Maybe this is a chapter that is more suited for the wonderful heritage of fairy storyteller Eddie Lenihan and fairy whisperer Pat Noone. But here, instead, I will share my experiences and interpretations from stories I have heard throughout my life.
Wow! Ali, what you wrote there is almost a complete personal substack of your own. Lovely. I’m under pressure to get another job done this evening, so will come back to this when calmer. From a flash read you seem to have put into your own words most of what I have been saying, and take that as a bit of a compliment plus good writing from yourself.
Yes, as I understand it, ‘Sidhe’ was probably first a description of the mounds, and then imagination and visions put all of these other stories into the mounds. Even these days if I am by these mounds or coming down children sometimes ask “tell me a story about the dragons up there, mister”. Part of that is due to me always wearing my ‘Nature Folklore’ t-shirts as i have barely got any other tops in my wardrobe.
I love that poem! 💕 I had never considered that those different names for the Sidhe might be different groups of people living within the Otherworld, I had just assumed they were different references, perhaps from different communities or storytellers, for the Tuatha de Danann.
Another thought about the link between Sidhe and Tuatha De Danann. I often forget of the two being quite exclusively intertwined, due to the way they have been recorded by scribes. My own flow of thinking with this is that every culture seems to have their version of the Sidhe and their own set of stories to link to their named entity or entities.
I am also thinking of the Tuatha De Danann not being a singular exclusive culture as portrayed for focus and convenience by scribes and writers. I think of them being a mix of parts of ancient cultures from between the Balkans and Baltic and along the Danube, and then adapting what they arrived with to form a culture that blends in with this island well.
I also find it interesting, from stories I have heard, that the Firbolgs seem to be told of having variable cultures depending which part of the island they lived in, but the Tuatha De Dannan seem to hold a fairly singular description?
This is an incredible post and discussion. I am fascinated by folklore, faery tale, and myth (I have a large box dedicated to tales from cultures around the world). Thank you so much for writing this blog - I will be reading your back catalogue and following along eagerly.
If you have the time to read them, I hope you enjoy such allusions in my poetry.
Thank you for your kind comment, of your enjoyment of these articles I am a bit slow finishing this series. Two articles to go to complete this series this year, and I hope to post one of them today. I will go to see your poetry as I do feature poetry on my live ‘Nature Echoes’ show on Sundays.
Just subscribed. Wonderful. It’s usually on Thursdays I spend a few hours going through substacks and other resources selecting a sort of ‘best of’ and picking Three to feature on my next live ‘Nature Echoes’ on Sundays and also invite live or prerecorded interviews too. I’m sorted for next Sunday, Easter Sunday but will keep looking for other Sundays. Thank you for making contact so I can keep in touch with what you do. Keep doing what you are doing. I wish more people would.
I would love to see, read, your own interpretations from your own studies Ali, as I am sure you have decoded a lot more from old texts than I have, while I am floating on the tales of surreal storytellers I remember with some passion.
From my own sum up, understanding, I find the whole Tuatha De Danann culture, as I have heard it, to be very surreal. It more on a biblical level than history level, as I think about it. A lot of ‘santa claus’ going on there.
I have often heard people call the Tuatha Danann being a half human and half fairy race. I seem to feel it describes a culture that were mortals and were here and did possess the skills of the Bronze Age.
What the story of them being driven into fairy mounds and living as immortal ‘fairies’, the Sidhe, really is I have not really concerned myself with.
Part of that being what I feel is the more incredible story of the Sons Of Mil who’s grandparents being told of being half hazel half human grandfather and deer doe grandmother. The Milesians even being physically present here on this island under that story is very suspect.
My own feeling is that cultures were arriving, at that time, due to different climate, and weather changes and challenges making it hard to carry on as they were, where they were. As nothing was being archived during their time to let us know much except maybe spirals and some of the Bronze age stone circles, star circles, sometimes re-arranged megalithic sites, like Grange in Limerick, it’s hard to capture a mortal history.
So what we have are these surreal stories, especially brought to us from the mysterious Dindshenchas, which I am sure you have studied and decoded more than myself?
So I think saying ‘half human, half fairy, or Sidhe’ is a handy four words for quite a profound story.
I tend to tell of the Tuatha De Danann as a settled farming culture that probably had an elite class as a backdrop to the Sidhe story. The Sidhe story, I feel is the foundation of Nature Folklore I talk about. Soon I will post articles linking the Sidhe very close to water, just to add to the confusion.
However, what is called ‘Sidhe’ today, may be just a Tuatha De Dannan name origin? But what is the ‘sidhe’ I feel is timeless, and previously maybe nameless, and has always been around. Just like Holy Wells today with all those saint names … yet they have always been around for millennia before they were called ‘holy’.
I wonder if the story of the Tuatha De Dannan ‘going underground’ is merely their elite scholar/priest class thinking they had captured ownership of the spirit and realm of life, the entire life ‘consciousness’ just like Christian and major religions think they have done?
HI John, so much to unpack in this comment, I haven't stopped thinking about it! I feel so relieved to read your thinking re the Danann. I have often heard people, even academics, claim that they were gods that were 'demoted' to a mortal state by Christian scribes. If anything, I have always felt they were mortals made into gods or demons, depending on the scribe's viewpoint.
My own view is that these stories have arisen out of honouring the ancestors, or ancestor worship. A human group, perhaps nomadic that made their way to this island and settled, with an elite class structure and new knowledge that seemed like magical powers to indigenous peoples. Perhaps like the so-called Celtic tribes of central Europe with their fabulously wealthy 'princely' class of burials, one of the richest of which actually belonged to a woman, known now as the princess of Vix.
The going underground could simply be a misunderstanding, the observation of people going in and out of these mounds where they were presumed to have entered the underworld. I always think the simplest and most obvious reasons for anything are overlooked and dismissed as too simplistic, which is why so often things are found to be hiding in plain sight. I have been told that the word Sidhe initially only referred to the mounds themselves but gradually came to represent the 'fairy folk' who 'inhabited' them as well.
Thank you for all this fascinating rumination! I look forward to your next instalment. As always, you challenge my perceptions and make me think about the things I think I know in a new light.
Thank you Ali. I agree with you about the different Sidhe names being different ‘references’. References to conditions, ‘rites of passage’, situations, and other things I will think of later.
Applying those Sidhe names to groups of ‘people’ is really me entering into the ‘romance’ interpretations as I think people generally find it easier to relate to the unseen being in the images of ‘people’, or maybe animals sometimes.
My own personal vision of the Sidhe, fae world, fairies is of a singular flow that morphs into different ‘personalities’. I feel it’s a bit like our brain, just one singular brain with a singular blood flow yet capable of many emotions. Sometimes we seem to give those emotions personalities too, and even name them.
I will have to look at this article again and re-write parts, but that may not be until about this time next year. Meanwhile, many thanks for pointing this out. Very helpful, Ali.
I think that would be a good sum up of what I may think today. Hard one to find an alternative word for as for me Sí or Sidhe says it all. ‘Consciousness’ a good alternative, but I see that in the ‘black’ section of the colour frequency section, a sort of still timeless library pool of everything that is ‘wisdom’. On an astrology chart where our South Node is, the dragon’s tail end, or the unseen umbelical cord we constantly have uncut to the ‘cailleach’.
Then there is the ‘energy’ word being the ‘white’ section of colour frequency that is the intensity of the flow of life, the dragon’s fire maybe, pulling from the black tail end, and we are the multicolour life forms in between. On the astrology chart we have the North Node in the white realm. Living between both nodes being our life’s unfolding ‘map’. Symbolism of what we may be reaching out for.
The ‘Danann’ word is also fascinating as I was raised on just Tuatha Dé for awhile until I was exposed to some understanding of Irish scribed literature that added the Danann word. It does seem the words Sí or Sidhe is exclusive to their mythology, but I tend to live thinking those words are not exclusive to any culture or race … and perhaps I need to be reminded of the word source sometimes.
Wow! Ali, what you wrote there is almost a complete personal substack of your own. Lovely. I’m under pressure to get another job done this evening, so will come back to this when calmer. From a flash read you seem to have put into your own words most of what I have been saying, and take that as a bit of a compliment plus good writing from yourself.
Yes, as I understand it, ‘Sidhe’ was probably first a description of the mounds, and then imagination and visions put all of these other stories into the mounds. Even these days if I am by these mounds or coming down children sometimes ask “tell me a story about the dragons up there, mister”. Part of that is due to me always wearing my ‘Nature Folklore’ t-shirts as i have barely got any other tops in my wardrobe.
I love that poem! 💕 I had never considered that those different names for the Sidhe might be different groups of people living within the Otherworld, I had just assumed they were different references, perhaps from different communities or storytellers, for the Tuatha de Danann.
Another thought about the link between Sidhe and Tuatha De Danann. I often forget of the two being quite exclusively intertwined, due to the way they have been recorded by scribes. My own flow of thinking with this is that every culture seems to have their version of the Sidhe and their own set of stories to link to their named entity or entities.
I am also thinking of the Tuatha De Danann not being a singular exclusive culture as portrayed for focus and convenience by scribes and writers. I think of them being a mix of parts of ancient cultures from between the Balkans and Baltic and along the Danube, and then adapting what they arrived with to form a culture that blends in with this island well.
I also find it interesting, from stories I have heard, that the Firbolgs seem to be told of having variable cultures depending which part of the island they lived in, but the Tuatha De Dannan seem to hold a fairly singular description?
So the Danann as mortals rather than gods? Just trying to get my head around this! 🤣
This is an incredible post and discussion. I am fascinated by folklore, faery tale, and myth (I have a large box dedicated to tales from cultures around the world). Thank you so much for writing this blog - I will be reading your back catalogue and following along eagerly.
If you have the time to read them, I hope you enjoy such allusions in my poetry.
Thank you for your kind comment, of your enjoyment of these articles I am a bit slow finishing this series. Two articles to go to complete this series this year, and I hope to post one of them today. I will go to see your poetry as I do feature poetry on my live ‘Nature Echoes’ show on Sundays.
If you sign up for the substack tonight, you’ll likely be the only one and I would have your email to send some unpublished works that might be most appropriate. Otherwise, I recommend https://www.thekeyunlocks.us/p/the-phoenix or https://wwe.thekeyunlocks.us/p/the-fungus-knows as being the most themstically related of my currently posted work.
Just subscribed. Wonderful. It’s usually on Thursdays I spend a few hours going through substacks and other resources selecting a sort of ‘best of’ and picking Three to feature on my next live ‘Nature Echoes’ on Sundays and also invite live or prerecorded interviews too. I’m sorted for next Sunday, Easter Sunday but will keep looking for other Sundays. Thank you for making contact so I can keep in touch with what you do. Keep doing what you are doing. I wish more people would.
I would love to see, read, your own interpretations from your own studies Ali, as I am sure you have decoded a lot more from old texts than I have, while I am floating on the tales of surreal storytellers I remember with some passion.
From my own sum up, understanding, I find the whole Tuatha De Danann culture, as I have heard it, to be very surreal. It more on a biblical level than history level, as I think about it. A lot of ‘santa claus’ going on there.
I have often heard people call the Tuatha Danann being a half human and half fairy race. I seem to feel it describes a culture that were mortals and were here and did possess the skills of the Bronze Age.
What the story of them being driven into fairy mounds and living as immortal ‘fairies’, the Sidhe, really is I have not really concerned myself with.
Part of that being what I feel is the more incredible story of the Sons Of Mil who’s grandparents being told of being half hazel half human grandfather and deer doe grandmother. The Milesians even being physically present here on this island under that story is very suspect.
My own feeling is that cultures were arriving, at that time, due to different climate, and weather changes and challenges making it hard to carry on as they were, where they were. As nothing was being archived during their time to let us know much except maybe spirals and some of the Bronze age stone circles, star circles, sometimes re-arranged megalithic sites, like Grange in Limerick, it’s hard to capture a mortal history.
So what we have are these surreal stories, especially brought to us from the mysterious Dindshenchas, which I am sure you have studied and decoded more than myself?
So I think saying ‘half human, half fairy, or Sidhe’ is a handy four words for quite a profound story.
I tend to tell of the Tuatha De Danann as a settled farming culture that probably had an elite class as a backdrop to the Sidhe story. The Sidhe story, I feel is the foundation of Nature Folklore I talk about. Soon I will post articles linking the Sidhe very close to water, just to add to the confusion.
However, what is called ‘Sidhe’ today, may be just a Tuatha De Dannan name origin? But what is the ‘sidhe’ I feel is timeless, and previously maybe nameless, and has always been around. Just like Holy Wells today with all those saint names … yet they have always been around for millennia before they were called ‘holy’.
I wonder if the story of the Tuatha De Dannan ‘going underground’ is merely their elite scholar/priest class thinking they had captured ownership of the spirit and realm of life, the entire life ‘consciousness’ just like Christian and major religions think they have done?
HI John, so much to unpack in this comment, I haven't stopped thinking about it! I feel so relieved to read your thinking re the Danann. I have often heard people, even academics, claim that they were gods that were 'demoted' to a mortal state by Christian scribes. If anything, I have always felt they were mortals made into gods or demons, depending on the scribe's viewpoint.
My own view is that these stories have arisen out of honouring the ancestors, or ancestor worship. A human group, perhaps nomadic that made their way to this island and settled, with an elite class structure and new knowledge that seemed like magical powers to indigenous peoples. Perhaps like the so-called Celtic tribes of central Europe with their fabulously wealthy 'princely' class of burials, one of the richest of which actually belonged to a woman, known now as the princess of Vix.
The going underground could simply be a misunderstanding, the observation of people going in and out of these mounds where they were presumed to have entered the underworld. I always think the simplest and most obvious reasons for anything are overlooked and dismissed as too simplistic, which is why so often things are found to be hiding in plain sight. I have been told that the word Sidhe initially only referred to the mounds themselves but gradually came to represent the 'fairy folk' who 'inhabited' them as well.
Thank you for all this fascinating rumination! I look forward to your next instalment. As always, you challenge my perceptions and make me think about the things I think I know in a new light.
Thank you Ali. I agree with you about the different Sidhe names being different ‘references’. References to conditions, ‘rites of passage’, situations, and other things I will think of later.
Applying those Sidhe names to groups of ‘people’ is really me entering into the ‘romance’ interpretations as I think people generally find it easier to relate to the unseen being in the images of ‘people’, or maybe animals sometimes.
My own personal vision of the Sidhe, fae world, fairies is of a singular flow that morphs into different ‘personalities’. I feel it’s a bit like our brain, just one singular brain with a singular blood flow yet capable of many emotions. Sometimes we seem to give those emotions personalities too, and even name them.
I will have to look at this article again and re-write parts, but that may not be until about this time next year. Meanwhile, many thanks for pointing this out. Very helpful, Ali.
So you see the Sidhe as more of a consciousnous or energy which is embodied by the Danann?
I think that would be a good sum up of what I may think today. Hard one to find an alternative word for as for me Sí or Sidhe says it all. ‘Consciousness’ a good alternative, but I see that in the ‘black’ section of the colour frequency section, a sort of still timeless library pool of everything that is ‘wisdom’. On an astrology chart where our South Node is, the dragon’s tail end, or the unseen umbelical cord we constantly have uncut to the ‘cailleach’.
Then there is the ‘energy’ word being the ‘white’ section of colour frequency that is the intensity of the flow of life, the dragon’s fire maybe, pulling from the black tail end, and we are the multicolour life forms in between. On the astrology chart we have the North Node in the white realm. Living between both nodes being our life’s unfolding ‘map’. Symbolism of what we may be reaching out for.
The ‘Danann’ word is also fascinating as I was raised on just Tuatha Dé for awhile until I was exposed to some understanding of Irish scribed literature that added the Danann word. It does seem the words Sí or Sidhe is exclusive to their mythology, but I tend to live thinking those words are not exclusive to any culture or race … and perhaps I need to be reminded of the word source sometimes.