Irish Myth

[Séadna]

I'm going through various books and handwritten manuscripts to pull out creatures and magic items for RPGs for my own games, but I thought I might as well post the more interesting stuff I find here, in case anybody finds it useful.

I'm cutting out the vague creatures like "scary dogs with red eyes" and going for ones that might be more useful to a fantasy game. I'm also concentrating on stuff that has never been translated into English. Phrases in quotes are translations.

The Sidhe:
A common error often seen is the Sidhe. Firstly "Sidhe" just means "of mound", the proper title is "Na Daoine Sidhe" = "The People of the Mound". They are not another race like Elves or something, they are simply the dead one encounters within old tombs and burial mounds.
A person entering the the burial mounds will often encounter many of the recently dead from their area, being presided over by the ancient peoples who were buried in the mound.
The ancient dead in particular are often called something that accurately translates to "the nobles", though more commonly translated to "The Good People".

Who goes onto heaven/hell and who remains on Earth in a mound is never clearly said, though the vague impression is that the mounds are sort of a holding place before heaven for good people. However the ancient dead, being pagan, can never cross over.

The ancient dead often abduct children and bring them to their mounds to live as one of them. In their place they leave "a useless thing", which could be a person, animal or object. It is possible to get the child back, but only if you can think of something it would be impossible for the most powerful of the ancient dead to get. It's often something religious (e.g. Christ's cross)

The rulers of the burial mounds are often incredibly beautiful women from ancient times. Their most dangerous warrior is always red haired woman, who can be encountered outside the mounds on various nights of the year and will kill on sight (she was often used to explain away murders on these nights).

On Halloween all the dead are allowed out with full freedom to roam. Though on other nights they are allowed out to specific locations to play team sports (sounds daft I know). On these other nights they always travel in groups with their approach being proceeded by a massive blast of wind (the specific type of wind has a name that rhymes with Sidhe).

Púca, Pooka:
Dead not confined to a burial mound, but haunt a site. Pretty much just a ghost. Some stronger ones can create the illusion that they are an animal. For some reason those killed by beheading often return as ghosts/pooka.

"Boogie-woman"/An Bhadhb:
A banshee variant that keeps track of her descendants and wails musically when they die, always a great distance from their house. They have to have been mute in life and have never laughed, nor does she laugh in death.


More to follow...

 

[Voros]

Awesome stuff. It is the mix of specifity and the mythic that make these so flavourful, a difficult thing to capture during monster creation in RPGs.

 

[Séadna]

Burial mound as a dungeon:
So just to fill out the burial mounds a bit.

As above they have the recently dead and the ancient dead all living under one roof.

The ancient dead tend to have the following working for them:

1. A few fallen angels (the ones that weren't bad enough to go to hell, i.e. the neutrals in the war in heaven)
2. A single living person. As the dead are transparent and immaterial when they leave the mounds they need a living person to abduct people for them
3. Abducted people working in slave labour. They are rendered immortal by magic and not permitted to eat.
4. "Crappy ghosts", "Wretches". Ghosts that won't be able to pass on to heaven, but lack the power of the ancient dead.

The recently dead are not under their control.

When the rest leave on an abduction raid or to wage war on another mound, only the living slaves and Wretches are left behind, with the wretches being guards (so sort of the low level baddies early on in the dungeon).

The mound will sometimes have a single massive cavern with a underground lake, the other side of which cannot be seen. Massive boats arrive and leave every so often, carrying the dead to heaven.

Magic items include rings of eternal youth and a cream that blinds people completely and cancels light where it is rubbed.

Rest of the mound is full of sleeping areas, feast halls, etc.

Grave Serpent:
Giant snake like beast that lives in rivers near graveyards and during the night unearths graves and consumes the corpses. The graveyards affected like this often have a semi-living fog the descends from nowhere during summer to cover the graveyard. Often the fog travels for miles to reach the graveyard.

 

[Séadna]

Giants:
Pretty similar to their standard fantasy description, except priests and monks can banish them magically, so one might add that to "Turn Undead" or similar for Clerics and the like. Nothing really indicates that they aren't human though and most stories present them as a man who just never stopped growing. One of the books had this nice illustration of one:

Dwarf/"Little Guys":
An actual different race. Not much to say outside of that they are generally very well educated and knowledgeable. In size they are always quoted "to fit in a man's palm". A few are quoted as having held the positions of professor of literature during the Middle Ages.
Leprechaun is just a dwarf that likes to carry a big pile of money around in a magic purse and come down people's chimneys during Halloween and kick the ash out of fires and mess the house.

The dwarves ride goats into battle and generally use them as steeds.

They're allowed into burial mounds, so associate with the Sidhe, but aren't usually seen with them.

"Mad Dogs":
A man with the magical ability to skin a wolf and wear its pelt, gaining access to its strength and ferocity. If they ask you what weapons you are carrying, any weapon you name will instantly become useless, so you must not answer.

"Greed Demon":
A lizard like demon that crawls into the mouth and makes somebody hungry enough to begin consuming food at tens of times the normal volume and rate. Eventually they will begin to eat furniture and possibly other people. Restricting access to food cause them to go into a berserk rage requiring several steel chains to hold them in place.

 

[Edgewise]

They are not another race like Elves or something, they are simply the dead one encounters within old tombs and burial mounds.

Is this canon? I think I had heard this once before, but the old fables tended to be inconsistent on such matters.

Giant snake like beast that lives in rivers near graveyards and during the night unearths graves and consumes the corpses.

Pre St. Patrick only, I suppose.

If they ask you what weapons you are carrying, any weapon you name will instantly become useless, so you must not answer.

Oh, I quite like this!

 

[Séadna]

Is this canon? I think I had heard this once before, but the old fables tended to be inconsistent on such matters.

The phrase commonly used translates to "the good people, that is to say the horde of the dead" or "The people of the mound, that is to say the horde of the dead". Stories about a banshee (mound woman) for example always start with "A mound woman, that is a woman from the afterlife...).

Since fallen angels and dwarves can sometimes come into the service of the dead within the mounds they would also count temporarily as Daoine Sidhe in some cases as they would literally be "People/Inhabitants of the Mound". However dwarves would rarely have this applied to them.

It'd be sort of like "Olympian" in Greek mythology, basically refers to the gods, but could refer to a mortal currently staying on Olympus.

In general stories of the dead and their deeds and misdeeds out number stories about creatures and little monsters.

Pre St. Patrick only, I suppose.

Yeah pre St. Patrick, the stories always begin with a phrase like "In the life of long ago..." usually a phrase for pre-Patrician times.

Concerning Patrick himself, many times English translations say he "banished" the snakes, but often in the folklore he literally wrestles the snakes and has titanic battles with them.

In one (daft) story he pulls a serpent described as the size of a castle out of a lake and sort of rodeo rides him along the middle of the country carving out an esker, until he decapitates him near the base of a hill.

Of course this proceeds the even dafter folk tale where he then climbs the hill and wrestles "a thousand angels and demons" and forces God to pause all of creation for a few seconds. This is because he starves himself on the hill which is "next to God's house" i.e. heaven. Starving yourself outside somebody's home was considered bad luck for them, so he was giving God bad luck (figure that out). He did so in order to get God to give the right to judge the Irish to Patrick. Creation pauses while God considers, before agreeing to do so. This was believed in even among my grandparent's generation.

Oh, I quite like this!

The "Mad Dogs" were believed in quite late, being a concern of rural road travel even into the 1920s/30s.

Here's one road that was supposed to have one in 1930:
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.301...4!1sg57G34Qa7ZftE-NF9d79jQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

[soltakss]

The Sidhe:
A common error often seen is the Sidhe. Firstly "Sidhe" just means "of mound", the proper title is "Na Daoine Sidhe" = "The People of the Mound". They are not another race like Elves or something, they are simply the dead one encounters within old tombs and burial mounds.

Is that your interpretation for your game? The Sidhe were banished below the mounds, either as the Tuatha de Danann or the Fir Bolg, their cousins. The Tuatha de Danann banished the Fir Bolg beneath the Mounds of Connacht and the Tuatha de Danann were, in turn, banished beneath the Mounds of Eire by the Milesians. In my Celtic games, the Sidhe beyond the Mounds live in the Land of the Fae. Their dead guard the Barrows and Mounds and stop mortals from using them to cross over.

 

[Séadna]

Is that your interpretation for your game?

It would be the canonical version of what the Sidhe are. Canonical here refers to the fact that an Irish village often had two or three people raised as "Seanachaí" (hard to translate but "storyteller" is probably the best English equivalent) or choose the craft themselves. They would have defined the "canon" versions of all tales.

The average person tended to use a related word "Sidheog" as a by word for the supernatural in general, but the canonical version is that they are the dead, not another race.

The Sidhe were banished below the mounds, either as the Tuatha de Danann or the Fir Bolg, their cousins. The Tuatha de Danann banished the Fir Bolg beneath the Mounds of Connacht and the Tuatha de Danann were, in turn, banished beneath the Mounds of Eire by the Milesians. In my Celtic games, the Sidhe beyond the Mounds live in the Land of the Fae. Their dead guard the Barrows and Mounds and stop mortals from using them to cross over.

If it's any use in your games for flavour, Éire is an archaic word, sort of like "These States United". I'd say "Éirinn" in day to day speech and would assume somebody was being poetic or grand when saying "Éire".

[EDIT: I meant to say, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with using Éire, just in case it's a cool addition to have it being a posh word]

I'll say more about the Tuatha Dé Dannan and the Fir Bolg a few posts from now.

 

[Séadna]

Just a breakdown on how Ireland would have functioned in the medieval period, if you wanted more in a Pendragon campaign if the PCs pop over, a "Mythic Ireland" expansion for Mythras's "Mythic Britain" or something. It'll also help explain the Fir Bolg and Tuath Dé Danann myth later.

Medieval Society:
Basically the island was broken into roughly 150 kingdoms (túath). Each kingdom consisted of the territory owned by one family, defined as all adult men who shared a great-grandfather and their families, and any families subordinate to them.
In addition the kingdom would have had its King, an assigned Ecclesiastical scholar, a priest and a Poetic Loremaster (mentioned below). Population of a kingdom averaged 3,000. The kingdoms did not have towns in them, but are a collection of hamlets. The king often simply lived in a larger than average house in the biggest hamlet.

The whole Túath was regularly assembled for "county court" for discussing social and politcal matters within the kingdom.

The common unit of currency was a slave girl (cumal). The price of items are often listed in surviving texts in terms of how many slave girls they were worth.

Nobody, even the nobility, had rights under the law outside their own kingdoms (except for the three professions below).

Each of the five provinces of Ireland had an overking to which all the kingdoms in the province paid tribute.

Trade between kingdoms was often done at Crannóga, which were little artificial islands built on lakes with one or two huts on them:


The three major unusual professions within a kingdom were Senchaid, Brithem, Filid. For which I'd use in English "Historian, Judge, Poetic Lore Master". Each kingdom had its head of each profession, known as an ollamh or "professor". As mentioned above the Annals sometimes record dwarves holding these positions occasionally, especially in the mythic past (pre 400).

Local pubs would have had Bards as middle class entertainers who wrote poems praising locals and entertained with songs. Sometimes Bards would be hired by Poets for recitation (the Poets never recited their own material, this being too "common").

Druids and the Celtic religion existed until well into the 10th century, five hundred years after Patrick, though increasingly confined to more remote areas. Despite the island being mostly Christian within a century after Patrick, Druids did have legal rights as a recognised profession. In the pre-Christian Celtic era they would have been coequals with the Senchaid, Brithem, Filid but by historical times the law declares them equal to blacksmiths in terms of rights.

A cool thing for a game, a possibly still pagan group lived in a forest in the south of the island and spoke what Annals call "The Iron Tongue", given a funny fantasy-esque description in a 9th century encyclopedia:

it is so called because of the darkness of the language, and its obscurity and density, so that it is difficult to explore.

Senchaid, Brithem, Filid (Historian, Judge, Poet):
Being a member of any of these three professions qualified you as a member of the nobility, though to enter them you had to have somebody in the last two generations be a qualified member. So effectively they were confined to specific families. All of them were trained together for the first seven years in monasteries where they learned to read and write. After that they specialised into their own fields, studying the longer texts relevant to their profession (respectively: histories and genealogies, legal codes, literature). It should be noted that in all cases the texts were mostly written in poetic form, even the law codes and they were expected to be able to draw on it and recall it accurately on the spot if demanded by the King or other nobles.

Any of them wishing to write further texts and commentaries did so in the same scriptoriums in monasteries they would have been trained in. As they learned to read and write in monastaries they would often pick up some competency in Latin and Greek from attending classes in them with the monks and priests.

Only these three professions had legal rights outside their kingdoms, often to meet in one of their professions universities/schools. Although the Poet is the only one to retain all his rights and is legally the most important profession.

This is because poetic satire and praise was believed to be a magically potent force capable of invigorating the land and men and even killing those it targeted. Kings are listed in the annals with cause of death being "rhymed to death". The king often traveled with his head Poet to counteract sorcery that might be targeted at him. The poet would also chew the marrow of farm animals and fall into a deep sleep to obtain prophetic dreams.

His poems carried a heavy price. A long technically precise composition to counteract a heavy satire might fetch him a chariot or anything worth one slave girl (even an actual slave girl). In general the poet's wealth was roughly equal to the king's.

The threat of commoners hiring a Poet for a satire was the main social control on the nobility's behaviour toward them.

At major festivals the Poet would have been called upon to recite epics of ancient times. Most Irish myths that survive are simply the most popular or highest quality ones that the Poets choose to record in the monastic scriptoriums, being the most worthy of the high costs of vellum inscription. Since most non-religious writing they knew was Greco-Roman myth, these formed a model for their written tellings of Irish myth. For example the Táin is model on the Aenid.

When the Normans invaded the monasteries were converted to purely religious institutions under Roman rule, so this put an ending to secular writing and the training of these secular professions within them. The Normans themselves had little interest in employing these literate professions, but loved praise poetry. Also the law was converted to a more standard European form due to Norman practices and expectation from Rome to do so. So all three professions survived by fusing into each other and taking on the functions of the previously middle class Bard.

These latter Bards, to elevate their status, basically spoke a frozen conlang form of the language, based on older speech but grammatically modified to make writing poems easier. They even spoke this conlang among themselves, meaning the average person could not understand them. This, combined with the high prices they charged for their praise poems, led to them being loathed by the average person.
The English equivalent would be like somebody today purposefully walking around speaking like the Middle English poem "Owl and Nightingale".

 

[Séadna]

The Law:
The most important text the judges had to learn from was "The Great Tradition", which lays down the vast majority of legal theory.

The law defines the status of various groups of people and what group A can legally do to group B, obviously favouring nobility, as well as property law and strict rules of hospitality. The law often revolves around a persons "honour price", a base fee you must pay for inflecting bodily harm or property damage on them. This also propagated to their kin as well. So if you kill a man, you need to pay the dead man's wife and all his children their full honour price (not the actual dead man's honour price), then all his nieces and nephews get half their honour price and finally cousins get one third of theirs.

Sexually harassing or satirizing (telling a false story about them, repeating a poet's satire against them if you weren't a poet) somebody required you to pay the person their full honour price. Only Poets were allowed to compose satire without legal consequences.

The main legal authority in a kingdom is of course its king. He must never perform manual labour, always travel with a retinue, not tolerate satire and thus hire a poet for counter-satire, be unwounded and undefeated in battle. Violation of any of these revokes kingship and passes it to one of his kin. Satire is noted in the law as being magically potent and capable of causing physical damage over time if not counteracted.

Cases were decided by a judge, with the king simply approving or rarely overturning the judgement. In a court of law the testimony of somebody of higher social rank automatically overrules those beneath him, except for woman whose testimony is beneath virtually everybody. Typically in court a bishop and a Poet would be present, in case religious or mythic knowledge was needed.

Other nobles within the kingdom have a typical feudal like client relationship with the king and commoners in turn being clients of these lower nobles. Land is provided in return for military service, etc.

Legal punishments are typical medieval ones, most similar to Icelandic law in punishing many crimes with exile.

Some funny material for flavour:

Since satirical poetry was thought to be capable of magically cursing you, there were several provisions against it from people not licensed to do it, up to causing you to loose all legal status except for medical care (roughly a state benefit from your kingdom if you were ill).

The law defines the three worst women as female satirists, promiscuous women who wander from kingdom to kingdom and a female werewolf. All are denied medical care.

Fixed prices for various goods are defined, even a famous passage about the correct prices of rent boys.

Other odd parts: it's legal for a woman to divorce a husband who is too fat to have sex, an enormous section on classifying cats and a collection of back and forth legal theory discussions on bees (complex because they are farming property that naturally moves around in a large area).

 

[Edgewise]

This is absolutely terrific material. You should consider publishing a supplement (if you haven't already).

 

[Dumarest]

...it's legal for a woman to divorce a husband who is too fat to have sex...

Sounds like a good incentive to stay in shape. What about the reverse?

...an enormous section on classifying cats...

Naturally. Precursor to the internet?

 

[Giganotosaurus]

Legal punishments are typical medieval ones, most similar to Icelandic law in punishing many crimes with exile.

It's interesting you say that. I read once that when the Norse settled Iceland they found it inhabited by Irish monks, who promptly left due to their dislike of the Norse heathens stinking up the place. It was mentioned that similar incidents happened in the Faeroe and Shetland Islands. I can't vouch for the veracity of this information as I didn't dive into the sources at the time.
Edit: Found the site I had heard this from, it seems to have originated from a single source so...I'danno?
Here's my source:
https://www.sagamuseum.is/overview/#papar

 

[Séadna]

Sounds like a good incentive to stay in shape. What about the reverse?

[Long answer!]

The reasons don't overlap in a strange way.

The reasons a man can divorce his wife:

1. Unfaithfulness
2. Constant Thievery
3. Performing an abortion on herself
   
4. Damaging his honour
5. Smothering her child
6. Being unable to breastfeed
7. "Destruction of all things"

We don't know what the seventh means, as the "Great Tradition" law text itself provides no further explanations and all except one of the surviving commentaries do not discusses it. The surviving commentary that does suggests it means smashing and breaking things in the house during an argument, but it's a bit vague.

The reasons a woman can divorce her husband:

1. Stops sleeping with her because he prefers another wife too much
2. Doesn't give her enough spending money and food
3. Tells offensive lies about her publicly
   
4. Has a poetic satire composed against her
5. Only managed to obtain her hand by sorcery
6. Erectile dysfunction
7. Impotence
8. Bedding men too frequently
9. If he becomes a priest or monk (though often women choose not to get divorced in this situation)
10. Too fat for sex
11. Telling others about her sexual performance and technique
    
12. Hitting her hard enough to bruise

Of course some reasons are not found on the husband's list because they're subsumed, e.g. Damaging his honour would include many things that are separate in the woman's list or the punishment is more severe, e.g. a wife writing a satirical poem against her husband (no Poet would agree to do it for her) would be guilty of the dual crimes of composing without being a Poet and inflicting the greatest possible offense hence she would be executed.

I should say there were nine types of marriage and a woman only has access to the full list of twelve reasons if she is of the highest three types.

In descending order of woman's legal rights:

1. Three types where wife is given by parents to the man. There are three types depending on whether the goods and property for the newly weds were contributed by both families or only one.
   
2. Then a type where she stays living with her parents and he visits her at night with their permission.
3. Fifth where she leaves to live with the man and announces it publicly, but parents do not agree.
   
4. Sixth is where she consents to the man for abduction in secret during the night.
   
5. Seventh he visits her at her parents place without them knowing.

Eight and Ninth are special cases, rape and the union of two insane people.

Polygamy was practiced but the different wives had to be from different marriage types.

Naturally. Precursor to the internet?

As mentioned above a judge must have a large oral command of the "Great Tradition" law text. The "Great Tradition" itself dictates what parts he should know by heart and proscribes "The Cat Passages" explicitly.

Of the cats, my favourite is the type called "A mighty cat that mews" which is worth two thirds of a female slave. (It's basically a large cat to fend off rats and other vermin on a noble's farm).

In total about ten types of cat are listed.

The rest of the passage deals with things you can't be sued for your cat doing (injuring others when pursuing rodents, stealing from pantries), as well as a child's rights to have them as pets and the price of killing another's cat.

 

[Séadna]

While gathering stuff for the epic myths (e.g. Tuath Dé Dannan) I thought I'd post this bit for the night coming.

Halloween:
Samhain was an ancient harvest festival in the Celtic calender, however by the historic period and our earliest written records it is already fused with the Christian festival of All Hallow's Day. As mentioned above it is a night when the dead are freed from the mounds to roam. Some dead may gather outside the houses of their families to receive prayers in the hope they can move on to the afterlife proper. Specifically they stood on the walls of the house. In the Celtic period proper before Christianity, some of the remaining sagas suggest the living could use the burial mounds to cross into the land of the dead. However this is back when the mounds were thought to lead to the realm of the Death god, which I'll say more on when I get to the Gods and Legends in the next post.

There was a tradition of a Halloween tree (planting a tree that night).

One unusual sight associated with Halloween was that there would be two moons.

On a personal note, in modern Irish "Samhain" just means "November" and before I knew it used to be a harvest festival I remember the bad guy from Ghostbusters being in an annual I got for Christmas with my Mam wondering why he was called November.

Séadna (Jack O' The Lantern):
This guy was a Smith or Cobbler (depends on the telling) who goes to buy leather/iron and on the road meets three beggars of some sort to whom he gives alms, leaving him with no money. All three turn out to be the one angel in disguise, who then offers Séadna three wishes. Being greedy and sick of thieves he wishes for a chair, an apple tree and a bag of meal that will confine or trap the hand of the next person besides him who touches them.
The angel vanishes and he then has no money and three objects miles away at home useless to him. The Devil appears and offers him a purse of endless money, if he gives him his soul in thirteen years. The years pass and he spends plenty of money (depending on the version he also has loads of adventures in this time, including meeting kings etc), when the devil returns for him. He tricks the devil into reaching into the bag of meal, which then sucks Satan into it.

After that he goes around asking various people to beat the crap out of the bag, annoying the captured devil as he does so, ultimately ending with him chucking the bag into a mill's grindstone, causing a massive explosion, destroying the mill and the bag (and possibly weakening the devil into non-corporeality some versions).

He then dies and finds Heaven's gates barred due to his soul selling deal. Then off he goes to Hell to find himself also banished due to tormenting Satan. So he takes some Hellfire and puts it in a turnip lamp and his soul wanders the Earth, especially marshes, for the rest of eternity.

(There's a version on Wikipedia called "Stingy Jack" that results from an early 20th century translation. Although it did exist as a variant, the above was the most common form of the story, though not translated into English I believe)

 

[Séadna]

Pre-Christian Ireland:
To be brief, Pre-Christian Ireland operated like the above section on medieval Ireland, simply remove the church and add hundreds of local cults and a fourth special profession Druids, simply priests of the local cults. In addition there were roaming bands of young men who swore blood oaths to a god private to their pack and raided other kingdoms on behalf of their lord.

For reasons you'll see below, I'd just make up your own Gods with Mythras's cult system or similar. There is little point in being authentic.

Mythological Cycles and Gods:
This is basically a quick intro to the literature on the Gods and the body of epic literature. I just name drop gods for now.
Gods are first then the seven bodies of literature:

1. The Otherworld Stories
2. The Mythological Cycle
3. The Ulster Cycle
4. The Fenian Cycle
5. Kingly/Historical Cycle
6. Book of Invasions
7. Romantic Cycle

The Gods:
So first off, we don't have a direct account of the pre-Christian Irish gods like we do for the Greek gods, in fact it is even more confused and vague than the Norse Gods about whom you could say our accounts are incomplete but we have genuine pre-Christian literature, e.g. the Poetic Edda.

The gods that appear in stories are almost all one of the following:

1. Deities worshiped across the island, especially if worshiped by the elite (Dagda) or by all members of an important profession (Mannanán for sailing). Local gods died out. We know a good few by name (Duibne, Loigde) but they didn't survive into the literature as they didn't have the wide recognition necessary to have their stories preserved by the literate classes that traveled around.
   
   
2. Deities that were specific to the Poets (Brigid), preserved specifically because they knew them.
   
   
3. Deities who were ancestors to very powerful families during the conversion period. They would have survived basically because these families were in ascendancy at just the right time to ensure their mythic ancestor was preserved in lore to enhance their territorial claims
   
   
4. After the 1200s, when the gods were viewed as simply another race of humans, a bunch of characters are added to their number just to fill out the story, i.e. "this group must have had a cook, so here he is"
   
   
5. Figures made up purely out of false etymology, e.g. the god Bel who is just extracted from the name of the feast Bealtaine.
   
   
6. Native re-namings of classical Greco-Roman deities (e.g. Anu is just the Greek Cybele)

The first four form the bulk of those that are met in the stories. As time went by these distinctions would have been less recognised, so for example they are mixed together, some in one group become parents of those in another, etc.

As for the nature of the gods, a given story will also take one of the following stances:

1. Human beings who escaped the Edenic fall of mankind. Stories that follow this view of them are the ones that have the Fantasy "Faerie" feel to them.
   
2. A group of pagan humans with access to immortality granting Druidic magic. This was pushed by the church as part of long project I'll mention below and became the only view on the gods after the 1200s.
   
3. Pre-Christian gods. That is they don't try to set them in Christianity and just tell the story "like a pagan would have". These read like Greek myth.
   
4. Angels sent by God to instruct humanity.
5. Angels neutral during the war in heaven.
6. Demons

Almost all stories use the first three, I only include the others for completeness.

The gods are originally called Túath Dé (God-people), however when reworked by the church in the 1100s as mortals they are called Túáth Dé Dannan (People of the Goddess Danu).

The Otherworld Stories:
These concern either a pious christian (often a saint) who journeys west out into the sea and is confronted by an otherworldly being and might see their homeland, or somebody is abducted and taken to their homeland.

The otherworlds (given names like Land of the Young (Tír na nÓg) or Plane of Pleasure) are metaphors for the glory of the Christian God's kingdom and the ascended state of those within it.

So a god like Mannanán might be given the attributes the saved would receive after the Second Coming of Christ, e.g. automatic comprehension of nature, weightlessness, immortality, direct comprehension of divine paradoxes.

The gods here are humans who never underwent the Fall.

They are the earliest stories featuring the gods written by Monastic Clerics. Written from the 7th - 9th centuries. It seems to have been an innovation of some monks in the north of the island to use the gods as metaphors like this.

The Voyage of Bran is the prototypical such story.

Occasional stories from later cycles might use their material (e.g. otherworlds), but explain it differently.

Mythological Cycle:
Stories about the gods, the closest to an account of the Pre-Christian myth we have. However the stories are very narrow in the sense that they only concern popular well known gods or those that served a purpose to some powerful group, as mentioned above.

These are mostly pre-Christian stories, but with adjustments like the Gods endorsing the political claims of the scribe's superior and his family or professing the superiority of the Poet classes and occasionally showing the ultimate victory of Christianity.

In the stories written in the 9th-12th centuries the Gods are either pre-Fall humans or just basically pagan Gods. In later ones they are humans from a race of ancient Druids.

These stories first appear in bullet point summary around the 9th century in writings from monks. It's thought that the success of the otherworld stories opened the door to writing the actual mythology down. However we get fully fleshed out versions in the 11th century when the Poets themselves, who would have been the ones who knew the stories in full detail, got permission to write them in scriptoriums.

The typical story is "The Wooing of Étaín". It's an interesting example as it probably combines previous written accounts of the myths from other manuscripts, one where the writer had the Gods as simply gods and one where they are Pre-Fall humans, resulting in a bizarre tonal shift at the end.

Additions to this cycle after the 1200s are essentially completely new stories about the gods not based on pre-Christian mythology at all, just taking the characters.

The Ulster Cycle:
We know several tales and sagas about the deeds of historic heroes existed in Ireland and were popular among the aristocracy (not commoners apparently from manuscript comments). However by the time the Poets began writing in the scriptoriums one set had become much more famous than any other, the story of the ancient heroes of the kingdom of Ulaid in the North of Ireland. So much so that we have little material from other heroic narratives. In essence this is the "War of Troy" of Irish myth and as that has "The Iliad" as its masterpiece, so this has the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin Bó Cuailgne) as its central story. The main hero is Cú Chulainn.

We know there is a good bit of distortion in these tales. The Poets had classical works such as the Iliad and the Aeneid as their only models of long written epics and these stories are written following them as a model and thus are probably quite far from their original oral versions (i.e. these are not recordings of heroic stories, but written literature based on the oral Ulaid tales).

These were written down during the 11th century as part of a national effort to preserve stories. The Gods make cameo appearances, but the stories aren't about them.

Cas Corach, a hero of this cycle, using his music to shift women of the Túath Dé back to their real forms, taken from a kids book:

Spoiler: NSFW for mild nudity

 

[Séadna]

Fenian Cycle:
Stories centering around the adventuring hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Fionn was a massively popular character among the common people, so his stories didn't feature among those chosen to be preserved in the 11th century (no fear of them being lost).

Fionn is a sort of a gestalt entity. Pre-Christian Ireland had many bands of roaming young men who pillaged and sacked other kingdoms on behalf of their lords, swearing blood oaths of comradery to each other to a god who bound the oath, as mentioned in the last post. Fionn is a combination of all these "raider oath gods", the most popular one being called Fionn, with a god of poetry of the same name. Some members of Fionn's band are likely other oath gods.

Eventually he became so popular that the Poets began composing new stories about him and reworked and expanded popular ones. The main story being "Tales of the Elders of Ireland". A long work in which the last of Fionn's band, his son Oisín and his nephew Caílte, having been alive for hundreds of years meet with Saint Patrick and tell him of their adventures. Saint Patrick's conversation with them forming a framing story to over two hundred tales, so that the story reads like the Arabic One Thousand and One Nights.

All written material on Fionn was composed after the gods had been reworked as ancient druids by the church and hence any appearances by them follow that model. Arthurian literature and continental romances were becoming popular in Ireland at the time, so Fionn often has a knightly quality and sometimes teams up with members of the Round Table.

The Fenian cycle was added to all the way down to the present day, this massive book from the 1930s collecting a huge amount of stories taken from local storytellers at the time:


Kingly Cycle:
Historical stories about high kings of Ireland and some regional rulers. The kings are obviously mythologised, e.g. fighting demons. The main point with this cycle is that the stories are clearly modified to support the existence of "The High Kingship", ruler over the whole island, as being ancient. In fact it was just a wish of three powerful families at the time who encouraged the Historians and Poets to work it into their histories and tales (the war among these families is Ireland's War of the Roses). The title never existed and never would. The high kings listed are either made up or small regional kings who happen to be ancestors of one of these families.

The High King has to be king of the area around Tara in the center of the island. This has no basis in Ireland's actual pre-Christian past, Tara simply happens to feature in a large amount of the stories that had been preserved.

However one thing was that Tara's kingship was guarded by a phallic stone, the Lia Fáil, that would cry out when the true king kicked it full force while naked and drugged.

I drove out to take a picture of it:


Also the entry to the supposed tomb of one of the mythic high kings, Niall of the Nine Hostages:


Book of Invasions:
This is the literary master work of the Christian Church in Ireland. An attempt to take all the material above, combined with the histories of Isidore of Seville and Eusebius and the Bible to create a Christian history of the entire island.

In every cycle or group of stories above, no time period is given, even in the Kingly Cycle. The Táin might overlap with the Mythological tales, but the Poets just didn't care about Chronology.

The monks however assigned a date to the entire mythos, connected it to the Bible (every mythological group becomes either a descendant of Japhet, Noah's son or of Cain for the Fomorians) and invented a series of invasions to explain the arrival of each group. Mythological cycle comes before Ulster cycle which comes before Fenian, both Ulster and Fenian happening during the Kingly, etc

Connecting stories were invented to tie previously unrelated material together. For example the story of how Fionn becomes the general of a high king from the Kingly Cycle.

We have several versions of it as it took a while to come into its final form. As time goes on all the material has the supernatural reduced as much as possible, until the gods are just a race of men.

Once this was completed it became the canonical ancient history of the island and isn't altered, outside of the odd stories set in the distant past. We know it took a while for the Poets to be convinced to abandon their original versions of the stories in favour of this and the odd renegade poet can be seen deviating on purpose from it up to about fifty years after it was complete.

Virtually all writing in English about Irish myth is based on this Church history. However even more so in Ireland it was considered unquestionably true. This school book from my grandfather's day presents it as literal fact:


Romance Cycle:
Basically just translations of Arthurian and Continental literature, or new Irish compositions of that style, e.g. Irish Arthurian stories.

 

[Edgewise]

Virtually all writing in English about Irish myth is based on this Church history. However even more so in Ireland it was considered unquestionably true. This school book from my grandfather's day presents it as literal fact:

That is so mind-boggling to me. On the one hand, it strikes me as so, um, uneducated (sorry, no offense intended), but on the other hand, you have this rich crazy quilt of tradition that ties the present to the past in a way that you don't often see. It's like I showed up for class and my teacher hands me a copy of Uncanny X-Men and tells me this will be on the test.

 

[Séadna]

That is so mind-boggling to me. On the one hand, it strikes me as so, um, uneducated (sorry, no offense intended), but on the other hand, you have this rich crazy quilt of tradition that ties the present to the past in a way that you don't often see. It's like I showed up for class and my teacher hands me a copy of Uncanny X-Men and tells me this will be on the test.

Well this has led to very funny incidents for me.

I often help out on tours as a hobby and a remember one back in 2013 where a historian from Arizona was with us (his specialty was the Antebellum South). We were out at Lough Arrow where there are several megalithic tombs. Anyway the tour guide was of my grandfather's generation, when after finishing an accurate summary of the Neolithic period of the tombs' construction, he suddenly said something along the lines of "...and that's not the only important thing here, the Túath Dé Dannan landed here after helping the Athenians, but we haven't found their settlements". The historian from Arizona immediately interjected with "WTF?" basically, but the tour guide was having none of it, they had landed, but since they were magic it was probably going to be difficult to find their remains.

I had to explain some of the above to the guy from Arizona.

However, it's one of the odder stories the church came up with to stick the cycles and Biblical history together. Before coming to Ireland, the Túath Dé helped the Athenians repel an invasion by the biblical Philistines by using Druidic magic to infuse demons into fallen Athenian corpses. It's a very crude attempt to combine Greek history from Eusebius with the Bible and Irish myth. Once these zombies showed up there was really no saving the conversation, it's hard to argue with a guy who believes in Athenian demon zombies.

On the other end I often have people for whom I "kill the romance" when they learn the mythic Otherworlds are just long theological metaphors for God's kingdom and the restored state of mankind after Christ's second coming. Of course many books present it as the Celtic afterlife like Valhalla for Norse myth, so it's quite a comedown.

 

[Edgewise]

Anyway the tour guide was of my grandfather's generation, when after finishing an accurate summary of the Neolithic period of the tombs' construction, he suddenly say something along the lines of "...and that's not the only important thing here, the Túath Dé Dannan landed here after helping the Athenians, but we haven't found their settlements".

That's just wonderful.

On the other end I often have people for whom I "kill the romance" when they learn the mythic Otherworlds are just long theological metaphors for God's kingdom and the restored state of mankind after Christ's second coming.

The lovely thing about all these myths is that you can take what you want as metaphorical and make a role-playing game or movie out of the rest of it. I suppose that's one way that we moderns interpret and consume the past.

 

[The Butcher]

Before coming to Ireland, the Túath Dé helped the Athenians repel an invasion by the biblical Philistines by using Druidic magic to infuse demons into fallen Athenian corpses. It's a very crude attempt to combine Greek history from Eusebius with the Bible and Irish myth.

Such a great campaign idea.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

Well this has led to very funny incidents for me.

I often help out on tours as a hobby and a remember one back in 2013 where a historian from Arizona was with us (his specialty was the Antebellum South). We were out at Lough Arrow where there are several megalithic tombs. Anyway the tour guide was of my grandfather's generation, when after finishing an accurate summary of the Neolithic period of the tombs' construction, he suddenly said something along the lines of "...and that's not the only important thing here, the Túath Dé Dannan landed here after helping the Athenians, but we haven't found their settlements". The historian from Arizona immediately interjected with "WFT?" basically, but the tour guide was having none of it, they had landed, but since they were magic it was probably going to be difficult to find their remains.

I had to explain some of the above to the guy from Arizona.

However, it's one of the odder stories the church came up with to stick the cycles and Biblical history together. Before coming to Ireland, the Túath Dé helped the Athenians repel an invasion by the biblical Philistines by using Druidic magic to infuse demons into fallen Athenian corpses. It's a very crude attempt to combine Greek history from Eusebius with the Bible and Irish myth. Once these zombies showed up there was really no saving the conversation, it's hard to argue with a guy who believes in Athenian demon zombies.

On the other end I often have people for whom I "kill the romance" when they learn the mythic Otherworlds are just long theological metaphors for God's kingdom and the restored state of mankind after Christ's second coming. Of course many books present it as the Celtic afterlife like Valhalla for Norse myth, so it's quite a comedown.

It's like how they still build roads around boulders and rocks in Iceland to avoid angering elves.

 

[Séadna]

Such a great campaign idea.

What I'm doing next is basically diving into the main stories in each saga and pulling out the most usable ideas. The above was to give the whole thing a context as otherwise it becomes a confusing morass. This way it'll be easier to reference the stories (and point out alternates).

 

[Edgewise]

It's like how they still build roads around boulders and rocks in Iceland to avoid angering elves.

That makes me think that this material could be a lot of fun not only in a fantasy campaign but a modern fantasy campaign set in Ireland. Who needs a fantasy "Oirlind" when you can play in (almost) the real thing? I'm really loving these posts, in case that's unclear.

 

[Luca]

This thread is so full of awesome it hurts.

Can we stick it and, like, preserve this info for eternity?

 

[soltakss]

Blending Folk History with Mythology/Legends is always a good idea.
Many places in the UK or Ireland have little variants on well-known mythology/legends that make for very interesting reading.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

Blending Folk History with Mythology/Legends is always a good idea.
Many places in the UK or Ireland have little variants on well-known mythology/legends that make for very interesting reading.

I listened to a podcast recently that talked about Gef (Jeff?) the Mongoose from the Isle of Man.

 

[Séadna]

While getting material for the next post I was reminded of this post:
https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/d-d-...an-vs-fighter-the-poll.1885/page-2#post-56553
and I knew I had a graphic novel that depicted it somewhere.

So here it is, St. Patrick vs the ArchDruid of Tara, his final battle in the conversion of Ireland.

The Druid charges Patrick and summons fire:

[
...upon hearing that Lochrú exploded in rage
"Behold the price of your interference interloper!"
"Aaargh" (Easy to translate )
Suddenly, I'm on the verge of incineration
]

The fire takes the form of a snake and attempts to crush Patrick, who summons strength from God:

[
Then a fresh form came upon the flames
"Serpent!"
"Strengthen me oh God, he is choking me"
A single great effort and...
]

With the strength granted he shatters the snake:

[
AAARGH!
FREE!
]

The foolish Druid then rushes to stab Patrick, who charges a powerful prayer which halts the druid and gives telekinetic control over him (I love how Patrick looks like Son Goku or something in the second last panel):

[
Lochrú toward me then, rushing
"What's this?"
But...
"UUUH!"
"Stop I say!"
"Ey??"
"Stay there for a while"
"Release me from up here, I order you!"
"As you wish"
]

Which he uses to slam him into the ground, the druids soul escaping as a bloated soul worm:

[
AAAARGH!!!
Lochrú fell
And his skull was ruined on a rock
"Wow!"
"Is that his end?"
"Seems so"
"What power is this?"
]


Cleric >>>> Druid

 

[Luca]

I never knew St. Patrick was a freaking munchkin.
The more you learn...

 

[Edgewise]

Oh my lord, the epicness continues...

 

[Séadna]

Ethnic groups:
Old Irish texts still reference other Ethnic groups besides the Gaels (the majority) living on the island. These are called the Érainn, the Cruithin and the Laighn. Up until the 9th century these ethnic groups still identified as distinct from other Irish. Most likely the Cruithin were a group of Celtic settlers from Britain and the Érainn and Laighn were from continental Europe. The "Ire" in Ireland actually comes from the Érainn. Many Irish gods and festivals originate with these groups. For example Mongfind, the goddess whose festival was Samhain, was an Érainn goddess.

These ethnic groups were the rulers of Ireland's largest kingdoms for the two or three hundred years before Christianisation. Christianisation actually coincided with a resurgence of the native Gaels retaking the island's big kingdoms, as well as a Romano-Gallish family (the Eoganachta) and their vassals invading the South of the island. Together they broke the power of these three groups.

A game set prior to the about the 8th century would still have the languages of these groups spoken in some areas, although by the 6th century they had mostly switched to Irish.

The Ulster Cycle is about the fortunes of one Érainn family called the Ulaid.

 

[Séadna]

Táin Bó Cúailnge:

The central myth of the Ulster Cycle, concerns the Queen of Connacht Méibh attempting to obtain the mythic Brown Bull from Ulster in order to have possessions equal to those of her husband Ailill, who possesses the mythic White Bull. The value of both comes from their supernatural prowess, possessing the strength to topple mountains.


At first she sends the former (now exiled) king of Ulster, Fergus, to speak to his own people and arrange terms for buying the bull. However during a drinking session after the purchase Fergus boasts Méibh could have stolen it anyway, offending the Ulstermen and cancelling the deal. When he returns, Méibh decides she simply will steal it and summons her armies and those of her allies and vassals to march on Ulster. She decides to do so directly after learning all but one of their warriors cannot fight as they are suffering from a curse that causes them to feel the pain of birthing contractions. And so her armies march out:


On the march to Ulster, Fergus tells the men of Méibh's army about the one warrior not affected by the curse, his nephew Cú Chulainn. Around the campfire he tells them of the young man's life and deeds, a set of mini-stories within the main story.

They finally arrive on "The Plain of Pig Herders", where the Brown Bull is to be found. The plain itself is just to the South of the Ulster capital, "Macha's Twins". There they find the speared heads of their scouts and an oak tree with a message written in the magical ogham script. It forbids anybody to pass until they manage to leap the oak in their chariot. They set about doing this, losing thirty chariots and their horses in the process. The entire thing is a ploy by Cú Chulainn who uses the distraction to slay their watchmen. He continues to sneak into her camp and slaughter men by night. However she eventually finds and captures the Brown Bull.

Cú Chulainn felling the tree and carving the message:


Méibh's army find the severed heads:



Seeing the level of damage, Méibh considers her men and her husband idiots and sends Fergus to treat with Cú Chulainn. Cú Chulainn refuses to surrender, regardless of any riches or terms, but they eventually agree that he will fight a warrior a day. He of course defeats every men sent to him, often giving them a chance to live. Sometimes he displays hilarious levels of skill, for example cutting all the hair and clothes off one man without even causing the slightest cut, before bisecting him to the navel.


The level of violence is such that the war goddess "The Great Queen" (Morrigan often the English translation), appears and offers to sleep with him and grant him more martial power. He refuses, desiring no help from a woman, after which she fights him in several forms (wolf, bull, fish). Eventually they make peace when he blesses her while she is in her crone form, after which she promises to torment his enemies with visions.

The Great Queen first appears:


Méibh then sends more men at him, where upon he enters his war form "The Spasm/The Distortion", slaughtering hundreds of her men.

Once he calms down from this there is a long passage about the beauty of his naked body and all the women of Méibh's army struggle to look at it as long as they can, Méibh herself climbing on top of her men's shields to do so.

She sends Fergus to fight him next, who Cú Chulainn can easily beat, but promises not to kill if Fergus surrenders the next time Cú Chulainn asks him to.

Finally she sends Feardia, Cú Chulainn's foster brother to fight him. As near equals they fight for three days. Constant combat by day, tending each other's wounds by night. Eventually Cú Chulainn wins using a trick taught by him in the realm of the Gods, using their legendary weapon "The Spear of Death". He grabs the Spear from a stream with his toes and forces up through Feardia's anus. Once it is embedded in flesh, the spear then grows thirty spikes that jut out into the surrounding flesh, eviscerating Feardia from within.

At this point the rest of the Ulster army arrives, the pregnancy curse on one of its temporary pauses and a full blown battle begins. It seems the Connacht army will win.

Méibh suddenly feels a pain in her stomach and releases a foul liquid from her anus/vagina (story is unclear) with enough force to cut three channels into the ground large enough to contain a house. The channels recur in later myths under the name "Méibh's foulness". While she is weak like this Cú Chulainn finds her. However he has a pledge to never harm women and leaves her untouched, venting his rage by rampaging for miles South destroying the landscape and cutting the tops off mountains.

He returns to the battle and meets Fergus and asks him to surrender. Fergus does and the Connacht army leaves with the bull.

The story then ends with the Brown Bull fighting the White Bull, killing it. It then rampages back to Ulster, forming many geographical features, before dying of exhaustion just before the capital.

 

[Séadna]

Cú Chulainn:
Cú Chulainn was actually a demigod hero local to the area around the Plain of Pigherders. He was probably worked into the Táin due to his prominence in the area where it is set. Although the tale still records he is not one of the Ulaid, just fostered by them. His semi-devine nature is evoked at one point in the story when his father, the god Lugh, visits him in a vision. Although Lugh is humanised in the tale itself as a king of a druidic tribe to the South.

Táin versions and the Gods:
The Táin has four versions. Their original forms where the Táin and Cú Chulainn are separate stories. The 8th century version where they are combined. The Book of Leinster version where an intro is added explaining why Méibh wanted the bull and the whole epic is in a much more florid style, less graphically violent and with Greco-Roman influences (e.g. Cú Chulainn is described in terms copied from descriptions of Achilles). Finally there is version from the Book of Invasions where everything is toned down.

The Book of Invasions sets the whole thing in the 3rd century, but in the other versions it is simply in "the epic past".

In the Táin the Gods are explicitly an ancient race of druid people with longevity powers and shape shifting spells, although their godly nature is barely hidden in some parts of the text.

The Bulls:
The White and Brown bulls of the tale are a reincarnation of two of the gods. They had a falling out and battled with each other across Ireland, shifting form through out the fight. They finally adopt the form of worms and are accidently eaten by two cows who give birth to their reincarnations.

The Pregnancy Curse:
The curse that afflicts the Ulaid is a result of them forcing a local noble's wife to race while heavily pregnant. The woman, Macha, goes into labour after being forced to race a horse and gives birth to twins. As she does she curses all Ulaid men (Cú Chulainn is present, but is not Ulaid).

The actual capital of Ulster, Emhain Mhacha, just means "Macha's twins", so the story also explains the capital's name. Macha was originally the areas soveriengty goddess, an analogue to Méibh.



Rest of the Ulster Cycle:
Most of the rest of the cycle is supporting tales that fill in details not mentioned in the Táin. Such as how the pregnancy curse happened. There are also some minor tales unrelated to the Táin, but that still happen to the Ulaid tribe. Finally there are tales of revenge, about the Ulaid getting back at Connacht for the Táin. I'll talk about the Revenge tales in the next long post as they have quite a lot of the supernatural.

Méibh and Urine:
Méibh was originally a sovereignty goddess, representing the land itself that a king ruled over. A king ritually married her to become the king in a ceremony where he had sex with the soil itself. We know elements of this ceremony survived into the Christian period for a while, with obvious disapproval from the Church. Although she is presented as human in the Táin, parts of the story make no sense if this were true. For example it says that all past kings have been her husband and any future ones must be so as well.
The foulness she emits is described as "Blood Water". Celtic Goddesses were often associated with Fertility, War and Life and other goddesses use blood and urine imagery in other tales. In fact the strength at which a women forces out urine is used as a measure of her sexual ability throughout Irish myth.

Another tale in the Ulster Cycle describes this in more depth, The Death of Dearbforgaill. There the Ulaid women form a massive phallus out of winter snow and whoever can urinate with the most force, measured by the depth the urine reaches in the phallus, is the one with the most sexual power. Dearbforgaill wins and the other women in their jealousy mutilate her and she dies later of shame and isolation due to her wounds, physical blemishes being especially shameful in Celtic society.

Méibh passing of vast quantities of menstrual urine with geography altering force is probably reference to her supernatural sexual prowess. Through the tale, no man satisfies her in bed.

The Distortion/Spasm:
Cú Chulainn's transformation is a kind of beserker rage where entire body is warped beyond recognition. In later versions of the Táin, the distortion is downplayed so that is essentially just him grimacing aggressively:


A more accurate depiction comes from this modern retelling for adults, unfortunately it's a bit abstract:


An even more accurate depiction is given by the Slaine comics from 2000 AD:


The only thing missing here is the glorious "Heroic light" shining from his skull (ultimately the same thing as the Farr of Persian Kings), the electric sparks in his hair and the cloud of toxic magic that follows him.

The only thing that can calm him down from this state is the sight of nude women while being submerged in a cauldron of cold water. Depicted here, though hard to make out:


The Spear of Death:
Cú Chulainn both received the spear and the training on how to use it from Scáthach, his trainer from "The Land of Shadow", the modern day Isle of Skye. Feardia also trained there. The spear has various origins in different tales, sometimes a weapon of the gods, in others the spine of a sea monster.
In some tales its spike-sprouting ability can only be used after a ritual involving a stream of water and probably the "training" Cú Chulainn received was learning this ritual.
On a minor note, the particular word for Death used in the spear's name is now the word for "Belly", so that it sounds like "Belly Spear". Plenty of kids books have Feardia impaled in the belly rather than the anus. Such as this kids comic:

 

[Edgewise]

That pregnancy curse is wonderful. Of course, in a fantasy setting, the curse would probably actually cause the PC to give birth. To...something...

Méibh then sends more men at him, where upon he enters his war form "The Spasm", slaughtering hundreds of her men.

I'm picturing a full-on anime-style power-up, with bits of sand and rock inexplicably floating upwards in his vicinity.

 

[Séadna]

That pregnancy curse is wonderful. Of course, in a fantasy setting, the curse would probably actually cause the PC to give birth. To...something...

I'm picturing a full-on anime-style power-up, with bits of sand and rock inexplicably floating upwards in his vicinity.

In the original 8th century version it describe his anger emerging as red fire lights up along his hair and produces a glowing aura of power, his rage physically manifest. It also causes lightening to flash in the sky and "The lights of Badb", massively powerful flashes of solar light, to burst from the sky onto the ground.

A bit like Son Goku's first transformation against Freiza.

 

[Séadna]

Overall there is an animesque quality to various heros. St. Patrick is often described as basically ripped with a six pack and glowing with power and often delivers a Latin name for his "attacks", such as summoning tree roots to crush his enemies.

 

[The Butcher]

Please never stop writing this thread.

I'm picturing a full-on anime-style power-up, with bits of sand and rock inexplicably floating upwards in his vicinity.

Partial to the Sláine version:

 

[Edgewise]

St. Patrick is often described as basically ripped with a six pack and glowing with power and often delivers a Latin name for his "attacks", such as summoning tree roots to crush his enemies.

If you're making this up, please allow me to remain blissfully ignorant.

I mean, I've heard that Irish monks saved Western civilization. I didn't know they invented Dragonball and Naruto while they were at it.

​

 

[Séadna]

I'll get to Patrick in a later post, but when I do you'll see that isn't the half of it. Him and Colm Cille (and some other Saints) have truly daft anime-style stories. Just as an example, in the Tripartite Life nine Druids attempt to assassinate him by posing as monks. Patrick isn't fooled due to his "divine awareness" and summons fire from the heavens that consumes the nine of them to ash. He also counters a weather altering spell from a druid:


And in combat at Tara a bright aura emerges from him with Holy Music and he kills 12,000 opponents.

However still there are all the demon fighting, angel wrestling, God-battliing, serpent monster riding stories to cover and all the stories of his control over the elements (e.g. getting the ground to swallow druids).

Even ignoring Patrick, there's other hilarious saints. Colm Cille has the ability to perceive the "awakened reality of all things", literally seeing the mechanisms behind the world that remain invisible to most humans and perceive things remotely and predict their actions.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

I'll get to Patrick in a later post, but when I do you'll see that isn't the half of it. Him and Colm Cille (and some other Saints) have truly daft anime-style stories. Just as an example, in the Tripartite Life nine Druids attempt to assassinate him by posing as monks. Patrick isn't fooled due to his "divine awareness" and summons fire from the heavens that consumes the nine of them to ash. He also counters a weather altering spell from a druid:
View attachment 5639

And in combat at Tara a bright aura emerges from him with Holy Music and he kills 12,000 opponents.

However still there are all the demon fighting, angel wrestling, God-battliing, serpent monster riding stories to cover and all the stories of his control over the elements (e.g. getting the ground to swallow druids).

Even ignoring Patrick, there's other hilarious saints. Colm Cille has the ability to perceive the "awakened reality of all things", literally seeing the mechanisms behind the world that remain invisible to most humans and perceive things remotely and predict their actions.

And we're certain that we're not just reading some nerd's Saint Patrick fan-fiction?
In all seriousness though it's stuff like this that made me study Anthropology in college.