Question: What's with the Dagda dragging his dick across the ground?
Heh. Oh, Dagda, you crazy dude.
The image is most strongly found in the second Cath Maige Tuireadh, when the Dagda is sent by the rest of the Tuatha to go try to be diplomatic and buy time among the Fomorians. Because the Dagda is not exactly what you would call the most awesome politician, it doesn't go awesomely, although he does manage to keep everyone distracted with his ridiculousness for quite a while. Knowing his penchant for unappetizing Irish food, they make him a massive cauldron of porridge and demand that he eat it all in one go, which he does because Tuatha, and he promptly passes out from massive overeating. He then has to drag himself home with his belly as large as the cauldron, his clothes too small to cover his ass and his giant penis hanging down and waggling around as he trudges off beneath a hail of Fomorian insults. It's not his finest hour.
However, mere boyish Fomorian pranks are not all that is going on here. The Dagda is the major fertility figure of Ireland, and fertility gods are notorious for having gigantic junk; it's an easy shorthand symbol to let you know that their powers of penis (and thus their powers over all kinds of fertility, including that of the land) are prodigious, often seen in other fertility gods like Freyr, Oko, Priapus and Min. (Guys, those pictures are not safe for work. Because of the penis.)
In fact, the CMT up there is enjoying some good old-fashioned punning, which is one of Irish myth's favorite things to do. In the same passage where it describes the Dagda's sorry state, it explains that he's dragging his club behind him and leaving a massive furrow in the ground; however, the word most often used to describe the Dagda's club, lorg, is a double entendre that can mean both "club" and "penis". So yeah, maybe he's dragging his giant relic club around leaving furrows in the ground that divide the provinces of Ireland... or maybe he's leaving giant dick-ditches everywhere. Irish mythology thinks Irish mythology is hilarious.
So, really, the dick is enormous because the Dagda's job is to be the enormous dick of nature, or something. And it's enormous so it drags along the ground, because no one had invented dance belts in ancient Ireland. And that's what's up.
It's almost reassuring to know that no matter the civilizations that rise and fall, the same basic set of double entendres will be with us. Almost.
ReplyDeleteGenitalia: endlessly entertaining!
DeleteJust wondering are there any myths that are inverses to most fertility gods and there big *blushes* dongs where the God is castrated are mocked for small *ahem* packages
ReplyDeleteWell, there's definitely Ouranos, getting castrated by his son; the Hittites have a similar chain of unfortunate events in which the Titan Kumarbi castrates his father and then eats the severed genitals to prove his superiority. Nephthys is called by the somewhat pejorative epithet "she who has no vagina", referring to her barren state as wife of Set and contrast to the fertile Isis, and Osiris' permanent penis loss is of course legendary and unfortunate (and literally prevents him from being whole enough to be truly resurrected).
DeleteDon't blush, mythology is all about some dongs!
I don't know of any myths that mock any males for small equipment, however. It's a fairly modern phenomenon to worry about it - actually, ancient Greeks were fairly notorious for thinking small penises were more attractive than large ones (which they found comical/grotesque/gross). One of the reasons so many Greek nudes have smaller phalluses.
DeleteDifferent countries and time periods had different standards for ideal penis size and different levels of caring about it at all, so it depends on the specific mythology.
Anne, do you mean that when they say the Dagda has to put wheels on his club to drag it around... they actually mean he has wheels to drag his junk around?
ReplyDeleteAll things are possible in Irish entendre.
DeleteNo wonder the Morrigan wanted to fuck him. I think when you said Tuatha in your explanation, you meant geasa. So the dagda had a geasa that required him to eat whatever food was offered him.
ReplyDeleteI think she's saying "Because Tuatha" like someone would say "Because Irish". It's explaining the reasoning why he'd eat all that food is because it's something one of the Tuatha would do. I can't remember the Dagda having a specific Geas about food.
DeleteHe's right! The Dagda doesn't have a particular food geas that I know of; I just meant that he's got a typical Irish mythology need to be Biggest and Strongest and Most Impressive and I Will Eat Every Porridge.
DeleteHe does have a geas that says he can't carry anyone who doesn't know his full, true name, however. Which is one of the weirder ones out there.
I stand corrected. Irish, biggest consumers out there, and we love them for it.
ReplyDeleteIrish mythology needs a content warning.
ReplyDeleteAll mythology does.
Delete