Danu is a goddess, but she is not mentioned very often in the Celtic pantheon. It is odd that a whole race of people are named after a goddess who plays little in their mythos. You also can not consider the Goddess Danu as a Mother Goddess because the Irish Celtic people did not have this concept.

It is also important to note that the Celtic people considered their deities as another life form, no more 'higher' or 'better' than themselves or their families. The words 'god' and 'goddess' therefore have a whole different meaning to them as it does to us. They were not worshipped in the same sense as we use the word. They respected and admired them not because they were divine but rather because they could do things that humans could not.
The Tuatha De Danann were also not considered immortal, they lived by the same physical laws as the Celts which included death. This is something that is very different, while nearly every other culture viewed their deities as superior and immortal the Irish Celts did not and must be kept in mind while studing them.

If we look at 'Tuatha De Danann' it is usually translated as The People of the Goddess Danu. Tuatha is People in the sense of a whole race. The Celtic people associated their gods and goddesses with various skills and abilities. A very big association with Danu is craftsmanship. Often in the legends the deity's name is interchangable with his or her skill, and by that we could come up with...
Tuatha De Danann as 'The People of Craftsmanship' or 'The Artistic People'. Which gives a better discription of them. The Tuatha De Danann were ordinary folk of the world, and it was used to define country people or common folk, like us, from the gentry of that day.

The root of Tuatha also means North. In the Irish Celtic mythos north is considered to be the source of all power. The Tuatha De Danann came from the North, here in the north they studied all the arts. The common people, the whole race, studied all the magical and powerful arts in the northern islands of the world.

"Tuatha de Dannan" (pronounced sorta like Too-ha day dah-nan) means "tribe of Dana" or "people of Dana", (also: Danu) the ancestress of these people, although some included in this group are some times listed as her siblings or husband (and since myths often evolve, esp. with new cultural influence, many of these may have at one time also been her children). They are the "last-but-one" occupiers of Ireland, who displaced the Fomorians, and were in turn displaced by the Milesians, or Celtic Irish. This according to their folklore.

The Tuatha were mighty beings, somewhere between mythical super-humans and deities, and some people do worship them as such. They are imtimately connected with fairy lore. They are seen in lots of different ways, but often as something like the rulers of the fairy world, which is also populated by various nature spirits, and the souls of the dead.

The story goes, that when defeated by the Milesians, they withdrew into their strongholds, the "Fairy Mounds", which are gateways to the otherworld/underworld/fairy world/land of the dead/land of the gods, etc.
The most famous of these is Brugh na Boine (sp?) on the boyne river in Northern Ireland. They are still seen in old sacred sites throughout Ireland.

They are an endlessly fascinating subject of study...and not limited to Ireland, if you look at other folklore and different names.

The children of Dana were: Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba. Theses were the Dei Dana. They were a triple gaod called Brian, who had one son, named Ecme (Knowledge or poetry).

When Danu gets mixed up with Brigit, we also see that she has another son with Bress named Ruadan. But he is killed when he is spying for the Fomorians during the Second Battle of Mag-Tured. He was welcomed warmly by the Tuatha, and even had Goibnu make him a spear at his forge. Later he returns, and tries to sabatoge the Tuatha by killing Goibnu himself. Goibnu then withdraws the spear and returns the blow to Ruadan killing him.

A better way to view the Tuatha is probably "culture." In reality, the word translates bests as family or clan. The Tuatha de Danann were believed to be the the merged Aquitana and Belgae Celts...while the first inhabitants of Ireland were probably a mixture of mainland Belgae and Scottish Picts who crossed over the land bridge between the two islands at Latharna (corran).

The only problem with this theory is that the Picts possessed an Azilian toll tradition where as the early Irish had an Campigian tradition.

This a very simplistic overview of the time periods that I often tend to mention when discussing Ireland..... The Mesolithic is also the time of the moundbuilders, which are thought to have possible come to Ireland through northern Africa. The only problem with thisa theory is with the Kilgreany man. There is a lot of controversy as to whether or not he was of this age.....but shortly afterwards, we know tht there were some people that were there, and thus this is what we have to work with when evaluating the brugh on the Boyne River...

MESOLITHIC
Kilgreany B, a human male, is found in the southern caves of Ireland. He is the earliest of all the specimens found so far. Although, it is believed that future excavtions in the area might reveal more.

BRONZE AGE
1600-800 BC
The Celts are in Western and Southern Gaul.

EPIMEGALITHIC
1200-200 BC
Alpine "Beaker People" enter Ireland via Britian.

HALSTATT CIVILIZATION
800-400 BC

Furness
Burial Mound
430-580 BC
Kildare, Kildare Co.

Du'n Ailinne
Hilltop Enclosure
390 BC-520 AD
Kildare, Kildare Co.

500 BC
The Celts invade Southern Gaul and Northern Italy.

400 BC-0 AD
LA TE'NE CIVILIZATION

IRON AGE
200 BC-500 AD
Druids migrate to Ireland, being forced by the Romans. They begin to institute Ogham and the enforcement of law. Those fleeing the Romans from other lands bring the beginnings of Christianity with them.

69 AD
Venutius gains control of the Brigantians after his wife, Cartimandua,divorces him and elopes with his armor-bearer, Vellocatus.

800-700 AD
Merging of native Irish religion with Christianity.

548 AD
Frankish merchants sail up the Shannon River.

The Fomorians are probably the oldest gods if an age is going to be prescribed, and it is thought that the conquering culture turned them into what they were seen as....so I have been looking for such evidence to test this hypothesis...but with the lack of viable evidence, this makes it extremely hard.

Plus, this is very interesting when we look and see that Tiernmas is credited with the discovery of the first gold mine and the first one to use metallurgy in Ireland. The god he followed was Cromm Cruaich, a god of meallurgy, whose stone it is said was covered in gold....Now, as we know, no gold mine is known of in present day, although many have searched for it....So it must be questioned where this legend came from...There is always some truth in the legends, we just have to find out the where it came from, and what parts were invented along the way.

It is well proven, that there were people living in Scotland long before there were people in Ireland.... They referrred to these Picts which came from the continent and had chosen to settle in Scotland. They were mainly a fishing society, with very very limited knowledge of boats, which is interesting. The area of land that they occupied was probably known for trade, and so the theory that a foreign culture came through there land and then over to Ireland is entirely likely. The first area of inhabitation in Ireland that has been found, suggests that they were there only seasonally to collect regional resources that were not available in their homeland. But, later evidence shows that whoever it was, that was there began making a permanent establishment. We also know that fairly early on, the Picts came over and began establishing themselves as well. We can see this by the emergence of the Azilian tool traditions near the Boyne River.

What I am trying to say was that Scotland was inhabited by these people long before Ireland was. In fact, Scotland in general was just inhabited before Ireland was.

In the story of the elopement of Diarmaid and Grainne, Diarmaid (one of the Fianna) is foster-son to the god Oengus macOc, himself son of the Dagda. I do'nt recall which of the Tuatha de Dannan, if any, is associated with Finn himself. The tales do not belong to the same cycle but do have some loose associations, in other words.

The Tuatha da Dannan and the Finna

Well, I *think* they are separate story cycles, prety much unrelated except that they came out of a similar people (the Irish, tho' of a later time and so somewhat changed). The Fianna were, if memory serves, which sometimes it does, a group of elite warriors under the leadership of Finn Mac Cuhmail, who is presented as either a giant or human hero, but may have originally been a god or evolved from one, much like Arthur or Robin Hood. His wife Sive (sp?) was a deer goddess who bore him a son named Oisin, who could shapeshift like his mother.

Oisin ended up traveling to "the Land of Youth", Tir na Oge (?) to marry Niave, a princess of that land. He lived with her in the otherworld for three years, and got homesick for the other Fianna. He went back on Niave's magic horse, but when he got back, hundreds of years had passed, and the Fianna the stuff of half-forgotten legends. He came across an old man stuck in a ditch, and as he helped him out, the strap of his saddle broke. As he touched the ground, Oisin became a withered old man, and the horse fled back home. This is the story he himself told, a couple of hundred years ago. Or at least by a man who claimed to be Oisin...but who knows?

And I believe that is about all I know about the Fianna. They were the ultimate in skill & honor. There is someone named "Macfinn" here, who no doubt could tell you more than I. I know tales were told of his father, Cumhaill, but I don't know them...

The Tuatha were sort of 'Greater Beings Than Ourselves', in a way, that the Irish ancestors displaced in invading Ireland.
They were highly skilled in mystical powers, and at their defeat they retreated into their hillside fortresses (i.e. the Otherworld, the world of the Sidhe or Faery) where they live to this day. They are venerated and respected and a little (more than a little, sometimes) feared, and placated. They are sighted every so often to this day.

Whether they were "gods" depends on your definition of "god". The attitudes of the Celts may (and almost certainly was) different than our own when it comes to gods. Also, they apparently practiced some sort of ancestor worship, so the belief that the Tuatha were "real" beings like people would not exclude them from also being deities. Especially when you take into account all the tales of interbreeding between Human and Sidhe folk...they must be the ancestors of half of Ireland, and many in America as well! After the Roman church cracked down on Pagan ways and Pagan elements in the Celtic Church, the people had, we might argue, to find some method to preserve their old ways and beliefs in as non-offensive way as possible, and legends of "fairies" and "heroes" may have done just that.

But no one will probably ever really know if the Celts (or any ancient, long gone culture) truly saw deity as anyone here does. But there are people to this day who revere, worship, follow, whatever, the Tuatha de Dannan as gods and goddesses in the same way as any other "god". So even if they weren't gods then, they sure are now.

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