I have slowly come to the realization that I know way too little about Irish mythology. I can talk for hours about mythology from Greece, Japan, Scandinavia, America, India, various regions of the Middle East and what feels like a dozen other places, but I feel completely clueless about the pre-Christian mythology of the Emerald Island. I know that this is partly due to much of the stories from that time having been lost, but I also know that a great deal remains, and whenever I pick up references to it, it sounds damned interesting.
So, where do I start studying up on pre-Christian Irish mythology? Any good introductory texts?
I’m butting in to say - don’t overlook pre-Christian Welsh mythology - specifically, the Mabinogion and its various retellings by modern authors. Some powerful , powerful, stories in that mythology.
Can’t help you with boe never read any any books etc. about Irish mythology just heard the stories in school and the rest but Cu Chulainn and the Fianna wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
Setanta/Cú Chulainn
Fionn Mac Cumhaill (or Finn McCool)
The Fianna
Meadhbh, Ailill and the Bulls of Ireland
Deirdre of the sorrows
The Children of Lír
The Tuatha Dé Danann
That kind of thing.
Most of the stories are interconnected, with Cú Chulainn popping up a lot. The story of the Bulls is about as close as Ireland gets to a saga, it’s quite a good one-if you can get a translation from Irish it would be best as you get a real sense of it.
A lot of the myths date from pre-christian times but were probably cleaned up a bit after Ireland became Christian. I’m thinking about Oisín’s return from Tír na nÓg and the christian ending of the Children of Lír, but there are loads of other examples.
There are loads of websites and books outhere, hopefuly you can search using some key words and find something to suit yourself.
Hey cool. I just looked it up and found out the Mabinogion is taken in part from the “White Book of Rhydderch’” “Rhyddderch’” is an old version of my surname! (Rhodes.)
Although our family did recently conclude that “Rhodes” probably isn’t our “real” last name–that it was adopted by one of our ancestors because he was AWOL from the confederate army and trying to escape detection.
But we don’t know this for sure.
So hey, maybe I really amdecended from some Welsh dude who collected myths and stuff.
I just did a test on all of this for my Celtic Studies class
Thomas Kinsella has a great version of the Táin out, and the Mabinogion is definitely worth reading–if you want to get a bit more advanced, try the Cad Goddeu poetry, or the Book of Aneirin or the Book of Taliesin.
The Táin deals with the Ulster cycle, but the Fenian cycle (the Acallamh na Senórach in the Book of Lismore) and the Tuatha Dé Danann stories are also great stuff.
I recognized all the names (Anglicized, though) that **irishgirl ** tossed out, but I’ve been a Yeatsian fangirl ever since high school. I gotta pick up the additional reading material that folks have pointed out, though, from the Mabinogion on.
If you want to see other facets of Celtic figures, a lot of modern authors have mixed dabs of Celtic mythology into their stories, such as Susan Cooper’s ‘The Dark is Rising’ series. Celtic figures are also a pretty common element in urban fantasy, come to think of it. Hey, that’d make a great paper – the relationship between the magic elements that get picked and the urban fantasy ethos in which they star. (On occasion I get the urge to go back to school and get a masters in literature or somesuch)
Oh, and you’ll want to look at Yeats’s Celtic Twilight (?) period, which focuses on many of said figures. One of my favorite poems of his from that period is ‘The Hosting of the Sidhe’. This website seems to have a good selection of his poems here sans commentary/background, which quite frankly play a good part in really understanding what the poem is about, although the poem can and does stand by itself. (Legolas who? :D)
This website lists several of Yeats’s more well known poems, along with a bit of the background of said poem, plus commentary. I recommend them (discloser: and one of the maintainers is a friend of mine, although I don’t have any other affiliation with them ).
I would recommend something by “Lady Gregory” as she will almost certainly be billed (real name: Isabella Augusta). She was crucial the Irish Nationalist movement at the begining of the last century and , with the help of likes of Yeats, she was instrumental in founding the Abbey theater.
Lady Gregory actually talked to people, in a cultural anthropological vein, collecting tales from the area around her home, especially from the residents of Gort workhouse.
This activity led to the publication of a number of volumes of folk material, including
A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906),
The Kiltartan History Book (1909),
The Kiltartan Wonder Book (1910).
Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902)
Gods and Fighting Men (1904).
wiki says In his introduction to the former (Gods and Fighting Men), Yeats wrote “I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time.” James Joyce was to parody this claim in the Scyla and Charybdis chapter of his novel Ulysses. Flann O’Brien would also parody the book in his At Swim-Two-Birds with his overly literal versions of the myths of the Fenian cycle.
Paperback, cheap, decent selection. I’ll second the Mabinogion and the Tain. Penguin also put out a book called something like “A Celtic Miscellany.” Oh, sheesh, it’s linked to on the above page–
