the Vikings as we have seen it in connection with Thor, Odin and the Valhalla, but the black and grieving fight that brings death to the land. The so-called “Phantom Queen” is not the allegory or metaphor of the Otherworld or the afterlife but Death herself who is about to come for everybody, even for heroes like Cú Chulainn, who in a version of his myth is pursued to death by the Morrigan.⁵¹⁵ Suidakra’s vision on the Morrigan⁵¹⁶ is found on their album of 1999, entitled Lays from Afar. Here we encounter the closest experience of death itself. Supposedly a warrior is facing death not in the meaning of the deadly strike of the enemy, but as dying closes around him in the picture of the Morrigan. The goddess is depicted in the lyrics the way we have met her above symbolised by a crow. The red clouds around her, her triple (three faced) and fierce nature, her connection to darkness are all enumerated. The warrior faces his fate with a hail movement greeting the guide to the afterlife showing no sign of anxiety. Besides the crow-like, dark and wild nature of the goddess we also can hear her scream that makes her presence real for the listener, as it shakes the earth, thus the possibility of the Morrigan is only a vision is scattered. Her hunger for the dead is well represented with the picture of crows picking the eyes of thousands of the deceased. The last line of the entire song (“[…] May the eyes of thousands please thy raging greed - but not mine...”)⁵¹⁷ turns the whole concept into and upside down, as the dying warrior who stands in front of death, accepting the fact of his fall, tries to fight it for one last moment. Here we can witness the basic instinct to avoid death, a very primordial feeling that works even in the last moments of life. The Morrigan in this song is presented more like a metaphor of death and not a goddess, only with lighter pictures to illustrate the process as she devours the souls of the dead.

513 Charles SQUIRE, ibid. 1999, 431.

514 Patricia MONAGHAN,ibid.2008,339-340.

515 Philip FREEMAN, Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses and Heroes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, 90, 134.

516 "[...] Wrapped in red clouds / The corvine goddess appeared / Emptiness filled my mind / Fervid thoughts crawled suddenly into me... // Morrigan - three faced goddess dark and wild / For thee I`ll raise my sword and shield / Morrigan - grimest crow beneath the sky / May the eyes of thousands please thy raging greed // Come forth now grimest crow / Thou cry shall shatter earth and sky / ...Like a shrieking carnyce... [...]" Suidakra, Lays from Afar, Last Episode, 1999.

517 Suidakra, ibid. 1999.

149 Waylander’s next song, Morrigan’s Domain,⁵¹⁸ promises to depict not only the goddess but the territory where she is queen. The first cited verse is a natural picture painted with images of death. The whole scene is attributed with the features of a nightmare showing a field of dead bodies supposedly after a battle as the deceased are named as slain suggesting violent death. The nightmarish vision is filled with gruesome images not just of dead bodies but of blood, the amount of the dead, and the natural cycle of life: the coming crows to feast on the corpses. The dead are not considered to be human beings or to have any connection to the living on the surface as those are called “lifeless forms” and “carrion” not showing any human attribute to them. The last line of the verse reflects on their relationship to the living as an absence for the left behind sons and fathers. In the next section we see the Morrigan once again, coming with a deathly scream just as we have seen her in the song of Suidakra above.

She is represented as a crow once again, imitating the movement of the death-birds before approaching their feast. This set table is served with not only the dead bodies but with their souls together. The Morrigan is shown to be the one who is celebrating the loss of others as it is her dining table: a row of attributes are show with triumph and rejoice. The last verse brings together the two previous images of death and the closing crow(s) with a quite natural description focusing on the disgusting and filthy details of death’s aftermath also showing the accompanying host of crows picking the eyes of the dead. The obscene and grotesque reality of death is also referred, with a comforting closure stating that the Morrigan welcomes the dead as it is the part of the natural cycle of life. Thus the picture above of death, disgust and degradation may seem the divine curse of the Morrigan but at last it is the fate of everyone living, placing the goddess to her well deserved position in the cycle of life and death, attempting to accept the fact that all of us is pacing towards the depicted end in body but to another stance in the soul.

Our last encounter with Primordial’s music is the 2002 song called Sons of the Morrigan.⁵¹⁹ As we have seen it previously in connection with Babel’s Tower and Death of

518 "[...] Nightmare visions, choked with the bodies of the slain / Rivers run red, ravens alight on mounds of lifeless forms / Feasting horribly on carrion and broken bones, / Once proud men, someone's sons and brothers all. [...] Hear the shriek of the Morrigan / As she circles preparing to dine, / To dine upon the slaughtered souls / To feast on fresh dead flesh / Triumphant scream of ecstasy / Exultant in the misery / Wallow in the pain //

Putrid stench of entrails and emptied bowels / Morrigan's minions glut on unseeing eyes / A picture painted in detail so obscene / Morrigan greets all those souls who die. [...]” Waylander, ibid. 2001.

519 "Shone the sunset red and solemn / Where we stood and observed / Down the corners of the column / Letter strokes of Ogham carved / 'tis belike a burial pillar / Said he and those shallow lines / Hold some warriors name of valour / And will rightly show the signs // No one saw, how far I fell / And no one ever knew / That there was a heart of flesh / Deep within me / As it was, bled of the twisted horn / And the howling of the dogs / Raise on old Heroes lament / While the weeping of women / Still vexes my heart [...]" Primordial, Storm Before Calm, Hammerheart Records, 2002.

150 the Gods the relation of Primordial towards mythology is more symbolic approach than a factual reception of the stories. Thus now we have a three verse song from which we only cite the first two ones as the last one is a citation itself. Within the lyrics we have a lament of a dying person with only one clear reference to Celtic religion with the mentioning of an Ogham inscription.⁵²⁰ The song is written from the perspective of a dying (supposedly warrior) far from his homeland awaiting his ultimate end, enumerating the circumstances of his death and some of his sorrows. His lamentation is not just only on the loss of life, but the chance of being forgotten, not just as a whole, but on the deep layers as well, e.g. the forsaking of his humanity and pride. This inhumanly human worry over the end of the life with the inner viewpoint creates a quite pictorial impression of a dying man’s mind.

Compared to the title of the song we see the same approach towards inevitable death as in the previous instances: death is real and we are all bound to meet it, or meet her as all the living is later becomes the son of the Morrigan, reminding the listener that there is no escape. Thus Morrigan is a symbol of death that is realised and explained in the lyrics of Primordial.

The inner viewpoint is maintained by Cruachan in their song, The Morrigan’s Call.⁵²¹ The title says almost of it all: the Morrigan’s call is the moment of death. The speaker shows us the process of transition from being a unique individual into being part of the mass of the dead. This is the liminal moment when one has to say farewell to the world of the living and greet afterlife where everything is transformed. We see the falling warrior in anxiety and worry over his family whom he will not only miss but are concerned what will come onto them. The responsibilities of a man are collected here to care for his wife and children, but not shown as a duty or obligation but a feeling coming from a loving heart. The growth of the children (a spring of life) is opposed with the passing of the speaker who should witness the life of his offspring but a warrior is constantly answering the Morrigan’s call and is playing with death.

Darkest Era is a Celtic metal band from Northern Ireland. Their heavy metal music woven with Celtic folk tunes lacking traditional instruments only uses metal to re-ignite the Celtic atmosphere. The debut LP of the band (The Last Caress of Light) contains the song:

520 The Ogham writing system was the traditional tool of druids attributed to the god Oghma or Oghmios, used for ritual, votive and other religious scripture to carve mostly on stones or wood. Sz. V. SKUNAJEV, Ogma = Mitológiai Enciklopédia, ed. Sz. A. TOKAREV, Budapest, Gondolat, 1988, 598.

521 "I fall to my knees, I await my death. / A fallen warrior, hear my last breath. / I fought so fierce, I fought with pride. / Now I am just another who died. // Who will care for my child? Who will care for my wife? / I leave them behind at the end of my life. / I long to stay and watch my child grow, / but I am dead and I must go." Cruachan, The Morrigan’s Call, AFM Records, 2006.

151 The Morrigan.⁵²² This instance of reception considering the Morrigan is quite different from the above listed songs. The main topic of the song is of course death and its approach towards a warrior, but in a new light. We see here a warrior who is brave and determined to win the fight he is about to participate in. The first verse and the first line of the second verse give us the well known description of the goddess lurking around to catch the ones about to die. She is named as the one inciting the concept of war amongst the people of the earth, thus she has her feasts. Thus not the manifested enemy is the enemy of the hero but death and war itself, what he attempts to beat and cast the Morrigan away. In this regard the goddess is in a close parallel to the Christian concept of Satan who is also attributed to be the one responsible for war and all the hostilities amongst men. The only difference is that from death nobody can escape thus his fight is in vain but noble. The last cited lines are about the occurrence of the mentioned event of falling fulfilling the purpose and task of the Morrigan. The songs above are all grasping the main concepts connected to the goddess: death and its inevitability. Most of the songs take the clear inner viewpoint of one facing death to bring it close to the listener, realising the attributes of the goddess and not using them as metaphors or allegories. Although the attributes of the goddess are attempting to only paraphrase death this liminal border is broken down in each song showing the naturalistic and even disgusting details of dying and the dead to underline the vast actuality that everyone must die in the end.