A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
A youth bearing a branch with nine red apples exchanges it with Cormac for the king’s wife, daughter and son. Its music suspends sorrow, including the family’s own distress at parting and the country’s grief afterward. After a year Cormac follows their path through magical mist. He encounters endless thatching and fire-making labours, then three heads over wells with differing inward and outward streams. A hospitable couple receives him and prepares a boar whose quarters cook as true accounts are told.
At the family reunion the host reveals himself as Manannán mac Lir, saying that he arranged the exchange and journey. He explains the labours as likenesses of human striving and the flowing heads as patterns of generosity. A tablecloth supplies requested food, a cup breaks at falsehood and reunites at truth, and the apple branch joins them as gifts. Cormac wakes with his family and these objects at Tara. This profile follows a specific medieval-derived literary episode and respects Manannán’s religious significance elsewhere; it does not reduce all representations of the figure to a fairy-tale invention.
Origins & earliest records
Jacobs says Alfred Nutt condensed an English version by S. H. O’Grady in the Ossianic Society’s Publications, volume III. His note cites fourteenth-century manuscript versions and an earlier catalogue reference. Those are attributed bibliographic claims; the selected 1895 adaptation is the directly read witness.
Records & interpretation
The youth’s bargain, revelation and explanations provide textual evidence for an Otherworld host and his narrated powers. Manuscript transmission concerns the history of a tradition, not zoological existence. Religious interpretations and other Manannán episodes require their own sources.
In the literature
“lord of the fairy Cavalcade”
How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery, pp204–209; p207; Manannan reveals himself
An initially unidentified youth trades a musical branch for Cormac’s wife and two children. After a year Cormac follows them through mist to a hall. Manannan identifies himself as the taker and explains that the bargain was meant to bring Cormac there.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
More Celtic Fairy Tales: How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery, pp. 204–209; note XLIV
Selected episode and relevant source note inspected. Earlier works named by Jacobs are attributed references, not falsely claimed as independently collated texts.
- 02
More Celtic Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales, selected1895 London David Nutt / New York G. P. Putnam edition, PG34453. Complete named tale and relevant source-note paragraph independently read.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
More Celtic Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales, selected1895 London David Nutt / New York G. P. Putnam edition, PG34453. Complete named tale and relevant source-note paragraph independently read.
- An initially unidentified youth trades a musical branch for Cormac’s wife and two children. After a year Cormac follows them through mist to a hall. Manannan identifies himself as the taker and explains that the bargain was meant to bring Cormac there.
How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery, pp204–209; Bargain, loss and invited otherworld journey
- Manannan interprets the apparently futile labour and three water-heads as human moral types, gives a food-producing cloth and truth-sensitive cup alongside the branch, and reunites the family. After sleeping, they awaken in Tara with the three gifts. This selected episode supplies no sea-monster anatomy.
How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery, pp204–209; Hospitality, moral explanation and returned gifts
This selected1895 literary witness is independently read; unshown mechanisms and missing later fates are not invented. No song, prayer or ritual formula quoted.
Primary source witness
Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales, selected1895 London David Nutt / New York G. P. Putnam edition, PG34453. Complete named tale and relevant source-note paragraph independently read.
- Jacobs explicitly credits Alfred Nutt’s condensation of S. H. O’Grady’s English version in Ossianic Society volumeIII. His Whitley Stokes manuscript and early-catalogue datings are reported scholarly claims, not independent manuscript verification.
Only the relevant source/comparison paragraph read and adopted; speculative diffusion and antiquity claims not asserted as proven.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textMore Celtic Fairy Tales, selected 1895 edition: How Cormac Mac Art went to Faery, pp. 204–209; note XLIVResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
