DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

Aisling : The word means dream or vision and is, in modern Irish, a woman’s name, but in the many Irish tales bearing this title, the dreamer experiences a vision of a Speir-Bhean or vision-woman whose beauty leads him into closer communion with the Otherworld. A great many poets of the eighteenth century wrote Aisling poems, in which a fair woman is found wandering in poverty and distress. She represents the land of Ireland itself, oppressed under the English yoke.