Airitech’s Daughters and the People of Ossory
Ireland has two distinct werewolf traditions, and both are old.
Airitech’s Daughters
Airitech was a man of the síde — one of the Otherworld people descended from the Tuatha Dé Danann. His three daughters came out every Samhain as wolves. They were large, fast, and very dangerous — they ran through Connacht killing livestock and tearing through everything they found. This had gone on for years. No one had managed to stop them, because following three wolf-women back toward the síde was not something any ordinary warrior was going to survive.
Caílte mac Rónáin — the fastest runner in the Fianna, the man who could outrun a horse — hunted them down on a single Samhain night. He moved fast enough between the three of them that none could escape before he had dealt with the others. They died in wolf form. When dawn came, three women lay dead on the grass of Connacht.
The People of Ossory
In the county of Ossory in Leinster, there was a family — or a clan, the accounts differ — under a curse. Every seven years, two of them were transformed into wolves. They lived in wolf form in the wild for seven years. At the end of those seven years they returned to human form and two others took their place. The curse had been running for generations and showed no sign of stopping.
Gerald of Wales recorded this around 1188, and he claimed a priest had encountered one of these wolf-people alone in the forest of Ossory. The wolf spoke to him, told him of the curse, and asked him to give last rites to its dying companion, who was also in wolf form but near death. The priest gave the rites. The wolf thanked him and went back into the trees.
Key facts about Mac Tíre
- Name: Mac Tíre (“son of the land”; the Irish word for wolf)
- Type: Humans who take wolf form — either seasonally or under curse
- Airitech’s daughters: Daughters of a man of the síde; came out as wolves every Samhain; killed by Caílte mac Rónáin
- People of Ossory: A family cursed to become wolves for seven years at a time, generation after generation
- Gerald of Wales source: Recorded the Ossory tradition around 1188 — near-contemporary with the Norman arrival in Ireland
- Division: Ancient — Airitech’s daughters are from early Fenian sources; Ossory wolves are 12th century
Link/cite this page
If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.
Link will appear as Irish Werewolves: https://irishgodsandgoddesses.net - Irish Gods & Goddesses, March 22, 2026