“The woman to whom thou speakest,” said the man, “is Faebor-begbeoil-cuimdiuir-folt-scenbgairit-sceo-uath.”
“Do ye make a fool of me?” cried Cuchulain…”
– Tain Bo Regamna

This scene occurs in the Tain Bo Regamna after Cu Chulain confronts a woman whom he believes is stealing a cow from Ulster – she isn’t, as it happens, but he doesn’t know that, nor does he realize she is the Morrigan until much later in their conversation. He comes upon her, a fierce looking woman dressed in red with red hair riding in a chariot pulled by a one legged horse hitched by a pole that passes through it’s body. She is leading a cow and accompanied by a man who speaks for her initially as she speaks for him, much to Cu Chulain’s consternation. In the versions I have seen the names of the man and woman are not translated but are given in the Irish, however I was recently asked to translate them and found the experience quite enlightening so I decided to share what I found here.

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I attended my first Pantheacon this year, so here is the obligatory re-cap of my experience:
Day one – travel. Who’d have thought I actually enjoy airplanes? Airports however are a form of elaborate torture. I arrived in California and was hit with immediate culture shock – you can get alcohol everywhere and it feels like early summer, and this is so not Connecticut. It was great to travel with a good friend and reconnect with other friends I had made at the Morrigan Retreat last June. I also had fun setting up a communal altar in the hotel room I was sharing with these three friends.

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I read a blog the other day about the Morrigan and not proselytizing which I agree with, and there’s really no need to re-hash here. But I mention it because a line in that blog stuck out to me: “spirituality is not a one size fits all concept.”

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Every cultural type of paganism has its own unique little issues, things that go around within that particular community. Usually these are not things based in facts, but are a kind of urban legend, a statement made at a some point that was then repeated and taken as fact and slowly takes on a life of its own until it gains a kind of truth of its own, no matter how disconnected it may be from the actual root culture, historic fact, or myth. In Heathenry you see this with the idea people constantly repeat that only those who die in battle go to Valhalla* or that Valhalla is a universal goal, a kind of heaven, while Hel is a terrible place to be avoided. In Celtic paganism, or I should say Irish paganism specifically, what I see going around fairly often is the assertion that the Irish Gods were not, in fact, Gods at all.

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