Otherworld

There are times where episodes are so bogged down with detail or the version I discover is so incredible that I know I will not come close to it that when I'm telling it in my own words, I tend to stick quite closely to lines and beats and characters.

But with something like this, which very easily could be a story of Tir na Nog or of High Brazil, this is what I mean when I say this very easily could be set in Ireland, and no doubt there probably was an Irish version of this story with our own Otherworld, but it is the constantly repeated tale of mortals interacting with the other folk and just taking things that step too far.

It's almost, it does parallel in ways the story of Oisin in Tir na Nog, in that Oisin went there for three years, which was 300 years to the mortal world, and then missing his family, wished to return to Ireland for one final time, and he assent on his love, Niamh's fairy horse.

who arrives and when he does, Uisín meets an old man who is struggling with this rock.

Oh.

Um, yeah, so they're not viewed as, like, magical pets, but, like, an ancient and displaced race, and they believe that they kind of coexisted alongside humanity in a parallel realm called the Otherworld, which we will talk about.

Hmm.

And in historical Irish, Scottish, and Welsh tradition, pronouncing the word fairy out loud was strictly taboo.

[laughs]

[laughs] I'ma start saying that.

Another rule is you couldn't eat any food or drink offered in the Otherworld or by one of the fair folk, because this would permanently bind a mortal soul to their realm.

And this concept shares deep roots with, like, a lot of classical mythology.

We also see in the Welsh Mabinogi, the first branch of the Mabinogi, the tail of Pwyff.

that there are white hounds with red ears described as these sort of hunting hounds of the Otherworld king around.

They're known as the Cunanun, the Hounds of Anun, which is in the Mabinogi the name of the Welsh Otherworld.

So we've got this big signal from the story that we're looking for an Otherworld cow, and that's why it's so hard to find.

Eventually, the court does find a cow of such description, but they only find one, and the one cow they find that meets the criteria belongs to the kailakh dove, the black hag.

And when you encounter the kailakh, a hag character, an elderly woman, you can expect more otherworld shenanigans.

Having gone surety for the King of Loughlin, he has to fulfill the request of the Cailach Dove.

But at the same time, dying in battle to sheep is not something you want to do as an Irish warrior and especially as a king.

The Hawthorn tree has some of the most complicated folklore surrounding it.

In Celtic lore, it was associated with the Otherworld and with fairies.

Certain Hawthorn trees were considered sacred, and disturbing them was believed to bring bad luck.

The idea wasn't necessarily that the tree itself was evil.

It was that something else might be living within it.

A tree could be a doorway, a boundary, a place where the ordinary world and the Otherworld came dangerously close together.

But hawthorn wasn't viewed negatively everywhere.

In Britain, the tree became strongly associated with springtime and renewal.

Now, of course, these two are inextricably related, but they, they probably didn't know that considering they didn't have an idea of the Earth being on an axis.

So Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the winter season, and historically, these celebrations were associated with the Celtic Otherworld, this being a time when the veil between our realm and the realm of the fae folk was at its thinnest.

During this time, travel between our world and theirs was a lot easier and oftentimes not to the benefit of humanity.

And according to the Wooing of Emer, a medieval Celtic legend, the Samhain festival may have also been observed as something of a New Year's celebration.

Anyone who broke the laws established during this time would be banished.

According to Irish mythology, Samhain, like Beltane, was a time when the doorways to the Otherworld opened, allowing supernatural beings and the souls of the dead to come into our world.

While Beltane was a summer festival for the living, Samhain was essentially a festival for the dead.

The Boyhood Deeds of Finn says that the sidhe, fairy mounds or portals to the Otherworld, were always open at Samhain.

Each year the fire-breather Aillen emerges from the Otherworld and burns down the Palace of Tara during the Samhain festival after lulling everyone to sleep with his music.

One Samhain, the young Finn mac Cool stays awake and slays Aillen with a magical spear, for which he is made leader of the Fianna.

In a similar tale, one Samhain, the Otherworld being Culduff emerges from the burial mound on Slieve na Mon and snatches a roast pig.

Finn kills Culduff with a spear throw as he re-enters the mound.