Quote from Fyois;285911:
Kind of depends on which stories you're reading. Morrighan is anything from a shapeshifting Goddess to the Granddaughter of Nuadha (or Great Grand daughter, I get a little confused. Either way it brings up weird issues because apparently in mabi she and Nuadha are married, though far be it from me to remember when in G12 this was actually mentioned. Reference anyone?). What's consistent is she is one of many of the famous immortals in Celtic myths and usually she has some level of power. She's taken forms including crows, cows, wolves and an old women. She is still generally a goddess of war, revenge and also in some interpretations, fertility based on the cow thing. The animals explain her color scheme in game (white and black).
Just a continuation Fyois (from wikipedia)
She is also known as Phantom, Banshee, and Lilith;
"The earliest sources for the MorrÃgan are glosses in Latin manuscripts, and glossaries (collections of glosses). In a 9th century manuscript containing the Latin Vulgate translation of the Book of Isaiah, the word Lamia is used to translate the Hebrew Lilith. A gloss explains this as "
a monster in female form, that is, a morrÃgan".Cormac's Glossary (also 9th century), and a gloss in the later manuscript H.3.18, both explain the plural word gudemain ("spectres") with the plural form morrÃgna. The 8th century O'Mulconry's Glossary says that Macha is one of the three morrÃgna. It therefore appears that at this time the name MorrÃgan was seen as referring to a class of beings rather than an individual."
"The MorrÃgan is usually interpreted as a "war goddess": W. M. Hennessey's "The Ancient Irish Goddess of War," written in 1870, was influential in establishing this interpretation.
Her role often involves premonitions of a particular warrior's violent death, suggesting a link with the Banshee of later folklore. This connection is further noted by Patricia Lysaght: "
In certain areas of Ireland this supernatural being is, in addition to the name banshee, also called the badhb""
"The banshee can appear in a variety of guises. Most often she appears as an ugly, frightening hag, but she can also appear as a stunningly beautiful woman of any age that suits her. I
n some tales, the figure who first appears to be a "banshee" is later revealed to be the Irish battle goddess, the MorrÃgan. The hag may also appear as a washer-woman, or bean-nighe (washing woman), and is seen
washing the blood stained clothes or armour of those who are about to die."
"The MorrÃgan's earliest narrative appearances, in which she is depicted as an individual, are in stories of the Ulster Cycle, where she has an ambiguous relationship with the hero Cú Chulainn. In Táin Bó Regamna (The Cattle Raid of Regamain), Cúchulainn encounters the MorrÃgan as she drives a heifer from his territory. He challenges and insults her, not realizing who she is. By this he earns her enmity. She makes a series of threats, and foretells a coming battle in which he will be killed. She tells him, enigmatically, "I guard your death".
In the Táin Bó Cuailnge queen Medb of Connacht launches an invasion of Ulster to steal the bull Donn Cuailnge; the MorrÃgan, like Alecto of the Greek Furies, appears to the bull in the form of a crow and warns him to flee. Cúchulainn defends Ulster by fighting a series of single combats at fords against Medb's champions. In between combats the MorrÃgan appears to him as a young woman and offers him her love, and her aid in the battle, but he spurns her. In response she intervenes in his next combat, first in the form of an eel who trips him, then as a wolf who stampedes cattle across the ford, and finally as a red heifer leading the stampede, just as she had threatened in their previous encounter. However Cúchulainn wounds her in each form and defeats his opponent despite her interference. Later she appears to him as an old woman bearing the same three wounds that her animal forms sustained, milking a cow. She gives Cúchulainn three drinks of milk. He blesses her with each drink, and her wounds are healed. As the armies gather for the final battle, she prophesies the bloodshed to come.
In one version of Cúchulainn's death-tale, as the hero rides to meet his enemies,
he encounters the MorrÃgan as a hag washing his bloody armour in a ford, an omen of his death. Later in the story, mortally wounded, Cúchulainn ties himself to a standing stone with his own entrails so he can die upright, and it is only when
a crow lands on his shoulder that his enemies believe he is dead."