Nuada Airgetlám

What it is

Nuada belongs to Irish myth as the first ruler of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the people said to have settled Ireland before later arrivals. His byname, Airgetlám, describes a hand or arm made of silver. Storytellers remember him mainly for two things: he gave up the kingship after losing a limb in combat, and he took it back once the injury had been repaired. He is counted among the figures of the Mythological Cycle, the oldest strand of Irish legendary history, and is generally taken to have been a god whose story was later told as the tale of a king.

Where it comes from

The name is written Núada or Núadu in Middle Irish and glossed as hero or champion. That sense, and the way the texts handle him, have led to the suggestion that a deity lies behind the king, recast as a human ruler, a process called euhemerisation. Linguists have looked for the root in a Celtic stem and further back in words for catching or acquiring, a line J. R. R. Tolkien pursued; Julius Pokorny proposed a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to acquire, use or go fishing, while Matasović found a link to a Proto-Celtic word for need or compulsion hard to sustain. In Britain and Gaul his counterpart is Nodens.

How it is done

The injury is told in stages. At the first battle of Mag Tuired the Fir Bolg champion Sreng struck off Nuada's arm. The Dagda shielded him, and fifty of the Dagda's men bore him away. Because the Tuatha Dé held that a king must be whole, Nuada could not stay ruler, and Bres replaced him. Then Dian Cécht, a physician, and Creidhne, a wright (a maker or craftsman), fitted Nuada with a silver arm that worked like a living one. Later Miach, Dian Cécht's son, gave him an arm of flesh and blood.

Tools and materials

Two objects stand out. The first is the silver limb, the work of a healer and a craftsman together, later swapped for a hand of flesh. The second is Nuada's great sword, which numbers among the Four Treasures, the prized objects the Tuatha Dé were said to have carried to Ireland from their cities. A smaller oddity comes from The Fate of the Children of Tuireann: his doorkeeper has only one eye, and the brother healers Miach and Oirmiach replace it with one taken from a cat.

Peoples and places

The stories set Nuada among the Tuatha Dé Danann and range them against the Fir Bolg, the inhabitants of Ireland before them, and later against the Fomorians, their tribute-taking enemies. The first battle at Mag Tuired turns on how much of the island each people should hold; afterwards Sreng is offered a quarter of Ireland and picks Connacht. Norway appears once, as the home of Aengaba, who takes a mortal wound fighting on Nuada's side. His name also clings to later groups and places: a branch of the Delbhna in County Roscommon was called the Delbhna Nuadat.

What people believe

Behind the story lies a rule about kingship: the Tuatha Dé held that a ruler had to be unmarked in body, so a lost arm cost Nuada his throne even though he had led his people. The same world is peopled by rival supernatural nations, the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians, the second of whom are likened to an opposing force in other mythologies and who exact tribute while Bres rules. Nuada is generally understood as a god in origin, a reading supported by his Welsh and British counterparts.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Study of Nuada has centred on his name and on what kind of figure he was. The equation with Nodens, a deity known from Britain and Gaul, and with the Welsh Nudd, is the usual route, and the later Welsh name Lludd Llaw Eraint is thought to have grown out of Nudd Llaw Eraint because the two sounded alike, a process called alliterative assimilation. Tolkien tied the name to a Germanic root for acquiring or catching, and heard in the silver hand an echo of the fame of Nodens the Catcher. No derivation is settled.

Compare and confuse

Nuada is set beside several figures. In Britain and Gaul, Nodens was linked with hunting, fishing, the sea and healing, and Roman writers paired him with Mars. In Welsh tradition the counterpart is Nudd, whose later form is Lludd Llaw Eraint. Two further comparisons concern missing hands: the Norse Týr, likewise matched with Mars, and Sabazios, another Indo-European god, who is tied to a sacred hand. Within Irish material Nuada may be the same person as Nechtan or Elcmar, both described as husbands of Boann.

Today

The figure survives in names. The Kildare town of Maynooth keeps him in Irish as Maigh Nuad, the plain of Nuada. A later High King, Nuadu Finn Fáil, and another called Nuadu Necht, bear the same name, as does the grandfather of Fionn mac Cumhaill on his mother's side. A rival of Conn of the Hundred Battles went by Mug Nuadat, Nuada's slave. The pre-Patrician part of the Annals of Inisfallen holds a fragmentary notice of him, in which every family in Ireland is said to descend from Nuada for his patience and for the support of his kin.

Questions people ask about Nuada Airgetlám

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle

• Nuada Airgetlám on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data