Blog Post #6: Niamh


Before the presentation on Maleficent two weeks ago, I knew little and less about the movie’s plot. Frankly, all I really knew about the movie was that Angelina Jolie played the titular character. So, when the presenters outlined the basic setup of the movie (the struggle for conquest between the human world and a fairy world called The Moors), I thought the film would steer in a much different direction. As I’ve mentioned before, I took a class last year on 20th Century Irish Literature, a class that I never realized would have so many connections to this one. From Samhain and Halloween to W. B. Yeats and C. S. Lewis, Ireland’s relationship with mysticism and, therefore, witchcraft is as strong as that of any other country/culture. Yet, despite all of this, Maleficent’s connection to Irish myth still came as surprise to me.

Indeed, the story of Niamh and Oisin starts off in much the same way as Maleficent, which is why I thought the movie’s plot was headed in a different direction. According to Alice Milligan’s modern retelling known as The Last Feast of the Fianna, Niamh, a fairy goddess, arrives at said feast and beckons the young warriors to accompany her back to Tir Na nOg, a world of fairies, magic, and youth akin to The Moors in Maleficent. One man, Oisin, a poet/warrior and son of the Fianna’s leader, Fionn mac Cumhail, volunteers; after doing so, his father and effective brothers never see him again.

This is where the two stories diverge. Whereas Maleficent’s romance with Prince Stefan turns sour because of human greed, Niamh’s romance with Oisin ends because of human recklessness. To wit, after 300 years in the Land of Eternal Youth, Oisin pleads with Niamh to return to his homeland. This request is not out of disdain for Tir Na nOg, but, rather, a longing for Irish soil. Promising to return, Niamh acquiesces, but not without a caveat, warning Oisin that if his feet touch the ground, his true age will return to him. And so, with the brevity that usually accompanies Irish myth (and perhaps myth in general), Oisin almost immediately gets himself into a situation that will ultimately cause him harm. Pressured by some men to assist them in relocating a marble flagstone, Oisin loses his balance atop Niamh’s horse and falls to the earth, quickly becoming decrepit and deceased.

This soil had changed considerably since Oisin had last seen it, of course, which is partly the reason Niamh was so apprehensive. No longer the “land of saints and sages” (as James Joyce refers to it), Ireland was now just a land of saints, saints that were ill-equipped to accept the magic and mysticism that characterized their land only 300 years prior. Indeed, in one version of the myth, Oisin encounters St. Patrick before this tragic end, chastising him for the massive cultural modifications the former had engendered.

To close, then, while I certainly did not expect an exact copy of this ancient story, I did believe a couple details might hint at Maleficent’s potential inspiration. Intentional or not, though, both stories, through the utilization of a great yet flawed romance, admonish the human tendency to disregard and/or destroy that which is unknown, whether its fairies, witches, or otherwise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #4: Golems

  Ever since learning about the golems of Jewish folklore a few weeks ago, I cannot stop noticing explicit and implicit references to them in my daily life. For example, they have been mentioned in two other classes I’m taking this year, most often in another Honors Colloquia class titled “Superheroes and Culture”. While the connection between golems and superheroes may not be obvious to most (at least it was not to me), they actually have quite a bit in common, especially considering they both emerged during periods of tremendous Jewish peril.  To the golems first, however. Perhaps the most well-known aspect of Jewish mysticism, these clay creatures could be magically brought to life by chanting the names of God. In spite of this, because they were not actually created by God, they were often dumb and dull, leaving them almost like Frankenstein’s monster. Still, what makes these golems so well-known is that there are mentions of their use as recently as the 16 th century. ...
Read more

Blog Post #5: Newt

  Almost every time our class mentions the near-ridiculous methods for determining a woman’s affinity for witchcraft, I think of a specific scene from my favorite movie of all time. That movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail and that scene, as fans of the movie might surmise, is the one in which King Arthur visits Sir Bedivere during a witch trial. While the scene is, of course, funny it its own right simply because the villagers’ many logical fallacies, an added level of hilarity emerges once one realizes, as I have, that these fallacies are not tremendously far off from their real-life counterparts. So, what better way to ring in the middle of the semester than by referencing one of the funniest movies of all time, at least according to me. Right. The beginning of the scene pokes fun at the faulty eyewitness testimony provided by the townsfolk during many of these witch trials. For example, in the Martha Carrier trial, a man named John Rogger testified “that upon the threat...
Read more