O'Donnell Lecture 2025: The Morrigan Revisited

This year's O'Donnell Lecture will be on 'The Morrigan Revisited' by Professor Ronald Hutton (University of Bristol) on 2 May 2025 at 5pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This is a public lecture and all are welcome. No booking required.

The Morrigan is the best-known goddess figure in medieval Irish literature next to Bridget, and in many ways epitomizes the dark aspects of Celtic female divinity, representing sorcery, sexuality, shapeshifting and war. At the same time there has been no consensus among recent academic experts concerning her essential character. This lecture seeks to fulfil the O'Donnell remit by using both a fresh analysis of the medieval texts and a comparison of other mythologies to suggest such a character for her, to explain her relationship with other Irish war goddesses and spirits and to account for her uniquely high profile, in comparison with those other beings, in modern Western culture.

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History in the University of Bristol, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Learned Society of Wales and the British Academy, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He is also the Gresham Professor of Divinity at London, sits on the Conservation Committee of Historic England and chairs the first national Blue Plaques Panel. He has published eighteen books and ninety-five essays on a wide range of subjects including British history between 1400 and 1700, ancient and modern paganism in Britain, the British ritual year, and the history of witchcraft and magic.

Cú Chulainn riding his chariot into battle with the Morrigan flying overhead' by Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874–1951) from T. W. Rolleston, Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race (1911)