The Mythological Cycle
Stories of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the god-like people said to have ruled Ireland before retreating into the hills and mounds of the land. The Children of Lir, turned into swans for nine hundred years, belong to this world.
Early Ireland
More than five thousand years of farmers, builders, scholars and settlers, each adding a thread. History first, then the myths that were told alongside it.
A timeline
- Before 3500 BCFact
The Céide Fields
Under the blanket bog of north Mayo lies a Stone Age farming landscape: stone-walled fields laid out more than 5,000 years ago. It is one of the most extensive Neolithic field systems known anywhere. The people who built it were farmers who had crossed from Britain and the continent, bringing cattle and crops with them.
- About 3200 BCFact
Newgrange
The great passage tomb at Brú na Bóinne in Meath is older than the stone circle at Stonehenge and the pyramids at Giza. For a few days around the winter solstice, the rising sun shines through a box above the entrance and lights the inner chamber for about seventeen minutes. Brú na Bóinne became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.
- From about 500 BCFact
The Iron Age and the Gaelic world
Ireland shared in the art and culture archaeologists call La Tène, seen in the swirling carving of the Turoe Stone near Loughrea, Co. Galway. Scholars still debate whether this “Celtic” culture arrived with settlers or spread through trade and contact. Society was organised into small kingdoms called túatha, bound by an elaborate native law later known as Brehon law, which aimed to restore balance through compensation rather than punishment.
- From about the 4th century ADFact
Ogham
Ireland’s first writing: strokes and notches cut along the edge of standing stones, mostly recording names. Several hundred ogham stones survive, most of them in the south-west, especially Kerry.
- 5th to 9th centuriesFact
Saints and scholars
Christianity arrived from Britain, carried in part by Patrick, a Briton brought to Ireland as a slave. Irish monasteries became centres of learning, then sent it back out: Colmcille founded Iona in 563, and Columbanus founded Bobbio in northern Italy in 614. The Book of Kells, made around 800 and probably begun on Iona, is now kept at Trinity College Dublin.
- 795 to 1014Fact
The Vikings
The first recorded Viking raid on Ireland came in 795. In 841 Norse settlers built a fortified harbour at Dublin, and later towns grew at Waterford, Wexford and Limerick. Raiders became traders and neighbours: Irish took words from Old Norse, among them margadh (market) and pingin (penny). At Clontarf in 1014, Brian Boru’s forces won a great battle, though Brian himself was killed.
- From 1169Fact
The Normans
In May 1169 a Norman force landed at Bannow Bay in Wexford, invited by Diarmait Mac Murchada, the deposed king of Leinster. Strongbow followed in 1170 and married Diarmait’s daughter, Aoife. The Normans built castles and walled towns, Galway among them. Over generations many Norman families took up the Irish language, law and custom. In Galway, fourteen merchant families became known as the Tribes, a name first used as an insult that the families came to wear with pride.
The four cycles of myth
These stories were written down by medieval scribes, drawing on far older oral tradition. Read them in the original through CELT, or find local versions in the Dúchas folklore collection.
The Ulster Cycle
The warrior tales of Ulster, centred on Cú Chulainn. Its great epic, the Táin Bó Cúailnge, tells how Medb, queen of Connacht, went to war over a prized brown bull.
The Fenian Cycle
Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna, a band of hunter-warriors. Fionn gained his wisdom by tasting the Salmon of Knowledge. His son Oisín went to Tír na nÓg, the land of youth, and returned to find three hundred years had passed.
The Kings’ Cycle
Tales of legendary and half-historical kings, such as Cormac mac Airt and Niall of the Nine Hostages, along with the story of Suibhne, the king who became a wild man of the woods.