Saint Nectan of Hartland is Nechtan, husband of Boann. Like her, he's a god of Wisdom..but with a different philosophy on Wisdom. Seemingly preferring knowledge to be cloistered and limited to the élite, Nechtan may be a God of Academies, or Mystery traditions.

Today's God-saint is as close as I've yet gotten to a Saint of Nuada himself. It's popular to posit that Nechtan is the same as Nuada; I think it's a little more complex. Nechtan looks like he exists at an area of intersection between the King archetypes, the Fionn-types, the Water-gods, the Fire-gods, and the Gods of Death. It's not as easy as just equating him to Nuada.

Foremost, though, Nechtan is husband to his wife: Boann - in many respects he's an expression of her, in fact. But, for an issue on Boann, you'll be waiting til Jul.5!

NB! In today's other issue, on Moling, I failed to include contextual links. I've amended the online version. Sorry!

Still, let's see what we can learn about Nechtan from his Saintly forms, and his parallels in the wider Proto-Indo-European sphere.

Differences from Taliesin's Map's Modelling

As with the issue for Moling/Aengus, a little preface on how I model differently from Taliesin's Map. I won't pretend to have it all figured out though - this is a very murky god. Appropriately, I guess, for a god of forbidden wells and deep waters!

The main variance, I suppose, is that in the view of the Taliesin's Map folks, this god-type is generally distinct from the two other god-types (in TM's model) that are most textually and mythically connected to it. These are the "Waters" gods Nuada, Varuna, Poseidon, and the "Fire" gods Manannán/Áed, Agni, Hephaestos. In my view, there's no need for sharp lines - they can lead to identifications that miss connections or second-guess documented tradition: for example, how the Vedas explicitly connect Apam Napat and Agni, or how the Greek and Roman theologians were content to identify Neptune and Poseidon.

A more flexible view reveals in some traditions a close connection to the Fionn-type and Divine-Twin-type gods, which is key I think. Both of these gods in their own ways are connected to the Fire God, too. It also reveals a subtle undercurrent connecting to the God of Death..but we'll get to that.

The Stories of Nechtan

Nechtan's name connects him, probably, to water. A related etymology suggests "descendent" (c.f. "Nephew"), but at least in Nechtan and Neptunes' cases, the watery etymology better-satisfies Occam's razor.

This is appropriate because Nechtan's whole thing in most of his surviving myths is that he's the husband of Boann, who's obviously a Water-Goddess among other things. In the conception of Aengus mac Óg, Boann and the Dagda conspire to trick Nechtan away for sufficient time for Aengus to be born, named, and safely fostered-off.

Perhaps because of this, and because Aengus later robs him of his house, and because of another myth where Cúchulainn himself comes and steals his wife (here called Fidelm) after maiming him, Nechtan has another name: Elcmhar, thought to mean something like "Envious".

Although we never hear how it played-out, it seems Nechtan became a foster-father to Aengus. And though Aengus isn't biologically his, he does get some traits from Nechtan; both share an affinity for horses (1). In one version of Aengus' taking of the Brú, Nechtan says sadly that he'd have given it freely to Aengus if he'd only been asked.

Nevertheless, in the continuation of this story in The Wooing of Étaín, he's later seen scowling across a valley at Aengus and Midir, and Midir volunteers to deal with the fighting youths between them, to avoid Aengus getting drawn into a conflict with Elcmhar. So it seems there was love, but also resentment.

The origin of the river Boann concerns only Nechtan and Boann. In this, he has a sacred well that's carefully guarded by he and his acolytes. Boann rocks up to the well haughtily, walks anticlockwise around it, and it blows up and maims her, then chases her to the sea to become the River Boann (EN: Boyne). Officially she dies in this, but she turns up later anyway as Fidelm because Irish gods aren't really bothered by dying.

Her River is the Boann ("Boyne"), arguably the most clearly sacred river in Ireland. But the Milky Way is also known as "Bealach na Bó Fhinne"; the Way of the White Cow. This suggests a direct parallel to the Saraswati, which is at once supposedly a real river (which?) but is also speculated to have been the Cosmic River of the gods; the Milky Way. Indeed, Boann and Nechtan might have been gods of the waters above: the night sky, or perhap the blue sky also.

The aforementioned Cúchulainn myth sees Nechtan and Fidelm by a riverside when Cúchulainn comes to takes some salmon from the river. The god Nechtan is troubled at this and tries to stop Cúchulainn from taking the salmon; Cú maims his hands and feet, and then kinda abducts Fidelm and makes her display her naked body to the other men in Ulster. Oh, and he takes the salmon, too.

Aside from these myths, Nechtan/Elcmhar is mostly absent in Irish myth, save one other appearance of the name: in Cúchulainn's first outing as a soldier, he kills a number of "Sons of Nechtan", but officially this Nechtan is a woman who we never meet. As we'll see in comparison, I think it's fair to speculate (as many do) that this is, in fact, the same Nechtan.

Saint Nectan of Hartland

We do in fact have a few Saints Nectan in Ireland, thought to somehow refer to the same guy, but we don't have a "Vita" for them. Nectan of Hartland is the most detailed Nec[h]tan we have.

His Vita has him as the eldest son of Brychan, Demiurge of Wales. He decides to become a holy-man, so he crosses some water, sets up a hermitage by a spring, acquires cows, loses the cows, loses his head, re-acquires his head, and dies by the well.

Do remember that summary, because we'll see it elsewhere. Nectan crossing water seems to be relevant; and he does so at the outset of his adventures. He sets up by freshwater - in this case, a spring, though he's also associated with waterfalls elsewhere.

The life mentions that he hosts his fellow hermit-siblings once yearly, which is interesting - it's possible that Brú na Bóinne was seen as the place where the gods held their (yearly?) Feast of Age.. but back on topic. Nectan.

After helping a guy find some pigs, Nectan gets a pair of milk cows. But soon after, they're stolen. Nectan pursues the bandits, tells them they're being naughty, and has his head cut off. He picks up his head and walks home; one of the bandits goes mad at the sight.

When he gets home, then he dies. He turns up a bit later as a sort of patron of sea travellers. But what's this got to do with Nechtan of Ireland? He wasn't beheaded - what does he have in common with Nectan? In short, his well, his cow, and his wife (but I repeat myself).

The White Cow

Nechtan's wife is Boann - Bó fhinn, or "White Cow". As mentioned previously, her original name is "Eithne", back when she was a maiden in a tower who was prophesied to bear her father's killer someday.

Her paramour, Cían (/Caoimh), finds her while searching for the stolen Glas Gaibhnenn - after he finds her and they make love, he leaves with the cow. It's as if, even back then, she was the Cow in some way.

Later, she's at the river married to Nechtan, now known as Boann - her name is now "White Cow", which as far as I know, is never really explained. She does, indeed, get stolen from Nechtan: figuratively by An Dagda, and literally by Cúchulainn.

So, Saint Nectan's cows who get stolen by interlopers, leaving him bereft, seem to mimic a running pattern of Nechtan's, where people come and steal his wife, his house, and his fish. That's rough - I bet he listens to Country music.

And, yea - the Christians just turned the goddess of wisdom into a literal cow, in this case. Reluctantly, in their defence, the goddess is often a cow.

A Milky Trail

The mytheme of saints getting beheaded and then walking away with their heads is actually a whole thing by itself; such Saints are known as "Cephalophores". Intriguingly, the related myth of a head that continues to talk doesn't usually overlap much with the Cephalophore myths. Beheaded gods and saints seem to either walk or talk, but usually not both. The Talking myths seem to attach more to the God of Death myths: Diarmaits/Donns, Orpheus, etc.

Something else interesting about walking Cephalophores, when I investigated them, is that they all seem to share a general narrative arc that loosely matches Nectan (plus or minus some steps):

1. Cross some water at the start
2. Become a hermit
3. Have a milk animal
4. Milk animal stolen / threatened
5. Saint beheaded by robbers, or simply Nasty Pagans™
6. Saint picks up head and goes home
7. Saint curses people on the way
8. Saint is revived, or dies there

Some other example Saints whose arcs match this general template include: Saint Decumen of Watchet; Saint Aphrodisius of Béziers; Saint Giles. Some of these match the pattern less than others; Giles doesn't even get beheaded! Though, he does get maimed in an attack on his animal, like Nechtan, and he's curiously associated with Horses, also like Nechtan.

Another interesting detail in common with these saints is that they're very associated with plague, an association of the Fionn-type group of gods - maybe that's bleeding through into the related Nuada/Nechtan.

Further North..

In the Norse religion (and perhaps more widely in Germanic), we find an interesting area of fuzzy overlap.

Going by the myth of the well/river associated god, who gets beheaded, and who appears as a sort of antecedent Water-Wisdom God to the Fionn-type (here, Óðinn), we rather clearly find ourselves looking at Mímir. This god is possibly Óðinn's uncle and mentor in Galdrs (magical incantations). He's later given as hostage as part of an exchange that ends the Aesir-Vanir war, but when the Vanir side get buyer's remorse, they behead him. Óðinn finds his head and keeps it, and it whispers secrets and knowledge to him.

This myth seems to segue from one archetype to another - from walking-beheaded-well-hermit to talking-beheaded-ancestor-king-death-god. This is an interesting datapoint - it seems to me that when gods collide, it's often because they were already somehow adjacent. In any case, I think Mímir is the most apt parallel to Nechtan, because of his wisdom-well associations, his position upstream of Óðinn, and his beheading.

Taliesin's Map however favours identifying Apam Napat / Nechtan to Heimdall, in part due to the seal-battle of Loki and Heimdall over Brisangamen in the water - this is compared to Apam Napat rivalling Agni and A Demon for a shiny thing in the waters (2). A connection is also drawn by Apam Napat being seen as an ancestor-figure of human lineages, and Heimdall having a myth of siring many lineages also. Heimdall also has a horn that he blows at Ragnorok, which used to belong to Mímir, and was used to drink from the well.. actually, there's another watery-horn connection in the Greek parallel, but space constraints force me to omit that one here.

I don't see these models as conflicting, any more than I see Loki and Freyr being Peaceable-Twin duplicates (see Moling's Issue) as a conflict. The myths may have simply been broken out into two characters in this way. It looks like Heimdall has some other stuff going on besides his watery material. It also does look like Mímir might have some death-god mythos connected to him.

..Further East

So, I'm skipping the Mediterranean because of time and space constraints. Let's look to the East. Yes, obviously I've already mentioned Apam Napat, but let's look with fresh eyes and use the pattern I found for the Gallic and Celtic saints. Here, we'll find some uncanny parallels.

There are two who have parallels to this myth: Jamadagni, and Vasistha. The former is more striking, but let's not write off Vasistha yet either (3).

Something these two have in common is that both have possession of a divine, wish-fulfilling sacred white cow-goddess, Kamadhenu. They are also both married to a woman who can be lined up quite well against Boann, either on the basis of their wisdom, maternity, or association with waters. While Nechtan's wife Boann is both a cow-goddess and a Wisdom/Water goddess, these two sages have a Cow Goddess in addition to a Wisdom/Water goddess wife.

Jamadagni

Jamadagni has more immediate parallels to Nechtan. He and his wife establish their hermitage at a riverside, they have god-cow Kamadhenu, they give incredible feasts, they have a son who's an avatar of Vishnu, all their sons are killed by (the same) avatar of Vishnu, and his god-cow gets stolen, he gets killed and revived, pursues the thieves, and his head is cut off.

In this combination of traits, we can see elements from Saint Nectan, combined with elements from the god Nechtan. His son is a Divine Twin, but he's very much the warrior type, and rampages in revenge for his father. The fact that Jamadagni's sons are killed by his own Divine Twin son, while Nechtan has a Divine Twin (foster) son in Aengus yet loses his son to another Divine Twin (Cúchulainn) is.. pretty interesting.

If we weren't sure about Jamadagni's wife matching Boann - Renuka is an incarnation of Adi Parashakti, who's basically the female form of Purusha, the Cosmic Person. So, cosmic waters goddess. In some versions of her myth, she dies by throwing herself into a body of water that becomes named for her.

She bathes daily in the waters and has powers over river sand, but becomes aroused by a different divinity she sees making love to his wives in the river one day, causing murderous rage in her husband when he finds out. This seems like a more fidelity-preserving version of how Ealcmhar is enraged by his disenfranchisement from his wife or home. Renuka doesn't cheat on Jamadagni, but he still loses his temper.

Renuka's conception of a Warrior-Twin incarnation of Vishnu doesn't derive from sexual trickery exactly, but it does derive from a magical intervention in conception and gestation: Jamadagni's own conception included a sort of trickery-laden magic-rice switcheroo that lead to his own conception and his destiny to have Parashurama for a son.

We'll return to Renuka in Eithne/Boann's issue. Curiously, she becomes associated with genderqueerness and society's downtrodden: shame July is after Pride Month. Well, joke's on ye! Pride Month is a month late in Cork, so Eithne's issue can be a Pride issue! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (Sorry, I jest: I don't have that much material.. but I'll include Renuka, for sure)

Vasistha

Vasistha makes for a less obvious parallel at first, but the details are there.

He's a descendent of Brahma, but ends up re-born as a child of Mitra & Varuna: Varuna probably aligns with Irish Nuada. He crosses the Saraswati to get to his preferred site, marries an explicit Wisdom-goddess, they have Kamadhenu the Cow-Goddess, they provide epic feasts, a someone tries to steal Kamadhenu, and kills almost all of their sons.

There's no beheading, and he keeps his Cow-Goddess and wife - so overall, doing better than most Nechtans. But the bones of Nechtan's arc are there.

He and Arundhati don't have a clear Divine Twin son, however they do have a Divine Twin great-grandson in Vyasa. That wouldn't be very interesting by itself, because lots of Rishis are ultimately ancestors of Vishnu incarnations - but if you look at Vyasa's father Parashara, he looks a bit like a Nechtan/Nuada figure in his own right, as if Vasishtha's grandson were a "reprise".

Parashara and Satyavati conceive Vyasa in a scene upon a body of water, shrouded in mist, and the infant is born and matures to adulthood immediately to hide the dalliance. Vyasa is an avatar of Vishnu (so, Divine Twin), so this hidden-dalliance conception myth lines up surprisingly well with Aengus'.. except that the father appears to be as much a god of the waters as the mother. As a canny water goddess who makes the most of a sort-of rape to become a queen and advantage her kids, Satyavati looks a lot like Ness, who's very possibly equal to Boann.

Parashara becomes lame after an attack upon his ashram, reminding of Elcmhar's maiming by Cúchulainn and St.Giles' by hunters. He's later devoured by wolves, but as a result becomes associated with the essence of wolves.

So, Vasishtha doesn't carry the whole mythos himself, but some part seems to be expressed through his descendents. Compared to Jamadagni it's less stark, but it seems nevertheless still there.

Curiously, Vasishtha has a rival sage, Vishvamitra , but Vishvamitra is tied into the shifty conception-myth of Jamadagni and his Vishnu-incarnate son. It's as if Vishvamitra was set up to be a rival to Jamadagni by fated birth-switcheroo, but instead attached to Vasishtha.

Enough International Parallels: Who's Nechtan?

If we look at the pattern of this god, we find that he's often attached to his wife-and-or-cow in a way that's (justifiably) covetous, but that he can't seem to retain ownership or control of her (except Vasishtha, that guy's overpowered).

Given that this complex of Wife-or-Cow-God seems to associate with Wisdom, Cosmic Water, Rivers, Cows, and Motherhood, we're looking at an expression of the Cosmic Ultimate in female form. That's explicit in the case of Renuka, and it's highly suggestive in the case of Boann.

With Boann, she's also clearly complicit in the destruction of Nechtan's well, which suggests a desire on her part to release the "waters" and whatever metaphorical payload they carried outwards. Nechtan, meanwhile, wanted them contained.

What does this mean? Two interpretations suggest themselves. One is that this is a coded myth of the actual creation of the universe from an ultimate Monad - the fundamental disagreement about whether to keep the Monad intact, whether any distinction and division should occur, whether "creation" should take place. In this interpretation, Nechtan is expressing the Fionn/Fiachra destructive urge to reduce everything back to the Monad, to keep it intact, while Boann would be expressing the Creative Urge (here, "maternal"): break the well, let the river flow, paint the sky with stars and stories and call it "The Way of the White Cow".

Another way to interpret this, which on some level is kinda the same thing, is to see Nechtan as being a curator of cloistered wisdom: his well gives wisdom but punishes those not prepared or invited to it, and he doesn't seem to share it. It seems to parallel Mímir's well, one of the wells at the roots of the Cosmic Tree Ygdrassil - truly a cosmic source of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. Against this, Boann strides up contemptuously and detonates the well, unifying with its essence and releasing the waters, and the wisdom, into the resulting river.

When Fionn eats the Salmon of Knowledge and gains the wisdom it embodies, this wisdom came from the well of Nechtan, which is understood to also be the Well of Connla, where the nuts of wisdom fall into the cosmic waters of the well, are there eaten by salmon, who bring the wisdom in their bodies out into the world.

Fionn is a descendent of Nuada on his mother's side; possibly also his Father's in some interpretations. If Nechtan is Nuada, then Fionn is probably therefore a descendent of Boann, too. And he's "activated" at a scene at the river Boann (literally the goddess herself) where he receives the wisdom released by Boann against the wishes of Nechtan. Oh, and the Salmon was probably a form of Fintan, the earlier, more cosmic form of Fionn.

What does this make Nechtan? Well, for one thing it makes him look even more like Mímir, who taught Óðinn (Fionn's parallel) and whose head becomes a neat accessory of his. It also suggests that Nechtan felt that wisdom shouldn't be shared, but that his wife (the very embodiment of wisdom itself) disagreed spectacularly. While he and she are both wisdom gods, their angle on wisdom seems to vary: anyone can meditate for poetic inspiration at the Boann - it's not controlled or walled in, like a well. Nechtan would prefer an academy, a cloister, a closed library.

Subtle Connections to the Death God

Something I noticed in my research for this issue, is that Nechtan and Nuada and their international parallels have a lot of connection to the death-gods. This isn't a clear 1:1 correspondence, but it's interesting.

The symbol of the noose or net is found with Varuna but also sea-death-goddess Rann and Persephone - weaving or spinning or thread goddesses such as Calypso or Ariadne or the Queen of the Island in Máel Dúin's voyage also seem to be afterlife goddesses who "ensnare". The name "Nuada" or "Nodens" might mean "the catcher", suggesting something similar. Mímir seems to have the death of a death-god, as a talking head. The Norns aren't far from Mímir, while their parallels, the Greek Fates, are associated with death and the underworld. Greek king Aegius, father of Divine Twin Theseus, dies and "becomes" the Aegean sea, but also a judge of the dead. Yama, in his guise "Dharma", tests Jamadagni's anger-management. Poseidon is thought to have been understood as an underworld god by Mycenian Greeks: Hades may have come later.

This seeming connection could help explain something of the nature of Donn and Nuada that's bothered me for some time. We know that Donn was viewed as a common ancestor of mankind in Irish myth, which parallels Yama as the common ancestor who becomes the death god upon his own landmark mortality. But it also appears that Donn/Diarmuid might be the first King - something I look forward to exploring in a future issue.

Nuada is also viewed as a common ancestor in some accounts.. and Apam Napat and Heimdall are also progenitors of various lineages.

Compared as Kings, Donn/Yama is maybe the first mortal king. The patterns of mortal succession seem to echo the Godly ones, but in Irish myth it's Nuada who's the first king of the gods. Does this relate the two?

In Germanic myth, it's the parallel of Midir, Njorð, who's the father of Freyr. Midir, the Moon-Immortality god, aligns not only with Dionysus but also Hades, who seems to have taken Poseidon's job sometime between Mycenian and Classical Greece.. And in Irish myth, Aengus is born to An Dagda (who's AKA Donn), fosteree of Nechtan, but is raised as Midir's own.

There's a surprising amount of overlap between Nuada/Nechtan (and their international milieu) and the gods of death. I'm still developing my thoughts on this. Enjoy a soup of questions, for now.

Is Nechtan Nuada? I think it's unfair to write him entirely off as a pseudonym. They certainly share a footprint: antecedents to Fionn, husbands to Wisdom who have a stop-go relationship to sex and fertility, victims of limb-maiming who often get temporary recovery before death; there's a lot. But, while Nuada wears a crown, Nechtan listens to country music.

Wrap-Up

I'm not aware of Nechtan or Elcmar being in any current usage as names whether given or familial; more's the pity.

Nechtan/Elcmhar is of course best associated with Brú na Bóinne, and also the official source of the Boann river where his well supposedly once sat.

There's a curious connection to horses in some saintly forms and in some poetic references, which aligns curiously well with Poseidon's association with horses.

Through Fionn, we can imagine a connection to Hounds and Wolves, so it's interesting to note distantly related characters like Parashara being associated with Wolves also - there might be something there.

If Fiacail, foster-father to Fionn and father to Moling Luath, is indeed the same as Nechtan, then his name might have originally been a form of "Fiach[nr]a", meaning "Raven".

Footnotes

1. The Dagda and his alter-ego Fergus in several myths behave as if they are a horse, interestingly. Which is different from being a "Lord of Horses".
2. Taliesin's Map models Loki as a god-type termed the "Demon of the Dark Age", a model I disagree with. In this case, they're aligning Loki with the Demons from Apam-Napat's story - if these stories are indeed cognate, then I think it more likely that Loki's here paralleled by Agni.
3. Note this about Sages or Rishis in Hindu mythos: while "rishi" can mean a particular class of aescetic/monastic sage, the capital-R Rishis are essentially proto-gods.

Coming Up

• 21st June: Suibhne/Comhgan, Merlin, the Mad/Ecstatic Sage
• 6th July: Eithne, Goddess of Wisdom and Deep Waters, Mother of Heroes, Cosmic Dreamer.
• 24th July: Déclán: (One) Saintly form of An Dagda, the cosmic wind who reveals land from the ocean, kindler and supporter of Lugaid.