Has the queen of first harvests been misunderstood?

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Queen of Teltown

In Irish mythology, Tailtiu was the last Queen of the Fir Bolg. Her husband, Eochaidh mac Eirc, was killed by the Tuatha de Danann in the First Battle of Moytura. After their victory, in order to establish good relations with the Fir Bolg people, the Danann gave her one of their noble-born sons, Lugh, to foster. Fosterage was common practice in ancient Ireland.

Tailtiu retired to the area located on the River Blackwater between Navan and Kells, now known as Teltown. In Irish, its name is Tailten. Here she established her home, and set about the back-breaking task of clearing the land.

Great that deed that was done with the axe’s help by Taltiu, the reclaiming of meadowland from the even wood by Taltiu daughter of Magmor. 1

The Metrical Dindshenchas

Meanwhile, she raised Lugh as if he were her own. She found for him all the best tutors, and had him trained not just in the arts of battle and strategy as befitted a high-born son, but in music, poetry, healing, the secrets of the forge, and many other skills besides.

When Tailtiu died, Lugh buried her beneath a great mound at her beloved Teltown, and set up the Tailten games, known as the Oenach Tailten, in her honour every year at Lughnasadh (August 1st), that she might never be forgotten. This festival continued on, in some form or other, well into the nineteenth century.

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A Complex Archaeological Landscape

Teltown is a vast and complex ancient site of some significance dating to the Iron Age. Features include the remnants of mounds, ring forts, earthen ramparts, artificial lakes, and an ancient roadway, but much of these have been erased from the landscape through centuries of farming.

I came to see Donaghpatrick Church and Rath Airthir, which means ‘the Eastern Fort’. Donaghpatrick, from Domnach Pádraig, means the ‘church of St Patrick’. According to legend, Conaill, brother of High King Laoighre, gave the land to St Patrick after his baptism.

It’s hard to imagine that the Irish would have handed over such an important site so willingly, but not so hard to imagine why Patrick would have wanted it. What better way to stamp out pagan activities than to establish a Christian church right there in the middle of such an ancient sacred landscape?

Donaghpatrick Church

In fact, there are six churches in total, though not all are still in use. Donaghpatrick is itself very intriguing. Built in 1896, it appears to be constructed upon a mound or platform, possibly an earlier ancient one, and contains a standing stone, and the old medieval font from the previous church in its grounds. It has been attached to a medieval tower house, which has a strange stone head embedded three quarters of the way up one wall, slightly offset to the right. Could this be the weathered remains of a Sheelanagig figure?

Rath Airthir

If you stand with your back to the church, Rath Airthir faces directly opposite, in a field just across the road. It is a trivallate ringfort, meaning it has three ramparts circling it, and stands at around 30m (98ft) in diameter. The ramparts could not be seen from this angle, but even so, it really is quite spectacular.

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Apparently, Rath Airthir has been identified by archaeologist Michael Herity as the Tredua (triple rampart) fort of Tailtú, as noted in an early Irish text known as the Metrical Dindshenchas, or ‘lore of places’, some of its content dating as early as the eleventh century. 2

The triple rampart of Tailtiu, famed beyond all lands, the spot where the kings used to fast, with laymen, with clerics, with hundreds of headmen, that no disease might visit the land of Erin.

Metrical Dindshenchas

The author of the Metrical Dindshenchas clearly associates this site with ancient Kingship purification rites. The triple rampart certainly marks the site as a place of particular significance, and reminds me of the Hill Of Ward, which is the location of a quadrivallate enclosure associated with another goddess, Tlachtga.

I was gutted when I walked up the road and found a sign on the gate prohibiting entry, but one has to respect the wishes of private landowners; trespassing does no one any favours.

Rath Airthir was, on this occasion, only to be admired from afar. 3

Queen of first harvest… right?

I had never previously looked that deeply at Tailtiu’s story; another selfless hard-working mother, I thought. But when I approached this story anew for this post, I felt as if all the disinformation fell away, leaving the bones sharply exposed.

Firstly, Tailtiu is vaguely described as the King of Spain’s daughter. His name is given as Mag Mór; this is Irish for ‘the great plain’. It would be an unusual name for a king. It could equally be the name of a place. Patricia Monaghan describes the great plain as a place in the Otherworld inhabited by the dead; 5 this seems strange to me, as Tir na n’Óg is translated as ‘the land of the ever-living’ or ‘ever-young’, and is associated with the Danann, not the dead or Fir Bolg – although if Tailtiu was the king of Spain’s daughter, she was likely not Fir Bolg, either.

I think there is some confusion here, because Tailtiu gave her life to clearing ‘a great plain’. To me, it seems possible that the great plain referred to signifies the landscape. Tailtiu came from the great plain and spent her life serving it, and returned to it after death. She is a daughter of the landscape. In other words, not a harvest goddess, but an earth goddess. She shaped the land just as the Cailleach did.

I had always assumed her to be fairly young when she fostered Lugh. But she had a family of her own, and adult grandchildren. Her husband was High King Eochaid mac Eirc of the Fir Bolg people, and in the First Battle of Moytura, their son, Slainge the Fair, fought by his father’s side against the Tuatha de Danann.

Slainge had four sons of his own, who also fought with great accomplishment in the battle with their father and grandfather, so they must have at least been in their late teens. 6 Bearing in mind that in ancient times, people married much younger than we do today, and so women would have borne children from their mid-teens onwards, I estimate that Tailtiu must have been around the age of 50. An older woman who shaped the land. She was a Cailleach.

After her husband, son, and grandsons were slaughtered by the Danann, so the story goes, the victors gave her one of their high-born sons, Lugh, as a foster-child, and she retired to Teltown, where she devoted herself to raising Lugh and clearing the land to form the great plain of Brega, now known as County Meath.

She transformed the land from a wild tangle of forest into a fertile plain, even pulling up trees by the roots. Two reasons are given for this; she was clearing a space for planting, or she was clearing a space for the Tailten Fair. In any case, she seems to have been a free woman in charge of her own lands and destiny.

However, she was not free. The Dindshenchas state that Tailtiu was “in bondage” (p. 150) to the Danann. This means that as a bondswoman, she was locked into servitude without remuneration, although clearly she lived well and not as a slave.

Her task, then, was to clear the land for the Danann, and they were not an agricultural people. They did not grow crops, they farmed cattle. According to the Dindshenchas, Tailtiu spent a year clearing forest to make way for a “plain blossoming with clover” (p.150). She shaped the land to create a meadow for grazing Danann cattle.

Even today, the Department of Agriculture and Food Development in Ireland recommend grazing cattle and sheep on clover, claiming, “the benefit of clover in grassland has previously been reported through increased animal performance, increased herbage production and potential saving in fertiliser”. 7

The physical work of clearing the plain in combination with the grief of losing her husband, son and grandsons, as well as her new lower status, presumably took its toll. Tailtiu grew ill; “[l]ong was the sorrow, long the weariness of Tailtiu, in sickness after heavy toil”, according to the Dindshenchas (p. 150).

From her deathbed she requested that “funeral games” (MD p. 151) be held in her honour. She died at Lughnasa, and so the sports became part of the annual Lughnasa celebrations at Teltown, where the fair took place “round her grave” (MD p.151). 8

The coincidence of her death with the festival of Lughnasa does not suggest the role of harvest goddess to me. On the contrary, the ‘evidence’ such as we have, 9 and such as I have interpreted here, indicates that Tailtiu may originally have been an earth goddess, and is therefore more closely aligned with the Cailleach and the land rather than the harvest. But Lugh, her beloved foster-son was associated with Lughnasa. In fact, it was named after him, not Tailtiu.

As always, the women of Ireland’s mythological past circle back to the land, to the fertility of the earth, where their names are remembered in the features of the landscape.

What can Tailtiu teach us?

Perhaps Tailtiu was a version of the Cailleach local to Teltown. After all, she bore different names in different regions. Perhaps she was an earth goddess euhemerised into a mortal queen. Perhaps she never existed at all outside of her legend, who can say?

But despite the murder of all her male kin by the Danann, she reared Lugh as befitting a prince and future king, and in return he honoured her dying wishes. If there was no love between them there was at the very least an extraordinary level of respect. She brought him up as if her were her own son, he honoured her as he would have honoured his own mother. That speaks of love to me, and forgiveness.

She had an incredible work ethic. She led by example. As a queen, she probably did not have to personally labour in the field, yet she chose to. Her people were as broken by their losses as she, and probably resentful and unwilling to serve their new masters. She showed her people how to accept their fate and shoulder their burden with dignity. She did not give up, even though her labour brought her to her death. She was proud and she was courageous.

She recognised her worth, and the value of her work, and she called upon the Danann from her deathbed to recognise and honour it.

Transformation of the self or of the land takes time and work and dedication.

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Go raibh maith agat for reading! I hope you enjoyed this slightly controversial interpretation of Tailtiu and what she achieved. If you did, please like and share. Grá,