I Know That’s Not How the Myth Goes
September 2026 <> From the Vale
There is something I should probably establish about The Morrigan Cycle before anyone gets too deeply invested in checking my work against a mythology reference book: I know. Whatever historical inconsistency, mythological liberty, impossible timeline, suspiciously convenient reinterpretation, or outright violation of traditional folklore you have just discovered, there is a very good chance I already know about it. More importantly, there is an equally good chance I did it on purpose.
This is not because I failed to research Celtic mythology. Quite the opposite. I have read so much mythology while building Tír na nÓg that at this point I feel as though I should either receive an honorary degree or be gently escorted away from the mythology section of the library. I researched Irish mythology and Welsh mythology, read different versions and translations of the same stories, and discovered stories that cheerfully contradict other stories. I found genealogies in which apparently everyone is related to everyone else in at least three different ways, along with characters who are gods in one source, kings in another, supernatural beings somewhere else, and possibly entirely different people depending on which scholar is having the argument.
I took notes. I cross-referenced things. I even tried to make timelines, which in retrospect was adorable. Eventually, after doing all of that research, I made one very important creative decision: I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted.
The Timeline Is a Disaster. I Know.
If you attempt to place every mythological figure appearing in The Morrigan Cycle into one clean historical chronology, I have some bad news for you. It isn’t going to work, because the mythology itself was never kind enough to provide me with one convenient timeline in the first place.
Some of these stories originated hundreds of years apart, and some were written down long after the traditions that inspired them. Characters drift between mythological cycles, relationships change depending on the source, and figures who are enormously important in one tradition barely exist in another. Trying to force all of that into one tidy chronology might be a fascinating scholarly project, but I am not writing a scholarly project. I am writing fantasy.
My timeline therefore operates according to a much simpler principle: if I want two people to have known each other, they did. If traditional chronology suggests they lived several centuries apart, that is unfortunate for the chronology, but I am not going to lose sleep over it. Tír na nÓg has its own history, and the mythology that survived in our world is an echo of that history rather than a police report documenting exactly what happened and when.
That gives me room to take recognizable pieces of mythology and arrange them into the history my story needs. I can connect people differently, move events, combine traditions, and decide that two figures whose surviving myths place them in different periods were actually contemporaries. Occasionally this also requires me to stare directly at several centuries of historical inconsistency before quietly sliding them off the table and continuing with my day.
The Selkies Would Also Like to File a Complaint
Traditional selkie folklore tends to be rather particular about the skin. The seal skin belongs to the selkie and is intimately tied to the ability to move between seal and human form. Losing the skin, having it hidden or stolen, and eventually recovering it are central parts of many selkie stories, which means that traditionally speaking, a selkie cannot simply say, “Here, borrow my pelt for the afternoon.”
I am aware that this is not how it works. I read the folklore. I understand the significance of the skin, and then I looked at the world I was building and decided that in Tír na nÓg, maybe it can work differently.
Sometimes mythology gives me an idea that I like more than the rule that came with it, and I am willing to follow the idea instead. That does not mean I have no respect for the original folklore; it means I am using folklore as the foundation for a fictional world rather than attempting to preserve it under museum glass. There is a difference between saying, This is what traditional mythology says, and saying, This is what happened in Tír na nÓg. The first requires historical accuracy. The second requires me, which is considerably more dangerous.
And Then There Is Ceridwen
Ceridwen deserves her own section because Ceridwen and I have history. In many modern interpretations, she is treated fairly sympathetically: a wise woman, enchantress, powerful witch, keeper of inspiration and transformation. She is associated with wisdom, poetry, rebirth, and the magical cauldron whose contents ultimately produce Taliesin. It all sounds wonderfully mystical and spiritually enlightened.
Then I read the story of Gwion Bach, and Ceridwen’s career prospects in my series took a dramatic turn.
The basic mythology is wonderfully unhinged. Ceridwen prepares a magical brew intended to grant extraordinary wisdom and inspiration to her son Morfran, and Gwion is assigned to help tend it. Three drops of the brew accidentally land on him. He does not plot to steal them, mastermind an elaborate magical heist, or deliberately deprive Morfran of his destiny. Something goes wrong, Gwion receives the magic, and Ceridwen responds by deciding that the appropriate solution is apparently to kill him.
Gwion runs, Ceridwen chases him, and then the story becomes even more entertaining because merely chasing someone was apparently insufficiently dramatic. Gwion transforms into different animals in an attempt to escape her, while Ceridwen transforms into corresponding predators and keeps pursuing him. Eventually he becomes a grain of wheat, Ceridwen becomes a hen, and she eats him.
This is where I would like to emphasize that eating Gwion was a decision Ceridwen made entirely by herself.
Unfortunately for her, the story does not end there. Gwion is reborn through Ceridwen as Taliesin, which means Ceridwen now finds herself pregnant with the reincarnation of the boy she deliberately chased across multiple forms and then consumed. Apparently, she is furious about this development. At Gwion.
Ma’am. You ate him.
At some point, personal responsibility has to enter this conversation. According to the story, Ceridwen gives birth to Taliesin, recognizes who he is, and finds herself unable to kill him because he is beautiful. Her solution is therefore to put the baby in a bag or basket and throw him into the water instead. That was approximately the point where I closed the mythology book and concluded that I did not particularly like this woman.
Ceridwen had just volunteered to become a villain.
To Be Fair, I Changed Her Too
The Ceridwen who appears in The Morrigan Cycle is not simply the mythological Ceridwen copied into my novel. I took the pieces of the story that interested me and asked what kind of person my version of Ceridwen would have to be for those events to make emotional sense. The answer was someone vain, entitled, powerful, deeply resentful, and remarkably talented at interpreting the consequences of her own decisions as things other people have done to her.
In my version, the magical gift is intended for Morfran because Ceridwen considers his appearance an embarrassment and believes the gift will compensate for it. When Gwion accidentally receives what she intended for her son, Ceridwen does not see an accident. She sees theft. She hunts him, consumes him, and through her own actions causes his rebirth as Taliesin. Naturally, she then blames Taliesin for that too.
From Ceridwen’s perspective, Taliesin stole the gift that belonged to Morfran and somehow compounded the offense by forcing Ceridwen to become his mother. From my perspective, we are back to the same fundamental problem: Ma’am. You ate him.
That myth gave me the emotional foundation for their entire relationship. Ceridwen becomes the sort of person who can cause a catastrophe through her own choices and still genuinely believe she is the injured party. Taliesin becomes a living reminder of an event she has spent centuries rewriting in her own mind. The mythology gave me the event; I changed the motives, personalities, and consequences until they belonged to the story I wanted to tell.
So yes, Ceridwen is one of my villains. I am aware that this is not the only way she has been understood or portrayed, and I am perfectly comfortable with that. She lost her appeal with me somewhere around the point where she turned herself into a chicken and ate Gwion.
Mythology Is Messy Anyway
One of the things I genuinely love about working with mythology is that there often is no single definitive version waiting for me to reproduce faithfully. These stories survived because people kept telling them, and people have always changed stories in the telling.
Different communities emphasized different details. Oral traditions shifted over generations, while later scribes recorded older traditions through their own cultural and religious perspectives. Characters merged, names changed, motives changed, gods became heroes, heroes became fairies, and stories crossed borders and absorbed elements of other stories. Even when two sources are clearly talking about the same figure, they may disagree about who that person was related to, what they did, or why they did it.
Mythology has always been alive, which is one reason I do not feel especially guilty about joining the tradition. I want enough of the original material to remain that someone who knows the mythology can recognize what I am playing with, but recognition does not require duplication. Sometimes I want the connection to be obvious immediately; other times I want readers to realize much later that something they have already encountered was my version of a familiar myth.
And every once in a while, I hope someone who knows the original mythology reaches a particular scene, suddenly realizes what I have rearranged, and thinks, Oh, you absolute bitch. I see what you did there. That would make me extremely happy.
Research First. Then Commit Crimes.
There is one distinction I do care about. I do not want to change mythology because I could not be bothered to learn it first. I want to know what I am changing and why I am changing it.
If I move someone several centuries out of their traditional timeline, I want to know that I moved them. If I alter the mechanics of a supernatural creature, I want to understand the folklore I am departing from. If I take a figure who is often portrayed sympathetically and decide she is going to be a spectacularly terrible person, I want to know what stories created the sympathetic interpretation and what other stories gave me ammunition for mine.
Research gives me options. It shows me which pieces of mythology are remarkably consistent, which are disputed, which developed later, and which have already changed repeatedly over centuries of storytelling. Once I understand those pieces, I can decide which ones serve the world I am building, which ones I want to reinterpret, and which ones I am going to cheerfully ignore.
This is perhaps not what my teachers meant when they encouraged research, but I feel I have honored the spirit of the assignment.
Ultimately, I Have One Unfair Advantage
The characters in The Morrigan Cycle may be gods. They may be ancient beings with terrifying magical power who can shape the fate of worlds, command armies, foresee disasters, survive death, and inspire thousands of years of human mythology. Unfortunately for them, I still outrank them.
Because in Tír na nÓg, I am the god.
I decide how their magic works, who knew whom, and whether a selkie can loan somebody a pelt. I decide whether ancient timelines politely align or get shoved into a drawer because they are interfering with my plot. I also reserve the right to decide that Ceridwen is a bad guy because I reviewed the evidence involving the magical potion, prolonged shapeshifting pursuit, grain of wheat, chicken, cannibalism, unexpected pregnancy, angry reincarnation, and abandoned baby and found her defense unpersuasive.
My ruling stands.
So if you are reading The Morrigan Cycle and discover that I have gotten the mythology “wrong,” please understand that I probably know. I read the mythology, researched the history, compared versions, and studied the contradictions until I could probably have turned the whole thing into a dissertation.
Then I threw the dissertation out the window and wrote the story I wanted instead.
Welcome to Tír na nÓg. The gods live here, but I make the rules.