1. Let one of you ask me the history of the wonderful yew: Why is it alone called the ‘Yew of the Disputing Sons’?
2. Of what wood is the poisonous, handsome tree – subject of such treachery? What nature of friendship originally existed before the disputing sons gave their name to it?
3. From his territory Ailill chose this meadow for the pasture of his horses: from Dun Clare to Dun Gair, from Ane to Dun Ochair.
4. The slender Sídhe-folk disliked this invasion of their land; they used to destroy the grass every Samhain – no story to equal this!
5. Ailill went with Ferchess mac Comman to view the fine grass; they saw on the plain three cows and three people herding them.
6. ’These are the thieves! ’ said Ailill, haughtily. ’A woman and two men, without doubt, and their three hornless cows.’
7. ’It is they who have trampled the grass and consumed our property to rob us, singing the sweet music of the Sídhe to put the race of Adam to sleep.’
8. ’If they are singing the music of the Sídhe,’ said Ferchess mac Comman, ’let us go no nearer until we melt some wax for our ears! ’
9. They could not hear the sweet music after they had thrust wax into their ears. Suddenly, each party saw the other: a surprising encounter!
10. Furiously, Eogabail (of the Sídhe) and Ailill grappled point to point; Eogabail was stricken down, and Áine (of the Sídhe) was overthrown.
11. Ailill came to Áine, overpowered her and lay upon her; he had knowledge of her then, not by consent but by force.
12. Áine took her knife to Ailill, no lying testimony mine! She sliced off his right ear from the head bent over her, so that afterwards he was called Ailill Bare-ear.
13. This enraged Ailill then; he thrust his spear into Áine; he did her no honour, he left her dead.
14. As for Ferchess, no one ever escaped him when he had unsheathed his weapon without receiving wounds and bruises, even though it were a friendly demonstration of his battle-skills.
15. Fer Fi retired to the Sídhe-mound where his kinfolk lived; many were the lamentations on account of Áine and Eogabail’s deaths.
16. The next day, at dawn, the mounted hosts of the Sídhe came out; they burned Dun Clare and Dun Crott, they caused a scouring blaze.
17. ’Let us go to Dun Ochair Mag, ’ they said among them themselves. ’Let us kill Ailill in his house and the daughter of Conn of the Hundred Battles.’
18. ’We have no claim upon fair Conn’s daughter,’ said Fer Fi, son of Eogabail. ’Not without danger, but by valour will I avenge my father.’
19. Fer Fi travelled westwards with Aeblean, his brother; they devised a strategy that was honourable to them, they shaped the Yew of the Disputing Sons.
20. The place that they created the tree was at Ess Mage of the great clans; three came to the tree who desired it for their own: Mac Con, Cian and Eogan.
21. Mac Con claimed the tree forthrightly, both the old wood and the green growth; Cian here claimed it from the seed, both the straight and crooked growth
22. No less comprehensively was it claimed by Eogan, who claimed all that grew above ground and all that grew beneath.
23. Such were the disputes of the men, the sons of one mother; each stalwart fellow claimed the whole tree for himself.
24. ’I shall accept your father’s judgement,’ said Mac Con of the Red Sword. ’Wherever he awards it to you or to me, I shall not appeal if I lose.’
25. Then Ailill gave harsh judgement; Mac Con was greatly annoyed thereby. Ailill awarded the yew to Eogan, and slighted Mac Con.
26. Mac Con then challenged Ailill to a battle to avenge it; so it was, without delay, that the Battle of Cenn Febrat was fought.
27. Mac Con was wounded there and limped thereafter, a sad affair; Da Dera, the fool of the Darine, fell at the hand of Cairpre.
28. This conflict caused the furious battle of Mag Mucrama of the red grasses; on Tuesday it was fought, where the heads of Ireland fell.
29. So fell Art mac Conn, high king of Ireland the unconquered; there fell dreadfully the seven fine sons of Ailill.
30. There was wounded Lug Laga, who performed the daring feat: he slew Art mac Conn the Fair, and Benne Britt of the Britons.
31. There fell the vengeful Mac Con and Ferchess mac Comman, and Sadb, daughter of Conn, from the venom of the beautiful yew.
32. It is no tree but an apparition of the Sídhe, its nature is not of this world; not of wood is its trunk, but of an horrific gloom.
33. The tree gave shelter from the cutting winds, enough for three hundred warriors; its seasoned wood would have been sufficient for a house, it was a protection against all dangers.
34. It is mysteriously hidden by the Sídhe with artful skill. Only one in a hundred is unlucky enough to find it; then it is everlasting discovery of misfortune.
35. From north and south fell warriors, from the venom of the russet-boughed yew; from east and west they fell – do not seek further to ask me why.
Source: Leabhar Laignech c. ~12C AD - Story attributed to Cormac mac Culennain, king bishop of Cashel (d. 908)
Áine : pron. “AHN-yeh”
1. Irish goddess of love and fertility. She was the daughter of Eogabail, foster-son of the sea-god Manannán Mac Lir, and a druid of the Tuatha dé Danaan. Áine has been identified with Anu, mother of the gods, and also with the Mórríghán, goddess of battles, but these identifications seem suspect and unlikely. Áine was continually conspiring with mortals in passionate affairs. She was raped by Ailill Olom and slew him with her magic. A second legend, which obviously had its roots in the Ailill Olom tale, occurred in the 14th century, when it was said that Maurice, first Earl of Desmond (d. 1356) raped Áine who bore a son Gearoid Iarla (third Earl of Desmond, 1359-98) who is known for the courtly love poetry he wrote in Irish. The historical dating is obviously suspect. When Gearoid died it was said that he was but asleep and would rise again on an enchanted steed from the waters of Loch Guirr. Another version is that Gearoid lives beneath the waves of the loch and is seen riding around its banks on a white horse once every seven years. Yet another version has it that Áine turned him into a goose on the banks of the loch. It is an historical fact that Gearoid’s son John actually drowned in the River Suir in 1400. The poems of Gearoid Iarla are preserved in Irish manuscripts.
Near Loch Guirr is Áine’s dwelling place, Cnoc Áine (Knockainy, Áine’s Hill, in Co. Kerry). Even up to the last century Áine was worshiped on St. John’s Eve, Midsummer’s Eve, when local people carried torches of hay and straw tied to poles and lit up Cnoc Áine at night. They would then invoke Áine na gClair (Áine of the Wisps) to guard them against sickness and ensure fertility. They would disperse among their own cultivated fields and pastures waving the torches over their crops and cattle to bring luck and increase. According to D. Fitzgerald in ‘Popular Tales of Ireland’ (Revue Celtique, Vol. IV): ‘A number of girls had stayed late on the Hill watching the cliars (torches) and joining in the games. Suddenly Áine appeared among them, thanked them for the honour they had done her, but said she now wished them to go home, as they wanted the hill to themselves. She let them understand whom she meant by “they” for calling some of the girls she made them look through a ring, when behold, the hill appeared crowded with people before invisible.’ The cult of Áine has been a long time in dying.
Source : A Dictionary of Irish Mythology by Peter Berresford Ellis, Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0192828711
2. In Ireland perhaps the symbolic beginning of ‘male dominance’ can be seen in the naming of great centers and festival sites. Each one of them is named after a goddess who has been raped and/or dies in childbirth. There appears a surprising number of stories which result in the defiling of the goddess by rape, beginning with the principal goddess of love and fertility, Áine, meaning ‘Radiance’ or ‘Splendor’. The name of this goddess became a popular name for girls in medieval Ireland. Significantly, Áine has been presented as an aspect of Anu, which again is simply a corruption of Danu. In stories about her, Áine is constantly falling in love with mortals, but this could be interpreted as the symbolism of procreation and fertility. However, in one story the goddess is raped by the king of Munster, Ailill Olom, or ‘Bare Ear’, because she cut off his ear and slew him in vengeance. Surprisingly, Áine’s cult survived to some extent down to the last century when, at Cnoc Áine (Knockainy, or Áine’s Hill in Co. Kerry) people gathered on St. John’s Eve (Midsummer Eve) and went to the hill to invoke the spirit of Áine na gClair (Áine of the Wisps) to guard them against sickness and ensure fertility.
The rape of the goddess occurs in the legends of the sites of Tailltinn, Tlachtga, Teamhair, Macha, Carmán and Culi. Mary Condren implies that the status of these goddesses was destroyed by the symbolism of rape in which the goddess gave birth to children.
Source : Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature by Peter Berresford Ellis, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1996. ISBN 0802838081
3. A love-goddess, daughter of the Danaan Owel (Ouel); mother of Earl Gerald; still worshiped on Midsummer’s Eve; appears on St. John’s Night among girls on the Hill. There is an ancient cairn and three small ring barrows known as Mullach an Triuir on the summit of Cnoc Áine which is near Knockainy village in Co. Limerick. She is also associated with Omagh in Co. Tyrone and Derry where there are wells dedicated to her called Tobar Áine.
4. A goddess who seems to have functioned as a type of Sovereignty in south west Ireland. She gave her name to a Sídhe dwelling in Munster, Cnoc Áine. She is variously described as the wife or daughter of Manannán Mac Lir.
Later folk tradition tells of Gearoid Iarla (Earl Gerald of Desmond, 1338-98) who encountered Áine bathing in a river and raped her. The first earl of Desmond was called ‘Áine’s king’ and Gerald himself ‘the son of fair Áine’s knight’. Gerald was said to have disappeared in the form of a goose, after a lifetime building up his reputation as a magician. This legend shows how active the myth of Sovereignty was persisting right into the medieval era.
5. Áine Clí: ‘Radiant Brightness’. She is the goddess of the sun, presides over love and fertility, and is Sovereignty for the Eoganacht dynasty of Munster. She is remembered as a fairy queen in Munster. As the daughter of Manannán, she is said to return to her fathers house each night as the sun sets in the West. She is also called Áine i nErindain and Ériu Ain, showing the great overlap between her person and that of Ériu. The power of Sovereignty is associated with Áine, Ériu, Brighid, the Cailleach, Meadhbh Temrach (i.e. Tara, Teamhair), and of course Morrigan. Horse symbolism and chalice symbolism are usually related to Sovereignty, and Meadhbh’s name finds a cognate in the Hindu, Madhavi, a princess, who was sequentially, the consort of several kings.
6. Áine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has her seat at Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former cult are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If they were neglected she and her troops performed them, according to local legend. She is thus an old goddess of fertility, whose cult, even at a festival in which gods were latterly more prominent, is still remembered. She is also associated with the waters as a water nymph captured for a time as a fairy-bride by the Earl of Desmond. But older legends connect her with the Sídhe. She was daughter of Eogabail, king of the Sídhe of Knockainy, the grass on which was annually destroyed at Samhain by his people, because it had been taken from them, its rightful owners. Ailill Olom and Ferchus resolved to watch the Sídhe on Samhain-eve. They saw Eogabail and Áine emerge from it. Ferchus killed Eogabail, and Ailill tried to outrage Áine, who bit the flesh from his ear. Hence his name of “Bare Ear.” In this legend we see how earlier gods of fertility come to be regarded as hostile to growth. Another story tells of the love of Aillén, Eogabail’s son, for Manannán’s wife (Fand) and that of Áine for Manannán. Áine offered her favours to the god if he would give his wife to her brother, and “the complicated bit of romance,” as S. Patrick calls it, was thus arranged.
Source: The Religion of the Ancient Celts by J.A. MacCulloch (1911), Project Gutenberg eBook.
7. It was on the bank of the little river Camóg, which flows near Lough Gur, that the Earl of Desmond one day saw Áine as she sat there combing her hair. Overcome with love for the fairy-goddess, he gained control over her through seizing her cloak, and made her his wife. From this union was born the enchanted son Geróid Iarla, even as Galahad was born to Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake. When Geróid had grown into young manhood, in order to surpass a woman he leaped right into a bottle and right out again, and this happened in the midst of a banquet in his father’s castle. His father, the earl, had been put under taboo by Áine never to show surprise at anything her magician son might do, but now the taboo was forgotten, and hence broken, amid so unusual a performance; and immediately Geróid left the feasting and went to the lake. As soon as its water touched him he assumed the form of a goose, and he went swimming over the surface of the Lough, and disappeared on Garrod Island.
According to one legend, Áine, like the Breton Morgan, may sometimes be seen combing her hair, only half her body appearing above the lake. And in times of calmness and clear water, according to another legend, one may behold beneath Áine’s lake the lost enchanted castle of her son Geróid, close to Garrod Island—so named from Geróid or ‘Gerald’.
Geróid lives there in the under-lake world to this day, awaiting the time of his normal return to the world of men (see our chapter on re-birth, p. 386). But once in every seven years, on clear moonlight nights, he emerges temporarily, when the Lough Gur peasantry see him as a phantom mounted on a phantom white horse, leading a phantom or fairy cavalcade across the lake and land. A well-attested case of such an apparitional appearance of the earl has been recorded by Miss Anne Baily, the percipient having been Teigue O’Neill, an old blacksmith whom she knew (see All the Year Round, New Series, iii. 495-6, London, 1870). And Moll p. 80 Riall, a young woman also known to Miss Baily, saw the phantom earl by himself, under very weird circumstances, by day, as she stood at the margin of the lake washing clothes (ib., p. 496).
Some say that Áine’s true dwelling-place is in her hill; upon which on every St. John’s Night the peasantry used to gather from all the immediate neighbourhood to view the moon (for Áine seems to have been a moon goddess, like Diana), and then with torches (clíars) made of bunches of straw and hay tied on poles used to march in procession from the hill and afterwards run through cultivated fields and amongst the cattle. The underlying purpose of this latter ceremony probably was—as is the case in the Isle of Man and in Brittany (see pp. 124 n., 273), where corresponding fire-ceremonies surviving from an ancient agricultural cult are still celebrated—to exorcise the land from all evil spirits and witches in order that there may be good harvests and rich increase of flocks. Sometimes on such occasions the goddess herself has been seen leading the sacred procession (cf. the Bacchus cult among the ancient Greeks, who believed that the god himself led his worshippers in their sacred torch-light procession at night, he being like Áine in this respect, more or less connected with fertility in nature). One night some girls staying on the hill late were made to look through a magic ring by Áine, and lo the hill was crowded with the folk of the fairy goddess who before had been invisible. The peasants always said that Áine is ‘the best-hearted woman that ever lived’ (cf. David Fitzgerald, Popular Tales of Ireland, in Rev. Celt., iv. 185—92).
In Silva Gadelica (ii. 347-8), Áine is a daughter of Eogabail, a king of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and her abode is within the Sídhe, named on her account ‘Áine cliach, now Cnoc Áine, or Knockany’. In another passage we read that Manannán took Áine as his wife (ib., ii. 197). Also see in Silva Gadelica (ii, pp. 225, 576).
‘In some local tales the Bean-tighe, or Bean a’tighe is termed Beansídhe (Banshee), and Bean Chaointe, or “wailing woman “, and is identified with Áine. In an elegy by Ferriter on one of the Fitzgeralds, we read:—
Áine from her closely bid nest did awake,
The woman of wailing from Gur’s voicy lake,
‘Thomas O’Connellan, the great minstrel bard, some of whose compositions are given by Hardiman, died at Lough Gur Castle about 1700, and was buried at New Church beside the lake. It is locally believed that Áine stood on a rock of Knock Moon and “keened” (caoined) O’Connellan whilst the funeral procession was passing from the castle to the place of burial.’ — J. F. LYNCH.
Source: The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz.
Some accounts give her as the daughter of Manannán Mac Llyr, God of the hidden paths in the realms of the western ocean, while others say that she was no other than the great Morríghan herself.
Within Áine we see the triple aspect of the Morríghan in the powers attributed to her. As the Maiden, she has the ability to reward her devotees with the gift of poetry or with unfortunate madness. As a Mother deity, Aine is associated with lakes and wells with great powers of healing. Tobar-Na-Áine (Well of Áine) was credited with life-restoring powers. In her third aspect of the dark Goddess, she has the ability to appear to mortal men as a woman of great beauty known as the Leannan Sídhe, which means “Faery Lover”. — sacredfire.net
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