Lámfada

A study of our local portal tomb 🌀

Can we talk for a minute about how badass Mess Búachalla really is?

I mean, having been of royal birth but disowned, dispossessed and fostered in a very poor family, having experienced hard toil to its fullest, then raped either by some shady Tuatha Dé Danann guy with a penchant for glamouring himself into a bird or by her own biological father even (depends on the text), with an unwanted pregnancy forced upon her, and still she takes back what's hers, becomes the Queen Mother of the whole island of Ireland, and yes, the shapeshifting prick gets what he deserves (hence the bloodied feathers I put under her foot in this one).

Tonaroasty (Tóin an Róistigh, something along the lines of 'The bottom end of de Roche lands') is a medieval ghost village in Co. Galway I accidentally came across when out to shoot a stone circle on a barrow (I did take photos of it too). Judging from the onomastics (and from the satellite photos clearly showing rectangular foundations and what seems to be a cross-shaped church) it was an Anglo-Norman settlement, so built no later than 12th c. This also gives us a clue about how and why it ended. When the Black Death reached Ireland, the Gaels were in a more advantageous position than the Normans as they lived in less crowded conditions and did not have any religious prejudice about cats (hence, less rats and less fleas carrying plague). The Norman settlers were traditionally living in a more compact way, were in frequent contact with people from crowded castles, and the relationship between cats and folk Christianity soon turned to be rocky at best (to put it very mildly). Therefore, the plague was feasting on them at will, and it was one of the factors that contributed to the subsequent Gaelicisation of the surviving Anglo-Norman nobility. The plague hypothesis also explains quite neatly why the site has not been used for settlement again ever since.

Today’s digital coloring practice. This OC of mine is in fact a sentient walking bog body of a sacrificed Irish king, only here he’s in a lifelike glamour (I’ll do the bog body look next, I promise!)

Also he’s got himself a tee saying ‘LAWFUL EVIL’, isn’t he a fashionista!

Celtober 2023 Days 7, 8 and 9: Dream, Birds and Divination

The druid, then in his sleep, at the end of the night beheld a man stark-naked, passing along the road of Tara, with a stone in his sling.

The destruction of Da Derga's Hostel

Hi I adore your name!

(I'm gonna ignore that I thought it was pronounced ay dawn like the word for forehead my whole life ;_;)

Awww, thanks so much!

Another WIP inspired by @sorrows-hand’s talk on women’s rights and divorce in Medieval Ireland at 2024 IONA conference

Celtober 2023 Days 4, 5 and 6: Murder, Judgement and Mound

Corrgend, the king of the Fir Bolg, caught Áed, son of Eochaid Dagda, in the act of sleeping with Corrgend’s wife, and so he killed Áed in a fit of rage and jealousy. The grieving father sentenced Corrgend to carry Áed’s decomposing body tied to his back until he finds a perfect place for the mound that he should build for his victim. After that, Corrgend was finally executed and buried elsewhere.

Celtober Day 1: Conquest

Each warrior of them burned his ship, When he reached noble Eire. Geoffrey Keating, The History of Ireland