Tony Mac Mahon::Tributes

SOUL THEFT

by John Moriarty

'…and blessings be on you, Tony Mac Mahon - blessings be on you, my very good friend, for the way, and the ways that you bring the music of Ireland to Ireland.
Do mholadh me i gCamus thu!'
John Moriarty

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In the mythic imagination of the Indo-Europeans it is the great battle. In India it is the battle between the Devas and the Asuras. In Greece it is the battle between the Gods and the Giants. In Nordic countries it is the battle between the Aesir and the Vanir. In Ireland it is the battle between the Tuatha De Danann and the Fomorians. An old book says this about the Tuatha De Danann :

Batar Tuatha De Danann i n-indsib tuascertachaib an domhuin, aig foglaim fesa ocus fithnasachta ocus druidechtai ocus amaidechtai ocus amainsechta, combtar fortailde for suthib cerd ngenntlichtae.

Living as they then were in the northern islands of the world, the Tuatha De Danann spent their time acquiring visionary insight and foresight and hindsight, acquiring the occult knowledge and the occult arts of the wizard, the druid, the witch - these, together with all the magical arts, until, masters in everything concerning them, they had no equals on the world.

Little wonder then that it was in a great magical cloud that they came to Ireland, landing in the mountains of Conmaicne Re in Connacht. In truth they were a race of Gods but, for all the occult arts at their command, it was their particular delight to be of one mind with the wind and the rain. Great warrior though he was, Ogma knew that a spear that went through him wouldn't open him out half as much to the otherworld as the call of a curlew calling in a bog would open him out to this world. And Dian Cecht, their leech, he had the look of an upland thorn bush that has long ago yielded to the endless, night and day persuasions of the prevailing wind and is now no more than a current, than the memory of a current, in it.

In the end you could walk through the land and not know they were in it.

Their feathers hanging like seaweed when the tide is out,their tongues the colour and shape of cormorants tongues, the clamour of ocean in their talk, Formorians came ashore.

Forests cut down, rivers rerouted, towers everywhere, it was soon clear that it must come to a fight.

It did. In Magh Tuired.

Never before or since did the battle hag screech as she screeched that night, her mouth bleeding in excited anticipation of the greatest battle that would ever be fought in Ireland. So long loud and piercing was her third screech that it cut gaps in the mountain, it sent the incoming tides back out and as far away as west Munster a man was talking that night to his wife but he didn't finish what he had to say because , sliced down the middle,the two halves of him and of what he was saying fell either side of her. It was that kind of battle.

As much because of what their wizards did as what their warriors did, victory was with the Tuatha De Danann, or so it seemed.

When the outcome was still in doubt Mathgen, their chief wizard, went chanting forward and so burning a thirst did he cause not just in the mouths but in the minds of the fighting Fomorian warriors that, whatever the cost, victory or defeat not counting now,they must find water, but find it they didn't because, changing his chant, Mathgen dried up the rivers and streams and lakes and wells of Ireland and there they were, deliriously crossing bogs and climbing mountains, the sound of far-away, illusory waterfalls calling them out over precipices to their death.

What the Tuatha De Danann didn't yet know was that the chief wizard of the Fomorians could make himself invisible and it was he, altogether more clever than Mathgen, who singlehandedly turned what they had already begun to think of as their greatest victory into their greatest defeat, and this he did by going right to the heart of Tuatha De Danann country, into a fortress there, and stealing their great harp called Harmonizes Us To All Things.

Next day at the very beginning of their victory celebrations, the Tuatha De Danann discovered and suffered their loss.

Putting it to his lips, the chief piper could find no music in his pipe..
Putting it to his lips, the chief trumpeter could find no music in his trumpet.
Putting his bow to it, the chief fiddler could find no music in his fiddle.
Tapping it with his drum stick, the chief drummer could find neither rhythm nor music in his drum.
Opening her mouth, the chief singer could find no music in her voice.
And the curlew didn't call in the bog.
And the blackbird in the willows didn't sing.

Asleep that night on the nine hazel-wattles of vision,Mathgen saw what had happened. Macguarch, the chief of Fomorian wizards, had stolen the harp and in stealing that he had stolen the music of Ireland. That very day, their tongues the colour and shape of cormorants' tongues, the Tuatha De Danann were the new Fomorians.

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