A Brief Visit to Tir na n’Og

Before the exploration of the world made it necessary for fairylands to be located in alternate universes, dimensional pockets, or far-off planets, it was pretty common for the writers of legends to set them in unexplored or barely explored regions near their own homelands. Such was the case for Tir na nOg, the home of the Irish fairies known as Tuatha de Danann, thought to be located to the west of Ireland, just off the map.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if more recent fictions that utilize Tir na nOg place it in a more hidden and/or mystical location, as Melody Grandy does when she has Zim visit the place in Zim Greenleaf of Oz.

Indeed, Tir na nOg is kind of similar to Oz, as it’s a land of plenty where no one ages or dies. Someone who used to be active on the Oz e-mail lists who went by “Boq Aru” proposed that Oz was actually named after the Irish fairyland. While I think Boq Aru’s conclusions usually stretch things about as far as Reachard’s arm, there might be something in that. Anyway, Tir na nOg actually means “Land of Youth,” and was also sometimes known as the Land of the Living and the Land Over Sea, as well as several other similar names. The fairies began living there after being driven out of Ireland itself (well, aside from those who chose to live underground). While Tir na nOg showed up in a fair number of old Irish tales, the most famous story involving the island is that of Oisin, son of the legendary hero Fionn mac Cumhaill. Oisin was famed as a singer and poet, and his name means “fawn,” due to his mother having been turned into a deer. He was brought to the Land of Eternal Youth by a fairy known as Niamh of the Golden Hair.

He lived with her on Tir na nOg for three years, while 300 years passed in the mortal world. Eventually, he became homesick, and Niamh told him he could go back and visit his old homeland as long as he stayed on the back of her horse Embarr. Of course, he fell off, and promptly aged those missing 300 years and died shortly after that. Some versions of the tale say that he was able to tell his story to St. Patrick before going to the grave. If this story sounds familiar, it might be because of its similarity to the Japanese tale of Urashima Taro, but the idea of time running differently in magic lands is hardly limited to these two.

The Narnia books, for instance, use this same basic principle, although time in Narnia actually runs faster than it does on Earth. In the Oz series, time seems to be pretty much the same in fairyland as in the Great Outside World, but there is an incident in The Lost King of Oz when Dorothy visits California and grows to the age she would have been if she hadn’t moved to Oz.

Her story works out more happily than Oisin’s or Urashima’s, though, as she’s able to get back to Oz and her childhood with some wishing sand. By the way, Oisin and Niamh had a son named Oscar, which is the first name of the Wizard of Oz. And the Wizard was at least sometimes played as a stereotypical Irishman in the stage play, so maybe there’s more to this connection than meets the eye. Probably just coincidence, but still pretty cool. By the way, in case you’re wondering why Zim visited Tir na nOg, it was to find his great-grandmother, a cloud fairy named Aurea. As far as I can tell, there’s no Irish precedent for this character, and her name sounds like the Latin for “gold” rather than anything Gaelic. Tir na nOg is now a popular name for Irish-style pubs, and I remember there being a show a few years back called The Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. Never watched it, but it looked pretty derivative of Power Rangers from the commercials.