Tea at Trianon: Tuatha Dé Dannan

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Tuatha Dé Dannan

Oisín and Niamh travelling to Tír na nÓg

From Ancient Origins:

According to legend, there were six waves of ‘masters of Ireland’ and each has some connection to the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood (today, it is unclear how much of this is fact and how much fabricated by Medieval Irish monks in order to make the Irish history equally as important as Israel’s). In each of the waves, women play a prominent role, reflecting the unique equality present on the island before its incorporation with the rest of Europe.

Scholars today know the most about the final wave of conquerors, the Milesians (sons of Mil, a descendant of Noah), who reached Ireland from Spain in the 4th century BC. These were the Celts. They displaced inhabitants known as the Tuatha Dé Dannan, the progenitors of the Irish fairies.
Originally, the fifth wave of conquerors were known simply as Tuatha Dé (‘People of God’) but this posed a problem for the Irish monks recounting their history because the Israelites were the People of God. So, the early inhabitants of Ireland became the Tuatha Dé Dannan (‘People of the goddess Danu’) after their primary deity.

Another group of settlers was the Fomorians , who will feature in the legends of the Tuatha Dé Dannan and in Celtic myths as giants and sea raiders. Some believe that they were the remnants of a forgotten trading outpost of the African empire of Carthage. The survivors of each successive wave of settlers were enslaved by the Fomorians.

This solidified the characterization that the Fomorians were representatives of all that is evil in the world – the bad elves. In recounting the struggles between the Tuatha Dé Dannan (thus, the good elves) and the Fomorians, the former takes on an aspect of semi-divine and the latter an aspect of semi-demonic.
[...]
It’s said that the Tuatha Dé Dannan descended from a group of people who previously lived in Ireland but had to leave. They were called the Nemedians and a faction of these people settled in northern Europe after their population was decimated following a battle against the Fomorians. (Read more.)