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Riders to The Sea, the play
Any man's death is a sacrifice of a sort. The ancients had many variations
of belief about death, sacrifices, and funerals.
Ideas of funerary rites and the condition of the dead varied from
culture to culture in ancient times. In general, pagans seem to have believed that the dead still played an active part from
time to time in the lives of the living based on their beliefs in the little people living in the underground
hill forts, various related beliefs about the dead returning and interacting with the living on certain festival nights, and
ways in which the bodies of the dead were treated.
The Irish wakes, which continue until the present time, demonstrated the feeling
that the dead could still enjoy one last good time before they were buried. Doubtless, the feeling that the spirit of the
dead lingered in or near the body after the person would be considered dead by todays' standards was even stronger in
days of old. The Egyptians prepared the physical body for the next world by mumification. The body was
opened and washed. Belief in the reanimation or resurrection of the human body was prevalent.
The Vikings
buried their kings in the cold earth until the body was black in color and then unearthed and prepared for their last funeral
rites. Some of the rituals were statements of the belief that a dead person was on their way or had already arrived in
greener pastures in heaven.
The Irish had distinctive ceremonies to bury their dead before
Christianity. After Christianization, many of the pagan burial practices were no longer tolerated by the church.
"In pre-Christian times the body was usually brought to the grave in a covering
of strophais or green bushy branches of birch. According to Cormac's Glossary the Druids used a fe
or rod of aspen, with an Ogham inscription cut on it, with which they measured the graves. It was regarded with horror
and no one touched it except the person whose job it was to measure the grave (Ellis, 137).
The Druids held strong beliefs about trees and about which kind of tree contained the magic
properties for each type of ritual they practiced.
The new religion, Christianity, was opposed to the Druid religion. Colmcille
(St. Columba), a Christian priest, wrote this anti-Druidic poem:
"It is not with the sneeze our destiny is,
Nor with the bird on top of the twig,
Nor with the trunk of a knotty tree.
Nor with an act of humming.
I adore not the voice of birds,
Nor the sneeze, nor a destiny on the earthly world,
Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman;
My Druid is Christ, the Son of God."
Comcille is listing things sacred to the Druids but not sacred to him. The Druid
says:
"There is a tradition that Druids divined 'by a sneeze (sreod) and also by an act of humming
(sordan).' St. Patrick spoke of the Druids, saying 'From them are every spell and every charm and every sreod (sneeze) and
voices of birds and every omen'" (Ellis, 85-86).
Maybe the custom of saying "God bless you" began as a counter balance against Druidic
divination of sneezes.
Columcille and the Druids
The oak tree is the tree most associated with the Druids. Some of their
most important ceremonies were conducted in groves of oak trees. The following illustrates the connection of Druids and Ireland.
Derry is a city name in Northern Ireland.
"The word Derry derives from the Gaelic doire, which means 'oak tree'. The whole
of the island of Ireland was covered by oak forests and when a tree grew close to a well, it became a holy place where ribbons
and adornments and, later on, medals were hung in supplication to the spirits who resided there" (McCourt, 78).
The name Derry derives from oak tree
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The funerals
of the Vikings, who were influential in imparting some of their beliefs and practices to the Irish, are written
about in history.
An
Arab traveler named Ibn Fadlan adds testimony in his eyewitness report of a Norse burial in The Viking.
It involved symbolic and archetypical items found in Synge's play Riders to The Sea, such as sticks, ships,
horses, bread, knives, rope, doorways and fire:
"When
a chieftain dies, his family says to his slave girls and servants: Which of you will die with him? Then one of them says,
"I will."
Meanwhile, Ibn Fadlan watched
the preparation of the actual pyre. The dead man's ship had been dragged ashore from the river, propped up with stakes and
surrounded by something that looked like a great stack of wood, on top of which it rested.
There
was a tent pitched on the deck of the ship...under the guidance of an old woman whom they called the Angel of Death, whom
Ibn Fadlan describes as an old hag-like woman, thick-set and grim looking...they also brought bread, meat and leeks...then
they took two horses and made them gallop round until they sweated...
It takes ten days to prepare the clothes and all that is needed ...during this
time the body lies in a temporary grave...He later states that the body had been embalmed, but that owing to the coldness
of the ground, it had turned black by the time it was dug up again..." (Simpson, 182).
Ibn Fadlan
Ibn Fadlan in history and literature
Ibn Fadlan's Letters On The Vikings
The
girl who offers herself for sacrifice plays a central role in the drama from then onward in the ceremony. It is:
“...a
very curious ceremony. Some of the men led her to a thing like a door frame which they had made; she seated herself on the
palms of their hands three times; they lifted her high enough for her to look over the top of the door frame...Ibn Fadlan
asked the interpreter to explain this:
He
replied: The first time they lifted her up she said: "Look, I see my father and mother! The second time she said: Look, I
see all my dead kinsmen sitting there! The third time she said: Look, I see my master sitting in Paradise. Paradise is green
and fair."
In some modern-day Christian religions, when a person is experiencing extremely distressing circumstances,
their church group will gather together and "lift them up in prayer". In Old Norse times, the group literally lifts the girl.
It is she who is in prayer.
Clearly, the wooden frame symbolizes a barrier between this world and the Otherworld...After
the ceremony the girl was handed over to the old woman and two "daughters"...the men began to beat their shields with sticks,
so that no sound of her shrieking should be heard, for fear the other girls should become frightened..."(Simpson, 183).
It
was essential that the victim and further potential victims be "kept in the dark" about the proceedings. If they were aware
of the fact of the matter, they would likely not volunteer to die.
In the poem "The Spell of the Yukon" we see words that echo the
sentiment of the sacrificed girl:
"There's a land where the mountains are nameless...
And I want to go back - and I will"
"The Spell of the Yukon" by Robert W. Service
"Heimdall is also a frame god, one who appears at the beginning and remains until the end."
Norse Funeral
The Norse
sacrifice ritual is linked to legend. It holds meaning for the devotees, who believe themselves on the verge of a mystical
and spiritual voyage to Valhalla.
The Norse girl was given some kind of draught or potion to strengthen the hypnotic
effect. Then, the sacrificial victim, pretty as a picture, is framed and dispatched.
It seems that the words, uttered
by the girl to be sacrificed, closely resembled a prayer ritualistically repeated in the ceremony. The actual circumstances
of her imminent death were kept from her and others like her, so that they would go willingly to their deaths, believing that
they would be in Paradise moments afterward, not unlike the two men who were put to death alongside Christ. He said to them
as he was dying: "Truly, I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise." The idea of a rewarding afterlife is offered
to offset the present hardship.
On the tree, Jesus is offered wine, but, instead accepts vinegar, a bitter cup. The
girl, having been drugged, and no doubt in a type of stupefied trance state, would have sex with several men before she was
handed over to the Angel of Death. This communal violation then required that the girl become the sacrificial lamb, and more
precisely, like the Goat of Azazel. She bears their guilt with her to the grave.
Some knowledge of Jung's theory of anima might add insight as to why this ceremony
may have taken place in such a way.
The first step is to look at the definition of anima.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines anima:
"Main Entry: anˇiˇma Pronunciation: 'a-n&-m&Function: nounEtymology: New Latin, from Latin, soul: an individual's
true inner self that in the analytic psychology of C. G. Jung reflects archetypal ideals of conduct; also : an inner feminine
part of the male personality -- compare ANIMUS, PERSONA."
The fact that it is described as the feminine part of the personality in men suggests that
is what is eliminated ritually.
Definition of "anima"
There is a strong psychological component to the rhythm of the sword
against shield and the drone of the beehive.
Though the Viking ritual did not include
any mutilation that is recounted, it did require a willing volunteer. Bodies Under Siege reveals that elements of stereotypic
and pattern are involved in some patients:
"Acts of stereotypic self-mutilation are monotonously
repetitive and even may have a rhythmic pattern. It is usually impossible to ascertain any symbolic meaning, thought
content, or associated effects with the behaviors. The acts are more likely than those of other types of self-mutilation
to occur in the presence of onlookers" (Favazza, 237).
Why mention this? The reason is because Maurya shows evidence of a trance state that could be credited
to keening and Norse funeral rites, both reflective of other than normal psychological states.
Bergman's film The Virgin In Spring depicts
many aspects of the worship of Odin. A girl, a daughter of a man called Thor, is sacrificed, although the rape/murder
seems on the surface to be more about an attack by robbers, but the underlying theme is about the old religion opposed to
the new Christianity.
The film is based on an ancient Swedish ballad called
Töre's Daughter in Vänge where the girls were killed and beheaded.
In this ballad, the idea of the pagan sacred wells
surfaces. This theme is found in the play Riders To The Sea:
"CATHLEEN (cutting off some of the bread and rolling
it in a cloth; to Maurya). Let you go down now to the spring well and give him this and he passing. You'll see him then and
the dark word will be broken, and you can say "God speed you," the way he'll be easy in his mind."
The Virgin Spring was derived from a folk ballad.
The ballad Töres döttrar i Wänge, is
Swedish and originated in the Middle Ages. As with many folk ballads, such as Barbara Allen, variations on the original occur.
One version of Töres döttrar i Wänge was "recorded in 1812", showing that the tradition of the song was still remembered
in modern times. In the 1812 version, there are archetypical elements found in folk ballads, northern mythologies, and classic
fairy tales.
As in the fable of Hansel and Gretel,
Pehr Tyrsson's daughters slept in the cold forest. They "slept too long", although the ballad doesn't say exactly how long
that was. It does say that while they were asleep, the leafage appeared on the trees, probably after a long winter. One
way of looking at the story is that the three daughters are dead at the beginning of the ballad with a Green Man and resurrection
theme. The daughters came alive again when the foliage began to grow again in the forest. In a sense, then, the daughters
are goddesses of fertility, and perhaps their death acts symbolically as a sacrifice to make sure the spring arrives again
and the crops grow again after their blood is let upon the ground.
The daughters' sleep is similar in nature to
the sleep of Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty, and an Irish story wherein all the inhabitants in the castle fell into an enchanted
sleep that lasted until the spell was broken which spell must have lasted a long time because the vegetation grew and engulfed
the castle until it was obscured from sight.
The ballad of Barbara Allen features the combining
of "the red rose and the briar" that sprang, one each, from the graves of the lovers and twined into "a true lovers'
knot". In the ballad of Pehr Tyrsson's daughters, the girls braid each other's hair upon awakening from their long sleep.
These braids could be symbolic knots, tying them together in death as they were in life, just as Barbara Allen and young William
were united for eternity, even though the actual killing of Pehr Tyrsson's daughters is told several lines later in the ballad.
The three daughters, after preparing themselves
for their journey, set out on the road toward the church. The church is a collection of people from the surrounding countryside,
not unlike the fair in the traditional ballad S(he) Moved Through the Fair. If the daughters are already dead
or as good as dead, then it is their shades moving towards the church when they encountered the highwaymen (or robbers
or shepherds). The highwaymen are blocking their path, preventing them from going any further. In Norse legend, Odin often
traveled on the highways in disguise, encountering various people he met, so it could be imagined he was sometimes a trickster
and even a robber.
The three highwaymen are actually the daughters'
brothers, although none of them know that fact. They are standing between the girls and the Christian church. The men give
them a challenge and an ultimatum. If the girls will not "marry" them, the robbers will kill them and cut off their heads.
The girls refuse and are killed. The robbers cut off their heads on a birch log. In keeping with the tradition of severed
heads and tree worship and runic knowledge, it is an important detail that the log is birch, even though it makes little difference
to modern people.
Three wells sprang up where the daughters' headless
bodies lay in the mud. The importance of wells is part of Irish legend. These wells were considered holy and each well had
its own tradition and an important imputed supernatural feature attached to it.
If the three girls are already dead before they
meet the three highwaymen, then the story is like someone having a nightmare about having a nightmare, dreams often being
considered a portent of what was to come.
The denouement occurs when the three lads, stripping
the dead girls of their clothes, try to sell them to the girls' mother. who recognizes what must have happened when she see
the silky garments. She tells her husband who confronts them and asks them where they are from. The three men give the names
of Pehr Tyrsson and his wife. The parents realize that these are the three sons they forced out of their home many years before
and feel the guilt of their actions. These details appear in the story of Oedipus Rex and in fairy tales where a baby is given
to a woodcutter instead of killing it.
Pehr Tyrsson kills two of the three men, leaving
the third, or thridi alive. One of Odin's titles was Thridi, so this could indicate the lick of Odin that he still
lived despite changing times.
The father decides to build a church where the
bodies of their daughters were slain. There is no use asking for blood money since the blame is his. In a way, building a
church is a way of showing that the Christian religion has triumphed over the old religion.
Töres döttrar i Wänge
In
any structured society of individuals, there would be a notion of "self" or "not self". That is to say, there would be a fairly
well defined sense of which persons were part of a group and, thus, "self",
and which persons were extraneous, not belonging to that group and, thus, "not-self".
The
rules, laws, and taboos governing that society of individuals would function as a means to maintain order and to prevent the
disintegration and fragmentation of that society. Those protections would not apply to outsiders, so warfare with its various
adjunct forms of violence, would not arouse negative public sentiment.
Within
the community, inevitably, laws and taboos would be broken, and a system of punishment would be developed to achieve balance
between what should have been done and what was actually done.
In
the case of the Norse sacrifice of the serving girl, it is not a foreign captive who is sacrificed, a "not-self”. She
is one of their own, killed by group consent, and her rape and murder, which is how we would view it from modern perspective,
is an aberration from the lawful code of conduct.
However, we have seen that there are a number of other factors involved.
The participants in the violence have crossed the line of their conscious ideal of conduct. They have reverted to a more primitive
mind within themselves, the "unconscious" mind that is capable of both rape and murder. The hypnotic beating of the shields,
the alcohol, not only for the victim but for the other members of the participating community, and, possibly, some type of
drug in the mead, had a narcotic effect, deadening the conscious mind and providing a bridge to the unconscious.
The conscious mind was, to all extents and purposes, deep asleep,
anesthetized. But since they were still walking and talking, it might also be said they were "only half-awake", something
like somnambulism. When this effect wore off, the conscious mind of the community will be consciously aware of their guilt.
This mind would demand some expiation for transgression in order to maintain balance, which we might define as sanity, and
justification to prevent disintegration of the structure of their group.
It may be that grief ceremonies and various
afterlife mythologies were woven into the ritual act because they had framework and form.
The paradoxical element in the Norse funeral sacrifice
that the victim also became the propitiary sacrifice. The crime against her was punished by her own death, satisfying
the community's need for a counterweight in the scale of justice.
To modern thinkers, this sacrifice is more like a nightmare
than an acceptable reality.
The reader must imagine that reality is split into
two parts, and those two parts must be balanced and reconciled.
The lurking evil of the primitive unconscious communal
mind seems to have a need to indulge the primitive brain in its repugnant behavior, proverbially to "rear its ugly head",
and cannot be completely repressed forever in all people.
There is still evidenced in modern times within cult
frameworks of group actions such as gang violence and mob lynchings, either by an assembled group or by an individual
acting or believing he is acting as an agent for a group in dispensing justice.
After
the socially unacceptable act of violence, there had to be justification and rationalization.
Some feel
that art, such as in this play, could function as a projection of the anima. That may explain why a simple one-act
play might reach much more deeply into the minds of the audience.
The actual details of the Viking ritual were no doubt
whispered about among those who knew about them, but they were not spoken about openly for reasons previously discussed. There
was probably some communal punishment for anyone who might break the silence on the subject.
This barbaric practice
shocked those from more civilized societies, and it is easy to see why the old religion and the new Christianity would be
in open conflict with each other.
Continuing with Ibn Fadlan's account we find out that:
"The girl is subsequently sacrificed by double means, knife and rope, and
the funeral is concluded in this manner: After this, whoever was the closest kinsman of the dead man came forward and took
a wooden stick and set light to it; then he walked backwards, with his back to the ship and his face to the people, holding
the stick in one hand, with the other hand laid on his backside...by this means the wood they had just passed under the ship
was set on fire...then the people came forward with wood; each brought a stick with its tip on fire and threw it on the wood..."(Simpson,
184).
This enactment may signify that the mourners are now to turn their backs on
the deceased, forgetting their grief for that person since all the prescribed rites had been performed. The mourning time
was officially over, and it was time to get on with the business of life. The act of each member of the assemblage coming
forward and performing an identical rite acknowledged that they have been participants of the entire ritual. In today's terms
they might be called accessories to the crime.
In other terms, they are giving consent and legitimizing what had been
done. Such seemed to be the case in the murder of Julius Caesar. Each conspirator had to plunge the dagger so that all would
be equally involved, and any penalty, if exacted, would fall on all of them. There could be no hold-outs who could provide
adverse judgment or evidence against them. All being equal, they would tend to be of the same mind.
Rollo
May explains the hidden nature of the unconscious motive:
"The unconscious
seems to take delight...in breaking through...exactly what we cling to most rigidly in our conscious thinking...A dynamic
struggle goes on within a person between what he or she consciously thinks...and some perspective that is struggling
to be born...The guilt that is present when this breakthrough occurs has its source in the fact that the insight must destroy
something" (May, 62-63).
It might
be said that the waking self is the rational half and the unconscious self is the nightmare half.
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