Les cheveux de la Morrígain

Résumé En

The Morrígain’s Hair The Morrígain is one of the most fascinating deities in Irish medieval literature. She is generally viewed as a goddess of war and death who appears alone or in triple form on the battlefield, is endowed with potent supernatural powers and symbolises the death of warriors. As the wife of the Dagda, the father god, she also possesses important sexual and agrarian attributes. She is thus a complex, polymorphic and multifunctional goddess. This study will examine a new aspect of her personality. As a goddess of fertility, she is closely related to water ; a characteristic which is reflected in her role as a washer of corpses at river fords. The numerous references to her long mane and sinister laugh, her role as a messenger of death and her connection with water all lend credence to the view that she is the fair-haired sea-goddess who drowns Conaing, son of Aedán Mac Gabráin, king of Alba, in the early 7th-century poem in the Annals of Tigernach.