The Bog King Coming Together Nicely.

I remembered I have a Bluesky profile, and I am honestly going to upload stuff there! So please follow if you'd like to interact (and so that I could follow you back) if you're on there

'Finally, I have found you'

Celtober 2023 Days 10, 11 and 12: Siblings, Medicine, Sacrifice

Now Núadu was being treated, and Dían Cécht put a silver hand on him which had the movement of any other hand. But his son Míach did not like that. He went to the hand and said ‘joint to joint of it, and sinew to sinew’; and he healed it in nine days and nights. The first three days he carried it against his side, and it became covered with skin. The second three days he carried it against his chest. The third three days he would cast white wisps of black bulrushes after they had been blackened in a fire.

Dían Cécht did not like that cure. He hurled a sword at the crown of his son's head and cut his skin to the flesh. The young man healed it by means of his skill. He struck him again and cut his flesh until he reached the bone. The young man healed it by the same means. He struck the third blow and reached the membrane of his brain. The young man healed this too by the same means. Then he struck the fourth blow and cut out the brain, so that Míach died; and Dían Cécht said that no physician could heal him of that blow.

After that, Míach was buried by Dían Cécht, and three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew through the grave, corresponding to the number of his joints and sinews. Then Airmed spread her cloak and uprooted those herbs according to their properties.

Cath Maige Tuired

A long overdue request from my Telegram channel - a technofantasy steampunk knight in his tent after a tournament. These are definitely the droids he was looking for.

Dublin City, 2025

Have you ever walked the lonesome hills and heard the curlews cry? Or seen the raven black as night upon a windswept sky? To walk the purple heather and hear the westwind cry To know that's where the rapparee must die... (The Pogues - Young Ned of the Hill)

Lámfada

Bodb Derg son of Dagda, High King over the Tuatha Dé Danann.

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.