from Cath Maige Tuired, edited by Elizabeth Gray This is our first encounter with Lug in our text. The main part concerns Lug’s listing of his crafts, with the door-keeper’s counter-listing of the craftspeople already in Tara. It is beautifully formulaic, and an opportunity for the storyteller to list many of the dramatis personae of…
Search Results for: Dagda
The Coming of Lugh
The Door-Keeper Speaks… Who is this young warrior who came late to the gate of Tara, after the feasting was begun? Who is this fine and shining youth who stood before me, Camall Mac Riagail, gate-keeper of the Túatha Dé? Oh, he was pleasant to look upon, his cloak threaded with gold. He was tall…
Bres in Other Texts
Bres Mac Elathan appears in a number of texts besides Cath Maige Tuired, and often in a more sympathetic light. He appears as one of the Túatha Dé Danann, as in Tocmairc Étaíne, “The Wooing of Étaín”, where the Dagda sends Elcmar of the Brug away on business to Bres in Mag nInis so that…
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…
The Story of Bres
It wasn’t his fault. How could one so noble, so beautiful, have been at fault? He was the golden youth, the beloved one chosen by his mother’s people. How could it all have gone so wrong? How had his golden dreams become so tarnished? He had grown up with his mother’s glowing stories. “When you…
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…
Four Cities, Four Teachers, Four Treasures
There is much curiosity surrounding the four cities and teachers named in the opening lines of Cath Maige Tuired. The names are archaic-sounding, with their -ias endings. The “cities” do not seem identifiable with any geographic location, ancient or modern. And aside from this brief appearance, the “teachers” are never heard from again. However, the…
Cath Maige Tuired – Sections 1 – 14
Edition: Elizabeth Gray Translation: Elizabeth Gray [Isolde Carmody] This text and its published translation are made available by kind permission of CELT, the Corpus of Electronic Texts, at University Colege Cork: http://www.ucc.ie/celt/ We will not always put the full text here on our blog, and we recommend that you read Gray’s edition, or better still,…
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….
Other Appearances of the Morrigan
As discussed in the podcast, there are several other notable appearances which the Mór Rígan makes through Irish Mythology. Below, I have produced a translation of the Dindshenchas poem, “Odras”. Before we get to her, here are links to some of her other roles: Esnada Tige Buichet, “The Melodies of the House of Buchet”. This…