Author: karinatynan

When Ireland was invaded by the Sons of Mil* (The Gaels or Celts), it began the retreat of the Tuatha Dé Danann to their Otherworld. Their three kings had been killed in battle, and so they chose Bodhbh Dearg as their new king. However King Lir was resentful that he had not been chosen. So to mend relations between them, Bodhbh gave him his foster daughter Aobh to marry. That marriage was fruitful producing a daughter and three sons. The eldest two were Fionnuala and Aed, but sadly Aobh died while giving birth to twins, Fiacra and Conn. Bodhbh felt sorry for Lir, and so he offered him another of his foster daughters, Aobh’s sister Aoife. 

As time went by Aoife realised that Lir would never love her. He worshipped the children to the exclusion of his new wife. Aoife became so jealous that she consulted a druid who gave her a spell that changed the children into swans for nine hundred years. As punishment, King Bodhbh cast Aoife to the four winds, and they say, You can still hear her wailing on a windy night in Ireland. 

***

That is the story I was told as a child was, Aoife was a bad and jealous stepmother. She deserved eternal punishment. I didn’t question it. Then many years ago, having explored that myth at the Bard Summer School on Clare Island Co Mayo, I realised I was angry on her behalf. I felt the story wasn’t told in full. Her part was banished to the four winds, and that seemed more cruel than death. I remembered, the stepmother is always portrayed as bad, evil, and worthy of punishment.

The story of Aoife was the first of my retellings from the perspectives of the women in the Irish myths. It was because of Aoife that I went looking for the other women. Some who didn’t have names, and were someone’s mother or wife . My retelling of the story from her perspective can be found in my book SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology where I give her the voice she was never given, not to exonerate her, but to tell the whole of the story. 

Image : http://www.kathytynan.net

At a time when the Fianna of Ireland* were coming to their end, a woman called Niamh Chinn Óir* came from Tír na nÓg* to ask Fionn mac Cumhaill’s* son Oisín* to come away with her. Oisín went with Niamh without fully understanding that Tír na nÓg was a place where all sense of time is lost. Three hundred blissful years passed in what seemed like three to Oisín, who after that time wanted to go back to hear the stories of how the Fianna had fared since he left. Niamh told him to remain mounted upon his horse, because if he touched the soil, his age would be realised, and he would turn into a withered old man.

When Oisín went looking for his comrades he realised the amount of time that had passed. He went about returning to Tír na nÓg, to Niamh and their children. On his way he met some men who were trying to move a large rock. He leaned down to help, but as he did, the girth of his saddle broke and he fell to the ground, and as predicted became a withered old man. 

It is said that Oisín who was regarded as the greatest poet in Ireland met with Saint Patrick before he died. They had a great dialogue where Patrick tried to convert Oisín to christianity. However Oisín was never convinced that Patrick’s heaven could be better than the days he spent running with the Fianna. . 

For Niamh’s telling of this and other stories from the Fenian Cycle for example, The birth of Oisín and other cycles see my book SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology 

* The Fianna of Ireland : a band of accomplished hunters, warriors and poets that lived in the wild and were also welcome in the halls of kings. 

* Niamh Chinn Óir : Niamh of the Golden Hair 

* Tír na nÓg : Land of the Ever Young 

* Fionn mac Cumhaill : leader of the Fianna

*Oisín : means little deer

I’m delighted to say that one of my stories from my book, TÁIN : The Women’s Stories has been translated into Italian by Alessia Sparaco for the beautiful magazine, Articoli Liberi read by Italian readers all over the world. I am very flattered that Alessia was moved to translate it. Thank you Alessia and Franco 🙏🏼🙏🏼

It is the first story in the book about a Neasa the mother of King Conchobar mac Neasa who made sure her son would fulfil the prophesy of Cathbad the Druid. it would seem that abandonment and grief led her to ambition and betrayal. So there you go…

Recently I read a new edition of Finn and his Companions by Standish O’ Grady published in 1921. It is a precious book to have so I decided to share a few pages of the wisdom of Fionn mac Cumhaill.

To be a member of the Fianna poetry was one of the qualities warriors were required.

Also one of Fionn’s own poems.

Also a few words about the dark or the shadow that is always there that we need to accept to keep in check.

Join us online at bardmythologies.com on April 23rd as we begin Nine Waves III, The Fenian Cycle series. This will cover the main stories of the Cycle: The Birth, Boyhood Deeds and Coming to Tara, the Stories of Oisin and Naimh, the Quicken Tree, Diarmuid and Grainne, and lesser well known stories. The overall theme is “Forces that Unite and Forces that Divide”..

On some sessions I will be reading from my book SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology and also some new unpublished work. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Image by the late Bill Felton 🤍

by Karina Tynan

DEDICATED TO GRETA THUNBURG

Note: The Fisher King from Arthurian mythology is a wounded king, and keeper of the holy grail who is waiting for the perfect knight to ask ‘the grail question’ e.g. Whom does the grail serve?

‘Only night is easy for me,’ said the Fisher King. 

‘Daylight would sear into my open wound, mock my decrepitude.

Once, like her I faced the sun’s glorious opening in the morning. 

bearing dreams over the sea. She, flying a polyester cloak, 

black, white, green, red for blood, and it mantling the wind,

recklessly trusting wind, and goodness. 

I wasn’t waiting for a girl and now I pay the price, stuck in cobwebs, 

too long in the company of shadow, waiting for the one

to un-prise my broken hands, finger by finger, 

steal the wound from my pathetic grip, suffocate the waiting.’

Below, a short short story about a Good Friday circa 1964 from the mythic mind of a child. And a photo of what may be the actual Holy Grail.

Upstairs was home. Sometimes we could see smoke seeping through the floorboards, feel the thump of the jukebox, the thrum of drunken voices. We were used to the noise, always there, the backdrop to every moment of our lives, a constant other world muffled by floorboards and linoleum. Good Friday was the only day of the year that our pub was closed and completely quiet. It was the day I would hang from a window pleading and hurling christian morals at every back door caller- fellows I’d seen in movies lost in the deserts for days, lips dry and scabby, delirious. 

“Can he not have one day off in the whole year.”

   My father, The Big Fella thought I was a great little spitfire, well able for them all. He would laugh at me encouragingly while slowly rising from the couch he was buried in to descend to the blackness below and sell the ‘poor fuckers’ what they wanted from the back door. He felt sorry for their gasping. I couldn’t understand. On his only day off in the whole year, they wouldn’t leave him be. The day God died for them all. My rage would swell as I watched him sigh, slowly stand, open his trousers to tuck in his shirt, neaten himself up, his large frame slowly changing from beaten to bright as he greeted his customers.

“Howaya lads, what’s up?’

“Da, can’t you just say, Go away?

“Might as well close up then ducks.” He was resigned. 

But that never stopped me. From my bedroom window I stayed on sentry duty each Good Friday minding my father’s rest, managing to put the run on the ones that didn’t have the nerve to ring the doorbell after my torrent of morals. Grown men walked away from my scolding, jumpy, not up to getting past me, because their nerves were shattered. I figured God was proud of me as they walked away.

I could never make up my mind which God I liked the most. God the son like the fellow in the telly with the beard and the piercing blue eyes, kindness oozing out of him. Or God the father; a bigger man altogether, kind too but you wouldn’t cross him. I tried to imagine sitting in his lap but I never felt comfortable. I would have wriggled myself free if I found myself there. God the holy ghost wasn’t touchable at all, a little white dove putting a light over your head with a drop of something holy dropping from its beak to make you holy, ripples of light, sun shimmering through leaves. I wasn’t sure but I knew he couldn’t be done without. I imagined conversations with each one of them but I always managed to say something stupid. Daydreams about God were not very satisfying.

   My sister whispered,“there’s a priest in the kitchen!” I could not turn my back for a second.

“That’s not a priest, it’s a friar stupid.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Drinking whiskey.”

“Why?”

“There’s nowhere else for him to drink, he can’t very well drink in the Friary in front of all the people praying can he.”

“Who let him in.” I raged.

   “Da felt sorry for him.”

It was strange eating dinner in front of a friar drinking whiskey. My mother offered him fish but he didn’t want any. I didn’t blame him. It was horrible. He sat in our kitchen in the armchair by the window, staring and drinking. Each time he sipped he scrunched up his face as if he was sucking lemons. I watched his feet, no socks, sandals, winter and summer, suffering for God. As a result his feet were white and dry with snot coloured nails like hooves peeping out under that man of God. He never said a word to us, nor did he give us any money.

“Don’t say anything in school to anyone about the friar in the kitchen.”

“Why not?”

“And what if the nuns hear?”

“Oh Yeah.”

Another furtive knock at the door. 

“Everybody stay where you are, I’ll get it,” I said.

“Yes!” I said, loud and frightening, like God the Father in a temper.

“Is yer fader dere?”

“No he’s not why?”

“Ask him will he geh me a few drinks dere will ya, goo girl.”

“I will not! Do you realise that this is his only day off in the whole year.  In the whole year!”

“Howaya Mick, alright alright.” My Da, the Big Fella loomed behind me, making a liar out of me, incensing me further.

Mick was a very good customer so he was allowed to drink in our sitting room, sure his poor wife was sick and he couldn’t be drinking at home could he? Sticky Heart was allowed too, Jack The Lad Martin, Murt Ryan, Finbar whatever his name was, and Mary (God love her) McCarthy. There was enough of them to squeeze my mother up to her bedroom. Quiet upstairs, quiet downstairs. By evening on Good Fridays our sitting room would be full of our best customers who all found it in their hearts to call me aside.

“I love yer fader do ya know tha.”

“Me and him” brown fingers crossed, “we’re like tha!”

“You look after yer fader now won’t ya, I love yer fader.”

Some thinking … by Karina Tynan

A little boy destined for excellence from the day of his birth, complete with a heavenly father like many a well known mythic character. His mother was Dechtine, sister to Ulster’s King Conchobar mac Neasa. His father was Sualdamh, and his heavenly father was Lugh, one of the principle deities of the Tuatha Dé Danann (People of the Goddess Danú) who came one night to his mother in a dream. The baby was welcomed, and before he could walk, already destined to be great in the minds of the king and his enablers, and because he was the nephew of a selfish king it was the kind of greatness that fits with war and fighting.

Cú Chulainn spent his early childhood with Dechtine and Sualdamh but because of the heaps of expectations put upon him, the impressionable child fell hook-line-and-sinker for a prophesy that said he would be remembered forever but his life would be cut short, and as a result, so was his childhood .

His mother gave him the name Setanta, but that was replaced one evening when he went to join his uncle at a feast in the home of a chieftain called Culann. When the king was asked if his party was complete he said, Yes, forgetting the young boy was due to join them later. The chieftain left out his hounds to guard the property, but when the boy came along, they attacked him. However, the resourceful boy hurled his sliotar (hurling ball) down the hounds throat, and instead of the chieftain and the king acting with responsibility, they allowed the boy to promise that he would be the man’s hound until he got a replacement. Hence, the name he answered to for the rest of his life was Cú Chulainn (Hound of Culann).

There are many stories of Cú Chulainn which I will not recount here, because I believe I have made a fair representation of him in my book TÁIN : The Women’s Stories. Suffice to say the character of Cú Chulainn is an archetype, like all characters in mythology, an aspect or part of a human being (see CG Jung for theory on archetypes). However the Cú Chulainn archetype in particular has been used, and manipulated over so many years. He is the part of a human that wishes to shine for physical excellence, from being the ‘best boy’ to the ‘great hero’. It might be fair to say that patriarchy has been honouring that hero archetype under his many names for a very long time. We are used to looking at leaders who are so tightly stuck inside it. The tough guy, stronger than all the other tough guys. Still alive and kicking, over used, boring, destructive, and not very grown up. These days, through social media, we get to see how horrific that is. The child, the mother, the granny keening their losses over and again. The good side of social media brings the hope that it is not quite so easy to turn our heads away from the horror of it.

As I sit out on this spring morning with my bare feet in the ground I can think about Cú Chulainn within the context of nature, and here that archetype seems ridiculous under this beautifully crooked tree that might have been planted by some great grandmother. The caw of the crow, her blackness silhouetted against a temporary blue sky, little birds interrupting with contrasting song. I think about their antiquity, hollow boned, feathered, three toed little dinosaurs hanging around for about 150 million years. I recognise that I am sitting with beauty, and I am happy that I can, because I am sure that to look beauty in the face is the greatest challenge, because its vulnerability hurts, and tough guys are not able for the pain. A sword-wielding-hero would look out of place on this beautiful morning. Specialness is out of place in our world today. My hope is, we are beginning to see the ordinary as beautiful, all children as sacred, all ground as sacred ground. The tough guys will die. In fact they will kill each other. Unfortunately their destruction will continue as long as it is such a challenge for them to look at truth and beauty, because when we do we contemplate death and our smallness in relation to what is important, and that is love. Love the birds and the tough guy will be redundant. I know this runs the risk of sounding simplistic but it might be our greatest hope.

This exploration of Ireland’s mythic wisdom begins very soon. At at time of turbulence in the world this is an opportunity to tap into Ireland’s remarkable mythic wisdom.

Also included are three mythic minds evenings with experts on selected themes.

Every Thursday from February 12th to 25th March 6.30pm to 8pm in 2026

for more information or to book a place go to :