Murphy, Denis, ed.
Annals of Clonmacnoise
. Dublin: Royal
Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896.
Ó Corráin, Donnchad.
Ireland before the Normans
. Dublin: Gill
& Macmillan, 1972.
O’Donovan, John, ed.
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland
. Dublin:
Hodges, Smith & Co., 1854.
O’Dwyer, Peter.
Céle Dé
. Dublin: Editions Táilliúra, 1981.
See also
Céli Dé; Clonmacnoise; Ecclesiastical
Settlements; Eóganachta; Munster;
Uí Néill, Southern
FEIS
Feis
, (plural
feisi
,
fesa
) (spending the night, a feast),
traditionally translated “feast” as in
feis Temro
(the
feast of Tara), is etymologically the verbal noun of the
Old Irish verb
fo-aid
(to spend the night, to sleep),
hence the formula
feis la mnaí
means “to sleep with a
woman” or “to marry a woman.”
Feis
is also a com-
ponent of the term
banais
(wedding, marriage feast),
which is sometimes used in its place.
A
feis
was originally a ritual celebrating the sover-
eignty of a king, held once in his reign, although not
necessarily at the beginning. This ceremony was con-
ceived of as a sacral marriage of the king to the goddess
of the territory. Mac Cana believes that the goddess
represented the land and people as well as the judicial
and spiritual realm of the territory. Through his mar-
riage with the goddess the king became (or was con-
firmed as) the temporal ruler of her territory. If the
king were a just ruler the land would flourish, be fertile,
and the people prosper. This concept is embodied in
the ideas of
fír flaithemon
(truth of a ruler). Such a
territory could be as small as the single
túath
or as
large as the kingship of Tara.
Historical accounts of
feisi
are not very numerous.
The most famous
feis
, the
feis Temro
,
occurs only
three times in the
Annals
, the last in 560 during the
reign of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Between the twelfth
and fourteenth centuries the term
feis
re-emerges in
the historical documents, this time in much greater
detail. The most famous account is of the inaugura-
tion of the Cenél Conaill king, as related by Giraldus
Cambrensis (iii §25). He alleges that the people gath-
ered together at the inauguration site where the suc-
cessor to the kingship sexually embraced a white
mare, which was then slaughtered and cooked into a
broth. The king was then bathed in this broth and he
and the people both drank of it. Unsurprisingly, this
account has been regarded as propaganda, painting
the Irish as a pagan, barbaric people. His description,
however, has not been entirely regarded as fabrica-
tion. Ritual horse sacrifice as part of inauguration
rites of a king was a noted feature of Indo-European
societies. Likewise, Byrne has suggested that in the
eighth century there seems to have been a confused
tradition linking the broth bath with the inauguration
ceremony. Additionally, the public inauguration site
mentioned by Giraldus was an important feature of
every
túath. Another account in the
Annals of Connacht
describes the inauguration of Fedlimid Ua Conchobhair
in 1310 as having been a public ceremony at which
he married the province of Connacht and his kingship
was proclaimed.
Although rare in the early historical sources, there
are continuous references to
feisi
in the literature
throughout the early and medieval Irish periods. It is
from the idealized tradition of Irish literature that the
feis
ritual has been understood, particularly the role
of the sovereignty goddess figures such as Medb,
Eithne, and Ériu. Given that the
feis
had a pagan
origin and involved the marriage of a pagan goddess
with the king, it is surprising that it survived into the
early Christian period. Its survival has been credited
to the conservative nature of Irish society, in partic-
ular its learned classes, although this is disputed.
Although it seems that
feis Temro
was no longer held
after the reign of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, other
feisi
seem to have persisted at the local level. There does
not appear to have been a standard ceremony, but
rather its form and content seem to have varied from
region to region. There were a number of basic char-
acteristics in the inauguration: the granting of the rod
of sovereignty, the holding of a race, a procession
symbolizing the regions under the king’s rule, the
singing of praise poetry, and the drinking of some
sort of liquor.
By the later Middle Ages the symbolic marriage
had disappeared from the inauguration ceremony. In
the early Irish concept of kingship, the king was mar-
ried to the
túath
and became its representative and
chief defender but never the owner of the territory. In
the later Middle Ages the concept of kingship had
changed. Where previously the king had been the rep-
resentative of the
túath
,
he was now a lord and at his
inauguration the land passed into his possession with
the people acting more as tenants. Under this sort of
altered governance, the purpose behind the marriage
ritual was lost from the ceremony.
M
ICHAEL
B
YRNES
References and Further Reading
Binchy, D. A. “The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara.”
Ériu
18 (1958): 113–138.
Dillon, Myles. “The Consecration of Irish Kings.”
Celtica
10
(1973): 1
−
8.
Freeman, A. M., ed. and trans.
Annála Connacht. The Annals
of Connacht
A
.
D. 1224–1544
. Dublin: Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1944.
Jaski, Bart.
Early Irish Kingship and Succession
. Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 2000.
FEIS