An Chraobh Airgid

Treasure

The Crane Bag

corrbolg

Manannán’s bag of treasures, full at high tide and empty at the ebb.

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

Aoife, daughter of Dealbhaoth, was turned into a crane by a jealous rival, Iuchra, and lived two hundred years in the house of Manannán. When she died he made a bag of her skin and kept in it every precious thing he had: his shirt and knife, the smith Goibhne’s girdle, the King of Scotland’s shears, the King of Lochlainn’s helmet, the bones of Asal’s swine. “When the sea was full, its treasures were visible in its middle: when the fierce sea was in ebb, the Crane-bag in turn was empty.” (Duanaire Finn, tr. Eoin MacNeill, 1908)

See also

  • Aoife Lir’s second wife, who turned his children into swans.
  • The filid Poets, seers and keepers of lore, ranked in seven grades.
  • Goibniu The smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
  • Manannán mac Lir “Son of the sea”: lord of the Otherworld across the water.

Sources

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

Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.