The Mythological Cycle of Irish Mythology: Tuatha DĂ© Danann and Irelandâs Gods
The Mythological Cycle is the part of Irish mythology where the gods are still in charge of Ireland. The Tuatha DĂ© Danann hold the country, the Fomoire press in from the sea, and the Milesians (the human Irish) havenât arrived yet. Medieval Irish texts most often shorten the longer name to Tuatha DĂ©, and this overview does the same. Most of what later cycles assume about Irish gods comes from texts in this cycle: how Lugh got to Tara, why the river Boyne is named for Boand.
If you havenât read the four-cycles overview, start there. This article focuses on the cast of the Mythological Cycle and the world they inhabit. The Ulster Cycle overview comes next.
The Mythological Cycleâs central conflict is the Tuatha DĂ©âs struggle for Ireland against the Fomoire. The cycle assumes readers already know that several other peoples lived on the island before the Tuatha DĂ© arrived. That backstory comes from Lebor GabĂĄla Ărenn (the Book of Invasions), the medieval Irish pseudo-history that frames everything else1.
The waves, as the medieval compilers had them:
Cessair. The first and least canonical. In some versions, sheâs Noahâs granddaughter, who fled to Ireland with fifty women and three men before the Flood. Almost no one survived. Medieval scholars treated her as a late, possibly apocryphal addition to the framework.
PartholĂłn. Came from Greece by way of a long migration. His people cleared four plains, brought farming and brewing, and were wiped out by a plague.
Nemed. Came from Scythia. His people suffered under heavy Fomoire tribute and attacked the Fomoire tower at Tory Island. The survivors split three ways: some became the Fir Bolg, some the Tuatha DĂ©, some sailed to Britain.
Fir Bolg. Returned to Ireland from Greece. They established the first kingship and divided Ireland into the five provinces that later kingdoms inherited. They lost the First Battle of Moytura to the Tuatha DĂ© and were given Connacht as their portion.
Tuatha DĂ© Danann. Came from âthe northern islands of the worldâ carrying four treasures from four cities: the Lia FĂĄil (the stone that cried out under a rightful king), the Spear of Lugh, the Sword of Nuada, and the Cauldron of the Dagda. They won the First Battle of Moytura against the Fir Bolg and the Second against the Fomoire.
Milesians (the Gaels). Arrived after the Tuatha DĂ© and defeated them. The Tuatha DĂ© retreated into the sĂdhe, the fairy mounds, where most subsequent Irish tradition leaves them. {:.timeline}
The Mythological Cycle stories are set during the Tuatha DĂ©âs reign, before the Milesians arrived. When the old gods reappear in the Ulster Cycle and after, theyâre already figures of the sĂdhe.
The Tuatha DĂ© are the gods of Ireland. The full name Tuatha DĂ© Danann means âthe tribe of the goddess Danu.â The Fomoire are their adversaries: older, sea-borne, often described as malformed or one-eyed, but also intermarried with the Tuatha DĂ© in important ways. Lughâs mother is Fomoire. Bres is half-Fomoire. The conflict between the two groups is family business as much as it is cosmic war.
The cycle is held together loosely. Thereâs no master text. Modern editors group these works under the Mythological Cycle:
Cath Maige Tuired (the Second Battle of Moytura), the closest thing to a centerpiece
Tochmarc ĂtaĂne (The Wooing of ĂtaĂn)
Aislinge Ăenguso (The Dream of Ăengus)
Aided Chlainne Lir (The Death of the Children of Lir), a late composition
Aided Chlainne Tuireann (The Death of the Children of Tuireann), also late
The dindshenchas poems and prose for places associated with the Tuatha DĂ©, especially Boand and the Boyne
Lebor GabĂĄla Ărenn itself, as the framework
The cycle is a grouping, not a single book. The texts were written down at different times by different hands. Reading them together is a modern editorial choice.
The Christian and monastic layer, briefly
The series opener covered this argument in detail. The short version: every Irish mythological text we have was written down by Christian monks. Most surviving Mythological Cycle material comes through Lebor na hUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow, c. 1100) and the Yellow Book of Lecan (late 14th century)2.
The point lands hardest in this cycle, because this is where the gods themselves appear as characters. Mark Williamsâs argument in Irelandâs Immortals is that the Tuatha DĂ© as we have them are partly a medieval Christian construction2. By the time the texts get written, the Tuatha DĂ© have been euhemerized: presented as ancient kings rather than as gods.
For practical reading: take the stories as evidence of how medieval Ireland thought about its old gods, not as transcripts of pre-Christian belief. Some pre-Christian material survives in the texts. Identifying which parts is a scholarly question without tidy answers.
These are the gods and figures the reader will keep meeting.
The Dagda. âThe Good God.â Not âgoodâ in a moral sense, but âgoodâ as in skilled at everything. He carries a club that kills with one end and revives with the other. He owns the cauldron of plenty. Heâs a comic figure as often as a powerful one.
Lugh. A latecomer who becomes the cycleâs most important young god. Skilled at every art, hence his epithet samildĂĄnach, âof many talents.â Half-Fomoire by his mother, Eithne. He kills his grandfather Balor at the Second Battle of Moytura.
The MorrĂgan. Goddess of war, fate, and sovereignty. She often appears as a crow or as a washer at a ford. She sleeps with the Dagda before Moytura and shapes the outcome of the battle through prophecy and choice.
Brigid. Daughter of the Dagda. Goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. She mourns her son RuadĂĄn with a keen so terrible it invents the form. The Christian Saint Brigid is a related but separate figure, and the two were deliberately blurred by medieval scribes. For a longer treatment of both Brigids and how they fit together, Courtney Weberâs Brigid: History, Mystery, and Magick of the Celtic Goddess is the place to start.
ManannĂĄn mac Lir. God of the sea and the Otherworld. He crosses into every other cycle and turns up in voyage tales and royal legends alike.
Nuada and Bres. Two early kings of the Tuatha DĂ©. Nuada loses his arm in the First Battle of Moytura and loses his kingship with it. Bres takes over and turns out to be a tyrant. Their handover triggers the Second Battle of Moytura.
Boand and Aengus. Boand is a goddess of the Boyne. Aengus (Ăengus) is her son by the Dagda. Aengus is the cycleâs god of love and youth, and he gives the cycle one of its loveliest stories.
Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Moytura) and the Coming of Lugh
The cycleâs central narrative. The Tuatha DĂ© have lost their king Nuada, who lost his arm in the First Battle of Moytura against the Fir Bolg. The half-Fomoire Bres takes the kingship and rules badly, exacting tribute from the Tuatha DĂ© and humiliating the Dagda. A young god named Lugh arrives at Tara and proves himself master of every art the gatekeeper can name. He takes command of the Tuatha DĂ©, and they face the Fomoire at the Second Battle of Moytura, where Lugh kills his grandfather Balor of the One Eye. The story has some of the cycleâs most famous set-pieces: the Dagdaâs grotesque bargain with the Fomoire, the MorrĂganâs prophecies, Brigidâs keen for RuadĂĄn.
Translation: Cath Maige Tuired (Elizabeth Gray, CELT)
Story Archaeology: the Battle of Moytura series (Episodes 1â12) and the later wider-audience series (also 12 parts) are the deepest treatment of any text on this list.
Candlelit Tales: Lugh & Balor of the Evil Eye (Ep 06) on YouTube; Lugh SamildĂĄnach (Ep 122) on SoundCloud.
Tochmarc ĂtaĂne (The Wooing of ĂtaĂn)
A three-part text. ĂtaĂn is wooed by the Tuatha DĂ© god Midir. His jealous first wife Fuamnach turns ĂtaĂn into a fly and blows her on the wind for centuries. ĂtaĂn is eventually swallowed by the wife of an Ulster king and reborn as a human. As a human, she becomes the wife of Eochaid Airem, High King of Ireland. Midir tracks her down across lifetimes and wins her back through a fixed game of fidchell, an Irish board game. The story is one of the cycleâs richest treatments of the Otherworld and reincarnation.
Translation: Tochmarc ĂtaĂne (Irish Sagas Online)
Story Archaeology: Dindshenchas 09, 10, and 11.
Candlelit Tales: Midir & ĂtaĂn (Ep 13), on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Oidheadh Chloinne Lir (The Fate of the Children of Lir)
A late composition (probably 14thâ15th century) that became one of the most beloved Irish stories. Lirâs four children are turned into swans by their stepmother Aoife, jealous of their fatherâs love for them. They live as swans for nine hundred years, three hundred each on Lough Derravaragh, the Sea of Moyle, and the Atlantic at Erris. They keep their human voices and their memory throughout. When the Christian monk MochaomhĂłg finds them and the spell finally breaks, the years catch up to them all at once and they die.
Translation: The Fate of the Children of Lir (CELT); also at Irish Sagas Online.
Candlelit Tales: The Children of Lir (Ep 222).
Aided Chlainne Tuireann (The Death of the Children of Tuireann)
Another late composition, often grouped folklorically with the Children of Lir and the Children of Uisneach (in the Ulster Cycle) as the âThree Sorrows of Storytelling,â though that grouping is post-medieval. The three sons of Tuireann (Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba) kill Lughâs father Cian. Lugh demands an Ă©ric, a blood-fine, made up of seemingly impossible objects from the corners of the world: three magical apples from a guarded eastern garden, a healing pigskin from the King of Greece, a spear from the King of Persia, two horses and a chariot from Sicily, seven pigs from the King of the Pillars of Gold, a hound whelp from the King of Iruath, a cooking spit from the women of an undersea island, and three shouts from the hill of Miodhchaoin. The brothers complete every task but are mortally wounded earning the last. Lugh refuses to lend them the healing pigskin they themselves fetched. They die, and their father Tuireann dies of grief on their grave.
Translation: Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann (O'Duffy edition, Internet Archive), bilingual Irish/English.
Story Archaeology: Battle of Moytura 09: The Children of Tuirenn 1, Part 1 and Part 2; Battle of Moytura 10: The Children of Tuirenn 2, Part 1 and Part 2.
Candlelit Tales: The Sons of Tuireann (Ep 12) on SoundCloud.
Aislinge Ăenguso (The Dream of Ăengus)
The shortest of the major stories and a good entry point. Ăengus dreams of a beautiful woman and falls so deeply in love with her that he sickens. His parents, Boand and the Dagda, search Ireland for her. They find her at a lake, where she lives among 150 swans bound together with silver chains. Every other Samhain she shifts between human and swan form. Ăengus joins her in swan shape, and they fly together to BrĂș na BĂłinne (Newgrange). The text matters for the Ulster Cycle too, since the woman, Caer Ibormeith, becomes a recurring Otherworld figure in the TĂĄin BĂł CĂșailnge.
Translation: Aislinge Ăenguso (Irish Sagas Online)
Candlelit Tales: The Dream of Aonghus Ăg (Ep 08), on YouTube and SoundCloud.
Boand and the making of the Boyne
Not a saga but a place-lore poem from the Metrical Dindshenchas, a body of medieval Irish verse explaining how every important place in Ireland got its name. Boand is married to the Tuatha DĂ© god Nechtan, who guards a well of inspiration whose waters can be approached only by him and his three cupbearers. Boand approaches the well anyway. The well rises against her, mutilates her, and chases her to the sea, becoming the river Boyne. Read alongside Tochmarc ĂtaĂne and Aislinge Ăenguso, the poem sketches the divine geography of the BrĂș na BĂłinne complex.
Translation: Metrical Dindshenchas Vol III (CELT). Boand I and Boand II are the two relevant poems.
Story Archaeology: BrĂș na BĂłinne and Cnogba in the Metrical Dindshenchas.
Candlelit Tales: The Goddess Boann (Ep 31) on YouTube; Boann & The Dagda (Ep 130) on YouTube and SoundCloud pairs the Irish story with a Greek myth from the Embers Collective.
A few things this overview leaves out. The ManannĂĄn material in Immram Brain and elsewhere sits between the Mythological Cycle and the immrama (voyage tale) tradition. The dindshenchas material runs far beyond Boand; many other places have origin poems featuring Tuatha DĂ© figures.
The Ulster Cycle is up next. Several Mythological Cycle figures (Lugh, the MorrĂgan, ManannĂĄn) reappear there, but the world has shifted. Humans are in charge now, and the gods have receded into the sĂdhe.
Lebor GabĂĄla Ărenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, R.A.S. Macalister edition (Irish Texts Society, 1939). â©ïž
Mark Williams, Irelandâs Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton University Press, 2016). â©ïž â©ïž
