Mag Mell- Celtic LocationLocation · Realm"Plain of Joy"

The Woman's Song

A woman from the Otherworld appeared to Bran mac Febail and sang fifty quatrains describing what lay across the sea. In the Immram Brain, she names Mag Mell among the Otherworld's regions: a plain without limit, covered with flowers that never wilt. Horse races run across its fields. No one knows grief or treachery. The sea around it runs with sweet water rather than salt, and golden chariots cross silver plains.

Bran and his companions sailed west and found the Island of Women, where supernatural lovers welcomed them into timeless happiness. They feasted and loved without any awareness of time's passage. When homesickness gripped one of Bran's companions, they turned east toward Ireland. Nechtan leapt from the boat onto the shore and crumbled to ash. The centuries they had not felt fell upon him in an instant. Bran called his name and his story across the water to those on the beach, then turned his boat west again. He was not seen after that.

The Lure of Connla

In the Echtrae Chonnlai, a woman of the síd appeared to Connla, son of Conn Cétchathach, as he stood with his father on the Hill of Uisneach. She was visible to Connla alone. She spoke of a deathless land beyond the sea. Conn summoned his druid Corán, whose incantations drove the woman's voice away. Before she vanished, she threw Connla an apple.

For a month Connla ate nothing but that apple, which never diminished no matter how much he consumed. His longing for the Otherworld grew until it eclipsed everything. When the woman appeared a second time in a boat of glass that gleamed on the western water, Connla leapt from the royal company and stepped aboard without a word. His father and brother Art watched the glass boat grow small across the sea until it vanished beyond the horizon. Connla was never seen in Ireland again. Art was afterwards called Art Óenfer, Art the Solitary, for he was the only son remaining.

Fand and Cú Chulainn

Fand, the wife of Manannán mac Lir, fell in love with Cú Chulainn and sent her sister Lí Ban to invite him to the Otherworld. The Serglige Con Culainn tells how Cú Chulainn had been struck with a wasting sickness by Otherworld women at Samhain and lay bedridden for a year before he accepted.

He found a realm of extraordinary beauty, fought battles on Fand's behalf, and became her lover. But unlike Bran or Connla, Cú Chulainn came back. His wife Emer confronted Fand, and Manannán appeared to reclaim his own. The sea god shook his cloak between Fand and Cú Chulainn so they would never see each other again, then gave both Cú Chulainn and Emer a drink of forgetfulness. The memory of Fand would have destroyed him otherwise.

The Sea Between

In the Immram Brain, Manannán appears to Bran riding his chariot across the waves. Where Bran sees grey water, Manannán sees a flowered plain. Where Bran's boat struggles through waves, Manannán's chariot rolls over meadows. Salmon leap like calves among the flowers. The sea is a landscape invisible to mortal eyes.

The plain was always there, present beneath the ordinary world. Manannán decided who saw it and who saw only water.