ABSTRACT
Our sources of information about early Irish female divinities are narrative texts which treat of the legendary past, but which were written in the Christian period, mainly between the eighth and the twelfth century AD. In these works, mythic concern with the sacred has become a historical concern with age-old events. It has been aptly remarked that ‘in the case of early Irish narrative, the hypothesis is that we are dealing with mythology refracted through literature’ (Ó Cathasaigh 1993:128). The literary texts do not provide access to a systematic view of the Irish mythic universe; rather, they allow glimpses of the manner in which the supernatural was represented in story.
