Aengus Óg, the Irish god of youth and the swan maiden

Irish mythology left no temples or statues, but a very rich literature in prose and verse, written down by monks from the early Middle Ages onwards. In these tales appears Óengus, now better known as Aengus Óg, the young. He is a member of the Túatha Dé Danann, the ancient divine race of Ireland, and modern interpreters regard him as the Irish god of youth, beauty and love.

A son born in a single day

According to the tale known as Tochmarc Étaíne, the Wooing of Étaín, Aengus was the son of the Dagda, the good god, and of Boann, the goddess who gives her name to the river Boyne. To hide their union, the Dagda made the sun stand still for nine months, so that the child was conceived and born on the same day. The nickname Mac Óc, young son, is said to come from this very story.

His place is Brú na Bóinne, the bend of the river Boyne where the great passage tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth stand, built around 3200 BC, long before the tales appeared. The myth explains in various ways how Aengus became its master: in one version he asks to dwell there for a day and a night, then argues that those words mean all time, and so obtains the dwelling for ever.

The dream of Óengus

The most beautiful tale about him is the Aislinge Óenguso, the Dream of Óengus, which survives in a late manuscript but is thought to be medieval in composition. One night the god sees in a dream a very beautiful maiden, who vanishes when he tries to take her hand. The vision returns for a whole year, and Aengus falls sick with love, so much that no physician can understand his illness.

After a long search, his family discovers that the maiden is called Caer Ibormeith and is the daughter of Ethal Anbúail, lord of an Otherworld dwelling in Connacht. One year she lives in human form and the next in the form of a swan, and at the feast of Samhain she is found with other swan maidens by a lake. Aengus joins her, becomes a swan himself and flies with her to Brú na Bóinne, singing music that puts anyone who hears it to sleep for three days and three nights.

Protector of lovers in flight

Aengus also appears in the Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne, a tale of the Fenian cycle in which the young Gráinne, promised to the ageing leader Fionn mac Cumhaill, runs away with the warrior Diarmuid. Aengus, Diarmuid's foster father, protects the couple several times, saving them from their pursuers. When Diarmuid dies, wounded by a boar, the god carries his body to Brú na Bóinne, promising to breathe a breath of life into it so that he can speak with him every day.

It is precisely his presence in these tales of passion, flight and transformation that has made Aengus, in the eyes of modern readers, the Irish figure closest to a god of love. The poets of the Celtic revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beginning with William Butler Yeats, took up his name, and the Boyne valley, with its prehistoric monuments, still keeps the memory of the god who dwelt there.