Celtic · English · 1911
Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race
T. W. Rolleston
The other standard retelling, and the one that shows its working. Rolleston names the Morrígan as an extraordinary goddess and declines O'Grady's identification of her with Dana, so a reader can watch a disputed identity being disputed rather than settled. He also reports d'Arbois de Jubainville placing Balor and the Fomoire among the powers of darkness, death and evil — a Celtic pantheon read as a solar myth with a devil in it, which is this site's subject happening to the scholarship.
Read Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race in full at the linked edition →What this text attests · 7
| Name here | Rank given | # | Powers described |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | Reported as one of the powers of darkness, death and evil in d'Arbois de Jubainville's reading, alongside the Fomoire, Aesus, Teutates and Taranus. This is the row the source was added for: a demonisation carried out in a footnote by a comparative mythologist, on the same figures and by the same logic that a church would have used. | |
Brigit = Brigid | — | — | Given as another name for Dana herself, a goddess much honoured in pagan Ireland whose attributes pass in great measure to the sixth-century Christian saint. Rolleston states the transfer plainly, which is the mechanism this site exists to watch and one of the few places a source says it out loud. |
| — | — | Carried through Moytura and the Ulster cycle as the god the hero descends from. | |
Nuada of the Silver Hand = Nuada | — | — | Named for the incident rather than the office: the hand cut off at Moytura and replaced by the artificers, from which the epithet comes. |
the Dagda = The Dagda | — | — | The chief of the People of Dana, and the father Angus cheats out of his dwelling. |
the Fomorians = The Fomoire | — | — | Grouped with Balor under the same reading of Celtic myth as a solar myth with a principle of darkness in it. |
 the Morrigan = The Morrígan | — | — | Named as an extraordinary goddess, with O'Grady's identification of her with Dana explicitly refused. A disputed identity left standing as disputed, which is worth more to this corpus than a confident answer. |