Listen to the Land Speak

Listen to the Land Speak examines how Irish mythology, language and landscape preserve ways of understanding place, nature and identity. Manchán Magan travels through bogs, across rivers and over mountains, tracing stories and traditions associated with the land and the people who carried them forward.

The book considers the influence of poets, seers, monks, healers and wise women, alongside the survival of older beliefs through Ireland’s changing history. Rivers appear as goddesses, trees carry spiritual significance, and the landscape becomes a record of memory stretching from ancient times through ice ages, famine and flood. Magan presents these accounts as cultural knowledge with continuing relevance to Ireland’s relationship with the natural world.