The 2024 Olympic Games have ended, and Irish athletes performed admirably at the Games in Paris, France. Little is known about the fact that Ireland once had its own ‘Olympic Games’, according to some of our oldest traditions.
The Aonach Tailteann – the Tailteann Games – were said to have been instituted almost two thousand years before the birth of Christ, making them over a thousand years older than the ancient games staged in Olympia, Greece, which were revived in modern times as the world Olympic Games.
The Aonach (also spelt Oenach) sites were monument complexes where great annual assemblies were held. There were several of them, but the twelfth century Lebor na hUidre (Book of the Dun Cow) tells us about the principal sites:
There are fifty hills [mounds] at each Oenach of these: fifty hills at Oenach Cruachan, fifty hills at Oenach Talten, and fifty at Oenach in Broga.[1]
These three oenach sites correspond with the monument complexes at Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon, Teltown, Co. Meath and Brú na Bóinne, Co. Meath. Brú na Bóinne is the most famous monument site, containing the largest passage-tombs in Ireland and the greatest concentration of Late Neolithic henge monuments in Ireland. However, its assembly traditions are muted, and belong to the distant past.
Teltown (Tailtiu/Tailteann), on the other hand, is enormously important because the annual games or celebrations there seem to have continued for centuries and perhaps millennia.[2]
Teltown is located beside a bend in the River Blackwater, a tributary of the River Boyne (see photo at the top of this article). There are prehistoric monuments there, but not nearly as many or as impressively large as at Brú na Bóinne.
The earliest attestation of the great National Games at Teltown in the manuscripts written in the Middle Ages suggest their origin was associated with the death and burial of Queen Tailte, wife of King Eochaidh Mac Erc, the last Fir Bolg king of Ireland. Tailte was also the foster-mother of the Tuatha Dé Danann deity, Lugh Samildánach[3] (also called Lugh Lámhfada[4]). In fact, it was Lugh who instituted the Teltown Games in honour of his foster-mother after her passing.
[Tailte] was the learned daughter of Mag Mór, a distinguished king of Spain, who reigned in the nineteenth century before the Incarnation; and her husband, Eochaidh (Aughy), was slain in the historic Battle of Moytura, fought between the Firbolgs and the invading colony of Tuatha Dé Danann, on the plains of Cong, in County Mayo, in 1896 B.C.[5]
Nally tells us that the famous Olympian Games, which he said were ‘but a pale reflex of those at Tailteann’, would not be inaugurated until more than four centuries after ‘Lugh Lámhfada summoned ‘all the men of Erinn’ to celebrate the Tailteann ceremonies on the plains of Royal Meath’.[6]
The festival celebrating the ripening of grain, which probably had its origins in deep prehistory, was known as Lughnasa,[7] and that’s when many of the Aonachs were held, including at Tailteann. The name Lughnasa derives from the násad (assembly or festive gathering) of Lugh, who inaugurated the games in honour of his foster mother.
Nally informs us that the institution of an Aonach arose from the burial at that location of ‘some great or renowned personage’ and a national assembly was called together, usually on the order of the king, to celebrate the funeral rites of the deceased. The king also availed of the gathering to improve the established laws of Ireland.[8] The assemblies were attended by all the vassal kings, chiefs, nobles and ‘vast multitudes of people’ from all parts of Ireland.[9]
The funeral games were called Cuiteach Fuait, and consisted of athletic, gymnastic and equestrian contests of many kinds, and included running, long-jumping, high-jumping, hurling, quoit-throwing, spear-casting, sword-and-shield contests, wrestling, boxing, swimming, horse racing, chariot racing, spear or pole jumping, slinging contests, bow-and-arrow exhibitions and other displays of physical endurance and skill.
There were also literary, musical, oratorical and story-telling competitions, singing and dancing contests, and tournaments. Furthermore, there were competitions for goldsmiths, jewellers and artificers in precious metals; for spinners, weavers and dyers; and the makers of shields and weapons of war.
There was also a great fair at the Aonachs (the proper plural Irish word is Aonaigh). All kinds of food, merchandise, livestock, household utensils, cloth, arms and articles of wearing apparel were displayed and were for sale.
The Aonaigh were held under strictly regulated conditions and prescribed bye-laws. Transgression of these bye-laws was punishable by death. The Aonach was a time of truce, so that no one could be arrested for a previous offence, or distrained or detained, or ‘otherwise vexatiously interfered with, either whilst going to, attending at, or returning from the Aonach’.[10]
All feuds, fights and quarrels were strictly forbidden and severely dealt with. All known criminals were rigorously excluded from both the games and the assembly.
Women had special protection at the Aonaigh too. They were not, as at Olympia, excluded, but in fact special measures were taken to attract their attendance. A curious match-making mart and marriage ceremony were established on the grounds. An enclosure with stands was provided exclusively for women at the Aonach.
Here is what Nally relates about the origin of the Tailteann Games:
Eochaidh had many business dealings with Spain, and had married Tailte, daughter of Magh Mór (which literally means ‘Great Plain’), a famous Spanish king. Tailte was not just beautiful and stately, but one of the most learned and accomplished ladies in all of Europe, being its ‘most distinguished druidess’.[12]
Tailte came to Ireland as Eochaidh’s queen more than 1,900 years before the Christian era, and had her abode at the royal palace of Tara.
At a certain time before her husband’s passing, Tailte personally chose her own burial place, a beautifully situated spot on the sunlit slopes of Caill Cuain, in the middle of a forest. At her request, the encircling trees were cut down and a large area on the green hillside reserved for her leacht (tomb).
‘It was a truly beautiful place, and could be seen from the doors of her favourite palace (at Teltown) some twelve miles away.’[13] This burial place is undoubtedly the megalithic passage-tomb cemetery of Loughcrew, Co. Meath, which lies just over a dozen miles from Teltown.
Fosterage was a custom of the time, and Tailte had taken a noble youth to be fostered at her court. He was Lugh Mac Eithlenn, and although of the Tuatha Dé Danann (who had slain her husband), she ‘brought him up most carefully under her own personal instruction’.[14] She educated him in every art, science and mystery then known, and afterwards he became one of the most accomplished warriors in Ireland.
King Lugh lived at his great palace at Nás (now Naas, Co. Kildare), and on the death of Tailte at her residence at near Teltown, Co. Meath, he interred her in her ‘green circle on the distant hills’ of Caill Cuain (now called Sliabh na Caillighe). She died on the ‘Kalends of August’ and was the funeral rites and games were celebrated by Lugh.[15]
The Tailteann Games continued to be celebrated until at least the 12th century AD. It is recorded that in 1169AD, the last King of Ireland – Roderick O’Connor – celebrated the games with the people of the northern half of Ireland (Leath Chuinn) and it is said that ‘their horses and cavalry were spread out on the space extending from Mullach Aidi (now Hill of Lloyd near Kells, Co. Meath) and Mullach Tailteann (now Slieve na Calliagh).[16]
Even long after the Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12th century, the Tailteann Games continued to be held, and there are records of the games being held at Teltown as late as the 19th century.
As the Irish athletes in various disciplines continue to display their great skill, having won four gold medals and three bronze medals at the Paris 2024 Olympics, they can be proud of the long tradition of games in Ireland. The Teltown Games are said to predate the original Olympic Games by many centuries. A remarkable fact indeed.
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[1] See Murphy, Anthony (2019), Dronehenge: The Story Behind the Remarkable Discovery at Newgrange, Liffey Press, for lots more about this.
[2] Most of the information for this article about Teltown is derived from the 1922 book The Aonach Tailteann and the Tailteann Games – Their Origin, History and Ancient Associations by T.H. Nally.
[3] Lugh the ‘Many-Gifted’.
[4] Lugh of the Long Arm.
[5] Nally (1922), p. 12.
[6] Ibid, P. 13.
[7] MacKillop, James (1998), The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, p. 274.
[8] Nally (1922), p. 16.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., p. 23.
[11] Ibid., p. 26.
[12] Ibid., p. 27.
[13] Ibid., p. 28.
[14] Ibid., p. 29.
[15] Ibid., p. 30.
[16] Ibid., p. 35.
