An Chraobh Airgid

God or goddess

The Dagda

An Daghda · Old Irish in Dagda

Say it: DAG-duh

“The good god”: father, druid and king of the Tuatha Dé Danann.

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

He owned a cauldron from which no company went away unthankful, and a club so heavy that its track was named after it. His harp came to him when he called it, and he played on it the three strains of Irish music. At Samhain, before the second battle of Mag Tuired, he met the Morrígan at the river Unshin. Bodb Dearg and Aengus were his sons.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • The Children of Lir A jealous stepmother, a druid’s wand, and four children who must live nine hundred years as swans.
  • 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 Fate of the Children of Tuireann Three brothers stone Lugh’s father to death. His price sounds small: three apples, a pigskin, a spear, a hound’s whelp, and three shouts on a hill.
  • The Coming of the Tuatha Dé Danann They burned their ships on the shore, and for three days a druid’s mist hid them. Then they sent word to the people who held Ireland: half the land, or a battle.
  • 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 Second Battle of Mag Tuired A beautiful king who gives nothing, a stranger with every art, an eye no army can face, and a harp that plays sorrow, laughter and sleep.
  • The Song of Amairgen A poet sets his right foot on Ireland and sings that he is the wind on the sea. Three queens of the old gods meet him, and each asks for the island’s name.
  • The Wooing of Étaín A fly on the wind drops into a golden cup and is born again, remembering nothing. A thousand years on, her first husband comes to Tara to play for a kiss.

See also

  • Boann The woman who became the river Boyne.
  • Brigid Saint, and perhaps goddess, of 1 February.
  • Brú na Bóinne Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. The mansion of the Boyne: a tomb older than the pyramids, and a house of the gods.
  • Imbolc The start of spring. Brigid’s day, and the first stirring of the lambs.
  • Indech King of the Fomorians at the second battle of Mag Tuired.
  • Samhain The start of winter. The night the mounds stand open.
  • The Three Strains Sorrow, laughter and sleep: the three kinds of Irish music.

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.