The ocean is the home of Finmen and mermaids, selkies and sea monsters. That such marshy areas were filled with tiny worms, eels and wriggling creatures must have proved evidence that the serpentine and the decaying were linked – just as maggots appear to colonise rotting flesh and intestinal worms fill the excrement of most living creatures. Easy to say: They are ‘Heros’ who kill serpents…” The Greek word for Hero is ‘Heron’…. The Morrigan is another character from Irish mythology that frightened me as a child. The boar replaced the dragon among the NW celts of the same period. the Vikings, Normans etc. Understandably, the female Merrow tended to prefer the company of human men, rather than pairing off with their own kind…. In fact, it wasn’t just snakes which might be considered in the class of ‘serpents’ to the ancient mind: Eels, earthworms and any number of wriggling larval creatures and amphibians gave the Irish a ready supply. Use water for divination by scrying during the full moon. Aoife did not like Lir’s children and wanted to … Tethra: would be the oldest sea-god, which might explain why even a “modern” hero like Cuchullain calls the fish his “cattle”. They were linked to meres and marshes whose mass of rotting vegetation and sourness was a metaphor for death itself. This fairyworld connects him to Manannán, who also rules an otherworldly kingdom where everything is pleasant and time does not pass. It is generally accepted that these were later introductions by the migrating warlike Steppes cultures whose peoples and influences flowed into the eastern European parts of the late Roman Empire – Scyhtians, Alans and Huns being examples of such groups. “I am the child of earth and starry heaven.” – Petelia Tablet, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde. Fionn dispatches him, by way of an introduction to a bardic celebration of his history of péist-slaying antics, which in itself reads like a catalogue of Ireland’s loughs, bogs and rivers as it accounts for his slaying of dragons living in Loughs Neagh, Cuillean, Erne, Eiach, Lein, Righ, Sileann, Foyle, Eamhuir, Meilge, Sera, Mask, Laeghaire and Lurgan, as well as river serpents on the Shannon and the Bann, and in a number of glens. One day Aoife took the children to a lake. | We Are Star Stuff. The Orkney Islands are the home of a number of fascinating myths and legends about the magical power of the sea. He assists them against the last group of invaders, the human Milesians, who cause the Tuatha to retreat into the fairy barrows. He is one of the Tuatha de Danann, the Children of Dana. Nechtan: is a little more speculative, since he is known as the guardian of a sacred well, which his wife Boand secretly drank from. In the latter, for example, the sailing saint and his companions land on an island and set a fire to warm themselves. Spilling water from a bucket on the way back from a well or spring can bring misfortune - unless, of course, you return to the source and make an offering to appease the spirits of the place. Donn: is really a god of the dead, and an ancestral god. In time, these charming creatures would grow homesick for the sea, and the lucky ones, who still had their magic caps, would find a way to return…, Other female Merrow would sometimes lure desirable men with their sweet voices and their magical wiles, and then take them under the waves to live amongst their own fairy kind. A central aspect of Irish folklore is the wealth of traditional beliefs and superstitions which have been held by Irish people over the centuries. Since the sixth century, the Irish people have regarded this symbol with reverence. A tympanum from Cormac’s Chapel at the Rock of Cashel depicts a Centaur shooting a peist with arrows… Fionn and a dragon? In Hoodoo and other folk magic traditions, vervain is used to make Van-Van oil - this is simply a blend of vervain and a base oil, simmered and strained. Myths and legends have been a part of Irish culture and folklore since the very beginning. The hearth fire was a place associated with the spirits of ancestors, and therefore with what became known from the middle-ages as ‘elves’ or ‘fairies’. “… No country in Europe is so associated with the Serpent as Ireland, and none has so many myths and legends connected with the same… “ Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions – James Bonwick, 1894. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. The origin the English word ‘reptile’ is from the ancient Greek class-designator herpeta (sing. He is described by the 12th-century Book of Invasions as being one of the mystical Tuatha Dé Danann who were finally defeated by the Sons of Mil – Milesians. Lir, like his Welsh counterpart Llŷr, is a god of the sea, though in the case of the Gaelic myths his son Manannán mac Lir seems to take over his position and so features more prominently. Interestingly, the father of the that fishing vessel’s skipper also caught two giant squids off the Kerry coast back in 1995 – the last recorded sighting in Irish waters. Anciently (and up until fairly recently in many parts of Gaeldom), the domestic hearth was a pit in the ground, so it is no wonder that the hearth and the chthonic otherworld are linked!

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