In the medieval Irish tradition, before the ancestors of the Irish people arrived, Ireland was ruled by a race of beings with supernatural powers. They came from the north, from four mysterious cities where they had learned magic and wisdom. They arrived in dark clouds, or burned their ships so they could never leave. They brought four great treasures, fought two epic battles for the island, and ruled it until they were defeated by the Milesians, the sons of Míl. Then they withdrew beneath the earth, into the ancient mounds and hills, where they became the Aos Sí, the people of the fairy mounds.
These were the Tuatha Dé Danann, “the peoples of the goddess Danu” — the gods of pre-Christian Ireland, recast by medieval Christian monks as an ancient race of magicians.
Who Were They?
The name Tuatha Dé Danann is usually translated “the peoples (or tribes) of the goddess Danu.” In the oldest texts they are called simply Tuatha Dé, “the peoples of the gods,” and the addition of Danann came later. The goddess Danu herself is barely mentioned in the sources; she is sometimes identified with Anu, a mother goddess whose name survives in the Paps of Anu, two breast-shaped hills in County Kerry.
The Christian monks who wrote down Irish mythology between the seventh and twelfth centuries could not present the Tuatha Dé as gods. Instead they described them as a race of people with great magical knowledge, one of several waves of settlers who had invaded Ireland in the distant past. The main source for this pseudo-history is the Lebor Gabála Érenn (“The Book of the Taking of Ireland”), compiled in the eleventh century, which fits the Irish past into a biblical framework beginning with the Flood.
Yet their divinity is clear. The Tuatha Dé are immortal, or nearly so. They control the weather and the fertility of the land. Their names correspond to those of gods worshipped by the Celtic peoples of Britain and the Continent.
The Four Cities and the Four Treasures
According to the tradition, the Tuatha Dé learned their arts in four cities of the northern islands of the world: Falias, Gorias, Findias, and Murias. From each city they brought a treasure:
- The Stone of Fál (Lia Fáil), from Falias, which cried out beneath the rightful king of Ireland. A standing stone on the Hill of Tara is still identified with it.
- The Spear of Lugh, from Gorias. No battle was ever sustained against it or against the one who held it.
- The Sword of Nuada, from Findias. No one could escape from it once it was drawn from its sheath.
- The Cauldron of the Dagda, from Murias. No company ever went away from it unsatisfied.
These four treasures have been compared with the four suits of the tarot and with the grail-hallows of Arthurian romance — the stone, the spear, the sword, and the vessel.
The Arrival and the First Battle
The Tuatha Dé arrived in Ireland on the feast of Beltaine (May Day), landing on a mountain in Connacht in dark clouds that hid the sun for three days. (Other accounts say they burned their ships on arrival so they could not retreat.)
Ireland was then held by the Fir Bolg, an earlier race of settlers. The Tuatha Dé demanded half of the island; the Fir Bolg refused. In the First Battle of Mag Tuired (Moytura), near Cong in County Mayo, the Tuatha Dé won, but their king Nuada lost his arm in the fighting.
Nuada of the Silver Arm
Because the king of Ireland had to be physically perfect, Nuada could no longer rule. The Tuatha Dé chose Bres as king instead — a beautiful young man whose father was a Fomorian, one of the monstrous sea-raiders who oppressed Ireland. Bres proved a disastrous ruler. He was stingy, forced the gods to do menial work, and allowed the Fomorians to demand crushing taxes. The poet Coirpre satirized him so bitterly that red blotches broke out on his face, and he was forced to give up the throne.
Meanwhile, the physician Dian Cécht and the smith Credne made Nuada an arm of silver that could move like a living arm. Then Dian Cécht’s son Miach made him an arm of flesh and blood, and Nuada was restored to the kingship. Dian Cécht, jealous of his son’s greater skill, killed Miach. From the grave grew 365 herbs, one for every nerve and joint of the body, which Miach’s sister Airmed arranged on her cloak according to their healing properties. Dian Cécht scattered them, and so, the story says, no one knows all the herbs of healing.
The Second Battle of Mag Tuired
Bres went to the Fomorians and raised an army to reclaim his throne. The resulting war, the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, is the great battle of Irish myth, in which the young god Lugh kills his Fomorian grandfather Balor of the Evil Eye. It is told in The Second Battle of Mag Tuired.
The Major Gods
The Tuatha Dé include many of the principal figures of Irish myth:
- The Dagda (“the good god”), father-figure of the gods, a master of magic and wisdom, owner of the inexhaustible cauldron, a club that could kill nine men with one blow and restore them to life with the other end, and a harp that summoned the seasons.
- Lugh of the Long Arm, master of all arts, hero of Mag Tuired (see Lugh: The Many-Skilled God of Ireland).
- Nuada of the Silver Arm, the king.
- The Morrígan, goddess of war and fate (see The Morrígan).
- Brigid, goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft, later identified with the Christian Saint Brigid.
- Manannán mac Lir, god of the sea, who rides the waves in a chariot and ferries the dead to the Otherworld.
- Aengus Óg, god of love and youth, who lives at Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange).
- Goibniu, the smith; Credne, the bronze-worker; Luchta, the carpenter — three craft gods who could make and repair weapons in a moment.
- Ogma, the champion and inventor of the ogham alphabet.
- Dian Cécht, the physician.
The Coming of the Milesians
The Tuatha Dé were eventually defeated by the Milesians, the sons of Míl Espáine, who arrived from Spain and were regarded as the ancestors of the Gaelic Irish. The poet Amergin landed first and chanted a mysterious poem claiming identity with all of nature: “I am a wind on the sea, I am a wave of the ocean…”
The Milesians met three goddesses of the Tuatha Dé — Ériu, Banba, and Fódla — who each asked that the island be named after her. Amergin promised Ériu that it would be, and so Ireland is called Éire.
After battles and magical storms, the Tuatha Dé were defeated. The land was divided: the Milesians took the surface of Ireland, and the Tuatha Dé took the land beneath it.
The Otherworld and the Sí
The Tuatha Dé withdrew into the síde (singular síd), the mounds and hills of Ireland. Each god had his own mound. Manannán gave them the féth fíada, a magic mist that made them invisible, the Feast of Goibniu that kept them from ageing, and the pigs of Manannán that could be eaten and returned to life.
Over the centuries, the Tuatha Dé became the Aos Sí, “people of the mounds” — the fairies of Irish folklore. The shining gods of myth became the “good people,” the “gentry,” whose music, beauty, and dangerous enchantments feature in countless folk tales. The banshee, bean sí, is literally “woman of the fairy mound” (see The Banshee).
The Children of Lir
One of the most famous stories involving the Tuatha Dé is the tragic tale of the Children of Lir, four children of a lord of the Tuatha Dé who were turned into swans by their jealous stepmother and condemned to wander the waters of Ireland for nine hundred years (see The Children of Lir).
Legacy
The Tuatha Dé Danann have shaped the image of Ireland as a land of magic and mystery. The poets of the Irish Literary Revival, especially W. B. Yeats, drew on them heavily. J. R. R. Tolkien’s elves, a people of great beauty and craft who withdraw from the world as mortals take over, bear a striking resemblance to them. They remain central to Irish identity and to modern Celtic spirituality.
Last reviewed: September 2026.