700 BC - 600 BC
700 BC - 150 BC
Early Dark Age - Two Plagues
occurred once again in Ireland early in this Century.
53.Macha
"Mongruadh"
-
of the Red Tresses
- had been the Irian
64th
Monarch of Erinn
for 14 years
who was a daughter of
52.Aodh
“Ruadh”- of Red Complexion
- who was descended from
37.Ir and was to be the
only woman ever to be a
Queen of Ireland
in her own right and
both
Emain Macha & Armagh in
the east of the
Ulster Province
are named for her.
653 BC - 633 BC *65.Reacht
aka Reachtaidh
“Righ - Dearg”- the Red King - was the
Heberian
65th
King of
Tara - Erinn
who was a son of
64.Lewy
“Lagha”
the previous
60th King of
Tara - Erinn and he was
involved in the killing of
53.Macha
"Mongruadh"
-
of the Red Tresses
-
the previous Irian
64th
Monarch of
Erinn.
He also
subdued the Celtic
Gaelic
Cruthin Picts in Albany
in the
Scottish Highlands
with a powerful army to increase his authority
there as they were
growing wayward in the payment of their yearly tribute to the
Gaelic Milesian
Kings of
Ireland and he was to rule for
20 years until he
too was killed in battle by
59.Ugaine
"Mor"
aka 59.Hugoney the Great.
59.Ugaine
"Mor" aka
59.Hugoney the
Great - became the
Heremonian
66th King of
Tara - Erinn who was a son of
58.Eochy "Buadach" the son of
57.Duach "Ladhrach" the previous
59th King of Tara - Ireland descended from
37.Heremon and many of the
chief aristocratic Gaelic Milesian
Families in Connacht,
Leinster,
Munster, Scotland
&
Ulster were to
eventually
trace their descent from him.
He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great and was to rule Ireland for
40 years
during which time he was to sail with a fleet into the
Mediterranean and landed forces in Africa
and also laid siege to Sicily and went onto Gaul. He married
Ceasair the daughter of the
King of the Gauls who
were his Celtic kinsmen and they had 22 sons and
3 daughters and he divided the Kingdom of
Erinn
into 25 parts for them to inherit but only
2 of his sons were to leave
any aristocratic issue;
60.Leary
/ Laoghaire "Lorc"
would be the
68th
King of
Tara - Erinn and the
direct
ancestor of the Cu Corb
&
Ui Connla
Leinster & Ossory
Kings and their
Heremonian
Families there.
60.Coffey
/ Cobthach "Caol
Bhreagh" - the Slender of
Brega - was to become the
69th King of Tara - Erinn
and he is the direct ancestor of
the main aristocratic Heremonian Dal Cuinn
Septs, the 3 Collas in the kingdom of
Orghialla -
Airghialla
- Oriel
in Southern
Ulster, the 3
Connachta and the Ui Maine
in the Connacht
Province, the "Southern" Ui Niaill
in Mide
- Northern
Leinster
and the "Northern" Ui
Niaill in the Ulster Province, the
Muscraige &
Earna in
Munster and their kinsmen the
Dal Riada -
Scottii of
Co. Antrim
in
Ulster
&
Argyle
-Land of the Gael),
Albany
&
Scottish Highlands.
Wine was imported into
Gaul while beer was for home production and Pork was a favourite
dish and etiquette of precedence and hospitality was observed with strangers
being fed before any inquiries were made and the Celts were also obsessed with
magic and ritual for as rural dwellers magic pervaded every aspect of their lives
and they were concerned to constrain the powers of magic to their benefit.
Ritual, sacrifice and sacred stories were used to impress the deities by
precedent and remembrance but there was no real conformity as in major religions
or organised structures as the Greeks and the Romans had. They sprung from a
common Indo - European tradition, which they shared with the
Aryan ancestors of
the Hindus and the Italic forerunners of the Romans and they had
2 principal
seasons, Warm & Cold, which eventually became
4 Festivals.
Samhain
- Fertility - Reassembly - on November 1st : Gathering together as each Tuath - Family region - went to the
Oenach (Assembly) at the end of the year, and the beginning of the next, a
turning point of the agricultural cycle and the end of the
grazing cycle when
only the breeders were kept from slaughter providing unlimited feasting seen as
the beginning of good fortune for the coming Spring and Summer. The union of the Daghda
(The Good Father - the Protector and Benefactor) with a divinity
such as Morrigan - the
Queen of the Demons or Boann
who was the deity of the River Boyne, with
Morrigan was also known as Nemain Panic and Badb
"Catha" - the Raven of the Battle.
Macha
&
Medb /
Maeve - were
female names of divinities also with mare attributes and symbolism, such as
Epona was a Celtic deity. No
deities of War just the Wisdom of the Sun as they were only concerned
with their local deities - male and female. In Gaul they had Cernunnos - The Horned One, and
Tarvos - The
Three - Horned Bull. The night of the eve before Samhain was overrun by magic
forces when magical troops came from out of the caves and mounds and mortal men
might be received into these realms and assaults occurred on the
Royal
strongholds with flame and poison attempted by demons. The
Daghda represented
immense
strength and appetite clad in a short garment of a servant, his weapon was a
great club, which was sometimes dragged on wheels, with a great magical cauldron, which was
a symbol
of abundance in Ireland
from which no one went away without being satisfied.
Imbolc
- February 1st: Lactation of the ewes beginning on the
Feast of
St. Brigid whose predecessor, Brigid was a wise woman, who was a daughter of the
Daghda, a fertility
divinity with attributes of learning & healing.
Sheep had no ritual status, as
did the Ox, Boar and the Dog components in divine and mortal names although
wool
was very important to the Celts.
Beltaine
(Cetshamain) May 1st: Beginning of the Warm Season, which was a
pastoral
festival where the cattle were taken to open grazing with the lighting of great
fires and then driven in between by the Druids to protect them from
disease as
the word Beltaine includes the Celtic word for
fire, which was also
a deity name in
Northern Italy, south - east Gaul
and in Noricum who was known there as
Belenus who is
one of the oldest gods known especially among the pastoralists.
Lugnasad
- August 1st
was to be introduced by the late coming settler group into
Ireland and
connected with the Tuatha De Danann
and Lugh
/ Lew
their King and
it
was agrarian in character
for the ripening of the crops to ensure the harvest,
not a thankful gesture,
human initiated with the ritual carried out correctly culminating in the desired
result. Lugh, a latecomer
in Ireland
was more a tribal deity who was less archaic in character then the others with
different weapons. His epithet was "Samildanach"
(The Lord of Every Skill) -
rather then knowledge in general and it was he who had personally founded the festival for
Tailtu or as
Macha in the
Ulster
Province.
This Festival was also known as Bron Trograin (The Rage of Trograin) - where
sacrifices were made to increase plenty and he may have been also a previous
tribal divinity who was overshadowed by the later
outstanding deeds of
Lugh.
Always visualised as a young man, Lugh had none of the characteristics of the
Daghda although there is no
vivid description of his appearance as there is of the
Daghda
(The Great Father.)
Lugh was also known as
Lugh "Lamfhada" - of the
Long Arm - as he also had far reaching weapons, a great throwing spear and a
sling that were new impressive additions to Irish
weapons.
These 4 Festivals were all based on
Lunar observations and
on the nights not the days. Misfortunes such as
failure of the crops, cattle disease, and other calamities could be attributed to
supernatural non - acceptability of the
King from a physical or ritual blemish
who was a mortal mate of the territorial nature divinity. At
Tara it was Etain
or
Medb who accepted the King as their husbands
as these divinities handed them the goblet, which was a symbol of marriage in Celtic
society or the Kings would meet her at a well or spring were she waited as a
beautiful maiden. The divinities could also turn from being beautiful maidens into
old hags and
they could also be very destructive usually predicting some calamity or they
could just
appear out of no where on a field of battle.
An example of this in later Irish myth,
was to occur to
Cuchulainn the
great warrior of Ulster
Province
who was to be confronted by Badb
in a red cloak with red eyebrows, who was also mounted in a chariot drawn by a grotesque horse
and accompanied by a crude male figure driving a cow and reciting
horse names. Badb was to
then change
into her bird form - raven or crow and gloat over the bloodshed, inducing panic
and weakness among the contending warriors.
+On to 600 - 500 BC