Embarr

The men on the Hill of Uisneach saw the light before they saw the riders. It came out of the east across the plain, so bright that they took it for the sun rising in the wrong part of the morning, and then it broke into shapes: a troop of horsemen, a young man at their head, and under him a horse that seemed to give the ground no weight at all.

The young man was Lugh. The horse was not his. She belonged to Manannán mac Lir, lord of the sea and of the Land of Promise, who had fostered Lugh and now sent him home dressed in borrowed splendour: a mail coat and breastplate no weapon could get through, a helmet set with bright stones, a sword called the Answerer, and the best animal in the Otherworld’s stable. Her name in the old text is Aonbharr. English readers know her better as Enbarr, and a good many modern books spell it Embarr.

All of this comes from one story, The Fate of the Children of Tuireann, a late romance whose surviving text is in Early Modern Irish. Eugene O’Curry edited and translated it in 1863, and P. W. Joyce retold it in Old Celtic Romances in 1879, where he gave the horse the title that stuck: Enbarr of the Flowing Mane. The tale’s description of her is short and has been repeated nearly word for word ever since. She was as swift as the bare cold wind of spring. Sea and land were the same to her. And no one was ever killed while on her back.

That is three sentences of record, and almost everything else said about her is commentary on them. The name alone has kept scholars busy. The ninth-century glossary credited to Cormac lists a word enbarr and explains it as froth, the foam on top of water, which would suit a sea-god’s horse very well. O’Curry read Aonbharr as one mane, or the unrivalled mane. The Celticist John Rhys, in 1891, took a different road and came out with a creature that had a bird’s head, noting along the way that the horse is a mare. A modern dictionary of Celtic myth prefers unique supremacy. Nobody has settled it. Her name might mean sea-foam, and it might mean she has excellent hair.

What a ride on her was like can be pieced together from what the tale allows. Manannán’s country lies over the water, so any journey to Ireland begins on the shore, with the smell of salt and wrack and the tide running. The mare goes straight in, except that she does not go in. Her hooves meet the swell as they would meet turf, and she crosses the grey miles at a pace that leaves the wind behind her, spray cold on the rider’s shins, no wake, no sound of splashing, only the drum of a gallop where no gallop should be.

The arrival at Uisneach is her one great scene. The Tuatha Dé Danann had gathered there under their king Nuada, a beaten people waiting to pay the Fomorians their yearly tribute. Lugh rode up among them on Manannán’s mare with his foster-brothers around him, and when he took off his helmet his face shone so that the assembly could not look straight at it. From that morning the paying stopped and the fighting started. The mare had done her part by getting him there alive, which, given her gift, was never in doubt.

She appears once more, and it is by not appearing. Later in the tale Lugh sets the three sons of Tuireann a blood-price for killing his father: a list of treasures scattered across the world. The brothers know what they need to reach them. They ask Lugh for the loan of Manannán’s horse. He says no. She is a loan to him already, he tells them, and he will not make a loan of a loan. So they ask for the next best thing, Manannán’s boat that steers itself by thought, and having refused once Lugh cannot decently refuse again. The brothers sail. The mare stays in her stall, and the reader is left to wonder how different the tragedy would have been on four legs.

Her origin is never told. No story says who bred her, what she was foaled from or how Manannán came by her. She is part of his household, like the sword and the boat, and that is the whole of her pedigree.

One more thing needs saying plainly. Many retellings give the name Embarr to the white horse on which Niamh carries Oisín across the sea to the Land of Youth, the horse he must not dismount from when he rides back to Ireland, and from which he falls and ages three hundred years in a breath. The match is easy to see: a horse from the Otherworld that runs on water. But the eighteenth-century Irish poem that tells that story calls the animal only a white steed. The name was borrowed across from Manannán’s mare by later writers.

Her powers are few and enormous. She outruns the wind, she treats the open sea as a road, and she keeps her rider’s life safe for as long as that rider stays in the saddle. Each follows from whose horse she is: the sea is her master’s own ground, and nothing in his keeping is ordinary.

Her limits are in the same three sentences. The protection holds on her back and nowhere else is promised. She carries whom Manannán says she carries, and even a god who has her on loan cannot pass her on. She can also simply be withheld. For the sons of Tuireann, that was enough.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Embarr in Irish mythology?

Embarr, more often spelled Enbarr or Aonbharr, is the horse of the Irish sea-god Manannán mac Lir. She appears in the tale The Fate of the Children of Tuireann, where Manannán lends her to Lugh. She can run over sea as easily as land, is as fast as the spring wind, and no rider can be killed on her back.

What does the name Enbarr mean?

The meaning of Enbarr is not settled. A medieval Irish glossary explains the word enbarr as froth or foam. Eugene O’Curry read the later form Aonbharr as one mane or the unrivalled mane, John Rhys suggested a bird’s head, and a modern dictionary gives unique supremacy.

Who rode Embarr?

Lugh rode Embarr when he arrived at the Hill of Uisneach to join the Tuatha Dé Danann. The horse belonged to Manannán mac Lir, who had fostered Lugh and lent him the mare along with his armour and his sword, the Answerer. No story shows a mortal riding her.

Why did Lugh refuse to lend Embarr to the sons of Tuireann?

Lugh refused because Embarr was not his own. He told the sons of Tuireann that the horse was a loan to him from Manannán and that he would not make a loan of a loan. They asked for Manannán’s self-steering boat instead, and Lugh gave them that.

Is Embarr the horse of Niamh and Oisín?

Many modern retellings call Niamh’s white horse Embarr, but the eighteenth-century Irish poem about Oisín in the Land of Youth does not name the horse. It calls the animal only a white steed. The name was carried over later from Manannán’s mare, who shares the power of running across the sea.

Related Entries

Manannán mac Lir, Lug, Nuada, Fomorian, Balor, Oisín, Finn mac Cumhal, Sídhe, Each Uisge, Kelpie, Sleipnir, Pegasus, Arion, Hippocampus