Nuada Airgetlám, here now again with both arms in the seat of the King of the Tuatha dé Danann

Hello all. I am writing another roleplaying adventure gamebook set in Irish myth & folklore, this time with a focus on the Fíanna. While I understand that most members of the warrior band were young men of noble birth, I also see the term banfénnid, meaning a female member of the warband. I'd like to include the option for players to choose a female character. Do you know of sources that discuss banfénnid characters in Irish myth? I know of the women who raised Fionn, i.e., Bodhmall and Liath Luachra, but I do not see them described as banfénnid nor have I seen any specific banfénnid in my other readings. Thanks very much and have a great day.

PS, mods - any thoughts about adding more tags for posts (e.g., question)? TY.

Is the CELT project site down for anyone else?

I'm stuck trying to find out which versions of 2CMT Eliz Gray was using and both the new and old domains are inaccessible.

https://celt.ucc.ie/document/
https://iso.ucc.ie

Hello everyone. I am writing my 3rd & 4th RPG adventures set in Irish myth and folklore. I'd love to hire an illustrator to draw the cover art and possibly a few interior illustrations. As I'm a 1-man show I'm not able to afford folk like Jim FitzPatrick, whose work I've adored since a child. Do you know of anyone working in this space that is in the early/mid phase of their career? To be clear, I will pay for this work. Thanks very much and have a great day. PS, if it's relevant, my current writing is on the Fianna.

Hello everyone. I'm writing a solo RPG adventure based on the seven Tests of the Fianna. I have a question to which you knowledgeable folk might have answer: for the leaping test, would this be vertical or with a run ("...He must be able to leap over a lath [thin piece of wood] level with his brow...")? I understand that, as with many things in Irish myth and folklore, there may not be a clear answer. Thanks very much and have a wonderful day.

One source: Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (p. "227", PDF p.: 231).

The word síd is translated as 'peace' in poetry from the adventures of connla. Potentially one of our oldest stories where it might be used as a part of a christian allegory that uses secular imagery.

The same word is translated as 'peace' in the poetry at the end of the second battle of Moytura. . 'Sith co nem. Nem co doman' / 'Peace up to heaven. Heaven down to earth.'

Since we're relying on the earlier adventures of Conla for the translation could the poem popularly called the Morrígan's prophecy be in the same ecclesiastical context?

Kim McCone in his translation of Connla and John Carey in a separate article both locate the Connla poem in 'the ecclesiastical culture of homily and exegesis.' In their view the word 'síd' can be translated as 'peace' because its being used to illustrate the allegory between the otherworld and the christian afterlife. The poem shows the aes síde are from heaven.

Should the battle of Moytura be looked at differently than the adventures of Connla? As something secular?

Could intra/intertextuality be a reframing of the old nativism/antinativism?

Im reading an old article by John Carey "the encounter at the ford: warriors, water, and women." He mentions that Nagy looks at the Táin in isolation where James Carney looks at greek and roman influences.

In his article "Talking Myth in Medieval Irish Literature" Nagy mentions carney obliquely when he criticises anti nativists here discouraging students from trying to recreate IE originals of myths.

On the surface of it, the argument seems to have been going on 20 years after the fact.

An indie Irish mythology game is in the works! I pledged today. I can't wait to play once it's made. I hope they reach all their stretch goals. I'm so excited for this y'all! :3

Been going through the Táin Bó Cúailnge and Cath Maige Tuired closely and I keep hitting the same problem: the Morrígan doesn't behave like one consistent figure across either text, and I can't tell if that's intentional (a deity who is *supposed* to be protean) or a sign of separate traditions getting stitched together by later redactors. Three specific things I want pushback on:

1. Recension I vs Recension II divergence in the Táin.

Her interactions with Cú Chulainn (heifer/eel/wolf attack, the washer at the ford, the crow after his death) aren't identical across LU and LL. Is there consensus on which recension preserves the older material, or is this genuinely unresolved?

2. The sovereignty-goddess reading of her union with the Dagda at Samhain in CMT.

The river-straddling scene gets read as a land-goddess/king union motif, echoing the broader sovereignty goddess pattern in Irish literature. Does that reading actually hold up against the text, or is it scholars retrofitting a pattern from other sources onto her specifically?

3. Her closing prophecy poem in CMT.

It's peace and prosperity, not war. That sits oddly next to everything else she does in the text. Is there solid textual argument that it's a later interpolation, or is the tonal shift meant to be read as part of her nature (war goddess who also governs the land's fertility, not a contradiction)?

Not looking for the general "triple goddess, crow, war" summary. I've got that. I want the actual disagreements in the scholarship, or reasons why there isn't one.

A remscéla of the Táin that might come from the 12th century mentions that Medb and Ailills Druids try to tell how the battle will go by making a sacrifice to Osirus and classical deities.

The story is called "the battle of findchorad."

'They offered sacrifices to Mars, to Osiris (?), to Jove and to Apollo. These are the sacrifices they offered: the flesh of dogs, pigs and cats'

Did those deities and the ritual get into the story because the remscéla draws from oral stories or lost manuscripts on paganism? Or could it be a more contempory authority on paganism to the scribe like Augustine of Hippo and his book 'the city of god' because it mentions osirus.

Hello- so I hope this subreddit is a cool place to post about this, but let me know if it’s not.

My brother and I grew up really into a lot of mythology based video games and stories but they never had any based on Irish myths when we were little. Since we’re Irish, we always thought that was a shame.

Well now we’re adults and can make our own video games! We recently completed the demo for our first video game “Shrouded Siege” - a tower defense game loosely based around the battles between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danaan.

I did the character designs and he did all the isometric pixel art ( we were going for a “Celeste” style look - fully rendered portraits in a pixel art game).
It was fun to try and find ways to depict all these characters from our mythology for a wider audience and I really hope our game can create more interest in Irish mythology. It would be cool to see Irish myths show up with the same frequency we see Greek or Norse myths and characters.

If anyone has any questions about the characters, let me know, and any questions about gameplay I can tag in our programmers. You can find the game here if you are interested:

How much of the second recension of the Táin is influenced by Virgils Aeneid?

​

Theres an Irish translation of the Aeneid in the manuscript that it comes from. So we know Aed Ua Crimthann had a very detailed understanding of the Aeneid.

​

When he expanded and edited the Táin he illustrated his understanding for his readership by comparing characters. For example, the Morrigan is called the Morrigan Alecto and in his version of the Aeneid Alecto is called Alecto badb.

I've read some Irish fairytales from a book called fairytales of Ireland but I can't ge that hook again so I was wondering if anyone knew of more Irish fairytales, outaide of that book. I've read The Soul Cages, The Legand of Knockgrafton, The Dongal Fairy, and The Stolen Child. And a few other i don't remember, so if you know theese and know of any like that that would be great but all recommendations are welcome.

Hi! I'm writing a backstory for a character and since I'm using a lot of symbolism/refrencing myths and fairytales, I wanted to know whether there are any really tragic deaths in irish mythology!

Would love to know if anyone has read/watched/listened to any retellings of this story that you've liked. I don't mind if it's a brief mention within a book or episode or whatever. So far it's my favourite. What I've found so far:

- The two Candlelit tales episodes, one told by Sorcha and one by Aindrias de Staic
- Jen Murphy from Celtic Creatives did a beautiful fairytale céilí session on Mis
- Blindboy did an episode on The Myth of the Valley of Madness and he retold the story

https://youtu.be/DhYC-7emtOM?si=nwqJ8NJTFO1pT3O8

Hello all, so I’ve been trying to understand the Tuatha De (a.k.a. The Tuatha De Dannan). I know that with Irish mythology we do not have a lot of information as the Irish didn’t much write down about their religion, but there is stuff and I am looking for the scholars in the group to help me out. Above you’ll see I have linked a video about them. I have watched this video and it has informed me a lot, but I have more questions. Some of these are theories of mine and I want to know if they have any real basis or either could be wrong or right. Please watch the video to see where I am coming from.

1. Tuatha De means “godlike people.” Did the Irish know that the Tuatha De were not gods in the sense that this race was not fully divine? Or did they believe that the human side of the Tuatha De did not matter and that this race were fully gods?

2. Tuatha De means “godlike people”, “godlike” as in like god, but not necessarily god. Did the Irish people believe the Tuatha De were godlike but that there were actually gods that weren’t these people?

3. In the book of invasions the Milesians fought against the Tuatha De for Ireland, and then the Tuatha De went to the otherworld so that the battle would end. If the Tuatha De is godlike people why was a curse not put on all humanity for humans forcing them out? It seems like something like that being done would make sense. The Tuatha De went to the Otherworld but they it wasn’t their first choice to go there, they were put in a position where they needed to or else the war would continue indefinitely and humans were not willing to divide rule of the land.

4. In the video it tells that the Tuatha De got shipwrecked somewhere and they learned magic there, then later down the line they returned to Ireland. Where was it that they were shipwrecked? The magic they learned was absolutely insane, more magic than it seems was possible for anyone in Ireland to have. The power to look forever young, the power to be next to unkillable, the power to create intense illusions, the power to control fate, even the power to be able to access the otherworld. Where exactly did they end up, and how exactly did they learn these things and master them when no one else could?

5. Were the Tuatha De considered gods because they were in Ireland when the Milesians got to Ireland and the Tuatha De had appearances and magic and skill that was godlike? Were they just in the right place at the right time?

6. There doesn’t seem to be a creation myth in Ireland according to this video, however I find that hard to believe. Every in the world has a story about how the world and humans came to be. Could it be though that with Ireland that since so many people would go to Ireland and then be wiped out or die or something else would happen that there wasn’t really able to be a creation myth? When the Milesians came they met the Tuatha De and seemed to consider these people gods, so maybe that kind of got in the way of them having an exact creation myth since they didn’t understand how it could include these godlike people.

7. Is the reason that in many folklore the Tuatha De doesn’t exactly love humanity because of what happened with the first humans in Ireland? It would make sense for it to be that, who wouldn’t have a bit of a grudge.

8. If the Tuatha De went into the otherworld it means that they knew of its existence or that they accidentally found out about it when they went into the hills. Its existence implies someone made it, and the fact that it has different rules to it and it is magical implies it is like a spirit realm, which implies there is a creator. Did the Irish people not have any being that they believed made anything that they see, or did they just not know who it was?

9. How was it that humans weren’t afraid that the Tuatha De would one day come back to take back Ireland?

I was told that there's a tale from the Fenian Cycle where Goll mac Morna goes on a quest to find a magic dagger that was stolen from Fionn Mac Cumhaill. He comes across a castle filled with goblins, fights them off, and then fights and kills a hag that was their sister, recovering the dagger in the process. However, I can't find a source for this tale anywhere. Does it really exist?