Six Years Ago Today

I received one of those social media reminders today that it’s been six years since I first published FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma, an anniversary that’s triggered some quiet reflection for me. FIONN 1 was actually the second book I ever published (Beara: Dark Legends being the first). It was my first attempt at producing… Read more »

Irish Woman Warrior on a Horse

A snippet from Liath Lauchra 3: The Seeking ———————————- Emerging from the cave, the warrior woman found Murchú already mounted and waiting below the yew trees. Swaddled against the cold in his black cloak, he had the lower hem drawn up and held in place beneath his inner thighs. The sight of the Uí Loinge… Read more »

Fantasy Fiction, Irish Blood Spatter and the Online Language Colonisation Tool

The title in the image above – Camhaoir Fuilsmeartha – is the Irish title for a free, online, bilingual adventure fiction project released in January 2020. The English title  – Dark Dawn –  is one you may have come across elsewhere (it’s a bilingual Irish/English project). As with all languages, translation often doesn’t work the… Read more »

A Viking Called Reginald

A friend of mine passed two books on to me last week as he knew he’d get a rise. Both books were in the Celtic fantasy genre, a genre which often involves fantasy stories loaded with ‘Oirish’ cultural elements for branding purposes. Sometimes that’s not too much of an issue but, on this occasion, both… Read more »

Important Locations for Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fenian Cycle

The original stories from the Fenian Cycle (the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the warrior band mistakenly called Na Fianna by medieval and later writers) are believed to have first originated in Leinster (that’s on the eastern side of Ireland if you’re unfamiliar with it) which is why so many of the Fionn mac… Read more »

Vikings in Ireland

An interesting study in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests that Viking intervention through colonisation etc. had an important impact on Ireland’s population. Over the last twenty to thirty years or so, the actual impact of Viking influence really only started to become recognised and nowadays it’s pretty much accepted that the vast majority of… Read more »

Ireland and The Myth of Countries

Studying the patterns in mythology has a way of changing the mind and one of the personal side effects of such research is that over the last few years, I’ve slowly ceased to believe in ‘countries’. Society Versus Geography When you look at mythology, you’re essentially looking at the cultural belief systems of a specific society.… Read more »

Finn (cough) MacCool versus Ming The Merciless

Because I tend to focus predominantly on culturally accurate Irish ‘mythology’, I come across a lot of examples where that mythology ends up being misrepresented or manipulated into something it’s not. This is what we find with the following teaser trailer for a film called “Finn MacCool” (sadly, despite the character’s Gaelic origins, the Gaelic… Read more »

The Strange Truth behind the Irish Mythological Cycles

Irish Mythological Cycles

In the mid-eighteenth century, an English detective working in Dublin was assigned to investigate the disappearance of a missing Irishman. On travelling to the up-market suburb where this individual had lived in a tiny hovel amongst the splendid Georgian architecture, the detective questioned the various individuals that lived nearby. What the detective found surprised him.… Read more »