Sovereignty, Lady

Sovereignty, Lady; sovereignty, sovranty [MidEng. souverein]. The personification of the power and authority of a kingdom as a woman to be won sexually pre-dates literature written in any Celtic language. In the hierogamy [Gk hieros, sacred; gamos, marriage] described in a Sumerian hymn (2nd millennium BC), the king must mate with Inanna, queen of heaven and goddess of love and fertility, on New Year's Day in her residence. In the hymn the king is seen as an incarnation of Dumuzi, a shepherd-king and husband of Inanna, and thus the rite of hierogamy ends with his ecstatic sexual union with her, perhaps acted out in life with one of Inanna's sacred prostitutes. Correlatives and echoes to a kind of spiritual and/or physical sexual union between the male king and a divine female sovereignty are widespread in early Indo-European culture, as far away as India in the instances of Vishnu and Sri-Lakshmi. Within Celtic traditions, evidence of sexual-sovereignty rituals, involving horses, survives to late pre-Norman Ireland, as the shocked and disgusted observations of Giraldus Cambrensis in Topographia Hibernica (1188) testify. Early Irish texts describe the ritual banais ríghe [wedding-feast of kingship], which included (1) a libation from the sovereignty bride and (2) the coition of the king with sovereignty herself. At Tara for the installation of the ard rí [high king], the ceremony was known as feis temrach [Ir. foaid, spends the night with] and fled bainisi.

Stories of a king's, or a potential king's, lovemaking with the goddess of Sovereignty are so widespread in early Ireland and elsewhere in Europe, such as Geoffrey Chaucer's ‘Wife of Bath's Tale’, as to merit their own international folk- motif number, D732. According to the conventionalized steps in the story, the male protagonist encounters an ugly hag who invites him to have intimate relations with her. Her repulsiveness, perhaps a metaphor for the responsibilities of both kingship and adulthood, initially put him off, but he eventually relents. On the morning after their lovemaking, the hag is transformed into a beautiful maiden. In Irish versions of the story, the hag sometimes defeats the male protagonist with a riddle he cannot answer and rewards herself with a geis he finds impossible to perform; failing this he has no alternative but to perform sexual intercourse.

Proinsias MacCana has written (1982) that the sovereignty story in Ireland is by its very nature political and never far removed from the propaganda of an interested dynasty. According to Echtra mac nEchach Muigmedóin [The Adventure of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedón], Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], nominal progenitor of the powerful Uí Néill, makes love to Flaithius, the loathly hag, thus grasping power from his half-brothers. A similar story is told of Lugaid Laígde, who takes precedence ahead of his brothers by making love to a hideous sorceress, again Dame Sovereignty in disguise. Thirdly, Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] also encounters Sovereignty in a story titled Baile in Scáil [The Phantom's Frenzy]. After Conn sets out from Tara, he finds himself in an otherworldly chamber with a ridge-pole of white gold. Seated upon a throne is Lug Lámfhota, who embodies sacral kingship, while nearby on a crystal chair is a beautiful girl, his consort (unnamed, but identified by commentators with the goddess Ériu). She asks who should serve the red ale [Ir. derg-fhlaith], making a pun on ale [laith] and sovereignty [flaith]. Lug answers by naming all Conn's successors in the kingship. Here the sexual contact is only symbolic as Conn is offered the drink in a golden cup, whose implications are clear from other contexts.

Many other female personalities from early Irish literature also carry associations with sovereignty, often linked with specific territory. Mór Muman embodies the sovereignty of Munster just as Medb Lethderg personifies it at Tara. Macha, Medb, and the Mórrígan all have associations with sovereignty in older Irish literature, while the Cailleach Bhéire is the foremost sovereignty figure from later and oral tradition. The colour blue implies sovereignty, redoubled in the name Gormfhlaith [blue sovereignty]. Branwen is the only Welsh figure to have sovereignty affiliations. See also SHAN VAN VOCHT / SEAN-BHEAN BHOCHT. OIr. flaithius; ModIr. flaitheas, ceannas; ScG uachdaranachd; Manx ardreeriaght; W penarglwyddiaeth; Corn. sovranta, myghternsys; Bret. pennrouelezh.

Bibliography

Máire Bhreathnach , ‘The Sovereignty Goddess as a Goddess of Death’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 39 (1982), 243–60;
Rosalind Elizabeth Clark , Great Queens (Gerrard's Cross, UK, and Savage, Md., 1990);
Sigmund Eisner , Tale of Wonder: Source Study for the Wife of Bath's Tale (Wexford, 1957);
Françoise Le Roux and and Christian-J. Guyonvarc'h , La Souveraineté guerrière de l'Irlande: Mórrígan, Bodb, Macha (Rennes, 1983);
Proinsias MacCana , ‘Aspects of the Theme of the King and Goddess in Irish Literature’, Études Celtiques, 7 (1955–6), 76–114, 356–413;
‘Aspects of the Theme of the King and the Goddess’, Études Celtiques, 8 (1958–9), 59–65;
Rhian Andrews , ‘Rhai agweddau as sofraniaeth yng ngherddi's Gogynfeirdd’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 27 (1976–8), 23–30;
Proinsias Mac-Cana , ‘Women in Irish Mythology’, in Mark P. Hederman and Richard Kearney (eds.), The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies (1977–1981), (Dublin, 1982), 520–4;
Jo Radner , ‘The Hag of Beare: The Folklore of a Sovereignty Goddess’, Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin, 40 (1974), 75–81;
Catherine A. McKenna , ‘The Theme of Sovereignty in Pwyll’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29 (1980), 35–52.