[W] “Little Little-one.” Trystan’s servant.
[I] A goddess of death and battles who is regarded as a triune deity: Badb, Nemain, and Macha meeting under the name the Mórrígán. Badb’s name signifies a crow or raven, which is a constant Celtic symbol of the war goddess. She was married to Net, who appears as an even more shadowy war god. In an account of the historical battle of Clontarf, a.d. 1014, it is said that Badb appeared shrieking over the heads of the warriors during the battle.
Battle of Mount Badon, dated by the Annales Cambriae to a.d. 516–518. The site of Arthur’s twelfth great victory over the Anglo-Saxons in which 960 Saxon chieftains are said to have died. In the famous tale of the Mabinogion, Rhonabwy dreams of Arthur and his men gathered on the battlefield. Arthur’s victory at Badon gave the Celts several decades of peace before the Anglo-Saxons pressed on with their conquest.
[I] A god of death and the most formidable of the Fomorii. His father was Buarainech. He had one eye, whose gaze was so malevolent that it destroyed whoever gazed upon it. The eyelid had to be levered up by servants. This is a fairly close description of Yspaddaden, the giant father of Olwen, with the exception that when his eyelid was levered up the eye did not destroy those on whom it gazed. As it was prophesied that Balor would be slain by his own grandson, he locked his only daughter, Ethlinn, in a crystal tower on Tory Island. Yspaddaden was not willing that his daughter should be married, either. In the case of Ethlinn, Cian, with the help of a druidess, Birog, managed to enter her tower and sleep with her; their child grew up to become Lugh Lámhfada, who fulfilled the prophecy by slaying Balor at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh, taking out the giant’s eye with a slingshot.
[W] King of Benoic. A foreign monarch who becomes an ally of Arthur. His brother is made into Bors of Gaul in Le Morte d’Arthur.
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