by Searles O'Dubhain

The Irish myth of Coincheann and Aedh mac Dagda is preserved in several versions, all centered on a murder and its reckoning. Coincheann killed Aedh out of jealousy. The Dagda, Aedh's father, sought vengeance and accepted blood price instead — a price measured in labor and grief rather than gold. Searles O'Dubhain, who spent decades studying the deeper logic of Celtic law and mythology, reads this story as psychological instruction: the unresolved guilt of one who has wronged another becomes a literal weight, carried until the correct reckoning is made.

Posted to alt.religion.druid in October 2009, this short essay draws a line from ancient myth to the Irish wake tradition, and from there to the modern psychological concept of buried grief. The hill's name at the end — Grianan Aileach, the Hill of Pain — is the destination the myth was always building toward.

Coincheann was a man who slew one of the Dagda's sons because he was jealous of him and his seduction of his own wife. When the Dagda found out about the death of his son, he came seeking vengeance. The Dagda was convinced to have Coincheann pay "blood price" or eric for the murder instead. Coincheann agreed to abide by the price which was to carry the body of Aedh on his back across the land each day until he found a single stone large enough to cover it. He eventually did this and according to some forms of the tale then died after erecting the stone.

I find the idea of atoning for the death of another by carrying his corpse on one's back to have an amazing synchronicity to what some do when feeling guilt about the death of another, whether friend, family member or loved one. Some people go through their entire lives influenced by this feeling of guilt and seek to atone for it (but in an undefined manner — no "blood price" is defined or paid). The lack of completion in fulfilling the prices we think we should pay haunts us and drives some into acting in an almost mentally imbalanced way.

Wakes are meant to be periods in which one can come to grips with death in another. They have protocols and activities that allow one to in a sense commune with the departed spirits and to make amends in a spiritual fashion. To never mourn or "wake" a person means that the grief or guilt one feels is buried deep within and causes all manner of trouble when it rots the psyche from within. Modern psychoanalysis attempts to root out these buried concepts and address them in the light of rationality and emotional awareness. Irish tradition allows for this process to occur more swiftly and in a cultural context at the wake.

Denial is not only a river. It is a large stone or corpse one carries on one's back until the blood price is paid.

These stones become monuments to one's grief and misdeeds. As the tradition tells it, the Dagda brought in two masters of masonry to mark the spot where the stone was laid. Garbhan chiselled the stones with the pride of his trade and name into just the right shape, so they could nestle into each other, and Imheall fitted them together in the eternal shape of the circle to protect the sad side of a son having gone before his father.

"From then on the hill was known as Aileac, the Hill of Pain, where Dagda sat and shed tears of blood."

This place is now known in Ireland as Grianan Aileach.

Colophon

Written by Searles O'Dubhain and posted to alt.religion.druid on October 18, 2009. Grianan Aileach (An Grianán Ailigh) is a stone ringfort in County Donegal, Ireland, associated in myth with the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Dagda. The site dates archaeologically to the Iron Age, though the mythological associations are older.

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