Dr Gillian Kenny

The land itself is suffused with magic.

In Rathcroan, in County Roscommon, there's a cave called Ufmagat, the Cave of the Cats.

which since medieval times has been thought of as the entrance to the Otherworld, and that's very much associated with the goddess Morrigan.

She's a very fearsome battle goddess who is said to emerge out of there once a year with her host to lay waste.

The Cave of the Cats.

Round.

Yeah, rat-crowing in County Roscommon, and that's also a place associated with Queen Maeve, who is also a very badly behaved woman.

They are grouped into collections.

They feature different beings which appear in magical tales.

And as I said, they were written down by Christian monks.

They're grouped into these cycles.

There's a mythological cycle, and that features the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were mangled in Hellboy 2, as Greg was saying in the beginning.

So they're usually translated as tribes of people of the goddess Danann.

They're a supernatural race.

who live in the Otherworld.

And the Otherworld is where you go via certain elements in the Irish countryside, like the Great Passage Tombs, the Brew.

And their enemy are a race called the Formorians, which are depicted as evil and monstrous.

The Ulster Cycle, which is set in the mythical parts of eastern Ulster and northern Leinster.

The Fenian Cycle,

about a mythical hero called Finn McCool and his band of warriors, the Fianna, and the King's Cycle, which are legends about historical and semi-historical Irish kings.