Saint Declan, and Earc and Dubhthach, are The Dagda. A greatly loved Gaelic God, he's a patron of magic, paternity, fertility, life & death, seasons, airs & wind, and the sky itself. Whoa.

A god deeply meshed in the hinted-at Gaelic cosmogony, The Dagda as "Dáire" seems to arrange or kindle the coalescing Cosmic Person deity, Lugaid. Perhaps for this and other reasons, all three Saints share a mytheme of being the first supporter and sponsor of Patrick ("Saint Lugh") in their reluctant assemblies.

Today's issue is (belatedly) for "Saint Declan", but must include other names, too: Earc, Dubhthach, Fergus, and Eochaid.

I lack wordcount here, but I believe that Oghma's likely role as the God of Bardcraft was transferred to The Dagda, so that it's the latter who expresses godly musical power. "Fergus" of the Fianna is a Bard, and various Saints are associated with Bards and Poets. I suspect The Dagda had an underlying Triplicity, of which Oghma was part.

Prior Art on Declan/Earc & The Dagda

I'm not the first to claim an identity of Declan and Earc with The Dagda. The best source I have so far comes from the paper "Percos/Ercos: An Unknown Celtic Theonym" by Lajoye and Oudaer, 2014.

Among the Dagda-related things that Lajoye & Oudaer cover are:

• A proposed identity with the PIE "Thunderer", including an alternate etymology for "Erc" linking it to the PIE Thunderer name "*perkw"
• His affinity / identity with horses
• The repeating motif of water-association, including conflict and/or death
• His relationship to trees, particularly Oak
• The widespread nature of the theonym around the Celtic world
• The Fir Bolg king Eochaid mac Eirc's likely status as a mirror of The Dagda.

But this omits "Dubhthach" - let's recap what we know of Earc and Dubhthach from previous issues.

Earc and Dubhthach

Dubhthach is St.Brigit's father. When she's born, it's officially elsewhere - but I've argued that this is a shell-game: she's actually still in Dubhthach's house. Therefore, the boy born the same night is her (half?) brother and celestial mirror, Bréanainn - the Moon God.

The most famous Saint Áed, "Máedóc of Ferns", is fostered by a Dubhthach - his biological father, Nad Fraoch, is also father to a king named Óengus (/Aengus) and mimics the Saints Dagda in his enthusiasm to greet Patrick.

A Dubhthach may have accompanied Moling (Aengus) once. Maybe.

Earc is Bréanainn's father-figure who baptises him, brings him to Íta for "fosterage", and accompanies him at many points in the stories.

An Earc also appears in Brigit's story, accompanying her for a time also.

So, Earc and Dubhthach appear as paternal figures and travel-companions to several God-Saints we already understand to be offspring of The Dagda: Aengus, Midir, Brighid, Áed.

Eochaid, Fergus?

"Eochaid", a key name of The Dagda's, appears as a teacher (implying fosterage) to the other Fire-God, Laisrén AKA Molaise of Devenish. This Eochaid is AKA Dallán Forghaill, a poet (Ó'Riain, 2011).

There are several saints "Fergus"/"Fearghas", and a few more named "Feargna". None seem to have very detailed stories, unfortunately. However, for other reasons (later) we can be confident of identifying this name with The Dagda.

The Father's Father

Curiously, the fathers of the various Dagda-Saints are often given Dagda-names. For example:

• Earc, son of Feargna;
• Feargna, son of Dubhthan
• Dallán/Eachaidh, son of Earc (AKA Forghall -> Fergal?)
• Earc, daughter of Dáire
• Déaglán/Declan: son of, variously, Earc, Earcbhran, Earnbhran, or Ros

When this God-Saint isn't being attributed his own parentage, there are two other distinct patterns that appear instead.

One is to have him as a son of an Óengus, Aengus, or [OA]illil, names that mostly belong to the Divine Twin. The other is to have him descend from names of the various tiers/emanations of Creator-Gods: Colmán, Cormac, Crimthann, Lug, Laigh. Déaglán's Christian father-figure is named Colmán.

This makes sense if the Sky is one of the first cosmic things made (see below) - and the Thunderer's earliest form is probably directly child of the Creator-God(s), too. Why should the Divine Twin names turn up so frequently, though? Lots to say, too little space!

A father "Daigh" or "Deg" appears frequently - it could be a Creator-name (as TM surmises), or simply a form of the "Dag-" ("Good") stem that gives us "Dagda" and "Déaglán". Ask a Linguist?

Being one's own parent isn't unusual for euhemerised deities. And, it has a prototype in The Dagda's son Bodb Dearg, who appears to be simply a continuation of The Dagda himself.

Erc; Erg; Earg?

Examining Erc, Feargus, and Bodb Dearg, there's a pattern of how "Erc" may have been broadened into a particle within another word: F-earg-us, D-earg. Old Irish allowed variant spellings of "De[a]rg" as "Derc", suggesting a flexible pronunciation. I think it's reasonable to surmise that Fearg* and Dearg are epithets that deliver "Erc" with different poetic meanings.

The Erc particle may appear in one of The Dagda's official names, also: "Cerrce". Sayers (1988) supposed "Cer" to be part of The Dagda's oldest epithet, also linking it (wrongly, I argue) with Cernunnos and Conall Cernach.

In light of Lajoye & Oudaer's work on "Erc", and the case for Fergus and maybe Bodb Dearg as "prefixed Erc" hypostases of The Dagda, I think it makes more sense to read "Cerrce" as just another consonant'd "Erc". So, the similarity to the Cer* prefix is coincidental.

Who, Definitively, is The Dagda?

The simple answer is that the Dagda is the combined "Sky Father", "Thunderer", Air, Bard, Druid, and Father god of the Gaelic gods, with mythic bleed-through from his own children, plus vibes of esoteric identity with Lugaid/Lugh and somehow also Nuada/Fionn/Conall.

Wait, that wasn't simple at all, sorry. The Dagda resists simple explanation, because he's one of those agglomerating gods that most mythologies seem to have at least one of. The Greek Zeus gathers a number of godly archetypes, as does Norse Óðinn. It just seems to be a tendency for religions to have a God that collects divine domains and myths - it makes them hard to figure out. It can even end in monotheism!

But, The Dagda can be unpacked. Let's focus on the Sky Father and Thunderer archetypes.

The Great (Sky) Father

This god is well-supported in Proto-Indo-European studies, known as *Dyēus. He is father of the Dawn Goddess and the Divine (or "Horse") Twins, at least. The Divine Twins are often associated with Celestial objects - so, *Dyēus' offspring are Celestial gods.

If we understand Aengus as the main Divine Twin of the Tuatha Dé, and Brighid as Dawn Goddess (and more..), that already strongly suggests An Dagda is "*Dyēus". Linguists have previously identified The Dagda as a descendent name of *Dyēus (1). The Dagda has other celestial kids too: Midir, the Moon-God; and Áed, the likely Sun-God. His most famous children are nearly all key Celestial Things, and he frequently travels with them.

The Dagda has been modelled by some as a Sun god (like nearly any Irish god has). But, the arguments for this can be just as validly put behind an identification with the Sky itself, as we'll see.

The God of the Vault

It's interesting to think about what exactly is meant by "Sky". As we'll see, The Dagda is a god who can compel waters. In fact, in so doing, he may have fulfilled a cosmogonic role as the one who first established space by Dividing the Cosmic Waters.

This scene, of a celestial aerial god dividing the upper and lower waters (or upper-waters and earth) to begin creation, is widespread. Forms of it are found in Egyptian, Hindu, and Mesopotamian and Abrahamic mythology, at least.

The first lines of the Abrahamic Book of Genesis have El/Yahweh doing just this (trimmed for brevity):

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2. Now the earth was formless and empty [..] 
   and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
6. God said, “Let there be a vault between
   the waters to separate water from water.”
7. So God made the vault and separated the water
   under the vault from the water above it.
8. God called the vault “sky.”
9. And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered
   to one place, and let dry ground appear.”

"Heavens" in line 1 is not the Sky, which is created subsequently. Sky is the "vault" that is holding apart the waters, inside which God then separates the lower waters to reveal land. Note El/Yahweh hovering above water in a "Spirit" form - Aerial, if you like.

Greek myth presents a more difficult-to-interpret example. Per Hesiod:

Now Earth [..] brought forth starry Ouranos,
[..], so that it would cover her on all sides

Gaia (Earth) emerges from Chaos, the primordial cosmic ocean, along with Tartaros - which at this stage is a sort of ambiguous void. The other beings to emerge at this point are more abstract. If Gaia wishes to be "covered on all sides", implying separation from something, then it's possible to interpret this as being separated from Chaos and Tartaros.

The agency in this myth is given to Gaia, but structurally it puts Ouranos (meaning "Sky") in the same role, as the separator of the Realm of the Created from the Cosmic Ocean. Tartaros, in this case, might be interpretable as the blackness of the night sky, in contrast to the oceanic blues of the day.

In Egypt, it is the god Shu, an Airy God and the first unambiguously Male god, paired with the sometimes Fierce, Feline Watery Tefnut (resembling the Mórrígan, then), who divides his Sky/Earth offspring Nut and Geb. So, Nut is considered to be the (female) Sky, rather than a Cosmic Ocean upheld by the Sky: the Cosmic Model is different here, but it's the Airy Father God who does the separating and upholding.

The Waters Without

So, the "Sky" is the Vault upholding the Cosmic Ocean, whereas the blueness or blackness of the sky is the Cosmic Ocean, seen through the Sky. The Celestial Ocean may be a pair, night and day (who were once combined) - or it might be just one Ocean wrapping the world, or an Ocean and a Void.

This idea, if it were true of the Celtic religions, would help to solve the ambiguity of The Mórrígan and Eithne - first raised in Íta's issue and recently re-examined in Eithne's.

At their closest, these two archetypical Water-Wisdom-Motherhood deities may be understood as rival Sisters. Understood as divided parts of the PreCosmic Ocean - above and below, or day and night - this uncanny similarity and "divisive" relationship makes sense. As does the fact that both of them have a relationship with The Dagda, who spans them. Perhaps Eithne's relationship to the highly Solar Cian, and the Mórrígan's association with caves, hints respectively at Day and Night?

The War of the Skies

A similarly widespread idea was that the Daytime and Nighttime skies were ruled by different "Sky Gods". If this were held in the Celtic world, then it also helps to explain the relationship of The Dagda and Elcmhar (AKA Nechtan or Nuada).

There are already reasons to model Nuada as a god of Night and "Waters". In this model, Nuada is cognate to Vedic night-sky ruler Varuna, to Greek Poseidon, and to part of Óðinn. This builds on Dumézil's "Mitra-Varuna" theories.

If An Dagda were understood as Daytime Sky-god only, that would imply a conflict-cycle between him and Elcmhar over who gets to be with one/either Cosmic Ocean (here, Boann). The Dagda's stratagem to delay Elcmhar's return is that he extends daytime. This has commonly been interpreted as The Dagda as a Sun-God.. but if he's the god of the Daytime Sky, in contrast to Elcmhar as god of the Nighttime Sky, wouldn't that be enough?

This model would place The Dagda as the Mitra to Nuada's Varuna, or as the Zeus to Nuada's Poseidon. But, that's problematic, because Lugh generally makes a better match to Zeus - not least because both of them are, or become, directly identified with the Cosmic Person or Demiurge. The Dagda and Nuada have their own particular relationships to these Creator-deities, but Lugh literally has the same name as the Cosmic Person - and Zeus consumes the Greek Demiurge in some versions of his mythos to become the Cosmic Person. Meanwhile, the Dagda as Dáire appears more like a catalyst or forerunner of Lugaid, he's never presented as being Lugaid.

How might we square this seeming conflict in a two-part system like Dumézil's "Mitra-Varuna" and the extensions that Taliesin's Map has proposed to that model?

The God of the Gloaming?

There is another possibility: Jean Haudry's "Three Sky Model". In his model, there are three Skies in the Proto-Indo-European cosmology, and three Sky-gods: Those of Night, Day, and Dawn-Dusk. The Sky-god of Dawn-Dusk, the Liminal Sky, is the mediator of Day and Night, and perhaps of the Heavens and Earth, Life and Afterlife, and the entry and exit of the Celestial bodies from the other skies.

Framing The Dagda as the Limneal Sky, dividing and connecting the Skies of Night (Nuada) and Day (Lugh), makes sense of a lot: his power over life and death, his relation to Nuada and Lugh and death-god Donn, his association with the colours Red and Russet, and so on. And as the mediating Sky between Day and Night (and so, perhaps, the divided Cosmic Oceans?), he would still have the power to make Day extend indefinitely, if he so chose.

The Impeller of Daytime

This dynamic would also explain how it is that Sts. Earc, Dubhthach, and Déaglán all have a mytheme where they are the first of their number to align with Patrick. Earc and Dubhthach's myths are very similar; they are the first to stand in honour of Patrick when he arrives, earning the ire of the incumbent kings.

Déaglán, meanwhile, personally intercedes with the other "Pre-Patrician" (so, Peri-Cosmic) Saints to accept Patrick as their new boss - Íbhar (who I believe matches Nuada) rejects Patrick but Déaglán helps paper things over. Déaglán's kingly mirror, Nad Fraoch, also is first to greet and accept Patrick on his arrival.

This can be framed according to the three-sky model as the Dawn Sky mediating a hand-over between the reluctant Night Sky and the unstoppable Day Sky: The Dagda supporting Lugh's accession over Nuada. We don't see this happen in the largely unaltered native myth, but we do see Oghma at first testing (and then kinda being muscle-bros with) Lugh at Nuada's court.

This also helps to explain why it is the Night-Sky God Nuada who divides Eochaid mac Eirc from his wife Tailtiú (the land). It's the division of (Dusk) Sky from Earth, a continuation of the primordial division of the Waters (Skies, Seas).

The Pretender-Sky

But Nuada doesn't become king of Ireland after defeating Eochaid.. and Lugh directly takes over from him, right? No Dagda hand-over? Something has gone awry in the sky.

Bres, seemingly a copy of Elatha, takes over after Eochaid, and in refusing to yield to Nuada he prevents Nuada or Lugh from gaining control of the world. The cycle's broken! Who's this Bres?

Bres resembles Lugh, as a solar-themed limneal son of the Fomhoire and Tuatha Dé. But he also strongly resembles The Dagda:

• They are sons of Elatha - plausibly, the impassive Demiurge
• His son "Ruadhán" duplicates a Dagda-name: "Ruad Rófhessa"
• His name, "Eochu Bres", duplicates another: Eochaid

It seems Elatha's wayward son usurps the sky-gods. In taking over from Eochaid instead of Nuada, Bres usurps the Dusk-Night phase.

Bres oppresses The Dagda and Oghma in particular, but in part due to The Dagda he is ousted. Nuada is king, but inert this time, somehow: maybe waiting. Bres still contests for rule; with the Fomhoire, he's usurping Dawn, also.

Lugh arrives: foster of Tailtiú and, presumably, her husband Eochaid, and Nuada yields to him. When Lugh defeats Bres, the war ends - and with Lugh's death, the Kingship reverts to The Dagda.

This is different from the pattern in the Saintly material, which seems tidier - "Lugh" arrives, the Dagda mediates the kings of Night and Dusk to submit to him. The Saints seem to be drawing from a different, perhaps later, mythic cycle.

Let's park the Sky - who's the Thunderer?

"The Thunderer"

Another strong PIE reconstruction is The Thunderer. This Warrior-God is associated with Blunt Weapons or Lightning, sometimes (maybe always?) Wind and Rain, and has one or more Chaoskampfs: struggles against a watery or serpentine monster, or a monster in or about water.

Scholars are divided on whether the Thunderer shares some identity with the Sky Father - it certainly seems that he did in Gaelic myth.

The Thunderer is often the King of the Gods of the "present". Among the Greek Gods, Zeus appears to be a combination of the Thunderer, the "Eternal-Summer-King" or "Mitra" god (so, Lugh) and a latter Sky-Father god (after Ouranos). In Hindu myth, Indra is King. In Irish, the "forever king" of the Tuatha Dé is Bodb Dearg, who is a slippery character to place - but his name-particle "Dearg" (meaning "deep red") may be related to the name "Erc".

The Thunderer and the Waters

As the Sky is the divider of the Cosmic Waters, the Thunderer also has a watery-struggle or "Kaoskampf" myth, where he battles a monster - tentacled or multi-headed or draconic - to liberate waters (rain) or to drive off floods. Indra defeats Vṛtra, Thor (initially) defeats Jörmungandr, Heracles defeats the Hydra. The Dagda battles a tentacled monster, usually translated as an "Octopus" (alternatively perhaps, "Cuttlefish"), and upon defeating it a magical ocean is driven back to reveal the plain of Muirthemne.

In fact, there are usually other Kaoskampfs - and the importance of the water often becomes figurative or gets sidelined entirely. These less-literal Kaoskampfs often figure a water-goddess instead of a monster, but the water itself isn't always the point anymore. Thor throws a stone at the Giantess Gjálp to stop her urine or menstrual fluids from swelling a river, so he may cross. The Dagda meets the Mórrígan where she stands astride two rivers - perhaps even as their source - and their union wins her essential support in the upcoming war with the Fomhoire. Fergus mac Róich fails to (verbally) stop the river-waters flowing from Medb's urination/menstruation.

Lajoye & Oudaer speculate convincingly that these battles echo cosmogonic or apocalyptic myths, so their outcome has wider significance even when the scope is reduced. The Dagda "wins" the favour of the Mórrígan, and so the Tuatha Dé win the war. Thor "defeats" Jörmungandr early in the cosmic cycle (I surmise it so, because the Gods haven't yet settled their yearly feast arrangements!), but later they kill one another at Ragnorok. Fergus mac Léti first survives a battle with his water-monster, but later they kill one another in a conflict resembling Thor and Jormungandr (credit to T.M. for this). Fergus mac Róich "fails" to stop the waters of Medb, shortly before their defeat. Fergus is later slain while sporting in the water with the same sometime water-goddess, Medb.

The Sky in the Silt

If we riff from the Sky Father's division of the Cosmic Oceans, to create space in the vertical orientation for the world, then we can interpret these Kaoskampfs as being the subsequent act that separates or manages water in the horizontal - a within-world repetition of the Cosmogonic mastery of water.

The Thunderer, then, is the one who's enacting line 9 of the Book of Genesis - separating sea and land, mediating the controlled fall of freshwater rain from the Cosmic Ocean Above, shaping them into rivers to avoid destructive flooding, and holding back the Seas to expose/preserve land.

And, returning to our Saint Déaglán, what is it that he does with the first land he sets foot on upon returning to "Ireland"? He strikes the shoreline with his Crosier and drives back the waters, just as The Dagda does with his magical club/staff. Lacking a sea monster to assault in a classic Kaoskampf, a boy is added for him to injure; because springs emerge from where the blood falls, Lajoye & Oudaer surmise that initially the blood was that of his foe.

Déaglán's Other Mythos

In fact, Déaglán's hagiography is replete with Sky and Thunderer myths, besides his "precosmic" status as a forerunner of Patrick, his sponsorship of Lugh upon his arrival, and his driving off of the sea to reveal land:

• A sign at his birth, a fiery ladder, recalls a symbol of the Egyptian firmament.
• His bell, the "Duibhín Déagláin", is probably the Cauldron of The Dagda, as his Crosier matches the Dagda's Club.
• His destruction of a town that rejects him (Ait-mBreasail) is a classic sky-smiting myth.
• But he also quenches a runaway fire with his staff - suggesting rainfall.

The Sky-Horse

"Eochaid" is a key name of The Dagda, and simply means "Horse" or "Horselike" (though previously thought to mean "Horseman" (2).

The Horse (and Chariot) is an enduring Solar/Sky image in PIE mythology. The primary Vedic Sky-God, Dyaus, was seen at times as a Horse, as was his son/continuation Savitar. Zeus and Ouranos do not regularly appear as Horses, but the Waters-associated Poseidon (compare: Nuada) is strongly associated with them - as is Nuada.

An Dagda and Fergus have strong Horse-imagery, and Lajoye & Oudaer separately have written on the Horse-like nature of the Dagda and Fergus, particularly with women and near/in water (Lajoye, 2012; Oudaer, 2021).

Wrap-Up

The names Fergus, Fergal, and Declan are in widespread use. It's possible that "Eoghan" (or "Eoin", cf. the Welsh name "Owen") meaning "Yew-Born" might be a name of The Dagda also, if it's not a name of a son of his: I'm not yet sure. As much as "Eochaid" is glossed "Horse" (usually "Ech"), it may also be a pun-spelling to link him to the Yew ("Eo").

The Dagda has many places, but for today's Saints let's point particularly to Ardmore in Waterford, and to various sites in West Kerry linked to Earc or "Mac an Dégaidh".

Animal associations should be obvious by now; An Dagda or "Eochaid" is principally a Stallion.

Tree associations to the Dagda, and Thunderers generally, include Oaks but perhaps also Pines. His names suggest an association with Yew, especially if Eoghan turns out to be a name of The Dagda's, too.

His calendrical associations are especially tied to Samhain, but feast-days for his Saints are also peppered widely.

As a possible god of Music, potentially anything would be seen as appropriate to The Dagda, but maybe especially Harps and other Strings.

Footnotes

1. Even his epithet "Ollathair" ("Great Father"), matches Dyēus' epithet "ph₂tḗr" ("father")
2. Amusingly, Lajoye's 2012 paper on this glanced off St.Declan in examining a background character named Eochaid.

Bibliography

• Sayers, William (1988) "Cerrce, an archaic epithet of the Dagda, Cernunnos, and Conall Cernach." Journal of Indo-European Studies vol. 16.
• Oudaer, Guillaume (2021) "Le Dagda, La Mort de Fergus mac Róich, at l'Aśvamedha". Études Celtiques, https://doi.org/10.3406/ECELT.2021.2611
• Lajoye, Patrice (2012) "Le Dagda en Etalon". Bulletin d'Information de la Society Belge d'Etudes Celtiques, N.219, 2012.

Coming Up (Prone to Cancellation!)

• 11th Aug: Athracht, another complex female deity blurring the lines this time between the waters and the heavens.
• 23rd Aug: Éoghan, who might be Bonus Dagda, or who might be akin to the Divine Twin.
• 12th Sep: Ailbe of Emly, perhaps an early pre-cosmic Divine Twin, akin to Vishnu