Tír na nÓg

Tír na nÓg, Tìr nan Òg (ScG), Tír na n-Óc, Tir na n-Óg, Tir-nam-Oge, Tir na Nog; also Eilean na nÓg (ScG) [Ir. óg, youth, i.e. Land of Youths]. Land of Youth, or the Ever-Young, in early Irish tradition. The most widely known of all the otherworldly lands [Tír] from early Irish tradition, probably because of its portrayal in Micheál Coimín's 1750 Irish-language poem Laoi Oisín i dTír na nÓg [The Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth], wherein the Fenian hero Oisín spends 300 years with the beautiful Niamh of the Golden Hair without knowing sickness, age, or decay, and thinks it but a day until his return to the realm of mortals. Bran also visits the land in Imram Brain [The Voyage of Bran]. Earlier Tír na nÓg is one of the many lands thought to have been settled by the semi-divine Tuatha Dé Danann after their defeat by the Milesians. Although Tír na nÓg should lie beyond the confines of any map, it is often perceived to be west of Ireland. Long-standing oral tradition places its entrance at Liscannor Bay, Co. Clare, south of the cliffs of Moher. In 1861 Bryan O'Looney wrote that Tír na nÓg was a beautiful city surrounded by white breaking waves between Liscannor and Lahinch. It is also associated with a cave on Knockadoon Island in Lough Gur and Rathlin Island, north of Co. Antrim. See David B. Spaan, ‘The Otherworld in Early Irish Literature’, dissertation, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1969); Bryan O'Looney (trans.), ‘The Lay of Oisín in the Land of Youth’, Transactions of the Ossianic Society, 4 (1861), 227–80. T. Gwynn Jones partially reshaped the concept in his Welsh-language ode Tir na n-Óg (1910). Folk motifs: D1338.7; F172.1; F377; F378.1. See also OTHERWORLD; YNYS AFALLON; HERLA, KING; ROCA BARRAIDH.