The Morrigan could change her shape at will, and she frequently appears in the ornithological guise of a hooded crow, (but also as a beautiful woman). She is one of the Tuatha De Danann (" Tribe of the goddess Danu") and she helped defeat the Firbolg at the First Battle of Mag Tuireadh and the Fomorians at the Second Battle of Mag Tuireadh.
The Celts believed as they engaged in battle, the Morrigan flew shrieking overhead, often in the form of a carrion crow or a raven, calling up a host of slain soldiers to a macabre spectral dance. When the battle ended, the soldiers would leave the field until dawn so that the Morrigan could claim their trophies of heads.
The Morrigan appears as both a single Goddess and a trio of Goddesses. The other deities who form the trio are Badb , and either Macha or Nemain .Their collective name means " the phantom queen".
As a triple goddess, Morrigan was the Crone aspect of the Great Mother.
For what it can be seen from different texts, "Morrigan" or"Morrigu" is a title applied to different women who for the most part seem to be sisters or related in some manner, or sometimes it is the same woman with slightly differing names in different manuscripts and redactions.
We see that Morrigan is identified with Badb, Macha, Anann and Danann. The first identified with the raven and battle, the second usually identified with the archetypal Celtic horse goddess, the third with the land goddess, and the fourth with a mother goddess.
She resided to the North, which was the realm of the dead, justice and the element of Earth.She often appeared to a hero on the day he was to die, thus she appeared to Cuchulainn before he went to the battle of Muirthemne as an apparicion of the three crones who were roasting a hound on a rowan pit.
There was a geas on Cuchulainn not to eat the meat of his namesake the hound or that would be the day he died. The crones shamed him into eating the taboo food and thus he was killed in battle later that day.
The function of the Goddess here, was not to attack Cuchulainn with weapons but to render him helpless at a crucial point in battle. And all because after she appeared to him for the first time and offered her to love him, he failed to recognize her and rejected her.
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The following is an excerpt from "Cath Maige Tuired".The English translation as done by Elizabeth Grey. A fuller study of the text can be found in a work by Ms. Gray as it is published by the Irish Texts Society. This translation has relied heavily on Dictionary of the Irish Language by the Royal Irish Academy.
ReplyDeleteThe Prophecy of the Morrigan
166. Then after the battle was won and the slaughter had been cleared away, the Morrigan, the daughter of Ernmas, proceeded to announce the battle and the great victory which had occurred there to the royal heights of Ireland and to its sid-hosts, to its chief waters and to its rivermouths. And that is the reason Badb still relates great deeds. "Have you any news?" everyone asked her then.
Peace up to heaven. Heaven down to earth. Earth beneath heaven, Strength in each, A cup very full Full of honey; Mead in abundance. Summer in winter... Peace up to heaven...
167. She also prophesied the end of the time, foretelling every evil that would occur then, and every disease and every vengeance; and she chanted the following poem:
I shall not see a world which will be dear to me: summer without blossoms, cattle will be without milk, women without conscience, men without valor, Honor will be found short. Conquests without a king... Woods without mast. Seas without produce... False judgments of old men, false precedents of lawyers, every man a betrayer, every son a reaver. The child will go to the bed of their parent, the parent will go to the bed of their child. Each their siblings mate. They will not seek any mate outside their own house... An evil time, son will deceive his father, daughter will deceive mother, ..