Stories
The story library. Every retelling on the site, listed in one place and browsable by cycle and theme.
- Fenian An Bradán Feasa The poet Finnéces waits seven years for the salmon of wisdom at Fec's Pool on the Boyne, only for his young pupil Fionn mac Cumhaill to taste it first through a burned thumb and receive all its knowledge.
- Cross-cycle Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera) Echtra Nerai is the Samhain tale of Rathcroghan: the warrior Nera braves a hanged man's corpse, follows a phantom host through Oweynagat cave into the Otherworld, and returns with summer flowers in winter as proof, before choosing to remain in the síd until Doomsday.
- Ulster Longes mac nUislenn Longes mac nUislenn (The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu) is the earliest version of the Deirdre story, an Ulster Cycle tragedy preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster.
- Mythological Oidheadh Chlainne Lir Lir's four children are turned into swans by their jealous stepmother Aoife and endure nine hundred years of exile across Ireland's waters until a Christian bell on Inishglora, off the Mayo coast, heralds the end of the spell.
- Fenian Oisín i dTír na nÓg Oisín, son of Fionn mac Cumhaill, is carried by Niamh of the Golden Hair to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, and returns three hundred years later to an Ireland where a broken saddle-girth costs him his youth in a single fall.
- Folklore Patrick and Corra on the Holy Mountain The legend of Patrick and Corra tells how St Patrick fasted forty days on Croagh Patrick, County Mayo, routed a plague of demonic birds with his bell, and, in later folklore, banished the she-demon Corra into the lake still called Lough na Corra.
- Ulster Táin Bó Cúailnge Táin Bó Cúailnge, the Cattle Raid of Cooley, is the central epic of the Ulster Cycle: Queen Medb of Connacht's great raid to seize the Brown Bull of Cooley, resisted almost single-handedly by the young hero Cú Chulainn.
- Ulster Táin Bó Flidhais Táin Bó Flidhais, the Mayo Táin, is an Ulster Cycle cattle raid in which Flidais, otherworldly queen of Erris, lures the exiled Fergus mac Róich west, betrays her husband to win him, and her miraculous cow the Maol becomes the provisioner of Medb's army.
- Mythological The Colloquy of Fintan and the Hawk of Achill The Colloquy of Fintan and the Hawk of Achill is a Middle Irish poem in which Ireland's oldest man and its oldest bird trade memories of every age of the island's past, from the Flood and the battles of Mag Tuired to the death of Cú Chulainn.
- Mythological The Fate of the Children of Tuireann Oidheadh Chlainne Tuireann (The Fate of the Children of Tuireann) is one of the Three Sorrows of Storytelling: the sons of Tuireann murder Lugh's father and are sent on a blood-fine quest that wins every treasure and costs them their lives.
- Mythological The First Battle of Mag Tuired (Cath Maige Tuired Conga) The First Battle of Mag Tuired is the Mythological Cycle tale in which the newly arrived Tuatha Dé Danann defeat the Fir Bolg in a four-day battle near Cong, where the champion Sreng severs King Nuada's arm and the defeated Fir Bolg are granted Connacht.
- Mythological The Second Battle of Mag Tuired Cath Maige Tuired is the defining war-myth of the Mythological Cycle: the Tuatha Dé Danann, led by the many-skilled god Lugh, overthrow the Fomorians on the plain near Lough Arrow in County Sligo, and Balor of the Evil Eye falls to his own grandson.
- Mythological The Wooing of Étaín Tochmarc Étaíne (The Wooing of Étaín) is the principal tale of the Irish Mythological Cycle: the Otherworld king Midir loses his wife Étaín to jealous magic and wins her back at Tara a thousand years later.
- Fenian Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne (The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne) is the great elopement tale of the Fenian Cycle: Gráinne binds Diarmuid Ua Duibhne with geasa to flee Tara with her on the eve of her wedding to Fionn mac Cumhaill.