Author: karinatynan

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 Chulainn. 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 Chulainn). 

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. Also I recognised in myself, when Israel’s murdering re-began in Gaza, pictures of celebrities and so called important people began to look ridiculous to me, similar to the way a sword-wielding-hero would look 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 guy leaders 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 :

A poem by Karina Tynan

His gate was closed. A rusty lock

kept a low profile pretending its job

but there was no quibble in the creak./

It seemed like time had stopped. 

The flowers were gone. 

Weeds filled the cracks consolidating the facts/

though, outside the river flowed and still, 

the splendid view, the hills, the horses 

calling me back./

I entered. The mess was alluring. 

I wanted to be one of those women.

Roll up my sleeves to scrub, to feed./

I strangled a hen, lit the fire,

brought foxgloves in from the fields,

washed and dried his clothes./

Red smoke rose that night 

from the hottest fire: 

Keep me a secret, tell no one I’m here./

As the stars winked over our mare’s nest,

jeered the shawl over my withers, my coiffed mane, 

foretelling my soon to be squandered, name. /

POEM PUBLISHED IN THE STONEY THURSDAY BOOK SUMMER 2018

Edited by Nessa O Mahony\

Drawing By Kathy Tynan. An image from my book TÁIN : The Women’s Stories

It had a frothy consistency and sticky at the same time. You couldn’t just shake it off if it landed on your duffel coat, but the coat wouldn’t be ruined either. It was called Jack Frost. You could buy it in bags in Woolworth’s up on High Street Kilkenny at Christmastime. You’d know they had it in, because it would be stuck to the black path outside from young people throwing it over each other. I loved it. I would go so far as to say it had a huge part in making Christmas sparkle for me. It was the contrast. The memory is always about five in the evening. The early dark, the Christmas shopping frenzy, and under all the feet and all the noise, under thrown papers, spilled beer, the sticky everything that makes filth, something sparkled like it had come from somewhere else. It was evidence of Christmas magic. The kind that tinsel hadn’t a hope of conjuring. I suppose it was the Christmas decoration that got away, that got to do its own thing. 

They didn’t have big street cleaning machines in those days. I remember the rubbish truck with the lifty sides that came down our lane, and Paddens Blanch who always waved and smiled, making his weekly visit an lovely occasion.  I suppose street cleaners in those days consisted of a heavy shower after a bit of a sweep. Not like the showers we have these days, no, they weren’t as heavy as they are now. The showers now would probably make shorter work of the black streets and Jack Frost would be disposed of much more efficiently to the drains.

My Dad never decorated the pub for Christmas. Nothing changed in there except the customers drank more, and the floor was stickier than usual. Grubby hands, black nails, orange Guinness rings stuck to stubble, and a stinking kiss for the boss’s daughter.

  “I love yer Fader, ya know tha”, giving me a good old squeeze, “Me and yer Fader” fingers crossed, “We’re like tha”.

The crib in the Black Abbey was different to all the other cribs in town, because it had little lights in the sky above the Holy Family. The sky had been painted a beautiful dark blue to show it was night time. Fairy lights were sticking through holes in the canvas, being stars. Angels were singing the Gloria and flying. If those angels were hanging from some form of string, I never saw it, and if the Gloria was some record player in behind the painted sky, it most certainly never reached my consciousness. The combination of the Gloria, the stars and the flying angels had me completely lost in Bethlehem. I went back many times to be lost again to that sparkling sky. Then the short cut home was down a dark lane by the old walls of Kilkenny. Someone had told me about a legless woman who would follow you. To this day I don’t know if I was being told about a drunken woman or a ghostly woman with no actual legs floating along behind you, but I had heard of the Bean Sí, and so I decided, that’s who it was. I knew she only went after the people of certain names, and mine wasn’t one of them so I was safe enough. Still the return from the paradise of holy Bethlehem was a breath held sprint down a crooked path. A bit like the Holy Family flying into Egypt after the joy of him being born and visited by Kings.

I was mad about the holy family, and I especially loved Mary. She was the perfect mother who was always holding her beautiful baby, and never putting him down to cry on his own. Not like the mothers who’d leave their babies stuck in prams outside shops. Babies know when their mother’s are gone, which is why they’d start crying the minute she was gone. I imagined Mary walking around High Street in her lovely blue and white floppy clothes. She’s be showing Baby Jesus the Jack Frost shining up at them. Stars below them as well as above them, and there’d be beautiful light shining all around them.

At school I was the maker of the paper mache donkey for the crib, while Tess Cullen got to make Virgin Mary. She did a lovely job, all blue and white with black lines to show the way her veil fell in womanly shapes over her shoulders. Tess was a great artist. You couldn’t argue with that, and though I put as much artistic talent into making the donkey that was to carry Mary, I knew there was no way a donkey would sparkle, no matter how hard I tried, and I couldn’t help thinking, if I had been the one making Mary, I would have used a little Jack Frost on her veil to show how close she was to stars. 

Originally published in The Little Book of Christmas Memories by Liberties Press

Before the four cycles of Irish Mythology there were other comings and goings

 THE FIRST WAS CESSAIR who was said to be the granddaughter of Noah, who was refused passage on his great Ark, but she, being a resourceful woman made an ark of her own. She sailed across many oceans with forty nine-women and three men to become the first inhabitants of Ireland. This story also touches on the shape-changer, Fintan mac Bóchra, who was the only one to survive the great flood by taking the forms of a salmon, an eagle, and a hawk, and went on to survive for centuries only to become a human again – one who carried the wisdom within the stories of all the ages.

THE SECOND WERE DEALGNAT AND PARTHOLÓN who came three hundred years after Cessair’s people were gone. They sailed from Greece having committed terrible crimes. When the came to Ireland they cleared many forests, brought agriculture and a story about a big fight between husband and wife. Neglected, Dealgnat had found a lovely young man for herself. However this didn’t go down well with Partholón, and it became the very first judgement for adultery in Ireland. A sad ending ensued, because after all that prosperity and prowess, having won many battles agains the Fomhóire, (ghostly phantoms with a strong relationship with the sea, and chaos) the people of Dealgnat and Partholón came to their end because a filthy black plague killed them all in a week. 

THE THIRD WERE NEMED’S PEOPLE who came from the Caspian sea. When the came to Ireland they too cleared many forests to reveal four lakes. For many years they prospered but the Fomhóire were always there to torment them. Many many battles were fought and in the end, due to another plague, they were weakened badly. They fled and as they did they split into two groups. Some went to Greece and were put to slavery to carry soil in bags onto the arid landscape in an attempt to make it fertile. After a time they escaped to return again as the fourth people to come to Ireland. 

THE FOURTH WERE THE FIR BOLG (men of bags) divided Ireland into five provinces for their five kings including the sacred Cúige (fifth) at the centre of the four. They ruled for thirty seven years until the Tuatha Dé Danann, also said to be descendants of Nemed returned from the mythical northern cities of Falias, Gorias, Murias and Finias. The Tuatha Dé Danann defeated the Fir Bolg who were sent to live in Connacht which, though very beautiful, is the least fertile of the provinces. After this, The First Cycle of Irish Mythology begins with the tales of The Tuatha Dé Danann. The stories of these, people of the goddess Danu are woven right through all of the cycles, which is why I named my book SÍDH since the people of the goddess have never left. (Plural Sidhe, underground homes of the Tuatha Dé Danann)

THE FOUR CYCLES OF IRISH MYTHOLOGY :

THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE is centred around the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the People of the Goddess Danu, a pantheon of deities who possess all the frailties of human behaviour. When they came to Ireland they brought four gifts, The Lia Fáil (a stone that cried out under a true king), The Cauldron of plenty that never emptied owned by The Daghda. The spear of Lugh when used in battle was never beaten and Fragarach the sword of Nuadu (their king). When they went underground they lived in the many Sidhe dwellings in Ireland. Some call them fairies but I like to think of them as similar to Tolkien’s elves, extremely skilled supernatural people, as capable of war, as they are of great love of nature. The Tuatha Dé Danann are not burdened by logic or chronology. Instead they enchant with dreamlike qualities, confusing with intense clarity. For instance in the story of Midir and Étaín, Fúamnach, sorceress and first wife of Prince Midir, cast his new love Étaín into a whole other lifetime with a spell laced with jealousy, and so the poor women lost her head for it. See SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology, to decide for yourself if she deserved it, or not. 

THE ULSTER CYCLE contains many stories that are all connected to a complete whole that is Ireland’s great Epic Tale, An Táin Bó Cúailnge, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley. This main thread of this cycle is Queen Meadhbh of of Connacht who goes to war with Ulster for a bull. This is because she is not the equal to her husband Ailill in all possessions. He owns a bull and she does not, but I often wonder was that the real reason or did she have other scores to settle? This is the cycle that features the very famous Cú Chulainn who fights Meadhbh’s army single handedly because the men of Ulster were struck down by Macha’s Curse. The story of Macha is one of the many tributary stories contained in TÁIN : The Women’s Stories. 

THE FENIAN CYCLE centres around Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader of the Fianna of Ireland who were a band of warriors, hunters and poets that lived in the wild, and were also welcome in the halls of kings. To be a member of the Fianna warriors had to prove themselves by completing amazing feats of strength and finesse. They were able to fight while running through a forest without disturbing a twig, write poetry, only ever marry for love and a lot more than that. The stories of the Fianna are full of mysterious happening, like the story of the beautiful Sadhbh, changed by a dark druid into the body of a deer, and who became the mother of Fionn’s son, Oisín who was the one who went with Niamh to Tír na nÓg (Land of the Young).

THE KING CYCLE traverses the two worlds of myth and history. There are many stories of the births of kings in the books TÁIN and SÍDH, and as you read them you will realise that the history part is questionable. For instance most kings and heroes have very interesting stories of their conceptions. A large bird comes to Mess Buachalla’s cow pen home to conceive King Conaire Mór who was the king who walked naked to Teamnair to claim his throne. Neasa mother of King Conchobar, mac Neasa’s copulated with the druid Cathbadh before she found a father for her child. That was  High King Fachtna Fáthach, but unfortunately he was killed by Queen Meadhbh’s father King Eochaid Feidlech of Connacht. Another king tale is of Niall of the Nine Hostages who won his father’s crown by kissing a hag who turned into a beautiful woman. Of course they lay down with each other and that is in fact entirely symbolic because, if a king doesn’t respect the feminine in all her guises, he is a fool. These kings and many more turn up in the retellings I have written but since my stories are from the female perspective you might only be introduced to them. 

Written by Karina Tynan

This year at the Bard Summer School we will be exploring the wisdoms of Fintan, Fenius, Bran and the Irish Goddesses on Clare Island, Co Mayo, Ireland.