Nabelcus
Continental Celtic god. This obscure divinity from the region of Vaucluse in France was associated by the Romans with their warrior god mars.
Name
Cosmological concept. The power of naming is commonly connected to spiritual prowess in many cultures, as is evidenced in the Christian myth in which the first humans, Adam and Eve, are granted the power to name all the animals they encounter. Bestowing a name on a child is an important act, one that Roman writers claim was conducted in Celtic Gaul by druids. Some Irish texts speak of a kind of baptism, with babies dipped in streams or dunked in holy wells as their names were given to them. This was not easily supplanted by the Christian rite; in the Hebrides, a long-lasting tradition called for children to be sprinkled with drops of water immediately upon birth, at which time a temporary name was granted the newborn.
In Celtic lands, where the power of the world was held primary, the very sound of a name was so important that to speak it was forbidden at certain times. While at sea, Scottish fishermen would not use the proper names of seabirds that they saw as threatening portents; similarly, names of villages were not mentioned, the places being referred to obliquely instead, apparently to protect those living there from potential harm from fairies or other spirits. Also in Scotland, people did not speak the name of a newborn child until it had been baptized and thus, presumably, protected from fairy kidnapping. The tradition of giving nicknames or pet names to people similarly arises from the belief that, if fairy people knew the real name of a loved person, that person would be in danger of being stolen away.
Names for fairyland
Many names for the otherworld are found in Irish and Scottish sources, although it is unclear whether these indicated geographically separate locations or are merely variant descriptions of the land’s features. The names describe the Otherworld as an abundant flatland, as in mag mell ("plain of honey") and mag mor ("great plain"), or as a submerged island, as in tir fo thuinn ("land under wave"). Perhaps the most common name was tir na nog ("land of youth"), which emphasized the unfading beauty of fairyland’s residents.
Names for the fairies
Folkloric motif. In places where the pre-Christian gods were demoted into fairies, these ancient powers are respected sufficiently that it is still considered dangerous to call them by their real names. Therefore euphemisms are used, some vague, others flattering: Them, the Other Crowd, the Good Folk, the Good Neighbors, even That Lot. In Scotland the common phrase was the Guid Folk, and on the Shetlands the Guid Neighbors, while the people of Wales used the term tylwyth teg, "the Fair Family." On the Isle of Man names for the fairies included Ny Mooinjer Veggey, "the Little Kindred"; Ny Guillyn Beggey, "The Little Boys"; and Yn Sleih Veggey, "the Little People." This verbal habit originated in Celtic beliefs about the power of the word. One famous tale describes how a man was kidnapped by the fairies simply for consistently using the word fairies rather than a euphemism when passing their abodes (see fairy kidnapping).
Names for the Otherworld
Folkloric motif. Although, unlike with fairies, there was no taboo against speaking of the otherworld, we nonetheless find many evocative names that describe the Celtic paradise: ildathach, "many-colored land"; mag mor, the "great plain"; mag mell, the "plain of honey"; Mag Mon, the "plain of sports"; Mag Rein, "plain of the sea"; tir fo thuinn, the "land under wave"; tir na nog, the "land of youth"; tir na mban, the "land of women"; and tir tairngiri, the "land of promise." These names sometimes are used of a specific Otherworld realm like the floating island inhabited by the great fairy queen niamh of the Golden Hair, but they are more generally interchangeable.
Nanny Button-Cap
British folkloric figure. A small sprite known in Yorkshire, Nanny Button-Cap was a good fairy who appears in some rhymes and stories; she was apparently a helpful sprite similar to a brownie.
Nar (Nair)
Irish goddess. An obscure goddess of this name ("modesty") is known from some texts to have offered a high king of Ireland great riches. She may be a form of the goddess of sovereignty more commonly known as Flaith.
Nar Thuathcaech
Irish hero. "Shame" is another name for the figure more commonly known as friuch, an argumentative swineherd reincarnated as the great bull donn cuailnge on whom the great queen medb of the western province of connacht set her sights. His name may derive from his role in setting in motion the great carnage related in the tain bo cuailnge, for it was his whisperings to Medb that encouraged her to marry ailill mac Mata, who in turn challenged her to prove herself equal to him, whereupon the great cattle raid on ulster was launched.
Nas (Naas)
Irish goddess or heroine. This obscure Irish goddess, known only as the wife of the great hero lugh, is familiar in Ireland today because of Naas, a prosperous town near Dublin that still bears her name. The place is said to have been the site of her death or burial. Its ancient importance is suggested by the buada or demand that the king at tara dine on hares from Naas, for which the town is called Naas na Ri, "Naas of the Kings." Reputedly Lugh instituted the great assembly (see oenach) of Teltown in honor of Nas, although most often that festival was said to have been organized to honor his foster mother, the goddess tailtiu.
Nasciens (Seraphe)
Arthurian hero. Once a pagan ruler named Seraphe, Nasciens ("knows nothing") took a new name when, blinded by his arrogant attempt to look upon the grail, he became a hermit monk who advised the knights who rode out in the quest of the sacred object.
Natosuelta (Nantosuelta)
Continental Celtic goddess. Her name has been translated as "mean dering river" and "winding brook," either one of which makes it clear that she is a goddess of fresh water. Like other Celtic river goddesses, she doubtless ruled the land of her watershed, in this case the River Trent in Britain. The Romanized images of this goddess do not stress her riverine nature. Rather, she is shown holding a pot— which could, arguably, hold river water but could also suggest that Natosuelta was a goddess of the household, for she was occasionally invoked as a protector of the home and hearth. Some images show her carrying a house on a sort of pole; on it perched a raven, common symbol of prophecy. A shrine to Natosuelta was erected at the Roman settlement of Ad Pontem (today, East Stroker in Nottinghamshire), where she was shown accompanied by an unnamed male deity. On the Continent, she was sometimes associated with the god sucellus, "the striker."
Nature
Cosmological concept. The Celtic love of nature has been noted by many writers, from ancient times to the present. However, it is important to note that the Celts, being radically polytheistic (see polytheism) and seeing divinity as lodged in this world rather than as separate from it, did not think of nature as we commonly do today. Nature was not evil or a source of temptation, as to many Christian believers who describe this world as a failed copy of the original paradise. Rather, this world was filled with beauty and splendor, as well as pain.
In one ancient Irish text, princesses eithne and fedelm of connacht asked st. patrick and his followers if their god was "in the heavens or on earth, in the sea, in the rivers, in the mountains, in the valleys." St. Patrick assured the girls that god was, indeed, in all those places, but the saint and the princesses, although in apparent agreement, meant quite different things. Patrick meant that a transcendent god, having created the world, still had power over it; the princesses intended no metaphor but expressed a belief in what is called immanent divinity, god found within nature rather than outside it.
A nature so suffused with divinity seems not to have been the vision of the Irish alone but to have been shared with their Celtic relations around Europe. Supernatural forces were believed to pervade the natural world, which was considered divine. The earth itself was typically feminine, a goddess, as were bodies of water, especially rivers. For this reason, the Celts worshiped out of doors, in sacred groves called nemetons rather than in roofed temples. The forces of nature were not always benign but could be threatening or even maleficent toward humans, who were not seen as separate from nature but as part of it.
Nechtan (Elcmar)
Irish god or hero. This relatively obscure god appears in the story of the goddess boand, whose river, the Boyne, was said to arise near a small hillfort called Sid Nechtain, "the fairy mound of Nechtan." Sometimes identified with the better-known god nuada, Nechtan was said to have lived originally in the great stone tumulus called the bru na boinne with Boand, his wife. But Nechtan was tricked by Boand, who wished to sleep with the powerful and well-endowed god, the dagda. They eloped together, and to hide the affair the Dagda made the sun stand still in the sky for nine months so that their child could be born before Nechtan realized what had happened. That son, aonghus Og, then tricked Nechtan into giving up possession of the great Bru na Boinne by claiming that he alone had been left out when fairy palaces were assigned. Thereupon, Nechtan moved to another fairy hill near the river’s source.
He lived there, some legends say, in the form of a salmon, although that figure is more commonly called find or fintan. The salmon lived on the nuts of wisdom dropped by magical hazel bushes that thrived at the river’s source. Anyone who could catch and eat the salmon would be gifted with all its wisdom. Nechtan has been connected with the continental Celtic god nodens, in whose shrine in Britain sculptures of hooked fish were displayed.
Nechtanebus
Irish hero. A supposed Egyptian pharaoh, he was through his daughter scota an ancestor of the Irish people. Scota married Mil, the wandering soldier whose children, the milesians, were Ireland’s last settlers, according to the mythological history called the book of invasions. Most scholars believe that work is not factually correct. Despite this doubt, there were indeed several pharaohs by the name of Nechtanebus. The name of the hero or god nechtan seems to be derived from this name.
Necromancy
Cosmological concept. There is some question as to whether the Celts employed what is today called necromancy—speaking with or raising the dead, sometimes with the intention of gathering information that only they possess. Folkloric tales describe witches or fairies as having this ability, but it is unclear whether normal people could attain it. In Irish texts we find a description of a long rite employed by a bard seeking to gain information through necromancy. Because parts of the greatest Irish epic, tain bo cuailnge, had been lost, the bard Senchan Torpeist did magic for several days that enabled him to raise the spirit of the great dead hero, fergus mac Roich, who had participated in the cattle raid that forms the subject of the poem. The poet managed the difficult feat, memorizing the missing verses and reciting them aloud to an assembly of other poets before dying of the effort.
Necthan Scene
Irish heroine. An obscure figure, she appears as the mother of several heroes who lost their lives to the ulster superhero cuchulainn.
Need-fire
Celtic ritual. fire was a potent symbol to the Celts, who viewed it as a seed or essence of life. Several times each year, fire festivals were held; these may have begun with the need of agricultural peoples to burn off stubble from fields and brush from cleared forests and later acquired a mythological significance as a solar symbol. In Ireland and on the Isle of Man, such festivals usually included the dousing of house fires throughout the land, to be later relighted from the sacral fires of the festival (see beltane).
There would also be times when it was felt necessary to call upon gods and other powers for assistance—when famine threatened, for instance, or when disease ran rampant among herds or humans, or when witchcraft was suspected (the latter was documented in Scotland into relatively recent times). Then the needed ritual fire would be lit, regardless of the season or date. House fires would be extinguished, and designated celebrants (druids, in ancient times) made fire with a wooden fire-wheel or with flint. Once the primary fire was burning, each local household would relight its hearth fire from it, thus spreading the intercessory ritual throughout the land.
In some cases, power was believed to come only from certain types of wood, which had to be rubbed together to create a spark for the need-fire. There were often complex rituals connected with the need-fire, such as that the spark had to be captured in hemp, which was then used to light a candle, which in turn lit a torch, and then finally a pile of peat or turf bricks. At times only married men were permitted to swivel the wooden fire-stakes against each other, suggesting a sexual symbolism to the fire-making that was apparently believed constrained by the men’s marital status. Water was sometimes made part of the ritual, with a cauldron being placed over the blazing fire; when it came to the boil, it would be sprinkled over homes, people, herds, or whatever was in need of protection.
Occasionally need-fires were lit for protection of women in childbirth, and for their children as well, for it was believed that when a newly lit need-fire blazed nearby, fairy kidnapping of infants was less likely than if the child were unprotected. The ritual of protection sometimes included carrying a blazing brand from the need-fire around the house or herd in order to purify and protect it.
The tradition of the need-fire lasted long in Celtic lands. It was recorded to have been lit in the year 1767 on the Scottish island of Mull, because a cattle disease was spreading rampantly and threatening the stock upon which people depended for food and livelihood. Despite the spread of Christianity and the demonization of ancient rites (the need-fire ritual was called "wicked" by local ministers), the people climbed the hill of Carnmoor with a wheel and some spindles made of oak, a tree sacred to the Celts. All the fires within sight of the hill were doused, and then the fire-wheel was spun in a sunwise direction until sparks flew from it. As this occurred, the witnesses chanted an incantation, whose words are not recorded. According to tradition, the wheel had to make fire before noon, presumably because the sun’s energy was waxing or growing stronger until then. For three consecutive days, hours of spinning did not produce sufficient sparks, so people stopped the process until the next day. When the need-fire was finally sparked into life, they took a heifer afflicted with the disease and sacrificed her, burning the diseased part in the blaze. All the hearth fires of the region were then lit from the need-fire, and the rest of the animal was roasted as a sacrificial feast to be shared.
The ritual of the need-fire was practiced by Germanic peoples as well as Celtic, as documented by the great folklorist Jacob Grimm. It is not clear whether the rite began with Germanic tribes and spread to nearby Celts, or the reverse.
Nehalennia
Continental Celtic goddess. One of the most important goddesses of the region we call the Netherlands was Nehalennia, a goddess so popular that many large monuments and carved inscriptions to her have been found in that relatively small geographical area. She was the center of a large, popular, and wealthy cult that involved not only Celts but Roman citizens as well. That she is little known in contemporary texts is probably the result of our ignorance of her mythology. No narratives about Nehalennia survive; we have only the many sculpted images dedicated to her, with their elaborate and quite consistent iconography, to use in interpreting what she meant to her people.
At two major cult sites on the North Sea, archaeologists have found temples filled with large monuments to her. One of these, on the Island of Walcheren near Domberg, emerged from the sea on January 5, 1647, as a storm ravaged the seacoast. When it subsided, a huge temple to Nehalennia, dated to the second or third century c.e., lay uncovered from the seaside dunes. More than two dozen altars and other monuments were part of the complex, which was unfortunately mostly destroyed by fire in 1848. Records show that much pottery and many coins were found on the site, suggesting commercial activity. It was a rich shrine, made of stone brought from Metz, more than 400 miles away in what is today Germany. Presumably Nehalennia was a special goddess to the sea traders who stopped in this ancient port for provisions, trade, and worship; that they believed she blessed or controlled their activities is clear from the wealth they lavished on her shrine.
Another shrine to Nehalennia was discovered more recently in 1979, when a fisherman working the waters of the Oosterschelde estuary near Colijnsplaat found fragments of altars to Nehalennia. Since then, almost a hundred artifacts have been found in the area, thought to be the temple called Ganuenta, which in late Roman times flooded and sank beneath the waters of the estuary. From these two sites with their wealth of statuary, inscriptions, and other artifacts, it has been determined that Nehalennia—despite our ignorance of her mythology—was a significant, perhaps the most significant, deity to the Celtic residents of the region.
She may have begun as the ancestral goddess of the local Celtic tribe, the Morini, but ultimately she was to become a goddess worshiped by the various travelers through the area, most of them sea merchants and sailing crews who made offerings to her for their continued safety on the often dangerous waters of the North Sea, where her worship seems to have been concentrated. Much of her iconography, not surprisingly, includes nautical imagery: boats, oars, rudders, shells, fish, dolphins, and sea monsters. She was typically shown as a strong young woman, usually wearing a little cape around her shoulders and a round cap, which have been interpreted as a local costume. Usually she was seated, although sometimes she stood with her foot resting on the prow of a ship or hauling a boat by a rope.
Nehalennia’s name has been translated as "leader" and "woman who steers," indicating that her position as goddess of seagoers did not limit her domain but expressed it symbolically. She has been described as a goddess of death, the one who brings her devotees safely home to an otherworld beyond this one, which was often imagined by the Celts as an island somewhere off in the western sea. Nehalennia was most often depicted with a dog, which in other contexts has been interpreted to represent a guardian of the dead. On most statues, these large beasts sit attentively at her feet, ears at the alert, looking more like guard dogs than pets but with a kindly rather than fierce expression on their canine faces.
In addition to her connections with the sea, Nehalennia was also associated with the productiveness of the land. She was depicted surrounded by symbols of abundance: the full cornucopia, as well as baskets of produce and grain; on the top of many of her altars were sculpted representations of heaped fruits, as though they had been piled upon her altar in offering. So predominant was this imagery that not a single image of Nehalennia has been found that does not include fruits on vegetables: she appears unconcerned with human or animal fecundity, focusing instead on that of the vegetative world.
This combination of nautical and agricultural imagery has been variously interpreted. As a goddess of commerce, Nehalennia naturally would have overseen the ships full of grain that were part of trade in those times; thus she may have been invoked for good harvests that would, in turn, lead to good profits. The imagery may have had a less selfish motivation, however, for Nehalennia may have been envisioned as a goddess of the world’s journey through the seasons. The fact that some of her altars show cosmic symbols such as sun and moon suggest that Nehalennia’s influence was much larger than mere commerce but included all kinds of abundance and prosperity, in this world and the Otherworld.
Nemain (Neman, Neamhan)
Irish goddess. One of a trio of war goddesses called the three Morngna, Nemain is the least known, the more prominent being badb ("scald crow") and morri-gan ("great queen" or "queen of phantoms"); Nemain’s name seems to mean "battle panic" or "frenzy of war." So frenzied did she make warriors that they sometimes mistook their friends for enemies, resulting in tragedies of the kind today called "friendly fire," in which a man is killed by his own comrades. She is described only briefly in various texts as confusing warriors with her weird cries. Like other war goddesses, she was imagined to take the form of a crow, which like other carrion eaters was often seen hovering over battlefields, waiting for a meal. Because her name may be connected to the Celtic word for an outdoor shrine, nemeton, she may represent the duty of warriors to protect sacred sites.
Nemed (Neimheadh)
Irish god. In the book of invasions, Ireland’s mythological history, we read of this man who was an early settler on the island. A direct descendant of the biblical Noah through his son Japheth, Nemed was also descended from the monster god of Britain, magog. Leaving his homeland of scythia, he arrived three decades after the mysterious people of partholon were wiped out by an unknown plague, but while the malevolent beings called the fomorians still raged through the land. Nemed had set off for Ireland with an armada of ships, but when his seamen saw a tower of gold on a shore along the way, they tried to land in order to enrich themselves. The sea was against them, however, and all the boats but that in which Nemed and his wife macha were traveling were dashed to bits.
Although Nemed kept on toward Ireland, it took 18 months of sailing before they reached landfall. Nemed’s people had to fight three battles to win the right to settle from the fierce Fomorians, but finally that monstrous race was defeated, and Nemed set them to work to build his palace, Rath Chinneich in Armagh. Once that effort was done, Nemed massacred the workers so that they could never build a palace better than his.
It was Nemed who, in honor of his wife Macha (the first of three goddesses or heroines by that name), cleared the first fields in the dense forests of the ancient island. As it happened, Nemed and his descendants, the Nemedians, did not long remain in Ireland. After Nemed’s death,the Fomorians paid back his attack on their people by forcing the Nemedians into servitude. When they tried to escape, their opponents called upon the winds and seas to crush the rebellion, and all but one of the Nemedian ships were overturned into the ocean.
That one carried Macha and Nemed’s son, fergus Lethderg, who moved to the next island to the east, where with his son Britan (after whom some claim the island was named; other sources cite the goddess britannia), established himself and became the ancestral father of the British people. Another descendant, Semeon, traveled as far as Greece, where he became the ancestor of the fir bolg, who returned to Ireland to fight the Fomorians again. Yet other descendants traveled far to the north where they became the tuatha de danann, returning to win Ireland from both the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians at the two battles of mag tuired.
Related to the Celtic word nemeton, which means "sacred place" or "grove," the name of this god or hero has been interpreted as meaning "sacred person" or even druid. Some historical facts seem to hide in the complex tales of the Book of Invasions. The Nemedians were apparently a Celtic people who had resided for some time in Ireland and then moved to Britain, where they remained powerful until the arrival of the Germanic peoples called the Angles and Saxons. Unfortunately, attempts to interpret the Book of Invasions in light of actual settlement patterns are invariably conjectural.
Nemetius
Continental Celtic god. The grammatical form of the Latinized name has led scholars to presume this figure to have been divine. Nemetius was honored at one site on the west bank of the Rhine. The name is connected to Celtic words for "sacred grove," found also in nemeton and nemetona.
Nemeton
Ritual site. The Celts worshiped not indoors but outside, in groves of trees and at other sacred sites. There are many evidences that trees played an important part in Celtic religious life, never more so than when rituals were held in forest clearings called nemetons, a name related to words in other Indo-European languages (Greek nemos, "glade," Latin nemus, "sacred") and may connect with the ancient Irish root, nem-, which meant "heaven" but referred symbolically to anything sacred.
Ancient classical authors made much of the outdoor location of Celtic rituals; Strabo described the oak groves in which the Galacians met, while Pliny the Elder and Tacitus both spoke of the same among continental Celts. Lucan, in a vivid passage, described groves "untouched by men’s hands from ancient times, whose interlacing boughs enclosed a space of darkness and cold shade," wherein "images of gods grim and rude were uncouth blocks formed of felled tree-trunks." He reported a legend that the trees would sometimes appear on fire or stricken by earthquake but would in reality be untouched and unharmed. Lucan also offhandedly mentioned that this sacred grove was leveled by Caesar because it was too near some buildings the Romans were erecting.
After Romanization, the word nemeton was sometimes used of a stone temple, when such buildings replaced the sacred groves that gave way to Roman axes. The word became part of the names of many Celtic settlements; thus we have Drunemeton near Ankara, Turkey, where the Celtic Galacians lived; Nematacum and Nemeton in Gaul, Nemetobrigia in the Celtic region of Spain called Galacia, Vernemeton in England, and Medionemeton in Scotland.
Nemetona
Continental Celtic and British goddess. The name of this goddess derives from nemeton, the Celtic word for "sacred grove," for the Celts never worshiped indoors but rather in the open air, especially in groves of trees that were considered to embody the sacredness of nature. Nemetona’s name, which has been translated as "she of the sacred grove" or "the goddess of the shrine" may be related to that of the Germanic tribe, the Nemetes, whose ancestral goddess she may have been; she has also been connected etymologically to the Irish war-goddess nemain, suggesting that part of the role of the warrior was to protect sacred sites. There is some evidence that in parts of Gaul, Nemetona was honored as a god rather than a goddess.
Nemglan
Irish god. This relatively obscure god appears in only one Irish myth, that of the heroine mess buachalla, to whom he appeared as a bird and whom he then seduced. Their son conaire, the king of tara, was told never to injure a bird because of his descent from that species, which has suggested to some scholars an ancient belief in animal totems. Nemglan came to Conaire before his inauguration as king, revealing to him the secret requirements for his selection and success.
Nentres (Nentres of Garlot)
Arthurian hero. This minor figure in the stories of the great king arthur opposed the king at the beginning of his reign but later married elaine, Arthur’s half sister, and became an ally.
neo-pagan (neo-Pagan)
Modern religion. This term, which means "new pagan," is used to describe those who attempt to reconstruct ancient religion in ways appropriate to today’s world. Some neo-pagans claim that their rites were transmitted in secret for many generations, but there is little proof of such claims; rather, they may refer to family traditions that mix christianity, Celtic religion, and pre-Celtic beliefs, traditions that continue even today in parts of Europe and that are often derided there as superstition. Other neo-pagans make no claims of secret information but describe their religion as a reconstruction of ancient beliefs. In both categories one finds groups and individuals involved in the celtic revival.
Nera (Neara mac Niadhain)
Irish hero. One of the great literary and mythological texts of Ireland is the Adventure of Nera. The tale is set at cruachan, the great palace of the goddess-queen medb of connacht, on the magical night of samhain (November 1), the Celtic feast when the doors to the otherworld were believed to open. When king ailill mac Mata asked that someone attend to a hanged corpse, Nera volunteered, only to find the dead man able to speak. The corpse asked for a drink of water, and so Nera hoisted it upon his back to find it a drink, but turning toward Cruachan, saw the palace ablaze. He chased the arsonists to the cave of oweynagat, where to his wonderment he learned that he had foreseen an attack that would occur the following year on Samhain.
The woman who offered this information became Nera’s Otherworld wife, but before settling down with her, Nera returned to Cruachan to warn Medb and Ailill of the attack he had foreseen. The queen and king raided Oweynagat, destroying the army that would have burned their palace. The adventures of Nera were not yet over, for the great war goddess morrigan stole a cow from the herd that Nera’s fairy wife had given him and took it to the upper world to be bred with the great donn cuailnge, the finest brown bull in Ireland. When the calf was born, it fell into a fight with the white bull of Connacht, finnbennach, who killed the young bull. When Medb overheard people saying that the fight would have been different had it been the calf’s sire fighting, she swore she would someday see such a battle—which indeed came to pass after her raid upon ulster, related in the great Irish epic, tain bo cuailnge.
Nerbgen
Irish heroine. This obscure figure, known as "the vehement," is named in the book of invasions as one of the five wives of the hero partholon, the others being Aife, Elgnad (or dealgnaid), Cichban, and Cerbnat. She is otherwise unknown.
Nerthus
Germanic goddess. There is no doubt that Nerthus is a Germanic goddess, but some aspects of her cult influenced the rituals of Celtic goddesses as well, suggesting that there was a shared source for these rituals or that the geographically close cultures influenced each other. The Roman general and geographer Tacitus describes the worship of Nerthus on a sacred island to which no human was permitted entry; such islands are found commonly in Celtic lore as an image of the otherworld. At intervals, however, Nerthus was stricken by a desire to leave her sacred isle to travel among her followers. She was hauled forth on an ox-drawn cart and was greeted with great festivity. All warfare ceased while the goddess was abroad in the land. She was believed, by her passing, to bring fertility to the fields. When her progress was over, Nerthus was conveyed back to her holy island, where those who attended her were put to death, apparently in the belief that no one could be permitted to live who had looked upon the face of the goddess. The image of the goddess drawn upon a cart is found in Celtic contexts as well; human sacrifice, too, may have been practiced by the Celts.
Nessa (Ness, Nes, Assa)
Irish goddess. The mother of the great king concobar mac nessa, Nessa was originally called Assa, "gentle one." Her father was eochaid, king of ulster, who brought up his daughter in dignity and comfort. She was a studious and quiet girl of great personal charisma and beauty who drew the eye of the lustful druid cathbad. Realizing that she was never without her 12 protective tutors, Cathbad had them all killed one night so that he could gain access to her. Cathbad underestimated the gentle girl: Appalled and infuriated by the violence done her beloved tutors, she gathered a company of warriors and set out to discover who was responsible and to wreak vengeance upon them.
She had never carried arms before, but anger made the girl strong, whence she became known as Nessa, "ungentle." She wandered across Ireland, waging battle wherever she saw wrong done, but she did not find who had killed her tutors. Then, one day as she bathed in a wilderness spring, the culprit found her. Cathbad sprang upon the unarmed, unguarded naked girl and drew his sword on her. "Better to consent to you than be killed without my own weapon," she said. Cathbad forced himself upon her; some legends say that in that moment Concobar was conceived, while others say that Nessa outwitted her rapist by conceiving through magical means. Though she lived with him as a sexual hostage, she did not give birth despite prophecies that she would bear a hero. An omen came to her one day: Two worms appeared in a pail of water from a holy well. Nessa drank them down, thus becoming pregnant (see pregnancy through drinking), but through her magical power she assured that the child was born clutching one of the worms, so that no one would mistake the future hero for Cathbad’s son.
After Cathbad died, Nessa married again, this time by her own choice. Her husband was fachtna, another king of Ulster, but he soon died too, whereupon she was courted by the impressive warrior fergus mac Roich, her late husband’s half brother, who had assumed the throne. As she had a son already, Nessa worried that Concobar, not being of royal blood, could never become king. So she entreated Fergus to give up his throne at emain macha for a year, to allow Concobar to reign in his stead; thereafter all of Concobar’s descendants could claim to be of the blood of kings. Nessa was more loyal to her son than to her husband, and after a year Fergus returned to discover that she had conspired to keep him from regaining his throne. Furious, he left Ulster and joined forces with the queen of the neighboring province, medb, who soon waged war on Concobar’s territory.
Nessa’s name has been traced to the language of the picts, a people who preceded the Celts in Ireland and Scotland. Some scholars argue that the Picts were matrilineal, tracing a child’s family line through the mother’s rather than the father’s family as in patrilineal descent. The fact that Nessa’s father gave his daughter land, in a region where the Picts were strong, seems evidence for this theory. Whether Pictish or not, Nessa’s child bore her name, being called Concobar mac Nessa, "son of Nessa," rather than after his father, whether that was Cathbad or a magical worm.
Net (Neit)
Irish god. An obscure Irish divinity known only as the mate of the war goddess nemain and therefore presumed to be a god of war, Net may be one of the rare Celtic war gods, for Celtic lands were usually under the power of goddesses. Or Net may be the same figure as nemed, the husband of macha, a goddess with whom Nemain is sometimes confused or conflated. Legends about Net are contradictory: some name him as a member of the monstrous fomorians, while others say he was one of the magical tuatha de danann. Net is often connected with the Irish site of grianan aileach, a great stone fortress in the far north of the island whose mythological importance is unarguable although interpretations of its meaning vary.
Neton
Continental Celtic god. This obscure god of the Celtic tribe called the Accetani, identified by the Romans with their war god mars, may be connected to the Irish warrior divinity net.
Nevyn
Welsh folkloric figure. This gorgeous Welsh mermaid was the beloved of a young man named Ivan Morgan, who lived on the Carnavonshire coast. Like others of her kind, she made a wonderful wife, sensuous and loyal to her human mate. She bore him a son, Nevydd, and a daughter, Eilonwy, and the family lived happily until she grew homesick for the land-under-wave in which she had been reared. While his mother and father were visiting the other-world under the seas, their son Nevydd learned the truth of his heritage and died of shame, whereupon Eilonwy committed suicide out of grief—or at least, she tried, throwing herself into the water. She did not drown, for she was rescued by a handsome merman prince who took her off to live with him in the Otherworld beneath the sea. Nevyn went back to land to claim the body of her son, which she took away with her on a beautiful ship that magically appeared. The legend does not record what happened to the bereaved Ivan. Nyved’s name is similar to the Irish fairy queen, niamh of the Golden Hair; they may originally have been the same figure.
Niall (Niall of the Nine Hostages, Niall Nioganach, Niall Naoi-ghaillach)
Irish hero. One of the greatest of kings of tara, Niall ruled for more than a quarter century. The meaning of his first name is not known, although it has been translated as "cloud"; no earlier heroes bear it, so the name Niall appears to originate with this heroic figure. The latter part of his name, Nioganach or "of the nine hostages" comes from his agreement to take on as foster sons one boy from each of the five provinces of the land, as well as four from Britain. (Some sources say one was from Britain and one each from Scotland, France, and Wales.) A stone monument on Tara, still standing today, is said to cover his grave. He is a quasi-historical figure, one of the earliest recorded high kings of Ireland and father of the important king Loegaire; Niall is believed to have ruled in the fifth century c.e. His descendants became the Ui Neill (O’Neill) family, one of Ireland’s most powerful for more than half a millennium.
Niall was known as a raiding captain who took many captives, following in the footsteps of his father Eochu Muighmheadhon ("lord of slaves") who captured Niall’s mother cairenn, a British princess, on one of his raids. Eochu already had a wife, mongfhinn, who naturally favored her own four sons. She persecuted Cairenn and her son until the bard torna foresaw the child’s illustrious future and offered assistance to the woman and her baby. It is unclear whether Niall’s father was king of Tara or whether Niall was the first of his family to hold that title.
Irish history at that time was thickly encrusted by myth, and so we find stories about Niall that have more legendary than historical accuracy. In one of these, Niall and his four brothers went hunting one day, only to find themselves in a region without game and growing very thirsty. The only water they could find was in a well guarded by a hag so unsavory in appearance that the young men fell back in disgust when she demanded a kiss of them. Only Niall stepped forward to bestow a kiss, and other favors, upon the hag—who, pleased with his performance, revealed herself to be a beautiful young woman in disguise. She told Niall that her name was Flaith or sovereignty and bestowed upon him the kingship of the land.
Niamh (Neeve, Niamh of the Golden Hair, Niave, Niam, Niau)
Irish mythological figure. One of the great fairy queens of Ireland, Niamh was so beautiful that no human man could resist her: stately, fair of feature, and crowned with cascading golden locks. Indeed, her very name means "beauty." Daughter of the ocean god manannan mac lir, Niamh lived far out to sea on a magical island, tir tairngiri ("land of promise"), to which she would take her captive and captivated lovers.
The most famous of Niamh’s lovers was oisin, bard of the band of heroes called the fianna, who left his comrades behind to follow Niamh to her otherworld. There they lived in a swoon of happiness made even more blissful by the birth of their daughter plur na mban ("flower of womanhood"). Eventually, however, Oism grew homesick and begged to go back to Ireland. Niamh had not tired of her lover and was reluctant to let him go into the danger she knew awaited him there, but he persisted, and she relented. She warned Oism that under no circumstances should his foot touch the ground. Then she put him on a fairy horse and sent him home.
Alas for Oism, he returned to an Ireland utterly changed, for time passes more slowly in fairyland than on our earth. The warriors of the Fianna were long deceased, and Ireland had lost its old gods with the coming of christianity. The poet was so shocked that he fell from his horse. All his years came upon him, and he quickly died of advanced old age. One famous poem is based on the conceit that, before dying, Oism was able to converse with st. patrick, who despite the Fianna poet’s great eloquence about ancient pagan ways, was able to convert him and baptize him just before death. In any case, Oism never saw his beloved Niamh again.
Two less important figures also bear the name of Niamh. One is the mistress of the great ulster hero cuchulainn; the other married the son of king concobar mac nessa, whom Cuchulainn served.
Nicnevin
Scottish folkloric figure. In some sources, we find this as the name of the figure elsewhere called habetrot, a beautiful fairy queen in a malevolent guise as the leader of the wild hunt that steals people from their homes to become entertainments for the fairies.
Night
Cosmological concept. Unlike our way of beginning day with dawn, the Celts began it at sundown the night before. Thus Celtic feast days were celebrated on the evening of what we would call the previous day. Hallowe’en is still celebrated at sundown on October 31, the day before the Celtic feast of samhain, from which it is derived, and beltane began with May Eve celebrations on April 30.
Nimue
Arthurian heroine. This Welsh name is sometimes offered as the personal name of the mysterious figure called the lady of the lake, the otherworld sponsor of king arthur who lived on an island of women somewhere in the fairy mists. The name is also occasionally used of the lover of the magician merlin, who otherwise appears as Arthur’s half sister morgause, who in turn has been assumed to be the Lady of the Lake. Even more confusingly, Merlin’s lover is called viviane in some texts. Such confusions are commonplace where mythologies are orally transmitted and later written down by imaginative writers.
One common story of Nimue was that she was the daughter of the Roman goddess diana, her father having been a human man named Dinas. As the daughter of the woodland divinity, she was naturally raised in the forest, where Merlin first met her. Her first request of him was to teach her to make a tower out of thin air; he did so, not realizing that his life would end when she fashioned just such a prison for him.
Nisien (Nissien, Nisyen)
Welsh hero or god. The Welsh god bran the blessed had two half brothers who were opposite in temperament. Gentle Nisien wished only the best for everyone, but his evil brother efnisien did nothing but cause trouble. It was Efnisien who caused the great war that led to Bran’s death in Ireland, by a random act of cruelty that caused the king of that land to be set against Wales forever. Nisien tried to intervene, searching for a diplomatic solution and offering apologies for his brother’s behavior, but to no avail. Nisien plays a relatively small part in the story, found in the Welsh tales recorded as the mabinogion, and may be simply a positive foil for his evil brother.
Nodens (Nodons)
British god. Relatively little is known about this god, whom the invading Romans said was the same as their warrior divinity mars. A huge temple was devoted to him on the banks of the Severn River at Lydney in Gloucestershire, with a dormitory and several healing sites; thus Nodens may have been envisioned as warring against disease. Nodens was also associated with the woodland god silvanus, suggesting that healing was believed to occur most effectively in the peace of a natural setting.
Never represented in human form, Nodens may have been pictured as a large dog—often a healing symbol to the Celts, although also a guardian of the dead—although the canine sculptures found in his sanctuaries may have been intended to represent the god’s attendants. His name has not been translated with certainty but may mean "cloud-maker," "wealth-producer,"or "fisherman." Because of the size and importance of his sanctuary, Nodens is considered one of Britain’s most significant Celtic gods; he is sometimes said to be parallel to the similarly named Irish god nuadu and has been linked as well to the Welsh god lludd, whose alternative name is Nudd.
Noine (Noindiu, Noidhiu)
Irish folkloric figure. Several curious legends feature this boy who was born after a nine-year gestation. In some, he is said to have been conceived by his mother after a water spirit seduced her when she was frolicking on the seashore; in another, she was made pregnant by the god of poetry, aonghus Og. Upon his birth, Noine uttered nine mysterious sayings, after which his grandfather died; this motif seems to have come from the more common story of the hero lugh and his malevolent grandfather, balor of the Evil Eye. Some scholars believe that Noine’s tales provided a source for stories about the hero fionn mac cumhaill.
Nosiu (Naeshe, Naisii, Naoise, Noise, Noaise)
Irish hero. One of Ireland’s most romantic and tragic legends surrounds this young man, one of the sons of uisneach and lover of the beautiful heroine deirdre. Doomed by a prophecy to be both immensely beautiful and the cause of war, Deirdre was held hostage by the king of ulster, concobar mac nessa, who wished to defy fate and have her for his bride despite the many years that separated them. Although she was brought up without ever seeing a man, Deirdre dreamed of the existence of Noisiu. One day she saw a raven’s feather and blood on snow, and she wished aloud to have a man with hair that black, lips that red, skin that white.
Her nurse, the bard leborcham, took pity on the girl and introduced her to the man she knew fit that description: Noisiu. Together with his brothers, Ardan and Ainnle, the pair eloped, running from the powerful king Concobar, who pursued them relentlessly. Finally the brothers and No^siu’s beloved Deirdre found peace in the wilderness of Scotland, where they lived a hard but healthy life until Concobar lured them back with promises of forgiveness. Deirdre suspected treachery, but No^siu yearned for home. As soon as they arrived, Concobar had No^siu and his brothers killed. Deirdre thwarted his attempt to take her, however, by committing suicide in grief over the loss of her true love, No^siu.
No^siu and his brothers were the children of an otherwise obscure man named uisneach; some have argued a connection with the important mythological site of Uisneach in Co. Westmeath. Their mother was Elbha, the daughter of the nefarious druid cathbad; thus they would have been half brothers to king Concobar himself, according to tales that have Cathbad fathering the king on the gentle scholar Assa, who after his assaults on herself and her household became the warrior nessa.
Nollaig (In Welsh, Nadolig)
Folkloric holiday. Although the Celts did not celebrate the solstices and equinoxes, centering their worship instead on the central days of each season (imbolc, February 1, in winter; beltane, May 1, in spring; lughnasa, August 1, in summer; and samhain, November 1, in fall), various pressures caused the addition of other seasonal feasts to the Celtic calendar. Earlier cultures had marked the solstices as is evidenced by the orientation of pre-Celtic stone monuments to the sunrise and sunset of those days. With the coming of Christianity, the winter solstice became especially important, for it was the date on which Jesus Christ was said to have been born. This alleged birthday of the savior was, in fact, adopted by the Christian church as a way of adapting the preexisting winter solstice festivals that the new converts were loath to abandon.
Thus Celtic lands developed their own winter solstice rituals, which were called in Scotland "Nollaig," apparently from the Latin natalis ("birth") as passed through Welsh. That this festival is not necessarily devoted to the birth of Christ, but is more generically a midwinter feast, can be detected by the fact that it is only sometimes celebrated on Christmas; in some regions it occurs on New Year’s Day, while still other regions celebrated the entire week between Christmas and New Year as Nollaig. In Scotland processions of youngsters used to walk from house to house, reciting nonsense rhymes whose words seem to refer to Celtic heroic figures; householders rewarded the singers with food and drink, with the climax of the festivities on hogmany or New Year’s Day. In Ireland boys hunted wrens that were then carried around the village to singing and elaborate pageantry. In Irish tradition, if one died during this period, it was a sign of being blessed.
Noreia
Possible continental Celtic goddess. In Roman times this obscure goddess was worshiped in the lands around today’s Slovenia, which was settled by both Celts and Illyrians; it is not certain to which ethnic group this goddess belonged.
North (tuasiceart)
Of the four directions, this one had the most sinister implications for the ancient Irish and, possibly, for other Celtic peoples as well. The sun was seen to move south on its daily path, as though retreating from the north (a direction geographically defined as the opposite from the Sun’s daily position at noon). Because the sunrise direction (deosil) was symbolically connected with correctness and the natural order, moving to the left or to the north had the opposite connotations. Words connected with north have, even in modern Irish, negative connections, as with words for "foreboding," "curse" and "anguish," all of which derive from the word for "north." The northern province, ulster, is most associated with war in ancient epics.
Northumbria
Celtic region. In Celtic times, the climatically harsh part of Britain, now known as Northumbria, was called Bernicia; the more fertile southern part was called Deira.
Nothain
Irish heroine. Like other mad women and men of Irish legend (see mis, suib-hne), Nothain was driven mad by war. According to the dindshenchas, the place-poetry of Ireland, Nothain was a warrior woman who, driven insane by an attack that left her family dead, wandered the countryside, becoming shaggy and wild. Her father, the only one to survive the assault, searched for more than a year before he found her, speechless with grief. After a night spent in his comforting presence, she finally spoke, only to ask if anyone else had survived. Hearing the sad news that the family was all dead, Nothain died of sorrow.
Nuada (Nuada of the Silver Hand, Nuada of the Silver Arm, Nuadu, Nuadhu, Nuada Argatlam)
Irish god. Leader of the tuatha de danann, the people of the goddess danu, at the time when they contested with the malevolent fomorians for possession of Ireland, Nuada was a great warrior and fine leader. In the fury of the first battle of mag tuired, his right hand or arm was sliced off by an opponent. Thus even though victorious, Nuada forfeited his throne, for a blemished king could not rule.
The half-Fomorian bres replaced him but turned out to be so stingy he would not even feed the poet cairbre—an offense against hospitality that lost Bres his realm, for the bard cast a satire upon him that raised boils upon his face, thus making Bres too blemished to rule. In the meantime, a silver hand had been crafted for Nuada by the healing god dian cecht. Even such a marvelous appurtenance did not satisfy the needs of kingship, for it still constituted a defect. Then miach, a brilliant physician and son of Dian Cecht, used his medical and magical skills to cause real skin to grow over the silver arm—thus entitling Nuada to reassume the throne. For his efforts, Miach lost his life, killed by his envious father.
When the Tuatha De left the surface of this world to live beneath the earth in their magical swellings or sidhe, Nuada became the lord of almu, an important early ritual site and magical center of the province of leinster. Other sources place his palace at the great tumulus on the River Boyne, the bru na boinne, claiming that he was the consort goddess of the region, boand. Deceived by her with the god dagda, Nuada was further deceived when the son of that affair, aonghus Og, tricked him out of the great palace; nechtan, the name sometimes given for Boand’s deceived husband, may be an alternative name for Nuada. Nuada was later euhemer-ized—made human—in stories that make him an earthly king who fought with the hero fionn mac cumhaill for control of Leinster. At Almu, Nuada was said to keep one of the great treasures of his race, a sword that could not be escaped once it had been unsheathed.
A minor figure by this name was a human, a druid who served the king cathair mor.
Nuala
Irish heroine. This name is often used as a shortened version of fionnuala, but it is also given to the fairy queen otherwise known as una, who was the lover of the king of the fairies, finnbheara.
Nuckelavee
Scottish folkloric figure. On Orkney, the islands northeast of Scotland, people occasionally reported being set upon by this monstrous centaur, whose one-eyed human head was mounted on a red-fleshed horse’s body that had flippers instead of legs. It lived in the sea and from there leapt out to kill humans or cattle as its whim took it. The only escape was to dash across fresh water, which this sea-being could not tolerate. The nuckelavee was related to the more commonly known water horse, or possibly to the nygel of Shetland.
Nudd (Lludd)
British god. A great temple of the Roman era was dedicated to a god called nodens, who is believed to be the same as the Welsh god Nudd or lludd. Given the location of the temple and the depiction of Nudd as surrounded by tritons, symbols of the sea, he has been interpreted as the god of the river’s mouth or estuary and possibly the headlands around it.
In Welsh mythology, the god called Nudd (more commonly, Lludd), was the ruler of Britain and brother of the king of the Continent, llefelys. He built London, but his reign was not entirely happy nor successful. A race of demons attacked the land, then two dragons, then a gigantic magician. With the help of his brother, Nudd was able to conquer all of the plagues.
Numbers
Cosmological symbols. As in many other cultures, the Celts saw numbers as mysterious, powerful, even magical. The most important were the numbers three and five, but other numbers had significance as well. The Celtic numerical system ended with 10—the number that could be counted on two hands— with larger numbers expressed in terms of multiples (10 times 10) or, more commonly, as a "vast" host or "innumerable" army. In Old Irish we find indications that numbers may have been originally counted in a system of fives, reflected in both mythology and family organization.
Although there is no written evidence of a numerological system whereby each number was given a specific mystical meaning, the repetition of certain numbers suggests such a belief. The iteration of the numbers three and five in various mythological contexts is an especially strong indication that such numerology originally existed and has been lost. Comparison of various myths suggests the following meanings for frequently occurring numbers:
Two—Connected with service or commitment, found in legends of enchanted women chained together in pairs, in pairs of oracular ravens that accompany the hero cuchulainn, and in the two loyal hunting dogs of fionn mac cumhaill.
Four—Connected with wholeness. Because a hidden fifth was implied (see provinces), four is seen as a diminished version of five.
Seven—Connected with magic, an interpretation that may have been adopted from non-Celtic, possibly Middle Eastern, sources; the most common usage shows typical Celtic multiplication, in the belief that the seventh son of a seventh son (less frequently, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) was especially likely to be magically gifted. In myths about transformation, a span of seven years is common; thus the goddess etain was forced to live for seven years as an insect, and the magical lough gur dries up every seven years to reveal its secrets.
Nygel (Noggle, nuggle)
Scottish folkloric figure. On the Shetland Islands, this magical being appeared as a sweet gray pony. But if you mounted it, beware, for it would take you on a fast ride to the sea and dunk you there. Attack by a nygel was far less threatening than that of the invariably fatal water horse, of which the nygel seems a variant, or of its neighboring monster the nuckelavee. The nygel loved millraces—the streams that ran from the old water-powered grain and woolen mills—and grew angry if they were accidentally left running at night; the fairy beast forced the wheel to a stop, which wreaked havoc on its machinery.
Nynnyaw (Nynniaw)
Welsh hero. This relatively obscure king was a son of the god beli and, with his brother Peibaw, once waged a war in which all the land was destroyed. The reason for the war: They disagreed on astrological interpretations. Few wars ever were begun for such meager cause, and so the two brothers were turned into animals to teach them a lesson.
Ny Shee
Manx folkloric figure. This term, in the language of the Isle of Man, refers to the fairy folk called the sidhe in Irish.
