Goídel Glas

Series on Celtic mythology

Celtic polytheism Celtic deities (list)

Gaelic mythology

Irish mythology Scottish mythology Hebridean mythology Tuatha Dé Danann Mythological Cycle Ulster Cycle Fenian Cycle

Brythonic mythology

British Iron Age religion British mythology Welsh mythology Breton mythology Mabinogion Book of Taliesin Trioedd Ynys Prydein

Religious vocations

Druids · Bards · Vates

Festivals

Samhain, Calan Gaeaf Imbolc, Gŵyl Fair Beltane, Calan Mai Lughnasadh, Calan Awst Index of related articles This box: view • talk • edit

In Irish and Scottish Medieval myth, Goídel Glas (Latinised as Gathelus) is the creator of the Goidelic languages and the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels.

Ireland

Scotland

Scota (left) with Goídel Glas (right) voyaging from Egypt, as depicted in a 15th century manuscript of the Scotichronicon of Walter Bower; in this version Scota and Goídel Glas (Latinized as Gaythelos) are wife and husband.

A Scottish version of the tale of Goídel Glas and Scota was recorded by John of Fordun. This is apparently not based on the main Irish Lebor Gabála account. Fordun refers to multiple sources, and his version is taken to be an attempt to synthesise these multiple accounts into a single history.

In Fordun's version, Gaythelos, as he calls Goídel Glas, is the son of "a certain king of the countries of Greece, Neolus, or Heolaus, by name", who was exiled to Egypt and took service with the Pharaoh, marrying Pharaoh's daughter Scota. Various accounts of how Gaythelos came to be expelled from Egypt—by a revolt following the death of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, pursuing Moses, or in terror from the Plagues of Egypt, or after an invasion by Ethiopians—are given, but the upshot is that Gaythelos and Scota are exiled together with Greek and Egyptian nobles, and they settle in Hispania after wandering for many years. In the Iberian Peninsula they settle in the land's northwest corner, at a place called Brigancia (the city of A Coruña, that the Romans knew as Brigantium).

References

• Broun, Dauvit, The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of the Scots in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Boydell, Woodbridge, 1999. ISBN 0-85115-375-5
• Ferguson, William, The Identity of the Scottish Nation: An historic quest. Edinburgh U.p>, Edinburgh, 1998. ISBN 0-7486-1071-5
• John of Fordun, Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, ed. William Forbes Skene, tr. Felix J.H. Skene, 2 vols. Reprinted, Llanerch Press, Lampeter, 1993. ISBN 1-897853-05-X
• MacKillop, James, The Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Oxford U.P., Oxford, 1998. ISBN 0-19-860967-1