On a previous post I commented about totemism and shaman practices by ancient Celts. Celts held no frontiers between human and animal forms and they were in no way in lower status than humankind. Birds were specially worshiped as messengers of the Otherworld, being capable to fly breaking their bondage to earth, and certainly the Raven and the Swan are amongst the most precious ones.
The Raven
In Wales bands of warriors at the battle of Cattraeth are described in Aneurin's Gododin poem as dogs, wolves, bears, and ravens, and the quotations on the Mabinogion amongst other instances, the wonderful crows of Owain, prince of Rheged, a contemporary of Arthur, which always secured factory by the aid of the three hundred crows under its command, which in fact may have been a clan with the raven as their totem, sometimes misunderstood as actual ravens.
Not only the goddess Morrigu is associated to this particular bird, but also the god Bran the Blessed (Welsh: Bendigeidfran or Brân Fendigaidd, literally "Blessed Raven").
Power is one of Bran’s qualities and famous for his succeeds on battle, maybe that’s why his name means 'crow' or 'raven' , associated thus with corvids because of these bird dietary habits which include dead corpses.
It is recounted that his head is said to be buried under the Tower of London facing toward France, a possible origin for the keeping of ravens in the Tower, which are said to protect the fortunes of Britain against invaders.
The raven was the ruler of the domain of air and therefore of communication; the cry of the raven was often interpreted as the voice of the gods. Images of the gods Lugh and Bran often depict them with birds alighting on their heads and shoulders, symbolizing this divine communication. (The Norse god Odin, who is sometimes compared to Lugh and Bran, has as his companions two ravens called Thought and Memory.) For this reason, ravens were favored by the druids for use in divinatory ritual.
In Cornish folklore crows and particularly magpies are again associated with death and the 'Otherworld', and must always be greeted with respect.
J. A. MacCulloch supposes that it was because of their dark color and gruesome dietary habits, that ravens were especially connected with gods of war and death.
It was the raven the one who accompanied the souls of the dead to the afterlife, and portraits of the deceased often depicted them with the bird. Ravens were sometimes viewed as reincarnated warriors or heroes , like the cited Mabinogion hero Owain, who had an army of invincible ravens, which are sometimes interpreted as an army of reincarnated warriors.
The origin of 'counting crows' as augury is British; however the British versions rather count magpies - their black and white pied colouring reflecting the realms of both the living and the dead.
The Swan
The swan was revered by the earliest Celts, as far back as the Urnfield and Halstatt cultures. Although they are creatures of water, swans were, oddly, connected with the sun, sometimes even appearing as bearers of the chariot of the sun god. Swans and other water birds adorned numerous religious artifacts of the period, including many small statues and masks.
Curiously, virtually every Celtic tale of magical swans share another theme, a chain or chains of precious metal by which a magical swan is identified. In some tales, the chains are of gold and silver; in others, the chain is made of common metals. Many times the birds appear linked together in large groups. The theme is an ancient one, which is reflected by the appearance of chained swans on ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic artifacts.
Many of the later Celtic gods appear in tales as swans or with the ability to change into swans. The ability seems closely connected with women although in some stories male gods have the same power, invariably with a female of the same ability.
As seen in the tale of Aenghus, both the god and his magical lover have the ability to transform into swans during the festival of Samhain. Sometimes, it is Deichtine, the lover of Cuchulainn, who takes the form of a swan. Yet another tale of Cuchulainn tells of a young girl who pursues the hero in the form of one of the great birds, but she is badly wounded when the god mistakes her for a potential dinner.
One of the best-known stories involving swans is the legend of Lir, the Irish sea god, whose beautiful wife dies giving birth to his children and leaves him bereft. Lir marries the sister of his deceased wife, but she is jealous of the attention he lavishes on his children and decides to do away with them. She accomplishes this by sending the children to swim and, while they are in the water, using a druid's wand to transform them into swans. The children are thus tragically enchanted for 900 years, yet they retain their intelligence and powers of speech.
It is a primitive idea that the soul can leave the body. As separable soul it may take manifold forms.
The soul in swan form is best evidenced by the Fate of the Children of Lir, a tragic story of great pathos wherein human beings are transformed into swans swans for 900 years at the bidding of a cruel stepmother. The metamorphoses of the three daughters of Lir, the sea-god, is but a return to their primitive estate.
Perhaps the idea of the isle or paradise of birds, as in the legend of St. Brendan, was founded on the belief of the soul in bird-form. Nothing has taken firmer hold of the Gadhelic mind than the Fate of the Children of Lir, who were turned into swans at the instance of their cruel stepmother, but they retained their souls, as is witnessed by their having ascribed to them the knowledge of their own Gadhelic music and their Gadhelic speech.
Such totemic belief birds had, that there was even an ancient Irish taboo on eating crane’s meat, which was noted by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Expugnatio Hibernica.
According to Miranda Green , the crane was the counterpoint to the swan: while the swan is associated with grace, beauty, and youth; the crane is identified with parsimony, harshness, death and old age.
A very related character we can trace in legends is the one of the “Swan Maiden”. The folktales usually adhere to the following basic plot. A young, unmarried man steals a magic robe made of swan feathers from a swan maiden so that she will not fly away, and winds up marrying her. Usually she bears his children. When the children are older they sing a song about where their father has hidden their mother's robe, or one asks why the mother always weeps, and finds the cloak for her, or they otherwise betray the secret. The swan maiden immediately gets her robe and disappears to where she came from. Although leaving the children may grieve her, she does not take them with her. If the husband is able to find her again, it is an arduous quest, and often the impossibility is clear enough so that he does not even try.
These folk motifs remind us of the the Orcadian and Shetlandic “Selkies”, that alternate between seal and female human shape.
In West Sutherland I ascertained that some of the fishermen formerly held it was unlucky to kill a gull, for gulls were the souls of the deceased.
Curiously the swan’s totemic power even seems to survive today since it has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin!.
Related Sources
Animal Symbolism in Celtic Mythology by Lars Noodén, 22 November 1992
"By Oak, Ash, & Thorn" by D.J. Conway
The Religion of the Ancient Celts By J. A. MacCulloch –1911-
Animals in Celtic Life and Myth – Miranda Green - 1998
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