Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (76 page)

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See the Scottish Gaelic variant on the death of Deirdre, linking her to the Milky Way Galaxy, p. 292.

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The Modern Irish phrase
saol eile
may denote ‘another world’ in Lucan’s sense of a faraway place, such as China or Paraguay. In the poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill (b. 1952) and elsewhere in contemporary Irish usage
an saol eile
is a spiritual world that lies beyond empirical examination.

*
The reference ‘
Annals
’ without prefix usually refers to what is called in English ‘The Annals of the Four Masters’, compiled by Micheál Ó Cléirigh and three others in the seventeenth century, translated by John O’Donovan in the seven-volume
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland
(Dublin, 1849–51) and much reprinted.

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Possibly named for local hero Fergus Caisfiaclach [crooked tooth], whose sobriquet was
Bód fo Bregaigh
[fire of Brega]; allusions to the two Ferguses may have become conflated in the 1830s when the Lia Fáil was erected.

*
This sword was attributed to many heroes, more often Fergus mac Róich, and is often thought to be an antecedent of Arthur’s Excalibur.