User:LimeGreenGiraffe/Irish mythology

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Irish mythology is the mythology of the island of Ireland that has been preserved in the oral tradition and later in the manuscripts of early Celtic Christianity. These tales and themes have continued to be developed over time in the living folklore of the country, but the main themes and characters have remained broadly consistent.

With the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, the first manuscripts preserved many of these tales in medieval Irish literature. Though the Christian influence is also seen in these manuscripts, this literature represents the most extensive and best-preserved of all the branches of Celtic mythology. Although many of the manuscripts have not survived and much more material was probably never committed to writing, enough is remaining to enable the identification of distinct, if overlapping, cycles: The Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Historical Cycle. There are also a number of extant mythological texts that do not fit into any of the cycles, and many recorded folk tales that continued as the oral tradition ran parallel to the manuscript tradition, which, while not strictly mythological, feature personages from one or more of these four cycles.

Today some of the best-known tales are of Tír na nÓg, Fionn MacCumhaill, Na Fianna, The Aos Sí / Aes Sídhe, Sétanta (CúChulainn), The Tuatha Dé Danann (Gods), the Children of Lir, Táin Bó Cúailnge & the Salmon of Knowledge.

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Depending on the sources, the importance of gods and goddesses in Irish mythology varies. The geographical tales, Dindshenchas, emphasize the importance of female divinities and powerful ancestors. At the same time, the historical tradition focuses on the colonizers, inventors, or male warriors, with the female characters only intervening in episodes.

The primal and ancestral goddesses are connected to the land, the waters, and sovereignty and are often seen as the oldest ancestors of the people in the region or nation. They are maternal figures caring for the earth itself as well as their descendants, but also fierce defenders, teachers, and warriors. More personalized deities may be connected to cultural qualities such as, in the case of Brigid, poetry, smithcraft, and healing. Some of the female figures associated with the druids are prophetic, especially when foretelling death and doom. Zoomorphism is an important feature for many Irish deities. Badb Catha, for instance, is "the Raven of Battle," and in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Morrígan changes into an eel, a wolf, and a cow.

Goddesses[edit]
The Celtic goddesses are not divided by singular qualities such as "love goddess" but are more of the nature of well-rounded humans, who have areas of special interests or skills. In this way, they do not correspond directly to other pantheons, such as those of the Greeks or Romans.

The mother of the Tuatha Dé Danann is generally considered to be Anu or Danu.

A number of the goddesses are associated with sacred sites where seasonal festivals are held. They include Macha of Eamhain Mhacha, Carman, and Tailtiu, among others.

Warrior Goddesses are often depicted as a triad and connected with sovereignty and sacred animals. The animals may be associated with carnage, such as wolves and crows, or the abundance of the land, such as cattle. They guard the battlefield and those who do battle, and according to the stories in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, some of these goddesses may be the instigators and directors of the entire war themselves. The main goddesses of battle are The Morrígan, Macha, and Badb. Other warrior women are seen in the role of training warriors in the Fianna bands, such as Liath Luachra, one of the women who trained the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill.[page needed]

Gods[edit]
The Irish Gods are divided into four main groups. Group one encompasses the older gods of Gaul and Britain. The second group is the main focus of much of the mythology and surrounds the native Irish gods with their homes in burial mounds (The Great Barrows of the Dead). The third group is the gods that dwell in the sea, and the fourth group includes stories of the Otherworld. The gods that appear most often are Dagda and Lug. Some scholars have argued that the stories of these gods align with the Greek stories and gods.

Druids[edit]
An order of priests and philosophers highly revered in Celtic society. The root deru- implies solidarity, firmness as a tree is steadfast. The Indo-European root wid- means “to know.” Druids could be male or female and were often compared to Roman flamines and Indian brahmins. Druids in Gaul had authority over divine worship and could also officiate sacrifices, exercised authority over legislation and judicial matters, as well as educated elite youth about their order.

Heroes[edit]
Heroes in Irish mythology can be found in two distinct groups. There is the lawful hero who exists within the boundaries of the community, protecting their people from outsiders. Within the kin-group or túath, heroes are human, and gods are not.

The Fianna warrior bands are seen as outsiders, connected with the wilderness, youth, and liminal states. They are considered outsiders who protect the community from other outsiders; However, they may winter with a settled community; they spend the summers living wild, training adolescents, and providing a space for war-damaged veterans. They live under the authority of their own leaders, or maybe somewhat anarchic, and may follow other deities or spirits than the settled communities.

Historical cycle
It was part of the duty of the medieval Irish bards, or court poets, to record the history of the family and the genealogy of the king they served. This they did in poems that blended the mythological and the historical to a greater or lesser degree. The resulting stories from what has come to be known as the Historical Cycle or Cycles of the Kings, or more correctly Cycles, as there are a number of independent groupings. This term is a more recent addition to the cycles, with it being coined in 1946 by Irish literary critic Myles Dillon.

The kings that are included range from the almost entirely mythological Labraid Loingsech, who allegedly became High King of Ireland around 431 bc, to the entirely historical Brian Boru. However, the greatest glory of the Historical Cycle is the Buile Shuibhne (The Frenzy of Sweeney), a 12th-century tale told in verse and prose. Suibhne, king of Dál nAraidi, was cursed by St. Ronan and became a kind of half-man, half-bird, condemned to live out his life in the woods, fleeing from his human companions. The story has captured the imaginations of contemporary Irish poets and has been translated by Trevor Joyce and Seamus Heaney.

Folk tales[edit]
Main article: Irish folklore

Although there are no written sources of Irish mythology, many stories are passed down orally through traditional storytelling. Some of these stories have been lost, but some Celtic regions continue to tell folktales to the modern-day. Folktales and stories were primarily persevered in monastic scribes from the bards of nobility. Once the noble houses started to decline, this tradition was put to an abrupt end. The bards passed the stories to their families, and the families would take on the oral tradition of storytelling.

During the first few years of the 20th century, Herminie T. Kavanagh wrote down many Irish folk tales, which she published in magazines and in two books. Twenty-six years after her death, the tales from her two books, Darby O'Gill and the Good People and Ashes of Old Wishes, were made into the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Noted Irish playwright Lady Gregory also collected folk stories to preserve Irish history. The Irish Folklore Commission gathered folk tales from the general Irish populace from 1935 onward.