¹ Binchy, D. A., “Secular Institutions,” in Early Irish Society, ed. Dillon, Myles (Dublin, 1954), at 54; Rees, Alwyn and Rees, Brinley, Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London, 1961); Cana, Proinsias Mac, The Cult of the Sacred Centre: Essays on Celtic Ideology (Dublin, 2011). For the house, fields, and early Irish neighborhood (comnessam), seeCharles-Edwards, Thomas, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship (Oxford, 2003), 47–48, 420.Byrne, F. J., Irish Kings and High Kings, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 2001), “Corrigenda,” n1, suggests, on the other hand, that the notion of the four provinces and center point is, inversely, a projection of the individual farm and its four neighbors. The quincunx is found as an organizational principle in many world cultures and was lavishly documented in the sixteenth century inBrowne, Thomas, Hydriotaphia, urne-buriall, or A Discourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately to be found in Norfolk together with the garden of Cyrus, or The quincunciall lozenge, or network plantations of the ancients (London, 1658).Google Scholar

² See Mathúna, Liam Mac, “The Christianization of the Early Irish Cosmos? muir mas, nem nglas, talam cé (Blath. 258),” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 49–50 (1997): 532–47; idem, “Irish Perceptions of the Cosmos,” Celtica 23 (1999): 174–87; idem, “The Irish Cosmos Revisited: Further Lexical Perspectives,” in Celtic Cosmology: Perspectives from Ireland and Scotland, ed. Borsje, Jacqueline et al. (Toronto, 2014), 10–33. For an earlier study, seeSayers, William, “Mani Maidi an Nem …: Ringing Changes on a Cosmic Motif,” Ériu 37 (1986): 99–17. Edward Hall coined the term proxemics for the study of the cultural use of space; see his The Hidden Dimension (New York, 1990).Google Scholar

³ Bondarenko, Grigory, “Significance of Pentads in Early Irish and Indian Sources: Case of Five Directions,” in Sacred Topology of Early Ireland and Ancient India: Religious Paradigm Shift, ed. Fomin, Maxim, Mac Mathúna, Séamus, and Vertogradova, Victoria, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 57 (Washington, DC, 2010), 113–32, at 118. See also idem, “The Five Primeval Trees in Early Irish, Gnostic Interior Space in Early Ireland and Manichean Cosmologies,” Cosmos 22 (2006): 36–54; idem, “Roads and Knowledge in Togail Bruidne Da Derga,” in Celtic Cosmology, ed. Borsje, et al., 186–206.Google Scholar

⁴ Bondarenko, , “The Five Primeval Trees,” 42.Google Scholar

⁵ van Hamel, A. G., ed., “Compert Con Culainn,” in Compert Con Culainn and Other Stories (Dublin, 1956), 1–8, at par. 1: “Conchobar, then, seated in his chariot along with his daughter Deichtine, who had reached adulthood. She was charioteer for her father. Other chariot warriors, Conall and Lóeguire and every one of the others, in their chariots. Bricriu with them as well.” The translation is mine, and intentionally quite literal, if awkward.Google Scholar

⁶ Best, R. I., Bergin, O., and O'Brien, M. A., eds., The Book of Leinster (Dublin, 1954), 1:116–20 and plate; Atkinson, R., ed., The Yellow Book of Lecan (Dublin, 1896), 419^a–b. On the corpus of Tara texts in which this text figures, seeDowney, Clodagh, “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta,” Ériu 60 (2010): 1–35; for the cuts of meat due each guest, seeDowney, and Sayers, William, “A Cut Above: Ration and Station in an Irish King's Hall,” Food and Foodways 4 (1990): 89–110 (the present essay supersedes this early study in the matter of the overall orientation of the hall).Google Scholar

⁷ The prepositional elements *ara-/are- are incorporated in both ara (“charioteer”) and aire (“nobleman”); seeThurneysen, Rudolf, “Ir. aire. gen. airech,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 20 (1936): 353–55; and O'Brien, M. A., “4. O.Ir. eirr, area,” Celtica 3 (1956): 170, under “Etymologies and notes.”Google Scholar

⁸ As concerns the movement to the new dispensation of Christianity, and the importance of numerology in its interpretive tradition, the use of such literary ordering devices as triads and quincunxes seems to have been little affected (although they might well be filled with Christian content), perhaps because of close association with deep-rooted conceptions of the land and sacral kingship.Google Scholar

⁹ As elsewhere in this essay, the speculative nature of the gathering of narrative detail into pentads and placement in quincunxes is freely acknowledged. The danger here is obviously of “a selective framing of scenes to ensure that the number five is produced,” as an asute reader of an earlier version of this essay observed. Although it may be judged that such special pleading imposes too great a systematization on the material, the very bulk of the relevant evidence dictates an attempt at ordering according to some notion of macro-principle.Google Scholar

¹⁰ This translation of the name Sétanta has been challenged, and sét (“object of value”) may be in play instead: Dictionary of the Irish Language, ed. Quin, E. G. (Dublin, 1913–76), s.v. “Sétanta.”Google Scholar

¹¹ Hamel, Van, ed., Compert Con Culainn, par. 6.Google Scholar

¹² Attention was first called to this scene inRees, and Rees, , Celtic Heritage (n. 1 above), 189.Google Scholar

¹³ Dillon, Myles, ed., Serglige Con Culainn (Dublin, 1953), lines 87–90: “When the Ulstermen were around him in the house, with Fergus between him and the wall, Conall Cernach between him and the bedrail, Lugaid Réoderg between him and the bolster, Ethne Ingubai at his feet.”Google Scholar

¹⁴ SeeThurneysen, Rudolf, A Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin, 1946), 251, par. 402, for the declination of the preposition eter.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Dillon, Myles, “The Trinity College Text of Serglige Con Culainn,” Scottish Gaelic Studies 6 (1949): 139–75; 7 (1953): 88, at verses 351–78.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The identification of these ailments is based on Dillon's translation, “The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn,” Scottish Gaelic Studies 7 (1951): 47–88.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The quincunx is generally conceived of in the horizontal plane; the height differential realized in these seating arrangements is one of the few manifestations of verticality and its near-intrinsic sense of hierarchy.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Lines 834–36: “Conchobor (1) ordered the poets (2) and men of art (3) and druids (4) of Ulster to find Cú Chulainn (5) and secure him and bring him with them to Emain Macha.”Google Scholar

¹⁹ Binchy, D. A., ed., Crith Gablach (Dublin, 1970), 23, par. 46 = Binchy, D. A., ed., Corpus Iuris Hibernici, 6 vols. (Dublin, 1978), 570, lines 13–26. Of the arrangement of a king's house, Clodagh Downey observes: “the principle of ordering a king's house went beyond the convivial and was an important legal concern,”Downey, , “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta” (n. 6 above), 24.Google Scholar

²⁰ Binchy, , Críth Gablach, 96.Google Scholar

²¹ Ibid., “Vocabulary,” 41.Google Scholar

²² Petrie, George, “The History and Antiquities of Tara Hill,” Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 18 (1837): 199–204.Google Scholar

²³ Petrie's path-breaking study is largely superseded byDowney, Clodagh, “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta,” and archaeological studies cited there. “House of the Banqueting Hall” is the conventional rendering of Tech Midchúarta, but both elements of the second term have been questioned (Downey, 2–5). Prose and verse texts relating to Tara and the manuscript illustrations have been more influenced by the surviving earthworks there than other tales treating of royal halls and hostels (Downey, 6).Google Scholar

²⁴ Downey, , “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta,” 13–14.Google Scholar

²⁵ Petrie, , “History and Antiquities,” 200: “The fourth part of Tigh Midchuarta is to the back/west of the king; the other three quarters eastwards/frontwards to the door.”Google Scholar

²⁶ Downey, , “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta,” 18.Google Scholar

²⁷ Since imdae (probably with a different etymology) was also used of the shoulder, shoulder blade, and hip, connotations would make fo glún “at the knee” (see below) an even more appropriate term for a subservient position. On the various terms here discussed, see Dictionary of the Irish Language.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ag (for agad) is also used of this panel.Google Scholar

²⁹ If the king is seated in the compartment with his back to the north end of the hall and two notables at his knees, and if two subaltern diners are seated on the platform toward the fire, as the manuscript drawing shows, that is, both lower and on the right of the threesome, the ordd may have involved both a step or more upward and a turn to the left, further evidence for its reading as “articulated joint.”Google Scholar

³⁰ More briefly discussed inDowney, , “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta,” 25–26.Google Scholar

³¹ Daly, M. O, ed. and trans., Lánellach tigi rich ℸ ruirech, Ériu 19 (1962): 81–86; Bhreathnach, Edel, Ireland in the Medieval World, AD 400–1000: Landscape, Kingship and Religion (Dublin, 2014), 114–15.Google Scholar

³² SeeDaly, O, Lánellach tigi rich ℸ ruirech.Google Scholar

³³ Daly, O, Lánellach tigi rich ℸ ruirech, “Introduction,” 86. Ar-said means literally “to sit before” but figuratively could have also meant “to sit in prominence, in a due and assigned position.”Google Scholar

³⁴ Kelly, Fergus, ed. and trans., Audacht Morainn (Dublin, 1976), par. 52.Google Scholar

³⁵ Búanand may then have had local topographical relevance and thus assist in placing the text.Google Scholar

³⁶ hAodha, Donncha Ó, “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare,” in Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney, ed. Corráin, Donncha Ó, Breatnach, Liam, and MacCone, Kim (Maynooth, 1989), 308–31, stanzas 11 and 13.Google Scholar

³⁷ Mention of these furnishings in the hall, most with a vertical axis, not only supports the basic concept of hierarchy but also recalls man's place on an earth with a heavens above (cf. sacred trees, standing stones, other center-oriented vertical artifacts).Google Scholar

³⁸ SeeKelly, Fergus, Early Irish Farming (Dublin, 1997), 443–44. See discussion of these trades and crafts inDowney, , “Dindshenchas and the Tech Midchúarta” (n. 6 above) 22–23.Google Scholar

³⁹ On hostels and hostelers closer to historical reality, seeMac Eoin, Gearóid, “The Briugu in Early Irish Society,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 49–50 (1997): 482–93.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See, for example, Toner, Gregory, ed. and trans., Bruiden Da Choca (London, 2007), hereafter BDC; Toner's “windy pass” (“bélat gaíthe”) of line 86 of the washerwoman's prediction may well be a reference to one of the doors of the hostel (cf. bél, “mouth”).Google Scholar

⁴¹ The pattern of segments meeting at a central point was an alternate conception of an Ireland of five provinces;Rees, and Rees, , Celtic Heritage (n. 1 above), 121.Google Scholar

⁴² Cormac in BDC, par. 46.Google Scholar

⁴³ Knott, Eleanor, ed., Togail Bruidne Da Derga (Dublin, 1936), line 642. On this important text, now seeO'Connor, Ralph, The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel: Kingship and Narrative Artistry in a Mediaeval Irish Saga (Oxford, 2013); on the motif of roads leading to the kingship and to death, seeBondarenko, , “Roads and Knowledge” (n. 3 above).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Carney, James, “The Watchman Device,” in Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, in Early Irish Myths and Sagas, trans. Gantz, Jeffrey (London, 1981), 83.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Thurneysen, Rudolf, ed., Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó (Dublin, 1935), par. 1 (hereafter SMMD). In another recension than that published by Thurneysem six hostels are mentioned.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ SMMD, par. 5.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Kelly, Fergus, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), 354–55: “Not difficult, five: the back court and the side court and the waiting(?) court and the court apart and the court itself.” Fuller discussion inKelly, Fergus, “An Old-Irish Text on Court Procedure,” Peritia 5 (1986): 74–106.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Kelly, , “Court Procedure,” 90; cf. Cana, Proinsias Mac, “The Three Languages and the Three Laws,” Studia Celtica 5 (1970): 62–78.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Kelly, , “Court Procedure,” 79.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Chart in ibid., 78.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid., 82.Google Scholar

⁵³ Archan, Christophe, ed. and trans., Les chemins du jugement: procédure et science du droit dans l'Irlande médiévale (Paris, 2007), 289, and, for a subsequent study, Bemmmer, Jaqueline, “Validity and Equality in Early Irish Contract Law: dliged and cert in the Light of Cóic conara fugill,” Studia Celtica Fennica 8 (2011): 5–18. Acken observes that the terminology of the tract is not analytic in nature, does not designate precisely what is involved, but rather seems to be a collection of assigned valorizing names, albeit names weighted with tradition for the initiate. SeeAcken, James, “Lexical Specificity in the Auraicept na n-Éces,” in Gablánach in scélaigecht: Celtic Studies in Honor of Ann Dooley, ed. Sheehan, Sarah, Findon, Joanne, and Follett, Westley(Dublin, 2013), 116–30.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Calder, George, ed. and trans., Auraicept na nÉces (Edinburgh, 1917), 16–17. Discussion inJohnston, Elva, Literacy and Identity in Early Medieval Ireland (Woodbridge, 2013), 57. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the term “definable language” (berla tobaide < do·fuiben), otherwise often met as “select language.”Google Scholar

⁵⁵ For a summary account, see“The Royal House in Archaeology,” in Bhreathnach, , Ireland in the Medieval World (n. 31 above), 115–17.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ The formula also occurs in Coic Conara Fugill;Archan, , Les chemins du jugement, 304; cf. Calder, , ed., Auraicept na n-Éces, 54–55. The likely source of such listings is Sedulius Scottus's commentary on Donatus; seeAcken, , “Lexical Specificity.” Acken calls these circumstances of composition “textual accidences,” 127, 128–29.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ O'Rahilly, Cecile, ed. and trans., Táin Bó Cúalgne from the Book of Leinster (Dublin, 1967), lines 276–79.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See the relevant discussion (although not of pentadic formulation) in Tomas ÓCathasaigh, , “The Body in Táin bó Cúailgne,” in Gablánach in scélaigecht, ed. Sheehan, et al., 131–53, at 145.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ O'Rahilly, Cecile, ed. and trans., Táin Bó Cúailgne: Recension I (Dublin, 1967), lines 3410–53; the incident is studied in Tomás ÓCathasaigh, , “Sírrabad Súaltaim and the Order of Speaking among the Ulad,” in A Companion in Linguistics: A Festschrift for Anders Ahlqvist on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Smelik, Bernadette et al. (Nijmegen, 2005), 80–91.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Lehmann, Ruth, ed., Fled Dúin na nGéd (Dublin, 1964), 1, lines 28–37: “And he designed seven great ramparts about that fort after the manner of Tara of the Kings, and he designed even the houses of the fort after the manner of the houses of Tara: namely, the great Central Hall where the king himself used to abide, with kings and queens and ollams, and all that were best in every art; and the Hall of Munster and the Hall of Leinster and the Banquet Hall of Connacht and the Assembly Hall of Ulster and the Prison of the Hostages and the Star of the Poets and the Palace of the Single Pillar (which Cormac son of Art first made for his daughter Gráinne) and all the other houses.”Dillon, Myles, trans., The Feast of the Fort of the Geese, in The Cycles of the Kings (London, 1946), 57–64, at 58. See Downey on the attribution of variously proportioned royal constructions to successive kings.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Marstrander, Carl, “A New Version of the Battle of Mag Rath,” Ériu 5 (1911): 226–47. The text even makes a slight hypothetical adjustment to the plan, in the event one of the O'Neills had ruled in the south.Google Scholar

⁶² Henderson, George, ed. and trans., Fled Bricrend: The Feast of Bricriu (London, 1899), 2–5. Tochmarc Emire (The Wooing of Emer) opens with a similar picture of the Cráebrúad, Conchobar's hall: nine compartments between the fire and the wall, Conchobar's loge “in the front of the building,” and twelve beds for the heroes of Ulster around it; Tochmarc Emire, in van Hamel, , Compert Con Culainn (n. 5 above), 21–68, at 21. In this ordered but dynamic environment, the seed of discontent that will germinate into story is the Ulstermen's unhappiness over Cú Chulainn's unmarried state.Google Scholar

⁶³ Here may be mentioned what seems an incomplete quincunx in Táin Bó Cúailgne, when the forces of Ulster muster for the final battle with Connacht. Conchobar's company draws up, and the king is seated on a mound, with Sencha and the king's son, Cúscraid Mend Macha, in attendance. Many other companies arrive, but there is no full discussion of the layout of the camp; O'Rahilly, , ed. and trans., Táin Βό Cúailgne: Recension I, lines 3589ff. The formal motif of the quincunx is otherwise absent from the Táin, perhaps because much of the action occurs in the field.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Carmichael Watson, J., ed., Mesca Ulad (Dublin, 1941), 36(hereafter MU). On the motif, seeSims-Williams, Patrick, The Iron House in Ireland, H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 16 (Cambridge, 2005).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ MU, 1.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Meid, Wolfgang, ed. and trans., Die Romanze von Froech und Findabair: Táin Βό Froích, 2nd ed. (Innsbruck, 2009), lines 51–52.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ P. 58, par. 7.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Gantz, , trans., The Cattle Raid of Fróech, in Early Irish Myths and Sagas (n. 45 above), 116.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Meid, , Die Romanze von Froech und Findabair, 139, lines 51–52n.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ In Fled Bricrend, Bricriu builds a bower that permits oversight of the main hall, from which he is banished because of his tendency to promote dissension. One can imagine it as structurally integrated with the side of the hall but reached by separate stairs or ladder. Still, this excrescence violates the integrity of the ideal hall and its self-contained but richly representative nature.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Stokes, Whitely, ed. and trans., “Echtra Mac nEchach Muigmedóin: The Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Muigmedóin,” Revue Celtique 24 (1903): 190–207, at 194–95.Google Scholar

⁷² Hull, Vernam, ed. and trans., Longes mac n-Uislenn: The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu (New York, 1949).Google Scholar

⁷³ The tale has a coda to the killing of Naoíse in Deirdre's own death. She has been loaned by Conchobar to Éogan mac Durthacht for a year. When she arrives in Emain Macha in a chariot with Eogan, she is taunted by Conchobar, whom we may assume to have been in his. Thus, two kings, two drivers, and a shared concubine. Conchobar reduces this to three entities, saying that Deirdre is like the eye of the ewe between two rams. She dashes her head against a rock.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Rees, and Rees, , Celtic Heritage (n. 1 above), 351. In these final pages the Reeses also group puns with “the boundary, the centre, intercalary time, ‘to-day,’ betwixt-and-between, incestuous births,” etc., even metaphor, claiming that in these is “an ambiguity, or a multiplication or concentration of meaning which makes them fitting symbols of the unmanifest, which is itself the world of chaos and at the same time the ground of all being” (ibid., 349). Puns and personal names in early Irish letters are certainly of compelling interest, but the Reeses, I contend, have the pun tracing a trajectory in the wrong direction. While incongruity is often at its base and there can be a moment of confusion and stress created by the challenge to comprehension (especially in the wake of an orally delivered witticism), the pun, in its formal economy, points not to chaos but to previously unseen order, as an underlying correspondence is now brought into the light. More as an exercise in analogy than claiming a true expression of homological thinking, the pun can be seen as two ideas conjoined, but also revealed, in one phonic envelope, just as another kinetic movement, the etarscarad or “separation” of Isidorean and Irish etymologizing, more explicitly than the pun, shows words and names to be composed of potentially complementary qualities, so that two word forms are shown to have coalesced in the distant past into one idea. This boxing-in and unpacking, respectively, are then lexical counterparts to the assignment of diners to their correct, framed places in the hall.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Corráin, Donnchadh Ó, “The Vikings in Scotland and Ireland in the Ninth Century,” Chronicon 2.3 (1998): 1–45, at 19n72.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Cléirigh, C. R. Ó, review of Celtic Heritage, by Rees, and Rees, , Béaloideas 28 (1960): 126–28, at 127.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Among several recent contributions to memory studies may be notedMinni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture, ed. Hermann, Pernille, Mitchell, Stephen A., and Arnórsdóttir, Agnes S., Acta Scandinavica: Aberdeen Studies in the Scandinavian World 4 (Turnhout, 2014), in particular because of the many analogies with Irish tradition that offer themselves.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ While one does a disservice to a great scholar by exploiting a celebrated summary remark in the service of a different argument, one readily sees how Binchy's “tribal, rural, hierarchical and familiar” can be viewed in spatial and deictic terms: the mesocosmic kingdom situated by the points of the compass in the landscape, centripetal, and ordered by a vertical axis.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ SeeSayers, William, “Netherworld and Otherworld in Early Irish Literature,” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 59 (2012): 201–30.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ O'Rahilly, , ed. and trans., Táin Bó Cúalgne from the Book of Leinster (n. 57 above), lines 4731ff.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Discussion inRees, and Rees, , “A Hierarchy of Provinces,” in Celtic Heritage, 118–39, at 123.Google Scholar