The Summer God of Love Oengus Mac Og

They say that Oengus Mac Og, the Irish god of love and inspiration, wit and charm, was a born liar. He could gab his way out of any tricky situation and gab his way into any advantageous one.

  

      

But if he was a trickster, it’s no wonder, because he was born of a trick. 

The Dagda, an Irish god so huge his club could not even be lifted by eight men, fell in love with Boann, goddess of the river Boyne, which flows past Newgrange in the northeast of Ireland. Boann was already married, but that did not deter the Dagda in his amorous pursuit. Naturally Boann fell pregnant and was terrified her husband would find out. So the Dagda caused the sun to stay still in the sky for an entire year, and when, at the end of what he though was a single day, Nechtan returned home, all seemed the same, except for a puzzling change in the foliage on the trees. 

On that one day, Boann had given birth to Oengus Og, and the Dadga had taken him away to be fostered in a good home.

I suppose his story really starts when he’s maybe fifteen — after all, it’s set in the smelly bedroom of an adolescent boy who wakes one morning to remember what seemed almost like a dream; the most beautiful girl had come into his room. From that day, in a love-sick fever, Oengus does not leave his bed, wrapt up in the dream of her. 

His foster mother asks him, ‘darling, what is wrong?’ But he can’t reply. 

His foster father comes to him; “Now, son, you’ve got to stop all this nonsense.’ But still he can explain.

Finally, they call the Dagda and to him, Oengus reveals the truth; he’s in love. The Dagda spends a year searching before the girl is found. 

Yewberry

Turns out she is Caer, or Yewberry, the daughter of the fairy king Ethal Anubal, who,with her 149 sisters, mostly wears the garb of swans. When Oengus arrives to claim his love, he has to pick her out from 150 white birds. But he knows her directly; she has a golden chain around her neck. He also transforms into a swan and they circle the lake three times before flying off to the Brough na Boinne. 

This was the ancient name for Newgrange, and it is said that it originally belonged to the Dagda, but when Oengus finally discovered he was his son, he decided to grab his inheritance. After all, his mother was goddess of the river that flows around this great edifice. He approached his real father, to ask if he could take up residence for a night and a day, and the Dadga gave his consent to that small request. 

Brough na Boinne –– Newgrange

However, the next morning, Oengus          refused to leave. Remember, that in old Irish, as in Welsh today, there is no indefinite article. ‘A night and a day’ would simply be ‘night and day’ and Oengus argued that  what he had been granted was residency at Newgrange for all time. 

Oengus wasn’t just god of love because of his winning of Yewberry. Perhaps it was more to do with the way he would successfully woo for others. He asks for the hand of the beautiful Etain for has friend Midir, and then undergoes many arduous jobs, such as clearing acres of land, before that hand is granted. However, Midir’s present wife is filled with jealously and turns Etain into a purple fly. She is blown about on Druidic winds for a long time, but finally Oengus finds her and crafts a bower for her, in which she can rest. 

Perhaps most famous is the story of Oengus’ foster son, Diarmaid. He had a great love for Grainne. Oegnus woos her for Diarmaid and they run away from her wedding feast after Granne drugs her new husband. They run from pillar to post -- or rather -- from ancient cairn to ancient dolmen. (It’s great fun searching for these ‘beds of Grainne’ which are scattered all over Ireland). 

Dairmuid and Grainne

After long years on the run, Grainne fell pregnant with Diarmuid's child, but fate was about to catch up with them. One day out in the wilderness, Diarmuid and Grainne came across a giant boar. Legend was, that a boar was the only living thing that could harm Diarmuid. As the boar charged, Diarmuid, protecting his heavily pregnant lover, wrestled it to the gound and killing it with his sword, but not before the boar had gored Diarmuid, fatally wounding him.

So what does all this mean? And why is Oengus the god of transformation, as well as love and wit?

I think it may be connected to his dreaming of Caer. Okay, I likened this story earlier to spotty teenaged romance, but when you think about the story, it seems more like creative experience to  me. Everything is reversed, or in mirror image. The girl comes in a dream; or does the girl really arrive (in some versions of the story) and it’s only after she disappears that Oengus dreams of her? He dreams and dreams and finally, there she is, a gold chain around her neck. 

This is so much like the creative process. First; the glimmer of something new, which can almost be forgotten immediately, unless it is ‘dreamed’ into existence. Then, the search —the frustration and hard toil of turning a ‘glimmer’ of an artistic idea into something solid; a book, an art work, a musical composition. But finally, it is done. People are saying they love it. It is enough to make the artist take wing and fly into the sunset.

W.B. Yeats wrote about this in his poem, “The Song of Wandering Aengus” centuries later, in the late 1890s. 

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

I think this paints a haunting picture. An old man reminisces about a life-quest, contrasting the earthly realm of ordinary life and the mystical otherworld of dreams.Check through the poem, to see where Yeats employs a semicolon or colon. These are used to make that shift each time we leave the real world (for instance 'he hooks a berry to a thread'), and move into the mysterious, magical otherworld

You can learn about my very own Yewberry here.

You can learn more about Newgrange here

You can learn more about Oengus Og.here 

You can learn more about “The Song of Wandering Aengus” here.