Case file · Sacred site
Manannán mac Lir and his cloak of mist
Manannán mac Lir, 'son of the sea', is the Gaelic sea god and king of the otherworld, who hides his realm behind a mist of invisibility and rides the waves in a self-steering boat, 'Wave-sweeper'.
800 CE · 54.15, -4.67 · status: legend
The account
Irish, Manx and Scottish tradition places his kingdom in islands such as Emain Ablach, the Isle of Apple Trees, or Mag Mell, the Plain of Delights, reached across or under the sea. He owns a horse that gallops over water and a sword no wound survives. The Isle of Man has long claimed him as its first ruler, and Manx custom tells of paying him a rent of rushes at midsummer. The pin is on South Barrule, the hill associated with him.
The sceptical view
Mythology; the sea mists of the Irish Sea are the natural setting of his cloak.
Connections in the atlas
- The vodyanoy, master of the waters
- Jonah in the belly of the great fish
- The drowned city of Ys
- Hy-Brasil, the island west of Ireland
- Lyonesse, the lost land of Cornwall
- Cantre'r Gwaelod, the drowned hundred