In which is presented a telling of the Cath Maige Tuired, accompanied by a DEEP linguistic inquiry into the Irish Mythology and Story, Part, 1.
Join the study and read along with us on Substack! By becoming a member, you get instant access to these recordings, in-depth write-ups of each episode beyond the transcript, and digital access to my award-winning Irish Retelling novels.
Learn more about me here on my website.
Buy my books!
Other Irish Mythology Podcasts to listen to: Candlelit Tales Irish Mythology Podcast, The Irish Pagan School Podcast.
. . .
The Cath Maige Tuired is an angular story set within the circularity of the Irish soul, or anam, a modern Gaeilge word rooted in the Proto Celtic anaman, from the Proto Indo European h₂enh₁-, meaning “to breathe” that is suffixed by *-mn̥, which creates abstract action nouns from regular verbs. Anam is a fine word, but there are others, lest we forget: misneach (mish-nyakh), being “the spirit that won’t break” and croí (krEE), being “centre-heart.”
The Cath Maige Tuired also opens the window for our deities, and our heroes—the Old Irish curad, meaning hero that is rooted in the Proto Celtic karuts, which means something like “warrior-champion.” It is a tale with teeth such that if we plunge into her bowels and swim in the green-grey sluice there we may find a counterposed narrative at nearly every turn. But, leaning back, the story appears not in its naked polarity, but as a round tale that begins and ends at the beginning.
It is a true circle, a fine weave, constructed by the pin-point.
You can see the oral tradition imbibing the tale and its looseness, its repetitiveness, the way it holds words like a river holds leaves—just barely and always just skimming the surface like fairy fingers, like Aes Sídhe (or the Proto Celtic sîdos) rose from their Earthen mounds to tickle the water’s surface, just barely, with the bronze pad of doru little leaves (doru means oak).
The Cath Maige Tuired is a special text in the sense that it is a cauldron of Gods. Many tales in Irish Mythology reference the figures of the TDD, often times present what I find to be a confusing mess of names and places and happenings that co-mingle into a life-time of study. But in the CMT, they are landed and embodied figures of clay and shape that speak directly with us, to us.
