Leabhar Gabhála Éireann

The Leabhar Gabhála Éireann when translated into English is normally called “The Book of Invasions” and it is the story of the six invasions of Ireland, a mythical history of Ireland.

Although this is a story of ancient Irish gods and heroes, all the versions of it seem to be riddled with Christian references. It also has come down to us in many versions all of which are missing part of the story. Even the version of the story featured in the Historia Brittonum, written just a few centuries before only features three of the invasions.

The story is incredibly Christianized. The six invasions were created to fit in with ‘The Six Ages of the World’, which was a popular idea in the early Christian world. Each and every wave of these six invaders can be traced back to Adam and Eve via Noah, including the Tuatha Dé Danann who, even as the text itself acknowledges, were otherwise known as the gods or the demonic deities of ancient Ireland.

This was all a deliberate and obvious attempt to show that Ireland's history was Biblical history, which was the only acceptable history around at the time the Lebor Gabála Érenn was compiled. As much as Irish myth might insist upon a time when the gods themselves were in charge, before the Irish came along, the Biblical scholars simply couldn't reconcile the existence of deities outside of God himself. So they set out to "prove" that the Tuatha Dé Danann were as mortal as anyone else. Hence they were descended from Noah, just like anyone else.

The Leabhar Gabhála Éireann as we know it now has evolved over the course of several centuries, with a number of different waves of invaders being added to the scheme until we ended up with the six we know today and then was tied in with the Biblical Six Ages.

Some versions of the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann mention that an earlier version of the story, compiled in the eighth century, insisted that Banba was the first settler in Ireland, not Cessair as the story now states. This has the potential to put a very different spin on things, for sure, especially seeing as the Tuatha Dé Danann as a whole don't seem to have become a part of the invasion scheme until relatively late, around the tenth century or so, maybe.

While we will probably never know what a pre Christian version of the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann might have been like, I have always wanted to read such a work. I have therefore taken it upon myself to construct such a work.

What I have tried to do with this ancient work is eliminate the Christian references and dismantle the attempts by the Christian monks, who wrote it down, to Christianize it. While doing this I have tried to put together a full recounting of all six invasions and thus construct a full uncontaminated version of the story in English.

The result is as you see it here. The full story can be read in order by clicking down the menu as the story parts are in order as you go down the menu.

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