The name “the Morrígan” has multiple English translations. One of them – the “phantom queen” might exist because modern Celtic studies started in German universities while we were fighting our way free of the British colony.

The earliest academic celticists were Germans like Johann Kaspar Zeuss, and Ernst Windisch in Leipzig. It was them that gave us the ‘phantom queen.’

Irish paganism: the origin of ‘the Phantom queen’

To Zeuss and Windisch who worked in early indo-european studies. “Mor” looked like the middle low German “mār/mare” a word thats still used in the english word “nightmare” today.

Their “mor/phantom” interpretation ties in with the description of the Morrígan as different types of demon in the Lebor Gabala and the Táin.

Irish Paganism: Not the phantom the ‘great queen’.

Demonising a character in a story is a good sign that our scribes knew there was a paganism involved that would be proscribed in their day. It’s not intended as a genuine description.

In medieval literature, when scribes want to emphasise the genuine frightening aspect of the Morrigan when her people are at war they refer to her as the Badb. But the name mean’s the Great Queen and its only one part of a greater whole of the Great Queen.

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Clarke, M. (2014) ‘Demonology, allegory and translation: the Furies and the Morrígan’, in R. O’Connor (ed.) Classical Literature and Learning in Medieval Irish Narrative. Boydell & Brewer (Studies in Celtic History), pp. 101–122.

Ó hÓgáin, D. (2006) ‘Badhbh’, in The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopaedia of Myth, Legend and Romance. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, pp. 26

Ó Cróinín, D. (2005) ‘The reception of Johann Kaspar Zeuss’s Grammatica Celtica in Ireland and Britain, and on the Continent: some new evidence’, in Wollenschläger, M., Kreßel, E. and Egger, J. (eds) Recht – Wirtschaft – Kultur. Herausforderungen an Staat und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter der Globalisierung: Festschrift für Hans Hablitzel zum 60. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 85–91

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