The Salmon Episodes in Tochmarc Moméra and Macgnímartha Finn: Les Mythes Se Pensent entre Eux

Abstract

In his seminal study Mythologiques I: Le cru et le cuit (The Raw and The Cooked), Claude Lévi-Strauss explained that there are universal laws that govern mythical thought and determine the system of myths. According to his striking statement, “les mythes se pensent entre eux” (“myths think themselves in relation to each other”). This means that certain myths constitute a system inasmuch as they represent different realisations of the same invariant myth. In this sense, the stories serve like mirrors to each other: one story can shed light on another story and vice versa, while the comparative analysis of both provides us with an underlying mythological pattern. The present paper compares the famous episode of Finn mac Cumal getting his supernatural knowledge in the process of cooking a salmon and the less known episode from Tochmarc Moméra, ‘The Wooing of Moméra.’ In this tale, king Eógan experiences a wonderful transformation after putting on a cloak made of salmon’s skin by Eógan’s wife. However different the verbal setting of these two episodes might be, the comparison shows that they effectively communicate, share the same structure (a shift from ‘raw’ to ‘cooked’ and from ‘nature’ to ‘culture’ which fits into the initiatory scenario) and eventually, help to better understand each other.