A tract on Nemed’s ancestry and descendants

Abstract

This paper presents a brief tract preserved in two copies, both of them in the Great Book of Lecan, concerned with some of the legendary settlers of Ireland. The text may be earlier than Lebor Gabála Érenn, dating possibly from the tenth century, and its doctrines differ from those of that work in several respects. Particularly interesting is its account of the Túatha Dé, whom it associates with contemporary magical practices, and for whom it claims some kind of ‘worship’ by the practitioners of various arts.