In the legends, hundreds of words go into describing the extreme attractiveness of the aes sidhe—their perfect hair, their perfect bodies, their perfect clothes (in one case, even their perfect knees)—and, just as with the elves, this beauty often shifts into something more akin to seduction. Male aes sidhe were often to be found having their way with human women: Lugh and another important aes sidhe, Manannan, both get mortal women pregnant, and at least in Manannan’s case, he goes out of his way to specify (to a group of complete strangers, who perhaps felt they didn’t need to know) that this was through “vigorous sex.”
Female aes sidhe can be extremely sexual as well: even the Sovereignty of Ireland, a slightly dull and colorless figure in The Phantom’s Vision, could be far more forward. In one legend called The Adventure of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedon, for example, five sons of the king encounter a hideous old woman sitting by a well who tells them that in order to draw water they must kiss her. The first three refuse, and get nothing; the fourth does as she asks, and she tells him that his descendants will rule Ireland; the fifth, and youngest, brother decides to go all in and has sex with her, at which point she transforms into a beautiful woman and informs him that he shall be king—a sovereignty goddess giving out kingship in return for sexual favors (as well as exhibiting the shape-shifting powers of the aes sidhe).
But not every sexual encounter with these supernatural women results in a crown—as with the elves, giving in to temptation could bring danger. In one legend Conn himself marries a woman of the aes sidhe called Becuma, an act that, through Becuma’s machinations, leads to a famine unleashed across all Ireland: it’s not until Conn sends Becuma away that everything is set right. On the other hand, resisting the temptations of an aes sidhe woman was also fraught with peril: when the hero Cú Chulainn turns down the aes sidhe Morrigan in a story called The Cattle Raid of Cooley, she starts shape-shifting into various animals to try and distract him or trip him while he’s in combat.
The Otherworlds are just like the aes sidhe themselves, beautiful and beguiling and full of wondrous magic, but to be feared and avoided nonetheless.
And Morrigan also shows clearly another facet of the aes sidhe that feels comparable to elves, mares, and valkyries: female aes sidhe were rarely constrained by gender stereotypes—they’re dominant, powerful, choosing their male lovers, and often the driving forces behind the stories (especially, as we’ll see, in stories of Otherworlds). Morrigan herself is an enormously powerful figure, and one who would have fitted right in with any gang of valkyries she came across: she is violent, blood-soaked, and she even prophesies battle and death in some legends. It’s notable as well that the Sovereignty of Ireland in The Phantom’s Vision has a sideline in prophecy, and sometimes Morrigan is even split out into three different women, “Morrigans,” rather than a single Morrigan: if they’d only have taken up spinning, they’d have been indistinguishable from valkyries, norns, and disir.
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This isn’t to suggest that aes sidhe and the elves (along with their related beings) came from a common source, but their similarities inevitably meant that their stories could merge into each other (which, in turn, only pulled them closer together). In the Irish myth The Sickness of Cú Chulainn, for example, the titular hero shoots down two beautiful white birds, without knowing that they are in fact aes sidhe. He falls asleep, and is instantly assaulted in his dreams by two women—the birds in their human form—who beat him with horsewhips until he’s almost dead. The similarity with the death of Vanlandi in the Icelandic myths—being brutally beaten to death by a mare in a dream at the behest of two women (with the horsewhips used against Cú Chulainn hinting at the “riding” of a mare)—is immediately striking.
But there’s one way in which the aes sidhe were entirely separate from the elves, at least in these earlier periods: they had a homeland, the Otherworld. And while Lugh might have conjured his Otherworld from his shadow, in most stories mortal heroes are taken to the Otherworld by female aes sidhe, who (despite the occasional mentions of some never-seen king) seem to be rulers of the Otherworld realms, which are often populated entirely by women. What’s more, these Otherworlds had locations within the real human world: they were inside the burial mounds.
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The Mound of the Hostages does not look big enough to accommodate an Otherworld—it could perhaps manage an Other-studio-flat. But the Otherworlds were often enormously larger than the mounds themselves—sometimes the size of a giant palace, or a whole island—and while they were, occasionally, entered by stepping through the dark little doorway of a mound, at other times they were reached by walking through mists (like Conn), or sailing across oceans. But despite this, they were still conceived of as being located within the mounds themselves, real-world anchors for these strange, marvelous realms. These realms were not always open and accessible—it wasn’t just a case of sauntering into a mound and finding an Otherworld whenever you felt like it—sometimes you had to be invited, sometimes you needed to sail there, and sometimes you had to wait until the right time of year: the festival of Samhain (November 1) was a day when the mounds were especially likely to be open, and the aes sidhe abroad.
At first glance, it might seem as if people would be queuing at the mounds every Samhain: the Otherworlds are, in some ways, written as wondrous paradises. There’s joy, there’s music, there’s magically regenerating food, trees that flower and fruit at the same time, piles of treasure, crystals that rain from the sky, everlasting happiness and health. In one Otherworld, a wandering hero finds a crystal bower filled with inexhaustible vats of perpetually replenishing food; in another realm “there is nought save truth, and there is neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness.” Free love abounds in these Otherworlds: Otherworld women frequently sleep with visiting mortal heroes, and the Otherworld inhabitants have sex with each other too: in one description, we’re specifically told that men and women “lie with each other under bushes.” These Otherworlds have names that reflect their marvels—Mag Mell (the Plain of Delights); Tir na mBeó (the Land of the Living Ones); Tir na nÓg (the Land of the Young); Tir na nlngnad (the Land of Wonders).
But despite all their wonders, Conn was right to fear the Otherworlds. He might have come back from his trip unscathed, but one of his sons, Connlae, wasn’t so lucky. The story of The Adventure of Connlae, as with The Phantom’s Vision, likely dates to the eighth century AD, and describes how a beautiful aes sidhe woman approaches Connlae, tells him that she loves him, and asks him to go with her to her home—a realm in a burial mound, a place “without death, nor want, nor sin,” where they keep a “perpetual feast,” and where they can live in ageless, deathless joy for ever. It’s not specifically stated why she wants Connlae to come, but we’re told he’s handsome, and the implication seems to be that she wants him as her lover. Connlae is tempted, but Conn overhears, and begs the court druid to drive off this “treacherous attack” that threatens to snatch his son away. The druid begins chanting, forcing the woman to depart, but as she leaves she throws Connlae a magic apple, which reconstitutes itself after each bite. After the encounter, Connlae is left changed. The text tells us that he lived, without drink, without food, until the end of a month, and he did not think any sustenance worth eating but the apple.
…Longing then seized Connlae for the appearance of the woman that he had seen.
And then, when the month is over, the woman returns, this time in a magnificent crystal boat, and again invites him to join her (adding an additional bit of information about her homeland—apparently, it’s a world entirely populated by women). This time Connlae agrees to go, but he seems uncertain at best, saying:
It is not easy for me, besides I love my people. Yet longing for the woman has seized me.
And he boards the woman’s crystal boat, his mourning people and father watching as he sails out of sight, never to be seen again.
There’s something profoundly haunting about this story, a sense that Connlae didn’t truly want to go, that he should have resisted the temptations of the strange, Otherworld woman. And anyone hearing the tale in eighth-century Ireland would have known that if Connlae did come to regret his decision, he might have found it very difficult to get home, an idea made explicit in another early Irish text (and near-contemporary of The Adventure of Connlae), The Voyage of Bran.
The aes sidhe were very clearly associated with the divine. In eighth-century myths the aes sidhe are literally called the tribe of the gods.
Like Connlae, Bran (who is king himself, rather than the king’s son) meets a lovely, nameless aes sidhe woman who invites him to her Otherworld—the land of Emain—an island entirely of women, full of endless joy and beauty, crystals, perpetually flowering and fruiting trees, and all the other Otherworld paradise staples. Unlike Connlae’s Otherworld guide, though, this woman doesn’t take Bran with her—instead, she leaves him with directions, and he sets sail with a crew of thirty men.
The first island they come to is not her paradise home but “The Isle of Joy,” where they see the shore filled with people laughing. One of Bran’s men goes out to greet them, but as soon as he reaches the island he looks back to the boats and his comrades and begins laughing too, unable to speak, unable to recognize their calls for him to return. Unwilling to risk more men, Bran is forced to leave his crewmate there, laughing madly on the distant shore. It’s a grim episode—and one that makes the claim that the land of Emain is “without grief ” and full of happiness and laughter suddenly threatening. Exactly how and why is everyone in Emain “happy”? Perhaps this is the reason Bran doesn’t disembark when his boat reaches Emain, even when he sees the beautiful woman who asked him to come standing on the shore. But she throws a ball of yarn to him, while holding one end of it herself. When he touches it, it sticks fast to his hand, leaving him helpless while she pulls him in.
Her home is truly beautiful, and for a year Bran and his men stay, with “no savor wanting to them,” enjoying the delights of paradise and having sex with all the Otherworld women. Eventually, though, they grow homesick and long to return to Ireland, at which point the woman allows them to go—but before they depart she warns them not to set foot on mortal soil. When they finally reach the shore of Ireland, Bran hails a man on the headland and tells him that he is “Bran, son of Febal,” returned. The man looks at him confused—“We do not know such a one,” he responds, “though the Voyage of Bran is one of our ancient stories.”
A single year may have passed in the Otherworld, but centuries have gone by on earth. And worse is to come: one of Bran’s men leaps ashore and instantly collapses into a pile of dust—the weight of all those centuries catching up with him as soon as he comes into contact with mortal realms. Bran and his men can never come home. They narrate their wanderings to the man on the shore and then sail away, never to be seen again.
The Otherworlds are just like the aes sidhe themselves, beautiful and beguiling and full of wondrous magic, but to be feared and avoided nonetheless. Should one of the aes sidhe appear beside the crooked doorway of the Mound of Hostages, bidding you to duck through the lichen-spotted stones and venture into its depths, you’d be ill-advised to follow.
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These stories are among the very earliest recorded literature in Ireland, which begs the question: where did they come from? Taking that in the most literal possible way, the legends we have today were likely written in Irish monasteries. Ireland was largely Christianized by the end of the seventh century (Patrick himself had already been and gone in the fifth), and by the time of the eighth century, when these myths were being written down, monasteries were the great cultural, artistic, and literary centers of the country: if you have a written text from eighth-century Ireland it’s unlikely to have come from anywhere but a monastery. The other subtle hint that the legends of the aes sidhe might have been written in a monastic setting is that, despite being full to the brim with strange and wild enchantments, they’re also full to the brim with extremely learned Christianity: there are frequent references to the coming of Christ, the arrival of Christianity on Ireland’s shores is constantly (and joyously) prophesied, and many of the legends include references to the works of famous Christian scholars (there’s some real treats in there for all you Isidore of Seville lovers).
But even if the monasteries are where these texts were written, they (obviously) aren’t the whole story. There’s plenty of evidence that the aes sidhe of the eighth century and beyond stemmed from earlier traditions—the monks writing these stories might have been adding their own spins, but they weren’t making them up entirely. They were drawing the tales from older legends and mingling them with Christian beliefs. And that strange mix of pagan Irish myth and Christianity is what has brought me to Tara, for this particular morning.
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On the hillside a handful of people have gathered with me in the pre-dawn light—a dog walker, a couple staying in Dublin, a group of giggling teenage girls. The dog walker lives nearby and tells me she’s been coming here, on this morning, since the pandemic—she doesn’t believe in anything either pagan or Christian, but says she finds the long history of the place grounding. The couple say they’re visiting all the Neolithic sites in the area, and as their visit happened to coincide with this particular day, they thought they’d come. We’re a strange little group, shivering together in the icy winter wind, but we’re all watching as the Mound of the Hostages, gray-black only a few minutes ago, turns to a vivid green; as the red glow reflecting off the clouds closest to the horizon turns so bright it seems like fire, burning ever more strongly until it hurts to look at it, until the whole of the eastern sky is ablaze.
And then the sun slips above the horizon, and in an instant the shadows turn from indistinct gray blurs to sharp black lines. In that same instant the passage into the mound is brilliant with sunlight, the rays entering it straight on, pouring through its wonky entrance, filling the tunnel with shadows and light, with a sunrise directed precisely into the channel of the passage tomb: a sunrise that has filled this tomb every February 1 for the last 5,000 years.
It’s impossible to know if the people who built the tomb intentionally angled it into this particular sunrise, or the sunrise of November 1, which also sees light stream down into its tunnel; there are so many passage tombs in Ireland and only two are positioned in this way, so it might well be a coincidence. But in the Irish legends, both these dates are significant: November 1, as we’ve seen, was the date of Samhain, and today—February 1—was the date of Imbolc, the first day of spring. Imbolc is a celebration referenced in one tenth-century legend (The Wooing of Emir), and in Cormac’s Glossary, a ninth-century manuscript containing explanations and glosses of about 14,000 Irish words.
There’s no suggestion as to where this festival might have come from, but from the seventh century February 1 and Imbolc were also the date of St. Brigid’s Day. Nominally this was a Christian feast day of Saint Brigid, patron saint of poetry and lambing, who was said to have lived in Ireland in the late fifth century. But Brigid also appears throughout the early Irish myths as a member of the aes sidhe. And there was a third version of Brigid as well—according to Cormac’s Glossary, Brigid was a “goddess, whom the poets adored, because very great and very famous was her protecting care.”
In this way, just like the elves, the aes sidhe were very clearly associated with the divine. In eighth-century myths the aes sidhe are literally called the tribe of the gods, and there’s a story as well, in an account of Patrick’s life written in the late seventh century.
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Excerpted from Perilous Enchantment: The True History of Faeries by Sarah Clegg. Copyright © 2026 by Sarah Clegg. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.