The movement of waters as symbolised by monsters in early Irish texts

Abstract

Several early Irish texts describe monsters that pose a threat to people who enter water. Their names and/or activities sometimes indicate sucking, swallowing and spewing, verbs that could refer to the movement of water, for instance, vortexes and tides. One may, therefore, connect one layer of textual symbolism with the movements of water: monsters partly personify these phenomena. This paper describes the chronological and conceptual development of this personification. Two lines of development are distinguished. The older consists of early Hiberno-Latin texts that use a name from classical mythology (Charybdis) as a technical term for whirlpools, and that do not connect the motif of the swallowing and spewing monsters with the movement of water. The later is represented by Middle-Irish texts and seems to begin with the Old-Irish Echtra Fergusa maic Leiti where a water monster (muirdris) inflates and contracts itself. This symbolism appears to climax in a small late Middle-Irish text that describes a monster in the Indian Ocean that causes the tides. The symbolism in this text has become explicit, and more complex because of external influence.