Who Were the Tuatha Dé Danann?

If you spend any time reading about Irish mythology, it does not take long before you encounter the Tuatha Dé Danann. Lugh, the Dagda, Brigid, Nuada, Ogma, Goibniu and the Morrígan are among the best-known figures associated with them, and today they are frequently described as the “gods of ancient Ireland”. That is a useful starting point, but it is also rather too simple.

The Tuatha Dé Danann come to us primarily through medieval Irish literature, written down by Christian scribes centuries after Ireland had begun its conversion to Christianity. The surviving stories undoubtedly contain material with roots in pre-Christian traditions, but those traditions have been preserved within texts shaped by medieval Christianity, literature, politics and changing ideas about Ireland’s past. Trying to understand who the Tuatha Dé Danann were therefore means looking through several layers of tradition rather than expecting to find a straightforward account of an ancient Irish pantheon.

What does Tuatha Dé Danann mean?

The name Tuatha Dé Danann is commonly translated as “the People of the Goddess Danu” or something similar. Tuath in Old Irish can mean a people, tribe or community, while the rest of the name is more complicated.

Danu is widely presented in modern books and Pagan writing as a great Irish mother goddess and the divine ancestor of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The medieval evidence is considerably less clear. There is no substantial surviving mythology about a goddess called Danu comparable with what we have for figures such as the Morrígan, Brigid or the Dagda. Her supposed character as a great mother goddess is therefore largely reconstructed rather than something clearly described in the surviving Irish texts.

Earlier sources also use the shorter name Tuath Dé, which can be understood as “People of the Gods”. The difficulty was that Christian writers could use similar terminology for the biblical People of God. The longer Tuatha Dé Danann appears to have helped distinguish the supernatural people of Irish tradition from this Christian usage (Carey, 1999; Williams, 2016). Even their familiar name, then, has a history and should not automatically be treated as something handed down unchanged from pre-Christian Ireland.

Where did they come from?

One of the fullest accounts of the Tuatha Dé Danann appears in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, usually translated as The Book of the Taking of Ireland, although it is also often called The Book of Invasions. The work attempts to construct a history of Ireland through a succession of peoples who arrive and settle the island. The Tuatha Dé Danann are one of these groups, appearing before the arrival of the Milesians, who eventually become the ancestors of the human Irish (Macalister, 1938–1956).

It is important not to mistake the Lebor Gabála for literal history. Its medieval compilers were combining biblical chronology, Christian ideas about world history, Irish genealogy, learned speculation and indigenous mythological traditions. In effect, they were attempting to find a place for Ireland and its traditional stories within a Christian history of humanity. The Tuatha Dé Danann were therefore incorporated into a historical scheme even though much about them remained unmistakably supernatural.

Another important text, Cath Maige Tuired, or The Second Battle of Mag Tuired, gives them a particularly mysterious background. It says that before coming to Ireland they had been in the northern islands of the world, where they learned druidry, magical knowledge, prophecy and other arts. Four cities are named: Falias, Gorias, Findias and Murias. Each had a teacher of wisdom, and from these places the Tuatha Dé brought four extraordinary treasures to Ireland (Gray, 1982).

Each of the four cities was associated with a particular treasure. Falias was the home of the Stone of Fál, with its connection to kingship, while Lugh’s spear came from Gorias. The other two were Nuada’s sword from Findias and the Dagda’s cauldron from Murias. Together, these became known as the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann

Modern retellings sometimes go considerably further and describe the four cities as established realms of a Celtic Otherworld, occasionally even assigning them elaborate spiritual or directional meanings. The medieval text itself does not tell us enough to justify all of this. The cities are mysterious places associated with supernatural learning, but precisely what the storyteller imagined the “northern islands of the world” to be remains uncertain (Gray, 1982).

Were the Tuatha Dé Danann gods?

This is probably the most important question, and the answer seems to be yes, at least in origin, although that answer needs some qualification.

Many members of the Tuatha Dé have characteristics strongly suggesting that they preserve memories of pre-Christian divinities. The Dagda is associated with abundance, supernatural knowledge, power and sovereignty. Lugh is the Samildánach, the master of many arts. Goibniu is the supernatural smith, while Dian Cécht is associated with healing. Brigid is connected with poetry and skilled arts. The Morrígan is associated with battle, prophecy, sovereignty, death and the fate of warriors. Some of these figures also have parallels elsewhere in the Celtic-speaking world, strengthening the argument that at least part of the tradition reaches back beyond medieval Christianity (Williams, 2016).

For Christian writers, the divine nature of these figures presented an obvious difficulty. One way around it was to treat them as remarkable people from Ireland’s distant past rather than as gods. This approach, known as euhemerism, was already well established in Christian writing. The old stories could remain, but their gods became powerful kings, warriors and ancestors.

The result is that the Tuatha Dé occupy an intriguing middle ground in the surviving literature. At times they behave like human kings, warriors, craftsmen and ancestors. They marry, fight, negotiate, suffer injuries and sometimes die. Yet at other times their abilities and characteristics are unmistakably supernatural. Mark Williams explores this changing identity in detail in Ireland’s Immortals, showing how Ireland’s pre-Christian gods were repeatedly reshaped as religious, literary and intellectual circumstances changed (Williams, 2016).

Rather than trying to decide whether the Tuatha Dé were either gods or humans, it may therefore be more useful to recognise that the surviving tradition preserves several different ways of understanding them.

The Battles of Mag Tuired

One of the most important stories involving the Tuatha Dé is Cath Maige Tuired. When they come to Ireland they fight the Fir Bolg for possession of the land. During the battle their king, Nuada, loses his arm. This matters because a king was expected to be physically whole, and Nuada’s injury means that he can no longer hold the kingship. Bres becomes king in his place.

Bres, however, proves to be a poor ruler. His reign is characterised by oppressive demands and, significantly, a failure to display the generosity expected of a proper king. Eventually he is removed and Nuada, whose missing hand has been replaced, returns to the kingship (Gray, 1982).

This leads eventually to another great conflict, this time between the Tuatha Dé and the Fomorians. The Fomorians are difficult to categorise in much the same way as the Tuatha Dé themselves. Modern retellings sometimes present them as a straightforward race of evil demons or monstrous forces of chaos, but the medieval stories are more complicated. There are family relationships between the two peoples, and the boundary between them is far from absolute.

Lugh is perhaps the clearest example. His father, Cian, belongs to the Tuatha Dé, but his mother Ethniu is the daughter of the powerful Fomorian Balor. The hero who eventually leads the Tuatha Dé against the Fomorians therefore carries the ancestry of both peoples. The battle is not simply a medieval Irish version of good gods fighting evil demons.

A people of skill and knowledge

One of my favourite episodes in Cath Maige Tuired occurs when Lugh arrives at Tara and asks to enter. The doorkeeper wants to know what skill he possesses. Lugh offers one after another: he is a carpenter, smith, warrior, harpist, poet, historian, sorcerer, physician and more. Each time the doorkeeper replies that Tara already has someone with that particular skill.

Lugh finally asks whether they have one person who possesses all of those skills. They do not, and so he is admitted (Gray, 1982).

There is something important here about the way the Tuatha Dé are portrayed. Their power does not rest simply upon warfare or magic. Their society values knowledge, craftsmanship and specialised skill. When preparations begin for the battle against the Fomorians, Lugh asks the members of the Tuatha Dé what each can contribute. Smiths, healers, craftsmen, druids and warriors all offer their particular abilities. Victory depends upon these different skills working together.

This makes the Tuatha Dé much more interesting than a neatly organised pantheon in which every deity has been assigned a single function. Their identities overlap and change according to the stories in which they appear.

The Morrígan and the battle

In Cath Maige Tuired, at Samhain, the Morrígan meets the Dagda before the battle with the Fomorians and tells him that she will bring her power against them. After the battle, it is the Morrígan who announces the victory, carrying the news to the royal heights, the hosts of the síd and the waters of Ireland ( (Gray, 1982).

The text then moves into one of its most intriguing passages. The Morrígan prophesies a time of prosperity, but this is followed by a vision of its opposite: disorder, false judgement, the breakdown of social relationships and a world in which things are no longer as they should be.

She therefore appears not simply in connection with warfare but with prophecy, the condition of society and what follows victory. This is one reason I think describing the Morrígan merely as a “war goddess” loses much of what makes her interesting. Like many of the Tuatha Dé, she cannot easily be reduced to a single function.

The coming of the Milesians

The position of the Tuatha Dé changes dramatically with the arrival of the Milesians. Within the medieval scheme of Irish history, these newcomers represent the ancestors of the human Irish. After conflict between the two peoples, the Milesians take possession of Ireland.

Yet the Tuatha Dé do not simply disappear from the stories. Instead, tradition increasingly associates them with the síde, the ancient mounds scattered throughout the Irish landscape. The Old Irish word síd refers to a mound, although it becomes closely associated with the supernatural beings believed to inhabit such places. This tradition eventually contributes to the idea of the Aos Sí, the People of the Mounds.

Figures who appear as members of the Tuatha Dé in mythological narratives consequently appear elsewhere as supernatural rulers dwelling within an Otherworld that exists alongside the human landscape. Mounds, caves, lakes and other distinctive places can become points where the boundaries between these worlds are particularly close.

This is one of the most striking characteristics of Irish tradition. The Otherworld is not necessarily somewhere unimaginably distant. It can exist alongside the everyday world, reached through particular places in the landscape. Myth becomes attached to the land itself.

Gods, fairies or ancestors?

This leaves us with the problem of what to call the Tuatha Dé Danann today.

Describing them simply as fairies can be misleading, particularly if the word brings to mind the diminutive, winged creatures familiar from Victorian art and children’s stories. Whatever the Tuatha Dé were, that image bears little resemblance to the powerful supernatural beings encountered in medieval Irish literature.

Calling them straightforwardly “the Celtic gods” is also problematic. There was no single uniform Celtic pantheon worshipped unchanged from Ireland to Britain and continental Europe. The surviving Irish evidence comes from a particular literary culture, and we need to be wary of combining deities and traditions from different places and periods into one supposedly universal Celtic religion.

Describing the Tuatha Dé as legendary humans does not quite fit the stories either. They possess powers far beyond those of ordinary people, and some of the figures among them appear to have their origins in the gods of pre-Christian Ireland.

Perhaps the most useful description is therefore that the Tuatha Dé Danann are the great supernatural people of medieval Irish tradition, among whom we can recognise transformed memories of pre-Christian Irish gods.

That is less tidy than simply calling them “the Irish gods”, but it better reflects the evidence we actually have.

A tradition that kept changing

There is another reason I find the Tuatha Dé Danann particularly fascinating. There was never one definitive version of them.

Their identities continued to change. Pre-Christian religious traditions were remembered and reshaped through storytelling. Christian scholars attempted to reconcile them with biblical history. Medieval poets developed genealogies and relationships between supernatural figures. Traditions surrounding the inhabitants of the síde continued to develop in folklore. Much later, antiquarians, folklorists, Celtic Revival writers and modern Pagans interpreted them again through the concerns of their own times.

That does not mean later understandings are somehow worthless. Traditions survive because people continue to tell stories about them and find meaning within them. Modern religious relationships with figures such as Brigid, Lugh, the Dagda or the Morrígan do not have to reproduce medieval Irish belief in order to have meaning for the people practising them today.

What matters historically is recognising which layer of the tradition we are looking at.

When we encounter the Tuatha Dé Danann in the surviving manuscripts, we are looking through medieval literature towards something older. We cannot simply remove the Christian material and assume that whatever remains gives us an untouched picture of pre-Christian Irish religion. The manuscripts are not transparent windows onto ancient Ireland. They are themselves part of the long history through which these beings have reached us.

So who were the Tuatha Dé Danann?

The simplest answer is that they are the great supernatural people of Irish mythology. But perhaps a more interesting answer is that they occupy the uncertain territory between gods, ancestors, heroes and inhabitants of the Otherworld.

Behind at least some of them almost certainly stand deities of pre-Christian Ireland. Within medieval literature they become kings, warriors, poets, healers, smiths, magicians and ancestors. Following the arrival of the Milesians, they become increasingly associated with the síde and with an Otherworld woven into the landscape of Ireland.

Perhaps we do not need to resolve that ambiguity.

The Tuatha Dé Danann have survived precisely because they have been capable of becoming different things in different periods while retaining something recognisable beneath those transformations. For anyone exploring Irish mythology today, the important thing is not to pretend that we can recover a perfectly preserved ancient pantheon. It is to follow the evidence carefully, recognise where the sources disagree or fall silent, and allow the Tuatha Dé Danann to remain as complex as the tradition that preserved them.

References

Carey, J. (1999) ‘The name “Tuatha Dé Danann”’, in Koch, J.T. and Carey, J. (eds.) The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. 3rd edn. Andover, MA: Celtic Studies Publications.Carey, J. (1981) ‘The name “Tuatha Dé Danann”’, Éigse, 18(2), pp. 291–294. Available at: University College Cork research record

Gray, E.A. (ed. and trans.) (1982) Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired. Irish Texts Society, Vol. 52. Naas: Irish Texts Society. Available at: https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T300010/

Macalister, R.A.S. (ed. and trans.) (1938–1956) Lebor Gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland. 5 vols. Dublin: Irish Texts Society. Available at: https://celt.ucc.ie/indexLG.html (

Williams, M. (2016) Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.