Getting medieval: Blindboy explores Ireland's myths and legends

With input from historians and local experts, Blindboy interrogates our early medieval history, laying bare the treasures of Ireland for all to see, from stone circles and the Skellig Islands and to the ancient pilgrimage site of Lough Derg, while asking: what did Irish Christian missionaries, hermits, and monasteries contribute to the Irish writing tradition?

Below, Blindboy digs deeper into Ireland's mythological past, in his own inimitable fashion...

Where did the inspiration for the documentary come from?

I'm an Irish writer; there’s an innate storytelling in our culture, in the way we speak to each other and how we describe the everyday. This unique Irish way of seeing and expressing drives my own approach to writing. I’ve a great love for Irish mythology—the craic and the madness of it. The reason I’m able to read Irish mythology is because early Irish Christian scholars were the ones who wrote it down. That’s what drove me to this documentary. I’m approaching it with the inquiry of a writer who has a love for the Irish writing tradition.

We know that Christianity came to Ireland in the 5th century with Patrick. Christianity was a new belief system—an urgent, apocalyptic belief system that took hold when the social fabric of the Roman Empire was unravelling across Europe. But Christianity in Ireland was also a vehicle that introduced the radical new technology of writing. I was very curious about the impact of writing on our indigenous oral storytelling. That’s a mad concept to get your head around because we take writing for granted now. But before the monastic system, we most likely held our stories orally, or through song, and might even have used the landscape to remember stories—such as the telling of the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge from the hill of Rathcrogan in Roscommon. I explore this in the documentary with Dr. Daniel Curley.

First look at my new documentary. It's
an essay about the impact of early medieval
Christianity on the Irish writing tradition. This is the
closest I've come to bringing the podcast hug to
television, I cant wait for ye to see it. pic.twitter.com/DyGSpFd93i

— The Blindboy Podcast (@bbboatclub) November 17, 2024

We invented spaces between words too. That sounds like horses**t you'd hear an ould lad say in the pub, but we did. Irish monks were prolific writers of Latin script during the time that Rome was collapsing. The Irish preserved Latin, translated Greek and Roman books, and contributed to Latin dictionaries. Before Irish intervention, Latin was written in scriptio continua. This writing had no punctuation, marks, or spaces. The Irish introduced spaces. Think of what that does to the written word—it brings pause, breath, lyricism, and song to the page. Emotion and drama. Writing ceases to be a way to simply record data and now becomes a medium for aesthetic expression. It’s my personal view that this is our oral storytelling methodology finding its way into the technology of writing. The early Christian scholars were writing down our own stories—stories that existed orally or as song. We had a very important impact on the craft of writing as we know it today.

There was a great inventiveness in how the monks recorded our mythology too, borrowing bits from the Bible, with echoes of Greek and Latin myth woven in there for the craic. I can’t help but compare some of their work to Flann O’Brien, who would have been writing in the 1930s, especially his book At Swim-Two-Birds. Flann is widely considered to be the first postmodern writer because of how he would blend Irish mythology with American Westerns. He’d have Fionn MacCumhaill hanging around with cowboys on the same page. Revolutionary at the time. But sure, we were doing that 1,500 years ago in the monasteries—blending the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark with tales about the magical Tuatha Dé Danann.

What is your own favourite Irish myth and/or legend?

The story of the Taking of Ireland from the Lebor Gabála Érenn, written down in the 11th century. It exemplifies the postmodern approach that I mentioned above. The monks who wrote it remixed elements of the Bible and wove them into our indigenous Irish foundational myth. I’m going to describe it in my own way, which is the best way to approach any storytelling: keep it fluid, flexible, and have craic with it.

Whenever I’m trying to get my head around any origin myth, I go at it using simulation theory. Simulation theory posits that reality as we perceive it could be an artificial simulation, such as a highly advanced computer-generated construct, rather than a physical or natural existence. The idea is that reality is a type of video game, and we humans are artificial intelligence inside this game—a game programmed by the Gods for their entertainment. For instance, God in the Bible created the Earth in seven days. That idea is impenetrable until you view our reality as a video game and God as the programmer. If I’m playing Red Dead Redemption 2, days will pass in the game, but only an hour will pass for me. That’s simulation theory.

Currently, in 2024, artificial intelligence can't create art. It can imitate really well, but it’s not truly creating anything that speaks to the human condition or that arouses deep emotion. But when it does, that’s when we’re all f****d.

Let’s take a foundational Greek myth: Zeus and Prometheus were bored, so they created the Earth for their own entertainment. But Zeus was scared that the A.I. (humans) would become smarter than the Gods, so he encoded suffering into the human A.I. to prevent us from becoming more powerful than the Gods. This is an existential threat we’re currently battling in 2024 as A.I. grows more powerful.

So, back to the question: what’s my favourite Irish myth?

The story of the Taking of Ireland begins with elements from the Christian Bible. Humans wanted to become more powerful than God, so they began to build the Tower of Babel—a skyscraper that could reach Heaven. God starts shitting his pants because he can’t allow that. Humans must reach Heaven through devotion to God, not by climbing up through the clouds like Jack and the Beanstalk. So God encodes regional languages into the human A.I. Now the humans, who are building the tower, can’t understand each other. They can’t communicate at all. One fella’s speaking Greek, and then another fella is speaking Latin. Construction of the tower stops, and the humans never reach Heaven. Now that bit—that’s from the Bible. That’s the Tower of Babel. God created different languages to stop humans becoming as powerful as their creator.

But there was no mention of the Irish language in the Bible, so the Irish monks started to remix the Tower of Babel story. They included an extra bit: when God was finished creating all the different languages, he took all the best bits from every language and stuck them together to create the Irish language. Which is a fucking gas twist—the hubris of it, the playfulness of it. I love that.

So anyway, in the story, the Island of Ireland was inhabited by the Tuatha Dé Danann—a race of supernatural Gods, not too far off the Gods on Mount Olympus or God Himself above in Heaven from the Bible. The Tuatha Dé Danann, like God or Zeus, are fearful that humans might become more powerful than the Gods. They are particularly frightened of these new humans, called Milesians, who are on their way in boats from Spain because they speak a language made up of all the best bits of every other language—the Irish language. A powerful language.

God in the Bible created the Earth in seven days. That idea is impenetrable until you view our reality as a video game and God as the programmer.

One day, the Milesians arrive in Ireland by ship. But the Tuatha Dé Danann use magic to shroud Ireland in mist so the Milesians can’t land their ships. But the Milesians are determined to settle—they won’t give up. They are knocking at the door of the Gods. So the Tuatha Dé Danann propose a deal. They say to the humans, "If ye can keep yere boats nine waves away from the shore and then try to moor a few days later, ye can claim Ireland for yereselves." But that was a double cross. As soon as the humans agreed and went nine waves beyond the shore, the Gods sent terrible storms to drive their boats away.

But these humans—these humans who spoke the best language—they had a powerful weapon: poetry and art. They fought off the magical storms with a poem, known as the Song of Amergin:

I am the wind on the sea,

I am the wave of the ocean,

I am the murmur of the billows,

I am the ox of the seven combats,

I am the vulture on the rock,

I am a ray of the sun,

I am the fairest of flowers,

I am a boar for bold valor,

I am a salmon in the pool,

I am a lake on the plain,

I am the word of knowledge,

I am the head of the spear in battle,

I am the god who fashions fire in the head.

This song spoke directly to nature itself—the land of Ireland. The storms subsided, and the humans reached the shore, where they defeated the Gods using poetry and art.

The Gods (Tuatha Dé Danann) retreated to the Otherworld and became the dreaded fairies. The Milesians became the people of Ireland, who lived on the land but were forever fearful of their defeated enemies, who lived in a separate plane of reality and would pop up as shapeshifting animals or emerge at Samhain.

That there is my favourite Irish myth because it’s stunning, gripping, and absolutely hilarious. And harking back to simulation theory, our foundational myth is about artificial intelligence discovering a programming language that can defeat its creator. In Greek myth, Zeus introduces suffering into reality when he sees humans creating art. He knows that art is the language of the Gods. In Irish myth, the humans, who speak the finest language on Earth, use their poetry to defeat their Gods and banish them to an alternate dimension. Our mythology is about artificial intelligence winning by creating art. Currently, in 2024, artificial intelligence can’t create art. It can imitate really well, but it’s not truly creating anything that speaks to the human condition or that arouses deep emotion. But when it does, that’s when we’re all f****d.

Do you think we celebrate our myths and legends enough?

No, we do not. Our mythology contains stories that are deeply connected to the land and to biodiversity—holy wells, trees, lakes. Understanding that features of our natural landscape have stories attached to them, some of which might be older than the pyramids, gives me a deep respect for biodiversity.

Just an hour up the road from me in Limerick, near Lough Derg, is a cave called Fintan’s Grave. In our mythology, a fella came here—belonging to the biblical Noah’s niece—and waited out Noah’s flood in that cave by turning into a salmon. He then went on to become the Salmon of Knowledge. Most likely, this is another example of an Irish monk blending the Bible with indigenous stories. But that story, attached to that cave, could be thousands of years old. It could even contain a historical memory of Glaciers melting in Ireland during the last Ice Age and flooding the gaff, passed down orally over millennia.

I know that sounds a bit mad, but in Australia, there are Aboriginal oral stories that contain geological information about islands submerged by water 30,000 years ago. When you can hear the stories of your ancestors in the landscape, you’ll think twice about exploiting and disrespecting it. We’re in the middle of a climate emergency.

Through your work in podcasting, music, and prose, do you consider yourself a modern mythmaker?

No, I wouldn’t say that. But I do like to think that I’m drawing from the unique Irish oral tradition in how I make my podcast. I write my podcast, it’s about 14000 words a week. I create it as a durational auto fictional work of literature, that is unbound by the limitations of pages or the written word. But I write my podcast orally. I use recording software to edit my words, with the same precision that I can edit the written word in a word processor. I write with my mouth for you to read with your ears.