She visited him in his dreams for a year, and all this time he could not touch her because she would disappear. The story tells how Oengus fell madly in love with a maiden who visited him while he slept. His father was the Dagda, the ‘good god’, a principal deity of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and his mother was Bóinn, or Bóann, the goddess of the River Boyne, which gets its name from her. He resided at Brú na Bóinne – the tumulus of Newgrange – and was often referred to as ‘Aonghus an Bhroga’. Oengus was a mythical chieftain of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who were the principal race of the otherworld – the gods – in ancient Irish mythology. One of the most striking swan myths associated with Newgrange is the story of the romance of Oengus (also sometimes spelt Aonghus) and Caer. The mute swans are resident all year round. Although awkward in take-off, which usually requires a long stretch of water or land to act as a 'runway', once in flight the swan comes into its own.Ī mute swan on the River Boyne. There is a certain grace and beauty encapsulated in the flight of the swan unmatched by other species of the bird kingdom. From there, the birds disperse to sites widely distributed throughout Ireland. The autumn landfall for these birds is in County Donegal. In the spring of 2004, there were 45 birds at this site, along with a further 15 to 20 mute swans. The flock at Newgrange varies in size from year to year, ranging from as few as 30 birds to as many as 226, the highest number ever recorded at the site, in the winter of 1987/'88. The most recent available estimate of the size of this population, from a survey carried out in January 1995, was of 16,000 birds. However, it is not known how long the birds have been coming to Ireland as statistics are unavailable for the preceeding centuries.Īll the whooper swans which visit Ireland are from the breeding population in Iceland. The whooper swan population was first officially recorded at Newgrange in the Winter of 1966/'67, but both whoopers and Bewick’s swans were recorded feeding on large open meadows and bogs in Co.

Newgrange is probably the only site in County Meath where whooper swans come in sizeable numbers each winter. Somewhere in the region of 15,000 to 20,000 swans land at Co Donegal and disperse from there to wintering sites around Ireland. The whoopers migrate to Ireland from Iceland for the winter months (which are warmer in this country) in large numbers. The fields near Newgrange provide a wintering ground for a large flock of whooper swans.

The enigma fable 3