Who Is the Irish God of the Sea? Meet Manannán mac Lir

He’s one of the few characters to appear in all four cycles of Irish mythology.

But is Manannán mac Lir—mac Lir meaning “son of the sea”—the Irish god of the sea?

Or was he a historical merchant—renowned for his navigatory prowess—and namesake of the Isle of Man?

Or is he a three-legged giant who rolls like a wheel through the mist, thus giving the Isle of Man its most enduring national symbol?

The answer: it really depends on which stories and texts you look at. 

Pssst. You can watch a video adaptation of this essay right here. Text continues below.

Manannán the Sea and Storm God

In his most popular incarnation, Manannán is a member of Ireland’s divine tribe, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and he’s the possessor of many supernaturally imbued objects and animals, including:

• a self-navigating boat called the Sguaba Tuinne (“Wave-sweeper”);
• a sword, Fragarach (“Answerer”) that can cut through any armor;
• another sword, Díoltach (“Retaliator”), that can slay with every stroke;
• a horse, Aonbharr, a.k.a. “Enbarr of the Flowing Mane,” that can gallop across the surface of the sea;
• a speckled cow he brought to Ireland from India that can provide a constant supply of milk; 
• and seven pigs or swine which, after being slaughtered and eaten, can be reconstituted so they can be slaughtered and eaten again, ad infinitum.

I should also mention that after the Tuatha Dé Danann are defeated by the invading Milesians, who are the final race of beings to settle in Ireland according to the Lebor Gabála Érenn, or Book of the Taking of Ireland, commonly known as the Book of Invasions, it is Manannán who is tasked with assigning the Tutha Dé nobles the sídhe or mounds they will henceforth inhabit. 

And to help them stay hidden from prying human eyes, Manannán provides his fellow gods with the Feth Fiadha, which is a magical mist of invisibility.

This according to the tale Altram Tige Dá Medar (or The Nourishment of the Houses of Two Milk-vessels).

Manannán mac Lir’s penchant for weather manipulation is also seen in a chronologically earlier story, Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Mag Tuired), in which it is inferred that sea storms are caused by “the horses of the son of Lir.”

Now, in addition to being the ruler of the sea and its storms, and the divine house sorter-er of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Manannán is the ruler of the Celtic Otherworld—or one of the Celtic Otherworlds, anyway.

Manannán the Otherworldly Ruler

In the Mythological Cycle tale The Coming of Lugh, Manannán’s domain is referred to as Tír na nÓg (“the Land of Youth”). This is where Manannán trains his foster-son, the god of many talents, Lugh, and outfits him with all sorts of weapons and armor ahead of the aforementioned Second Battle of Mag Tuired. 

In the Ulster Cycle tale the Sick-Bed of Cú Chulainn, it’s called Mag Mell (“the Plain of Delights”). Turns out it isn’t all that delightful, however, as Manannán’s wife Fand needs to recruit the Ulster warrior Cú Chulainn to come to Mag Mell to help her defeat her enemies in battle.

Then there’s the Fenian Cycle tale, The Pursuit of the Gilla Decair And His Horse, in which the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and his warrior band, the Fianna, pursue a disguised Manannán across the sea to his otherworldly fortress, here known as Tir fo Thuinn (Land under Waves). 

Finally, in the Kings’ Cycle tale Cormac’s Adventure in the Land of Promise, the high king of Ireland Cormac mac Airt pursues a disguised Manannán through the countryside and gets lost in a magical fog. When the fog dissipates, the king finds himself in Manannán’s castle in the titular Land of Promise, Tir Tairngiri.

So there you have it: four stories from the four cycles of Irish mythology featuring four interpretations of Manannán ruling over four iterations of the Celtic Otherworld.

But arguably the most famous Manannán mac Lir myth is one that doesn’t fit comfortably into any of the four cycles.

The Voyage of Bran

The Voyage of Bran sees Bran mac Febail seeking out an idyllic island where the weather is perpetually wonderful and inhabitants never succumb to sickness or aging. 

This is yet another iteration of the otherworld, Emain Ablach (Emhain of the Apples), which reminds me that a mysterious woman gives Bran a silver branch from an apple tree near the beginning of the voyage and this serves as his supernatural passport of sorts.

Pssst. If you want to hear the full story, I have it on good authority that the Voyage of Bran will be the subject of the next episode of IrishMyths StoryTime.

Anyway, once Bran is out to sea, who should appear but Manannán mac Lir.

He’s riding in a chariot. And he tells Bran that to him, the ocean doesn’t appear as a body of water, but as a flowery plain.

Which explains how Manannán’s horses are able to run across it.

Now, if the imagery of a horse-loving, chariot-driving, storm-conjuring Manannán has got you thinking of another sea-god from a separate mythological tradition, that might not be a coincidence.

The Manannán-Poseidon Connection

The Greco-Roman god of the sea and storms and horses, Poseidon (a.k.a. Neptune) bears more than a passing resemblance to the Irish deity.

In addition to the aforementioned similarities, both gods are described as ruling over island utopias. 

In the case of Poseidon, that would be Atlantis—this according to Plato’s Timaeus and Critias.

And if you’re thinking to yourself, but hey, Poseidon famously creates springs by striking his trident into the ground. Where’s that in the Manannán myths?

Well, it’s there. Sort of.

To quote from the Lebor Gabála Érenn:

“Orbsen was the name of Manannan at first, and from him is named Loch Orbsen in Connachta. When Manannan was being buried, it is then the lake burst over the land, [through the burial].”

There are two main explanations for all of these similarities between Manannán and Poseidon, which might not be mutually exclusive. 

Firstly, the Greek language and the Celtic languages, including the Gaelic/Goidelic language spoken in ancient Ireland, were both derived from Proto-Indo-European. So it’s possible the figures of Manannán and Poseidon are both offshoots of a common Proto-Indo-European water/horse deity.

Secondly, the Christian scribes who first recorded the Manannán myths may have infused them with Classical mythological elements.

Actually, we pretty much know they did, as the Lebor Gabála Érenn itself includes references to Greek mythology as a way to date certain events. Including the following event: 

“Death of Manannan by the hands of Uillend… Agamemnon began to reign.”

Agamemnon, of course, being the Mycenaen king who famously recruits Achilles during the Trojan War, as explored in Homer’s Iliad.

Side note: the chariot battles featured in Irish mythology, especially in the Ulster Cycle epic Táin Bó Cúailnge or Cattle Raid of Cooley, were likely inspired by the Iliad, as there is no archaeological evidence of war chariots having been used in ancient Ireland.

Manawydan fab Llŷr: The Welsh Manannán mac Lir?

While we’re on the topic of comparative mythology, I’d be remiss not to mention that Manannán mac Lir has an unambiguous cognate in the Welsh mythological figure Manawydan fab Llŷr. 

Or at least these two figures have the same name. 

Because when you actually dig into the earliest Welsh prose stories that comprise the Mabinogion, Manawydan, despite being dubbed the son of the sea, isn’t actually depicted as a sea-god.

He is, however, the brother of a character named Bran, but this Bran is a giant and the King of Britain who sails with Manawydan to Ireland to save their sister but he ends up getting his head chopped off and the head keeps talking.

It’s a whole thing.

Interestingly, in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, Manannán is listed as having a brother with a similar name, Bron, but he doesn’t turn into a talking head.

Even more interestingly, the Lebor Gabála Érenn version of Manannán, which dates to the 11th century CE, doesn’t list Manannán as the son of Lir but as the son of a Tuatha Dé Danann chieftain named Allot, a name that means soil or land.

What’s more, the following description of Manannán is given:

“Manannan the chapman who was [trading] between Ireland and Britain, who used to recognise the dark or the bright signs (?) in the air.”

Manannán the Merchant

I know, this is a lot to take in. 

The Irish god of the sea was actually…a merchant, a trader, whose divine superpower was…weather forecasting?

And lest you think this was some kind of scribal fluke, the same treatment can be seen in the Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary), the earliest version of which is traditionally attributed to the late-9th/early-10th-century Irish bishop and king of Munster, Cormac mac Cuilennáin.

And I quote:

“Manannan Mac Lir, a celebrated merchant who was in the Isle of Mann. He was the best pilot that was in the west of Europe. He used to know by studying the heavens [i.e. using the sky], the period which would be the fine weather and the bad weather, and when each of these two times would change.”

The entry goes on to note, in Latin, that both the Britons and the Scoti—the latter being a reference to the Gaels of Ireland and later, coastal Scotland—began calling Manannán the god of the sea, and hence he became known as Manannán mac Lir, “son of the sea.” The Latin also notes that the Isle of Man was named after him.

However, a more likely etymology for the Isle of Man, according to Celtic scholar John T. Koch, is that it’s derived from the Proto-Celtic *moniyos, meaning mountain—same as the Welsh island of Anglesey, which, in its native Welsh, is called Ynys Môn (source: Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia).

Etymology aside, Manannán has another potential connection to the Isle of Man and this one is…well…you just gotta listen.

Manannán the Three-Legged Monster

The following is a footnote that John O’Donovan included under the entry for “Manannan Mac Lir” in his famed English translation of Cormac’s Glossary published in 1868:

“According to the traditions in the Isle of Man and the Eastern counties of Leinster this first man of Man rolled on three legs like a wheel through the mist, and hence the three-legged figure on the Manx halfpenny, and the motto quocunque jeceris stabit [‘whithersoever you throw it, it will stand’]”.

That three-legged figure, or triskelion, would also come to feature on the Isle of Man’s coat of arms as well as its flag. 

And while the idea of a sea-god rolling around on three legs might seem odd from a storytelling perspective, a document produced at St. Columb’s school in Moville, Co. Donegal—that is now part of Ireland’s National Folklore Collection—can help shed some light on the subject.

“The three legs which, paradoxically, are the arms of Man, are the representation of the storm-god careering over land and sea with whirling motion.”

Meanwhile, the Celtic scholar Whitley Stokes, who edited John O’Donovan’s translation of Cormac’s Glossary, had a different theory. 

In a footnote to O’Donovan’s footnote, Stokes admitted to “knowing nothing of this tradition,” before adding, “if it be authentic, we may possibly trace a connection between this three-legged Manannan mac Lir…, the TARVOS TRIGARANUS of the Notre Dame Inscription and the Vedic Vishnu with the three strides, i.e. the rising, the culmination and the setting of the sun.”

The inscription Whitley is referring to here comes from the Pillar of the Boatmen, a Gallo-Roman monument constructed in the first century CE that depicts a host of deities, including the horned god Cernunnos and the aforementioned Tarvos Trigaranus, who is represented as a bull with a trio of cranes on his back.

And I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Hindu deity Vishnu. The three strides Stokes mentioned a.k.a., the Trivikrama, typically refers to Vishnu establishing the cosmic order by covering the earth with his first step, the air or ether with his second step, and the heavens or immortal realm with his third step.

Granted, some have argued, as Stokes did, that Vishnu’s three strides also correspond to the three points in the sun’s course across the sky. 

But apart from the tripartite nature of these aforementioned deities, it’s hard to draw a direct connection from them to Manannán mac Lir.

Besides, as I already explored in my essay/video on Celtic knots, there are several other potential explanations for how the Isle of Man’s three-legged triskelion or triskeles came into being. 

So it’s possible that descriptions of Manannán rolling around on three legs were made retroactively, i.e., storytellers saw the three-legged symbol—perhaps on a stained-glass window or coat of arms—and invented the story to fit the imagery. 

That being said, when we consider how the euhemerization process usually works, a three-legged rolling sea/storm deity inspiring the creation of a symbol and the name of island and, later, historical-ish-sounding stories of a master navigator is also possible.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Euhemerization

To borrow the admittedly controversial historian Richard Carrier’s definition, euhemerization is “the taking of a cosmic god and placing him at a definite point in history as an actual person who was later deified.”

And for my money, that’s exactly what happened with Manannán mac Lir.

Cormac’s Glossary has it backwards.

There was no historical man Manannán who was later deified, there was only the mythical god Manannán—created as part of an oral storytelling tradition/ancient Celtic religion—whose divinity was later explained away by Christian scribes when they recorded the myths.

There is, after all, a good reason why so many storm/sea deities exist across different cultures. 

Our ancient ancestors, lacking scientific knowledge of certain phenomena, imagined that storms rolling in off the sea must have had a divine cause—like the thunderous hooves of a god’s horses, perhaps.

Or a god’s giant, cartwheeling legs.

What makes understanding the euhemerization of Manannán tricky is that the order in which Irish myths appear chronologically does not align with the order in which those same myths show up in the historical record.

Case in point: 

The Lebor Gabála Érenn is the chronological beginning of Irish mythology. It’s the story that sets everything in motion. 

Yet as I mentioned earlier, the oldest extant version of this story to feature Manannán, the one that establishes Manannán mac Allot as a chapman or merchant, dates to the 11th century.

Meanwhile, the Voyage of Bran, which occurs chronologically much later and depicts Manannán mac Lir as an otherworldly ruler riding across the waves on a chariot, appeared in the 8th century codex Cín Dromma Snechtai.

So one can imagine a scenario wherein the Christian scribe who was to record the Lebor Gabála Érenn first perused the Voyage of Bran and thought to himself:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This Manannán fella is way too powerful, and way too God-like; we need to make him more grounded.

And what better way to ground a character than to give him an everyday job and a surname that means son of the soil?

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