The Lughnasagh games The Lughnasagh (or Lughasad / Lúnasa / Lughnasadh…) games, inaugurated by Lugh in honour of his foster mother, may be of as old a lineage as the Olympic games. Twenty one years ago, I thought it might be a good idea to create our own modern version of the games on my own…
Category: Related Material
Explorations and developments of the themes of each episode
Notes on the Festival of Lughnasagh
The subject of Lughnasagh is worthy of a whole podcast episode on its own, as are any of the traditional Irish festivals. We may well examine these these in more detail sometime in the future. In essence, however, Lughnasagh is a festival that marks an important phase in the agrarian year. It is the close…
Lugh Who? Where did Lugh come from?
In the Irish stories, Lugh, sometimes Lug, is a central and popular figure. To summarise his story, as it is given in text and tale, he is a child born in secret to a Fomoire mother and a Dé Danann father. In text, his father and mother are contracted to each other to form an…
Carrowkeel
High above the western shore of Lough Arrow are the Bricklieve hills. From the plain of Moytura, these hills rise clear, and the grey limestone domes that top them are highly visible. These domes are a part of the megalithic complex of passage tombs known as Carrowkeel. The complex comprises of 14 cairns, with a further…
Bres – Kingship and Status
In the 21st century, we have quite different ideas of government, nationhood, sovereignty and royalty to our ancestors of 1000 and more years ago. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that an island as small as Ireland had as many as 150 túatha (usually translated as “tribes” or “petty kingdoms”) between the 5th and…
Midsummer Midnight Skies over Leitrim
In the podcast episode, we mentioned how bright the night skies can be, here in Leitrim, even at midnight. The sun does not go far down behind the horizon then, and even at midnight the sun glow is still visible. It is easy to imagine that there is some wonderful city casting its light into…
The Romano-British temple to Nodens at Lydney Park:
I have never visited Lydney Park in Gloucestershire so I cannot give a personal impression of the complex. However, the site is very relevant to any exploration of Nuada. There are definite etymological connections between the British Nodens, the Welsh Lludd (Nudd) and the Irish Nuada. Descriptions of the temple complex given below are largely…
The Fisher King
The Fisher King is a figure closely associated with the Arthurian cycle and, more directly, with the legends of the search for the Grail. A discussion on the development and varying source materials for the stories is beyond the scope of this article, but similar motifs and character types appear in each version, the main…
Series 2: The Battle of Moytura
Our second series of podcasts concerns the great mythical saga, Cath Maige Tuired, The Battle of Moytura. Now, you may legitimately ask “Which one?”, because the tradition does indeed have two battles at Moytura. The first battle was between the Túatha Dé Danann and the Fir Bolg at Magh Tuired Coinge, near Cong in Co….
Tales of Sheebeg
The 1931 excavation of the cairn on Sheebeg In our conversation on Sheebeg, we talked about the excavation that took place in January 1931. I thought that it might be interesting to include a few quotes from the newspapers of the time and the only sketch that was made, as far as I am aware,…