DeDanaan

Amárach : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “uh-MAW*-rahk*”
1. Tomorrow

Amaideach : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “AHM-i-dyuhk*”
1. Foolish; idiotic

Amadán : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “AHM-uh-daw*n”
1. Fool (man or boy)

Altruism : 1. A quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others; altruism is an ideal which was often lacking among the human race. Their main concern was mostly centered around personal financial profit regardless of the needs of others or the devastation wreaked on their environment; corporations are rarely altruistic, there is always an ulterior motive or hidden agenda.

2. A great ambition or ultimate goal of enlightened beings.

Alcohol : Fluid replacement is vital to the well-being of all organic life. However, some beings take fluid replacement to health-threatening extremes, with the enthusiastic imbibing of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters. A cocktail invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, its ingredients include Ol’ Janx Spirit, Santraginean sea water, Arcturan Mega-gin, Fallian marsh gas, Qualactin Hypermint extract, the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger, Zamphuor and an olive. It should be drunk with extreme care. Ol’ Janx Spirit is a particularly vicious alcoholic drink. This clip demonstrates its adverse affects. Wiping the neck of a bottle with a towel is more likely to kill any bacteria on the towel than on the bottle. It is an interesting fact that almost every culture invents a drink called a jynnan tonnyx, or something that sounds identical. Some beings reject alcohol, and instead drink tea. No one is quite sure why.

Álainn : (Gaeilge - Irish) pron. “AW*-lin”
1. Beautiful; lovely
2. Delightful

Ainm : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “AN-im”
1. Name
2. Reputation

an t-ainm pron. “un TAN-im” = the name

Áine : pron. “AHN-yeh”

1. Irish goddess of love and fertility. She was the daughter of Eogabail, foster-son of the sea-god Manannán Mac Lir, and a druid of the Tuatha dé Danaan. Áine has been identified with Anu, mother of the gods, and also with the Mórrí­ghán, goddess of battles, but these identifications seem suspect and unlikely. Áine was continually conspiring with mortals in passionate affairs. She was raped by Ailill Olom and slew him with her magic. A second legend, which obviously had its roots in the Ailill Olom tale, occurred in the 14th century, when it was said that Maurice, first Earl of Desmond (d. 1356) raped Áine who bore a son Gearoid Iarla (third Earl of Desmond, 1359-98) who is known for the courtly love poetry he wrote in Irish. The historical dating is obviously suspect. When Gearoid died it was said that he was but asleep and would rise again on an enchanted steed from the waters of Loch Guirr. Another version is that Gearoid lives beneath the waves of the loch and is seen riding around its banks on a white horse once every seven years. Yet another version has it that Áine turned him into a goose on the banks of the loch. It is an historical fact that Gearoid’s son John actually drowned in the River Suir in 1400. The poems of Gearoid Iarla are preserved in Irish manuscripts.

Near Loch Guirr is Áine’s dwelling place, Cnoc Áine (Knockainy, Áine’s Hill, in Co. Kerry). Even up to the last century Áine was worshiped on St. John’s Eve, Midsummer’s Eve, when local people carried torches of hay and straw tied to poles and lit up Cnoc Áine at night. They would then invoke Áine na gClair (Áine of the Wisps) to guard them against sickness and ensure fertility. They would disperse among their own cultivated fields and pastures waving the torches over their crops and cattle to bring luck and increase. According to D. Fitzgerald in ‘Popular Tales of Ireland’ (Revue Celtique, Vol. IV): ‘A number of girls had stayed late on the Hill watching the cliars (torches) and joining in the games. Suddenly Áine appeared among them, thanked them for the honour they had done her, but said she now wished them to go home, as they wanted the hill to themselves. She let them understand whom she meant by “they” for calling some of the girls she made them look through a ring, when behold, the hill appeared crowded with people before invisible.’ The cult of Áine has been a long time in dying.

Source : A Dictionary of Irish Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis, Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0192828711

2. In Ireland perhaps the symbolic beginning of ‘male dominance’ can be seen in the naming of great centers and festival sites. Each one of them is named after a goddess who has been raped and/or dies in childbirth. There appears a surprising number of stories which result in the defiling of the goddess by rape, beginning with the principal goddess of love and fertility, Áine, meaning ‘Radiance’ or ‘Splendor’. The name of this goddess became a popular name for girls in medieval Ireland. Significantly, Áine has been presented as an aspect of Anu, which again is simply a corruption of Danu. In stories about her, Áine is constantly falling in love with mortals, but this could be interpreted as the symbolism of procreation and fertility. However, in one story the goddess is raped by the king of Munster, Ailill Olom, or ‘Bare Ear’, because she cut off his ear and slew him in vengeance. Surprisingly, Áine’s cult survived to some extent down to the last century when, at Cnoc Áine (Knockainy, or Áine’s Hill in Co. Kerry) people gathered on St. John’s Eve (Midsummer Eve) and went to the hill to invoke the spirit of Áine na gClair (Áine of the Wisps) to guard them against sickness and ensure fertility.

The rape of the goddess occurs in the legends of the sites of Tailltinn, Tlachtga, Teamhair, Macha, Carmán and Culi. Mary Condren implies that the status of these goddesses was destroyed by the symbolism of rape in which the goddess gave birth to children.

Source : Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature by Peter Berresford Ellis, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1996. ISBN 0802838081

3. A love-goddess, daughter of the Danaan Owel; mother of Earl Gerald; still worshiped on Midsummer’s Eve; appears on St. John’s Night among girls on the Hill.

4. A goddess who seems to have functioned as a type of Sovereignty in south west Ireland. She gave her name to a Sí­dhe dwelling in Munster, Cnoc Áine. She is variously described as the wife or daughter of Manannán Mac Lir.

Later folk tradition tells of Gearoid Iarla (Earl Gerald of Desmond, 1338-98) who encountered Áine bathing in a river and raped her. The first earl of Desmond was called ‘Áine’s king’ and Gerald himself ‘the son of fair Áine’s knight’. Gerald was said to have disappeared in the form of a goose, after a lifetime building up his reputation as a magician. This legend shows how active the myth of Sovereignty was persisting right into the medieval era.

5. Áine Clí: ‘Radiant Brightness’. She is the goddess of the sun, presides over love and fertility, and is Sovereignty for the Eoganacht dynasty of Munster. She is remembered as a fairy queen in Munster. As the daughter of Manannán, she is said to return to her fathers house each night as the sun sets in the West. She is also called Áine i nErindain and Ériu Ain, showing the great overlap between her person and that of Ériu. The power of Sovereignty is associated with Áine, Ériu, Brighid, the Cailleach, Meadhbh Temrach (i.e. Tara, Teamhair), and of course Morrigan. Horse symbolism and chalice symbolism are usually related to Sovereignty, and Meadhbh’s name finds a cognate in the Hindu, Madhavi, a princess, who was sequentially, the consort of several kings.

6. Áine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has her seat at Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former cult are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If they were neglected she and her troops performed them, according to local legend. She is thus an old goddess of fertility, whose cult, even at a festival in which gods were latterly more prominent, is still remembered. She is also associated with the waters as a water nymph captured for a time as a fairy-bride by the Earl of Desmond. But older legends connect her with the Sídhe. She was daughter of Eogabail, king of the Sídhe of Knockainy, the grass on which was annually destroyed at Samhain by his people, because it had been taken from them, its rightful owners. Ailill Olom and Ferchus resolved to watch the Sídhe on Samhain-eve. They saw Eogabail and Áine emerge from it. Ferchus killed Eogabail, and Ailill tried to outrage Áine, who bit the flesh from his ear. Hence his name of “Bare Ear.” In this legend we see how earlier gods of fertility come to be regarded as hostile to growth. Another story tells of the love of Aillén, Eogabail’s son, for Manannán’s wife (Fand) and that of Áine for Manannán. Áine offered her favours to the god if he would give his wife to her brother, and “the complicated bit of romance,” as S. Patrick calls it, was thus arranged.

Source: The Religion of the Ancient Celts by J.A. MacCulloch (1911), Project Gutenberg eBook.

7. It was on the bank of the little river Camóg, which flows near Lough Gur, that the Earl of Desmond one day saw Áine as she sat there combing her hair. Overcome with love for the fairy-goddess, he gained control over her through seizing her cloak, and made her his wife. From this union was born the enchanted son Geróid Iarla, even as Galahad was born to Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake. When Geróid had grown into young manhood, in order to surpass a woman he leaped right into a bottle and right out again, and this happened in the midst of a banquet in his father’s castle. His father, the earl, had been put under taboo by Áine never to show surprise at anything her magician son might do, but now the taboo was forgotten, and hence broken, amid so unusual a performance; and immediately Geróid left the feasting and went to the lake. As soon as its water touched him he assumed the form of a goose, and he went swimming over the surface of the Lough, and disappeared on Garrod Island.

According to one legend, Áine, like the Breton Morgan, may sometimes be seen combing her hair, only half her body appearing above the lake. And in times of calmness and clear water, according to another legend, one may behold beneath Áine’s lake the lost enchanted castle of her son Geróid, close to Garrod Island–so named from Geróid or ‘Gerald’.

Geróid lives there in the under-lake world to this day, awaiting the time of his normal return to the world of men (see our chapter on re-birth, p. 386). But once in every seven years, on clear moonlight nights, he emerges temporarily, when the Lough Gur peasantry see him as a phantom mounted on a phantom white horse, leading a phantom or fairy cavalcade across the lake and land. A well-attested case of such an apparitional appearance of the earl has been recorded by Miss Anne Baily, the percipient having been Teigue O’Neill, an old blacksmith whom she knew (see All the Year Round, New Series, iii. 495-6, London, 1870). And Moll p. 80 Riall, a young woman also known to Miss Baily, saw the phantom earl by himself, under very weird circumstances, by day, as she stood at the margin of the lake washing clothes (ib., p. 496).

Some say that Áine’s true dwelling-place is in her hill; upon which on every St. John’s Night the peasantry used to gather from all the immediate neighbourhood to view the moon (for Áine seems to have been a moon goddess, like Diana), and then with torches (clíars) made of bunches of straw and hay tied on poles used to march in procession from the hill and afterwards run through cultivated fields and amongst the cattle. The underlying purpose of this latter ceremony probably was–as is the case in the Isle of Man and in Brittany (see pp. 124 n., 273), where corresponding fire-ceremonies surviving from an ancient agricultural cult are still celebrated–to exorcise the land from all evil spirits and witches in order that there may be good harvests and rich increase of flocks. Sometimes on such occasions the goddess herself has been seen leading the sacred procession (cf. the Bacchus cult among the ancient Greeks, who believed that the god himself led his worshippers in their sacred torch-light procession at night, he being like Áine in this respect, more or less connected with fertility in nature). One night some girls staying on the hill late were made to look through a magic ring by Áine, and lo the hill was crowded with the folk of the fairy goddess who before had been invisible. The peasants always said that Áine is ‘the best-hearted woman that ever lived’ (cf. David Fitzgerald, Popular Tales of Ireland, in Rev. Celt., iv. 185–92).

In Silva Gadelica (ii. 347-8), Áine is a daughter of Eogabail, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and her abode is within the Sídhe, named on her account ‘Áine cliach, now Cnoc Áine, or Knockany’. In another passage we read that Manannán took Áine as his wife (ib., ii. 197). Also see in Silva Gadelica (ii, pp. 225, 576).

‘In some local tales the Bean-tighe, or Bean a’tighe is termed Beansídhe (Banshee), and Bean Chaointe, or “wailing woman “, and is identified with Áine. In an elegy by Ferriter on one of the Fitzgeralds, we read:–

Áine from her closely bid nest did awake,
The woman of wailing from Gur’s voicy lake,

‘Thomas O’Connellan, the great minstrel bard, some of whose compositions are given by Hardiman, died at Lough Gur Castle about 1700, and was buried at New Church beside the lake. It is locally believed that Áine stood on a rock of Knock Moon and “keened” (caoined) O’Connellan whilst the funeral procession was passing from the castle to the place of burial.’ — J. F. LYNCH.

Source: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz.

Aimsir : (Gaeilge-Irish) pron. “EYEM-sheer”
1. Season
2. Weather
3. Time of year
4. Period of service