Bres

A silver vessel came in on a sea so flat it might have been a board laid down, and the woman watching from the house at Máeth Scéni could not make out its shape until the current carried it to the shore. The man who came off it had golden-yellow hair to his shoulders and a cloak banded with gold thread, five gold circlets at his throat, and a brooch on his breast with a stone in it that caught the light. He carried two silver spears on smooth riveted shafts of bronze. His name was Elatha, he was king of the Fomoire, and the son he left with Ériu that afternoon would be handed the kingship of Ireland before he was properly grown.

The father set the terms of the name before the child existed. Call him Eochu Bres, he said, Eochu the Beautiful, because every beautiful thing seen in Ireland, plain or fortress, ale or candle, woman or man or horse, would from then on be measured against the boy, so that people would look at a fine thing and say, it is a Bres. He also drew a gold ring off his middle finger and told Ériu to part with it to nobody whose hand it did not fit. Then he went back to the sea.

The boy grew at twice the ordinary rate. A week after his mother’s lying-in he had a fortnight’s growth on him, and he kept that pace for seven years until he stood the size of a lad of fourteen. It made him look like the answer to a problem the Túatha Dé had just acquired. Núadu their king had lost a hand in the first battle at Mag Tuired, and a maimed man could not hold the sovereignty; the tribe and their wives fell to arguing about who should. Bres was their own fosterling and his father ruled the Fomoire, so the crown in his hands would tie the two peoples together. He gave seven guarantors from among his mother’s kin that he would hand the kingship back if his own conduct ever gave cause. His mother gave him land. The Dagda built his fort.

What followed was seven years of a very particular kind of rule. Three Fomorian kings, Indech mac Dé Domnann and Elatha and Tethra, laid their tribute on the country until there was not a smoke rising from a house in Ireland that was not taxed. The great figures of the Túatha Dé were put to labour. Ogma carried firewood daily from the islands of Clew Bay and was so weakened by hunger that the sea took two thirds of every bundle off him before he made land; he delivered the remaining third and the household lived on it. The Dagda dug the earthwork around the king’s own fort, and every night a blind satirist called Cridenbél, whose mouth grew out of his chest, demanded the three best bits of his supper, each bit the size of a good pig.

The complaint the Túatha Dé eventually made against him was not about tribute at all. Their knives, they said, were never greased in his house. However often they came, their breath did not smell of ale. No poet, no bard, no harper, no piper, no hornblower, no juggler and no fool ever entertained them in his household, and no warrior was ever seen proving his skill at arms before the king. He was rich and he fed nobody.

Then Coirpre son of Étaín, poet of the Túatha Dé, came looking for hospitality and was put in a narrow black windowless room with no fire in it, no furniture and no bedding. Three small cakes arrived on a little dish, and they were dry. In the morning he crossed the yard and said his four lines: without food quickly on a dish, without cow’s milk on which a calf grows, without a man’s dwelling after dark, without payment for a company of storytellers, let that be Bres’s condition. It is remembered as the first satire ever made in Ireland, and from that hour there was only blight on him. The tribe came and called in the seven guarantors.

He asked for seven more years and got them, and spent the time doing exactly what he had asked for the time to do. He went to his mother, who took him back up the hill where she had watched the silver vessel come in, and gave him the ring. It fitted. In the land of the Fomoire he passed unrecognised through a racing of dogs and a racing of horses, and only when he raised his hand in the sword contest did Elatha see the gold on his finger and ask who the man was. His father heard the whole account and was not impressed by it. Better their prosperity than their kingship, he said, and better their requests than their curses; you should not take by injustice what you could not keep by justice. Then he sent him on to Balor and to Indech, who raised every fighting man from Lochlainn westward and bridged the sea from the Hebrides to Ireland with their ships.

His wife was Brígh, the Dagda’s daughter, and their son Rúadán was sent into the Túatha Dé camp as a spy because his blood ran on both sides. He came back with an account of the smith and the wright and the brazier and the four physicians chanting over the well, and was sent again to kill Goibniu the smith. He asked the smith for a spearpoint and got it, then turned and put it into him. Goibniu pulled it out and threw it back, and Rúadán died in front of his father in the middle of the Fomorian assembly. Brígh came and keened over him, first shrieking, then weeping, and that was the first time either sound was heard in Ireland.

Lug found Bres unguarded on the battlefield afterwards and let him talk. Spare me, Bres said, and the cows of Ireland will always be in milk. Lug took it to Máeltne of the great judgements, who ruled that a man with no power over a cow’s age or her calving was offering nothing worth having. Spare me, said Bres, and you will reap a harvest every quarter of the year. Máeltne ruled that the four seasons already suited perfectly well, spring for the ploughing, early summer for the strength of the grain, autumn for the ripening and the cutting, winter for the eating. Less than that will save you, Lug told him. Tell us how to plough and sow and reap. On a Tuesday their ploughing, Bres said, on a Tuesday their sowing, on a Tuesday their reaping. He was let go.

That is one ending. The dinnshenchas of Carn Uí Néit, the cairn at the far tip of the Mizen in Cork, gives another, and it turns on the one thing Bres could not do. He was under a vow never to refuse anything put in front of him. Lug had three hundred cows built out of wood and set pails under them, and what filled the pails was a red liquor with no brightness or fat in it at all. Three hundred measures were poured for the king, bitter and harsh. He drank it off without flinching and it killed him where he stood. The same poem, which knows perfectly well what he did as king, calls him a kindly friend, noble and fortunate, an ornament of the host with a face never woeful, the flower of the Túatha Dé.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Bres in Irish mythology?

Bres was a king of the Túatha Dé Danann, son of the Fomorian king Elatha and Ériu of the Túatha Dé. He was given the kingship after Núadu lost a hand and became ineligible to rule, and he held it for seven years before being deposed for meanness and injustice. He then led the Fomorian host against the Túatha Dé at the second battle of Mag Tuired.

Why was Bres called “the Beautiful”?

His father Elatha named him Eochu Bres, meaning Eochu the Beautiful, before he was born, and said that every beautiful thing in Ireland would afterwards be judged against him, so that people would say of a fine thing, “it is a Bres.” No source actually describes what he looked like. His beauty functions in the stories as a standard of comparison rather than a description.

What did Bres do wrong as king?

Bres let three Fomorian kings tax every house in Ireland and put the Túatha Dé to forced labour, with Ogma hauling firewood and the Dagda digging earthworks. Worse in Irish terms, he kept no hospitality: guests’ knives were never greased with meat, their breath never smelled of ale, and no poet, harper or entertainer was ever kept in his hall.

How was Bres brought down?

The poet Coirpre son of Étaín was lodged in a cold, bare room and given three dry cakes, and in the morning he composed four lines against Bres that are remembered as the first satire made in Ireland. Blight followed the king from that hour, and the Túatha Dé called in the guarantors he had given and took the kingship back.

How did Bres die?

The accounts disagree. In Cath Maige Tuired he is captured by Lug after the second battle and spared in exchange for telling the men of Ireland to plough, sow and reap on a Tuesday. In the dinnshenchas of Carn Uí Néit, Lug builds three hundred wooden cows, milks a bitter red liquor into pails, and Bres, bound by a vow never to refuse anything offered him, drinks it and dies.

Related Entries

Nuada, Lug, Dagda, Brigid, Goibniu, Dian Cécht, Balor, Fomorian, Fir Bolg, Morrigan, Aengus Óg, Manannán mac Lir