The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The hegemony wrested from the enemy, the freedom won from the malice of the monster, the life energy released from the toils of the tyrant Holdfast — is symbolized as a woman. She is the maiden of the innumerable dragon slayings, the bride abducted from the jealous father, the virgin rescued from the unholy lover. She is the “other portion” of the hero himself — for “each is both”: if his stature is that of world monarch she is the world, and if he is a warrior she is fame. She is the image of his destiny which he is to release from the prison of enveloping circumstance. But where he is ignorant of his destiny, or deluded by false considerations, no effort on his part will overcome the obstacles.*

The magnificent youth Cuchulainn, at the court of his uncle, Conchobar the king, aroused the anxiety of the barons for the virtue of their wives. They suggested that he should be found a wife of his own. Messengers of the king went out to every province of Ireland, but could find no one he would woo. Then Cuchulainn himself went to a maiden that he knew in Luglochta Loga, “the Gardens of Lugh.” And he found her on her playing field, with her foster-sisters around her, teaching them needlework and fine handiwork. Emer lifted up her lovely face and recognized Cuchulainn, and she said: “May you be safe from every harm!”

When the girl’s father, Forgall the Wily, was told that the couple had talked together, he contrived to send Cuchulainn off to learn battle skills from Donall the Soldierly in Alba, supposing the youth would never return. And Donall set him a further task, namely, to make the impossible journey to a certain warrior-woman, Scathach, and then compel her to give him instruction in her arts of supernatural valor. Cuchulainn’s hero-journey exhibits with extraordinary simplicity and clarity all the essential elements of the classic accomplishment of the impossible task.

The way was across a plain of ill luck: on the hither half of it the feet of men would stick fast; on the farther half the grass would rise and hold them fast on the points of its blades. But a fair youth appeared who presented to Cuchulainn a wheel and an apple. Across the first part of the plain the wheel would roll just ahead, and across the second the apple. Cuchulainn had only to keep to their thin guiding line, without a step to either side, and he would come across to the narrow and dangerous glen beyond.

The residence of Scathach was on an island, and this island was approached by a difficult bridge only: it had two low ends and the midspace high, and whenever anybody leaped on one end of it, the other head would lift itself up and throw him on his back. Cuchulainn was thrown three times. Then his distortion came upon him, and, gathering himself, he jumped on the head of the bridge, and made the hero’s salmon-leap, so that he landed on the middle of it; and the other head of the bridge had not fully raised itself up when he reached it, and threw himself from it, and was on the ground of the island.

The warrior-woman Scathach had a daughter — as the monster so often has — and this young maid in her isolation had never beheld anything approaching the beauty of the young man who came down from the mid-air into her mother’s fortress. When she had heard from the youth what his project was, she described to him the best manner of approach to persuade her mother to teach him the secrets of supernatural valor. He should go through his hero’s salmon-leap to the great yew tree where Scathach was giving instruction to her sons, set his sword between her breasts, and state his demand.

Cuchulainn, following instructions, won from the warrior-­sorceress acquaintance with her feats, marriage to her daughter without payment of a bride-price, knowledge of his future, and sexual intercourse with herself. He remained a year, during which he assisted in a great battle against the Amazon Aife, on whom he begot a son. Finally, slaying a hag who disputed with him a narrow path along the edge of a cliff, he started home for Ireland.

One further adventure of battle and love, and Cuchulainn returned to find Forgall the Wily still against him. He simply carried the daughter off this time, and they were married at the court of the king. The adventure itself had given him the capacity to annihilate all opposition. The only annoyance was that uncle Conchobar, the king, exercised on the bride his royal prerogative before she passed officially to the groom.^[19]