An Chraobh Airgid
In a dark chamber a luminous girl stands at the head of a sleeping young man's bed, playing a small harp.

The Mythological Cycle

The Dream of Aengus

Aislinge Óenguso

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.

Medieval manuscript · 7 minutes to read

Read it on the full siteThe paintings change as you read, and every name, place and Irish word opens.

I The Timpán

Aengus, the Mac Óc, son of the Dagda, was asleep one night when he saw something at the head of his bed. It was a girl, coming toward him, and she was the most beautiful in Ireland.

He reached for her hand, to draw her in beside him. Before he could touch her she sprang away from him, and she was gone, and he could not tell who had taken her from him.

He lay there until morning, and his mind would not settle. That was the start of his sickness: a shape he had seen and never spoken to. No food went into his mouth that day.

The next night she came again. She had a timpán in her hand, the sweetest that ever was, and she played to him until he slept. 1 In the morning he would not eat.

So it went for a whole year. Every night she came and played for him, and every morning she was gone. He told no one. By the end of the year he was wasting away, and nobody knew why.

They gathered the physicians of Ireland to him. Not one of them could say what was wrong.

At dawn an old physician leaning on his staff reads the smoke rising from a round house where a young man lies sick.

II Fergne

Then they sent for Fergne the physician. Fergne could look into a man’s face and see the sickness in him. He could look at the smoke rising from a house and tell how many lay sick inside. 2

He looked at Aengus, and he took him aside.

You have fallen in love, he said, with someone you have never met. 3

You have found my sickness out, said Aengus. And he told him everything. A girl came to him in the night, the most beautiful in Ireland and the finest to look at. She had a timpán in her hand, and every night she played it to him.

No matter, said Fergne. She has been chosen for you. We will send for Boann, your mother, to come and speak with you.

Boann came, and Fergne told her how it stood: her son had a sickness that nobody knew. He must be in his mother’s care now, Fergne said, and you must have the whole of Ireland searched for a girl of the shape he saw.

So Ireland was searched. For a whole year Boann looked for a girl of that shape and that face, from one end of the country to the other.

At the end of the year, nothing like her had been found.

At dusk lights stream from the open door of a green mound on a mountainside as a king comes out to meet riders.

III The King of the Munster Sídhe

They called Fergne back. We have found no help in this, Boann told him.

Send for the Dagda, said Fergne. Let him come and speak to his son.

The Dagda came. Why have I been called? he said.

To advise your son, said Boann. It is better that you help him. It would be a pity for him to die. He is wasting for a love he has never met, and there is no help for him.

What good is talking to me? said the Dagda. I know no more than you do.

You know more, said Fergne. You are king of all the sídhe of Ireland. Send to Bodb, king of the sídhe of Munster. His knowledge is famous through the whole of Ireland.

So the Dagda’s people went south to Bodb, and he made them welcome. We have news, they said. Aengus son of the Dagda has been wasting for two years. He saw a girl in his sleep, and no one knows where in Ireland she is. The Dagda bids you search all Ireland for a girl of that shape and that face.

She will be looked for, said Bodb. It will take me a year to be sure.

At the end of the year they went back to Bodb’s house at Síd ar Femen. I have been through the whole of Ireland, Bodb said, and I have found her. She is at Loch Bél Dracon, at the Harps of Cliach. 4

On a lake shore a long line of girls linked by silver chains walks by, one a head taller than the rest, as a young man watches.

IV Thrice Fifty Girls

The news went to the Dagda: the girl was found. Bodb asked that Aengus come to him, to see whether she was the one he had seen.

So Aengus was brought south in a chariot to Síd ar Femen. Bodb held a great feast for him, and they were three days and three nights at it. Then Bodb said: Come out now, and see if you know her.

They went on until they came to the lake. There they saw thrice fifty young girls, and the girl was among them. Not one of the others came higher than her shoulder. Between every two girls ran a chain of silver. She herself had a silver necklace at her throat, and a chain of burnished gold.

Do you know that girl? said Bodb.

I know her, said Aengus.

I can do no more for you than this, said Bodb.

No matter, said Aengus. She is the one I saw. I cannot take her away with me this time. Who is she, Bodb?

I know that well, said Bodb. She is Caer Ibormeith, daughter of Ethal Anbuail, from Síd Úamain in the country of Connacht.

Under a storm sky warriors lead a proud lord of the sídhe out of a green mound whose door stands broken open, with chariots behind them.

V The Storming of Síd Úamain

Aengus went home, and Bodb went with him to the Dagda and Boann at the Brú. They told everything: her shape and her face, and her name, and the names of her father and her grandfather.

That is no use to us, said the Dagda.

The best thing you can do, said Bodb, is go to Ailill and Medb. The girl is in their country.

So the Dagda went into Connacht with sixty chariots. The king and queen made him welcome, and for a whole week they feasted and drank ale together. Then the king asked him why he had come.

There is a girl in your country, said the Dagda. My son loves her, and he is sick for her. I have come to ask whether you will give her to him.

Which girl? said Ailill.

The daughter of Ethal Anbuail.

We have no power over her, said Ailill and Medb. We cannot give her to him.

Then have her father summoned, said the Dagda.

Ailill’s steward went to Ethal with the summons. I will not come, said Ethal. I will not give my daughter to the son of the Dagda.

That word was brought back to Ailill. He will not come, they said. He knows well why he is called.

No matter, said Ailill. He will come.

Then the household of Ailill and the army of the Dagda rose against the sí of Ethal Anbuail, and they laid the whole of it waste. They brought sixty heads out of it, and they brought Ethal with them, a prisoner, to Cruachan. 5

In a firelit hall a king and queen on their thrones question a bowed prisoner while a huge old god watches.

VI One Year a Bird

Give your daughter to the son of the Dagda, Ailill said to Ethal.

I cannot, said Ethal. There is a greater power in her.

What great power is that?

That is easily told. One year she is in the shape of a bird. The next year she is in the shape of a woman.

Which year will she be a bird?

That is not mine to tell, said her father.

Then your head is gone from you, said Ailill, unless you tell it.

Then I will tell you, said Ethal. This Samhain that is coming, she will be in the shape of a bird at Loch Bél Dracon. Beautiful birds will be seen with her there: there will be thrice fifty swans about her. 6

Then friendship was made between Ailill and Ethal and the Dagda, and Ethal was set free. The Dagda said his farewells and went home, and he told his son all that had happened.

Go to Loch Bél Dracon at Samhain, he said, and call her to you from the lake.

On a moonlit lake full of swans wearing silver chains, two white swans rise together into the night sky.

VII Samhain at the Lake

At Samhain Aengus went to Loch Bél Dracon. On the lake he saw thrice fifty white birds, with their silver chains, and gold about their heads.

Aengus stood on the shore in the shape of a man, and he called to her.

Come and speak with me, Caer!

Who is calling me? said Caer.

Aengus is calling you.

I will come, she said, if you swear on your honour that I may come back to the lake again.

I swear it, he said.

She came to him. He put his two arms around her, and they slept in the shape of two swans. Then three times they went round the lake together, so that his word to her would not be broken.

They rose from the water in the shape of two white birds, and they flew until they came to the Brú of the Mac Óc. There they sang together, and their singing put everyone in the Brú to sleep for three days and three nights.

The girl stayed with him after that.

That is how the friendship began between the Mac Óc and Ailill and Medb. And that is why, when they went out on the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Aengus went to them with thirty hundred men. 7

And that is the Dream of Aengus, son of the Dagda, one of the tales that go before the Táin.

At dawn two white swans fly side by side low over the Boyne toward a great grassy mound.

What the tale keeps

A face seen only in sleep, and years of looking for it. A mother searched Ireland for a year, and a king of the sídhe for another, and in the end two armies broke open a hill.

On the first night Aengus reached for her, and she was gone. At the end he stands on the shore and calls her by her name, and she comes on her own terms: that she may go back to the water. To keep his word, he becomes what she is. Two swans go three times round a lake at Samhain, when the hills stand open, and fly home.

The tale was kept as a prelude to a war. What it remembers is a suantraí: two voices, and everyone at the Brú asleep for three days and three nights.

Notes

  1. Müller’s English of 1878 calls it a cymbal, but the timpán had strings. “The Irish had a small stringed instrument called a Timpan, which had only a few strings” (P. W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, 1903): from three to eight, he says. ↩
  2. The smoke is in the Irish text; Müller’s English of 1878 misreads the line. The manuscript names the physician Fergne. Francis Shaw’s edition of 1934 changes him to Fíngen, physician of Conchobar. ↩
  3. Fergne’s words in the Irish are “Sercc écmaise ro carais”: you have loved a love in absence, someone you have never met. ↩
  4. Francis Shaw’s edition of 1934 reads Loch Bél Dracon oc Crottaib Cliach: the Lake of the Dragon’s Mouth, at the Harps of Cliach. The manuscript, as Müller printed it in 1878, has the singular, “occruitt Cliach”, and he translated it “the harp of Cliach”. ↩
  5. Müller’s English of 1878 leaves out the heads, and puts the king “in the caves of anxiety”. The Irish says Ethal was taken captive to Cruachan. ↩
  6. The Irish says “In t-samuin-se as nessam”: this Samhain that is nearest. Müller’s English of 1878 has “the next summer”. Some modern retellings make Caer a swan all year and a woman for one day at Samhain. The Irish says only that she is a bird one year and a woman the next. ↩
  7. The Irish says “tricha cét”, thirty hundred. Müller’s English has three hundred. ↩

Where the tale comes from

Medieval manuscript. An Old Irish prose tale, one of the fore-tales of the Táin. It survives in a vellum manuscript written about 1517 (British Library, Egerton 1782).

  • The tale survives in British Library MS Egerton 1782, a vellum manuscript written about 1517. The story is older than that: the twelfth-century Book of Leinster lists it second among ten remscéla, the fore-tales of the Táin Bó Cúailnge, with The Adventure of Nera and The Wooing of Emer.
  • Eduard Müller printed the Irish text with an English translation in Revue Celtique in 1878. His English is uncertain in places, and the notes say where the Irish differs.
  • Lady Gregory’s Gods and Fighting Men (1904) gives the whole story a single sentence: “it was in the time of Maeve of Cruachan that Angus set his love on Caer Ormaith, of the Province of Connacht”.
  • Like nearly all early Irish literature, it was written down and copied by Christian scholars. Unlike The Children of Lir, it has no saint and no bell in it: it leaves the old gods in their hills.

Sources

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