Question: Why did you ditch Guardian and Animal on the Dagda for Sun and War? Just because he held the sun in place for nine months shouldn't give him power over the purview!
I seriously promise you that we are not trying to be mean to you, person asking this question, but we both laughed out loud when we opened it. Something about the way it's phrased seriously tickled us.
It's a legitimate question, though, so let's ignore our outbursts of glee and answer it! As for removing the first two purviews, those were pretty easy ones.
Animal (Pig) was a completely ridiculous association for the Dagda to have; the only reason it was there at all is the fact that the Dagda famously possesses two pigs, one of which is always cooking while the other is always ready to eat. But these pigs are not doing anything but being ready-made pork; they're examples of the Dagda's association with food, prosperity and plenty, not suggestions that he's some sort of god of pigs, which he obviously is not. He never speaks to pigs, calls on pigs, turns into a pig, or in any way uses pigs for anything except eating, which is frankly not an exceptional thing to be doing with pigs. The magical pigs themselves are very fancy, but they're clearly a Birthright he possesses, not evidence of his link to all swine.
Guardian was less ridiculous, but it also didn't really have any evidence to support it. The Dagda doesn't do much in the way of guarding; he's great at busting some heads on the battlefield, but he isn't the patron or protector of any place, the defender who saves others from danger, the figurehead who represents a guardian of his people or otherwise demonstrating any embodiment of the Guardian purview that we could see. Sure, people are being protected as a side effect of his awesomeness at killing enemies, but you could say that about the Morrigan, too, and she definitely doesn't have the Guardian purview in any dimension. It's Nuada who functions as the protector of his people and the benevolent ruler who sees that they're safe; the Dagda, while awesome in his own way, doesn't do any of that. He has no more need of the Guardian purview than anyone else.
Which brings us around to things he does do, and War is one of those things. There are few gods and fewer enemies who can match the Dagda on the field of battle, where it took Cethlenn herself to defeat him (and even she had to do it on a sort of time-delayed basis); and while just being very badass is not usually enough to make us think a god has the War purview, the Dagda is also strongly associated with the leading of armies (commanded by his magical harp) and the formulation of tactics (which he is even ready to bang the Morrigan to get hold of, because he is serious about this stuff). The Dagda is a leader and a frontline soldier when it comes to the famous pitched battles of the Tuatha, so War seemed a natural fit for him.
And, finally, Sun, which is where John and I started giggling. Again, we're not meaning to pick on you, but - seriously, if a guy holding the sun in place for nine freaking months isn't an example of him having the Sun purview, what the hell is? That's classic power over the sun, very literally changing the span of days and the natural order of the heavens with his own power; it's not even something that he could have been doing with a little Sun, because that right there is some stuff you need The Glory to pull off. He's not one of the charioteering kinds of sun-gods, true, but they're not the only kind of sun-god out there. We can't think of too many better examples of someone having ultimate power over the sun than a guy who refused to let it set for nine straight months until he felt like it. That's mightily epic use of Sun.
So there's our reasoning; the Dagda has nothing to do with pigs and doesn't really bother with guarding much, but he's a badass war commander and is capable of making the sun his bitch for indefinite periods of time.
I'm not gunna lie, I almost blew pepsi out my nose when I read that question.
ReplyDeleteI know, right?
DeleteNot the OP, but wasn't the "Sun" actually Balor?
ReplyDelete...not that I've ever heard? The problem was that the Dagda had knocked up Boann, who was married to somebody else at the time (to Nechtan, possibly another name of Nuada, which would make it super awkward), so the Dagda stopped the sun for nine months so that she could give birth to the baby in a single "day" before the husband came home. The baby (Aengus) was then packed off to be fostered as quickly as possible, and no one found out about the indiscretion.
DeleteI've never heard of Balor being involved in any way there - what was it he would have been doing?
I guess it doesn't hurt that he had both ultimate strength and stamina to help. How much did he piss the other sun god's off with that stunt? I'd think Baldur and Apollo as the closest sun god's geographically must have felt at least some kind of unpleasentness from the sun standing still in the sky for nine months. I mean was Appollo's chariot stuck in the middle of the sky all that time or what?
ReplyDeleteIt does beg some question to the myth does it not? I mean look at it this way. He holds the sun for nine months in order to allow the birth of a child go unnoticed, but who would not notice the sun staying up for nine months? I look at it like a metaphor. Maybe he just sped up gestation of the child rather than actually halting the movement of the Earth or Overworld. Maybe it is an example of the secret knowledge he seems to possess that was brought up in a previous question on this blog. Myths are full of hyperbole and metaphor so there is no reason to take this literally. It could have just as easily been an example of the Fertility purview or even Magic at work.
DeleteYou get into really dangerous ground when you start turning myths into what they mean as metaphors.
DeleteJohn's right; if you're going to start trying to come up with what else gods could have been doing instead of what their myths say they were doing, you're on a neverending road where you're basically making everything up. The myth doesn't say that he sped up Aengus' gestation; it says that he halted the sun, and furthermore that he did it specifically to hide the baby's birth. If you decide that the Dagda holding the sun in place is just a metaphor, why aren't you deciding that Zeus smiting things with thunderbolts is just a metaphor, or that Amaterasu hiding in a cave is just a metaphor, and that they really have different purviews instead of Sky and Sun themselves? Why is this the moment that you decide to randomly make an exception and start coming up with some other association instead of the one the myth is clearly referring to?
DeleteThe idea of keeping the sun in place to stop the "day" from ending is a very Irish one, actually. Technicalities are huge in Irish myth; this is far from the only ridiculous thing that someone does and gets away with because it's technically conforming to the rules. Mythology is full of those sorts of contradictions; sure, of course we'd be like, "man, this day is lasting a really long time!", but that kind of shit happens in myth and it still manages to work. It's no more nonsensical than all the other ridiculous bullshit gods get up to and away with.
Firefight, other gods definitely do get pissy about prolonged bogarting of the sun, and it'd be hard to beat the Dagda on that Strength roll to wrest it away from him. What that means exactly for what was happening in the world at the time is a Storyteller call, though; because All Myths Are True, this would have to be happening but also (possibly paradoxically) other sun gods still doing things. The Dagda holding onto the sun would keep the sun from moving elsewhere, but it wouldn't make Apollo unable to use his own Sun boons, so there's no reason his chariot would be stuck in a rut, as it were.
It's the people not near Ireland and therefore stuck in darkness for nine months that I'd be more worried about. Maybe this is also the point at which Amaterasu was like "eff all y'all, I'm going in a cave now until you learn some goddamn respect."
Ann, that's a good explanation and makes sense. When the sun halted on the other side of the world, It could of been the last straw that broke Amatu-Chans back. Like she's in this big fight with her brother and then some barbarian sun god from the other side of the world decides to put the sun in a head lock for nine months, so she just said fuck it and opted out for a while. So what would you say happened with Apollo and Baldur, being the closest sun gods geographically. I think they would both be at least a little curious. Come to think of it, In the scion universe at least, I'm surprised that the sun halting in the sky would not send the chariot driving guardians of the daily cycle sun gods to def con 1, especially the Aztecs. Screw being on the other side of the world, Hutzilopoctli must have been spitting blood and wanting to charge into Ireland to stab the Dagda in the face for disrupting the continuity of the heavens like that. That would actually be an enteristing story hook, the Hummingbird of the left having a grudge against the Dagda for his percieved impertanence.
ReplyDeleteAs a side question, how come Nuada doesn't have Guardian?
ReplyDeleteHe actually used to, and we were reluctant to strip it, but we eventually decided that his style of leading and protecting lent itself more to Justice than Guardian as something he might have the Avatar of. He'd definitely have a lot of Guardian even if he doesn't have The Sentinel, though (and I could see putting it back in, depending on the ST).
Delete