An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Cairenn

Cairenn Chasdubh · Middle Irish Cairenn Casdub

Niall’s mother, made to draw the water of Tara.

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In the tale she is the daughter of Scál the Dumb, king of the Saxons, and her byname Casdub means curly-black; Geoffrey Keating calls her “daughter of the king of Britain” (tr. David Comyn and Patrick S. Dinneen, 1908). Mongfind hated her son Niall and kept her drawing the water of Tara, and she bore him on the green of Tara beside her pail, and dared not lift him from the ground. When Niall came back grown, with his foster-father Torna, he found her carrying water, and took her into Tara and dressed her in purple.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

See also

  • Teamhair The Hill of Tara. Seat of the high kings, and of the stone that cried out.
  • Torna The poet who found the newborn Niall on the green of Tara and fostered him.

Sources

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

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