Oak To Quintessence (Celtic mythology and folklore)

Oak

Symbolic plant. Large and impressively long-lived, the oak was one of the most important trees to the Celts. In part, this was because of the oak’s usefulness: It provides abundant acorns, which were in ancient times a favored food of pigs, whose flesh then became part of the human diet; its long-lasting wood is sought after for building; its bark produces a substance useful for tanning leather. The oak’s usefulness extended to the spiritual plane as well; according to Roman author Pliny the Elder, the Celts harvested mistletoe from oak trees for ritual use in curing disease and encouraging human fertility.

Oak forests were common in continental Gaul, where we find early evidence of their sanctity: Construction of oak funeral houses by hallstatt and la tene peoples suggests that the tree was connected with the afterlife or otherworld. The oak may have been associated with a specific god, although which one is not clear, because documents date only to Roman times, when Maximum Tyrius claimed the oak symbolized the father of gods, who lived within the tree; the so-called Jupiter columns (jupiter being the Roman version of Zeus) found in Gaulish temples have been interpreted as indoor substitutes for great trees dedicated to the god.

Although trees in general were sacred to the Celts, who practiced their rituals in nemetons or sacred groves, the Celtic priesthood of druids held the oak to be the most sacred tree; indeed, the very word druid is connected to an ancient word for "oak." The Roman poet Lucan described the druids as using acorns in their prophetic rituals, masticating them until they saw visions; the story is hard to credit, because no hallucinatory substances have been isolated in acorns. Wooden images from the pre-Roman and Roman periods have been found, carved of the strong and lasting wood of the oak.

Belief in the sanctity of the oak survived into the post-Celtic era, when folklore envisioned the oak as a living being that, when cut, cried out or took revenge upon the forester, maiming or killing him as it fell. An oak was believed to make a desperate racket when felled, loud enough to be heard a mile away. fairy folk were thought to live in or around oaks; together with the ash and the thorn, the oak constituted the sacred tree trinity that marked fairy places.

The centrality of the oak in ancient Celtic life can still be detected in names that embody the tree: the Celtic capital of the Galacians in Turkey, Drunemeton ("sacred oak grove"); and the Irish abbey towns of kildare ("church of the oak") and of Durrow ("plain of oaks").

Oakmen

British folkloric figures. Occasionally in the north of England, references are found in oral literature to fairy people who lived in great oaks; an old rhyme holds that "fairy folks/are in old oaks." Especially powerful were oaks that regenerated themselves after being cut; the saplings that came forth in such circumstances were regarded with awe. In the Cotswolds each village had a sacred tree, usually an oak, where fairy beings were believed to hide.

Oath

Ritual act. Calling upon divine forces to witness the truth of a statement is known in many societies, including those of the Celts, who put great stock in verbal truthfulness—perhaps because they had no written language. Oaths were made by calling upon either gods or elemental powers (sun, moon, air), who would punish the speaker for lying; a common form of the oath among the radically polytheistic Celts was, "I swear by the gods my people swear by."

Oberon (Auberon, Oberycome)

British folk-loric figure. Oberon makes a memorable appearance in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a king of fairyland whose quarrel with his consort titania prompts him to meddle in the love affair of humans astray in the forest. Oberon, who also appears in French and British romances, is more a literary than a mythological character. He is associated with the fairy queens Titania and mab.

Ocean Sweeper (Aigean scuabadoir)

Irish mythological object. One of the great treasures of the Irish otherworld was a boat that moved through the sea under the power of its pilot’s thoughts. Brought from the Otherworld by the heroic lugh, the magic boat became the property of the ocean god manannan mac lir.

Ocelus

Welsh and British god. This obscure god, known from only a few inscriptions, was associated by the Romans with mars.

Ochall Ochne

Irish mythological figure. A fairy king from the western province of con-nacht, Ochall Ochne played a minor role in the greatest of Irish epics, the tain bo cuailnge. It was his swineherd, rucht, who had an unending argument with another swineherd named friuch; the two were born and reborn in different forms until they became the two great bulls who killed each other at the epic’s end.

Ochren (Coinchenn, Corrgend)

Irish mythological site. This name is occasionally used of an Otherworldly place beneath the ocean where fairy people disported themselves by dancing in labyrinthine patterns.

Octriallach

Irish hero. The monstrous fomo-rians, one of the early races of mythological Irish settlers, are rarely known as individuals but appear rather as a frightening and murderous mass under the leadership of their king, balor of the Evil Eye. An exception is this spy who learned the secrets of the Fomorians’ opponents, the tuatha de danann. dian cecht, the Tuatha De physician, bathed their wounded in the magical well of Slaine, which healed all their wounds (it could not, however, reconnect amputated limbs or heads). When he discovered this, Octriallach decommissioned the well by filling it with earth, whereupon he was killed by ogma, the god of eloquence.

Odras

Irish heroine. A lake in Co. Roscommon, in Ireland’s western province of connacht, was named for this brave girl, daughter (or wife) of the hostel-keeper Buchat Buasach. When the morrigan, the great death-queen, stole Odras’s cow to mate with her own otherworld bull, Slemuin the Smooth, Odras was bold—or foolhardy—enough to go after the thief. She traveled to oweynagat, the cave beneath the great provincial capital cruachan, hoping to redeem her loss. There an enchantment overtook her, and she fell asleep under an oak tree, just short of penetrating to the Morrigan’s domain. She never awoke, for the Morrfgan turned her into the small lake that bears her name, to keep her from reclaiming her stolen cow.

Oenach (Aonach)

Irish ritual assembly. At regular intervals, the Celtic peoples of Ireland gathered at sacred spots to celebrate seasonal rituals intended to recognize the honor of the natural cycle while restoring the ancient union of the tribe. As the ancient Irish lived in relatively small groups in somewhat isolated spots, such assemblies served many purposes other than the paramount religious ones. horses and cattle were traded; young people met and courted; laborers were hired; contracts between otherwise distant parties were established. Some of the important Oenachs were those on beltane at the sacred hill uisneach in the center of Ireland, and on lughnasa at the site dedicated to the goddess tailtiu.

Ogalla

Irish mythological site. The Celts revered water, both fresh and salt, and many myths are situated at or near water. Streams and wells—pure water that springs forth from underground—figure importantly in Irish myth and legend. One such narrative tells of two princesses of connacht, eithne and fedelm, who went to bathe one morning in the holy spring of Ogalla, near the great capital city of cruachan. There they encountered men who, dressed in white, looked to them like druids. They were not; it was st. patrick and his followers.

The girls questioned Patrick about his god. Where, the girls asked, is that god located, whether in the earth or the sky or the sea? Does he have fine daughters, and are his sons beautiful to look upon? Patrick assured the princesses that the Christian god was all they desired (skirting the question of that god’s "daughters"). Thus he converted the princesses of Connacht, who then chose to die instantly upon baptism rather than linger in the sinful world. The end of the story is as clearly un-Celtic as the questions the girls posed were pagan.

Ogham (ogam)

Celtic symbolic system. The Celtic people did not practice writing as defined today; they did not use alphabetic letters nor pictorial script to spell out words. Religious, ritual, and historical material was committed to memory by the druids, who believed that such material was too precious to be written and thus at risk of coming into the possession of those unprepared to understand or appreciate its meaning and value. For this reason we have no written mythology, not even historical works from the Celts themselves. We have instead only writings by people who came into contact with them (often through war) and by later descendants (often Christian monks); thus we must be careful to evaluate written sources on Celtic material to discern political or religious bias.

The fact that the Celts were not literate does not mean they lacked literature or were unintelligent. The lack of interest in—some would say taboo against—writing was based in the importance of speech, which was held to have great power. Even today, eloquent speech is especially valued as a human talent in the ancient Celtic lands.

The Celts did have a symbolic script system called ogham, said to have been invented by ogma, god of eloquence, or by brigit, goddess of poetry. Whether ogham developed after contact with and in response to literate cultures is not clear, although many argue that it was inspired by the Latin alphabet. The ogham "letters" were lines drawn horizontally and diagonally on wood; there are 20 different combinations of strokes. Epics refer to libraries of wooden wands inscribed with such lines, but wood does not typically endure for centuries; the inscriptions that have been found—fewer than 400—are all carved on stone, most giving only a single name or title. These ogham tablets predominantly come from the southwestern Irish province of munster, where some argue the script was invented in between the third and fourth centuries c.e., but tablets have been found in Wales and Scotland as well. See tree alphabet.

Ogma (Oghma, Ogme)

Irish god. This Irish god is believed parallel or cognate to the continental Celtic god ogmios. He was the son of the beneficent father god, the dagda, and father of the important goddess etain and of the poet cairbre mac Eadaoine. Although he has little legend, Ogma is said to have invented the writing script called, after him, ogham. He was also eloquent of speech and a great poet.

Ogmia

British god. Assumed to be a British version of the continental Celtic god of eloquence ogmios and the Irish god ogma, Ogmia was depicted by Romano-Celtic artists as a curly-haired youth with rays erupting from his head. Nothing is known of his myth or cult.

Ogmios (Ogmioc)

Continental Celtic god. The Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, in the second century c.e., connected Ogmios with the powerful classical hero hercules, although it seems clear that the strength of the Celtic god was rather verbal than physical; Ogmios was depicted as a dark-skinned bald man dragging people around by chains that stretched between his tongue and their ears, symbolizing the power eloquence has over its listeners. For this metaphorical strength he is called Trenfher, "strong man." Ogmios’s advanced age suggests that fine speech is a gift of maturity rather than youth. In some contexts, Ogmios, described bringing the dead to the otherworld, was associated with the Otherworldly divinity dis pater.

Ogniad

Irish heroine or goddess. This obscure figure was the daughter of the important fairy king midir and mother of the hero sigmall, but little is known of her except that she was lawless and self-willed. Whether her own mother was Midir’s consort etain is unclear from textual evidence.

Ogyrvran (Ogyrven)

Welsh hero. In Welsh folklore and literature, we find mention of this giant who owned a cauldron from which inspiration arose in the forms of sprites or fairies. He may be a folkloric memory of a local version of ogmios, the Celtic god of eloquence, to whom his name seems related.

Oirbsen

Irish god. This obscure term was an alternate name or title of the shape-shifting god of the sea, mannanan mac lir, who drowned in a lake called Loch Oirbsen (now Lough Corrib).

Oism (Oshin, Ossian, Oisin)

Irish hero. The poet of the fianna, the band of warriors who followed the great hero fionn mac cumhaill, Oism was named "little fawn" because of the fur across his eyebrows, left when his mother sadb licked her newborn while still wearing her enchanted deer shape. He grew into the most eloquent of his peers and, like many other poets, drew the attention of a fairy lover. In Oism’s case, this mistress the most beautiful fairy of them all, niamh of the Golden Hair, who stole him away from his human wife, the blonde beauty Eibhir. Oism traveled to her land far beyond the western waves, tir tairngiri, the land of promise, and lived with her for several happy weeks. Or at least it felt like weeks to Oism—but because time passes differently in fairyland than it does here, Oism was actually away for three centuries, during which time his friends died and Ireland changed almost beyond recognition.

When he finally grew homesick, Oism prevailed upon Niamh to let him visit earthly reality again. She grudgingly agreed and even provided him a magical horse, warning him that he was under no circumstances to touch the ground. (This common motif in folklore invariably indicates that someone will, in fact, touch the ground.) And so Oism went home, and he failed to attend to Niamh’s warning—although sources differ as to whether Oism”s saddle gave way, or he leaned down to help a beggar, or he was overcome with desire to feel earth beneath his feet again.

In any case, when Oism touched the ground, his many years instantly came over him. He was no longer the hale and healthy lad who had left Niamh. He grew stooped and gray, then died and turned to dust, all in the wink of an eye. In some versions of the story, Oism lived long enough to debate the values of Ireland’s ancient paganism with st. patrick, and to recognize the value of the Christian way enough to be baptized.

A character named Ossian, invented by the 19th-century Scottish poet James Macpherson, was credited with the creation of a number of poems that Macpherson himself had written, inspired by the oral literature of his native land. When it was revealed that there was, in fact, no ancient Scottish poet named Ossian whose work had been translated, Macpherson was disgraced and the "Ossian forgeries" were dismissed as sentimental. Yet Macpherson’s work was influential, especially in Germany where it inspired the emergent Romantic poets.

Olca Ai

Irish hero. The giant Olca Ai once so frightened the women of the capital of con-nacht, Ireland’s western province, that they fled across the land and, still terrified, drowned themselves when they reached a large body of water. The lake in which they perished bears the name of their leader, erne. Some have interpreted the rough-hewn stone sculptures found on White Island in Lough Erne as representing the giant and one of the maidens.

Ollam (ollamh, ollave)

Irish bardic title. The highest of the seven level of fili or poet, the ollam was prepared to recite all of the 250 important stories of the land and 100 of the lesser tales.

Ollamh Fodhla (Ollam Fodla, Ollamh Fodhla)

Legendary Irish king. This high king was said to have mounted the throne of tara in 714 b.c.e. and to have first codified the law of the land. His name seems to mean "poet of fodla," (Fodla being one of the goddesses of the Irish land); as poets were also brehons or judges, Ollamh may have held that position before being elevated to the kingship.

Ollipheist

Irish mythological being. A large snaky creature, the Ollipheist wriggled through the soil of ancient Ireland, creating a gully down which water flowed to form the River Shannon. See liscannor.

Ollototae

Romanized British goddess, or Roman goddess. An inscription to this multiple goddess was found at Chester, although it is unclear whether the divinity was a Celtic goddess translated into Roman form, or a Roman adaptation of the Celtic earth goddess.

Olloudios (Ollouidias, Olludio)

Continental Celtic and British god. This relatively obscure Gaulish god may have been a local divinity (genius loci) worshiped in a tree, for his name seems to derive from two words for "great tree" or "giant tree" (ollo-vidio). His special region was the islands off the south of France called the Antibes, where he was honored by the tribe called the Narbonenses. Olloudios was also found in Britain, where in Gloucester he was depicted as having huge ears that stuck out from his head like wings.

Olwen

Welsh heroine or goddess. The Welsh tale of kulhwch and olwen centers on this heroine, who may descend from an earlier goddess. There are many indications that she was originally a sun goddess: her name, which appears to mean "leaving white footprints" or "golden wheel"; her red-gold necklace and many golden rings; her streaming yellow hair; and her power to raise white flowers from every step she took. The hero kulhwch wished to marry her, but her father yspaddaden penkawr ("giant hawthorn tree") opposed the match because he believed it would be the death of him (the same motif is found in the apparently parallel Irish story of balor of the Evil Eye and his daughter eithne, courted by the hero cian). Yspaddaden placed 13 obstacles (possibly the 13 lunar months) in Kulhwch’s path, but with Olwen’s assistance the hero won her hand.

Omen

Cosmological symbol. To see an omen is not necessarily to see into the future, despite the most common understanding of the word. Omens may be portents hinting at events to come, but they can also point to an event that has already happened in a distant place and so can be a form of far-seeing. Belief in omens has been part of every culture, for there are always those who wish to know more than their senses can tell them. In the case of the Celts, we find omens typically associated with unusual behavior of animals or stars; sometimes it is difficult to discern whether such behavior predicted, or caused, bad luck. In some cases, ritual relief was suggested; for instance, if one caught sight of the new moon through a window, bowing three times to the moon would ward off the bad luck that otherwise followed.

Things out of place or in the wrong season were typically interpreted as omens or portents: A rat seen at sea was considered among Scots sailors to be a sign that someone aboard would drown. Similarly any peculiar juxtaposition of objects or beings could represent an omen: Those same Scots sailors believed that seeing a rat or mouse in a sieve was a sure signal of danger to anyone at sea that evening, for their boat would spring as many leaks as the sieve had holes.

The Irish specified many omens of death: gaps in a sown field, a hen cackling on the roost, a dog howling for three nights in a row. Horseshoes were oracular, for if they were found with the closed end pointing away, bad luck was coming, but if pointed toward the finder, good luck was approaching.

Oppida

Archaeological site. This Latin word is used to describe ancient Celtic towns such as that found at la tene in Switzerland. The large fortified settlements of the sixth-fifth centuries b.c.e. were built in easily defensible positions (on heights or promontories) and were often located near mineral deposits, which provided the settlement’s source of wealth.

Oracle

Symbolic object or event. Systems of divination often require the employment of oracles to indicate the future. Flights of birds, unusual weather, untimely blossoming: All these and many other occurrences could predict the outcome of events. Typically oracles were things dislocated in place (a seashell found on a mountain) or time (a tree blossoming in winter). A distinction is sometimes made between omens, which predict ill-fortune, and the more neutral or positive oracle. The word is also used to describe a prophet; that usage is more typically classical, as in the Oracle of Dephi in Greece, rather than Celtic.

Orc Triath

Irish mythological beast. The Irish corollary to the Welsh twrch trwyth was a magical boar owned by the goddess brigit.

Orlam

Irish hero. One of the sons of queen medb and king ailill mac Mata of the western province of connacht, Orlam was one of the first to die at the hands of the great hero cuchulainn on the cattle raid known as the tain bo cuailnge. Orlam’s charioteer carried his master’s head to Medb and Ailill, and for his efforts got brained with a stone thrown by Cuchulainn.

Oscar (Osgar)

Irish and Scottish hero. The son of the poet oisin and his human wife Eibhir, he was the grandson of the hero fionn mac cumhaill. Oscar followed his father by becoming a member of the fianna, the band of warriors that fought with Fionn. His name means "deer lover" and refers to his descent from his grandmother, Oisin’s mother sadb, who had been enchanted into the form of a deer.

The fiercest of the Fianna warriors, Oscar led the group called "the terrible broom" because it swept clean any battlefield. After the death of his grandfather, Oscar became the head of the mighty band. When they were finally defeated in the battle of Gabhra, Oscar killed the leader of their foes, the high king cairbre, but died of wounds from that battle. His wife, aidin, wept herself to death when his father Oism bore him away to the otherworld.

Otherworld

Cosmological concept. This term is used to describe an alternative reality that was the home of spirits and divinities and the beloved dead. This folkloric belief is found in lands where the Celts formerly lived, giving rise to the supposition that it descends from Celtic religion, but there is also the possibility that the Celts adopted the concept from indigenous people whom they conquered. Not a "heaven" like that envisioned by Christian believers as above and separate from this earth, the Celtic Otherworld existed nearby, though just out of reach. Sometimes it rested on an island in the ocean that floated unfettered through time or space. Such an island might appear only every seven years, or it might move around the ocean and appear in different locations. At other times, the Otherworld was imagined as beneath a hill, often an old fort (see hillfort), which opened to reveal an entire vast city. Shadowy and liminal not-here, not-there places such as bogs, caves, and reedy shores were also seen as gates to the Otherworld.

People of this world could visit the Otherworld by accident or design. They could be stolen away, usually by a fairy lover who wished to take pleasure with a handsome human lover. Musicians were likely to be kidnapped (see fairy kidnapping); if they played well for the Otherworldly dances, they might be granted a special tune to play once they returned to earth. Midwives were stolen to help with Otherworldly births; it was important that they not question their kidnappers but do their jobs quietly and hope for a speedy return home. Babies could be stolen, for human infants were more beautiful than those born in the Otherworld; these could be reclaimed through various rituals and tricks (see changeling).

Those of this world did not have to await kidnapping to reach the Otherworld, for at certain times the doors would swing open. Such was the case with the great Celtic holidays of beltane (May 1) and samhain (November 1), which remained magical in folklore long after Christianization of Celtic lands. Liminal times like dawn, and shadowy weather conditions, could also provide moments when the Otherworld could break through to this one, or visitors from this world could gain access there.

In the Otherworld time moved slowly, so that an hour spent there could be a century here. As a result, Otherworldly dwellers did not age and rarely died. There was no illness or pain or bad weather there, but only beautiful sunny days that were passed in dancing and song. Trees of the Otherworld bore fruit and flowers at the same time; the food served there was impossibly tasty but never filling.

Many names are used of the Otherworld: mag mell ("plain of honey"), tir na nog ("land of youth"), and hy-brazil (the island of Bres, after which the South American country of Brazil was named). Some scholars have derived the word avalon, used of the mysterious and powerful place of Arthurian legend, from the phrase emain ablach ("island of apples"), used to describe the Otherworld.

Otter

Symbolic animal. Both the Irish and the Scottish Highlanders believed that this sleek, playful water mammal had the powers of the otherworld. Otters were believed to live in kingdoms like humans, ruled over by an otter king (sometimes called Dorraghow or dob-harchu) whose skin was worth a fortune. It was hard to catch such a creature, for it was virtually invulnerable; a bit of white fur under its chin showed the only point where it could be killed. Despite the value of the pelt, killing the king otter was costly, for the murderer (whether human or dog) would die soon after, apparently taken out of revenge by the otter-people.

Some felt that the king otter’s pelt was worth even that price, for a fragment of the hide would protect an entire household from harm. Soldiers going off to war believed that they would be protected from death at the front if they carried a portion of the skin of a king otter. According to tradition, the only ones who escaped the historic massacre of the followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden were those carrying king-otter skin. In Ireland a purse made from the skin of the king otter would be forever filled with coins, making its owner fabulously wealthy.

Owein (Owain, Iwein, Yvain, Owein fab Urien)

Arthurian hero. In an Arthurian text from Wales (The Dream of Rhonabwy), this name is given to a knight of camelot, son of king urien and king Arthur’s sorceress half sister morgan. One day, while adventuring abroad, Owein heard of a land that suffered under the scourge of a mysterious Black Knight. He traced the Knight to a forest (see broceliande) and defeated the villain there. There too he found a fountain, guarded by a lovely maiden named luned, who helped him win the heart of her mistress, an even lovelier maiden whose only name was the lady of the Fountain.

Despite pledging to be true to her, Owein was unable to fulfill his vow, leaving her to go adventuring with king Arthur and forgetting to return. The Lady’s servant Luned followed him to Camelot, where she shamed him before the other knights for his faithlessness. He fled into the forest, where he finally healed himself sufficiently to become a knight again. Adventuring about the land in knightly fashion, he encountered Luned again, whom he rescued from an imprisoning giant. To repay his assistance,

Luned arranged a reconciliation between Owein and the Lady of the Fountain.

Oweynagat (Cave of Cruachan, Cave of the Cats)

Irish mythological site. In Co. Roscommon, in Ireland’s western province of connacht, there is a tiny cave of huge mythic importance. Oweynagat is part of the great archaeological complex of cruachan, the ancient capital of the province of Connacht centered on the fort of its goddess-queen medb. Still visible and accessible in a small field on the edge of the complex, 700 meters southwest of the great mound where Medb’s palace was said to stand, the cave’s opening is quite small, some three feet high by four feet wide, formed by a medieval souterrain or underground passage. After that narrow opening, the cave opens up to a huge cathedral-like space.

Oweynagat figures prominently in ancient Irish myth and legend. It was the birthplace of Medb herself. The goddess and fairy queen etain, fleeing with her fairy lover midir from her human husband, stopped at Oweynagat with her companions, who included her maidservant crochan Crogderg, whose name means "blood-red cup." Midir was said to have wanted to visit a relative who lived in the cave, the otherwise unknown Sinech ("large-breasted one"), for whom he had great affection. At the end of their stay, Crochan was so enamored of the place—which although it seems only a dingy cave, is a great palace in the otherworld—that she begged to stay. Etain and Midir gave her the cave, and so it was there that Crochan’s daughter Medb was born.

Oweynagat also appears in the adventure tale about one of her servants, a man named nera who saved Cruachan from an attack by Otherworldly forces with the assistance of a fairy woman whom he met in the cave and married. She warned him that Medb’s beautiful palace would be burned to the ground the following samhain, a warning that brought the forces of Medb and ailill mac Mata into the cave to eliminate the danger. As with other tales, this one associates the cave with the feast of Samhain.

The cave is also associated with the great figure that shadows Medb throughout the epic through which she is most known, the tain bo cuailnge or cattle raid on cuailnge—the morrigan, who drove her Otherworldly cattle into the cave each sunset. She may be the one who flew out of the cave, called "the hell-mouth of Ireland" in medieval documents, for apparitions were said to appear there, especially on the magical Celtic festival of Samhain (November 1) when the veils between the worlds were thin and even those without second sight could see beyond this world and into the next.

The Morrigan was known to have stolen the herds of a girl named odras and to have driven them down into the cave of Oweynagat. Undeterred by Morrigan’s fierce reputation, Odras pursued her, trying to regain the cattle upon which she relied. She got almost to Morrigan’s domain, but the great queen was more powerful than the girl and turned her into a lake.

How the cave got its name is unknown; no cats appear in its folklore or myth. An oracular cave in Connacht where a cat was consulted by fortune-tellers is recorded in some texts, but its location is not given, so it is unclear whether Oweynagat is intended. Oweynagat is much more commonly associated with cattle than with cats; not only does the Morrigan drive her cattle through the cave, but a woman was said to have traveled underground for many miles, dragged there by a calf to whose tail she clung.

In a text from the 18th century, the cave was described as the "Hell-mouth of Ireland," suggesting that the deities and spirits who had been believed to live within Oweynagat were still imagined as active, if diabolical. The cave is still accessible, although its frighteningly tiny entry makes it one of the least-visited of Ireland’s great mythological sites.

Owl

Symbolic animal. The majestic power of the night-hunting owl was recognized by people around the world. To the Celts, the owl symbolized age and its attendant wisdom. The most renowned owl in Celtic literature is the transformed Welsh flower-bride blodeuwedd, who was turned into an owl as punishment for betraying her husband and persuading her lover to kill him. We also find an owl (the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd) in the Welsh epic of kulhwch and olwen, but the wise bird was unable to provide the hero with the information he needed to find his lover. In Ireland a vestigial owl goddess is found in the figure of Echtach, sister or double of the cannibal goddess Eghchte.

Some have interpreted the great spiraling patterns that appear in eye-like pairs on some pre-Celtic monuments in Ireland, Britain, and France as representing an owl-faced goddess. This controversial viewpoint links those ancient monuments to others in the eastern and central Mediterranean.

Ox

Symbolic animal. Although this word is not always accurately used, sometimes merely indicating cattle, it actually means a castrated bull, usually of the domestic bovine species. Because removing the testosterone-producing testes from an animal typically produces a more peaceable disposition as well as weight gain, and because having too many ambitious bulls in a herd could lead to fighting and thus loss of precious animal life, some animals were transformed from bulls into oxen early in life. They then were used for hauling, for their great bulk gave them great strength; they also found their way into the stewpot. Oxen are less important in myth and legend than either cows or bulls, but occasionally they appear to represent strength and endurance. Similarly, landscape features named for oxen were typically monumental; thus we find, in the west of Ireland, a powerful range of hills called the Ox Mountains.

Padfoot

English folkloric figure. In Yorkshire, this strange donkey-sized creature appeared as an omen of death; it looked like an amorphous shaggy ball with eyes or a woolly white dog. It could become invisible at will and often roared or rattled to terrify unsuspecting travelers who passed its lair. It was very important never to strike out at Padfoot, for touching it gave the monster power over you.

Padstow

Obby Oss Cornish ritual. In the small Cornish port of Padstow on beltane morning (May 1), a hobbyhorse ceremony is still held to mark the arrival of spring according to the old Celtic calendar. The celebration has been linked to old Celtic horse rituals.

Paganism

Cosmological concept. All Celtic religion is pagan, for the word defines the polytheistic world as distinguished from the monotheistic. Celtic religion arose before the historical Christ was born and thus before his followers had articulated their message. As Christians made theirs the dominant worldview of Europe, they employed derogatory words to describe anyone who continued to hold to the traditional beliefs of their ancestors. They were "pagans," from the Latin pagani, which means "hick" although it is more formally translated as "a country dweller." Similarly, the word heathen was used to describe someone who lived on the heath or moor, poor agricultural land where impoverished people eked out a living and clung to ancestral beliefs. The use of these words betrays the urban background of Christianity’s rise and the religious conservatism typical, even today, of the country dweller.

Today the word pagan is used in America to describe people, most often urban or suburban, who search for non-Christian spiritual traditions articulating a worldview that seems less dualist, less sexist, or more nature-embracing than they believe Christianity has become. Some scholars argue that the term should not be applied to people who adopt paganism, referring to such seekers as neo-pagans ("new pagans"), to distinguish them from those who practice an unbroken tradition. Such distinctions have given rise to several cults that declare themselves descendants of some religion, often Celtic, that existed in ancient times and was conveyed in secret through the ages. Most such claims are without substance, although there is strong evidence that folklore and place-lore (see dind-shenchas) conveyed ancient beliefs forward to contemporary times.

Palomides

Arthurian hero. Not British but a Saracen, an Islamic fighter, Palomides was one of the greatest knights of the round table, who served king arthur in the quest for the sacred grail.

Pamp (Pam)

Irish hero. The book of invasions gives this as the name of nemed’s father, thus making him an ancestor of the race of Nemedians who were among the early invaders of Ireland. His name is believed to be a late invention, derived from the Latin Pompeius.

Paps of Danu (Paps of Anu, Da Chich Anann)

Irish mythological site. On the road between the scenic Lakes of Killarney and the city of Cork in the southwestern Irish province of munster, two almost identical rounded hills rise from the Derrynasaggart Mountains. The top of each is crowned with an ancient cairn, a rock construction built some 6,000 years ago by unknown people who preceded Celtic settlement in the area. The west Pap has not only a mound surmounted by a cairn but a stone chamber as well. Between the two hills is a stand of ragged rocks called The Teeth.

The Paps are often cloud-hung, but when the mist clears, the cairns create an earth sculpture of nipples atop the rounded breasts of the paired hills. The mountains are called the Paps (breasts) of danu (sometimes anu), after a goddess who appears as an ancestral figure but to whom little myth accrues. The monument has been interpreted as indicating that Danu was a goddess of the earth.

Danu is not the only female figure connected with the Paps. The poet cred was said to have built her palace on the side of the hills; a holy well on the Paps was dedicated to the strange figure of crobh dearg ("red claw"), honored at beltane with visits to the well. The only male figures associated with the twin mountains are the bard cael and the hero fionn mac cumhaill, both lovers of Cred.

Paradise

Cosmological concept. The Celts had no concept that exactly parallels the eastern Mediterranean vision of Paradise as a beautiful, unearthly world that existed before this one, that was lost to us through the human sin, and to which the elect will go after death. Instead, the Celts believed in an otherworld that could be reached during one’s lifetime if one happened to be in the right place at the right time. The Otherworld was not necessarily a desirable destination, for the fairies and minor divinities that occupied it could hold a person against his will and refuse to let him return. Not that the captive would necessarily wish to run, for the Celtic Otherworld was beautiful and satisfying, if somewhat sterile.

Their familiarity with this pleasant Other-world may have made it easy for the Celts to accept the apparently similar Christian vision of Paradise. Although Christians might be given a visionary glimpse of the world to come, they cannot enter while in their earthly bodies, nor can they readily return from Paradise once they arrive there. As the home of God, Paradise is entirely unshadowed with the ambiguity of the Celtic Otherworld. Thus the differences between Paradise and the Otherworld are profound despite their slight and superficial similarities.

Paris Continental Celtic hero. In the Welsh mythological tale of kulhwch and olwen, a king of this name appears as ruler over the region where the French capital now stands. Most scholars dismiss the assumption that this offers proof of an historical Celtic king named Paris; rather, they say, the city’s name probably derives from a local Celtic tribe, the Parisi; the same tribe, or a branch of it, settled in Britain’s Yorkshire region. Another legend offers a different idea of how Paris got its name: Because the city was so beautiful, it was named par-Ys—"like-ys"—after the lost magical city of Brittany.

Partholon (Partholon, Parthalan, Parthanan)

Irish hero. In the mythological history of Ireland, the book of invasions, Partholon was the least significant of the invaders, coming after cesair and before nemed and his followers. Unlike some of the other races that disguise a history of early settlement, Partholon is believed to have been invented by medieval historians who based his name on Bartholomaeus, a figure from early Christian pseudo-history.

Partholon, it was said, came to Ireland from Greece, where he had killed both his parents and had been blinded in his left eye as punishment. (The theme of the one-eyed leader, which also appears in the stories of balor of the Evil Eye and the warrior goll mac morna, may be Celtic in origin.) Thirty years after the biblical great flood, Partholon arrived in Ireland with his people, the Partholonians, who settled in after fighting off the monstrous fomorians. Their battle was a strange one: No blood was shed because the fighting took place entirely in the realm of magic.

Life in Ireland was not happy for Partholon, who discovered that his wife dealgnaid, whom he left alone while he surveyed the land, took advantage of his absence to sleep with their servant Togda; Partholon blamed not his wife but himself, saying that women should never thus be abandoned with their needs for love unsatisfied. Partholon and Dealgnaid had four sons; together they cleared the forests and established farms. After several hundred years a plague struck, and the descendants of Partholon were all killed off, all between one Monday and the next in May. Only tuan mac cairill, a shape-shifting bard, survived. A folkloric remnant of Partholon was an Irish harvest spirit named Parthanan who stole any grain left unthreshed.

Passage graves (Passage tombs)

Mythological sites. Archaeological evidence of an ancient people who preceded the Celts in Ireland, Britain, and Brittany, these stone structures are built of huge boulders, arranged standing upright to form a corridor leading to an inner chamber. The entire structure was usually covered with earth, forming a mound (see fairy mound), but in many cases this outer covering has worn away, leaving the stone skeleton clearly visible. As was the case with many ancient monuments of the megalithic civilization, these impressive ruins were believed haunted by the Celts, and their superstitious beliefs concerning the tombs make up some of the lasting folklore of the Celtic lands.

Patera

Cosmological symbol. The continental Celtic goddess epona is frequently shown carrying a flat object upright in her hands. This patera, or offering plate, also appears in other contexts: held by a deity, offered up by a human worshiper, filled with fruit or other produce, or entirely empty. Some have interpreted the object not as a plate but as a small frame drum.

Pattern (patron)

Ritual. A series of ritual activities performed on a specific day and usually at a specific site, the pattern (Irish usage) or patron (in Brittany) is apparently Christian but descends from a Celtic, or sometimes pre-Celtic, original. Examples are numerous: visiting holy wells at ancient ritual times, climbing mountains on Celtic holidays, traveling along a certain road or path while performing specified actions. The pattern often included walking in circles, leaving specified offerings, reciting specific prayers, or drinking well water. In some cases the actions could be effective at any time, while at other locations the pattern had to be done on a certain day and at a certain time. These rituals, which still continue today, are described as Christian by their practitioners, who may be aware of pagan antecedents but who are rarely bothered by them.

Pech (peht, pict)

Scottish folkloric figure. In Lowland Scotland, this name used of the oth-erworld creatures otherwise known as fairies apparently derives from an ancient historical people called the picts. As is common with fairy races, the pech was fair-skinned and red-haired (see red) and might be mistaken for a human except that they were extraordinarily short. Despite their dwarfish height, they were strong and agile; they formed great lines in order to haul stones from quarries to construct their castles. Like many Otherworldly peoples, the pechs could not bear sunlight and fled to their residences each dawn.

Peg O’Nell

British folkloric figure. Figures of legend are often earlier deities in degraded form. This seems to be the case with Peg O’Nell, connected with the River Ribble in Lancashire; the Ribble once bore the name of the river goddess belisama, who was worshiped at its source and on its shores. That her worship may have involved human sacrifice is suggested by some scholars who have found in the figure of Peg O’Nell a vestige of that dreadful rite. Peg was said to have been a servant girl who drowned in the Ribble and, to punish those who failed to rescue her, came back every seven years to steal another victim. (In Ireland, we find a similar seven-year cycle of drowning connected with aine, a fairy queen and ancient goddess of the haunted lough gur.) On Peg’s Night, when the Ribble rises to snare a new victim, it was considered appropriate to make propitiatory sacrifices of small birds or animals to the river spirit. A headless stone statue at Waddow Hall on the river’s banks is believed to represent Peg or, in alternative theories, the goddess Belisama.

Peg Powler

British folkloric figure. A haunting green-haired spirit of the River Tees between the counties of Durham and Yorkshire, Peg Powler may be a degraded descendant of the ancient Celtic river goddess of the area. She was said to wander about, especially on Sundays, luring young and old folks to a watery death;those who drowned in the Tees were said to have been eaten by Peg Powler. When foam gathers on the waves of the river, it is called "Peg Powler’s suds" and is said to be "Peg doing her laundry," while a white slick means she is milking her cow and is called "Peg Powler’s cream."

Peist (bruckee)

Irish folkloric figure. A monstrous serpent or reptile, the peist appears in a number of legends, including many in which it is overcome by st. patrick. Typically the peist is associated with water, usually fresh rather than oceanic: it lives in a lake and can only be successfully killed when submerged. It is also called the ollipheist.

These beasts are especially common in the area of west Co. Clare called the Burren, where place-names like Poulnapeasta ("water dragon’s lair" or "peist-hole") are found. Near Corofin a pool that changed color and was marked with several funnel holes was believed to harbor a brown, hairy, big-eyed monster.

Pelagianism (Pelagius)

Cosmological concept. The fifth-century Christian philosopher Pelagius is believed to have been a Celt, British or Irish (his opponent, St. Jerome, claimed Pelagius was "stuffed with Irish porridge"), who gained many followers in the early church with his "happy heresy." Pelagius believed that all of creation was good and that the human enterprise was to learn to love all that exists. Opposing this vision was that of the North African cleric Augustine, who had been greatly influenced by the dualistic philosophy of the Persian sage Mani in his youth, an influence that he never entirely shed (see duality). St. Augustine’s combat with Pelagianism was one of the defining moments for the emerging Christian church. A brilliant and charismatic leader, Augustine argued fiercely against the Pelagian vision, which reflected a typical Celtic view of nature.

Pellinore

Arthurian hero. Brother of the fisher king Pelles, Pellinore was a great knight of the round table and, in some texts, father of the pure percival.

Penarddun (Penardun)

Welsh heroine. The daughter of the important goddess don and the sea or death god beli, Penarddun was one of the consorts of king llyr. She is sometimes called the mother of Llyr’s daughter branwen as well as his sons bran the blessed and manawydan (some sources give another woman, Iweriadd, as mother of the first two). With another man, Eurosswyd, she had two sons of opposite temperament: the gentle nisien and the evil efnisien. All of Penarddun’s children figure prominently in the mythological Welsh tales collected in the mabinogion; she herself has little legend and appears to be an ancestral figure.

Penn Cruc

Welsh god or hero. The Welsh equivalent of the Irish harvest god of similar name, crom cruach, Penn Cruc was worshiped at ancient mounds and stones.

Percival (Perceval, Parsival, Parsifal, Parzifal)

Arthurian hero. The son of the Welsh princess herzeloyde and the warrior gahmuret, Percival was brought up in a cottage without knowledge of his illustrious parentage, and he became a knight noted for his simplicity and purity. The quest for the grail—the cup that Jesus of Nazareth used at his Last Supper, later brought to Celtic lands by the mysterious joseph of arimathea—makes up a major part of the Arthurian legends. The story of the Grail quest begins with the knight Percival wandering in a barren land. Its ruler had been wounded (see fisher king) and could do nothing other than fish from a boat, although nothing ever came to his line. Dining with the king, Percival suddenly had a vision of a chalice and a bleeding lance. Trying to be polite, he said nothing about the curious experience. The vision ended, and the castle suddenly disappeared, leaving Percival alone in the woodland, wondering how the Fisher King and his lands could be saved.

The quest for the Grail was thus launched. Percival returned to arthur’s court, and the knights of the round table set off, each of them experiencing a different quest that matched the needs of his soul. Percival finally was able to rediscover the Grail Castle and this time asked the necessary questions: Whose is the cup, why does the lance bleed? His questions restored the king to health, and thus the land bloomed again, and Percival succeeded the Fisher King on the throne of the reborn land.

The great Breton writer Chretien de Troyes first wrote of Percival in 1175 c.f. (Perceval, ou Le Conte du Graal); he appears in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur as Sir Percival; and he is Parzifal in the Germanic versions of the story that became part of German composer Richard Wagner’s operatic cycle.

Peredur

Welsh and Arthurian hero. In one of the great romances of Wales, we learn of this callow young man who, enduring many trials and succeeding at many quests, became a noble and admired knight. His character, somewhat altered, became the basis for the Arthurian knightly hero percival. Some have found in his name an echo of the grail itself, for per means "bowl" in Brythonic Celtic; any connection to the Grail, however, does not appear in most versions of Peredur’s tale.

Perilous

Bed Arthurian site. Unknown in the physical world, the Perilous Bed magically appeared before knights who quested for the sacred grail. It looked soft and inviting, but anyone who lay down upon it was punctured by invisible knives, until gawain destroyed the threatening object.

Perilous Seat (Siege Perilous)

Arthurian site. Like Celtic inauguration stones, the Perilous Seat recognized true heroism; only the finder of the grail could sit in it without disappearing. In some texts, percival sat on the Perilous Seat after his first and failed encounter with the fisher king; the stone cracked apart to indicate his unworthiness, but he later repaired it, sitting upon it after successfully finding the Grail and knitting the stone back together.

Perilous Valley Breton mythological site. Within the legendary forest of broceliande in Brittany, there was a haunted valley that had been cursed by morgan, half sister of King arthur and lover of the unfaithful guyomard. To assuage her wounded feelings, Morgan enchanted the valley so that any man who had ever betrayed a woman would find himself lost in the Perilous Valley, wandering as though pixy-led, unable to find the way out. The green valley would seem, to a faithless knight like Guyomard, to be filled with monsters—all of his own imagining. In the heart of the valley was a lake called the fairy’s Mirror, from which nightmares rose like mist. No matter how many knights happened into the valley, each would think himself alone. Finally one of the knights of Arthur’s own court, the young gawain, found himself snared in Morgan’s trap, and lancelot went to save him. As Lancelot has never been untrue to his beloved guinevere (his adultery with elaine of Corbenic, whereby the hero galahad was conceived, did not count because he was inebriated and believed himself to be making love to Guinevere), he was able to dispel the enchantment and free the captives.

Phantom islands

Mythic symbol. islands that appeared and disappeared in cloudy mist were believed to be entrances to the other-world where fairies, divinities, and the dead dwelt in endless sunny pleasure. These phantom islands could be seen out in the ocean or on lakes; some appeared regularly, usually on a seven-year cycle, but others appeared once in the mist and were never seen again.

Pict (pl., Picts, Pictii; in Irish, Cruithin, Cruithne; in Welsh, Prydyn, Priteni)

There is some evidence that what we know as Celtic religion and mythology includes vestiges of the beliefs of the apparently non-Celtic ancient people called the Picts, or "painted ones," a name that may derive from a tradition of tattooing their bodies. Some argue that the Picts were Celts from such tribes as the Caledonii and the Maecatae, for some Pictish rules had names that seem to have been in the Brythonic (P-Celtic) language. Others claim that the Picts were a distinct ethnic group, speaking a non-Indo-European language. In either case, the Picts may have been matrilin-eal (see matriliny) basing descent on the mother’s line rather than the father’s, as we find many of the most ancient and presumably Pictish figures named in that way (like the Welsh gwydion son of don and mobon son of mod-ron), while later heroes and heroines bear patronymics, based on the names of their fathers.

The Picts lived in what is now Scotland, where they left traces in the form of stone carvings of symbolic animals and objects such as bulls and horses, serpents and ravens, hammers and combs; these carvings may have represented religious beliefs or tribal totems. They were allies with Celtic tribes in fighting the invading Romans; it was against these fierce northern warriors that the great Hadrian’s Wall was erected. They continued to be an historical force until the ninth century c.e., when they united with the Scots in a joint kingdom, after which all traces of their language died out.

Pig

Symbolic animal. The pig is important in Celtic religious symbolism, as might be expected among people for whom it provided a vital meat source, second only to the cattle that also figure so significantly in myth and folklore. Early pigs were smaller and fiercer than today’s domestic variety; they lived half-wild in the forests, rather than confined to sties, and grew fat on the "mast" or acorns found under oaks that were themselves sacred to the Celts. In early Celtic culture the pig was a funeral animal; a connection with the warrior class is also suggested by the occasional depiction of a boar on a helmet, although this may have been an evocation of the animal’s fierceness when cornered.

Mythical and folkloric pigs include, most notably, the ever-regenerating pigs belonging to the dagda in the Irish otherworld; any number of people could slice pork off the creature, which would be found whole and hearty the next day. Also in Ireland, the great boar—a transformed man—that killed the hero diarmait Ua Duibne is found, as is the enchanted sow Caelcheis, who was brought to her doom by a harper’s music. In Celtic Gaul there is evidence of a god named moccus ("porker"), whom the Romans assimilated to their Mercury. On the Isle of Man the Arkan Sonney or "lucky piggy" is an Otherworldly creature that, like others of its fairy kind, could be distinguished by its red ears and white skin; it brought good luck if you could catch it, but few ever did.

Pilgrimage

Cosmological concept. The symbolism of the pilgrimage—a journey to a sacred place—is that of the journey of life, tending inevitably to its conclusion in death and the afterlife. The conception, familiar to both Christian and Islamic religions, had little place in Celtic thought. Not that the Celts did not travel to holy sites; there is strong evidence that they did, evidence that continues in the patterns or rituals held at such sites even today. However, travel and pilgrimage are not the same. There was no holy center for Celtic religion, no place where anyone could come at any time and expect to find an unchanging sanctity. The center was more a cosmological concept (see mide) than a geographical one; in addition, sites were connected to specific days and even hours. Thus pilgrimage did not exist in the conventional sense among the Celts; rather, people traveled for various purposes to many sites, usually near home rather than far away.

Pin

Symbolic object. Small pointed bits of metal or bone—pins and needles—were common offerings at Celtic holy sites, especially those related to water, such as wells and river sources. Because pins were used to fasten cloth together, they may have been symbolic prayers for healing or "sewing up" of broken bones and even broken hearts.

In fairy lore, tiny pins were secreted in the clothing of those who were victims of fairy kidnapping. Upon returning to this world from the otherworld, the erstwhile captive would remain in a comatose state until the vestiges of fairyland were located and removed.

Pishogue (piseog, pistrog)

Irish folkloric concept. The term "pishogue" or "pishoguery" is still used in Ireland to dismiss old ways ("it’s just a pishogue") and occasionally to describe false tales got up to seem like folklore. Originally the word meant an Otherworldly bewitchment that caused the world to seem quite different than it really is (see glamour).

Pixy (pigsie, piskie)

British folkloric figure. One of the most commonly recognized names for the Otherworldly beings of fairyland, this word was used in the West Country of England and in Cornwall. Like other such beings, pixies typically wore green or red, had red hair and pointed ears, and were shorter than humans. Often they squinted as though they could not bear the light of day; indeed, they preferred the nighttime. (In Cornwall the piskie was some what shorter, older, and more wizened than the British pixy.) Also typical was their mischievous manner; they enjoyed leading people astray (see pixy-led) and rousing the animals in the dead of night. They could be friendly and helpful as well, like brownies and other household spirits, offering aid with housekeeping and farmyard chores. As with other such races, it was important to ignore the pixy’s contribution to the household economy, because praise or gifts would cause the pixy to be "laid" or driven away

Pixy-led (pixy leading, pouk-ledden)

Folkloric motif. Wherever we find belief in fairies—in other words, in the ancient Celtic lands—we find the tale that they entertained themselves by leading humans astray. They cast a glamour or pishogue over a scene so that everything seemed strange. A path disappeared, a gate went missing, a road dissolved: they remained real in the physical world, but the pixy-led traveler simply could not find them. Round and round the traveler turned, looking desperately for a familiar landmark, but until the pixy decided to lift the spell, it was to no avail. Being pixy-led was most common at liminal times and places (at dusk, in bogs, at lakeshores) and on the ancient Celtic feasts, especially samhain on November 1. That Shakespeare knew of the superstitions about being pixy-led is clear from his description of Puck’s doings in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: "to mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm."

Several antidotes to being pixy-led have been recorded: carrying iron, wearing clothing backward or inside out, wearing hobnailed boots, carrying salt in the pocket, whistling or singing while walking. Although none offered a guarantee, such actions offered some protection against fairy mischief. See also stray sod.

Place-lore

Many European place-names are of Celtic origin, especially those ending in variants of -dunum ("fort," or "town") such as Lyon and Verdun in France (originally Lugdunum and Virodunum) and those including nemeton ("sacred grove") such as Nanterre (Nemetodurum). In addition to names, we find Celtic influence in the stories told of landscape features. As Celtic religion was radically polytheistic, envisioning divinities as related to specific places and the people who live there, place-lore was an important part of religion.

The naming of places oriented speakers and listeners spiritually as well as geographically. In ancient Ireland the remembering of place-names and the stories connected with them was an important duty of the poetic class (see bard); even today, Irish poetry often includes the naming of specific places, although contemporary work gives less information about the mythological lore connected with them. A specific form of poem told the tales of important places; these place-lore poems are collectively known as the dindshenchas. Some of the stories were invented by medieval poets to fill in gaps in what was known of locations, but in many cases the poems, compiled in the 12th century, provide lore that dates back far into the Celtic past. A century later, another collection expanded the poetic place-lore and added interpretations in prose; together the volumes make up one of the most comprehensive, although difficult to interpret, works on Irish place-names.

Other Irish place-lore was never recorded in writing but remained in local oral tradition. Such material presents specific challenges to the scholar, who must determine whether the tale was an invention, a misinterpretation or misunderstanding, or a true myth. The study of place-lore is less developed in Celtic lands outside Ireland.

Plant Annwn (Plant Annwyn, Plant Rhys Dwfen)

Welsh folkloric figures. The "tribe of the otherworld" and the "tribe of Rhys the Deep" were names for Welsh fairy people. The Plant Annwn lived below the surface of lakes, where they kept their red-eared cattle (the Gwarthegy Llyn) and teams of white dogs (c’wn annwn). Like other such beings, the Plant Annwn could intermarry with humans, but should the restrictions they put on their mates be broken, they would instantly disappear. The Plant Rhys Dwfen were a subspecies of fairy who were extremely facile at marketing and thus grew very wealthy.

Planxty

Folkloric motif. The music of the otherworld was, according to all who heard it, more beautiful by far than anything in our world. The great Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, who fell asleep one day on a fairy mound and awoke a musical genius, coined the word planxty to describe the special qualities of fairy music. It was not as regular as our music, nor as rhythmic, but its odd dissonance and erratic rhythm produced a hypnotic and melancholic trance that ordinary music could not. Musicians who heard music in strange lonely places could be certain that what they heard was no earthly melody, but beautiful as the melodies were, they were also difficult to remember. Even if a fiddler played it over and over, by the time he reached home the melody had disappeared from memory.

Following fairy music was a certain way to adventure, but there was no easy way to return to human life once you had heard it. On the Isle of Man, a farmer named Lonagher Lowey went into a hill in search of the melodious sounds; there he found a complete town where a magnificent banquet was underway. Having some presence of mind, Lowey poured off the wine he was offered, rather than drinking it, because eating or drinking anything in the Otherworld makes it impossible to leave. He was one of the rare people who returned unharmed from fairyland.

Pledge to the elements

Continental Celtic ritual. In Gaul the following words were used when speaking an oath: "If I break faith, may the skies fall on me, may the seas drown me, may the earth swallow me up whole." The pledge calls upon the air, sea, and earth to bear witness to the speaker’s truth. The words show something of the Celtic sense of animism, of the world being alive and in this case, watchful.

Plowing

Ritual activity. The plowing of a field, necessary in spring to prepare the land for seed, is also an archetypal activity that appears in myth and legend. Often it represents the first arrival of a people in a new land; thus the various races of invaders to Ireland are described as clearing and plowing different regions of the land. Typically gods or heroes do the plowing, although goddesses are sometimes involved when they inspire the work. An alternative name for the harvest god crom dubh, Soicin, means "little plow," suggesting a double god of spring and fall; the name of mac cecht, husband of the land goddess fodla ("unplowed land") means simply "plowman," as does the name Airem, borne by one of the mythological kings of Tara.

Plur na mBan

Irish heroine. This minor heroine, whose name means "flower of womanhood," was the daughter of the fairy queen niamh of the Golden Hair and her favored love, the human poet oisin.

Poetry

Cosmological concept. Today poetry is typically understood as an art form, of little religious consequence. To the Celts, matters were different. Words were powerful; indeed, they had such power that they could alter our physical world. Thus a poet’s word in ancient Ireland was feared, for a satire could be so stinging that it could raise welts on a person’s face; in the most dire situation, appropriately aimed words (connected with matching rituals) could bring about a person’s death.

The Celtic bard was as much a diviner or seer as a maker of lovely words. It seems clear from ancient sources that druids and poets were, if not identical, at least nearly so; they were similarly trained and may have been seen as different stages of the same career. Both were adept at shape-shifting: a druid literally so, being able to change into various bodies or to become an invisible fog; the poet through metaphoric words that find likenesses between apparently unlike objects and ideas and thus transform one thing into another.

In addition to being seers, poets were also historians. Invention was not prized above accuracy of knowledge; indeed, invention needed to be rooted in tradition. Thus the poet’s training included memorization of long passages as well as extemporaneous composition. Such rote learning may have created a light trance or meditative state in which visions of the other-world were more readily seen; thus the long and arduous training in traditional forms may have opened the door to, rather than sealing it against, invention and illumination.

Poet’s circuit

Irish mythological motif. Once an ancient bard had been fully trained, he or she often traveled through Ireland, meeting other poets, exchanging tales and poems, and engaging in poetic debate. It was while on a poet’s circuit that the fair liadan met her fated lover, Cuirithir, she refused to interrupt her travels when he proposed to her.

Poisoned Glen Irish mythological site. When the heroic god lugh killed the monstrous king of the fomorians, balor, the victim’s evil eye split the rocks of a small valley, which remains dangerous to this day. The Poisoned Glen is near Dunlewey, in Co. Donegal.

Polytheism

Cosmological concept. Scholars of religion separate the monotheistic from the polytheistic worldview, the former seeing divinity as singular, the latter as plural. But the subject is more complex than might appear from that division. Implicit in monotheism is dualism, in that whatever is not "god" becomes "not-god"; thus monotheistic religion is inclined to develop a theology that includes evil. Similarly, monotheism typically has associated the divine with something outside or above this world; thus nature becomes less holy in monotheistic religion because it is created by god rather than being god itself. Finally, all monotheisms are based on the concept of a masculine divinity; there is no monotheistic religion that excludes a male god, while all exclude a female image of the divine. All three of today’s most powerful monotheistic religions (in order of development: Judaism, Christianity, Islam) arose in a relatively small region in the eastern Mediterranean; they are desert religions with an emphasis on imagery appropriate to that geographical region.

Polytheism, the belief in multiple divinities, is more widespread and has been the predominant religious system for most of the world over most of the world’s history. Polytheism is typically far less dualistic than monotheism, although such dualistic cults as the Persian Manichaeism are known. More typically, evil is seen not as a cosmic force at war with god/good but as part of the natural cycle that is less comfortable, more frightening, less understood. Thus death is not the opposite of life, but a natural part of it. This does not mean that polytheistic peoples view death with less fear or that they mourn their lost loved ones less; it does mean that death is not typically defined as unnatural.

The Celts appear to have been polytheistic to the extreme; this is assumed because, although the names of more than 200 Celtic gods and goddesses are recorded, few are known from more than one site. It is possible that the number of divinities may have been somewhat smaller if each god had many titles, as the second person of the Christian trinity is known as "Jesus," "Lord," "Christ," "Savior," "Son of Man," and so forth. Sometimes the same image appears in different locations under different names; it is difficult to know if that indicates regional or tribal manifestations of a similar divine power or the same god under different titles.

Unlike the Greeks and Romans, the Celts had no organized hierarchical pantheon, no list of gods and goddesses arranged in order of power. Rather, there seems to have been a concept that divinity was deeply linked to place and, through place, to people. In Irish, the word tuath meant a people and the place they lived; each region had a divinity that represented the land, the land’s sovereignty, and the people connected with that land. This is most forcefully expressed by the goddesses of the Irish land, but similar conceptions seem to be found in other Celtic regions, where numerous divinities personify the powers of springs, rivers, river sources, lakeshores, and other sites.

From this place-based polytheism, some scholars have argued, grew a passionate love of the natural world, which is found expressed in Celtic poetry and in the folkways of Celtic countries. Rituals were linked to the passage of seasons; omens were drawn from the flight of birds and from other natural phenomena; stories were told that explained the ways myth and place intersected. Some have argued that there was an implied monism in Celtic culture—that while not seeing a single divinity as monotheism does, the Celts saw a unity in nature that could be expressed as a singular being—but there is no evidence of a hierarchy that places one god above others. Thus the arrival of Christianity in Celtic lands meant the adoption of and adaptation to a new worldview.

Pooka (puca, phouka; in Wales, pwca; in England, pouke, puck)

Irish folkloric character. The spectral figure of the pooka was a familiar part of Irish folklore, although there is great diversity in its description. Often it was said to be a white horse, but sometimes it appeared as a black dog. It also could appear in the form of a goat, who lived in the woods and had a tremendous capacity for leaping over fences and other obstacles. It may not derive from Celtic mythology, which knows nothing quite like it, but from that of the Danes, who had a similar figure called Pukf. The pooka became, in Welsh, pwca, who appears as Robin Goodfellow, the half-goat, mischief-making Puck whom Shakespeare evoked in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Britain the puck was a shape-shifter who tended to appear in human form.

Sometimes the pooka was friendly, helping farmers who treated it kindly, as in the story of the boy who made friends with a pooka and soon found that a half-dozen were living in the barn, doing the farm’s work. As with any such other-world being, however, the pooka refused pay, and when the boy made a little suit for the pooka, it disappeared. In the famous story of the Pooka of Kildare, the being appeared as a donkey, but when given clothing by the farm workers it disappeared.

Often the pooka was a harbinger of doom, indicating bad luck on the way. One tale describes how a pooka, in the form of a goat, leaped onto a man’s shoulders; when he went home, he took to his bed and was unable to move for three weeks with intense pain, although there was no visible mark from the attack. The pooka attacked most often after samhain, the Celtic feast of November 1 when winter began, and was thought by some to be the cause of plants’ blighting in that season. In its horse form, it would take its victims on a wild ride, flying through the air in terrifying fashion and leaving the unfortunate rider far from where he started.

The Irish center of pooka appearances is in the southwestern province of munster, where a castle called Castle Pooka near Doneraile (where the English poet Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene) is said to be haunted by one; a rock called Carrig-a-Phooka, west of the little market town of Macroom, is a common site of visitation; and on the island of Melaam near Kenmare, frightening noises attributed to the pooka are regularly emitted during storms and dark nights. The pooka makes an important appearance in the modern Irish comic novel At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan).

Portals to the Otherworld

Cosmological concept. The Celtic otherworld was not a place apart from this world; there was no heaven high above or hell down far below. Rather, the Otherworld existed in a kind of parallel time and place, near to this world but not accessible. Certain sites and times, however, offered portals to the Otherworld. Then the veil between worlds, always thin, became even thinner; then people could pass from one world into the other. Such places include ancient sites, both Celtic and pre-Celtic. dolmens, which are door-like structures of stone built by pre-Celtic people for unknown reasons, were especially likely to be places where one could enter the Otherworld. Similarly stone circles, also artifacts of the pre-Celtic period, served as ways to enter there; Celtic hillforts made ideal portals as well. Certain times also made an approach to the Otherworld easier; most significant were the two ancient Celtic holidays, beltane on May 1, and its opposite day, samhain on November 1, when the forces of the Otherworld could easily enter our world, and those from this side could slip over to the Other.

Portune

British folkloric figure. The wizened and wrinkled portune was a typical brownie-type fairy, delighted to help with farm work provided no payment was offered; it was also necessary to resist the temptation to replace their wrinkled, ragged old coats. They were especially useful in hauling and doing other heavy work. Portunes lived on frog meat, roasted on hot coals. The name may come from a mispronunciation of the Roman god of the sea, Neptune, although the portune has no connection to the ocean. Occasionally, the portune revealed his fairy nature by turning mischievous and driving horses into swamps, laughing hysterically at their wild attempts to escape.

Powrie (dunter)

Scottish and British folkloric figures. Noisy spirits, they set up a racket in old buildings and towers; when the noise grew impossibly loud, death or ill fortune was approaching the hearer.

Pregnancy through drinking, eating

Mythic motif. There are a number of Celtic myths in which a goddess or heroine is made pregnant though the mouth, by eating or drinking. Most commonly, the pregnancy results from drinking down a worm or other insect that has drowned in water or wine. The divine beauty etain, cursed by the wife of her lover, became a fly and drowned in a cup of wine, which a princess drank; when she gave birth nine months later, Etain was reborn in a new (but still beautiful) form. The hero concobar mac nessa was born clutching a worm, for his mother, the ravished scholar nessa, wished to prove that her son’s father was a worm she drank rather than the druid who held her hostage; his paternal line being in doubt, Concobar bore his mother’s name. This motif is found in many other cultures,including the Chinese, where emperors were commonly said to have been born through miraculous conception after their mothers ate or drank something unusual. Some have argued that such myths disguise an ancient matrilineal succession, with property and names being passed through the mother’s family.

Prophecy

Religious ritual. The difference between a prophecy and an omen (or portent) is that the first is the result of a ritual embarked upon to find information about the future, while the second is an unsought gift. Omens such as the flight of birds simply existed, like acts of nature, although interpreting their meaning was a skill learned by the Celtic priestly class of druids. Prophecy, by contrast, could be courted by initiates, and the druids practiced various ritual techniques that produced a trance or altered state that permitted a view into hidden matters. Prophecy permits early vision of the future; in this, it is a specialized form of divination, which can also include learning about secrets hidden in the past or present. Thus one might use divination to find out who had committed a crime but prophecy to discover whether the culprit would be caught.

The Celts used both prophecy and divination from earliest times. Both Diodoros of Sicily and Strabo describe how human sacrifice (probably the killing of prisoners or criminals) was used to foretell the future; the victim was stabbed with a dagger and, as he died, his death agonies were decoded to reveal events yet to unfold.

In Ireland several complex rituals of prophecy and divination were known, including the imbas forosnai, or chanting into the fingertips, and the tarhbfleis or bull-sleep, in which a druid or poet slept inside the hide of a newly slaughtered bull in order to dream the future (especially the identity of the future king).

Protection against fairies

Folkloric motif. fairies were not evil; however, they were amoral, not tied to the moral and ethical demands of humanity. Thus to protect oneself against them was not the same as fending off evil, for they were merely playful troublemakers rather than devilish opponents. They commonly tried to lead travelers astray (see pixy-led, stray sod); this was a minor inconvenience and could be quite frightening, but even without protection, the fairy eventually grew bored with the trick and released the ensnared human.

More seriously, the fairies attempted to lure useful or attractive people into the other-world, to do their bidding until released. Musicians were sought after to play for the endless fairy dances; midwives were useful for delivering fairy babies; and handsome people of either sex were desirable for sexual dalliance. Because time in fairyland passed so much more slowly than in our world, a day spent there could be a lifetime here; the returnee might find loved ones dead and the world utterly changed. Even more dreadful, the returnee could find this world so flat and dull compared to the beauties of fairyland that death followed soon after.

Therefore it was traditionally considered wise to carry protection against fairies when going on a trip of any distance; indeed, even a short hike could result in trouble, so filling one’s pockets with bread or salt was always a good idea. The fairies stayed away from anything Christian, so crosses were useful, as was holy water. iron, too, was dreadful to the fairies, so keeping a knife, scissors, or nail in the pocket was considered well advised, as was mounting a horseshoe over entries to house and barn. Four-leafed clovers or shamrocks exuded an oil that, if rubbed on the eye, could remove any fairy enchantment; other useful plants were St. John’s wort, daisies, and red verbena. Most effective of all was rowan or mountain ash, whose berries the fairies could not endure.

Actions could also break the fairy spell. The most common was turning one’s clothing inside out or wearing it backward, the latter presumably based on the idea that the fairies fail to torment someone who seems to be departing rather than approaching. Praying aloud, or singing, or whistling, were held to be efficacious. As fairies were believed to find running water frightening, leaping over a stream put protection between the traveler and the fairy—provided there was not another fairy standing on the distant shore.

Province (coiced)

Irish geographical and cos-mological concept. The island of Ireland was divided into four main provinces, each with its own significance: leinster in the east, the region of commerce; munster in the southwest, land of song and women; connacht in the west, the province of wisdom; and ulster in the north, the land of war and strife. These regions were mythological constructs; indeed, there was little sense of the provinces as political units, a situation that remains so today.

In addition to the four main provinces, there was a fifth, one that existed even more in the realm of myth than the others. This was mide or Meath, the central province. Its boundaries were even less firm than those of the others, because it represented the concept of the center rather than any specific geographical region. Several hundred years ago, the county of Meath was established, but the fifth province of Ireland remains just as elusive as in prehistory.

Pryderi (Gwri)

Welsh hero. In the first topic of the collection of Welsh mythology known as the mabinogion, this hero was born of the magical woman (possibly originally a goddess) rhian-non, who married the human prince pwyll after a strange courtship. Rhiannon appeared on an impossibly speedy mount and was chased by Pwyll, who never could catch up with her. When he finally simply asked her to pause, she willingly did so. Once married, however, their lives were soon unhappy, for when their son Pryderi was born, he quickly disappeared from his cradle. He had been, unknown to the court, snatched away by an Otherworldly hand, but when the monster tried to add a foal from another part of the land to the night’s catch, the foal’s owner counterattacked, causing the monster to drop the tiny infant and flee. This left the prince far from home, but happily the noble farmer whose horse had been threatened, teyrnon Twf Liant, adopted him and reared him in safety and comfort under the name of Gwri.

When he learned the truth of his birth, the young boy set out to claim his inheritance. Finding that his mother had been accused of murdering him and was still being punished for this imaginary crime, he set Rhiannon free by revealing the truth of his absence. Rhiannon welcomed him, but named him Pryderi, "care," for all that she had suffered. The family lived happily until their land was set upon by a strange curse that caused its cattle and people to disappear in a magical mist, as described in the third branch of the Mabinogion. Pwyll had died, and Rhiannon was remarried to the kingly man-awydan; Pryderi too was married, to the fair maiden cigfa. Unbeknownst to them all, friends of a rejected suitor for Rhiannon’s hand still harbored a desire to avenge the humiliation he had suffered. Thus Pryderi was enchanted, together with his mother, and held until their spouses could determine how to free them.

Prydwen

Welsh mythological object. This magical boat, said to have been King arthur’s, was described by some Welsh legends as able to navigate both the waters of this world and that of the otherworld. The name was also used occasionally of Arthur’s shield.

Puck

British folkloric figure. The most famous little fairy in English letters is "that merry wanderer of the night," Puck or Robin Goodfellow of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The puck was well-known to country dwellers as a kind of pooka, a ghostly haunt that caused mischief wherever it went. A small good-natured creature, the puck lived to make trouble, leading travelers astray whenever possible (see pixy-led), pushing furniture about to make people fall flat on the floor, laughing at the annoyances he caused. Like any such being, a puck was friendly enough and could be induced to assist in farm labor, provided no reward or recompense was offered.

Under the name of robin goodfellow, the puck was described in the 17th-century British folklore as a half-human son of oberon and a country lass who took the fairy lord’s fancy. Robin was a normal child until the age of six, when he realized his ability to shape-shift, which he used to become a kind of robin hood, causing mischief to the rich but helping the poor. Some of these motifs have been traced to the Celtic myth of the half-human fairy king and sea god manannan mac lir.

Puck

Fair Irish folkloric festival. On a weekend near the ancient Celtic harvest festival of lughnasa, a strange ritual is held in the small village of Kilorglin in the southwestern province of Ireland, munster. A wild goat is captured in the mountains near the town, then ceremoniously brought into the square and crowned king. Hoisted above the square, the Puck rules over three days of events: Gathering Day, Fair Day, and Scattering Day. Festivities range from horse shows to outdoor games to music and drink. At the end of the fair, the Puck is taken back to the mountains and released. Locals claim the festival dates back to time immemorial, but some scholars suggest that it is a relatively recent invention, perhaps 300 years old. The fact that the goat is not found as an important symbolic animal in Celtic culture, as well as the use of the word puck, which derives from British rather than Irish sources (for Irish, see pooka), supports the latter argument.

Purr Mooar

Manx folkloric figure. On the Isle of Man, this otherworld specter haunted people in the form of a pig.

Pwyll (Pwyll Prince of Dyfed, Pwyll Pendefig Dyfed)

Welsh hero. One of the primary heroes of the collection of Welsh mythological narratives called the mabinogion, Pwyll appears in the first branch of the series, where he was asked by an Otherworldly king, arawn, to exchange places with him. Arawn was being hounded by a murderous enemy and rival, haf-gan, and hoped that Pwyll would be able to save his country. Pwyll agreed, and taking on the appearance of Arawn, ruled well in the Otherworld. So honorable was Pwyll that he refused to make love with Arawn’s queen, though she did not realize another man’s soul inhabited the semblance of her husband’s form. At the end of the year, Pwyll met the enemy Hafgan in single combat—a classically Celtic motif—and defeated him, thus further bonding him to the grateful king Arawn.

Back in his own world, Pwyll found himself infatuated with a beautiful woman who appeared on a white horse that no one could catch. For many nights he chased rhiannon to no avail, until finally he called out to her to stop. She did, and they were soon happily married, but their happiness was short-lived, for after their son pryderi was born, Rhiannon was discovered raving with blood on her face, while the child was nowhere to be found. Believing his wife had killed and eaten their child, Pwyll punished her by making her act as a horse, carrying visitors on her back into their castle. She thus served for many years before their son Pyrderi—who had in fact been kidnapped by a spectral arm and rescued by a distant farmer— returned to free her from her burdens. Pwyll’s reign thereafter was without disturbance and abundantly successful.

Questing beast (Beast Glatisant)

Arthurian figure. This monstrous but unexplained hybrid combined the bodies of serpent, deer, and leopard. Although it had only four legs, the sound of 30 hooves was heard whenever it ran. A knight—variously called pellinore and palo-mides—pursued it endlessly, perhaps because it was really human, a boy transformed to animal shape by the horror of seeing his mother torn apart by wild dogs.

Quintessence

Cosmological concept. This word, derived from the Latin word for five and indicating a distilled essence, describes the mystical center or mide, a place that is both everywhere and nowhere, a pivot point around which the world turns. Although Mide exists as one of the five provinces of ancient Ireland, it was not limited to one location until the medieval period, before which it was a shifting boundless space. See uisneach; tara.