These stories have been told for 2,000 years. At their heart stands the great Ulster hero, Cúchulainn and on his shoulder sits a dark goddess in the form of a crow. She is the mistress of chaos, surveying the slaughter as he whirls in fury through an ancient yet still familiar world. Their dynamic force has helped shape the history of Ireland – its tribes, its warrior queens, its dispossessed kings. Harnessing the imagination of a modern storyteller, using often overlooked material, this work is an exhilarating retelling of an epic journey – following our champion from a disputed birth through to the battle of the bulls and beyond.
Though men dominated early Irish society, women dominated the supernatural. Goddesses of war, fertility, and sovereignty ordered human destiny. Christian monks, in recording the old stories, turned these pagan deities into saints, like St Brigit, or into mortal queens like Medb of Connacht. The Morrigan, the Great Queen, war goddess, remains a figure of awe, but her pagan functions are glossed over. She perches, crow of battle, on the dying warrior CuChulainn's pillar stone, but her role as his tutelary deity, and as planner and fomentor of the whole tremendous Tain, the war between Ulster and Connacht, is obscured. Unlike the Anglo-Irish authors who in modern times treated the same material in English, the good Irish monks were not shocked by her sexual aggressiveness. They show her coupling with the Dagda, the 'good god' of the Tuatha De Danann before the second battle of Mag Tuired, but they conceal that this act - by a goddess of war, fertility and sovereignty - gives the Dagda's people victory and the possession of Ireland. Or they reduce the sovereignty to allegory - when Niall of the Nine Hostages sleeps with the Hag she is allegorical of the trials of kingship! With the English invasion and colonization, the power of the goddesses diminishes further. The book shows the fall in status of the pagan goddesses, first under medieval Christianity and then under Anglo-Irish culture. That this fall shows a loss in the recognition of the roles of women seems evident from the texts. This human loss only begins to be restored when, presiding over the severed heads in Yeats's The Death of Cuchulain, the Morrigu declares, 'I arranged the Dance.'
Heroes, Gods and Monsters of Celtic Mythology' is a collection of classic myths from all over the Celtic world: from Scotland to Ireland to the Isle of Man to Wales and all the way to Brittany. These stories tell of the pride of warriors, the magic of gods and wars between clans. They tell of savage beasts and deadly chariots, of love lost and found, and of friendship and loyalty. An historical introduction explains who the Celts were, describing their beliefs and customs, and a 'Finding out more' section provides you with the tools you need to discover even more about this increidble civilisation and their beliefs.
Did King Arthur really exist? The oldest manuscripts refer to him as a "Lord of Battle" who emerged soon after the Roman Empire crumbled. But what would be the origin of all these stories that turned a war leader into a king, an emperor, a legend... even a god? What if Arthur was really a deity similar to Zeus and Odin, with his roots in the rich Celtic mythology of the British Isles? A study of Arthurian myths reveals Britain's most legendary king as an ancient Sun God, known by many different names in the myths of Wales and Ireland. Even his Knights of the Round Table, and his sister Morgan le Fay can all be identified as ancient Gods and Goddesses of earth, sea and sky. Their survival in Arthurian legend stands as a shining testament of a story far more ancient, but by no means lost to us...
From the award-winning author of The Silver Road comes a new tale of contemporary Ireland and ancient myth . . . When Ben and his family have to leave Dublin and move into the remote house where his mother grew up, he's not optimistic about what lies ahead. For him and his brother Fin, it'll mean fitting in to life with his aunts and a cousin he doesn't even know. But what Ben doesn't expect is that he will be drawn into the mysteries of the wild mystical landscape. He can sense its power, and he can see a light shining from the mountain on the horizon. Even stranger, crows are gathering, watching him and haunting his dreams. As Ben uncovers the stories of Ireland's mythical heroes and warriors that obsessed his grandfather right up until he died, Ben begins to wonder if there is more to the tales than pure fantasy. It seems like trouble is stirring - and will he have the power to face it? A powerful new book for children aged 9 and up, drawing on Celtic folklore. Perfect for fans of Catherine Doyle and Ross Montgomery.
The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology. Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources,Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology.
'I am Morgan the Fay. The wicked witch, the embodiment of evil. And yet. I am the queen who takes Arthur in my arms for healing. Some editing of the story will clearly be necessary.' Morgan stands by Dozmary Pool after the Battle of Camlann, pleading with the dying Arthur to trust her. Only she can heal him. Is her price too high? As she retraces the bitterness and misunderstanding between them, she throws new light on the tales which the first four narrators have told. But that's not all. There have been countless other versions of her story, from prehistoric myths to contemporary novels. With scornful irony Morgan show us how their authors have changed her from a wise and healing ruler to a malignant sorceress and derided temptress. Can Arthur see the truth in time?
