99.9% Irish...But How Much Elf?
The Legend of the Tuatha de Danann - The Magical Race Who Vanished from Ireland
The origin stories that the Irish of old would tell of the Celtic arrival in Ireland have always been a fascination to me. A magical Irish-born healer here in the remote mountain village where I dwell in southern Colorado - a woman to whom fairies are a matter-of-fact reality - once told me “Oh, sure, there’s more than a touch of the Too de Danann about you, Michael.” “The who?” I asked. I soon learned that this was how the Irish (at least in her region of the Isle) pronounced the name of the legendary and magical race who had lived in Ireland before being displaced by the Celtic Milesians, who then inhabited what is now Portugal.
When the Milesians defeated the magical race, so goes the legend, a treaty was made which gave Ireland above ground to the conquerors, while the Tuatha de Danann (literally, people of the Goddess Danu) were given the underworld realm to dwell in, whence they retreated into the mists, first being worshipped as The Siddhe - the pre-Christian deities who were petitioned for favors and graces. After St. Patrick brought centralized Roman authority to Ireland, Catholic priests taught that the Siddhe were “fallen angels,” aligned neither with God nor the dark one. But their existence does not seem to have been disputed.
Gradually, their reality blended with the realm of Faerie to be eventually watered down into stereotyped versions of leprechauns and “the Little People” whose blessings are still sought in many places in Ireland and nearby islands to this day.
Curiously, the story of the Tuatha de Danann is said to have resonance with pre-Deluge myths which appear in many places throughout the world, now traceable to the beginning of what geologists call The Younger Dryas Period - the anomalous mini-Ice Age which erupted just as the world had been warming for many centuries, allowing civilization to flourish until suddenly in 9600 B.C. an apparent catastrophic meteor impact in North America led to a worldwide plunge in temperatures which lasted centuries.
(The 11,000-year-old ruins of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey)
This timing, as noted by author Graham Hancock, coincides curiously with the sinking of Atlantis as recorded by the philosopher, Plato, who states that the deluge occured “9,000 years before the philosopher Solon” - who lived in 600 B.C. - thus, 9600 B.C.
Evidence is emerging that upsets the conventional version of human development, indicating that advanced civilizations (such as the 11,000 year-old ruins found at Gobeckli-Tepi in Turkey) had existed long before the hunter-gatherers-become-farmers story which tells us that civilization as we know it only emerged approximately 6,000 years ago. These ancient civilizations were then wiped out by the Deluge of 9600 B.C.
(An image of The Deluge of Atlantis, said by Plato have occurred in 9600 B.C)
In the wake of the disaster, legends around the planet tell of a “magical race” which came to teach the survivors geometry, agriculture, writing, and astronomy to enable them to rebuild civilization. These superior beings are then said to have faded away into the mists of time, lingering as god-like beings in the myths of the people, still prayed to and petitioned, and still, some say, appearing in ethereal form when they chose.
Since my recent DNA analysis has me proudly made up of 99.9% Irish genetics, and since the red-haired Celts have been shown to have more in common than modern Egyptians with the genetic make-up of Egyptian Pharoahs (a number of whose mummies have curiously red hair), I am tempted to give greater credence to the legend of Princess Scota, a daughter of a Pharoah who is said to have fled upheaval in Egypt to land in Ireland around 1300 B.C , bringing with her the Sacred Stone, and whose name eventually was given to Scotland itself.
From there it is only a short and somewhat fanciful jump to accept the stories of pre-Catholic (i.e., pre-St. Patrick), Gnostic Christian communities in Britain and Ireland, and the legends of St. Mary Magdalen’s sojourn on the holy isle of Iona, where she was supported by far-flung mystery schools of Isis allied with the mystic Essene communities from whom many scholars believe Mother Mary and Jesus Himself came.
(St. Mary Magdalene)
The modern Celts of Ireland seem to have absorbed something of the Fairy Folk essence into their make-up and self-image as a magical, legend-spinning race of song and story, prone to chasing absurdly ambitious dreams of freedom. As the great-grandson of a Fenian Raider (the Irish veterans of the American Civil War who decided to free Ireland by conquering Canada and trading it to the Crown for the freedom of Ireland), I’ve decided to embrace all these myths since, after all, the pursuit of Sacred Activism is perhaps the most gorgeously absurd and beautiful knightly quest one could possibly find.
Mo sheacht mbeannacht ort! (My seven blessings on you!)
Michael Henry Patrick Dunn