THE STRANGER COMES TO
TARA
by - Dáithí Ó
hÓgáin
The ancient feis Temro (’Feast of Tara’),
seems to have been held only once in the reign of a king,
and its purpose was to sacralise and proclaim his right
to the kingship. The residue of this early Tara cult had
a huge effect on Irish tradition. All the literary
sources, in their backward look onto the prehistoric era,
portray it as a sacred and consequently a royal centre.
It was there and in its vicinity of the Boyne valley that
they locate the most crucial decisions governing the
culture, as well as many of the most important mythical
events.
I would suggest that a basic element in the ritual of
kingship at Tara was that the father-deity, called
usually an Daghdha, represented the sun, and that the
conceit was for that solar figure to bestow the kingship
for a while on the reigning monarch. The actual wealth of
the kingship was symbolised as a woman who proffered ale
to the king. From this format comes much of the ritual
material and of the nomenclature which storytellers and
writers developed into the Irish narrative lore which has
come down to us from the Middle Ages. This mediaeval
process was the development of ritual into romance. What
I am concerned with here is one aspect of this complex in
Irish narrative tradition - the result of some long-lost
rhetoric's used in the inauguration of Tara kings. To
judge by the débris in story - the picture of a
brilliant stranger ushering in a new era - such
rhetoric's must have been devised by minds not only
capable of much imagination but also of no small amount
of flattery.
The primordial battle:
Writing of the Gaul's, Julius Caesar stated that they
most worshipped a god whom he equated with the Roman
Mercurius. ‘They declare him the inventor of all
arts, the guide for every road and journey, and they deem
him to have the greatest influence for all money-making
and commerce’. All the evidence points to Lugh (in
Celtic, Lugus) as the deity in question. Sanctuaries with
dedications to this personage have been discovered
throughout Gaulish territories, and the Celtic placename
Lugudunon (’fortress of Lugus’) survives in
many forms, for example Lyon, Laon, Lauzun, Laudun,
Loudon, and Leiden. His cult appears to have been
introduced into Ireland, directly from Gaul or via
Britain, and it soon replaced earlier harvest lore and
became the nexus of one of the four cardinal points of
the Irish year. A glossary compiled in the 9th century,
which embodies much ancient lore, explains Lughnasadh as
‘an assembly held by him (i.e. Lugh) at the
beginning of harvest each year’, and another early
source identifies this assembly as the great fair of
Tailtiu (Teltown in Co Meath). The origins of various
communal activities relating to festive celebrations were
also attributed to him - such as ball-games,
horse-racing, and the Irish form of chess.
Irish tradition at all stages represents Lugh as slaying
his maternal grandfather, who was a tyrant. This must
derive, together with the harvest lore, from the cult of
Lugus among the Continental Celts, as it conforms to a
myth-pattern which was prevalent among the ancient
peoples of the Mediterranean. Since the Greeks knew the
plot, it is feasible to assume that the Celts of southern
Gaul borrowed it from the long-established Greek colony
at Marseilles and applied it to their own harvest-god
Lugus, who - under the designation Esus - was reputed to
engage in great atmospheric contests with the thunder-god
Taranos.
The fullest description of Lugh is found in an
11th-century Irish text Cath Maige Tuired (’the
Battle of Moytirra’). The text incorporates
material written down several centuries earlier, and it
describes the events surrounding what became known as the
second battle of Moytirra. It tells of the relations
between the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the
Fomhóire. In an attempt to establish peace between
these two groups, one of the Fomhóire leaders
called Balar gave his daughter Eithne to a young man of
the Tuatha Dé called Cian, ‘and she bore him
the child of accomplishment, that is, Lugh’. Time
passed by, and when the Tuatha Dé were oppressed
by the Fomhóire they rebelled. The Fomhóire
then gathered a massive force in the northern zones of
the world and, under the leadership of Balar, prepared to
invade Ireland.
The Tuatha Dé were at Tara, planning the defence,
when their doorkeeper saw a handsome young warrior
approaching. The newcomer announced himself as Lugh, and
was told by the doorkeeper that he could not enter the
citadel without having an art. Lugh said that he was a
builder, but the doorkeeper replied that they already had
a builder and did not require another. Lugh said that he
was a smith, but got a similar reply. Likewise when he
said that he was a champion, harper, warrior, poet,
historian, magician, physician, cupbearer, and brazier.
Then Lugh said: ‘Ask the king if he has one man who
is skilled in all these arts, and if he has I will not
enter Tara.’ The doorkeeper told the king that a
stranger had arrived who was ‘the man of every
single art’, and Nuadhu commanded that he be
allowed to enter, ‘because a man like that has
never yet come into this fortress’. When he
entered, Lugh performed a prodigious feat by throwing a
great flagstone over the wall of the building, and then
he played magical music on the harp.
It is likely that earlier Celtic tradition portrayed this
deity as being particularly suited to a leader’s
role, for in Irish he is known as Lugh Lámhfhada -
the epithet meaning ‘long-armed’, a suitable
image for a good protecting king. The mediaeval
literature, in its own fanciful way, echoes something of
this by describing how Conn, a mythical king of Tara,
once had a vision while in the company of his druids and
poets. In the vision he found himself in a wonderful
house in the company of a very handsome man and a
beautiful woman. The stranger explained that he was Lugh
and that the woman was Sovereignty. She gave a drink to
Conn, to indicate that he was the king, and Lugh foretold
a long list of kings who would succeed him.
The kingship of Tara:
Tara was a sacred centre from time immemorial, and it was
situated in the richest part of Ireland. Accordingly,
great prestige attached to the gaining of the kingship
there. In reality, the ancient kings would have come to
power through a combination of factors - such as wealth,
diplomacy, and fighting - but no doubt they felt the
necessity to legitamise their position. In this way, a
compromise had to be reached between personal ambition
and social convention. On the conventional side of the
equation, the rituals of installation were of great
importance, enacting as they did the right of the king to
his throne and the right of his people to benefit from
him. To guarantee all of this, the involvement of
otherworld forces - even if contrived - was necessary,
and what the mediaeval literature tells of ritual echoes
this. For example:
This is how they did the bull-feast : a white bull was
killed and one man consumed his fill of its meat and of
its soup, and he slept after that meal, and a charm of
truth was sung by four druids over him, and it would be
revealed to him then in a vision the identity of the man
to be made king, as to his form and his appearance and
the nature of the actions he would do.
We note here the parallel between the white bull and the
bulls of the same colour sacrificed by the ancient
Gaulish druids and with the early lore of white cattle in
Ireland. Such animals and their colour reflected both
prosperity and benign otherworld forces. The king, having
been selected at the direction of spiritual forces, was
no longer an ordinary man and must exercise the wisdom
and caution appropriate to his office. His reign itself
was something of a ritual, and his behaviour and actions
were invested with supernatural import. One text
describes sacred prohibitions which were on the king of
Tara:
The sun must not rise upon him in his bed in the plain of
Tara. He must not traverse the plain of Cuilleann after
sunset. He must not launch his ship on the next Monday
after Bealtaine (May-feast). He must not leave the track
of his army on the plain of Maighean on the Tuesday after
Samhain (November-feast).
Some of the details here may be mediaeval fancy, but it
is significant that emphasis is on the sun and also on
the ancient two-part division of the year. The strong
suggestion is that the reign of a king was brought into a
causal relationship with the sun and the year-cycle, thus
reflecting a religious myth which concerned agricultural
welfare. Another text stresses that rituals of kingship
symbolised natural productivity. This is a literal
translation:
There was a king’s chariot at Tara. Two steeds of
one colour, who were never before harnessed, were yoked
to the chariot. He to whom the sovereignty of Tara was
not due, the chariot would tilt up before him so that he
could not control it, and the steeds would rear up at
him. And there was a king’s mantle in the chariot -
he to whom the sovereignty was not due, the mantle was
too big for him. And there were two flag-stones in Tara -
Blocc and Bluigne. He whom they accepted, they would open
before him so that the chariot would go between them. And
Fál was there, the stone penis, at the head of the
course - he to whom the sovereignty of Tara was due, the
Fál used to call against the axle of the chariot
so that all heard it.
The imagery here is redolent of sexual intercourse, and
it may be viewed as a reflection of the primordial mating
of sun and soil. This would mean that the kingship was
synonymous with the life-giving forces, and the
importance attributed to the Lia Fáil as a
wondrous gift of the Tuatha Dé can therefore be
explained as a rationalisation of ancient ritual. This
explanation dovetails with the general tendency by which
early ritual practices of ancient times are reflected as
epical motifs in the literary period.
The Érainn at Tara:
The story in which the sacred rituals of Tara are
described was committed to writing in the 8th century AD,
and is principally concerned with the accession to that
kingship of a hero called Conaire, of the ancient
Érainn people. His name probably signified
‘warrior-lord’. There are interesting hints
of a social dimension to the legend of Conaire - we read
of how he gained the throne through the aid of druids and
satirists and hornblowers, and through the aid of an army
which came from a tumulus. Thus the role of priestly
caste and of ceremony, as well as of the otherworld
community, is expressed as crucial to the kingship. The
ritual practices associated with the reign of a king are
clarified by a version of the story which uses the whole
life-span of Conaire to symbolise his sacred office.
According to this, the princess Mes Buachalla was
abandoned as a child and was raised by a herdsman. When
she grew up, she was betrothed to the Tara king
Eterscéle. On the night before her wedding, a
stranger came to her in the form of a bird and, laying
aside his feathers, made love to her. He told her that
she would have a son and that this son should not kill
birds. After she was married to the king, she gave birth
to the child Conaire, and he was taken to be the son of
Eterscéle. He was put into fosterage away from
home, along with three sons of a champion called Donn
Désa. The boy Conaire possessed three great skills
- he had great hearing, seeing, and wisdom in giving
judgements. In time, king Eterscéle died and his
followers assembled for the ‘bull-feast’ to
select a new king. The man performing the ritual saw in a
vision ‘a stark-naked man, as night ended, on the
road to Tara with his stone in his sling’.
Meanwhile, Conaire had been travelling towards Áth
Cliath (Dublin) in his chariot, when he saw huge
white-speckled birds. He followed them as far as the sea,
with the intention of shooting at them from his sling,
and they suddenly turned and faced him with spears and
swords. One of them protected him, telling him that it
was his father, and reminding him that he was forbidden
to cast at birds. The bird further instructed him to go
to Tara. He did so, naked and at daybreak, and was met by
men who put a garment on him and brought him to the
citadel to be installed as king. Then Conaire revealed
the prohibitions which the bird-man had put on him, as
follows:
You must not go right-handwise around Tara or
left-handwise around Breagha; you must not hunt the wild
animals of Cernae; you must not venture each ninth night
out of Tara; and you must not stay in a house from which
firelight can be seen to emerge after sunset or can be
seen from outside; and three reds must not precede you to
the house of Derg; and no plunder must be taken in your
reign; and a company of one woman or one man must not
come to you in your house after sunset; and you must not
intervene in a quarrel between two of your servants.
During the reign of Conaire there was an abundance of
wealth and peace, and the weather was wonderfully calm.
Eventually, however, he broke all of the sacred
prohibitions which had been placed on him and he was
slain in a scene reminiscent of Greek tragedy.
This lore seems to preserve several elements of ancient
belief in Ireland, though these elements are couched in
narrative form. The role of the birds in the story might
be interpreted as a conceit that birds in certain
contexts carried messages from the heavens to the earth.
The author of this text seems to have regarded them as
the form which the otherworld beings take in their
relationship with Conaire. It is they who impose the
prohibitions on him which limit his activities as king.
Significantly, the text states, after he had broken some
of the prohibitions, that ‘he was on this account
the king whom the spectres banished’. The word used
for spectres here, siabrai, is used in another text on
his accession, viz. ‘that was the Conaire whom
spectres brought to the kingship’. The parallelism
between the two phrases is striking, and expresses the
notion that just as a king was appointed by the spiritual
powers he was also deposed by them.
The coming of Conaire to Tara is told as the adventure of
an ancient hero, but the story-line is based on rituals
concerning the installation of a king. It is likely that
the basic idea was that the sun - symbolised as the
bird-father - appointed the king to rule as its ritual
son. Accordingly, the prohibitions, which are placed on
Conaire and which he dramatically breaks, are echoes of
ideas centering on the sacred rules which kept the
community in equilibrium with the natural and cosmic
realms. The fire within the king’s household would
be a symbol of the king’s own reign, and it should
not be seen to contend with the heat of the sun just as
the reigning king should accept the ultimate mastery of
the heavenly body. Finally, the hostel in which he meets
his death belongs to Da Derg, which name can be
translated as ‘the Red God’, suitable as a
designation of the sun as god of the underworld. The
’son’ of the sun was destined to be favoured
only for a while.
The Leinstermen at Tara:
It has been suggested that in the prehistoric background
lies a memory of how the Leinstermen first took Tara from
the Érainn. All indications are that the Laigin
(’Leinstermen’) had possession of Tara some
centuries before the Christian period. Their legends told
of the mythical king Labhraidh, whose name literally
meant ‘he speaks’ and may reflect the duty of
a sacred king to make solemn pronouncements. He was
sometimes referred to as Labhraidh Lorc (the epithet here
meaning ‘fierce’). The actual establishment
of their kingship, which by implication in the Conaire
story is connected with the taking of Tara, seems to have
been a matter of great ritual importance to the
Leinstermen. According to tradition, Conaire was slain in
a hostel by besiegers who had Leinster associations.
Another regnal story, which survives in a verse fragment
from the 6th century AD, tells of a parallel victory
gained by the Leinstermen in a siege. The location of
this action is at Dind Ríg (at the moat of
Burgage, south of Leighlinbridge in Co Carlow) and the
Leinster leader was Labhraidh himself. The later
literature amplifies the description. We read that
Loeghaire Lorc was king of Tara, but that he was
assassinated by his jealous brother Cobhthach Coel. The
latter also poisoned Loeghaire’s son Ailill, and
then usurped the kingship. Ailill had a young son who
never spoke and was therefore known as Moen (’the
dumb’). While playing hurley one day he was struck
on the shin and cried out in pain. The other players
remarked in astonishment that ‘the dumb
speaks’ (labhraidh Moen), and this as a result
became the name of the youth. Later, Cobhthach asked his
poets who was the most generous man in Ireland, expecting
that they would give the honour to him, but they replied
‘Labhraidh Moen’. Overcome with jealousy, the
usurper then banished Labhraidh from the country. The
young man was very successful abroad, however, and
brought an army back to Ireland with him and laid siege
to Cobhthach at the strong fortress of Dind Ríg.
The fortress was set on fire, and all within perished.
Thus was the kingship gained by Labhraidh.
This burning is likely to be an echo from some ritual. In
the mediaeval literature, the mythical warrior Fionn mac
Cumhaill, comes as a young stranger to Tara and saves the
citadel from the fire-breathing spirit Aillén.
Fionn (earlier, Find) was very much a product of Leinster
tradition, and his alter-ego Find File was represented as
an ancient Leinster king. It would be logical to consider
brightness and wisdom - as indicated by the name Find -
to be traits proper to a king, and the Leinstermen may
therefore have dramatised the gaining and loss of
kingship by a fire ritual. Fire, like Labhraidh, was both
startling and fierce. Apart from this portrayal of a
basic or original king-type, the Leinstermen laid
particular stress on another reputed king of theirs,
called Cathaoir Mór, whose reign the
pseudo-historians put down variously to the 2nd, 3rd, and
4th centuries AD. The name Cathaoir Mór meant
‘great battle-lord’ and may in fact have been
a title borne by Leinster kings at Tara for, as we have
seen, the sovereignty there was a matter of acute
contention.
The Connachta kingship:
Around the year 400 AD, the whole plain of Meath was
taken from the Leinstermen by an ascendant sept called
Connachta. In taking possession of Tara, these new rulers
also took over the cult of the place. One obscure figure
whom the Connachta used in their propaganda was Cormac.
From the frequent occurrences of variants of this name in
early Leinster genealogies, it would appear that the lore
of Cormac was borrowed by the Connachta from their
predecessors at Tara. By the 6th or 7th century AD a
special legend had been developed by the Connachta
concerning this character, whom they called Cormac mac
Airt. Most of the motifs in the legend of Cormac have the
marks of borrowing from Christian and Latin sources, but
there are a few aspects which reflect earlier native
ideology. Principal among those are the imagery of the
‘true’ king who gives wise judgements.
According to the epical biography, on the night before
battle, king Art slept with the daughter of the druid Olc
Aiche. Her name was Achtan and, before he left, Art gave
her as tokens his sword and a golden ring. He was slain
in the battle next day, and his foe Lughaidh mac Con took
the kingship. Achtan gave birth to her baby, Cormac, but
she had to endure several trials, as the usurper’s
forces were continually trying to take and kill her
child. On reaching the age of thirty, his
druid-grandfather told Cormac that a certain day was
auspicious for an attempt at gaining the kingship. Taking
the sword and ring of his father Art, he set out for Tara
all alone. As he approached the citadel, he met with a
woman who was crying because the king had declared her
sheep forfeit for grazing in the queen’s field of
woad. ‘One shearing for another would have been
more just!’ said Cormac. When word of this was
brought to Lughaidh, the usurper recognised the truth of
the judgement. He suspected that this was a son of Art
and realised that his own false reign was at an end.
Therefore, when Cormac came, Lughaidh received him and
handed over the kingship to him.
The great king of the historical Connachta in the early
5th century AD was Niall Naoi-Ghiallach (’Niall of
the Nine Hostages’), whose epithet referred to the
sureties taken by him from other groups for his
overlordship. Niall is described as the son of Eochu
Muighmheadhon (the sobriquet here meaning ‘lord of
slaves’) and a captive girl from Britain called
Caireann. This may reflect historical fact. We read that
Caireann was resented by Eochu’s legal wife, who
gave her servile tasks to perform, and that Niall was
therefore born in the open air. Birds attacked the baby,
but the poet Torna took up the child, named it
‘Niall’ and prophesied its future greatness.
Niall was reared by the poet, and when he was of age
Torna brought him to Tara. A druid-smith was appointed to
compare Niall with Eochu’s four legal sons, and he
did this by setting fire to a forge where the young men
were working. Each of them saved an implement from the
fire, but the anvil was saved by Niall who thereby showed
his superiority. Then follows a most striking vignette of
the goddess of sovereignty. The five young men went
hunting, and in the wilderness one of them went to fetch
water. Coming to a well, he found an extremely ugly hag
there guarding it. She asked him for a kiss, but he
refused. His three brothers similarly refused, and as a
result they got no water. Finally, Niall came to the
well:
‘Water to me, woman!’ said Niall. ‘I
will give it,’ she said, ‘and give me a
kiss!’ ‘I will lie with you as well as giving
a kiss!’ He threw himself on her then and gave her
a kiss. Then, when he looked on her after that, there was
not in the world a maiden with a more pleasant deportment
or mien than her… ‘You are multishaped,
woman,’ said the youth. ‘That is true,’
said the woman. ‘Who are you?’ said the
youth. ‘I am sovereignty,’ she said, and
spoke thus: ‘O king of Tara, I am the sovereignty;
I will tell you its great value!’
She then explained to him that ‘just as you saw me
loathsome, beastly, and horrible at first and beautiful
at last, so is the sovereignty, for seldom is it gained
without battles and conflicts, but at last a person finds
it beautiful and comely’. This account makes use of
a common folktale plot concerning a magical transforming
kiss, but the plot is used to illustrate the dual nature
of kingship, which must have been a very old concept. The
Tara goddess of sovereignty, called Meadhbh, was
described as being ‘half-red’ by nature, and
the very name of this goddess (Celtic Meduva) refers to
the ritual drink proffered to the new king. The word used
for such an inauguration was feis (literally
’spending of the night’), with the import
that the new king had sexual intercourse with the
goddess. All of the main themes of the Tara inauguration
rituals are therefore featured in this account of
Niall.
The Coming of St. Patrick:
The last great portrayal of a stranger coming to Tara
concerned the national saint. The historical Patrick must
have been a very courageous and determined man, but he
appears also to have been very shrewd in his dealings
with the Irish, and to have made himself acutely
sensitive to the structures of power which existed in the
country. Concerning the difficulties which he
encountered, and of the strategies adopted by him, the
following remarks of his are the nearest hints which he
gives to the actual situation: ‘And all that time I
used to give presents to the kings, in addition to paying
wages to their sons who travel with me’. This is
not quite the same as the legendary accounts of the saint
given by later writers and storytellers. One thing,
however, which reflects reality is the emphasis placed by
tradition on Patrick’s opposition to sun-worship,
of which he certainly disapproved, as is clear from the
following discourse in his Confessio:
For that sun, which we see, rises daily at God’s
command for our sake; but it will never reign, nor will
its splendour abide…
Patrick’s contemporaries noted his insistence on
the contrast between ordinary physical light and the
light of heaven. So much so, indeed, that traditions
developed which used such imagery to show his triumph
over Irish paganism. Borrowing from the Confessio, one
early biographer, Muirchú, describes
Patrick’s youth, captivity, and escape, and then
goes on to tell in very dramatic terms of the
saint’s mission to Christianise the country. We
read that the druids of the high-king Laoghaire, son of
Niall, had foretold in verse the coming of such a one, an
‘adze-head’ who would triumph over the old
ways. Accordingly, Patrick arrived at Inbhear Dé
(Arklow), but then sailed northwards and did not come to
the midlands for quite some time.
Finally, he approached the sacred centre of pre-Christian
Ireland. It was Easter-tide, and the custom was for the
high-king to light a fire at Tara at that time. Anybody
who lit a fire before Laoghaire did so would forfeit his
life. Patrick, however, lit his own Easter fire at
Sláine (Slane, Co Meath), and when Laoghaire saw
this he rushed in anger, accompanied by his druids and
soldiers, to confront the newcomer. Patrick was ordered
to explain his behaviour, and he immediately got into
contention with the druids - one of whom, named Lochru,
he caused to be raised into the air and to fall and dash
his brains against a stone. Seeing this, Laoghaire and
his men tried to seize the saint, but darkness fell and
the ground shook, causing them to mistake each other for
him. Following this. Laoghaire pretended to do reverence
to Patrick and invited him to come to Tara. Patrick
however, suspected treachery. He blessed his eight
companions, and they disappeared into the wilderness in
the form of deer.
On the following day, the saint with five of his
companions entered Tara through closed doors as the royal
household was feasting. He was invited to join in the
feast, and a druid called Lucat Moel put a drop of poison
into his drink. Patrick blessed the drink, which then
froze, and the drop fell out. A contest in wondrous feats
between the saint and Lucat ensued. To show his power,
the druid covered the plain with snow, but he could not
remove it and Patrick had to do that for him. Similarly
with a fog which the druid brought. Finally they agreed
to a test of fire. A house was built, half of green wood
and half of dry wood. Lucat went into the green part,
wearing the saint’s chasuble, and Patrick’s
servant-boy Benignus went into the other part, wearing
the druid’s garb. The house was then set on fire,
with the result that Lucat was burned to death while
Benignus emerged unscathed. However, the druid’s
garment on Benignus was consumed, whereas Patrick’s
chasuble on Lucat was untouched. We are told
(inaccurately) that Laoghaire was then converted, but
Patrick told him that - on account of his previous
opposition - none of his descendants would be kings.
This whole account is lavishly ornamented with detail
from the Bible. The high-king and his cohorts are
expressly compared with the Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar and his satraps, and the author further
admits that his description of the fire-ordeal has been
influenced by the Book of Daniel. Also in the
author’s mind was the contest of Moses with the
magi of the Egyptian Pharaoh in Exodus, as well as that
of Elias with the priests of Baal in the Book of Kings.
The reference to green and dry wood echoes a passage in
Luke’s Gospel.
Such tradition portrays the druids in an impersonal and
ideological way. One early biographer, for instance, had
been shown a stone at Tara onto which Lochlethanu was
dashed after being miraculously lifted into the air by
Parick’s prayer. Another biographer tells this of
Lochru, and cannot hide his suspicion that the episode
was borrowed from the Acts of Peter, an apocryphal text
which has St. Peter overcoming the magician Simon Magus.
It is clear that, already by the 7th century, there was
an established tradition that Patrick had visited Tara.
It is quite conceivable that he did indeed do so, but how
he fared there in reality is a fact lost to history.
The idea that Tara was a source of renewal was not,
however, entirely lost, nor with it was the dramatic
picture of a victorious newcomer. During the Nine Years
War towards the end of the 16th century, for instance,
Aodh Ó Néill, Earl of Dungannon, made a
push towards the Pale, and the following was reported of
that to Dublin Castle:
Presently, he gathers all his forces and friends of
Ulster, besides some out of Connacht, and with these
makes incursions into the English Pale, even to the
county of Meath - coming to the hill of Tara, where the
old doating prophesy was that if O’Neill could come
and shoe his horse, he should be king of all Ireland.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin is
the Associate Professor of Folklore at Univercity College
Dublin, Ireland. He has been published extensively with
many publications on the subject of Irish Myth and
Folklore.
