THE HISTORY OF AONACH TAILTEANN

For more than a thousand years, the people of Ireland gathered every Lúnasa at Tailtiu in County Meath for Aonach Tailteann, the great royal fair. Legend says the god Lugh founded it as funeral games for his foster-mother Tailtiu, who died clearing the plains of Ireland for farming. Under the High Kings it grew into a festival of athletic contests, horse racing, music, storytelling, law-making and trade, where couples could even enter a trial marriage by handfasting. The last fair held in the old way was in 1169, the year the Normans landed. The Irish Free State revived the name for the Tailteann Games of 1924, 1928 and 1932. In 2027, the Aonach returns to the Boyne valley at Slane Castle.