Indo-European Poetry and Myth

The cattle raid (táin) is a staple theme of Irish saga –– theTáin bó Cúailnge
(Cattle raid of Cooley) is one of several works that carry it in their title –– and
of early British poetry. Eithinyn the son of Boddwadaf ‘attacked in force for
the herd(s) of the East’ (Y Gododdin 434, cf. 447). Urien of Rheged ‘with his
horse under him, set to raid Manaw, seeking spoils and plentiful plunder;
a hundred and sixty of one colour of both cows and calves, milch cows and
oxen’.

They drove their spoils back from Taf ’s meadows;

Captives complained; cattle lowed, bellowed...

Splendour of sword-play, great the plunder

at Caer Lwytgoed, Morial seized it,

fifteen hundred cattle at battle’s end,

fourscore horses, and trappings as well.^16

Strongholds

The sacking of an enemy stronghold is a climactic and sometimes conclusive
achievement in war, and one that confers signal glory on the hero or heroes
who accomplish it. It was certainly a feature of warfare from Neolithic times,
and it is well reflected in Indo-European poetic traditions.
The strongholds in question, as regards the early millennia, were not castles
but hill forts or other open spaces protected by walls of earth, perhaps
reinforced with timber and stone, and serving as places of refuge for a com-
munity and its livestock.^17 Several (late) Indo-European words applicable to
such enclosures can be identified.^18 The two most important for our purpose
are those represented by Greek πο ́ λι and π3ργο.
The common classical sense of πο ́ λι is ‘community’, ‘city-state’, but its
older meaning was ‘citadel, acropolis’, as still in fifth-century Athens (Thuc. 2.

15. 6, al.). Nestor instructs his men how past warriors sacked πο ́ λια κα?
    τεχεα, ‘forts and walls’ (Il. 4. 308), and πτολπορθο‘polis-sacker’ was a
    traditional epithet of heroes. When Achilles claims ‘I sacked twelve πο ́ λz of
    men with my ships, and eleven more on foot in the fertile Troad, and from all
    of them I took much treasure’, and when he recalls how he and Patroclus

(^16) Canu Taliesin 5. 12–16, trs. J. T. Koch in Koch–Carey (2000), 345; Marwnad Cynddylan
38 f., 54 f., trs. Clancy (2003), 99. Cf. also Kychwedyl am doddyw o Galchuynydd, Koch–Carey,
356–8; Moliant Cadwallon 33, Koch–Carey, 362.
(^17) Cf. Feist (1913), 143–6; M. Gimbutas in Cardona et al. (1970), 164–8; G. Costa, SSL 27
(1987), 151–75; EIEC 210 f., 629 f.
(^18) Cf. A. Della Volpe, JIES 16 (1988), 195–208; Gamkrelidze–Ivanov (1995), 647–9; Sergent
(1995), 185 f.; EIEC 199, 210.
452 12. Arms and the Man