Table Of ContentOF IRISH
MYTHOLOGY
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A Dictionary of Irish Mythology
Peter Berresford Ellis
A DICTIONARY OF
IRISH MYTHOLOGY
i Bata Library
ABC CLIO TRENT UNIVERSITY
Santa Barbara, California PETERBOROUGH, OMT
For EDWARD CARDIFF—last but not least
who completes the circle
First published in Great Britain 1987
by Constable and Company Fimited
10 Orange Street, Fondon WC2H 7EG
Published in the United States by ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Copyright © 1987 by Peter Berresford Ellis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of
brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis. Peter Berresford.
A dictionary of Irish mythology / Peter Berresford Ellis.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
1. Mythology, Celtic—Dictionaries. 2. Ireland—Religion—
Dictionaries. 3. Northern Ireland—Religion—Dictionaries.
I. Title.
BL980.I7E45 1989 299’. 16—dc 19 89-160
ISBN 0-87436-553-8
96 95 94 93 92 91 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
ABC-CLIO, Inc.
Santa Barbara, California
This books is Smyth-sewn and printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Introduction
T
he Irish language contains one of Europe’s oldest and most
vibrant mythologies. The language is the vehicle of Europe’s
third oldest literature being predated only by Greek and Latin.
It is a Celtic language, a branch of Goidelic Celtic closely related to
Manx and Scottish Gaelic and less closely to the Brythonic Celtic group
of Welsh, Cornish and Manx. The Celts were the first transalpine
people to emerge into recorded history. It was the Greek chroniclers
who first designated them as Keltoi. It has been suggested that the word
means ‘hidden people’ because of their reluctance to commit their vast
store of scholarship and knowledge to written records until the turn of
the Christian era. The etymology of the word may well be the same root
which gives us ceiit, an act of concealment, and also the word kilt, the
short male skirt of traditional Celtic dress.
At the start of the first millennium bc the Celts were possessed of
great skill in metal work, especially in the use of iron, a metal only then
becoming known to the craftsmen of the ‘Classical’ world. By the end of
the sixth century BC their formidable armaments, spears, swords, axes
and agricultural implements rendered them superior to their neigh¬
bours. Their axes and billhooks enabled them to open roadways
through the previously impenetrable forests of Europe and to make
extensive clearances. An ancient Irish word for road, avenue or path¬
way, which is still in use, is slighe from the word sligim - ‘I hew’. It was
the Celts, not the Romans, who were the original road-builders of the
ancient world, a fact slowly being accepted by scholars in the light of
new archaeological finds. To the discerning historian the evidence has
always been there, especially in the writings of Julius Caesar. In 1985 a
1000 yard long stretch of road was found preserved in a bog in Co.
Longford, demonstrating Celtic skill in road-building. It had a founda¬
tion of oak beams, placed side by side on thin rails of oak, ash and alder.
The road is dated to about 200bc. What is particularly fascinating is the
6 Introduction
fact that such a road is mentioned in the area in which it was found in the
story of‘The Marriage of Etain’, when Eochaidh Airemh the High King
imposed the task of building the road, across the bog, on the tribes of
Tethbae (a district comprising parts of Co. Westmeath and Co. Long¬
ford). The story tells how the task was accomplished with trees used as
foundations. The Latin language adopted many Celtic loan-words
which were connected with roads and transport, for example the names
of various vehicles: carpenlum (from which both car and carpenter
derive), carruca, currus and essendum.
By the ninth century BC the Celts had settled extensively in southern
France; they moved into the Iberian peninsula and by the sixth century
crossed the Alps into the Italian peninsula. They achieved their greatest
expansion from Ireland in the west to Asia Minor in the east in the third
century bc. It is generally thought that the first Celtic migrations to the
British Isles took place during this period but some modern scholarship
suggests that the first Celtic peoples may well have arrived as early as
2000BC and definitely not later than IOOObc. The last series of Celtic
migrations to Britain occurred in the second century bc when the Belgic
tribes crossed from the country which still bears their name (Belgium)
to southern Britain.
Although the Irish were firmly established in Ireland, distinct from
the rest of the Celtic peoples by this time, there was a great sense of
unity within the Celtic world. The Irish traded extensively with their
fellow Celts in Britain and Gaul and the Gauls were in regular contact
with all parts of the Celtic world - even with the Galatians in what is now
Turkey. This Celtic kingdom had been established in the third century
bc and its people were still clinging tenaciously to their language and
culture as late as the fifth century ad. So close were the contacts between
the Celts that the Senate of Marseilles asked the Gaulish druids to
persuade the Galatians not to aid Antiochus III of Syria in his war
against Rome in 197bc. In fact, it was the druidic religion and the
institution of the druids which was the corner-stone of the Celtic world,
linking the Celts of Ireland with their fellow Celts in Britain and on the
Continent in a common heritage.
It is natural, therefore, that Irish mythology should have its closest
parallels in the mythology of Wales, representing the Brythonic Celtic
culture. The old gods of Ireland are to be found in counterpart in the old
gods of Wales. Bile, for example, is Bel or Beli; Nuada occurs as Nudd
and sometimes Ludd; Lir is easily recognisable as Llyr; Manannan, his
son, is Manawyddan; Lugh Lamhfada is Llew Law Gyffes; while Dana,
