popular contribution to medieval European literature,
inspiring imitations in many European languages.
JONATHAN M. WOODING
References and Further Reading
Burgess, Glyn, and Clara Strijbosch. The Legend of St. Bren-
dan: A Critical Bibliography, Dublin: Royal Irish Acad-
emy, 2000.
McCone, Kim. Echtrae Chonnlai and the Beginnings of Ver-
nacular Narrative Writing in Ireland. Maynooth, Ireland:
McCone, 2001.
Mac Mathúna, Séamus. Immram Brain: Bran’s Journey to the
Land of the Women. Tübingen, Germany: Niermeyer 1985.
———. “The Structure and Transmission of Early Irish Voyage
Literature.” In Text und Zeittiefe, edited by H. L .C. Tristram,
313–357. Script Oralia 58. Tübingen, Germany: Niermeyer,
1994.
Meyer, Kuno, trans. Immram Brain. (The Voyage of Bran.) The
Celtic Christianity e-Library. http://www.lamp.ac.uk/celtic/
BranEng.htm.
Ó hAodha, Donncha, trans. Immram Snédgusa ocus Meic
Riagla (The Voyage of Snédgus and Mac Riagla). The
Celtic Christianity e-Library. http://www.lamp.ac.uk/celtic/
SnedgusaVerse.htm. First published as “The Poetic Version
of the Voyage of Snédgus and Mac Ríagla.” In Dán do Oide:
Essays in Memory of Conn R. Ó Cléirigh, edited by A.
Ahlqvist and V. Capková, 419–429 Dublin: 1997.
Stokes, Whitley, trans. Immram Ua Chorra (The Voyage of the
Uí Chorra.) Translated 1893. The Celtic Christianity e-Library.
http://www.lamp.ac.uk/celtic/UaCh.htm.
———, trans. Immram curaig Maíle Dúin (The Voyage of Máel
Dúin’s Curragh.) The Celtic Christianity e-Library.
http://www.lamp.ac.uk/celtic/MaelDuin.htm. First pub-
lished in Revue Celtique 9 (1888): 447–495; 10 (1889):
50–95.
Van Hamel, Anton, ed. Immrama. Medieval and Modern Irish
Series 10. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1941; reprinted 2004.
Wooding, Jonathan M., ed. The Otherworld Voyage in Early
Irish Literature: An Anthology of Criticism. Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 2000.
See also Aided; Echtrae; Hagiography
and Martyrologies; Pilgrims and Pilgrimages
INAUGURATION SITES
The kings and chiefs of medieval Gaelic ruling fami-
lies were ritually inaugurated at specially appointed
open-air assembly sites within their respective territo-
ries. Thirty inauguration venues have been identified
on the Irish landscape. Common to each of them is
their setting on low-lying but far-seeing hills. A pan-
oramic view of the territory over which the royal can-
didate was about to rule was fundamental to the Gaelic
inauguration ceremony. The land that constituted a
ruler’s dominion was considered his betrothed, and the
ceremony that conferred legitimate right to rule was
accordingly portrayed as a marital feast or banais ríghe
(literally, king’s wedding feast). The place-names of
inauguration sites tend to allude to royalty, to a sept
name, or to a hilltop monument and the topography of
the site. For instance the place of inauguration of Ua
Dochartaigh in the sixteenth century was Ard na
dTaoiseach (Height of the Chietains; Inishowen, Co.
Donegal) while Carn Uí Eadhra (Lavagh, Co. Sligo)
derived its name from that of the sept of Uí Eadhra
(O’Hara). In particular, the words ard (height), cnoc
(hill), mullach (top), tulach (hill), lec (flagstone), car-
raig (rock), carn (heap, pile or cairn) and cruachan
(heap, pile, hill) are recurrent in the place-names of
inauguration sites.
The range of archaeological monuments identified
with certainty as inauguration places includes hilltop
enclosures, more popularly earthen mounds, and less
frequently natural places, ringforts, and churches. Sacred
trees (bileda), stone chairs, inauguration stones and
stone basins are also associated with some sites. Irish
dynasties tended to appropriate existing prehistoric
ceremonial landscapes for assembly and inauguration.
The expedient purpose behind this was to visibly attach
the pedigree of a royal candidate to an illustrious past,
whether that took the form of an alleged burial place
of an eponymous ancestor of the sept or a legendary
heroic figure, or an ancient landscape associated with
renowned events.
Mounds define thirteen of the thirty known inaugu-
ration venues. Their lack of homogeneity confirms
their diverse origins. Some of them appear to be
reused, unaltered prehistoric sepulchral monuments.
Others show modifications, such as a flattened summit
or an upper tier, that could have been the direct result
of the adaptation of an existing prehistoric mound for
inauguration ceremonies, and still others may have
been wholly new additions to earlier ceremonial land-
scapes. The small summit diameters of some of them
suggest that they were essentially throne mounds
accommodating no more than the official inaugurator
and the royal candidate who sat in a stone chair on the
summit, or stood there, placing his foot on a stone.
The idea of the enthroned chief raised upon a mound
above the assembly is conveyed in a stylized and ret-
rospective illustration of the performance of the rite of
the single shoe during the inauguration of Ua Néill at
Tulach Óg (Cookstown, Co. Tyrone), on an unsigned
map of Ulster by Richard Bartlett or a copyist dated
circa 1602. The main body of evidence for the use of
mounds in the inauguration of Gaelic royalty lies in
the annals, prose tracts, and bardic poetry from the
twelfth century, but more particularly from the four-
teenth century onward. Among those documented are
Magh Adhair (Toonagh, Co. Clare), the inauguration
venue of the Dál Cais dynasty and their Uí Briain
successors; Carn Fraoich (Carns, Co. Roscommon)
where the Uí Chonchobair chiefs of Síol MuiredaigIMMRAMA