EARTHING
THE
MYTHS
For Scota and Ériu, their rivers, hills and plains.
EARTHING
THE
MYTHS
THE MYTHS, LEGENDS AND
EARLY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Daragh Smyth
First published in 2020 by
© Daragh Smyth, 2020
9781788551359 (Cloth)
9781788551366 (Kindle)
9781788551373 (Epub)
9781788551380 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
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Typeset in Minion Pro 11/14 pt
Unless otherwise stated, all images are from the author’s private collection.
Images on pp. 13, 20, 23, 28, 62, 134, 140, 158, 213, 266, 277, 279, 321, 355
© Alamy Stock Photo.
Front cover: David Lyons / Alamy Stock Photo
Back cover: Andrew Holt / Alamy Stock Photo
CONTENTS
Kilkenny
Laois
Longford
Louth
Meath
Offaly
Westmeath
Wicklow
Wexford
MUNSTER
Clare
Cork
Kerry
Limerick
Tipperary
Waterford
ULSTER
Antrim
Armagh
Cavan
Derry
Donegal
Down
Fermanagh
Monaghan
Tyrone
NOTES ON PICT-LAND AND SCOT-LAND
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
It is my experience in studying our historical and quasi-historical legends, and in the best of all ways, namely by going over the actual ground where they are alleged to have happened, that wherever you are on sure ground there is a remarkable appropriateness between the episodes and the incidents of the tales and their topographical setting. The story told whether actual happenings or a conflation of legends, or a conscious invention, suits the geography and the terrain.
–Henry Morris, First Battle of Magh Tuiredh, JRSAI, 1928.
The purpose of this book is to provide a guide to readers who would like to become familiar with those places associated with early Irish history and mythology. In Ireland, the link between place and myth is strong. The hundreds of dolmens and ring forts associated with the love story of Diarmuid and Gráinne, for example, keep this medieval tale alive, just as ‘The Cave of the Otherworld’ near Tulsk in Co. Roscommon connects us to the earliest rites of samain, a festival that is still with us in the shape of Hallowe’en; or there is Glenasmole on the borders of Dublin and Wicklow, where Oisín, the son of Finn mac Cumhail, fell from his horse on his return from Tír na nÓg, having set out 300 years previously from Glenbeigh Strand in Co. Kerry.
Like most mythologies, Irish mythology has a mythos or a sacred narrative and a religio, that which binds members by vows and rules. In the Irish context, the mythos is the strongest component and the religio is the weakest. This means that pre-Christian Ireland did not have a religion as such, but this apparent absence of structure does not mean that