sídh

sídh, sídhe, síodh, sí, síd (OIr.), síth (OIr.), s'th (ScG), side (gen.), shee (Manx, ang.); the form sídhe, commonly cited in English, is the unreformed ModIr. genitive singular. Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx words for fairy mound and, by implication, the realm beyond the senses, the Otherworld or, in oral tradition, the fairy world. The fairy mound/sídh is a familiar landscape feature in Goidelic culture: a round, flat-topped, manmade barrow, tumulus, or hillock of ancient origin apparently intended to bury or commemorate a mortal king or ruler. From long-standing oral tradition the fairy mounds/sídhe were thought to mark places where the semi-divine Tuatha Dé Danann fled underground after their defeat by the mortal Milesians. The Dagda himself assigned a sídh to each member, both male and female. In much of earlier Irish written tradition, therefore, the sídh appears to be a palace or at least a fine residence, like Finnachad, the sídh of Lir in Oidheadh Chlainne Lir [The Tragic Story of the Children of Lir]. In early literature such residences, especially when they are named without the prefix sídh-, seem almost more this-worldly than otherworldly: Brí Léith, [Sídh] Clettig, Femen, and [Sídh] Úamain. Hundreds of others are cited in the literature, often bearing the name of their most powerful resident, e.g. Sídh Nechtain, dominated by Nechtan.

In oral tradition the story of the Tuatha Dé Danann's defeat and migration underground became a means of accommodating international fairy lore. The old divinities became the áes síde [people of the fairy mound], invisible to most mortals at most times, Samain and Midsummer's Eve being the chief exceptions. Humans favoured with second sight could perceive them. On occasion persons from this hidden world might intrude into the realm of mortals, such as the woman of the sídh [Ir. bean sídhe] or banshee who calls out in the night to foretell death. The sídh was not to be disturbed by grazing cattle, and most farmers would avoid both the sídh and perceived paths to and from it. In Modern Irish the word sídh, meaning ‘fairy’ instead of ‘fairy mound’, combines to make dozens of compounds, e.g. ceo sídhe [fairy mist], ceol sídhe [fairy music], sídh chóra, sídh ghaoithe, and séideán sídhe [fairy wind], poc sídhe [fairy stroke], corpán sídhe [changeling], suan sídhe [fairy sleep].

Bibliography

See Heinrich Wagner , ‘The Origins of Pagan Irish Religion’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 38 (1981), 1–28;
Diarmuid A. MacManus , The Middle Kingdom: The Fairy World of Ireland (London, 1960);
James A. MacDougall , Folk and Fairy Lore in Gaelic and English, ed. George Calder (Edinburgh, 1910);
Dora Broom , Fairy Tales from the Isle of Man (Harmondsworth, 1951);
Daniel Parry-Jones , Welsh Legends and Fairy Lore (London, 1953);
Tomás Ó Cathasaigh , Éigse, 17 (1978), 137–55.