An Chraobh Airgid

God or goddess

Boann

Bóinn

The woman who became the river Boyne.

Open it on the full site There every name opens, and a web shows who is kin to whom.

Wife of Nechtan, and mother of Aengus by the Dagda. In the Dindshenchas she went in her pride to test the secret well in Nechtan’s síd, which none but Nechtan and his three cup-bearers dared go near, and walked three times round it: three waves burst out and struck her foot, her eye and her hand (the prose says a thigh, a hand and an eye). She fled to the sea with the water behind her, and was drowned at the river’s mouth; that flood is the Boyne, named for her. Inside the síd, the poem says, the river is called Segais. In The Dream of Aengus she is alive at the Brú, and searches Ireland for a year for the girl her son saw in his dream.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • Boann and the Secret Well Whoever looks into Nechtan’s secret well, his eyes burst. Boann walks three times round it to show it has no power over her, and the water rises.
  • The Dream of Aengus For a year a girl plays to Aengus in his sleep. When he finds her, she is one of thrice fifty girls on silver chains, and every other year she is a swan.
  • The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn A druid and a warrior woman hide a hunted boy in the woods. Years later a poet on the Boyne gives him a salmon to cook, and tells him not to taste it.

See also

  • The Dagda “The good god”: father, druid and king of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
  • Dindshenchas The lore of places.
  • Síd Nechtain Carbury Hill and Trinity Well. Nechtan’s hill, where the Boyne rises from the well that rose against Boann.

Sources

Medieval manuscript. Written down by Irish scholars between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.