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Free from the Archives

In the our April 6, 2017, issue, Fintan O’Toole reviewed Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth, by the Oxford medieval historian Mark Williams. “Pre-Christian Irish culture was almost entirely oral,” wrote O’Toole, and thus Accalam na Senórach, a thirteenth-century compendium of “many of the older stories of an imagined pre-Christian Ireland,” is “self-consciously literary.” The Accalam uses an “ingenious narrative device”: the old gods “are allowed to tell their tales to an unimpeachable audience: Saint Patrick himself…. The angels pass on to Patrick God’s instruction to ‘have these stories written down on poets’ tablets in refined language.’ God himself, it seems, wants the Irish deities to be transformed into literature.”

Fintan O’Toole
A World More Glowing Than We Will Ever Know

“Many of these old gods probably had deep roots in pre-Christian Ireland: among them are the father figure called the Dagda; Brigit, who is the exemplar of poetry, medicine, and metalwork; the aforementioned Lug; the Morrígan, a goddess of battle who appears as a crow or raven; the sea god Mannanán; the warrior king Núada of the Silver Arm; the beautiful “young lad” Óengus (later called Aengus or Angus); and his mother Bóand, who was the goddess of the River Boyne.”

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