The Tale of Lí Ban, the Mermaid Saint of Ireland
A recounting of an ancient legend
In Northern Ireland, there is a vast lake known as Lough Neagh…
It is the largest freshwater lake in Ireland and the British Isles, and is thought to have formed over 400 million years ago from tectonic events…
According to ancient tales in Ireland, however, the lake’s origin story is far stranger than the geologic record would suggest…
One that involved a mermaid who would one day become a saint.
Centuries before Christianity arrived in Ireland, there was a good king who ruled over Munster on the south of the island.
His name was King Cairid, and he had two sons: Eochaid and Ribh.
The prince Eochaid was the more rebellious of the two brothers, often vexing and displeasing his father the King, and Eochaid’s forbidden romance with his young stepmother Ebliu finally caused father and son to part forever.
Determined to win lands for a kingdom of his own and have the hand of Ebliu, Eochaid chose to flee the kingdom of Munster.
Ribh joined them, but the brothers soon parted as Ribh traveled westward and Eochaid and his party continued north.
Eochaid’s travels were untroubled until he and his people came to the palace of Mac Indor and desired to rest on its lands.
A tall man approached from the palace and told them that they must leave at once, but Eochaid did not listen and his people pitched their tents for the night.
The tall man left, but by the light of the moon, he returned that night and slew all of the party’s horses.
In the morning, the tall man returned and told them to leave — lest he slay all of the people as well.
“What evil you have done to us, by killing all our horses!” said Eochaid. “And now we cannot leave, even though we wish it, because without our horses we cannot travel.”
But then the tall man brought to Eochaid an enormous horse, far greater and more powerful than any other steed anyone had ever seen, and on this horse the people piled all their goods.
The tall man bid them to leave and never return.
“But have a care — you must keep this great steed ever walking onward, for the moment he rests, it will be the death of you.”
And so Eochaid and his people set out again for the north, in the season of autumn.
They traveled until they reached a land called the Plain of the Grey Copse, and it was there that they chose to settle.
Yet in the people’s haste to unload the horse of their belongings and attend to their own cares, no one thought of the tall man’s warning — to their peril.
For the moment the great steed stood still, a magic well began to bubble up from the earth beneath the stallion’s giant hoof.
Now Eochaid, when he saw the ice-cold fountain springing out of the ground, suddenly remembered the tall man’s grim words.
He quickly ordered his people to build a small house around the well, and chose a woman to watch over the it and keep the door locked always — lest its enchanted waters continue to grow.
Eochaid and Ebliu had two daughters: Airiu and Lí Ban.
Airiu was married to Curnan the Simpleton, and he was called this because he always going about and telling the people that a great lake was going to flow up out of the well, and that they should all be making boats.
Come forth, come forth, ye valiant men; build boats, and build ye fast!
I see the water surging out, a torrent deep and vast;
I see our chief and all his host o’erwhelmed beneath the wave;
And Airiu, too, my best beloved, alas! I cannot save.
But though Curnan foretold his wife’s doom, he had a different prophecy for his sister-in-law:
But Lí Ban east and west shall swim
Long ages on the ocean’s rim,
By mystic shores and islets dim,
And down in the deep sea cave!
No one listened to Curnan’s repeated warnings, thinking he was only a fool…
On one fateful day, the woman who was tasked with watching over the magic well forgot to lock the door to the well house.
Suddenly, now that the well was unwatched and unbound, the terrible spell awoke and was free to wreak destruction upon Eochaid’s little kingdom.
The earth opened up and water burst from the well in vast torrents, and it swept across the great plain in monstrous waves, burying the people’s houses beneath them as it formed an enormous lake.
In the flood, Eochaid and all of his family and his people were drowned, except for three people: Curnan the Simpleton, Conaing, and the princess Lí Ban.
Curnan would soon die of grief, and of Conaing, nothing more is told.
But though Lí Ban was swept away by the waves along with her people, some small, good magic was afoot amid the awful destruction, for her life was not lost.
Instead, the swirling waters carried the princess to the very bottom of the lake, where stood an enchanted chamber.
It was in this chamber that Lí Ban lived for a year, magically protected from the water, with only her lap-dog for company.
But though she was alive, she grew deeply weary of her underwater prison.
Through the window, she would gaze upon the fish swimming by and wished desperately that she could join them:
“If only I were a fish also, that I might swim in the wide sea!”
And so, Lí Ban prayed to whatever gods she knew that she would be made into a fish, so that she might be free.
And as by magic, the lower half of her body transformed into a fish’s tail, with the rest of her unchanged, and her little lap-dog — ever faithful to her — was changed into an otter, that he might be with her wherever she went.
And then — traveling by deep sea caves and secret passages, just as Curnan foretold — the mermaid Lí Ban took to the ocean.
She swam from sea to sea for three hundred years…
In the 6th century, there was a young Irish monk by the name of Beoan who was on a journey to Rome.
Sent by St. Comgall, the Bishop of Bangor, the monk Beoan was to meet with the Pope to settle certain matters of order and ruling.
When Beoan’s boat was crossing over the sea on the way to Rome, however, he and his crew were startled by the sound of beautiful singing coming from the waters below.
It was as though an angel were singing to them from the dark fathoms, and the men listened for a long while, enchanted.
At last, Beoan asked the waves, “Pray thee, what are these strange melodies, and who is singing them?”
To their amazement, out from the waves came the face and shoulders of a woman, and the shimmer of a great fish’s tail.
“Hale be thou, travelers!” said the woman. “I am Lí Ban, daughter of Eochaid and grand-daughter of Mairid. It is me you have heard singing, so that you might stop and hear what it is I have to ask of you.”
“What is it, fair lady? Why are you here in these waters?” asked Beoan.
“For three hundred years I have lived in the sea,” answered Lí Ban, “and a time soon approaches that I must leave it. I have come to find you today to ask that you meet me on this day in one year’s time at the mouth of the River Larne which flows into Lough Neagh. Come there with your boats and fishing nets, and take me from the waters.”
“I will do as thou asks of me,” said the monk Beoan, “if thou will grant me one reward.”
“What reward is this?” asked Lí Ban.
“That whenever you die, fair maid, you will be buried next to me in my own monastery.”
And the mermaid, who perhaps knew better than anyone the loneliness of such a request, smiled.
“I will grant thee this. Farewell—farewell — till a year’s time!”
And so Beoan traveled to Rome and returned to Bangor, and he told St. Comgall and others at the monastery his strange tale of meeting the mermaid.
Soon a year had passed, and Beoan and a company of monks traveled westward to keep his promise to Lí Ban.
To the wonder of all the people watching, it was as Lí Ban had said: at the mouth of the River Larne, a mermaid was pulled from the waters in a fishing net.
The boat that delivered her from the river was kept half-full of water, and she remained there as people came to wonder at her and hear her story.
And as chieftains and others came to see her, there soon arose an argument about who was to care for her.
St. Comgall said that she was his responsibility, for she had been pulled from the water in the lands under his jurisdiction.
But another man named Fergus argued that because the fishing net belonged to him, then Lí Ban belonged to him also.
And the monk Beoan reminded them both of Lí Ban’s promise to him out on the ocean, and that if she should remain with anyone, it should be him.
And the three men fasted and prayed that an answer would be given to them.
Finally, an angel appeared and told one of the company:
“In a day’s time, two wild stags will appear, sent from lands where Lí Ban’s sister Airiu is buried. You must yoke a chariot to them and place the mermaid in the chariot, and wherever they carry her, she shall remain ever after.”
And the next day, the wild stags appeared just as the angel had said, and when Lí Ban was set in the chariot, they carried her swiftly to tech Dabheoc, the monastery of Beoan.
It was at the monastery that Lí Ban the Mermaid was given a choice: to be baptized and then die immediately and go to heaven, or to live on earth for three hundred more years and finally go to heaven at the end of those long centuries.
Lí Ban chose to go swiftly to heaven. St. Comgall baptized her and gave her the name Muirgen, which means born of the sea, and after she died, she was buried at the monastery, as she had promised Beoan.
And ever since, she has been counted among the holy women of Ireland as Saint Muirgen, and it is said that wonders and miracles have been wrought through her at the monastery of tech Dabheoc.
Background
I ran across this legend by chance a few weeks ago, and I thought it was so utterly strange and intriguing that I wanted to re-write it myself so more people could learn about it.
I’m not Catholic, but the stories of the ancient saints are often fascinating, and this one especially so!
I mean, a mermaid that’s a saint? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?!
It’s true that Saint Muirgen is not well-known, but she is listed in genealogies of ancient Irish saints and her feast day is said to be the 27th of January.
For the record, this isn’t a retelling, like my version of The Legend of the Blue Rose, but only a simplifying of the surviving legends.
The original stories have several peculiar and/or extraneous details, which I trimmed out to make the story easier to follow.
I hope I did it justice! I drew from two sources:
- Old Celtic Romances by P.W. Joyce (1879)
- “The Death of Eochaid” from The Book of the Dun Cow, which was translated by Standish Hayes O’Grady in Silva Gadelica (1892)
Curnan’s prophecy is taken directly from Old Celtic Romances.
Personally, I found the detail of waiting 300 years to go to heaven interesting, because that’s the same amount of time that the mermaid lives as a daughter of the air before being able to go to heaven in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid. (It’s quite different from the film!)
It makes me wonder if Andersen knew something about this obscure story, or if the concept had been handed down through other mermaid legends and folktales that I haven’t discovered yet.
The perfect excuse to sail away and conduct more research!
