The mythology of Ireland combines the mundane with the epic - one of the most famous legends is about a cattle raid - yet the tales of heroic feats and fierce battles have a grandeur to rival the sagas of the Greeks and Romans.
The myths of Ireland were fashioned nearly two thousand years ago, when formal storytelling, accompanied by lavish feasting and drinking, was the most widespread entertainment among the early Gaels. At the time, there was a distinct and very important class of professional learned men. Among their many duties was the passing on from generation to generation of history and religious knowledge by word of mouth. They were divided into groups of men with different roles. One of these groups were the filí, the poets and storytellers.
A file had a long apprenticeship, learning to narrate "the chief stories of Ireland's kings, lords and noblemen." A fully-trained 12th-Century poet, for instance, was expected to be able to recite at least 350 tales. Each poet had a patron - the file of the 6th-Century Irish king Mongan, was said to have entertained his master with a story every winter night from the first of November to the first of May.
The poets tended to group their tales according to theme, but when the stories were later classified by scholars they were put into four main groups: the Mythological Cycle, which deals mainly with the gods and goddesses of the Gaels; the Ulster Cycle, which relates the exploits of the warriors of the Ulaid, and their youthful hero Cuchulainn; the Cycles of the Kings, which comprises tales from the reigns of various ancient kings; and the Fenian Cycle, the many tales of the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill.
Irish monks working in the monasteries first wrote down their native myths in the 6th Century. One of the earliest complete books, the 12th-Century Lebor Gabála Érenn, describes the arrival of people in pre-Celtic and Celtic Ireland, in successive waves. These tales are dealt with primarily in the Mythological Cycle. In the first Cath Maighe Tuireadh, for instance, the invading Tuatha de Danann (the people of the goddess Danu), defeat the Fir Bolg, who had previously conquered Ireland. In the second Cath Maighe Tuireadh it's the Tuatha de Danann defending the land and defeating the invading Fomorians. Later, when the Milesians (the Gaels) arrive, the Tuatha de Danann are finally defeated and banished to the magical world of the burial mounds.
Scholars now believe that the Tuatha de Danann were the gods of the Gaels and that the Christian scribes demoted them, though they still allowed them to be a powerful race, skilled in druidic magic. However, some of these deities retained their importance, in the form of Christian saints - Naomh Bríd, for example, has been associated with the Gaelic goddess of poetry and learning.
The tales of this cycle tell of a time when people appeared to have little fear of death, for druidic teaching held that the soul did not die, but passed into another body. The Otherworld, known as Tír na nÓg (the Land of Youth), is described as a blissful place, where flowers are always in bloom and women always beautiful. It best known from the tale of Oisín and Niamh.
One of the first Irish sagas to be written down, the Tain bo Cuailnge (the Cattle Raid of Cooley), is contained in the Ulster Cycle. In it, Medb, Queen of Connacht, invades Ulster to steal the mighty brown bull of Cooley and, because the Ulster warriors are struck down by a strange illness, it is left to the hero Cuchulainn to defend the province alone. He eventually defeats the men of Connacht, but is mortally wounded. He dies, on his feet, strapped to a stone pillar.
The stories of the Fenian Cycle belong to a later period - some even describe Fionn's son Ossian entertaining St. Patrick in the 5th Century. Fionn was a giant and, like Cuchulainn, a warrior of renown. Whereas many of the Ulster Cycle stories revolve around court life, Fionn and his elite band of warriors, the Fianna, are constantly on the move, hunting, fighting and feasting throughout the provinces of Leinster and Munster.
One of the most popular tales of this cycle is the story of Diarmuid and Grainne - said to have inspired the French romantic tale of Tristan and Iseult. It tells how King Cormac's beautiful daughter, Grainne, given in marriage to the aging Fionn, puts a geis (spell) on the raven-haired Diarmuid to force him to elope with her. After many years on the run, Diarmuid is eventually killed in a fight with a great boar, on the slopes of Benbulbin in Sligo. As he slays the boar, it rips his stomach open, fulfilling a prophecy that he would die in this way. The lovers are remembered in the great number of dolmens scattered around Ireland, which are known as "the beds of Diarmuid and Grainne."
The decline of the Gaelic nobility under English rule meant that by the 17th Century there were no native patrons to employ the poets. It was left to others to revive these great myths - the 18th-Century Scottish poet James Macpherson wrote a series of poems about Fionn, and after him, others, including Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats, gathered Irish stories, and reproduced them in English.
The myths live on in the memory of the Irish people, and are fixed in the landscape as well. If you stop to chat with local people about a place, somebody just might start telling you how Queen Medb was buried in that mound and that Fionn slew a giant by this lake and that the River Shannon is named after Sionna, granddaughter of the sea god Lir...
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