#FolkloreThursday #Celtic: `In the legends of the heroic period in Ireland, we find the heroes called #Cúchulainn, Cúroi, and Cúlann connected with the Isle of Man, while, in the later or Ossianic Cycle of legends, we have Finn and his son Oisin.`
Source: https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/fim/fim04.htm

#FolkloreThursday #Celtic: Early in fall the Fianna embarked on a hunt, only to end up in the captivity of an abysmal unattractive hag. In order to marry Fionn, she wanted to kill his father-in-law in mortal combat.
`This episode continues the Fianna Saga of www.candlelittales.ie with a two-part story of what happens when the Fianna split up to go hunting. You could call it a love story, of a sort.
Please note the content of these stories may be triggering for some listeners. This story contains allusions to coercive control, animal cruelty and animal death, and physical restraint.`
Please take care of yourself as you listen to my source: https://on.soundcloud.com/s3WZuEEqcwmddu0klt

#FolkloreThursday #Celtic: `In this episode the creators of www.candlelittales.ie continue the Fianna Saga with a story about #Fionn‘s encounter with an #Otherworldly woman, who wants things to be all on her own terms, and what happens when she doesn’t get her way.
Please note the content of these stories may be triggering for some listeners. This story contains mentions of compulsion, verbal abuse, and abandonment.`
Please take care of yourself as you listen to my source: https://on.soundcloud.com/RI17s3WdeIVWHyX3Qt

#FolkloreThursday: `Some heroes and heroines are named from their associarion with animals: Kulhwch is so called because he was born in a pigstye (kil-hwch); #CuChulainn is 'the hound of Culann', Mes Buachalla 'Cowherds' Fosterchild', Oisin 'Little Deer', and Oscar 'Deer-Love'. And there are many whose animal names are not explained, such as Ruadchoin 'Red hounds', Conchenn 'Wolf head', MacCon 'Son of Wolfdog', March "Horse' (he had horse's ears), Bran 'Crow', Echbel 'Horse lip'.`
Source: Ancient Irish Tales, ed. by Tom P. Cross & Clark H. Slover

#FolkloreThursday: “The Exile of the Sons of Usnech” `owes its popularity to the fact that it tells the tragic love story of the beautiful but ill-starred Derdriu (Deirdre), the Helen of ancient Irish tradition. Fated from birth to bring misfortune to others, this primitive epic woman flees from the court of the elderly and uxorious King Conchobar with the handsome young Naisi, one of the three “sons of Usnech,” only to involve herself, her lover, and his brothers in sorrow and disaster. Though not so well known as her Greek counterpart, Derdriu still deserves to rank as one of the great tragic heroines of literature.`
Source: Ancient Irish Tales, ed. by Tom P. Cross & Clark H. Slover

#FolkloreThursday #Celtic: `On the second morning after the eve of #Samhan Cascorach went out to the same cairn, and set his people about it, and the wolves came there and stretched themselves to listen to the music. And Cascorach was saying to them: "If you were ever women," he said, "it would be better for you to be listening to the music as women than as wolves." And they heard that, and they threw off the dark trailing coverings that were about them, for they liked well the sweet music of the Sidhe.
And when Caoilte saw them there side by side, and elbow by elbow, he made a cast of his spear, and it went through the three women, that they were like a skein of thread drawn together on the spear. And that is the way he made an end of the strange, unknown three. And that place got the name of the Valley of the Shapes of the Wolves.`
Source: Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory - Project Gutenberg eBook