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Irish Mythology

The Tuatha de Danaan: Manannan

pre-12th century - present. Old Irish | Modern Irish, folklore.

Manannan liked to roam about Ireland, sometimes in the shabby clothes of a harper or a conjurer, at other times in the fine clothes of a warrior.

Manannan was a son of Lir - the god Lir, whose daughters became swans in a beautiful Irish story of enchantment and disguise. Manannan himself liked to travel about in disguise.

On one occasion, Manannan came to the stronghold of a chieftain dressed in the clothes of a clown. The chieftain asked him where he was from and Manannan gave a long list of the places he had spent a night. ‘A pleasant, rambling, wandering man I am, and it is with you yourself that I am now, O’Donnell,’ he said. O’Donnell admitted him and was so enthralled by his skill at the harp that he refused to let him go. When the guards attempted to stop Manannan from leaving, they wounded and killed each other instead, but Manannan gave the gatekeeper a herb to rub into their lips and bring them back to life again.

Off again on his wanderings, he once disguised himself as Gilla Decair, the Hard Servant, an unruly menial who rode an absurd horse and caused Diarmuid to be led down through the waters of a spring into an Otherworld. Then another time he took a heroic part as a warrior in a cattle raid for the men of Connacht. Then he was back again on the road in his old striped clothes and leaking shoes once more.

Arriving at a new fortress clothed this way, he announced himself as a conjurer. One of his magic tricks led to the decapitation of a boy. ‘I would rather that such things were not done in my hall,’ censured the chieftain, Tadg O’Cealaigh, so Manannan rejoined the boy’s head to his body and, once he had screwed the head straight, [the boy] was as well as before.