In Irish mythology, our rivers and streams
acted as a sort of boundary between this world and the Otherworld. The water
was the way into the Otherworld. In the days before mirrors, you could look
into a calm pond or lake and see an alternative universe, with yourself and the
sky and the mountains and the trees all around you. Flick a stone in it and the
vision disappears.
The legacy of this is that nearly every
river or lake in Ireland derives its name from the gods and, most especially,
the goddesses of the Tuatha Dé Danann. In fact, Eire, the official name for the
Republic of Ireland, derives from Ériu, or Erin, a goddess of the Tuatha Dé
Danann.
In the legends, sacred rivers like the
Boyne and the Shannon bestow life and wisdom and beauty on the warriors and
queens of old, as do the springs that bubble up from the Otherworld. An
awful lot of those who feature in these tales were fated to be drowned in those
rivers and springs.
The story runs that Ireland had seven
secret streams of knowledge that ran from Conla’s Well, sometimes called
the Well of Segais, enchanted well, or fountain of wisdom, which was surrounded
by nine magical hazelnuts trees from which magical red hazelnuts fell. When
the hazelnuts fell into the well, they turned the headwaters crimson red and
sent mystical bubbles bubbling down the river. These red bubbles attracted and
guided all the salmon, and trout too for that matter, up the rivers of Ireland
to feed on the fallen nuts. And, sure how else do you explain the red speckles
on the fishes?
If you managed to catch and eat one of
those salmon, you would be endowed with poetic inspiration and wisdom beyond
compare. Now, the trouble was that this wisdom was not actually available. It
was forbidden fruit, especially for females, which really annoyed Boann, a
goddess of poetry and fertility in the stories of the Tuatha de Danaan. Seeking
to boost her wisdom, she made her way to Connla’s Well and tasted the water.
Then she overcooked it, challenging the power of the well by walking around it
counter-clockwise and reciting incantations. This is not recommended behaviour,
especially if you’re a goddess in an ancient legend. It is not going to go well
for you. Predictably, it didn’t pan out brilliantly for Boann. The waters
rushed up from the well in a series of gigantic waves and scooped her up and
forged a path to the sea. This was all too much for Boann herself who drowned
in the course of it all and thus became one with the river. The river
would be named for her – the Boyne – and is now one of the most famous
waterways in Ireland. It wends through the Boyne Valley, one of the most important
prehistoric landscapes in the world, past the celebrated passage tombs of
Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. And thus, for the ancients, the Boyne was a river
by which the spirits of the dead could enter the Otherworld.
A very similar story is told about the origin
of the Shannon, which takes its name from Sionann, the beautiful
granddaughter of Manannán mac Lir, God of the sea. She caught and ate
the Salmon of Knowledge and thus became the wisest human being in the
whole wide world. Unfortunately that wasn’t wise enough, or filling
enough, because she then decided to eat some of the mystical red bubbles
created by the hazelnut tree. When she died, the well went nuts and rose up in
a torrent and drowned poor Sionnan. Just as the spirit of Boann merged with the
Boyne, so Sionnan was merged with the Shannon.
In Sionnan’s story, the source of the well
is sometimes deemed to be a place now known as the Shannon Pot in County Cavan. Fionn
MacCool once hurled a mighty rock called the Stone of Sionnan at his enemies
and killed them all. The rock can still be seen at low tide but I’m not telling
you where it is because your name might be Bethany and, according to the
legends, if someone called Be Thuinne should ever visit the rock, that’s game
over for the world. We have enough to be worrying about without that in the mix
also.
The Shannon Pot in Co. Cavan, the source of the River Shannon
The River Bann in Ulster takes
its name from ‘An Banna’ [On Vonna], another Tuatha de Danaan goddess. The River
Bride, which flows through Counties Cork and Waterford, is named for the
goddess Brigantia, who evolved into Brigid, the Celtic goddess of fire and
fertility, and later into Saint Bridget. Killbrit, just off the Bride, is
derived from the church (kill) of Bridget.
The jury’s still out about the derivation
of the River Barrow’s name. My money’s on Berba, a goddess whose son
was born with three serpents in his heart, God love the poor fellow. And,
of course, the Barrow is one of the Three Sisters, with the Nore and the Suir.
The Irish name for River Inny in
County Longford is more charming than the English: An Eithne. It derives
from a princess variously called Eithne, Ethniu, Enya or Ethlenn. She was the
only daughter of the terrifying, one-eyed Fomorian leader Balor. Was Balor,
pronounced Baal-er, anything to Baal, I wonder!?
A druid prophesied that Balor would be killed
by his own grandson. Given that he didn’t have any grandsons yet, he took the
wise precaution of locking his only daughter up in the eponymous Túr Ri (King’s
Tower) on Tory Island. Alas for Balor, he hadn’t banked on the determination of
Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann who tracked Eithne down and seduced her. She gave
birth to triplets, including a boy named Lúgh who became the warrior king of
the Tuatha Dé Danann. As predicted, Lúgh thrust his deadly spear into Balor’s
evil eye. Somewhere along the line, poor Eithne drowned in the rapids near
Ballymahon and so the River Inny was named for her.
By one account, the River Erne (and,
by extension, Lough Erne) is named for Ierne, a beautiful lady-in-waiting
to the famous Queen Méabh. One tragic day, a fearsome giant popped out of a
cave and chased Ierne and her fellow maidens all the way up to wherever the
Erne rises and, well, you guessed it, the waters rose up and drowned them all.
By another account, Erne was a princess of a tribe called the Érainn. Yet another
proposes that the Ernai were a sept of the Fir Bolg who were defeated in battle
shortly after a lake burst all over them! Whatever which way you look at
it, you can be sure the waters rose and someone died.
Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh
When I was interviewed about the ‘Waterways
Through Time’ podcast on ‘Mooney Goes Wild’ (28 February 2022, RTE Radio One), Éanna Ní Lamhna told me that the river names are “from a language that is older
than Irish” and that the Irish words we use today are an “Irishization of the
older world.” As an example, she cited the Barrow (an Bhearú), the Dee (an
Níth), the Glyde (an Casán), the Lagan and the Boyne. I should add that Barry
Dalby, always a refreshing cynic, provides some chicken and egg musing on the
subject:
“I tend to think that the linking names of
rivers to ancient myth is just speculation. How can it be otherwise? Some of
the names are very old, for sure, but beyond that, who can say. The Barrow is a
good example. Compare to the nearby Boro on the far side of the hills and other
older records of that, which could simply combine two words ‘mhór’ and ‘abh’ or
‘ow’, simply the big river.”
The River Barrow at Carlow