Boann

What it is

Boann, also spelled Boand, is a goddess of Irish tradition and the figure behind the River Boyne, called Bóinn in Irish. The river runs through Meath, a historic province of Ireland, and the woman and the water are one thing in the texts. She belongs to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the supernatural people of Irish story, and is named as a daughter of Delbáeth and sister of Befind. Her husband is given as Nechtan in some accounts and Elcmar in others. By her lover the Dagda she is mother of Aengus. She also watches over her sister's son, the hero Fráech.

Where it comes from

The genealogy and the birth tale come from Lebor Gabála Érenn and Táin Bó Fraích, while the making of the river is told in the Dindsenchas, a body of Irish place-lore. Her name is read in that place-lore as 'white cow', from bó fhionn, and there she is called White Boand. Ptolemy's Geography of the second century records the river as Bouvinda, which may come from a Proto-Celtic form with the same sense. Segais is given as another name for her, and from it comes the Well of Segais. A well in Tír na nÓg, with its own hazels and salmon, is thought to share a common origin with her story.

Tools and materials

In the tale of the well, nine hazel trees stand around the Well of Segais. Their nuts drop into the water and are eaten by the speckled salmon, and both nut and fish carry wisdom in Irish myth. A second set of objects appears in Táin Bó Fraích, where Boann equips Fráech from the store of the Sídhe: cloaks and tunics worked with animal figures, jewelled spears, swords with gold hilts, horses hung with gold bells, silver-chained hounds, and a company of trumpeters, jesters and harpers. He uses the display to impress Medb and Ailill.

Peoples and places

The legend belongs to Ireland and to the Irish-language texts that preserve it, and Boann is counted among the Tuatha Dé Danann. A poem in the place-lore sets her beside rivers of other lands: the Severn, the Tiber, the Jordan, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The same poem heaps up by-names for stretches of the Boyne, among them the River of Segais, the Great Silver Yoke, the Roof of the Ocean, Banna and Lunnand. Related tales of a figure called Buan, whose name means enduring, are told elsewhere in the same tradition.

What people believe

Behind the stories lies a world where water, wisdom and time are linked. The Well of Segais holds knowledge, and its nuts and its salmon stand for it. To walk around the well tuathal, against the sun's direction, is to challenge it, and the water answers by rising. In the Aengus tale the Dagda halts the sun so that a single day stretches across nine months, and the Irish word for solstice, grianstad, means sun-standstill. Boann's gifts to Fráech are described as the raiment of the Sídhe, the otherworld dwellings.

When it is done

One reading of the Aengus tale ties his conception to the midwinter beam that reaches the inner chamber at Newgrange, and the Irish word for solstice, grianstad, means sun-standstill. On that reading the child stands for the sun's rebirth at the turning of the year.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Commentators have proposed that the conception of Aengus encodes the midwinter illumination of the passage tomb at Newgrange, when sunlight reaches the inner chamber, and that the child stands for the reborn sun. The likeness between Boann's hazel well and the Well of Knowledge in Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise, with its nine purple hazels, five streams and five salmon, is taken to point to a shared origin. Writers also note that no Celtic text makes Boann the mother of Brigid, and some argue that stories of lesser goddesses were gradually folded into Brigid's.

Compare and confuse

One Buan, called White Buan, is named as a man, the father of Baile; another is the wife of Mesgegra, king of Leinster, who dies of grief and has a hazel grow through her grave; and the hazels of Buan give their name to the Well of Knowledge. Eithne is another name given for Boand as Elcmar's wife, and Segais is an alternative name for the goddess herself.

Today

Modern Paganism sometimes treats Boann as Brigid, or as Brigid's mother, though the medieval Irish texts say nothing of the kind. Some present-day writers argue that the tales of several lesser goddesses with similar concerns were absorbed over time into Brigid, the goddess who later became a saint. Her name also lives in the river's Irish form, Bóinn, and in the many by-names the old poem gives its stretches.

Questions people ask about Boann

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Boann on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data