Ana or Danu? The Search for Ireland’s Mother of the Gods

Everyone knows Danu, or thinks they do.

Often presented as the ancient mother goddess of Ireland, ancestor of the Tuatha Dé Danann and ruler of earth, rivers and fertility, Danu has become one of the most familiar figures in Celtic mythology. But what do the medieval Irish sources actually say?

Ana or Danu? follows the trail back through glossaries, manuscripts, place-names, folklore and the mountains of Kerry. In a ninth-century Irish glossary, a figure called Ana is named “mother of the gods of the Irish,” said to have fed them well, and linked to the Paps of Anu. Yet the familiar Danu emerges from a more uncertain history of shifting names, editorial choices, Victorian comparisons and generations of retelling.

This is not a story of a goddess disappearing under scrutiny. It is the recovery of a more complex record: Ana and Anu; abundance and provision; war goddesses, holy wells and named landscapes; medieval scribes trying to make sense of the past, and modern readers doing the same.

Ana or Danu? traces the line between medieval evidence, later interpretation and modern tradition.

For readers of Irish mythology, Celtic history, folklore and the hidden histories behind familiar gods.