Feis, (plural feisi, fesa) (spending the night, a feast), traditionally translated "feast" as in feis Temro (the feast of Tara), is etymologically the verbal noun of the Old Irish verb fo-aid (to spend the night, to sleep), hence the formula feis la mnaf means "to sleep with a woman" or "to marry a woman." Feis is also a component of the term banais (wedding, marriage feast), which is sometimes used in its place.
A feis was originally a ritual celebrating the sovereignty of a king, held once in his reign, although not necessarily at the beginning. This ceremony was conceived of as a sacral marriage of the king to the goddess of the territory. Mac Cana believes that the goddess represented the land and people as well as the judicial and spiritual realm of the territory. Through his marriage with the goddess the king became (or was confirmed as) the temporal ruler of her territory. If the king were a just ruler the land would flourish, be fertile, and the people prosper. This concept is embodied in the ideas of fir flaithemon (truth of a ruler). Such a territory could be as small as the single tuath or as large as the kingship of Tara.
Historical accounts of feisi are not very numerous. The most famous feis, the feis Temro, occurs only three times in the Annals, the last in 560 during the reign of Diarmait mac Cerbaill. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries the term feis re-emerges in the historical documents, this time in much greater detail. The most famous account is of the inauguration of the Cenel Conaill king, as related by Giraldus Cambrensis (iii ยง25). He alleges that the people gathered together at the inauguration site where the successor to the kingship sexually embraced a white mare, which was then slaughtered and cooked into a broth. The king was then bathed in this broth and he and the people both drank of it. Unsurprisingly, this account has been regarded as propaganda, painting the Irish as a pagan, barbaric people. His description, however, has not been entirely regarded as fabrication. Ritual horse sacrifice as part of inauguration rites of a king was a noted feature of Indo-European societies. Likewise, Byrne has suggested that in the eighth century there seems to have been a confused tradition linking the broth bath with the inauguration ceremony. Additionally, the public inauguration site mentioned by Giraldus was an important feature of every tuath. Another account in the Annals of Connacht describes the inauguration of Fedlimid Ua Conchobhair in 1310 as having been a public ceremony at which he married the province of Connacht and his kingship was proclaimed.
Although rare in the early historical sources, there are continuous references to feisi in the literature throughout the early and medieval Irish periods. It is from the idealized tradition of Irish literature that the feis ritual has been understood, particularly the role of the sovereignty goddess figures such as Medb, Eithne, and Eriu. Given that the feis had a pagan origin and involved the marriage of a pagan goddess with the king, it is surprising that it survived into the early Christian period. Its survival has been credited to the conservative nature of Irish society, in particular its learned classes, although this is disputed. Although it seems that feis Temro was no longer held after the reign of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, other feisi seem to have persisted at the local level. There does not appear to have been a standard ceremony, but rather its form and content seem to have varied from region to region. There were a number of basic characteristics in the inauguration: the granting of the rod of sovereignty, the holding of a race, a procession symbolizing the regions under the king’s rule, the singing of praise poetry, and the drinking of some sort of liquor.
By the later Middle Ages the symbolic marriage had disappeared from the inauguration ceremony. In the early Irish concept of kingship, the king was married to the tuath and became its representative and chief defender but never the owner of the territory. In the later Middle Ages the concept of kingship had changed. Where previously the king had been the representative of the tuath, he was now a lord and at his inauguration the land passed into his possession with the people acting more as tenants. Under this sort of altered governance, the purpose behind the marriage ritual was lost from the ceremony.
