Category Archives: Folklore & Mythology

The story of the fate of the children of Lir tells how the Milesians, so moved by the plight of the swans, introduced a law in Ireland that no swan was to be harmed. Continue reading →

King Cormac, the hero of the present narrative, was the son of Airt (Art). This piece is not a single narrative story; it is a collection of narratives based on an ancient account of various legal ordeals, and later expanded into a story of a visit to the faery world. Here we see illustrated the strong tendency toward moralizing and social criticism exhibited by Irish literature of the middle period. These stories, of course, are not told entirely for the purpose of expounding the legal or social ideas to which they refer; they merely capitalize upon an already established interest and follow the usual literary habit of furnishing a narrative to explain every well-known fact. Continue reading →

The central heroic tale of the group dealing with the Tuatha De Danaan and the so-called Mythological Cycle is “The Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh (Moytura).” The text, though not so early as most of the stories of the Ulster Cycle, still preserves much of the rugged strength and directness for which the older tales are admired. It also exhibits something of the rough exaggerated humor of the earlier texts. The diversity of material, the repetitions, and the contradictions all go to show that the story as we now have it is a compilation made up of a number of independent narratives. Continue reading →