The Dagda

The Dagda ("the good god" — good in the sense of being good at everything, not morally good) is the foremost among the Tuatha Dé Danann, associated with abundance, wisdom, strength, and fatherhood. He carries a great club so large it must be dragged on wheels, one end of which can kill nine men with a single blow while the other end restores the dead to life. He also owns a cauldron, the Undry, from which no company ever leaves unsatisfied, and a harp, Uaithne, that he can play in three modes — sorrow, joy, and sleep — controlling the emotions of everyone who hears it. Before the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, the Dagda meets the Morrígan at a river (the Unshin, in some tellings) on Samhain, and their union there is understood as a symbolic joining of the land's abundance with its power of fate and war, securing her aid in the coming battle. During the battle itself, his harp is stolen by the retreating Fomorians and hidden in their hall; the Dagda, Lugh, and Ogma pursue it, and when the Dagda calls the harp by name, it leaps off the wall and kills nine men on its way to him, after which he plays all three modes in succession — grieving the dead, then lifting the survivors' spirits, then lulling the enemy to sleep so the Tuatha Dé Danann can escape safely. The Dagda is also the father of several major figures, including Aengus (through Boann, wife of Elcmar) and, in some genealogies, Brigid. His dwelling at Newgrange (Brú na Bóinne) is famously claimed from him by Aengus through a trick of wordplay, and after the rise of the Milesians (the mythical ancestors of the Gaelic Irish), later tradition holds that the Dagda divides the sídhe — the ancient burial mounds and hills — among the Tuatha Dé Danann as their dwellings in the world beneath Ireland's surface.