#celencyedit

Among people whose vision of divinity was so polytheistic that the same name of a god or goddess is rarely found more than once, Epona is an exception, for statues and altars to her have been excavated across continental Europe, the center of her worship, and in Britain – more than for any other god or goddess of the Celts. Yet little is known of this goddess except that she was connected with HORSES. Her name means “horse,” from the Gaulish epos, and she was depicted astride a horse (usually a mare), surrounded by horses, or even occasionally lying naked on the back of one. 

This WITCH or sorceress (possibly the double of MORGAN) conceived a lust for the great king ARTHUR and lured him to her forest, but she was not to have her way with him. When he rejected her, she held him captive and sent knights to challenge him in single combat, hoping he would be killed. Arthus was able to hold them off, so she sent the challengers after him in pairs, and they overpowered him. But with the assistance off NIMUE, the knight TRISTAN was able to free the king, after which Arthur killed Annowre. 

This obscure divinity is invoked in a magical charm as having control of seven periods of time; she was nursed by FAIRY women but is otherwise unknown.

In Ireland the great goddess MEDB was diminished over time into a quasi-historical queen of the same name. In Wales the same process resulted in this FAIRY QUEEN who offers only a hint of earlier divinity. Queen Mab is best known from the reference in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julliet, where she appears as the “fairies’ midwife,” a role traditionally played by a human victim of FAIRY KIDNAPPING. Queen Mab’s other duty, according to Shakespeare, was to bring nightmares - once again, a role rarely ascribed to Medb but common among mischievous fairies; her playfulness has led some scholars to derive her name from the Welsh term for child, mab, which also appears in the collection of myths called the MADBINOGION. Shakespeare borrowed British and Welsh fairy lore at will; although vivid, his portraits of mythological beings are not necessarily accurate. 

Ruler of MAG MELL, the “plain of honey” where the trees were always loaded down with magical fruit and vats of mead could never be emptied, Labhraidh arranged for the hero CÚCHULAINN to spend time with Labhraidh’s wife’s sister, the lovely FAIRY QUEEN FAND. In return for this dalliance, Cúchulainn had to fight and defeat three warriors who were troubling Labhraidh. This bargain set in motion a love triangle, because Fnd was the only companion who tempted Cúchulainn to break faith with his wife, the peerless EMER. 

This obscure divinity who ruled cultivated fields was identified by the Romans with MARS, now conventionally described as a war god but originally a divinity of fertility. 

This feminine spirit - a BOGIE or WITCH - was believed to live near castles and to provide unspecified, even mysterious, service to their residents. Her name came to mean any domestic servant, but in Highland folklore she is described as having originated not in the human world but in the OTHERWORLD. 

On the Isle of Man, this variety of the WATER HORSE was a monster that stole cattle (and sometimes people) from the safety of land and drowned them in lakes or in the sea.