Mag Tuired (Moytura)
The Irish plain where legend sets the battles of the Tuatha Dé Danann, including the clash in which Lugh killed Balor of the evil eye.
- Location
- Moytirra, near Lough Arrow, Co. Sligo (second battle); Cong, Co. Mayo (first, by tradition)
- Modern country
- Ireland
- In legend
- Tuatha Dé Danann vs Fir Bolg, then vs Fomorians
- Text
- Cath Maige Tuired, preserved in a 16th-century manuscript
- Landscape
- Rich in megalithic tombs
What is Mag Tuired known for?
Mag Tuired, anglicized Moytura or Moytirra, is the name of the plain on which medieval Irish literature sets two great battles of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Tradition places the First Battle, against the Fir Bolg, near Cong in County Mayo, and the Second Battle, against the Fomorians, at Moytirra near Lough Arrow in County Sligo, a landscape rich in Neolithic tombs.
The Second Battle of Mag Tuired (Cath Maige Tuired) survives in a 16th-century manuscript now in the British Library (Harleian MS 5280), though the text is centuries older. In it the young god Lugh leads the Tuatha Dé against the Fomorians and kills his grandfather Balor, whose single eye destroys whatever it looks at, by casting a stone through it.
Scholars read the battles as myth, shaped by medieval monks who framed Ireland's gods as an early people. The name may have been attached to these places later because of their many ancient monuments.
Mag Tuired is the battlefield of Lugh and Balor in Cath Maige Tuired.
Mentioned on these pages
- Rabbit holeBalor
- Rabbit holeTuatha Dé Danann
- PassageBalor's killing eye (Second Battle of Mag Tuired)
- PersonLugh
- PersonNuadu (Nuada Airgetlám)
- PersonThe Dagda
- PersonWhitley Stokes
Sources
- Cath Maige Tuired: The Second Battle of Mag Tuired, trans. Elizabeth A. Gray (CELT, University College Cork)Primary text
- Wikipedia, 'Cath Maige Tuired'Reference
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