An Chraobh Airgid

Treasure

The Silver Branch

An Chraobh Airgid

The token of the Otherworld. This site takes its name from it.

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

Bran woke to find one in white blossom beside him. Cormac was given one with three golden apples, and “men sore-wounded, or women in childbed, or folk in sickness would fall asleep at the melody which was made when that branch was shaken.” (Stokes, 1891) Whoever holds it has already been invited across.

In the tales

  • Cormac and the Silver Branch A grey-haired stranger brings Cormac a silver branch whose music puts every sorrow to sleep. The price: his daughter, his son and his wife.
  • The Voyage of Bran Music puts Bran to sleep, and he wakes beside a silver branch in blossom. He is gone a year, he thinks. At home he is already an old story.

See also

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.