Celtic PantheonSacred Site
Rathcroghan (Cruachan)
The royal complex of Connacht in County Roscommon, seat of Queen Medb and King Ailill in the Táin, whose cave Oweynagat was said to be a door to the otherworld.
About Rathcroghan (Cruachan)
Medb's court
Cruachan is the court of Medb and Ailill, queen and king of Connacht, in the Ulster Cycle. The Táin Bó Cúailnge in its later recension opens here with their pillow-talk: comparing their possessions, they find them equal except that Ailill owns the great bull Finnbennach, and Medb resolves to take the Brown Bull of Cooley from Ulster to match it. The war of the Táin begins at Cruachan and its bulls finally fight across Ireland.
The cave of the cats
Oweynagat, 'the cave of the cats', a natural cave entered through a souterrain, was known in medieval tradition as an entrance to the otherworld. In Echtra Nerai ('The Adventure of Nera') a man of Ailill's court enters the síd of Cruachan at Samhain, and other tales bring monstrous creatures and the Morrígan out of it.
The landscape
Rathcroghan is a spread of more than 200 archaeological sites, mounds, enclosures, and linear earthworks, spanning thousands of years. It is interpreted by the Rathcroghan Visitor Centre at Tulsk; like Emain Macha and Tara, it was a real royal centre that the tales remember in their own way.
On the map
Rathcroghan (Cruachan) among other places of the Celtic Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Táin Bó Cúailnge (Book of Leinster recension)
- Echtra Nerai (The Adventure of Nera)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.