Mythology has always been—and will probably
always be—a favorite source of creative
fuel for writers of all kind.
Essayists use it as a cultural lens, poets
draw on the iconography for meaning, and fiction-writers
are forever enamored with its breadth of unique
material.
If you're casually familiar with any particular
mythology, chances are it's because a writer
has adapted or appropriated something from
it.
A lot of the major world mythologies get this
treatment over and over, ending up in film
after film, game after game, story after story.
Even if you've never done any research on
Greek, Egyptian, or Norse mythology, it's
probably a safe bet that you still at least
sort of recognize some of this stuff.
One way or another, through the channels of
popular media, it's made its way to you.
Unfortunately, despite everything it has to
offer, Irish mythology doesn't usually get
that opportunity.
Which is... interesting, because we find that
the apparent reasons it's often eschewed are
also the reasons that people ought to be writing
about it.
Before we go any further though, you should
know that almost all of Irish mythology as
we know it comes not from pagan Irish tradition,
but from the writings of Christian scribes
during a climate of feverish conversion.
We talked about the effect of this in last
year's video, but suffice to say that the
accuracy of their transcriptions is probably...
questionable at best.
Accurate or no, the old manuscripts are teeming
with worthy material, ripe for your creative
human brains to mold.
Between the Mythological, Ulster, Fennian,
and Historical cycles—which together make
up Irish mythology—we find the Mythological
cycle to be the closest in form to the other
major mythologies.
So in this video, we'll be focusing exclusively
on the Irish Mythological cycle.
So, the immediate question: why doesn't anyone
know about this?
Why doesn't it get the attention that the
others do?
Well, one of the first major differences we
noticed between Irish mythology and the others
was the strange approach to the supernatural.
Where gods, magic, and miracles often come
from a clear source and serve a clear purpose
in mythological tales, the opposite tends
to be true for Irish mythology.
To start, the Irish progenitor gods are shrouded
in mystery.
Danu and Domnu—the sister goddesses who
raise the Tuatha De Danann and birthed the
Fomorians, respectively—are hardly mentioned
in the original texts at all.
So unlike, say, Greek mythology, where the
gods are carefully organized and explained,
the divine lineage here is a bit vague, unconcerned
with quantifying or defining the ineffable.
Irish mythology is mostly concerned with the
activities of mortals.
That's not to say that the stories lack fantastical
or magical elements, though.
Far from it.
In fact, the magic in these stories is so
abundant that it almost feels arbitrary.
It's no surprise in the Book of Invasions
when Fintan—husband of Ireland's first settler,
Cessair—reacts to the stress of caring for
a tribe of 49 other women by jumping into
a river and just... turning into a salmon.
Y'know.
Like you do.
"Spontaneous salmon" is actually a decent
representation of how magic seems to work
in Irish mythology.
A lot of the time, characters just do stuff.
At the tail end of the Book of Invasions,
one of the Milesian men—Amergin—is able
to quell a storm created by the Tuatha De
Danann by reciting verse at it.
They just do stuff, and it's great.
But we'll get back to this in a minute.
Another reason Irish mythology hasn't quite
spread in the same way as its peers might
be the fact that a lot of information is just...
missing from it.
Not necessarily pivotal plot arcs or anything
like that—nothing that would make it incoherent—it
just lacks a lot of the background details
that more meticulously-archived mythologies
tend to have.
For instance, in our research, we were never
able to find anything that amounts to an Irish
creation myth.
The stories just seem to grant that the world
always was.
The closest thing they have to an actual origin
story is the tale of Ireland's first settler,
Cessair.
And even her story is riddled with holes.
The question of where she came from is handily
addressed by the Christian scribes, who say
that she was the daughter of Noah and that
she travelled to Ireland to escape the great
flood after being denied a place on the ark.
Even still, that doesn't explain weirdness
of the two ships she lost at sea, and how
the party aboard the one ship that made shore
was comprised of 49 women and three men, two
of whom ended up dying, and one of whom—as
we mentioned—spontaneously animorphed into
a salmon.
Even stranger, we never get much information
about the classic villains of Irish mythology:
The Fomorians.
They always seem to be around to battle with
Ireland's various settlers.
They come into conflict with the tribes of
Partholon and Nemed, the Fir Bolg, and most
famously, the Tuatha De Danann, but even after
all of that, we never quite get a feel for
what exactly they are.
Powerful, mysterious beings who are capable
of things like raising tidal waves to wipe
out an entire people, or—in the case of
the Formoragh champion, Balor—raze landscapes
to cinders just by looking at them.
You'd think there'd be more information about
such a present, formidable adversary, but
that's Irish mythology for you.
And that's not even the most significant gap
in the mythos.
What perplexes us most is the origin of the
Tuatha De Danann—the god-like race around
whom the majority of the stories center.
Their tale begins with the tribe of Nemed,
who, after weathering plagues and warfare
with the Fomorians, eventually disperse out
into the world.
Some travel inland to Britain, some go south
to Greece, and finally, in so many words,
the remainder of them set off "into the north
of the world."
What exactly that means... eh, who can say?
But I guess one things led to another and,
somehow, they end up in the presence of the
goddess Danu, who sends them to learn in the
four mystical cities of knowledge: Gorias,
Finias, Murias, and Falias.
When they eventually return to Ireland, they
return as gods—the Tuatha De Danann.
And just... nobody knows why.
This might sound like a criticism of the mythology,
but it isn't meant to be.
In fact, these vagaries are one of our favorite
things about it.
We like to think of the informational gaps
like footholds for a creative mind.
Again, though, we'll come back to this.
The final possible snag we can really see
writers encountering when trying to create
something based on Irish myth is the wealth
of conflicting material from different sources.
Unlike most mythologies, which have primary
sources to draw on, just about all of Irish
mythology comes from transliterations of transcriptions
of oral tradition.
So there are bound to be some discrepancies
between interpretations, right?
Seems at the outset like it should be a small
thing, but you'd be surprised how impactful
this kind of minutia can turns out to be.
Like, when Nemed's descendants escaped their
slavery in Greece and returned to Ireland,
did they acquire the name "Fir Bolg"meaning
"men of the bag" because they carried sacks
of soil on their backs whilst in slavery?
Or was it because they carries sacks of soil
to Ireland in order to make the stony earth
fertile?
When the Tuatha De Danann returned to Ireland,
did they come on thirty ships which they burnt
upon the shore?
Or did they arrive in a rolling haze of black
clouds, without a ship to speak of?
And perhaps most importantly: was Fintan the
only spontaneously-immortal salmon-man?
Or did Tuan Mac Cairill—one of Patholon's
tribe—survive the plague that wiped out
his tribe in the same super-bizarre fashion?
These aren't necessarily difference that change
the mythology, but it's certainly possible
that they'll change your perspective of it.
Your experience will most likely be colored
by the specific nuances of second-hand source
you use, and they are all second-hand sources.
So, at the outset the mythology's supernatural
elements look vague, there are a lot of informational
gaps, and it's host to a wealth of conflicting
details from various sources.
Understandably, this probably deters a lot
of writers from using at as a conceptual basis
for their work.
But we see all of this as an opportunity.
Irish mythology isn't rigid like the others.
It's flexible.
If the gods are mysterious and the magic is
arbitrary, paint them to fit a new picture.
If information is missing, do what fiction-writers
do best and invent something to fill the gaps.
And if the sources can't agree, abscond with
your favorite ideas and re-shape them.
So that's our challenge this month, and to
that end we're going to write a sequel to
last year's story, which you can listen to
by clicking here.
If you want to give this a shot yourself,
feel free to post a short story on Tumblr
with the tag "Keep Making Stuff Up," or click
the "submit" button at the end of the video.
Finally, we'll be posting exclusive previews
and sneak peeks for all our videos this month
on our Patreon, so if you're curious, a little
support goes a long way.
Anyway, that's all for now.
Thanks for watching, and keep making stuff
up!
We'll see you...
next week!
Bye!
