One of the questions I get hit with a lot is “If I’m getting into Irish Mythology, what sources do you recommend?” It’s a sad, sad truth about the field that a lot of really valuable info is kept locked away in books and journals that the lay person wouldn’t know about (and then we wonder why information about the field is so bad.) So, I decided to compile a list of sources that I’ve personally used and found helpful in my time. It’s not a complete bibliography because, frankly, that would take up a TREMENDOUS amount of space and you’d be scrolling forever to find what you wanted, and I don’t AGREE with every single thing they say, and it’s by no means exhaustive (keep in mind: scholars from all over the field use mythological texts to study things as diverse as law, geography, tribal names, material culture, etc. and here I’m mainly focusing on sources that are JUST mythological-focused) but they’re a good starting point to forming your own opinions. The journal articles are, tragically, generally kept confined to academia, but….perhaps….if you were to ask around, someone might be able to provide you with a copy. As a whole, Celticists tend to be quite generous when it comes to sharing articles.
List subject to change, check back as time goes on to see if I’ve added anything. Also, as always, feel free to either drop me an ask or a pm if you’re curious about digging further into a given text/figure. I can’t act as a consultant on a religious question; I’m a very firm atheist with all the spirituality of a dull spoon, except with the existence of ghosts. My interest in the Tuatha Dé is purely scholarly; all that I can say is what I know about these topics from the perspective of the medieval sources, but I can definitely do my best on that one front, and I won’t reject anyone who has a different interest in the Tuatha Dé from contacting me.
This list only deals with the Mythological Cycle, not the other strands of the literary tradition that is generally if not uncontroversially referred to as “Irish Mythology”. For Fenian Cycle traditions, a similar bibliography has been compiled by Dr. Natasha Sumner of Harvard, here.
Editions/Translations of Texts (many of these are available at UCC’s CELT archive or on Irish Sagas Online):
Cath Maige Tuired, Elizabeth Gray (If you can and you’re serious about the field, I highly recommend getting the actual Irish Text Society Edition, which includes a wonderful index of every time a given figure shows up in other sources. An absolute must for a mythographer.)
Lebor Gabála Érenn, J.R.S Macalister, 5 vols. (The entirety of this is available on archive.org. Personally…while the rest of it is obviously important and worthy of study, if you’re interested in just the mythological stuff, I recommend Volume IV, which includes both the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé. Unless you really, really want to read five volumes of medieval Irish pseudohistory, the last volume of which was finished posthumously.) iiiiiiivv
The Metrical Dinshenchas, Edward Gwynn. (5 vols.) (These are difficult, with many scholars outright ignoring them except when absolutely necessary. These are in a later form of Irish, which means that, while some of the contents in them could very well be Pre-Christian in nature, they very much do reflect a later medieval world. Some of them are just as much about contemporary politics as they are about mythology, and many of them also bring in content from the Ulster Cycle and the Fenian Cycle. My personal favorites to look up are Tailtiu, Carn Hui Néit, Duirgen, and Carmun, though there are MANY others.) iiiiiiivv
“The First Battle of Moytura”, John Fraser (Note: It’s a VERY late text, with the question of the Fir Bolg/Tuatha Dé battle and how far the tradition really goes back being one that’s very important to keep in mind. It’s a personal favorite of mine. But it’s very late.)
Baile in Scáil, Kevin Murray (Thurneyson also did an older edition that’s more readily accessible, hence why I linked it here, but Murray is the most recent and up to date.)
Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann, Richard Duffy (This is an Early Modern Irish text, so it was written down comparatively late. That doesn’t mean that there’s NO mythological content here, it’s a personal favorite of mine, but it means that it very much reflects the cultural context of around….the 15th-17th century or thereabouts. It’s very chaotic, very violent, and the heroic figures are….not….heroic.)
Echtra Nerai, it’s available in a fairly recent translation by John Carey in Celtic Heroic Age (pub. 2003) , listed below, though Kuno Meyer also did an edition/translation for it that I’ve linked to here.
Books:
Proinsias Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology(Personally, I’d recommend this one first - It’s designed for someone who isn’t a specialist and, while a lot of what he’s saying has been disputed back and forth, it’s still a handy primer and will get you into the myths.)
John Koch and John Carey, The Celtic Heroic Age (Once you have an idea of what you’re looking at, I recommend this one, since it’s a sourcebook. A TON of material from across the Celtic world, featuring classical sources, medieval Irish sources, and Welsh, all of it in one place.)
Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals (I personally recommend you read this one after you read CHA, giving you a bit of context for what Williams is saying here.)
O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (note: A lot of what he says here is no longer considered recent in the field, but his knowledge of his own sources is, frankly, without any other peer. Use with a grain of salt)
John Carey, The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature
Yes, I DID spend 20,000 steam points on both Resident Evil 8 profile packs and? Tbh? No regrets, my Steam profile looks badass and now I just need to get a couple hours in the game so I can buy the other profiles because I need the Heisenberg one.
gays aren’t “starved for representation” you just refuse to watch anything that isn’t a marvel movie
“but gay representation still hardly exists in the mainstream” gay rep will NEVER exist in the mainstream if you don’t support indie lgbt projects, if you don’t prove the demand for depth for complexity for love, if you don’t just fucking google actual lgbt films
seeing a couple people on this post talking about how there’s no media about lgbt people of colour. here’s a list of over 100 films with lgbt protagonists of colour.
okay but dwarves put SO much effort into their tombs already, carving perfect stone and inscriptions and making records to bury kin with kin and everything, let alone for Gimli son of Gloin Lord of the Glittering Caves.
The years of planning and amounts of paperwork and arrangements for the tomb of Gimli son of Gloin Lord of the Glittering Caves one of the Nine of the Fellowship one of the Heroes of Arda the Elf-friend and sturdy and possessor of the three hairs of Galadriel would be IMMENSE
and then Legolas rocks up in Gimli’s final days of life like: ok so I built this boat
If social media has taught me anything, it’s that no matter how well-stated your point is, no matter how many details you include, no matter how clear you make yourself, no matter how many clarifications and qualifiers you add, there will always be someone who shows up to wildly, if not intentionally, misinterpret your post as an excuse to yell at you.
See, this why I like to say that (while distinctly progressive and left-leaning in my modern sociopolitical views) I’m Team Dead People re: history. Standing up against misinformation no matter if it comes from someone I agree with on other things, or someone from whom I differ in my views. I suspect you’re the latter.
AFAB people who lived permanently as men definitely did exist earlier. I cited some of them- Dr. James Barry (1789-1865), Charley Parkhurst (1812-1879), and Albert Cashier (1843-1915; made to wear feminine clothing again near the end of his life, but that reversion was not voluntary and he was buried under his chosen name). You might say that they were just reacting to the gender roles and restrictions of their society, but I would argue that…we all are, really.
What is a trans man? A person assigned female at birth who feels themselves a man by the standards of their culture. Indeed, there is no other framework by which to work out one’s gender than the world one lives in- that sets the parameters we use to judge such things, which history shows can shift radically over time.
Would, say, Dr. Barry have chosen to “transition,” as we’d say today, if he lived in modern Britain where women have far greater freedom to travel alone and and practice medicine? Maybe. Maybe not. But we can’t ask him. As with Louisa May Alcott, we can only examine the nuances of his life and respect the terms he identified with in his place and time:
Man. James Barry. He/Him.
The right to agency and self-identification is retroactive, even if you suspect a historical figure would have identified differently today. They aren’t here today. They’re there, and then, and we have to abide by how they presented themselves in their worlds, according to their standards.
(Not to mention, there WERE women throughout history who pretended to be men for various temporary purposes and made it clear that they still considered themselves women. Usually by returning to life as women after the extraordinary circumstances had passed. Deborah Sampson and Sarah Emma Edmonds, for example. They stand in stark contrast to figures like Barry, Parkhurst, and Cashier who lived as men indefinitely.)
Given that, I say again: these people were AFAB and voluntarily lived the majority of their lives as men. We know that with a high degree of certainty not present in cases like Louisa May Alcott’s. Therefore, it seems fair to me to say that they were what we’d now call trans men.
My take on fic writing is that I don’t care what actually happened in canon.
- but I do need to get the price of tulips in 1850’s Paris right because that’s how I’m letting you guys know that my ignorance of the source material is a hard-earned and intentional kind of bliss.
Each part of canon that I include is lovingly hand picked.
