Clíodhna - E. L Hunter

Clíodhna had once been a queen among the Tuatha Dé Danann, Ireland's old gods, with a realm off the Munster coast. Three bright birds attended her, and their song could heal the sick or lull the grieving to sleep. As the country turned Christian and its gods faded into fairies, she dwindled into an omen, the wailing woman whose cry told a family one of them would die.

Her own story ends at the water. She left the Otherworld for a mortal man, and while she slept on the shore a wave carried her out to sea. That tide still breaks on the Cork coast, and they call it Tonn Chlíodhna, the Wave of Clíodhna. The goddess who keened for the dead had herself drowned, in the water that now carries her name.

Clíodhna is what a god becomes when a religion ends but the people are not ready to let go. She was never worshipped across all of Ireland like Brigid or the Morrígan; she stayed in the folk memory of Cork and Kerry, long after the greater gods became names on a page. Munster is still telling her story, and this book is one more retelling.