Danu and Bile: The Primordial Parents?

Copyright © 1998 Alexei Kondratiev All Rights Reserved
May be reposted as long as the above attribution and copyright notice are retained

[Originally published in An Tríbhís Mhór: The IMBAS Journal of Celtic Reconstructionism Vol. 1, No. 4, Bealtaine 1998.]

It is now commonplace among people with an interest in early Celtic tradition to believe that the gods of pre-Christian Ireland were the Tuatha Dé Danann, the "peoples of the goddess Danu". This goddess is pictured as their progenitor and as a general Earth-mother, tying both the nature of the gods and the manner of their worship to the physical reality of the Land. In Neo- Pagan circles a vivid sense of the character and personality of this goddess has emerged, so that some people can now describe themselves publicly as "ardent devotees of Danu". Also widespread is the notion that Danu's consort is Bile, and that he is either the first male ancestor of both gods and mortals and therefore a kind of Lord of the Dead, or that, because of his name (which means "tree"), he represents the World Tree that is the axis of the universe and of any ritually consecrated area. These are powerful theological concepts, which provide revived Celtic religion with some much-needed focus and depth. Yet what are our textual sources for them? How solidly are they rooted in the historical record?

Our most immediate sources are certain popular Victorian and Edwardian books (many of them still in print) that first attempted to bring the complicated and chaotic material from mediaeval Irish and Welsh manuscripts into a form that the non-scholarly public could understand and enjoy. They transmitted the conclusions of more scholarly discussion about the nature and meaning of the texts, without, however, going over the arguments of the discussion in detail, or indicating the reservations some scholars might still have had about the conclusions. It is in these books that the Tuatha Dé Danann are first presented unambiguously as "the peoples of the goddess Danu", with Danu and Bile as the most ancient ancestors within the pantheon. In the words of Charles Squire, for example:

"… The most ancient divinity of whom we have any knowledge is Danu herself, the goddess from whom the whole hierarchy of gods received its name of Tuatha Dé Danann … She was the universal mother.… Her husband is never mentioned by name, but one may assume him, from British analogies, to have been Bilé [sic], known to Gaelic tradition as a god of Hades, a kind of Celtic Dis Pater from whom sprang the first men. Danu herself probably represented the earth and its fruitfulness, and one might compare her with the Greek Demeter. All the other gods are, at least by title, her children." 1

Let us examine the foundation for these statements, beginning with the figure of Danu herself.

First, it must be recognised that *Danu is a reconstructed form: it never occurs as such in any Irish source. If one assumes that Danann (as in Tuatha Dé Danann) is the genitive form of an n-stem noun, one can also assume -- on the analogy of other n-stem nouns like Ériu gen. Érenn, brú gen. bronn, etc. -- that its nominative form would be *Danu. However, even this supposed genitive form is of very limited distribution (usually found only in the expression Dé Danann), and when it occurs in other constructions it seems to refer to a male name (e.g. in the patronymic mac Danann meic Bratha, which clearly indicates a *Danu son of Brath).2

Next, it should be pointed out that nowhere in the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Conquests of Ireland) -- our earliest source on the material related to the Tuatha Dé Danann, compiled between the ninth and the twelfth centuries -- does Danu appear (under any form of her name) in the role of primordial mother. The one figure who appears prominently in the text and has a similar name is Danand (or Donand) daughter of Delbaeth son of Ogma, who cohabits with her own father and has three sons by him, Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba. These three come to be known as the tri Dé Danand, the "three gods of Danand", and we are told that all the Tuatha Dé Danann took their name from them, although no logical reason for this appears in the narrative, nor any sense of why the three alone are "gods".3 A story already current at the time of the compilation of the Lebor Gabála made them the enemies of Lúgh, because they had killed Lúgh's father when he was in the shape of a lap-dog.4 The magical tasks which Lúgh imposed on them and the cruel death they suffered in spite of all their efforts were the subject of a literary tale from the later Middle Ages, Oidheadh Cloinne Tuireann (The Violent Death of the Sons of Tuireann), which was counted as one of the "three sorrowful tales of Ireland" (Tuirell [or Tuirenn] Biccreo was, according to the Lebor Gabála, another name of Delbaeth).5 Elsewhere in the Lebor Gabála the "three gods of Danand" are stated to be Triall, Brian and Cet, sons of Bres (presumably also by Danand), the half-Fomorian ruler who is the antagonist of Lúgh in Cath Maige Tuired, the story of the great climactic battle between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann; indeed, the compilers of the Lebor Gabála seem to have been uncertain as to which trio merited the name.6

Danand is described as having four daughters: Airgdean, Barrand, Be Chuille and Be Thedhe.7 Elsewhere they are presented as her sisters, and in that context all of them are said to be the daughters of Flidais.8 Be Chuille is particularly linked to Danand: they are mentioned in several places as di bantuathaig ("two female farmers [or landowners]")9 among the Tuatha Dé Danann.10 These are surely the same pair as Be Culde and Dinand who are called upon by Lúgh in Cath Maige Tuired to serve as bantuathaid ("witches", practitioners of destructive magic) in the battle.11 Finally, to make matters even more confusing, one passage states that the Morrígu was the mother of the Three Gods, and that her other name was Danand -- despite the fact that elsewhere in the same compilation the Morrígu and Danand are presented as sisters, both daughters of Earnmhas who was herself a bantuathach.12

What we undoubtedly have here is the work of loremasters dealing with a vast number of regional tales, many of them very similar to each other but involving differences in detail and in the names of their protagonists. In attempting to weave all of these elements into a consistent whole they were unable to avoid some confusion, giving incompatible genealogies to some characters and assigning the same narrative role to different characters in different passages. Thus the role of the "three gods" appears to shift between several triads of characters (the three sons of Delbaeth; the three sons of Bres; the three sons of Cermait) at various points in the text. Also, harmonising different stories from different sources required coming up with a single name for each functional character. Some of the names used (Lúgh, Brigit, Nuadu) are corroborated by ancient Celtic sources and are certainly authentic survivals of pre-Christian Celtic theonyms. Others (In Dagda, Goibniu, probably Dian Cecht and Oengus), though not confirmed by the same kind of evidence, appear equally authentic on the basis of their structure. But some (e.g. Partholón, Cessair) are obviously complete inventions, and others appear to be adaptations of names found in Classical sources (as has been suggested in the case of Ogma, whose name appears to be borrowed from Lucian's Gaulish god Ogmios). Thus the Lebor Gabála is no trustworthy guide to the names and relationships of the figures in pre-Christian Celtic mythology. What evidence it gives us of the earlier tradition is to be found in the overall patterns of the stories, and in the basic functions exercised by the more important characters.

In the case of "Danu"/Danand, one particular element should hold our attention: her relation to a specific feature of the Irish landscape, the Dhá Chíoch Anann, two hills in Luachair in West Munster whose shape suggests the breasts of a vast supine woman whose body is the Land itself. This was the site of one of Fionn Mac Cumhaill's most famous boyhood deeds (his victory over the fairy woman of Síd Brég Éle) and was recognised as a place of importance in some of our earliest written sources. Many linguists have supposed that Anann is, like Danann, the genitive of an n-stem noun whose nominative form would be *Anu. In the Lebor Gabála, however, the di chích Anand are linked to a figure named Anand who is also a daughter of Earnmhas, and who in another passage is stated to be identical to both Danand and the Morrígu (dia forainm Danand o builed Da Chích Anann for Luachair, 7 o builed Tuatha Dé Danann - "from whose supplementary name 'Danand' the Two Breasts of Anann in Luachair are called, as well as the Tuatha Dé Danann").13

(One should also make note here of a phrase used several times in the Lebor Gabála: Danand máthair na ndée ("Danand, the mother of the gods").14 In context, it clearly refers to her as mother of the Three Gods only; but it would suggest something rather different to a later readership with different expectations.)

Throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the Lebor Gabála remained the prime authoritative source on the origins of Ireland. All literate people were expected to be familiar with its basic plots and characters, and it gave rise to countless secondary tales and poems. In the seventeenth century, as the native lore was coming to be challenged by a new elite of foreign settlers, the great Irish scholar Geoffrey Keating (Seathrún Céitinn) produced his encyclopaedic work Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (Foundation of Knowledge About Ireland), an updated and re-organised compilation of material from the Lebor Gabála and related sources that made the lore more accessible to the people of his time. Keating was a man of formidable erudition and had a deep understanding of the traditions he collected. It is thus significant that he stresses the link between Danann and the two hills in his native Munster. He explains the "divine" status of her three sons by their excellence i gceardaibh gintlí ("in pagan crafts"), which led to their people worshipping them as gods and calling themselves "Tuatha Dé Danann" after them. And he adds: Is ón Danann ba mháthair don triar seo ghairtear Dhá Chíoch Dhanann den dá chnoc atá i Luachair Dheáidh i nDeasmhumhain ("And it is from the Danann who was the mother of these three that the two hills that are in Luachair Dheáidh in Desmond are called The Two Breasts of Danann").15 His choice of spelling -- Dhanann instead of Anann -- has led many scholars to suppose that the second name was derived from the first. Since in modern Irish pronunciation the lenited d sounds like a voiced guttural spirant, coming after the other guttural spirant ch it would tend to be assimilated, and one might hear Dhanann as Anann. So this would seem to be a tidy solution to the problem of the two goddesses Anann/*Anu and Danann/*Danu: Anann is simply a corrupt form of Danann, and they were always the same figure.

Yet is this really the full answer? There are many reasons to think that it isn't. For one thing, the name Danand was already associated with the two hills during the Middle Ages, when the lenited d had a quite different sound and was less likely to be dropped. Also, the name of the hills is already di chích Anand in the earliest sources, which suggests that Danand is the secondary rather than the primary form. Most importantly, the prominence of the cult of santez Anna ('St. Anne') in southern Brittany, often associated with pre-Christian religious sites, strongly suggests the widespread worship in the region of a Land-goddess with a name that sounded like "Ana". The origin of the name is obscure, and may even be pre-Celtic. But another, similar-sounding name -- Danann -- was known to Irish scholars of the Middle Ages, who decided that it referred to a figure of identical function, and led to both being conflated with each other in the syncretistic history that became the Lebor Gabála. One can speculate that the name Danann was introduced by one of the later Celtic groups that had an influence on Ireland. Since, as we shall see, it has a Welsh cognate, a good guess is that it was a Belgic name; and its probable derivation from a root dan- meaning "low ground" or "moist earth" makes it plausible that it was the name of a Land-goddess.

At this point we may want to consider the provenance and original meaning of the term Tuatha Dé Danann. Whether or not it ever meant "peoples of the goddess Danu", it isn't likely to have originally been a theonym: there's no precedent in Indo-European tradition for gods or groups of gods being referred to by a term of this kind. Indeed, it fits perfectly into the pattern so well-attested in the Lebor Gabála of using the names of historical ethnic groups to designate mythological peoples: Fir Bolg (Belgians), Fir Domnand (Dumnonians), Fir Gaileoin (Gauls), and so on. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Tuatha Dé Danann were also an ethnic group known in Ireland's distant past -- perhaps the people who worshipped the goddess whose name we have been considering. This is not to suggest that the compilers of the Lebor Gabála were the first to apply that name (arbitrarily) to figures based on Celtic gods: the name is too deeply entrenched in Irish literary and folk tradition to have been invented in the Middle Ages. But it may have been in use for some centuries to mean "magical ancient people", ascribing all strange, unexplainable structures in the landscape to a real people vaguely remembered from the distant past -- much as rural French folklore today ascribes all ancient ruins indiscriminately to the "Romans" or "Saracens". The makers of the ancient wonders would have been imagined with godlike traits, which would have made it all the easier to place the gods of the older religion among them, reducing them to mortals with magical powers (with the exception of Danand's three sons, the Lebor Gabála never portrays them as actual gods). A tradition existed that they were demons and beings from the Otherworld, but the compilers of the Lebor Gabála preferred to think of them as ordinary humans with arcane knowledge.16 Their association with the síd-mounds and ancient burial sites made it possible to conceive of them as both supernatural creatures and human ancestors.

Let us now turn to Bile, *Danu/Danann's supposed consort. A figure by that name does appear in the Lebor Gabála, but is not related in any way to Danand in the narrative. Bile is one of the ten [some recensions say six] sons of Bregon [or Breogan] who originally lived in Spain. One of them, Íth, first saw the land of Ireland when gazing out to sea from the top of a tower, and mounted an expedition to investigate it. Arriving just after the death of Nét son of Indui at the hands of the Fomorians, he gave advice on the matter of that chieftain's inheritance, and then was murdered by the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were jealous of his charisma and wisdom and suspicious of his motives. His body was brought back to Spain, whereupon the other sons of Bregon decided to go to Ireland themselves to avenge their brother and seize the island, taking with them their own sons and retainers. Bile's son was Mil, after whom the "Milesian" invasion of Ireland was eventually named, since it was from Mil's sons alone that the Gaels were said to be descended. Bile, therefore, can indeed be seen as a "first ancestor" figure, and was explicitly declared to be such in mediaeval Irish literary tradition, since the Lebor Gabála states several times: Bile 7 Mílid, is dia cloind Gáidil uile ("Bile and Mil, it is from their progeny that all the Gaels come") -- obviously a well-known item of historical lore.17 It is not Bile, however, but his grandson Donn who takes on the role of "first ancestor to die in Ireland" and therefore the leader and host of all those who will die subsequently in that land -- something like the "god of Hades and Celtic Dis Pater" suggested by Squire. Donn (whose name means "lord") was the chief of the eight sons of Mil and commanded one of the ships in the invasion. A magical wind sent by the Tuatha Dé Danann wrecked his ship against a small island off the southwestern coast, drowning three of the sons of Mil (Donn himself; Airech the steersman; and the youngest, Éraind [or Érennán] the lookout on the mast, who fell into the sea), as well as their grandfather Bile.18 Although all of these characters could have qualified as "first dead in the land" and leaders of the later dead, and were perhaps recognised as such in parallel traditions,19 Donn gave his name to the islet where the wreck took place (Tech Duinn, "the House of Donn"), after which it became the focus of folk traditions about the Otherworld, with himself as Lord of the Dead.20 As for Bile, apart from his position of primacy and the manner of his death, he plays no active role in the narrative at all.

What grounds do we have, then, for linking Bile with *Danu/Danann? Squire mentioned "British analogies". There is indeed in mediaeval Welsh literature a figure named Dôn whose name appears to be a cognate of Danann. She never appears as a character in the stories, but is known only as the mother of the Plant Dôn, a group of figures with traits suggestive of pre-Christian divinities, very similar to the Tuatha Dé Danann in concept and function and most probably cognate to them. Unlike the Tuatha Dé Danann, however, whose precise relation to *Danu/Danann is somewhat confused, the Plant Dôn are explicitly Dôn's children. Although there are more than three Plant Dôn, three among them are set apart by the similarity of their names, which are descriptions of occupations with augmentative suffixes: Gwydion ("Great Wizard"), Gofannon ("Great Smith") and Amaethon ("Great Farmer"). Not only does this at once suggest an Indo-European functional triad, but it also obviously presents an analogy with the trí Dé Danand who are Danand's sons. The names in both traditions are sufficiently different to make certain that one wasn't simply a borrowing from the other, but that both are descended from a common theme in the Celtic past, whatever role culture contacts may have played in the subsequent development of the stories. However, the main source in which the Plant Dôn appear (the Four Branches of the Mabinogi) makes no mention of Dôn's husband, and the only male figure of her generation who plays a major role in relation to her is her brother Math, the magician-ruler of the Plant Dôn (in an arrangement many scholars have found to be reminiscent of a matrilineal social system). The only place where Dôn's husband is fleetingly identified is the Trioedd Ynys Prydein (Triads of the Isle of Britain), a collection of lore in triadic form, found in several manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which was intended to serve as a memory aid for native Welsh storytellers, linking characters by common themes relating to their roles. Many of the stories would now be completely unknown to us if we didn't have these brief, cryptic allusions to them in the triads. Triad 35 (Tri Chyuor a aeth o'r Enys hon, ac ny doeth dracheuyn yr un onadunt - "Three emigrations that went from this island, and not one of them ever came back") mentions Arianrhod -- the daughter of Dôn who is famous for being the mother of Lleu in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi -- as Aryanrot merch Veli, "daughter of Beli".21 This is evidently Beli Mawr son of Mynogan (or Manogan), who appears frequently in chronicles and genealogies relating to Celtic Britain. Like Bile, he plays no active role in any story, but is important chiefly as the "first ancestor" of virtually all the lineages of native British rulers, most of whom claimed kinship with one of his descendants, Coel Hen ("Old King Cole") of Colchester. According to Genealogy 10 in the Harl. MS 3859, Beli's grandson was Afallach, whose name is directly linked to Ynys Afallach, the Island-Paradise of Apples, cognate to Eamhain Abhlach of Irish tradition; and, most importantly, in the same source his wife is called Anna (quam dicunt esse consobrinam Mariae virginis - "who was said to be the cousin of the Virgin Mary").22 We have already noted the confused relationship between Danand and Anand in the Irish texts, so it is significant to see a similar relationship suggested between the names Dôn and Anna. The linking of Beli to Dôn by way of Arianrhod appears very tenuous, of course, especially since the figure of Arianrhod in Triad 35 bears little resemblance to her character in the Mabinogi. Here she has a husband, Lliaws son of Nwyfre, and two sons, Gwenwynwyn and Gwanar, who join their uncle Caswallawn son of Beli (the same character who was depicted as ruling Britain in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi; he was modeled after the historical figure Cassiuellaunos) in an expedition to pursue Julius Caesar's army after the latter's attempted invasion of Britain. One could well be tempted to assume that this is a completely different character coincidentally bearing the same name as Lleu's mother. Yet Arianrhod's name is both unique and extremely well-known in Welsh tradition, so that if there really had been "two Arianrhods" in the literature of the Middle Ages some allusions to that fact surely would appear elsewhere in the extant poetry, contrasting the two and making it clear that one and not the other was meant. It is actually simpler to accept that there was a sequel to the Mabinogi, in which she married and had two other children besides Dylan and Lleu (the chronology of the stories indeed makes this possible). So the thread uniting Beli and Arianrhod and Dôn, though barely visible, still holds plausibly.

Although their roles and names appear strikingly similar, it is in fact difficult to find an etymological link between Bile and Beli. We will deal with the name Bile in the next paragraph; Beli, despite its close similarity to the former, doesn't seem to be either a cognate or a borrowing -- although the resemblance between the two names may have guided the development of the characters' parallel roles in Irish and Welsh tradition. Since in Latin texts Beli sometimes appears as Belinus, it was once widely assumed to be related to the Gaulish theonym Belenos, but this no longer seems so likely. It is most probably derived from the stem bel- meaning "battle, tumult", exemplified in words like the British theonym Bellatucadros (Beautiful in Battle) and perhaps early Welsh belu "to kill" (although there may also have been some influence from Breton beli "power, authority").

The most plausible etymology of Bile (though even this isn't certain, since the mediaeval copyists seemed unable to decide whether the i in the name was long or short) derives it from a word that means "tree", especially in the sense of "sacred tree". Throughout Irish tradition the term bile has been used to designate particularly large and ancient trees that served as focal points for ritual spaces or tribal territories. The lore of places frequently mentions the trees that marked the centres of the provincial divisions, with the centre of Ireland as a whole indicated by the biggest of them all, the Craeb Uisnig (Tree of Uisnech), an ash tree of such proportions that it was said to have covered twenty miles of ground when it finally collapsed. It was described as dor nime ("door of heaven"), suggesting that it was a means of gaining access to other worlds, a role often played by great and wonderful trees in Celtic stories, and which certainly points to the fundamental Indo- European motif of the world-tree or world-pillar which serves as the axis of the entire universe and whose immense height penetrates all the levels of existence and unites them all.23 The importance of this concept to the Celtic theory of sacred space is further reinforced by the architecture of the later temples of the "Belgic" type (like the particularly elaborate one discovered at Gournay-sur-Aronde), where great posts were strategically placed to indicate the centre and the four quarters, exactly like the famous bilí of Irish sacred geography.24 The term bile is also known (as a rare and archaic term) in Scots Gaelic, while in Manx billey has become the ordinary word for "tree". It has its origins in Old Celtic bilios, attested in Gaulish place- names like Biliomagos "Plain of the Sacred Tree" (modern-day Bilem).25 No cognate has survived in Welsh, but in Breton bilh can still mean the trunk of a very large tree that has been cut down.

These linguistic and theological features could indeed suggest that the figure of Bile, "first ancestor" of human lineages in time, is also "first point in space" out of which all subsequent spatial dimensions grow. That the name of the character did have such symbolic associations cannot be ruled out by any means, but there are simpler reasons why a human could be compared to a bile. In literary Irish -- and especially in the praise-poetry the filí addressed to their aristocratic patrons -- the term bile is often applied to the scions of noble families, with the sense of "eminent warrior".26 Sometimes a poet might make a playful allusion to the "tree" meaning (as when, for example, we read in the Metrical Dinnshenchas: mac Golláin cen imduibe/ba bili bán Bregmaige - "the son of Gollán without darkness of dishonour was the white bile of the plain of Brega"),27 but the basic characteristics invoked were visible glory and solid, immovable strength. These are, in fact, the main qualities suggested by bile when it refers to a tree. The word is ultimately derived from an Indo-European root *bhel- applied to things that are bulky and swollen, or in the process of swelling and growing (it is, in particular, the root from which the word "phallus" developed). The idea, then, is great size and solidity with a specifically masculine, virile flavour. In relation to the trees, it originally expressed their size rather than their sacredness, although the longevity of a giant tree, remaining as an unchanging landmark for centuries in the shifting landscape, would have naturally made it the focus of religious awe. But given the generalised meaning and diversified usage of the term, and even while noting the fascinating correlation between trees, maleness, and the centre of ritual space, it becomes less compelling to link the literary character Bile directly to the concept of the World Tree.

Where does this leave our original pair of "primordial parents"? The evidence linking the two figures to each other in a literary context is, as we have seen, almost nonexistent. Bile/Beli is indeed associated with a "first ancestor" motif (and in both Irish and Welsh traditions he has a grandson who rules an Otherworld place for the dead), and his name (at least in its Irish form) does contain a possible reference to sacred trees, but this seems to be little more than an instance of a widespread Celtic metaphor (albeit a powerful one) in which male strength and dependability are compared to the solidness of a giant tree. As for *Danu, although it remains possible that this was the original nominative form of the name, in all extant sources the nominative in fact appears as Danand (modern Danann).28 The scant literary evidence concerning her places her within the now-familiar Celtic pattern of a Land-goddess linked to three male divinities who represent either a functional triad, the three vertical divisions of the universe, or something less clearly defined. In the mediaeval texts these goddess-figures are never shown as primordial mothers, but always as daughters of some pre-existing character. Danand is specifically identified as a bantuathach ("female farmer or landowner" -- one can assume that the term bantuathaid "sorceress, witch" used in Cath Maige Tuired came from a misunderstanding of the original word), which links her to the world of third-function activities, and may indicate the context of her worship in pre-Christian times. Squire's comparison of her to Demeter is particularly apt, since the Greek goddess was, despite the more exclusive Eleusinian mystery cult that grew up around her, first and foremost tied to the processes of the agricultural cycle, and relevant to the lives of farmers (as she still is in her guise of St. Demetra); and although her name meant "Mother Earth" (suggesting that she once had a more primordial role), the official theogony didn't portray her as the progenitor of the other gods, but made her a child of Rhea and Kronos. The association of Danann with a probably much older figure named 'Anann' or 'Anna' also suggests that she may have been superimposed on a goddess with more primeval "Mother Earth" traits.

"Moist earth" and "pillar of strength": although one can no longer point to them as characters in an explicit mythology of origins, they are still powerful archetypes of the primordial qualities of the divine female and the divine male, as expressed by the Celtic imagination. As symbols, they remain basic to the vocabulary of Celtic myth, and exploring the intricate patterns into which they have been woven throughout the literature and lore of the Celtic languages will continue to be a fruitful and enriching endeavour.

NOTES
1. Squire:1979[1905], 50-1.
2. DIL:1983, 182.
3. LGE:1941, 128, 156, 160, 192.
4. LGE:1941, 134-6.
5. ibid.
6. LGE:1941, 162, 198.
7. LGE:1941, 182.
8. LGE:1941, 132, 158.
9. Tuathach can also mean "lord, chief representative of a tribe", which complicates the picture. However, since the term bantuathach is unique to this text (and to texts derived from it), I have chosen to retain R.A.S. MacAlister's interpretation.
10. LGE:1941, 150, 182.
11. CMT:1982, 52-4.
12. LGE:1941, 122.
13. LGE:1941, 188.
14. LGE:1941, 182, 216.
15. FFE:1982, 86.
16. LGE:1941, 134, 165.
17. LGE:1956, 44, 90.
18. LGE:1956, 38, 54-6, 70, 80.
19. Ír, another son of Mil, was drowned at Sgeilig, which also became an important sacred site associated with death and the Otherworld.
20. Davidson:1988, 176.
21. TYP:1979, 75-82, 277-8.
22. TYP:1979, 281-3.
23. Davidson:1988, 178-81.
24. Brunaux:1986, 20.
25. Ross:1967, 34.
26. DIL:1983, 73.
27. LL:1965, 867.
28. In some later texts, Danann is given a new genitive form Danainne, treating it as a feminine noun of the second declension (cf. DIL:1983, 182).

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