An Chraobh Airgid
Newgrange at a frosty midwinter dawn: the white-fronted mound above the Boyne, its carved entrance stone and standing stones, long blue shadows across gold-lit frost.

Mide · Meath

Brú na Bóinne

Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth · Co. Meath

Say it: broo nuh BOH-nyuh

The mansion of the Boyne: a tomb older than the pyramids, and a house of the gods.

Open it on the full site There it is marked on the map of the five fifths, where the road of a tale can be traced.

Farming people raised the great mound of Newgrange around 3200 BC, with a passage nineteen metres long. Above its entrance a roof-box catches the sunrise at the winter solstice: for about seventeen minutes the light runs up the passage onto the chamber floor. Michael J. O’Kelly first saw it happen in 1967. The white quartz front seen today was rebuilt in the 1970s after his excavation, from quartz found fallen before the mound, and archaeologists still argue about whether it stood as a wall. Thousands of years later, storytellers made the Brú the house of the Dagda, or of Elcmar, until Aengus asked to have it for a day and a night, and then kept it, since all of time is made of days and nights. Somewhere on this river, Finnéces caught the salmon of knowledge.

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 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 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 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.
  • 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.
  • The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne Promised to the ageing Fionn, Gráinne puts the feast to sleep and lays a geis on Diarmuid to take her away. Fionn hunts them for sixteen years.

See also

  • Aengus Óg The young god of the Brú: lover and trickster.
  • Caer Ibormeith The girl Aengus saw in his sleep: a swan one year, a woman the next.
  • The Dagda “The good god”: father, druid and king of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
  • Diarmuid Ua Duibhne The Fianna’s great lover and champion, foster-son of Aengus.
  • Finnéces The poet who waited seven years for the salmon of knowledge.

Sources

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