The Otherworld
Mounds, caves, islands and water — the edges where the ordinary world thins.
The tradition
Irish literature and folklore contain many traditions of supernatural realms existing beyond or alongside the ordinary human world.
Different stories associate supernatural encounters with síd mounds, caves, islands, water, ancient monuments and other liminal landscapes.
Time, ageing and ordinary human rules may behave differently in Otherworld narratives.
These traditions help explain why the Irish landscape itself plays such an important role in mythology and folklore.
Oweynagat at Rathcroghan has a particularly strong traditional association with the supernatural and Otherworld tradition.
The world behind the cards
The Morrígan, the Fairy Host, the Púca, the Banshee and the Silver Branch all belong to this side of the tradition: encounters at the boundary rather than battles on a field.
Not one single place
The Irish Otherworld is not one universally consistent realm, and archaeology does not show that any cave or mound is literally a supernatural portal.
