Hi Finn, could you tell me about number symbolism in the Ulster cycle? I notice the number 9 coming up a lot, as well as 3 and 50 I think (not sure, but those numbers would make more sense anyway). I tried to google it and look at my uni's library but couldn't find it, so do you have an idea what the symbolism of the number 9 is? (sorry if this is a very stupid question! I know that i know nothing)
That’s absolutely not a stupid question, don’t worry!
Number symbolism isn’t something I’ve looked at in great depth, mostly because numbers make my brain hurt so I avoid them. I’m probably not the most expert person to ask as a result, but I’ll give it a stab. Bear in mind that most of this is... well, if it was on Wikipedia it would say “citation needed”, so while the underlying ideas are probably sound, don’t quote me on the details.
The number three definitely comes up a lot. It has varying layers of significance -- three people/items/events in a triad, three figures in the Trinity, triple births and triple deaths, arguably triple goddesses although that’s shaky ground these days... Threes are everywhere. We love a three.
Triads in particular are interesting in both narrative and legal texts. Frequently you’ll get text that will say something like, “And these were the three great kin-slayings that were committed, that is, the kin-slaying of [x], the kin-slaying of [y], and the kin-slaying of [z].” But often only [y] will survive in extant texts, so we only have the triad to go on that [x] and [z] ever did (this is also a thing in Welsh literature).
You get these in legal texts because they’re often illustrated by narrative examples -- they’ll give a law, and then they’ll give examples of texts in which it’s broken or upheld.
Triads also serve to underly narrative structure: you’ll often have three events that take place in succession. Once the first happens, it’s likely enough it’ll happen again, but you don’t know for sure until the second one happens. But once the second happens, you know there’s going to be a third, it’s how narrative works. It’s when that triad gets disrupted (i.e. the third thing doesn’t happen, or it does but then a fourth happens) that you get high drama.
See Merugud Uilix meic Leirtis and the three pieces of advice given by the Judge of Truth for a very solid triad of counsel-and-subsequent-testing-of-counsel; see Táin Bó Cúailnge for a variant where there are three combats with foster brothers that are then disrupted by the fourth combat, with Fer Diad (the ‘superlative fourth’).
Honestly, it’s hard to throw a rock in medieval Irish literature without hitting a triad. There are so many groups of three brothers (the sons of Uisliu, the three foster brothers in Immram Maele Dúin, the three foster brothers in Togail Bruidne Da Derga, and no doubt a million more than I don’t remember) that you begin to lose track after a while.
Nines are significant because... they’re three threes -- a triple triad! Much triad, very three, wow. I’m not sure they particularly carry other inherent significance other than this, but it’s logical enough that if a three is powerful, then three groups of three must be even more significant. It seems likely that that’s all there is to it in terms of the symbolism of a nine.
You also get groups of 3,000 (all the warriors in the Táin are grouped like that -- 3,000 men to each champion/hero/leader), which I think is again a case of, “Well, 3s are good, so how about we have a REALLY BIG THREE.” Though it may also be related to how many people were considered to belong in a kin-group/army, I’m not sure.
Fifties, I know less about from a ~symbolism~ point of view, though I don’t doubt there’s something to be said there, so I can’t help much with that. Another number that comes up is 7, especially in legal texts (such as in the one about bees) but also in narrative texts (see Cú Chulainn’s seven pupils, his seven fingers on each hand, and so on). Again, I know people will have written about this, but as it’s not something I’ve researched much myself, it’s difficult for me to pull up relevant articles to share.
I think it’s important to remember that the medieval Irish were pretty keen on maths. One of Cú Chulainn’s special skills is that he’s good at counting, effectively; he can reckon up the armies of Ireland even when they’ve dispersed one unit of 3,000 men among the rest and confused the count so that Láeg is struggling. The medieval period in general was full of people doing a lot of very complicated calculations (many of them to do with the date of Easter, but not all), and just reading about them makes my head hurt, so they certainly had a fair amount of number-sense going around. Making things unnecessarily mathematical is a very medieval thing to do.
This probably isn’t as much of an answer as you were hoping for, but I hope it helped a little! If anyone has anything to add about number symbolism, please do, because it’s definitely not my main area of expertise.
