Great queen of war and fate
The Morrigan is the great war goddess of Irish tradition. Her name is usually read as 'great queen', though an older etymology gives 'phantom queen'. She rarely fights with weapons; her instruments are prophecy, shape-shifting and dread. She settles over armies as a hooded crow announcing who will fall, or appears as a hag washing bloody gear at a ford, and those whose armour she washes are doomed. Texts often set her in a triad, the Morrigna, alongside Badb the scald-crow and Macha.
In the Tain Bo Cuailnge she comes to Cu Chulainn as a young noblewoman offering love. Refused, she attacks him during his ford-combats as an eel about his legs, a she-wolf stampeding cattle, and a hornless red heifer, and is wounded in each shape; she then tricks a triple blessing out of him in the guise of an old milking woman, which heals her. When Cu Chulainn finally died bound to a standing stone, his enemies dared approach only after a crow settled on his shoulder, understood to be the Morrigan. In Cath Maige Tuired she meets the Dagda at a river at Samhain, pledges her aid, and closes the battle with a double prophecy, first of peace and plenty, then of a world sliding into ruin.
Modern Celtic revival and fantasy writing have remade her as a template of the triple goddess. Whether Morgan le Fay of Arthurian romance descends from her remains an open scholarly question.
