Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  * 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.

  * 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.