|
In Irish and Norse legends, the number nine is connected to Odin's nine days on the tree and may relate
to the nine wave-daughters of the sea, who with their mother, could possibly be symbolically implicated in the mythical
drowning deaths of seafaring men. These legends were part of the shaping influence
of the Aran Islanders. Furthermore, in the play Riders to The Sea, Maurya suffers nine days of keening and mourning
over her missing son.
During certain Pagan festivals which required sacrifice, the Norse also offered sacrifices of nine each of various kinds of
creatures which were then hung up in trees for all to see. These also included human sacrifices which seems to say that they
did not make much of a distinction, if any, between human beings and animals.
Numbers 3 and 9 in Norse Mythology
There were nine days alloted to looking for Maurya's son who was missing and presumed
dead by Maurya, Bartley, and the two daughters, although they show a little hope, however futile.
"MAURYA. It's
a hard thing they'll be saying below if the body is washed up and there's no man in it to make the coffin, and I after giving
a big price for the finest white boards you'd find in Connemara.
[She looks round at the boards.]
BARTLEY. How would it be washed up, and we after looking each
day for nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the west and south?"
It is shortly after Bartley mentions the fair that the number nine is
introduced into the play. In connection with the missing Michael, Bartley says: "and
we after looking each day for nine days."
The number nine is mentioned twice again in the play, once again speaking of Michael:
"for when a man is nine days in the sea..." This is a reference to the drowned
man, and later, when Maurya's grieving is discussed: "And isn't it nine days herself
is after crying..."
In Riders to The Sea, Bartley says: " I'll have half an hour to go down, and you'll see me coming again in two days,
or in three days, or maybe in four days if the wind is bad."
"I seen two women, and three women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not saying a word."
This quote is from Maurya.
Both are references to the women number nine: two + three + four = nine. The numbers are in a sequence.
This is not the only riddle with numbers in the play. When the bundle is opened, Nora and Cathleen recognize the stocking
as Bartley's. However, are 59 stitches (three score is 60 minus the one dropped stitched) enough to knit a grown man's sock?
"NORA (who has taken up the stocking and counted the stitches, crying out). It's Michael, Cathleen, it's Michael;
God spare his soul, and what will herself say when she hears this story, and Bartley on the sea?
CATHLEEN (taking the stocking). It's a plain stocking.
NORA. It's the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score stitches, and I dropped four of them.
CATHLEEN (counts the stitches). It's that number is in it (crying out).."
(http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/micsun/IrishResources/riders.htm)
In
the ancient Irish legend of Finn and Diarmuid, there was a geis, a kind of specific taboo, on Diarmuid. He was never
to hear the baying of hunting hounds without responding to their call and joining in the chase. His uncle Finn was searching
for him and one day spied "the whittlings of a stick coming down the waters of a brook, each speel of them curled nine times
in a way that no knife in Ireland other than Diarmuid's could have contrived", so that Finn, his enemy, knew he was near and
set up a trap by planning to release his hounds to hunt boar. Then he could catch Diarmuid.
To
save him, Finn would have to walk "nine footsteps" to the well with the best water in the world (Campbell, 472).
Wells in pagan Ireland were sacred to the Celtic people. There are many instances
where the number nine is used as a magical formula for attaining the desired results besides this story of Diarmuid.
Of all the single digit numbers, nine (9) may be the most profound. Composed of three trinities (3 times 3 equals 9), nine
represents the principles of the sacred Triad taken to their utmost expression. The Chaldeans believed 9 to be sacred, and
kept it apart in their numerology from the other numbers. Nine has been and in some cases still is considered thrice sacred
and represents perfection, balance, order -- in effect, the supreme superlative.
There is an attempt to balance opposite elements
in some of the Norse and Irish myths. Night is balanced against day. Summer is balanced against winter. Single life was balanced
against married life.
As further evidence that the number nine is of special importance in Scandinavian myth, Scandinavian Mythology
by Paul Hamlyn offers these thoughts which link the idea and ideal of marital unification:
"The myth of Fryers wooing of the maiden Gerd is preserved in one of the Edda poems…
Northwards, in the Underworld, he caught sight of a beautiful maiden coming out of her father's hall...He sent his
servant Skirmir on a long and perilous journey to woo the maiden for him, giving him his own sword and a horse which could
carry him to the otherworld... he had to threaten her with the magic sword with the wrath of the gods before she finally consented
to meet Freyer in a grove in nine nights time to become his bride..."
It is possible that the ritual of the divine marriage was linked to the reappearance of the sun after the winter darkness...The
nine nights of waiting imposed on him are referred to again as preceding the supposed marriage of Freyja to the giant Thrim,
and may have been a part of the pattern of a marriage ceremony "(Hamlyn, 74-76).
The idea of marriage, the combination of two separate elements, was one easily grasped and transferable from this story.
Marriage was represented as joyousness in the rebirth of light as the days grew longer and brighter after the winters
solstice. The comments Maura makes about the dark nights of Samhain are rooted in long held beliefs.
Nine days or nights' time was linked to legends of sacrifice, the difficult days preceding good ones and proverbial
darkness before the dawn, a union of the immortal sea with mortal flesh.
Certainly, the elements of this tale of Freyr occur in Riders to The Sea. Nine
is an integral part of the pattern. The sons, one already dead and one soon to be, appear in the play caught in a dimension
between this world and the underworld. They are mounted on horses that figure
symbolically in the play and have similar functions in many ancient mythologies: Norse, Celtic, Roman and British.
Maurya’s vision of her sons journeying together is validated soon after.
It is evident that they are on some sort of spiritual journey.
Viking Wedding and Blood Twigs
|
|
Stephen Crane's set of verses The Black Riders recalls the importance
of the number nine. The Black Riders were probably invading Danish Vikings. They often had dark hair and were considered more
ferocious than the fair-haired Vikings:
The Black Riders and Other Lines
The Greeks Had Nine Lyric Poets
There is an old spell remembered by people of the Orkney Islands as the
Wristing or Wresting Spell:
Our Savior rade,
His fore-foot slade;
Our Savior lichtit
down.
Sinew to sinew, vein to vein,
Joint to joint, and bane to bane,
Mend thou in God's name!
This formula derives from an ancient source. The essence of the spell "joint to joint
and sinew to sinew" is a recitation for healing:
"The physician Dian Cecht replaced Nuada's arm with a working silver one and he was reinstated as king.
However, Dian Cecht's son Miach was dissatisfied with the replacement so he recited the spell,
"ault fri halt dí féith fri féth" (joint to joint of it and sinew to sinew), which caused flesh to grow over
the silver prosthesis over the course of nine days and nights" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_D%C3%A9_Danann).
This Wresting Spell involves the tying of knots to secure the spell. The spell
also seems to have a hidden reference to the Norns who were spinners. In Riders to the Sea, there is a spinning wheel
on the set.
...he recited the spell, "ault fri halt dí féith fri féth" (joint to joint of it and sinew to sinew), which caused flesh to
grow over the silver prosthesis over the course of nine days and nights...
...during which the Milesians would lie at anchor nine waves' distance from the shore.
Heimdal and His Nine Mothers
|
