Sabraan To Sympathetic magic (Celtic mythology and folklore)

Sabraan

British goddess. This obscure goddess is known from a single Romano-Celtic temple built on a site in Gloucestershire that is believed to have been inhabited from pre-Celtic times; thus she may have been derived from or connected to a pre-Celtic goddess of the region.

Sabrina

British goddess or folkloric figure. A goddess of this name is believed to have been honored as the divinity of the Severn River in Britain; as many Celtic goddesses were seen as embodied in a river and its watershed, this interpretation is supported by evidence from both insular and continental sources. Like many goddesses, Sabrina survived not as a divine but as a folkloric figure, one who appears in the famous "Masque of Comus" by English poet John Milton.

Milton based his Masque, a dramatic entertainment, on the legend of Locrine, king of Loegria (an ancient name for the English Midlands), who was defeated by an invader named Humber. Among Locrine’s subjects was a lovely maiden, Estrildis, to whom the conquering Humber took a fancy, despite being already married to the powerful princess Gwendolen of Cornwall. Rather than choose between his marriage vows and his infatuation, Humber hid Estrildis in an underground chamber, where she conceived and bore their child, Sabrina.

When his powerful father-in-law died, Humber thought himself free of any consequence of his infidelity and brought forth Estrildis and Sabrina from their dark confinement. Gwendolen, furious at her husband’s betrayal, marshaled her father’s troops and marched upon him. When she proved victor, she demanded that the unfortunate woman and her child be drowned in the Severn. This late legend seems to support interpretations of Sabrina as the resident spirit of the river.

Sacral kingship

Cosmological concept. This term is used by some writers to represent the idea that kingship was not only a political role within Celtic society but a sacred one. Although there is evidence to support this contention, the phrase is a controversial one because of its use in other, non-Celtic, contexts.

Kings were often chosen from families of royal blood, but at other times a man from a lesser family might be chosen through divination by druids or through feats of arms. Once elevated through the ritual of inauguration, the king was expected to follow a series of rules and to abide by certain taboos (see buada and geis). Such understandings of Celtic kingship are generally accepted today.

Far more controversial is the theory, generally discounted but fiercely upheld by a minority of scholars, that Celtic kings became human sacrifices in times of need or disaster. There are some mythological hints of such sacrifice (see conaire), but most scholars argue that a king was driven from power rather than killed if crops failed or other misfortunes occurred. Whether this constitutes a sacred kingship as the term is used in other contexts is still debated.

Sacrifice

Cosmological concept. Sacrifice— the offering up of one thing in order to gain another—was practiced by the Celts, as by virtually all other peoples. Goods of various sorts were offered to gods and goddesses at regular intervals and, most significantly, in times of danger. Typically an object was damaged in some way before being sacrificed; as the Celts usually worshiped outdoors rather than in temples, the object would be deposited in a natural site. Thus a piece of jewelry might be smashed or a torc twisted out of shape before being thrown into a lake or buried in a bog. An animal might be killed; sometimes the entire animal was burned, so that no part of it was used for human food, but there are also evidences of portions (sometimes the best meat) being sacrificed, while other portions became part of a feast. Sometimes a distinction is made between sacrifice, which requires that something be alive or once alive, and offerings, which were never alive; thus artifacts like coins and jewelry constitute offerings, while plants and animals, to say nothing of humans, are sacrifices. More frequently, the term "sacrifice" describes anything offered to the gods and placed beyond human use.

Sadb (Saba, Sabia, Sava, Sadhbh, Blai)

Irish heroine. The beautiful maiden Sadb, daughter of the great magician bodb derg, was turned into a deer by one of his magical enemies, Fear Doirche. Her sister daireann became infatuated with the great hero fionn mac cumhaill and drove him mad when he rejected her, but that punishment did nothing to gain his affection. Instead he regained his sanity and fell in love with a mysterious woman who visited him at night after he had saved a fawn from being killed by his hunting dogs. After many nights of pleasure, the dark druid—her father’s enemy— found that Sadb had managed to slip out of her deer form and enjoy the hero’s affections. He cast a darker spell upon her so that she could never regain her womanly form.

Heartbroken, Sadb fled from her lover, who searched Ireland for nearly a year. Then, near the great flat peak of ben bulben, he found a deer nursing a human infant. Recognizing his lover and their son, Fionn took the boy from her tenderly, naming him oisin ("little fawn"). Little more is heard of Sadb, who apparently lived out her years as a deer, but we hear much of her son, who became the greatest poet and one of the finest warriors of Fionn’s band, the fianna. Some legends say that Sadb was so tender of heart that she died of shame and sorrow after discovering how cruel her lover, Fionn, was in battle.

Sain

Irish and Scottish concept. The term, meaning roughly "to make holy," is used of the actions of saints attempting to remove pagan associations from a sacred place. st. patrick of Ireland, for instance, dipped his pastoral staff in many holy wells, thus permitting ritual to continue at the sites under Christian protection. Once sained, a place was considered to be protected against evil spirits and fairies, both of which can be seen as vestigial forms of ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic divinities.

Sainnth

Irish hero. In some texts, this is the name of the father of the goddess or heroine macha, an otherworldly woman who was forced to race with the king’s horses. Little else is known of him.

Saints

Folkloric figures. The Catholic Church now requires candidates for sainthood to go through an elaborate three-stage process, being declared "venerable," then "blessed," and finally "saint." That process was not put into place until the 10th century, however, under Pope John XV. Some of the more egregious miscreants (like the Italian god of erections once known as St. Priapus) were struck from the rolls in reforms orchestrated in 1983 by Pope John Paul II, but other saints of doubtful historicity remain, including Ireland’s beloved St. brigit, who bears suspicious resemblance to a Celtic goddess of the same name. Neither Brigit nor Patrick are likely to lose their place in the church calendar, given their importance to the Irish church.

In addition to converted divinities, there were other saints, real humans, to whom mythological and magical motifs accrued: in Ireland, Aedh Mac Breic, who flew through the air; St. Ailbe, who was suckled by wolves; St. Bega, who was betrothed to Christ in her infancy but became a nun instead; dragon-slaying St. Finnbar; St. Flannan, who traveled to Rome on a boat made of stone; St. Cury of Brittany, who lived off the same self-regenerating fish for years; and King arthur’s Welsh friend St. Gwynllyw. These mythological accretions may have been added through a folkloric process, whereby through continual retelling the stories of local saints and divinities and even fairy folk became confused and confounded; or through the efforts of early monkish writers who created a literary character from a mortal saint, fleshing out historical facts with recognizably powerful mythological motifs.

Saitada

British goddess. This obscure goddess of the Tyne valley is believed to have represented grief and suffering.

Salmon

Mythic figure. The salmon of Celtic myths is almost invariably a symbol of wisdom, perhaps because of the fish’s own remarkable life-journey. Hatching from eggs laid in freshwater pools and rivers, often deep inland, the fish travel to the ocean, where they live for some years. No one knows what biological mechanism triggers the fish’s return to the pool or river of its origin; nor do scientists know how the salmon navigates to a location it has only seen once before. The unerring ability of the fish to find its home, where it spawns (females laying eggs and males providing milt, or sperm) and dies, is one of the wonders of nature. Migrating salmon flood into rivers, intent upon their reproductive task, providing food for animals and humans in the few spring weeks of the spawning season.

The salmon of wisdom appears in several important myths of the insular Celts: In Ireland it appears as fintan, the one-eyed ancient who lived many lifetimes; in Wales the salmon of Llyn Llwy is the oldest and wisest of earthly beings. Several Celtic sculptures from Gaul show fish in contexts that suggest that the connection of salmon and wisdom was shared by Celtic people on the continent as well.

The most elaborate myths are found in Ireland, where the salmon of wisdom lived in a pool of water or a well surrounded by magical hazel trees. Variously called the well of segais or connla’s well, and described as the source of the Boyne and the Shannon rivers, this pool was a liminal place, neither entirely in this world nor in the otherworld, but linking the two. The surrounding hazels dropped nuts into the water, filled with all the world’s wisdom, which caused bubbles of inspiration called eo fis. The fish—which could be either singular or multiple—ate the nuts, thus growing wise.

Some legends claim that the extra nuts washed out into the river and could be snared and eaten directly by a seeker after wisdom. More often, the fish themselves had to be caught and devoured in order for the wisdom to pass into a human being. Only two people ever tasted the salmon of wisdom. The great hero fionn mac cumhaill did so, when he was a boy serving the druid-seer finneces. The druid hooked the fish and set it to cooking, but it spattered some grease onto the boy’s thumb. When Fionn sucked it, he discovered that he had absorbed all the fish’s wisdom. (This fish is sometimes named Goll Essa Ruaid, the one-eyed salmon of assaroe, after the pool beneath the mythological waterfall where he lived.) Also successful was the goddess sinann, who caught the salmon that lived in the pool beneath the white mountain Cuilcagh in Co. Cavan. When she ate the fish and was flooded with its wisdom, the well rose up and drowned her and the wisdom she had absorbed.

The mythological salmon of wisdom survived into very recent times in Irish folklore. Red-fleshed salmon were seen as fairy creatures from the Otherworld (see red); holy wells, even those dedicated to Christian observance, were visited in the belief that salmon or trout (even, occasionally, eels) living there could, if they made their appearance, bring good fortune to the viewer. Attestations of healing that occurred when a fish was seen leaping from a holy well continue to occur even today in parts of Ireland.

Salt

Symbolic material. The Celts based much of their early wealth on salt, for there are extensive salt mines near their great center at hallstatt in Austria. Salt was a necessity for ancient inland people, who used the mined mineral to preserve meat through winter, making ham and jerky as well as salted fish. Salt was not only used by the Celts but also traded for valuables from distant places. There is no evidence that salt had any religious importance among the continental Celts, who viewed it entirely as a commodity of trade.

Among the insular Celts, however, salt became connected with the belief that a world of mischievous and sometimes dangerous fairies was near to hand, which required that salt be always carried on one’s person. This belief may derive from the fact that salt is a preservative; it might thus preserve one from fairy mischief. Fairies found salt abhorrent and avoided any travelers who carried it; even salt water could do in a pinch. There are tales of people nearly stolen by the fairies but then abruptly let go, who later find a forgotten few grains of salt in the seams of a pocket. Similarly, someone carrying salted meat or fish, even on dangerous days like samhain on November 1, could pass unmolested by fairy sites.

Fairies also could be kept away by carrying iron—another of the earliest Celtic trade items—in the form of nails and scissors. It is not clear whether fairies were kept at bay because they loathed the mercantile world of trade, because they were pre-Celtic deities driven away by the salt-and iron-bearing Celts, or for another reason.

Samaliliath (Malaliach)

Irish hero. Very few members of the obscure race called the Partholonians are named in Irish myth, but one who is remembered is this hero, who invented brewing and thus brought ale to Ireland.

Samhain (Sauwin, Samuin, Samain, Sauin, Samonios)

Celtic holiday. The Celts are typically described as having four great holidays, one for each of the year’s seasons. imbolc (February 1) marked the beginning of spring, beltane (May 1) of summer, and lughnasa (August 1) of the fall harvest season. Most important was Samhain (November 1), the festival of winter’s beginning when, folklore says, the people of the otherworld came to our world to blight vegetation with their breath, so that on the following day nothing remained green and growing.

Samhain was the equivalent of New Year’s, for just as the Celtic day began at sundown, so the year was believed to begin with winter. Some scholars, arguing that there is little evidence of these holidays on the Continent and pointing to their appropriateness to Ireland’s seasonal changes, contend that the "traditional Celtic" holidays are in fact only Irish. Others believe that because absence of evidence does not constitute proof to the contrary, we can assume that the festivals found among the Celtic Irish were celebrated as well by other Celtic peoples.

Samhain is the Celtic holiday most observed today, for it has become the children’s holiday of Hallowe’en, celebrated with decorations, costumes, and pranks. Christianized into All Saints’ Day, the feast was carried to the New World and was adopted not only in North America but in lands invaded by the Spanish (some of whom were descendants of Celts from Galicia), where it became Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Thus Samhain is arguably the most long-lasting and widespread of the Celtic feasts.

Samhain was part of the agricultural calendar in two important ways. Firstly, it marked the day upon which pigs were killed; the sound of desperate squealing must have added to the fearful quality of the feast, although there would also be seasonal treats like blood pudding to be enjoyed. In addition, cows were brought down to protected winter pastures on Samhain, after six months in the mountains with their milkmaids. The movement of animals to and from seasonal pastures continued well into modern times in Ireland.

While it is not known how the festival might originally have been celebrated, evidence from Irish mythological texts suggests that consumption of alcoholic beverages was part of the feast. Every story in which drunkenness figures (the intoxication of the ulstermen, for instance, and the Adventure of Nera, as well as descriptions of the feast of kingly inauguration called the Feis Temro) is said to take place at Samhain. As there is archaeological evidence of brewing vats but little evidence of storage vessels of the sort found in wine-making regions like Greece, it is possible that grain from the recent harvest was brewed and the mixture drunk during the Samhain season. Once the ale was gone, life returned to normal until the next Samhain.

There is some evidence that fires were lit on hilltops on this occasion, as on other Celtic feasts. Although the hill of tara is deeply associated with Samhain in mythology, the Samhain fire was not lit there. The nearby hill of tlachtga in Co. Meath has been proposed as the central fire for this festival, as has uisneach for the opposite feast of beltane. As the harvest’s end, Samhain was a feast of both plenty and fear, for although food had been gathered against the dark winter, there was no way to predict what that season might bring. Thus divination rituals were probably part of the event from ancient times.

If we know little of how the ancient Celts celebrated the feast, we have ample evidence of how Samhain was viewed by later peoples. Innumerable legends and ghost stories are linked to the holiday, when the veil between this world and the Otherworld was lifted so that fairies and the dead could come forth, readily visible to even those without second sight. Fairies were especially prone to stealing humans on Samhain. For this reason, people stayed close to home or, if forced to walk in the darkness, carried iron or salt or turned their clothing inside out (see protection against fairies). Fairies rode forth on the wild hunt, hordes of them pouring out of their fairy mounds and riding through the night, kidnapping people they encountered on the road. For this reason, it was considered ill-advised to walk near a fairy mound on Samhain night, even more so than on ordinary nights.

The dead also came forth from graveyards to visit their old haunts; some traditions claim that they were friendly, seeking to enjoy the familiar fruits of human life once more, while others viewed the returning dead as dangerous. Those who viewed the dead as friendly often set out a "dumb supper" of the favorite foods of the departed; their return was anticipated with respect and only a touch of fear, and the next day’s empty plates were pointed to as evidence of their visit. Those who viewed the dead as dangerous believed that, like the fairies, they were likely to steal away loved ones and carry them into the Otherworld of death.

On the Isle of Man, Samhain was said to be the time when fairies specialized in stealing human victims (on the opposite feast of Beltane, they were more interested in stealing milk and other animal products). It was also a night of divination. Women made Soddag valloo ("dumb cake") on Samhain night; baked directly on the embers of the hearth fire, the cake was eaten in silence by the young women of the household, who then—without turning their back on the fire—retreated to their beds, in the hopes of dreaming of their intended lovers.

Such divination was a common part of Samhain rituals. Girls hid beside a neighbor’s house, their mouths full of water, a pinch of salt in each hand, as they listened for the names of eligible young men; the first one spoken would be the husband of the girl who heard his name. Nuts were burned in the hearth and their patterns interpreted for clues about the future. Molten lead was poured into water, the shapes it formed indicating the future occupations of the inquirers. Those born on Samhain were believed to possess this divinatory skill in everyday life; should they be born with a caul or other indication of spiritual power, they might be greatly feared and respected.

Some writers assert the existence of a god named Samhain, brother of cian, who lost the great cow of abundance, the glas ghaibhleann, to the evil Fomorian king balor of the Evil Eye, but most find no evidence of such a figure.

Samhair

Irish heroine. The daughter of the great hero fionn mac cumhaill, Samhair married a man who, to please her, built a bed held up by three enormous pillars. Thus the palace of Samhair and her husband Cormac Cas was called Dun-tri-lag (now Duntryleague, Co. Limerick), "the fort of the three pillars."

Sampait (Sempait)

Irish heroine. The story of this strong and self-confident woman appears in the dindshenchas, the place-poetry of ancient Ireland. She was a bard and a herdswoman who, when tending her flocks one day, was set upon by a nobleman named Crechmael. Believing that he had the right to her body because she aroused him, Crechmael attempted to rape Sampait. She trussed him up like a pig for slaughter and killed him—by strangling him, one story says, while another says that she smashed in his skull in retaliation for his attempted crime.

Sanctuary

Celtic ritual site. The most common forms of Celtic sanctuary are the nemeton or tree grove and the sacred water-source (spring, well, or pond). The latter was known as far back as the la tene period, for dozens of sacrificed weapons and other objects have been retrieved from such ancient shrines. Typically the Celts worshiped in the open air, but three kinds of sacred buildings are known, which archaeologists call the Belgic type, the viereckschanzen, and the Celto-Ligurian. The first is a typical temple, a structure built for ritual and sacrifice in which rich hoards of jewelry, weapons, and other metal objects have been found. The second is a rectangular building similar to the Belgic temple but lacking any sacrificial goods. Finally, the rare Celto-Ligurian site, resulting from Roman influence, appears much like a classical temple structure.

Sanding the steps

Cornish ritual. On New Year’s Day in Cornwall, it was traditional to pay boys to put sand on the steps of houses and other buildings in hopes of attracting good luck for the ensuing year.

Sarras

Arthurian site. This city was the source of the grail and the destination of the knights who quested in search of that sacred object. The name appears to derive from the term "Saracens," used in the medieval period to describe eastern Mediterranean or Islamic warriors. Some texts claim it as the site of galahad’s death.

Satire

Irish ritual. In modern times satire has been defined as a literary work in which wit and irony are used to discredit vice and folly. Among the ancient Irish satire had a similar, but more urgently moral, purpose, and it was specifically poetic in form. The greatest satirical work in post-Celtic Irish literature, Jonathan Swift’s bitter "A Modest Proposal," which proclaimed that English landlords should devour "suckling children" because they were already eating the parents alive, had much in common with its ancient forebears. Whereas today satire is sometimes used to expose political injustices but at other times has a merely playful or even a malicious purpose, in Celtic Ireland satire was more carefully targeted speech: It changed society.

The role of the bard was to balance the power of the king (see kingship), who was required to offer generous hospitality to all and to follow his sacred vows—his buada and geis—to the goddess of the land’s sovereignty. Should the king fail, barrenness and famine could result, so it was the poet’s duty to create a satire so powerful that its very words would raise boils on the king’s face or otherwise cause deformation. Then, because a blemished king could not rule, the failed leader would be forced from power. Satires occur in several important Irish myths, notably in the expulsion of bres mac Elatha from the kingship of tara after he proved ungenerous, and in the stories of difficulties caused by the bitter poet aithirne.

Because satire was legally considered an assault, it could not be recklessly employed. An honor price or eric was demanded in cases of unjust satire, including the coining of insulting nicknames, the repetition of satires by other poets, and the mocking of a person’s physical appearance. There was a legal requirement that the satire be based in truth, for ancient legal tracts refer to what we would today call slander. Because the purpose of satire was not simple cruelty, it was illegal to compose satires about people after death; such compositions required payment of the person’s full honor price to their relatives (see fine). Even satires based in truth required the poet to pay restitution—but a praise-poem sufficed and balanced out the damage done by the satire.

Scantlie

Mab British folkloric figure. An assistant to habetrot, the spinning fairy, Scantlie Mab was an unattractive hooked-nose being, admired for her devotion to her other-world mistress.

Scathach (Skatha, Scathach nUanaid, Scathach Bunand, Scathach)

Irish heroine. One of the great warrior women of Irish legend, Scathach ("shadowy one") lived on the island named for her—what is now the Isle of skye, off Scotland. There she made warriors into heroes, for only Scathach knew the secrets that brought her such students as the great cuchulainn, who vowed he would find her or die trying. The latter was a frighteningly real possibility, for to get to Scathach’s school, candidates had to pass the Bridge of the Cliff, a great chasm that Cuchulann could only cross by performing his great salmon-leap (whether there was any connection to the salmon of wisdom is unclear).

Scathach’s curriculum was challenging. Students learned strangely named martial arts: apple-feat, thunder-feat, supine-feat, salmon-feat of a chariot-chief; use of blade, spear, staff, and rope; hero’s call; use of the magical weapon called the gae bulga. Not only did Scathach teach her students, she also foretold their futures. In Cuchulainn’s case, she refused to do so—because she saw that he would murder his only son, connal, who in some versions of the story was, also Scathach’s grandson.

Some legends say that Cuchulainn attempted to battle with Scathach for ownership of Skye. After days of exhausting combat they sat down and together ate the hazel nuts in which the world’s wisdom was hidden. With the clarity of his inner vision, Cuchulainn realized he would never beat Scathach, and he returned to Ireland, leaving the island of Skye to the warrior woman. The gift that Scathach made to the hero upon his departure, the great weapon called the Gae Balga, has been compared to the sword excal-ibur, offered to king arthur by his mysterious protector, the lady of the lake.

Some writers use the tales of women warriors such a Scathach, as well as historical figures such as Cartimandua and boudicca and comments by classical authors about Celtic women’s prowess in war, to argue that Celtic women fought alongside men. Others refute such evidence, pointing to laws that limit women’s activities or offer protection to women in times of war.

Scene (Skena)

Irish heroine. An obscure figure in the book of invasions, she was the wife of the great bard named amairgin. She died as their people, the milesians, were attempting to invade Ireland.

Scenmed

Irish heroine. A warrior woman, she led her army into battle against the great ulster hero cuchulainn after he abducted her niece emer, but the hero used the battle skills he had learned from another amazonian woman, scathach of Scotland, to defeat Scenmed.

Sceolan (Sceolang)

Irish mythological beast. The story of this dog is one in which shape-shifting plays an important role, for Sceolan would have been human except that his mother uirne had been bewitched into canine form; she was later restored to humanity, but her twin pups, Sceolan and bran, were not. Sceolan’s uncle, the hero fionn mac cumhaill, adopted both dogs into the fianna, his band of warriors, where they served well as hunters, fighters, and sentinels.

Scota

Irish heroine. A vague figure in Irish legend, she was called a daughter of the pharaoh Cingris in the book of invasions, which combined ancient Irish lore with biblical legend. Another woman of the same name was also a pharaoh’s daughter, but this time he was named nechtanebus; she was wife of the Irish invader Mil, thought to represent a Celtic tribal ancestor (see milesians). Scota may have been a Celtic ancestor goddess, for the people of Ireland were called in ancient times "scoti" or "scots," a name that later came to rest in another Celtic homeland, Scotland.

Scythia

Mythic site. Several Irish texts, notably the book of invasions, claim that the Irish originated in Scythia. Although there was no actual ancient land by that name, there was a migratory group in eastern Europe called the Scythians. Noted for their horsemanship and their impressive gold, they may have in fact interacted with the Celts in their original homeland in central Europe, as the similarity of swirling la tene art and some Scythian patterns suggests. Poet and propagandist Edmund Spenser used the mythological association of the Irish and Scythians to argue that, being barbarians, the Irish should be exterminated—so that their lands could then be distributed among apparently non-barbaric English settlers like himself.

Sea fairies (na buchtogai)

Scottish and Irish folkloric figures. The creatures of the other-world, the fairies, did not only live beneath the hills and in the midst of impassible bogs; they also lived on islands in the sea, especially ones that disappear often behind misty clouds, or even in the ocean’s waves. Sea fairies usually disguised themselves as seals, just as their freshwater counterparts the swan maidens changed into swans. Marriage between water fairies and humans was apparently very common, if folklore that claims seal ancestry for many coastal families is to be believed.

Seal (seal people, silkie, selkie, roam roane)

Scottish and Irish folkloric figure. A sleek furred mammal that lives in cold seas, the seal is found along Ireland’s west and northern coast (occasionally on the east coast, as near Skerries), in many coastal regions of Scotland and, most significantly, on the Scottish islands. On land, seals tend to live in colonies, sometimes quite large ones; in the water, they are strong, graceful swimmers who feed on fish and other sea life.

Many arctic people make seal meat an important part of their diet, but this was never the case in Ireland or Scotland, where eating seals was considered a form of cannibalism. The idea that seals are enchanted people (sometimes, fallen angels) is found in both lands, at times confused with mermaid legends. This notion may be Celtic in origin or may derive from one of the other strata of culture; the appearance of seal people in Scandinavian folklore suggests an ancient derivation from that region. Some scholars remark upon the claim of seal ancestry by certain coastal families—in Ireland, the Coneelys, Flahertys, MacNamaras, Sullivans, and many families on Achill Island; on the Hebrides, the MacPhees; on the Scottish mainland, the MacCondrums; on the Isle of Skye, all fair-haired people. This may reveal an ancient totemic system; the taboo on members of such families killing seals or eating their meat points in the same direction.

Seals do bear some resemblance to human beings, especially in their wild moaning calls and in the direct gaze from their soft dark eyes. Fishermen sometimes spoke or sang to seals, who were thought to speak back, usually begging that no harm come to them or their young. In Donegal, on the northwest coast of Ireland, it was believed that seals were human beings wearing fur coats. Women of the seal people were thought to make splendid wives, except that their children had webbed toes and fingers. As with swan maidens, a man had to steal their animal-cloak and keep it hidden, for if the seal woman ever found her skin, she would disappear instantly into the ocean. Some tales claim that silkies were not born as seals but were human girls drowned at sea and transformed. Women, too, could find seal lovers, by sitting on lonely rocks and weeping into the sea. Such lovers were kind and gentle, but prone to sudden disappearances.

In Orkney, seals still congregate at Sule Skerrie, home of the Great Silkie of a famous ancient ballad, who sang, "I am a man upon the land, I am a Silkie on the sea," in order to seduce a human woman into bearing his half-seal child; the child then returned to the ocean, only to be killed by the woman’s husband while in his seal form. More recently, the image of the seal maiden inspired American director John Sayles’s movie, The Secret of Roan Inish, in which some apparently human children discover that they are the offspring of a silkie.

Seanachie

Irish folkloric figure. The seanachie or storyteller was an important figure in rural Ireland up until the late 20th century. A vestigial form of the ancient bard who memorized the history and myth of the people, the seanachie spun yarns that were often based in the same material, though degraded by time and distance.

Seanchan Toirpeist (Senchan, Senchan Tor-peist, possibly Senchan mac Uarchride)

Irish hero. This bard may have lived in the late sixth-early seventh century c.e., but he certainly did not live the life ascribed to him by his biographers. Like some Irish saints of the period, Seanchan was mythologized—given magical powers such as raising the dead and fighting with magical cats. He is thought to have been attached to the court of the legendary king guaire of connacht, at whose court he learned that none of Ireland’s poets could recite the important epic, the tain bo cuailnge, in its entirety. Determined to remedy this loss, he traveled to the grave of one of the tain’s heroes, queen medb’s lover fergus mac Roich; there Seanchan (or his son, Muirghein) invoked the hero from the otherworld. Fergus materialized and recited the Tain, and, Irish poets having been trained in feats of memory, Seanchan memorized it even as the words were spoken. When the ghost of Fergus appeared again at Guaire’s Court, Seanchan fell over dead. Variations of the story exist, including one in which Seanchan died of shame at his failure to recite the Tain when requested by the king, leaving it to his son to restore his reputation through the magical invocation of Fergus.

Searbhan (Sharvon the Surly, Sharvan, Searban)

Irish hero. In the romantic tale of grainne and diarmait, this giant and magician helped the escaping lovers by letting them hide in his magical rowan tree. He warned them not to eat the berries, but Grainne still craved the magical fruit, and Diarmait killed Searbhan so that they could eat it. The giant’s dying screams revealed the couple’s location to fionn mac cumhaill, who was pursuing them.

Second sight

Folkloric motif. In the ancient Celtic lands, whether on the Continent or on the islands of Britain and Ireland (and in areas of the New World where people of Celtic heritage settled), we find a common superstition that some people can see things invisible to the physical eye. Folklorists have theorized that this is a degraded remnant of Celtic belief in an other-world that is sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. This was an important part of Celtic religious belief; druids and other bards (who were considered seers as well as verbal artificers) practiced some techniques of divination that they believed permitted them to see things hidden in past, present, or future.

In the Scottish Highlands, someone who possessed second sight was called a taibhseaer, while the vision itself was called taibhs. Another term, da-shealladh, does not translate literally as "second sight" but as "two sights," for it was believed that everyone can see ordinary reality through "one sight," but only gifted people can see the otherwise invisible world. This Otherworld included ghosts of the dead who walked casually and without hindrance among the living, invisible to most people but as real as a living body to the second-sighted. People with second sight also could see the fetch, a duplicate person who appeared before a death, walking the path the funeral would take, and fairies, visible to the ordinarily sighted only at liminal times and places.

Like other unusual traits, second sight was not necessarily believed to be a gift; it was rarely envied, and seers often wished to be rid of it. It was generally hereditary but could make its appearance in anyone who suffered a trauma or spiritual awakening.

Seelie Court

British folkloric motif. The opposite of the unseelie court, this group of trooping fairies brought only blessings to those they passed as they traveled through the land on the great holidays of beltane and samhain.

Segais (Segais)

Irish mythological site and goddess. In the tale of boand, goddess of the river Boyne, this was the name of the secret well of wisdom (sometimes called connla’s well, although it is possible the two sites were distinct). Despite prohibitions, Boand chose to travel to the well, placed by some high in the mountains of Slieve Bloom, while others say it was the source of the Boyne itself, near Edenderry in Co. Kildare.

Like other mystic wells, it had the power to grant wisdom to anyone who drank from its waters or, alternatively, ate the fish that swam within it. When Boand approached, the well rose up suddenly and drowned her, carrying her out to sea. Thereafter, its waters could never return to the tiny space of the well, and the great river watered the land. The same story is told of the goddess of the River Shannon, s:1Nann, thus making this well the source of two of Ireland’s most important rivers; both tales are often held up as warnings against women seeking wisdom but can as readily be seen as creation myths.

Segais is also a name given to Boand herself. The place-poetry of Ireland, the dindshenchas, says that she was called by that name in the oth-erworld, and that the other name for the Boyne is Sruth Segsa, "river of Segais." If the well were in the possession of Boand from the start, as this implies, rather than of her husband nechtan, the likelihood that her drowning was not punishment but creation is heightened.

Segomo (Segamonas, Neta Segamonas)

Continental Celtic god. This now obscure divinity (possibly "the victor" or "the victorious one") once had a wide following, as is evidenced by inscriptions to him in Britain as well as in Gaul.

Sele (Seelie)

British and Scottish folkloric figure. Variations of this name appear all over Britain and Scotland; it has multiple referents, including fairy folk and sacred hills, folkloric figures and festivals. Although found in Celtic lands, the word may not be Celtic in origin; it is related to Old Norse saell, "happy," and old Teutonic saeli, "blessed," as well as to Sil and Silly, Sal and Sally, names used of female figures in folklore and tales. The seelie court was a British and Scottish name for a troop of good fairies (evil fairies being called the unseelie court). Connections have been suggested to the magical mermaid, the silkie, and with the sun goddess sul.

Semias

Irish hero. The members of the magical tuatha de danann came from four cities, each of which was ruled by a master of wisdom. Semias was such a master in murias; he owned a great cauldron of abundance, which he bestowed upon the beneficent god dagda.

Senach

Irish goddess. This obscure divinity is invoked in a magical charm as having control of seven periods of time; she was nursed by fairy women but is otherwise unknown.

Senchas Mor (Senchas Mar, Senchus Mor)

Irish text. An important collection of laws from approximately the fifth century C.E., when Celtic influence still held sway in Ireland, the Senchas Mor offers a view into the world of the brehons, judges of the druids. Although Christian influence was already prominent and may have affected this legal tract, it is nonetheless one of the earliest collections of legal documents known in Ireland. The text includes some mythological references, for example, the derogatory description of ailill mac Mata, husband of connacht’s queen medb, as a man of hasty judgment, and the comment that bards were the judges in the time of the great ulster king concobar mac nessa.

Senua

British goddess. In 2002 a "new" Celtic goddess was discovered, her broken silver statue part of a hoard of 26 precious objects hidden in the earth at her shrine in Hertfordshire during the late third century, apparently when some disaster threatened, and found by an amateur archaeologist using a metal detector. The Romanized sculpture was much degraded by time, but British Museum X rays of votive plaques, which showed Senua in the garb of minerva, revealed the goddess’s name. Senua appears to have been a goddess of water, honored at a small spring and associated with healing. Her emergence from the earth after 1,600 years of burial is a reminder that it is impossible to know what aspects of Celtic religion still remain unavailable to modern eyes.

Sequana (Sequena)

Continental Celtic goddess. The river Seine originally bore this goddess’s name. Sequana was especially honored at the Seine’s source, Fontes Sequanae ("springs of Sequana") near the French town of Dijon. There, a Roman-era shrine has been found where hundreds of coins were offered to the bronze image of a crowned woman, her arms aloft: she is mounted in a boat shaped like a duck, which holds a berry in its beak. While other Celtic goddesses such as rhiannon are connected to birds, Sequana is the only one whose emblem is a water-bird; thus she may have combined the healing qualities of the river goddess with the bird goddess’s otherworld aspects. Another Gaulish river goddess, natosuelta, is similarly depicted with a bird, but in her case it is the raven, typically a symbol of death.

Sequana’s healing powers can be recognized from the many bronze and silver models of legs, eyes, breasts, and other body parts that were deposited in the river source; such offerings usually indicated the organ in need of healing. She may have been a very important goddess, for the Romans did not change her name to a Latin one; all inscriptions use only her original Celtic name. A tribe named the Sequani may have been connected to Sequana, perhaps envisioning her as their divine ancestor.

Serpent (snake)

Symbolic animal. Although the snake is not found in all Celtic countries (Ireland being famously free of them), the serpent exists in all Celtic mythologies; it never appears alone but always as the companion of a divinity. On the Continent, the snake was a typical symbol of warrior gods, perhaps because of its connections with wealth and fertility. Often the snake was depicted with horns, suggesting a combination of reptile and mammal; the ram-headed snake often appeared with the woodland god cernunnos. The Romans associated gods who accompanied snakes with mercury, their divinity of commerce.

The alleged extermination of snakes from Ireland by st. patrick was impossible, as they are not indigenous to that island. Nonetheless we find them in myth, usually as female figures such as the she-monsters corra and cao-ranach. Some interpret the dispatching of the serpent goddess as a memory of the dispute between arriving Christians and an older, goddess-honoring paganism; others find a hidden seasonal myth in the stories, with the serpent representing the winter goddess who gives way to her double, the blooming spring. In his role as serpent-destroyer, Patrick may have stepped in for an earlier hero god, for in the dindshenchas we find the god of healing, dian cecht, slaying a serpent who would otherwise have devoured all the cattle in Ireland.

Snakes do live in Britain, where the adder was given special mythological consideration as the island’s only poisonous native snake. It was said to be a wise creature but very wily. In the Scottish Highlands the adder was associated with the weather-controlling hag, the cailleach.

Serpent stone (serpent’s egg, druid’s glass, serpent bead, adder stone, Clach Nathrach, Glaine Nathair)

Symbolic object. Of all the methods of divination and healing that the druids used, the most powerful and the most mysterious employed the serpent stone, a round bit of glass that had magical powers.

The Roman author Pliny claimed that a warrior of the Vocontian Gauls was executed by emperor Claudius because he carried an ovum anguinum or serpent’s egg when he went to court. The Romans seemed to fear the power of this object, which Pliny said could only be formed in summer, at a certain phase of the moon. Then, countless serpents would writhe about each other, secreting a ball of liquid from their bodies and hunting it into the air while they hissed vociferously. (Except for the ball of liquid, this is an accurate description of the mating habits of some snakes, such as the garter snake, in which scores, even hundreds, of male snakes surround a single fertile female, all squirming about in an attempt to fertilize her.) The serpents were apparently generating the stone for their own use, for they would set out in mad pursuit of any person who stole the object; only a man on a fast horse could outpace the furious reptiles, and then only if he could speedily cross water, since the snakes would be stopped by a running stream.

Although Pliny claimed he saw one as big as an apple, typically serpent’s eggs were closer to the size of a nut. In addition to its apparent efficacy in lawsuits, the stone was used in healing. Those who suffered from bewitchment could be cured by a glass of water, so long as the stone had been dipped in it. Long after the druids had passed into memory, folklore still described such stones as treasured medicine. In the 19th century, serpent stones were said to be found among heather, where a snake had left its spittle after slithering in a circle.

Setanta (Cuchulainn)

Irish hero. When he was a boy, the great ulster hero cuchulainn was called by this name, but when he grew old enough to fight, he adopted a new name that represented a debt of honor.

Setlocenia British goddess. Only one inscription has been found to "She of the Long Life," apparently a goddess of prosperity and longevity.

seven

Daughters of the Sea Irish divinities. These obscure goddesses were invoked in an incantation or cetnad used to learn how long someone would live. "I invoke the seven Daughters of the Sea," the invocation says, "who fashion the threads of the sons of long life. May three deaths be taken from me! May three periods of age be granted to me! May seven waves of good fortune be dealt to me! Phantoms shall not harm me on my journey in flashing corslet, without hitch. My fame shall not perish. May old age come to me! Death shall not find me until I am old."

Although otherwise unknown, these figures may be connected to the Seven Sisters whose name is given to several holy wells and ancient stone circles across Ireland. Seven was a magical number in Ireland, although that sanctity may be the result of Christianization; three and five were more commonly sacred to the Celts.

Seventh son

Folkloric motif. In several areas of Celtic influence, we find a belief that some people are gifted with second sight because of their place in birth order. The seventh son of a seventh son is reputed to be such a gifted—or cursed— individual. In the Cotswolds it was believed that such people could see the double of a person who was about to die (see co-walker). The belief survives in some areas of America where significant immigration from Celtic lands occurred.

Sgeimh Soluis

Irish heroine. The great band of warriors called the fianna became unpopular after the death of their leader, fionn mac cumhaill, because they grew greedy and violent. This woman, granddaughter of the great king of tara, cormac mac airt, refused to pay tribute to the Fianna before her marriage. They attacked and, at the battle of gabhair, were utterly defeated.

Shamrock

Symbolic plant. There is no evidence that the clover or wood sorrel (both of which are called shamrocks) were sacred to the Celts in any way. However, the Celts had a philosophical and cosmological vision of triplicity, with many of their divinities appearing in three. Thus when st. patrick, attempting to convert the druids on beltane, held up a shamrock and discoursed on the Christian Trinity, the three-in-one god, he was doing more than finding a homely symbol for a complex religious concept. He was indicating knowledge of the significance of three in the Celtic realm, a knowledge that probably made his mission far easier and more successful than if he had been unaware of that number’s meaning. When the shamrock appeared with four leaves instead of the usual three, it was believed to be valuable for making fairy ointment.

Shape-shifting

Cosmological concept. In myth and folklore from Celtic lands, we find frequent mentions of shape-shifting or moving between bodies. In myth this is often associated with the powers of bards and druids, who could transform their appearance without losing their essence. The great poet of the milesians, amairgin, spoke a long poem upon first setting foot in Ireland that described his various incarnations as "a wave of the sea, a salmon in a pool," while similar poems are credited to the Irish tuan mac cairill and the Welsh taliesin. While it is quite possible to read these poems as simple lists of natural phenomenon, then construction argues against that reading, for each line starts with "I am," as though once having taken the shape of another being, the poet thereafter remains partly salmon, hawk, star.

In myth, too, we find tales of people who change from one form to another. Often the cause is enchantment, as when sadb, mother of the heroic poet oisin, was turned into a deer; or when aige’s beauty provoked so much envy that a spiteful fairy transformed her into a doe; or when the evil aife was changed into a crane in appropriate punishment for cursing fionnuala and her brothers to be swans for 900 years. Sometimes the shape-shifter desired the new form: etain and midir flew away from tara in the form of swans, a bird that mates for life just as they had mated for eternity; cian turned himself into a pig to elude the sons of tuireann; the Welsh ceridwen transformed herself many times in order to capture her thieving servant gwion.

Most fairies were believed adept at shape-shifting, although some of the smaller breeds (spriggans and the like) were trapped within a single body. Monstrous fairy races like the water horse changed their shape when they wished to bring harm; a handsome young man could change to murderous equine form in the blink of an eye. Some argue that fairies did not really change form but placed a glamour around themselves, causing viewers to see them differently than they are, but the difference would be irrelevant to witnesses.

In folklore the power to change shapes at will was assigned to witches, who typically assumed the shape of a common animal—most often a hare—in order to sneak about stealing milk and butter, driving cattle crazy, and otherwise doing evil. If one hit a hare in the leg and it escaped, it was certain that the next day an old witch would be limping about the village. Thus what may have begun as a magical act showing the druid’s control over the physical world diminished, in folklore, to local mischief.

Shee

Finnaha Irish mythological site. The palace of lir, one of the kings of the tuatha de danann people, was said to be located near the town of Newtown Hamilton, on the borders of counties Armagh in today’s Northern Ireland.

Sheela na Gig (Sheela-na-gig, Sheila na Gig, Sile na gig, Sheela Ny Gig, Sile na gCioch)

Irish goddess or folkloric figure. Smiling lewdly out from rock carvings, the Sheela na Gig can still be seen: a grinning, often skeletal face, huge buttocks, sunken or absent breasts, bent knees, and a vagina held open. The stones have in most cases been incorporated as gargoyles in Christian churches, usually over the entrance, although some are found in castles, mills, and other buildings.

The figures, commonplace in Irish and British villages, drew the attention of scholars in the 19th century. The prudery of the era, however, often resulted in the figures being misiden-tified (in one case, as a male fool holding his heart open) or misinterpreted (as dirty jokes). Generally, the figures were believed pagan, an ancient goddess brought into churches as an attempt to co-opt the devotion of her followers.

More recently, scholars place the date of creation of the Sheelas in the Christian Middle Ages—most date to the 12th century—and consider her a Christian icon. But what does she mean? Some interpret her as a warning against lust, but more recently connections have been drawn with folklore that connect this figure with the hag goddess.

Her name has been variously translated as "hag," as a vulgar word for female genitalia, and as "the holy lady." She has been called a fertility figure, but her grinning face and genital display are complicated by the apparent ancientness of her flesh and the fact that she generally lacks breasts. In a few areas, rock scrapings were taken from the Sheela’s vulva and used as a means of promoting fertility and safe childbirth.

Her location over doors is often interpreted as meaning she is apotropaic, intended to ward off evil; folklore that women could drive away evil by revealing their genitals supports this interpretation. Some figures, however, are placed lower in walls; many of these show evidence of having been constantly touched in the genital area, perhaps as a ritual for good luck or healing; at Ballyvourney in Co. Kerry, a ritual still remains of touching a Sheela (there said to be the image of the local saint, gobnat) with a handkerchief on the saint’s feast day, February 11. A few Sheelas have holes in the head, as though horns were once placed there.

Despite the known Sheelas being dated, with little dispute, to the Christian era, pagan antecedents have been found. A small carving at tara and a grotesque grinning figure from Lough erne are among the figures that suggest that the Sheela’s posture and exaggerated features may derive from an ancient divinity, probably a goddess. Similarly, the appearance of skeletal hags in Irish myth (see da derga) suggest to some a connection either to the multiform goddess of sovereignty or to the pre-Celtic divinity called the cailleach.

Several dozen Sheela figures can still be seen in situ in Britain and Ireland, while others have been moved to museums: but there is evidence that hundreds more once existed and were destroyed,either through prudery or a thrifty need to use the stone elsewhere. Whether the Sheela na Gig is a Celtic figure, a remnant of the pre-Celtic past, or an apotropaic sculpture meant to represent a Christian conception of the impurity of the female flesh is still debated. The Sheela na Gig has been used in recent times as an image of women’s power by feminist artists in Celtic lands.

Sheep

Irish folkloric animal. Although sheep-rearing has been an important part of the Irish economy for hundreds of years, there is virtually no mythology in which they appear; bulls and cows, by contrast, are extremely common in myth. There are some folkloric references to sheep: It was considered unlucky to meet them early in the morning, and it was considered best to knit in the evening, when the sheep were sleeping.

Shellycoat

Scottish monster. This huge water monster lived in the port of Edinburgh, where it hid under a coat of shells in order to torment the sailors who tried to pass out to sea. When not at work wreaking havoc, Shellycoat left his coat under a rock and became vulnerable to attack, for without it he was powerless.

Shinny

Scottish ritual. In Scotland, this ball game, a bit like hurling, used to be played on the day of the winter solstice.

Shoemaker

Irish folkloric figure. Shoemakers have a greater stature in Irish folklore than the average craftsman probably because of the famous figure of the fairy shoemaker, the leprechaun. Shoemakers appear as clever men who can cause trouble with their cleverness, as in the tale of the man who learned shoemaking from the fairies; he made shoes for the parish priest, who was unable to say Mass whenever he wore the shoes.

Shoney

Scottish god. Until the 1600s, a tradition on the Isle of Lewis and Harris honored this otherwise obscure divinity of the sea. Every samhain the fisher folk of the island would carry out a mug of ale and pour it into the ocean, calling out to Shoney to accept the mug in return for filling the boats with fish. Some have seen him as the basis for the seamen’s folkloric guide, davy jones.

Sdhe (shee, sidhe, s^d, si)

Irish folkloric figure. This word has two meanings in Irish folklore. The primary meaning is a fairy mound, a hill beneath which people of the otherworld live, out of sight of those with normal vision but visible to those with second sight. By extension, the word is also used to mean the fairies themselves, as a shortened vision of the phrase "people of the sidhe."

Many legends interpret the people of the sidhe as the tuatha de danann, the ancient tribe of the goddess danu who were driven underground after their defeat by the milesians, Ireland’s first human invaders. Each important divinity was provided his or her own sidhe, as midir was given bri leith and una the mound of knockshegowna.

Sigmall

Irish hero. The grandson of the fairy king midir and son of Midir’s lawless daughter ogniad. Although Midir’s consort etain may or may not have been Sigmall’s grandmother, Etain is said to live now and forever in the other-world with Sigmall.

Silbury

Hill British mythological site. Although built many centuries before the Celts arrived in Britain, the massive artificial mound of Silbury Hill, near the stone circle of ave-bury, is often mistakenly described as Celtic. Covering more than five acres, the pyramidal mound has attracted much folklore, including the story that the devil built it, all in one night, dragging rock and earth to the site in a huge sack. Rumors abounded that a knight named Sil (Seal, Kil, Zel) was buried within it, mounted on horseback and surrounded by all his treasure, hence the name Sil-bury. Excavations turned up no knight, and certainly no treasure. Instead, it was discovered that the entire mound is carefully constructed in layers of organic and inorganic material—peat and rock—making the whole hill a huge spiral. Silbury has been connected with harvest rituals to the earth goddess.

Silkie

Scottish folkloric figure. Taking her name from the silk clothing she wore, this Scottish house-goddess sneaked into homes to clean whatever was left in disorder; too-careful housekeeping was as bad as slovenliness, for if she found nothing to clean, Silkie messed up the rooms instead. Some have connected her with the harvest goddess sele and with the fairy folk called Silly witches, while others consider her a form of the brownie. The name silkie (or selkie) is also used for the apparently human seal race.

Sillina

British goddess. Although her existence has not been proven, scholars believe there was a goddess of this name who gave her name to the Isles of Scilly, where an impressive Roman-era shrine was found.

Silvanus

Roman god. This Roman name was sometimes applied to indigenous Celtic woodland gods, most of whose names have been lost as a result of the interpretatio romana.

Sin

Irish heroine. This Irish fairy woman is probably a remnant of an early goddess, for she was said to have created wine from water and swine from leaves to feed the battalions of warriors she had created with her spells. She appears in a tale of the king muircertach mac erc, whom she seduced and drove mad to punish him for killing her family when she was a child.

Smann (Shannon, Sinann, Sionann, Sionnainn, Sinand, Sineng)

Irish goddess. The granddaughter of lir—apparently the hypothesized ancient sea god who was father of the ocean ruler manannan mac lir, rather than the human king who was father of the heroic fion-nuala—Sinann was goddess of Ireland’s most important river, the Shannon, which waters one-fifth of the island. Like other Celtic river goddesses, she was seen as ruling both the river’s waters and the land it irrigated.

Her legend is very similar to that of another important Irish river goddess, boand. Warned that she should not approach a well—variously named the well of segais and connla’s well— wherein wisdom was hidden, Sinann ignored the prohibition. In some sources she, like fionn mac cumhaill, caught the salmon of wisdom who swam there and, upon eating its flesh, became the wisest being on earth; in others, she merely arrived at the well in search of wisdom. In either case, the result was the same: the well broke forth from its bounds in a great flood, drowning Sinann as it carried her to sea. Thereafter the river could never return to the limiting confines of the well and instead watered the land. Although often interpreted as a cautionary tale, warning women against seeking wisdom, Sinann’s story can also be seen as a creation myth, in which she sacrifices herself to establish the land’s fertility.

A minor story told of Sinann claims that the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill was set upon by several fierce warriors at Ballyleague, near the northern end of the great lough ree. Almost overcome by the number of opponents, Fionn was rescued by Sinann, who arrived with a magical stone that, when Fionn threw it, killed all his enemies at once. Fearful of the power of Sinann’s stone, Fionn threw it into the river, where it remains hidden in a low ford. Should a woman named Be Thuinne ever find it, it would indicate the world’s end is near.

Sirona (Dirona, possibly Tsirona)

Continental Celtic goddess. Many inscriptions in France and other continental Celtic lands invoke this healing goddess, whose name has been translated as "star." Although Sirona was often connected with the Celtic apollo, she also stood alone. She was frequently depicted with serpents and eggs, suggesting a connection both to rebirth and to fertility.

Sithchenn (Sithchean)

Irish hero. This druid and smith was asked to prophesy for niall of the Nine Hostages and his four brothers. Sithchenn did as asked, but in a strange way: He set fire to his own forge, and then observed what items the young men grabbed as they fled the burning building. Niall rescued the anvil, the smith’s most important tool, leading Sithchenn to predict that the boy would grow up to become leader of all Ireland from the great royal seat of tara.

Skriker (trash)

British folkloric figure. When death approached, this portentous figure appeared like a banshee, predicting the event to come. Sometimes the skriker wandered the forests of Yorkshire and Lancashire, screaming; or like other fairies he engaged in shape-shifting, transforming himself into a terrifying dog.

Skye

Scottish mythological site. The Isle of Skye off Scotland’s west coast, largest of the Inner Hebrides, was named for the woman warrior scathach.

Slane (Slaine, Aed, Slaine)

Irish hero and mythological site. Although Slane himself is a minor figure in Irish mythology—being a leader of the fir bolg, who were defeated by the magical tuatha de danann—the place of his burial is famous. It was on Slane hill, overlooking the great bend in the River Boyne near the impressive ancient mounds called bru na boinne, that st. patrick lit a fire one beltane. On nearby tara, the druids were gathered to light the first fire of that festival night, and seeing the upstart blaze on a spiritually insignificant hill, went right over to hear the word of the Lord and the sermon of the shamrock from the man who would bring Ireland into Christendom. Another Slane was a doctor of the Partholonians, one of the mythological races that invaded early Ireland.

Slieve Gullion (Sliab Cuilinn, Sliab Cuillinn)

Irish mythological site. In Co. Armagh, a strange geological formation, a circular valley formed by ancient volcanic action, is centered around the legendary mountain of Slieve Gullion. The peak was named after, the fairy king cuilenn, whose home it was said to be. More prominent in the region’s mythology is the cailleach, the great hag goddess who formed the landscape and controlled the weather. She was said to live in the cairn that tops the mountain, which was built by the people of the pre-Celtic mega-lithic civilization and was called by local people Cailleach Birrn’s house. From that point, she once threw a huge rock across the valley; she was a giant, so the boulder seemed like a pebble to her. It landed miles away, in the Dorsey Ramparts, where it was honored until recent times. The great hero fionn mac cumhaill was said to be buried in the cairn, although the story of how his body got there is not recorded.

Slievenamon (Slievenaman, Sliab na mBan, Mountain of the Women; Sliabh na Bhan Fionn, the Hill of Fair Women)

Irish mythological site. In the southeast of Ireland, this cairn-capped hill was named for the contest held by Irish women who wished to bed down with the heroic but aging fionn mac cumhaill. The winner of the contest, grainne, may have been fleet of foot, but she was also fickle of heart, for at her wedding feast she noticed the handsome hero diarmait and, putting a spell upon her husband-to-be and the wedding party (or possibly drugging them), eloped with the young man.

Sluagh

Scottish folkloric figures. The "Host of the Unforgiven Dead" were not fairies, for they rode forth only at night. They were the ghosts or souls of those who had died without being forgiven for earthly transgressions; they were trapped in this world and could not move on to the oth-erworld. They could never travel in daylight, being forced to reside always in gloomy night, and they waged endless war upon each other, leaving stripes of their blood behind each morning.

Smertrius (Smertrios, Smertrio)

Continental Celtic god. The name of this relatively obscure god includes a syllable, smer-, also found in the name of the goddess rosmerta and apparently meaning "protection." One sculpture believed to be of Smertrius shows him as a strong, bearded man with a snake’s tail.

Smirgat (Smirnat)

Irish heroine. One of the wives of fionn mac cumhaill, she was a prophet who revealed to the hero that if he ever drank out of a horn, he would die. Fionn took the warning seriously and always used a goblet.

Smith

Irish and continental Celtic mythological figure. From the beginnings of Celtic culture, metalcraft was one of the Celts’ main sources of wealth. Smiths, those who smelted metal (especially iron and gold) from ore and formed it into useful and ornamental objects, were greatly revered. In myth, the smith (see goibniu and govannon) became associated with magic and alchemy; in Irish folklore, he was connected with the magical cow of abundance, the glas ghaibhleann.

Snail bead

Symbolic object. Like the serpent stone, the strange Scottish talisman called the snail bead was said to have been formed naturally, in this case by snails gathered into a great mass and secreting a mysterious fluid. Such stones were rare and difficult to obtain, but they were worth the trouble for their healing power: dipping the bead into a glass of water would create a healing potion. Anyone wearing the bead on his person would be protected from all bad luck.

Solitary fairies

Folkloric figures. In Irish and Scottish folklore fairies appeared either as trooping fairies, who spent their time with others of their kind, dancing and making merry, or solitary fairies, who preferred their own company to that of others and were typically ill-natured. The most famous solitary fairy was the leprechaun, the miserly fairy shoemaker who hid his wealth away; the wary cluricaune was another solitary fairy.

Solstice

Calendar feast. The word means "sun sitting still," and the sun does, indeed, appear to stand still on the several days surrounding the summer and winter solstices on June 21 and December 21, the year’s longest day and longest night, respectively. The changes in length of daylight and night slow and become almost imperceptible, before beginning again as the solstice period concludes. Although the solstices were not marked by the Celts, they must have known how to calculate them, as their own annual feasts were based upon this knowledge.

Sons of Tuireann

Irish heroes. A long and complex ancient story (Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann or The Tragedy of the Sons of Tuireann) tells of the brothers brian, iuchair, and iucharba, children of the important goddess danu (or donand) and the otherwise obscure tuireann, son of the god of poetry ogma and the craft goddess etan. The three set off to ambush their father’s enemy, cian, known from other tales as the clever man who seduced the fair captive eithne despite her father balor’s attempt to keep her hidden from all men.

Cian, realizing he was about to encounter the heavily armed sons of his enemy, transformed himself into a pig (see shape-shifting), but not fast enough, for the brothers changed into dogs and hounded him nearly to death, permitting him to turn back into human form before they finished him off. Just as the Sons of Tuireann had taken up their father’s cause, so did Cian’s son lugh, who demanded a heavy honor-price (see eric) for his father. Brian and his brothers performed seven impossibly difficult deeds, but the eighth was beyond their strength, and so Iuchair and Iucharba died, and Brian soon after. The tragedy of their deaths led the ancient Irish to name this tale among the three sorrows of ireland, the others being the stories of the sons of uisneach and the children of lir.

Sons of Uisneach (Usnech, Usna)

Irish heroes. It is not known whether the paternal name of these Irish heroes is connected to the great Irish mountain uisneach, for little is said of their father in the sad tale, which is remembered as one of the three sorrows of ireland, the others being the stories of the sons of tuireann and the children of lir.

The tale begins with a prophecy by the chief druid of ulster, cathbad, who declared at a feast that the child born that day would be the world’s most beautiful woman, but that she would bring sorrow to the province. Some of the court wished to have the child killed immediately, but king concobar mac nessa was intrigued. He determined to have deirdre brought up to be his companion and bedmate, and so she was raised under the tutelage of leborcham (sometimes described as a woman poet, sometimes as a male forester).

Nonetheless Deirdre’s heart was open to love. One day she saw a raven drinking blood from snow, and she wished aloud for a man whose hair was that black, whose lips were that red, whose skin was that white. Wise Leborcham knew that only one man was that beautiful: noisiu, oldest of Uisneach’s sons. She arranged for the pair to meet in secret, thus sealing their fate. Knowing that the king would be severely displeased with losing his future consort, the couple fled, first across Ireland and then to Scotland, accompanied by Noisiu’s brothers Ardan and Ainnle. In Scotland they lived happily on wild food in the forest, under the protection of the region’s king.

Concobar could not forget the fated beauty, and so he arranged for a treacherous invitation. Promising that all would be forgiven, he invited the three brothers and Deirdre back to Ulster. Despite forebodings, Deirdre agreed to go, in part because the honorable fergus mac Roich was the messenger. As soon as he arrived in Ireland, the Sons of Uisneach were killed, whereupon Deirdre herself died—either by suicide, throwing herself from a chariot, or simply from a broken heart. Thus the tragic heroine is known as Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Souconna

Continental Celtic goddess. This otherwise obscure river goddess may have ruled the Saone, a river in eastern France, which bore her name in ancient times; however, there may have been two goddesses of the same name, for an inscription found at some remove from the river also mentioned Souconna.

South

Cosmological concept. In the spiritual geography of Ireland, north represented the direction opposed to the solar cycle, because from the northern hemisphere the sun moves always toward the south from dawn to noon. Thus south is deosil in Irish, a word that also means to move in a way congruent with the natural order. The southwestern province of munster takes on some of the mythological significances of its direction, representing poetry and song; it is also considered the province most connected with women and the feminine.

Sovereignty (Sovranty, Lady of Sovereignty, Flaith)

The goddess of the land was envisioned in Celtic Ireland as bride of the king, wedded to him at his inauguration. The figure of Sovereignty is varied: It can be the unnamed loathy hag who offers niall a drink at her sweetwater well, then demands a kiss in recompense; it can be eriu, titular goddess of the island; it can be fierce and willful medb, who weds one king after another.

If the figures vary, the concept they embody remains stable: that the king’s duty is to maintain the land’s fertility through righteous behavior. This meant that he had to offer hospitality to all who came, to rule wisely, and to honor the sacred vows and taboos (see buada and geis) that came with his office. Should he fail to do so, his reign would be forfeit—if not his life, as was the case for conaire, who, despite years of successful ruler-ship, broke his sacred vows and died a horrible death as a result. The hag who came to him at da derga’s hostel to proclaim his death may be a punitive form of the goddess of Sovereignty.

Speir-bhean (spear-ban, sky woman)

Irish heroine. A late (16th-18th century) version of the goddess of sovereignty through whose right a king could rule in Ireland, the speir-bhean was depicted by bards of the time as a beautiful young woman, possibly from the otherworld, who wandered the roads searching for the land’s true leader. Her name was sometimes given as cathleen ni houlihan, sometimes is roisin dubh or Dark Rosaleen. Sometimes she appeared as the Shan Van Vocht (Sean-bhean Bhocht), the "poor old woman," who recalls the hag who turned young again when kissed by the rightful ruler. The most famous version of the speir-bhean is found in William Butler Yeats’s play Cathleen ni Houlihan written for the revolutionary leader Maude Gonne.

Spells

Ritual action. The use of verbal magic has a long history in Celtic lands, for bards were believed to have the power to transform the physical world by the sheer power of their speech. In folklore this belief was translated into the idea that rhyming spells can bring healing (when the words are used to bless) or pain (when cursing is intended). Sometimes brief ceremonies accompanied the repetition of the rhyme—dipping stones in water, rubbing parts of the body—but these were less important than the rhyme or recitation itself.

Spiral

Mythological motif. Celtic art is renowned for its interlacing spirals, which especially deck the metalwork (shields, jewelry, and tools) found in their lands throughout the duration of the culture. The motif continued to appear as late as the Christian Middle Ages, when such masterworks as the Book of Kells, with its ornate spiraling ornamentation, were created. Though the spiral is associated today with the Celts, it is possible that they adapted it from the imagery left them by the people of the megalithic civilization, who carved great spirals across their stone monuments. Many pre-Celtic spiral designs, like the triple spiral of Ireland’s Newgrange (see bru na boinne), are complex artworks that suggest a spiritual importance. Whether and how the spiral was transmitted from pre-Celtic to Celtic people has not yet been studied.

Spriggans

Cornish folkloric figures. These ghosts of the ancient race of giants were transformed into fairies, who served as bodyguards to other fairies. They were mischievous, though not usually dangerous, preferring to scare off those who might intrude upon fairy gatherings rather than, for instance, murdering them. Like many fairies, they were inveterate thieves, slinking about the countryside stealing butter and other valuables.

Spring

Mythic site. wells and springs can be difficult to distinguish, for they both serve similar purposes in myth and legend as well as being similar freshwater sources. Both were viewed as having healing powers, even at a distance, so that water brought from a holy well or sacred spring could help someone unable to travel there. Especially potent were thermal springs or "hot springs," where early people could relax in naturally warm (indeed, sometimes scaldingly hot) waters; even into Roman times the great thermal spring at bath was visited by throngs seeking cures for physical and emotional pain. Many scholars have proposed that pre-Celtic peoples also used these sites, so rituals there may have derived from a mixture of religions. Earlier peoples may have seen the sites as openings to the womb of the earth mother, but the Celtic heritage seems clear in the connection, found throughout the Celtic world, of water with abundance, fecundity, and health.

Spring equinox

Calendar feast. The Celts did not mark the two equinoxes, when daylight and darkness are of equal length, nor the solstices in winter and summer, as most other peoples of the world do; rather, they marked the points in between, in their great festivals of samhain (winter), imbolc (spring), beltane (summer), and lughnasa (autumn). Yet there are vestigial celebrations in Celtic lands that suggest that earlier dwellers had marked time in the more conventional way; orientations of stone circles and such megalithic monuments as the bru na boinne in Ireland show that equinoxes and solstices were important to those earlier dwellers.

Sreng

Irish hero. Less renowned than nuada, his opponent in single combat in the first battle of mag tuired, Sreng was a warrior of the fir bolg who, sent to meet the invading tuatha de danann, realized that his people would be unlikely to beat their magically armed foe. His own people refused to listen to his counsel, so Sreng fought with the Tuatha De king Nuada, cutting off his arm and causing him to lose his kingship.

Stag

Mythic animal. The horned male of the deer held a significant place in the iconography of the god cernunnos, who wears antlers in many sculptures and reliefs.

Standing stone

Mythic site. Hundreds of pillar-like stones still stand throughout all the ancient Celtic lands, sometimes in groups (see stone circles) and sometimes alone. Erected by pre-Celtic people of the megalithic civilization some 6,000 years ago, such monuments are evidence of an early civilization with great engineering skills and an apparently deep religious sense. See also dolmen.

Starn

Irish hero. Two obscure figures carry this name. One was a brother of the invader partholon; the other, son of nemed, was father of the poet tuan mac cairill. Neither plays much role in myth.

St. George

British saint and folkloric hero. The cross on the British flag today is an emblem of this saint, said to have been a soldier from the Holy Land who suffered martyrdom by the Romans. What such a figure has to do with England has baffled many; some believe that, like st. michael and st. patrick, St. George took the place of an earlier mythological hero who protected the land by slaying dragons.

Many scholars argue that St. George stands to England as St. Patrick to Ireland: as the symbol of Christian dominance over ancient pagan ways. Patrick killed the goddess-demons corra and caoranach, while George slew the dragon that haunted the wilder places of Britain, where the old ways remained strong the longest. As with St. Michael, George’s churches often stand in ancient holy spots. The image of George killing the dragon may have been an icon of the victory of Christianity over Celtic paganism.

St. Michael

Scottish and British saint and folkloric hero. In Christian cosmology, Michael was one of the archangels of heaven who, tempted by the bright angel Lucifer to oppose the divine will, refused and remained at God’s side in a great angelic battle. His appearances in Christian legend are numerous, for he witnessed the burning bush with Moses and spoke with Abraham. This angel-saint plays a significant role in British and Scottish folklore, perhaps standing in (as st. patrick may in Ireland) for an earlier mythological hero figure. He was a specialist at removing threatening dragons from the land, an honor he shared with st. george; the dragons have been variously interpreted as indicating residual pagan influences beaten down by Christianity, or earlier mythic beings who were bested by a Celtic god or hero. Many sites or churches dedicated to St. Michael were built on ancient sacred sites, notably the tower atop the tor in glastonbury, further supporting the theory that his legends are influenced by Celtic or even pre-Celtic material.

St. Michael’s feast day on September 29, called Michaelmas, is close enough to the autumnal equinox that harvest festivals have collected around that day; in the Scottish islands a special harvest-bread called struan or struan Michael was until recently served as part of the ritual festivities. In Ireland "Michael’s portion" was an offering at harvest time.

Stoat

Irish mythological animal. This small red-brown Irish land mammal, which looks rather like a weasel, was viewed anthropomorphically and thought to have human characteristics such as living in families and holding rituals for their dead. They were dangerous, for their saliva could poison a full-grown man; they were also mischievous and prone to thieving. It was not good luck to encounter a stoat when setting out on a journey, even a short one, but one could turn the luck to good by greeting the stoat as a neighbor.

Stone

Mythic motif. The mysterious pre-Celtic people of Ireland, Britain, and Brittany were astonishing stonemasons, building structures that lasted almost 6,000 years; they also carved their art onto the stones, leaving an unreadable but provocative record of their beliefs. The Celts, who moved into these lands thousands of years later, saw no similar depth of symbolism in stone. They did, however, adapt the impressive sites— see bru na boinne and stonehenge—to their own rituals, including the important one of kingly inauguration. At Tara the impressive boulder called the lia fail was said to roar or shriek when the true king sat upon it; at Ireland’s center the stone of divisions was said to map the four provinces of the island.

Adapting earlier stone structures to ritual use was made easier by the fact that the Celts saw the world in a pantheistic way, believing that nature was animated by divinity and was therefore sacred. Stones, like trees and running water, therefore were significant evidences of divine power.

Stone circles

Mythic site. Hundreds of stone circles, ranging from tiny to enormous, dot the islands and peninsulas of the traditional Celtic lands. Built by the people of the megalithic civilization thousands of years before the Celts emerged into the historical records, the stone circles were often kept as sacred spaces, being left relatively undisturbed while fields and towns were built around them. (In the case of avebury, the town was built within the stone circle, one of the largest in Britain.) Although there were periods in historical times when the stones were moved or destroyed, in general folklore (often mislabeled "superstition") preserved them, for the archaeological sites were believed to be the habitations of the fairy race.

Stonehenge

British mythological site. On the Salisbury Plain rises one of the ancient world’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge. For hundreds of years, the great stone circle was wrongly associated with the Celts, who lived in the area thousands of years after the erection of the stones in ca. 4000 b.c.e. The builders lived so far before historical time that we have no information about who they were, what language they spoke, or what they believed, but the similarity of Stonehenge to other such monuments (notably Carnac in Brittany and bru na boinne in Ireland) has led scholars to speak of the megalithic ("big stone") civilization, named for their monumental constructions. Like other great megalithic monuments, Stonehenge was built with reference to the stars. It is carefully aligned to permit a particular illuminating moment on the morning of the summer solstice; both Carnac and Newgrange at the Bru na Boinne were aligned to the moment of sunrise on the winter solstice. Whoever the builders were, whatever their beliefs, they possessed impressively accurate information about the solar system.

Although its original myth and meaning are lost, Stonehenge in historical times attracted many legends. The third-century b.c.e. writer Apollonius claimed that it was a temple to apollo and called the worshipers there Hyperboreans ("beyond the wind god Boreus"). Later stories claimed that the great magician merlin built Stonehenge in a single day, bringing the stones by magical levitation from Ireland; they were called the giants’ dance because they had earlier been carried off through enchantment from Africa by Irish giants. Another story credits the devil with building the stone structure, all in one night, chuckling at the surprise of the local population when they awoke to find the massive building where, the evening before, there had been only a flat plain. A monk, overhearing the Devil’s bragging, interrupted him, whereupon the Devil threw one of the huge stones at him—which nicked his heel before falling to the ground, thereafter to be known as the Heel Stone. These legends hide a bit of truth. Although it is unlikely that teleportation was the means of transit, it is true that the stones come from a distance, some having been carried—perhaps rolled on logs—from as much as 26 miles away.

Despite scholarly agreement on the lack of connection between Celts and Stonehenge, the local antiquarian and man of letters John Aubrey argued, in the 17th century, that the site was a druid temple. In recent years the Order of British Druids (established in 1781) has claimed the right to celebrate their rituals within the stone circle. Robed in white in the pale dawn, the group may indeed be reenacting the presence of Celtic peoples within the circle at that time, but with no documentary evidence of Celtic use of the site, such a reconstruction can only be considered imaginative theater.

Stone of Divisions (Aill na Mireann, Ail na Muenn, Catstone, Navel Stone)

Irish mythological site. Upon the flanks of the sweeping hill uisneach, mythic center of Ireland, a huge boulder lies, left there by the retreating glaciers some 10,000 years ago. It rests about halfway down the hill, a half-mile away from the summit, from which almost all of Ireland can be seen on a clear day.

Locally called the Catstone, although there is no legend or myth to explain the name, the great glacial erratic is more formally known as the Stone of Divisions, because its shattered face is believed to include a map of the four provinces of Ireland. With a good imagination one might, indeed, see munster, connacht, ulster, and leinster mapped in the cracks of the rock. Local legend has it that the stone marks the grave of the goddess eriu, for whom Ireland is named. The stone is also sometimes called the Navel Stone of Ireland. The phrase would seem to indicate that it marked the point where the land was once connected to an immense mother, but little legend exists to further describe this phrase.

In the book of invasions, the arriving milesians encountered three goddesses in turn, each standing on a mountain; each obliged them to promise that the land would be named after her (see banba, fodla). Upon arriving at Uisneach, their poet amairgin decided that the land should bear Eriu’s name, as it does to this day.

St. Patrick (Patrick, Patricius, Padraig, Patraic, Cothraige)

Irish saint and folkloric hero. It is interesting that no contemporary author from the fifth century c.e. mentions this name, for that is when the great St. Patrick was said to have been converting Ireland; Gildas and Bede, two important historians of the era, make no reference to a man named Patrick, which has caused some commentators to doubt that he ever existed. Although that is a minority opinion, most writers agree that folkloric and mythological motifs gathered around an historic figure, so that anything written about Patrick must be viewed with great caution in terms of its historicity.

According to the various Lives written in early Christian times and the two autobiographies reputed to have been written by the saint himself, Patrick was born in Britain to a family of well-off Romanized Celts. Even such a genteel upbringing was insufficient protection against sea pirates, who kidnapped the lad and sold him into slavery in Ireland (traditionally, in ulster). For six years, until he was 22, Patrick was a farm worker, apparently learning the language of his captors. Then he escaped and made his way to the Continent.

There, he experienced a vision in which he was instructed to return to Ireland in order to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. Legend does not record what kind of training he received for this mission, but it tells much about his arrival in Ireland. Proselytizing among his former captors, Patrick used his knowledge of Irish religion in order to explain the mysteries of Christianity. The best known of his evocative explanations is his use of the shamrock, probably the common clover, to show how the Christian divinity can have three persons (father, son, holy spirit) while being still one god; in this, Patrick employed the familiar Celtic motif of triplicity in an innovative fashion (see three).

Rather, they were celebrating the springtime festival of beltane, which involved lighting fires on hilltops across the land. As the people waited expectantly for the fire to blaze from the top of tara hill, home of the high king, they were surprised instead to see a light from an inconsequential little hill nearby. The druids rushed to slane to see who dared such a sacrilege and found Patrick there over his offending fire.

Most of Tara’s court was, according to legend, easily converted, but some of the druids did not wish to give up their power to the new hierarchy of priests and monks. Thus there are a number of legends in which Patrick was said to engage in combat with the druids—legends that are filled with un-Christian imagery suggestive of the Celtic worldview. In one such story, Patrick was challenged to a magical combat by a druid, who enchanted a garment that Patrick was to wear. Patrick did the same, and the druid died horribly after putting on his garment, while Patrick’s associate escaped unharmed (the great saint did not, apparently, risk putting on the enchanted garment himself). Some druids continued to threaten Patrick, but he passed through their midst without their seeing him. He could read in the dark by the light of his own glowing fingers; rain never touched him no matter how severe the storm. Such magical events are clearly legendary rather than historical. The insertion of a druidical prophecy claiming that Patrick would come to convert the land seems a later interpolation designed to support the claims of the new religion.

In several legends Patrick directly confronts the pagan world that his religion replaced. In one such story, he encountered the princess of connacht one morning at the holy spring of ogalla, where they had come to bathe. The girls, eithne and fedelm, mistook Patrick and his monks for druids and began to discuss religion with them. Learning that Patrick served a new god, the girls asked questions that give insight into the religious expectations of the Celts at the time, asking, for instance, where his god lived, whether in the earth or the sky or the sea? Satisfied by Patrick’s answers, the girls accepted baptism and then died instantly, to assure themselves of remaining unstained by sin. In a similar tale, Patrick encountered oisin and Caoilte, members of the heroic fianna who had been stolen away and carried to the other-world. (Variants of the tale say Patrick met only one, usually the poet Oisin.) He debated with them which religion held more promise, showing Christianity to be the more hopeful worldview, and thus converted the pagan sages. Such literary texts are useful in gaining insight into what values and ideals Celtic Ireland held, as well as those brought from abroad by the proselyting Christians.

Also legendary were Patrick’s combats with various Otherworld powers. He split the hag garravogue into four parts with his staff; he battled the water monster called caoranach, sending her to a watery death (or perhaps not, depending on the legend consulted); he fought with the demon corra atop the mountain now called croagh patrick in his honor; he smashed the idols of crom cruach. And, in the most familiar legend, he drove the snakes out of Ireland (see serpent). That last is entirely fabricated, as there were no snakes in Ireland at the time of his coming; this has been typically interpreted as indicating the driving forth of pagan Celtic divinities from the land.

Many sites in Ireland that are now devoted to reverence of St. Patrick were originally pagan sites that were sained or converted with the coming of Christianity. The most prominent of these is Croagh Patrick (locally known as "the Reek," from a word meaning "mountain"), the pyramidal mountain where Patrick is reputed to have fought with the demon Corra before flinging her into the sea at the mountain’s base. Ruins have been found on Croagh Patrick’s summit suggesting that religious observance there stretches back into the neolithic period, some 6,000 years ago.

St. Patrick’s feast day of March 17 is celebrated as a holiday in many countries where Irish influence has been strong. It was not traditionally a day of national importance in Ireland itself until recent times, being more typically an ethnic celebration of descendants of the Irish diaspora.

stray sod (lone sod, fod seachran)

Irish folk-loric motif. While the idea of being lured off your intended path by fairies usually entails the fairy placing a glamour spell upon a site, in Ireland the fairy people had a simpler, more portable expedient. They put a stray sod—a little piece of enchanted grass—on the path and then watched as people became pixy-led or helplessly confused as to their location. It was possible to hide a stray sod in plain sight, even in the middle of a road. When a passerby’s foot struck the sod, all the surroundings became unfamiliar. Trapped this way, a traveler could wander for hours, growing ever weaker and more exhausted, until the mischief-making fairy put everything right again.

Stream

Irish and Scottish mythological site. All flowing water was sacred to the Celts; most rivers were named for goddesses, who were imagined as generously watering the land. In a diminished way, streams and brooks had the same healing quality. Most significant was the crossing or joining of three streams; as anything occurring in threes was significant to the Celts, such sites were considered magically potent. In Scotland, as the sun rose, if you filled cupped hands with water from the point of meeting, you could have good luck and good health, as long as you spoke the following invocation: "I will wash my face, in the nine rays of the sun, as Mary washed her Son, in the rich fermented milk."

Strid

British folkloric site. Near Bolton Abbey in West Yorkshire is a narrow pass in the River Wharfe called the Strid. There, on beltane morning, a woman was said to appear, riding a white horse; she was thought locally to be the goddess of the watershed, verbeia. Those who crossed the river afterward were warned to be careful, for the goddess’s appearance often prophesied death from drowning.

Stroke (Elf-stroke, fairy stroke)

The full or partial paralysis that we now know to be caused by an interruption of blood to the brain or a clot therein was believed, in the past, to be punishment for offending the fairies, who would "stroke" the offender in punishment. Those who lapsed into coma were believed to have been taken away and changelings put in their place. Cutting down fairy trees, plowing through fairy mounds or otherwise interfering with fairy business could bring on stroke. Many sites of legendary importance were protected for generations by this belief.

Sualtaim mac Roich. (Sualtam mac Roy, Subaltach, Sualtach)

Irish hero. Foster father of the great ulster hero cuchulainn, Sualtaim was given the princess dechtire in marriage after she became pregnant by drinking water in which a magical worm was swimming. Sualtaim plays little part in myth, except to warn the court of emain macha about the advance of queen medb’s armies in the tain bo cuailnge. Unfortunately he turned so quickly on his horse, the Grey of macha, that his own shield lopped off his head—which continued to call out warnings until the men of Ulster awakened from Macha’s curse and protected their land.

Suantrade

Irish hero. The music of this legendary harper was so sad that people died of broken hearts just hearing it.

Submerged city

Mythic theme. The image of a city under the water of a lake or the sea is common to Celtic lands: Ireland’s inchiquin lake and lough gur both were said to have cities on their rocky bottoms; in Wales we find tales of the Lowland Hundred in Cardigan Bay; in Brittany the magical city of ys rested in the sea off Pointe la Raz. Some of these were fairy cities, for which the otherworld is sometimes called Land Under Wave; some were originally surface cities that sank, either because of the decision of their residents to withdraw from this world, or because they were cursed by an evil power. As there are in fact sunken settlements in the areas covered by the Irish and North Seas and the Atlantic Ocean as the glaciers retreated, there may be some historical memory embedded in these apparently fanciful tales.

Sucellus (Sucellos)

Continental Celtic god. The name of this important Celtic god seems to mean "the striker," and in his arms he carried the symbol associated with his name, a great hammer or mallet like the one that a similar god, the dagda, carried in Ireland. Found across Gaul, sometimes in connection with the goddess natosuelta, he was not renamed by the invading Romans for one of their gods, although he was sometimes associated with their woodland god Silvanus. Sculptors showed him as a mature bearded man with a fine head of curly hair, gazing benevolently at the viewer. He wore native, not classical, clothing—a tunic and a cloak. Sometimes Sucellus wore a crown of leaves or was joined by a hunting dog.

His hammer has been variously interpreted. It was so important to his identification that sometimes the hammer alone, with no human form, stood for the god. It was not usually connected with lightning, as with other hammer gods such as the Greek Zeus and the Scandinavian Odin. Rather, the hammer has been interpreted to mean the power of vegetation, driving itself up through the earth; thus Sucellos is described as a fertility god or a god of the wildwood. Perhaps because his hammer could reawaken life, he was also seen as a god of healing.

Suibhne (Sweeney, Mad Sweeney, Suibne, Suibne mac Colmain, Suibhne geilt)

Irish hero. When Suibhne, a king of a small region of ulster, went to war to support the king of the province, he did so with a cloud hanging over him, for he had recently mistreated a monk, St. Ronan, who cursed him. The saint traveled to the battlefield to attempt to make peace, but Suibhne again insulted him, this time also killing one of Ronan’s clerics, and the saint cursed him again.

When the battle started, it was fierce and horrible. Whether because of Ronan’s curse or because of the horror of war, Suibhne went mad and abandoned his post on the battlefield.

Thinking himself a bird, he climbed a yew tree. Each time he was found by his supporters, he fled again, always finding another tree in which to make his home. Finally he arrived at a monastery, thought to have been at Rosharkin in Co. Antrim or Gleann na nGealth (the Glen of the Lunatics) in Co. Kerry, where a relative disguised himself as an old woman—the only one Suibhne trusted—and finally brought the king back to his throne. Then the old woman came to him and reminded him how high he used to jump when he was mad. Suibhne tried it again and lost his wits again. He lived for a time with another madman, Alladhan (also called Fear Caille), who tried to leap into a waterfall and drowned; after that, Suibhne partly recovered his sanity. When he reached his old palace, he would not go in for fear of capture and went away lamenting his life. He wandered across Ireland until he reached a monastery in Co. Carlow, where he spoke with the resident saint, molling, and was in the process of dictating his adventures to a scribe when, in a jealous fury, the husband of the monastery’s cook stabbed him with a spear.

Suibhne is not listed on any of the rosters of historical kings, so it is believed that he was an Irish version of the figure known in Welsh mythology as myrdinn wyllt, "wild Merlin." The magician, well known in the story of King arthur, went mad as a result of the massacre he witnessed in the battle of Arfderydd. Like Suibhne, he hid out in the woods, living off wild foods and making prophecies.

During his mad days, Suibhne spoke in sensuous poetry, and thus he is an attractive figure for poets; both the American poet T. S. Eliot and the Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney have used him as a poetic persona, while the mid-20th-century Irish poet Austin Clarke wrote a long poem entitled The Frenzy of Suibhne.

Suideachan

Irish mythological site. On the slopes of the munster mountain Knockadoon can be seen aene’s "birth chair," a rock outcropping that was said to be an entry to the other-world. There this goddess or fairy queen sat, arranging her long golden hair with a golden comb. As recently as a century ago, sightings of Aine on her chair were not uncommon, although those who witnessed her appearance were likely to drown thereafter or to go to insane from the vision of her unearthly beauty. The chair was sometimes said to be the possession of an otherwise mysterious figure called the fairy housekeeper, suggesting an identity between the two magical feminine figures of haunted lough gur.

Sul (Sulis, Sulis Minerva)

British goddess. At the small city of bath in central southwestern England, hot springs bubble forth at the rate of a million gallons a day. They were called by the Romans aquae sulis, "the waters of Sul," and the site was a significant center for commerce and healing, a combination of Lourdes and the Mayo Clinic where people came to pray and bathe in the steaming waters, hoping to be cured of their ills. For many centuries after the legions left Britain, the baths were buried under silted-up deposits, but in the 17th century they were rediscovered by antiquarians. Today the great columns of the main bath are open to the sky; from their level, one can look up to see the medieval cathedral, its base several stories above the once-buried Roman baths.

The Romans associated the goddess of the thermal springs with their healing divinity, minerva or Minerva Medica ("medical Minerva"), so that she is sometimes called Sulis Minerva; in a bronze sculpture found in the temple precinct, Sul is shown as a warrior maiden. More important, scores of inscriptions—many written on lead and deposited in Sul’s waters—reveal how active the shrine was in ancient times. More than 6,000 coins have been retrieved from the spring, most of Roman date. As goddesses of water are known in other Celtic lands, it is assumed that Sul is the local form of that divine category.

Sul’s name suggests that she was a sun goddess, for it is connected to words that mean both "sun" and "eye." Despite this pointed connection, some scholars continue to look for a male sun divinity in the area, even suggesting that all inscriptions to Sul contain a misspelling of the word for "pig." As a sun goddess, Sul would be connected with such figures as brigit, who in Ireland was associated with holy wells (in that case, rarely thermal) that were said to have healing properties. Like Brigit, too, Sul was said to have been served by a college of priestesses who tended an eternal flame. Occasionally Sul appears in the plural (see suleviae); the same name is occasionally given to Brigit.

Suleviae

Continental Celtic goddess. Several dozen inscriptions have been found to this multiple goddess, whose name seems to mean "the many Suls," thus connecting her with the British healing goddess sul. Caesar associated this team of divinities with the Roman goddess minerva, who ruled healing.

Summer Land (Summer Country)

British folkloric site. This name is often used to describe the otherworld, where the weather is always fair, flowers bloom endlessly, and fruit hangs ripe off the trees. It is also used in some texts to describe the land of meleagant, the ogre who held queen guinevere hostage until the fine knight lancelot rescued her.

Sun

Cosmological concept. In the 19th century, scholars sometimes spoke of mythology as a form of poetry, a collection of primitive narratives about the forces of nature. Primary among these forces was the sun, whose presence at the center of our solar system and impact on earthly life made it a likely candidate for divinity in many cultures. So insistent were scholars of that early period in finding solar connections to various gods that a backlash began. Today, "solar mythology" is disdained, and as result antiquated attitudes about mythology have remained unexamined for more than a century.

Primary among these attitudes is the presupposition that the sun is invariably a masculine symbol. In fact, dozens of cultures from Japan to South America, from the arctic to Arabia, have seen the sun as feminine. Yet examination of solar mythology generally halted while the assumption was still made that that the Celts saw the sun as a male figure—as a god. Many candidates are proposed as the "Celtic sun god," including lugh and lancelot, yet there is no definitive statement in any Celtic-language text that shows a god being honored as the sun.

There is, however, significant evidence that the Celts saw the sun as a goddess. Indeed, the name of one goddess, sul, means "sun." In the Irish language the word for "sun" has been feminine in gender since the first recorded usage; this word, grian, is occasionally used for a minor goddess figure who may be connected with or the same as the more prominent heroine grainne. A few scholars are hesitantly examining this question, but the general prohibition against solar mythology means that it has not been substantively explained.

Superstition

Cosmological concept. When one religion is replaced by another, one, either through conversion or conquest, the earlier religion rarely disappears entirely. Rather, its beliefs and rituals remain, although the context and meaning was forgotten. Thus in the ancient Celtic lands today, we find a general revulsion at eating horse-meat, considered a useful food in some areas of the world; this may derive from the old reverence for the horse among the Celts. Similarly, beliefs in the banshee and other fairy beings, viewed as superstition today, represent an earlier belief system in vestigial form.

Sutugius

Continental Celtic god. A few inscriptions from France attest to the existence of this god, believed by contemporary scholars to have pre-Celtic roots and equated by the Romans with their warrior god mars.

Swallow

Folkloric animal. In Ireland the swallow was considered a helpful bird; to kill one brought bad luck.

Swan

Folkloric animal. The swan was often, like the seal, seen as a transformed human; occasionally the swan was believed to be a bewitched nun. It was considered lucky to see seven swans flying, because seven years of good luck would follow; seeing a multiple of seven brought that many more years of good luck. Hurting or killing a swan, conversely, brought bad luck to oneself and one’s entire community. See swan maiden.

Swan maiden

Irish, Scottish, continental Celtic folkloric figure. The story of a young woman who is half-bird appears throughout the ancient Celtic lands. Sometimes the girl was said to be under an enchantment, which might or might not be broken; other times, no reason was given for the maiden’s double nature. In the dark of night, such maidens took off their swan plumage and left it beside the lakes in which they swam, naked and beautiful. Should a man find the feather cloak of such a woman, he could make her his wife by stealing it, whereupon (like a seal woman) she became a happy and hardworking helpmeet. Should the swan maiden ever find her feathers, she instantly converted herself to bird form and flew away, leaving her children behind without so much as a backward glance.

That this fairy tale has mythological roots is generally unquestioned. The bird is associated with religious imagery across Europe; it is found among the Celts as far back as the hallstatt period. Many bird divinities had solar associations (see sun), while waterbirds were connected to thermal springs that were believed to hold the night-sun’s energy. One of the largest and most graceful of waterbirds, the swan was sometimes depicted as part of a team pulling a chariot or cart, each swan connected to the others by a small chain. That motif appears in Irish mythology in the story of caer and aonghus og, who, after falling in love, flew away together linked by a golden chain.

When a swan-woman married, she often demanded that her husband follow specific rules; the fairy queen or goddess aine, for instance, demanded that her husband, the Earl of Desmond, express no surprise at anything their children did. Should the rules be broken, the swan-wife and her children would instantly depart, as Aine and her son geroid iarla did, turning into waterbirds which still can be seen on the magical lough gur. A few scholars have proposed that these legends recall a period when women made specific demands in the negotiation of a marriage contract.

Swarth

Scottish folkloric figure. A magical double of a person, the swarth was dangerous to meet on the road, because seeing the image of yourself was an almost certain prophecy of death’s approach. If, however, you were brave enough to speak with the swarth, you could gain magical knowledge and second sight.

Sympathetic magic

Cosmological concept. In many cultures and mystical traditions throughout the world, it was believed that objects of a specific shape or form affected other similar objects; thus a girl combing her hair at home in the evening could attract the attention of a dangerous mermaid, who also used a comb at that hour and liked to drown sailors. Another form of sympathetic magic was the supposition that parts always remain connected to the whole; thus discarded hair and nails had a subtle power over the person from whom they originally came. (See also external soul.)