DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

Mythological Cycle

The Mythological Cycle tells of the beginnings of the Irish people and their culture. Many of the stories concern the Tuatha Dé Danaan, a god-like people believed to descend from the Irish mother-goddess, Danu (also spelled Dana). The Tuatha Dé Danaan constitute a pre-Celtic pantheon, which some scholars view as comparable to the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Mythological Cycle is the least well preserved of the four cycles. The cycle consists of numerous prose tales and poems found in medieval manuscripts, as well as pseudo-historical chronicles such as Lebor Gabála Érenn and the early parts of the Annals of the Four Masters and Seathrén Céitinn’s History of Ireland. The most important sources are the Metrical Dindshenchas or Lore of Places and the Lebor Gabála Érenn or Book of Invasions. Other manuscripts preserve such Mythological tales as The Dream of Aengus, The Wooing Of Étain and Cath Maige Tuireadh (The Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh). One of the best known of all Irish stories, Oidheadh Clainne Lir, or The Tragedy of the Children of Lir, is also part of this cycle.

Lebor Gabála Érenn tells of a series of invasions or “takings” of Ireland by a succession of peoples, one of whom was the people known as the Tuatha Dé Danaan, who were believed to have inhabited the island before the arrival of the Gaels, or Milesians. They faced opposition from their enemies, the Fomorians, led by Balor of the Evil Eye. Balor was eventually slain by Lugh Lámfada (Lugh of the Long Arm) at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh. With the arrival of the Gaels, the Tuatha Dé Danaan retired underground to become the Faery people of later myth and legend. The Tuatha Dé are said to have brought chariots and druidry to Ireland.

The Metrical Dindshenchas is the great onomastic work of early Ireland, giving the naming legends of significant places in a sequence of poems. It includes a lot of important information on Mythological Cycle figures and stories, including the Battle of Tailltiu, in which the Tuatha Dé Danaan were defeated by the Milesians. Some of the Dindshenchas can be found here.

It is important to note that by the middle ages the Tuatha Dé Danaan were not widely viewed so much as gods as the shape-shifting magician population of an earlier Golden Age Ireland. Texts such as Lebor Gabála Érenn and Cath Maige Tuireadh present them as kings and heroes of the distant past, complete with death-tales. However, there is considerable evidence, both in the texts and from the wider Celtic world, that they were once considered deities, gods and not-gods.

Even after they are displaced as the rulers of Ireland, characters such as Lugh, the Mórrí­gan, Aengus and Manannán appear in stories set centuries later, betraying their immortality. A poem in the Book of Leinster lists many of the Tuatha Dé, but ends “Although [the author] enumerates them, he does not worship them”. Goibniu, Creidhne and Luchta are referred to as Trí­ Dáe Dána (”three gods of craftsmanship”), and the Dagda’s name is interpreted in medieval texts as “the good god”. Nuada is cognate with the British god Nodens; Lugh is a reflex of the pan-Celtic deity Lugus; Tuireann may be related to the Gaulish Taranis; Ogma to Ogmios; the Badb to Catubodua.

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