Odd

Why was Ireland so odd?

It could be argued that it’s simply because it’s an island off in the west and had no easily-procurable resources, unless you’re a Viking out for portable monastic gold and silver and slaves. It’s true that it wasn’t until the 16th-century English wanted colonies and also worried about keeping rival Spain at arms’ length, that Ireland, odd or not, mattered much to anyone else, Soon, though, the traditional slightly odd Irish disorganization or at least lack of the types of organization that could have produced a strong unified state able to fight off newly-efficient hordes of English soldiers and entrepreneurs, mattered quite a lot.

Irish oddity was not much valued by the English conquerors who, after all, were there because they valued clear hierarchical systems, efficiency and profit. In such a context, oddity could only last as long as it didn’t get in the way of important things.

Oddity…I’m not talking about things like inadequately-developed awareness of the importance of clock time, chattiness and sense of humor. Such things have, in the 20th and 21st centuries, sold films, airline seats and bed and breakfast bookings, but they are not really odd.

I’m talking about deviant odd

Ireland is really the only place in Europe where the traditional vernacular traditions were cultivated both by traditional hereditary learned families and also within structures of everyday life. (What do I mean by “vernacular “? I mean they were not based on late Roman Empire Christian religious structures or learning.) It is the only place, for example, where, in his inauguration, a king symbolically married the goddess of that place. It is the only place where people knew of the specific goddess of their locality and something about her. It is the only place where people still knew the traditions of their local place and their history going back hundreds of years.

(I’m not saying that the traditional learned families were closet pagans or anything like that. They were very Christian and very familiar with Latin ecclesiastical learning, but Christianity in Ireland was not imposed by conquerors: it was adapted by the Irish themselves and in certain ways, the new religion incorporated some aspects of fundamental pre-existing Irish ideology and social practice.

For example, there is a trio of West Cork/Kerry saints, Latiaran, Crobhdhearg (sometimes Iníon Buí instead) and Gobnait, believed to be sisters. They are now patronesses of local churches. Gobnait’s feast day is close to St. Bridget ‘s Day/Imbolg, traditional beginning of Spring: Iníon Buí and Crobhdhearg’s feast day May 1st/Béaltaine, beginning of Summer, and Latiaran’s feast is close to August 1st/Lughnasa, the beginning of Autumn and Harvest.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T1sRqtZLaI0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF3Z1WlipnE

There is a healing well associated with each of these saints, and a traditional gathering there on their feast day: the usual thing. Each saint is associated with specific farming tasks logically enough. For example, farmers from a wide area brought their cows to Cathair Crobhdhearg, an old rath (circular enclosure) that contains the well. (”Cathair” is usually a stone-built one.) The visit brought the cows health for the season.

(Crobhdhearg is translated in one of the videos as “Red Claw” but that is wrong. “Crobh” can mean a claw, but in names in usually means hand,)

Statues of trios of goddesses are very common finds from Celtic Gaul, and they often carry things like cornucopias, babies and agricultural implements that suggest a connection with the earth. Trios are very common in older Irish literature, and as Mac Cana points out here:

There were probably other, even many, such trios of saints about whom knowledge did not last or which was never noted, but these three saints happen to be associated with Sliabh Luachra, an upland area now mostly known for a style of music, and the region is therefore considered the villages associated with that music in the late 20th century. The area was originally larger, extending from west Limerick south to…well, nobody is sure where, because south of Knocknagree etc, you’re into mountains and mountain valleys from Killarney and Glen Flesk southwest to Beara and Bantry etc.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYThos9mnPg

This larger traditional Sliabh Luachra appears regularly in medieval tales as “the wilderness”. ?????. and it was still known as wild unprofitable country to 16th and 17th century English conquerers. It was for sure rough country and out of the way, and some of the last formal aristocratic resistance to the English appeared there, ranging from Art Ó Laoire (see his wife Eibhlín’s famous keen for him) to the O’Donoghue lords of Glen Flesk, to the Ó Súlleabháin lords of the Kilgarvan area, and those of Beara.

One traditional learned family, Ó Dálaigh, associated with the important FitzGerald lords and with the MacCarthaigh lords of West Cork, had two seats in Sliabh Luachra, and two of the great learned poets of the 17th century – the last ones – are believed to have been partly educated there, although Áodhgán Ó Rathaile is more likely associated with the seat of his mother’s family, the Mac Aodhgáns, another traditional learned family there.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNac0hanTUg

Latiaran and Iníon Buí are saints of two parishes on the Blackwater river that is known in Irish as Abhainn Mór na Mumhain. This is usually translated as Big River of Munster, but probably actually refers to Mór, a goddess associated with Cluain in east Cork not too far from where the river meets the sea. Crobhdhearg’s seat is also on the river just over the border in Kerry (Rathmore). Gobnait is the exception and her seat is to the south of a mountain mass and separated from the others, though not too far from Na Cíochanna, the Paps mountains that were traditionally Dhá Chíoch nAnann, the Two Breast of Anú. (Anú was another goddess, an important one.)

Just as the Celts apparently considered a calendar date to begin with what we would consider the night before, the Irish considered Samhain/Nov 1 (the New Year) to begin with what we would say was the night before. There are many indications that they also thought that all fundamental things had their beginning in and arose out of night: out of “darkness”, the wild and the unorganized/uncivilized.

The Fianna, for example, the quintessential defenders of ancient Ireland against invaders and against hostile eruptions of the Otherworld into the cultivated “daylight” world, were able to defend the human community because the Fianna were partially situated in the Wild themselves and were nourished by it.

Many male heroes in the old stories have to leave the known daylight world and go into the unknown and Otherworld to face strange ordeals, and (hopefully) the fundamentals (like the Fianna were required to do), thus to return whole and adult. There is a corresponding corpus of tales of female heroes who are also expelled from the daylight world and go into the darkness where they endure strange trials before they return to the daylight world as grown women.

An example is Gobnait who was forced to leave her home in (it is said) Clare and take refuge first in Inisheer (Aran) and then wander southern Ireland alone until she would see nine white deer together. This only finally happened in Baile Mhuirne (Ballyvourney, Co Cork). There she established her church and has protected the local people since against outside violence and harm.

Suithchearn, in the old tale Suithchearn and Ronán Diacolla, is forced from her home and wanders Ireland impoverished and alone until she becomes a servant at the court of the king of the Uí Liatháin in east Cork, The Queen challenges the king to sleep with her, apparently the ugliest woman in Ireland. The king, shamed, unwillingly does so, and in the morning, when Suithchern cleans herself, her actual beauty is revealed and she becomes queen in place of her somewhat morally challenged and certainly not very perceptive predecessor. (Her name, by the way, translates as Great Lord.)

There may have been a similar element of Iníon Buí’s lost tale: “Buí” often translates as swarthy-skinned, implying a life out under the elements, lack of cleanliness etc., and it may be that she underwent her own wanderings before finding her place. (Suitchchern rubbed rye flour on her face to disguise herself, (maybe to counterfeit the effects of a hard life) and I think if anyone in Irish history earned the nickname Swarthy, someone with a layer of old rye flour on their face would.

Sliabh Luachra was thus not simply a place with lots of trees and animals, It was formally the Wild, the Night, the Darkness out of which all things arise: a source. It was where the Mother Goddess of Munster, Anu, was seated. It was where families of hereditary poets who took pver the druids' non-religious functions had their seats. It was where heroes and heroines ventured in order to pass on into knowledge and adulthood.

These are the kinds of things that made Ireland really odd.

Notice, though, that nobody was saying "Oh yes, we're keeping up this archaeic worldview and these practices because we are committed to The Old Faith, Would you like me to explain our beliefs and tell you why we are right?" No, it was simply that old patterns made sense to people on the ground, and life and practice tended to return always to such patterns despite formal changes in formal religion, and while such things in European peasant communities were considered weird and heretical by the authorities, and suppressed, in Ireland, the authoritiesWrite your text here...

Email : tighsagainne@fastmail.com (all lower case)

© 2026. All rights reserved.