Celtic Mythology
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50 free Celtic Mythology trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Celtic mythology survived mostly by accident. The Gauls' gods vanished with their language, so what we have comes from Ireland and Wales, where Christian monks wrote down the old stories centuries after the druids stopped telling them. The result is a mythology of shape-shifting war goddesses, a hero who turns into a monster in battle, a god with a club that kills and revives, and four magical treasures carried in from cities in the north. These 50 questions walk through the Irish cycles and the Welsh branches: the Tuatha Dé Danann and their Fomorian rivals, Lugh killing his grandfather Balor, Cú Chulainn's boyhood name and his barbed spear, Queen Medb's cattle raid, the Morrígan as a crow, the Dagda's cauldron and harp, Fionn's thumb of knowledge and the Giant's Causeway, the Children of Lir's 900 years as swans, Samhain and Imbolc, and Pwyll, Branwen, Blodeuwedd and the Mabinogion's Arthur. There are manuscript questions too: the Book of the Dun Cow, the Red Book of Hergest and Lady Charlotte Guest. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and each explanation adds one more detail. Play it solo or print it for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which branch of Celtic mythology has the largest surviving body of written myths?
Irish
Irish. Rome never conquered the island, so its old tales lived on until Christian monks began writing them down in the early Middle Ages, while the myths of the Gauls survive only in scraps.
Q 02Epona, a Gaulish goddess adopted by the Roman army, was the protector of which animals?
Horses
Horses. Her name comes from the Gaulish word for horse, and the Romans who took up her cult set her image in a shrine in the stable and garlanded it on feast days.
Q 03Who were the Tuatha Dé Danann's great enemies, beaten for good at the second battle of Mag Tuired?
The Fomorians
The Fomorians. These seaborne raiders had ground the Tuatha Dé down with heavy tribute and menial work, until the gods rose up and drove them from the island for good.
Q 04Niamh of the Golden Hair carried a mortal hero across the waves to which land, where 300 years passed like three?
Tír na nÓg
Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth. Homesick, he rode back under strict orders never to set foot on the ground, only to learn that everyone he had known was long dead and half forgotten.
Q 05The Lia Fáil, said to roar under a rightful king, stood at which royal site?
The Hill of Tara
The Hill of Tara. The Tuatha Dé Danann were said to have carried the stone with them from the northern city of Falias, as one of the four magic treasures they brought to their new home.
Q 06Which invaders, ancestors of the Gaels, drove the Tuatha Dé into the sídhe?
The Milesians
The Milesians. The two sides agreed to divide the country, and the newcomers took the half above ground while the Tuatha Dé took the half below, living on inside the mounds.
Q 07Which king of the Tuatha Dé Danann lost his arm and, being blemished, his throne?
Nuada
Nuada. The healer Dian Cécht fitted him with a working arm of silver, which earned him the name Airgetlám, 'silver hand', and let him take back the throne.
Q 08One end of the Dagda's great club killed; what did its other end do?
Revived the slain
Revived the slain. The club was so huge that he dragged it behind him on wheels, and the track it left was said to be deep enough to mark the boundary of a province.
Q 09The Dagda is said to dwell in which ancient monument?
Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange)
Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange). In one telling his son Aengus tricked him out of it, asking for the mound for 'a day and a night' and then arguing that all of time is made of days and nights.
Q 10Besides 'great queen', the name Morrígan is also translated as which kind of queen?
Phantom
Phantom. This reading ties the first part of her name to the 'mare' in 'nightmare', an old word for a spirit that torments sleepers, which suits a goddess who foretells death and doom.
Q 11In which bird's form does the Morrígan typically appear?
Crow
Crow. As the badb, or scald-crow, she haunted battlefields to stir up the fighters, and when Cú Chulainn spurned her love she came at him in mid-duel as an eel, a wolf and a heifer.
Q 12In Gaelic folklore, whose wailing outside a house warns that someone in the family is about to die?
The banshee
The banshee. She was said to follow only the old families and no others, so a household she wailed for could count her as an honour, a sign of ancient and noble stock.
Q 13Whose baleful eye could destroy an army, until his own grandson Lugh killed him?
Balor
Balor. In the old battle saga it took four men to hoist his eyelid by its ring, and Lugh's sling stone drove the eye out through the back of his head, where it turned its power on his own army.
Q 21What is the Irish term for Cú Chulainn's terrifying battle frenzy?
Ríastrad
Ríastrad. In it his feet and knees turned backwards, one eye sank into his head while the other bulged out, and he could no longer tell friend from foe, so his enemies called him the Distorted One.
Q 22Who trained Cú Chulainn in arms and gave him the spear Gáe Bulg?
Scáthach
Scáthach. The spear was cast from between the toes, went in as a single wound and then burst into barbs that had to be cut out of the body, and she taught the trick to no pupil but him.
Q 23In which country did Cú Chulainn train for war under a famous warrior-woman?
Alba (Scotland)
Alba (Scotland). Tradition places his teacher's fortress on the Isle of Skye, and while he was there he fathered Connla, the son he would one day kill in single combat.
Q 14Which month is still called Lúnasa in Irish, after the harvest festival founded by Lugh?
August
August. Lugh was said to have founded the festival as funeral games for his foster-mother Tailtiu, held every year at her tomb on the first day of the month.
Q 15Lugh's epithet Samildánach means what?
Equally skilled in many arts
Equally skilled in many arts. Turned away at the king's door because every craft already had its master, Lugh asked whether the court had one man who was builder, smith, harper, poet and champion at once, and was let in.
Q 16Cú Chulainn was doomed after three crones tricked him into breaking his taboo against eating which meat?
Dog
Dog. His name means 'Hound of Culann', so the meat of his namesake was forbidden, yet custom also forbade him to refuse a meal, and the roast the crones pressed on him sapped his strength.
Q 17Which tragic heroine, foretold to bring ruin on Ulster through her beauty, eloped with the warrior Naoise?
Deirdre
Deirdre. King Conchobar had her raised in seclusion to be his own bride, and after he lured the lovers home and had Naoise killed, the old saga has her take her own life.
Q 18Manannán mac Lir, a Gaelic god long linked with the Isle of Man, is the lord of what?
The sea
The sea. A medieval glossary tried to explain him away as a mortal trader from the Isle of Man, a pilot so good at reading the weather that people took him for a god.
Q 19What was Cú Chulainn's birth name?
Sétanta
Sétanta. As a boy he killed the savage guard hound of the smith Culann in self-defence, then offered to guard the house himself until a pup could be reared, and so became 'Culann's Hound'.
Q 20Forced to run a race while pregnant, Macha cursed the warriors of Ulster to suffer what in their hour of need?
Labour pains
Labour pains. She won, bore twins at the finish line and laid the curse as she cried out, which is why the young Cú Chulainn has to hold off Queen Medb's army alone while the men of Ulster lie helpless.
Q 24Which foster-brother did Cú Chulainn kill in single combat at a ford?
Ferdiad
Ferdiad. He refused to face his old comrade until Queen Medb had him plied with drink, promised him her daughter's hand and threatened to set poets mocking him as a coward.
Q 25Who is Cú Chulainn's wife?
Emer
Emer. She bore his many affairs until he fell for Fand; then she came after her rival with fifty women armed with knives, and Fand went back to her own husband.
Q 26Queen Medb of Connacht invades Ulster in the Táin to steal which bull?
Donn Cuailnge
Donn Cuailnge. Medb wanted the brown bull because her own white-horned one had gone over to her husband's herd, leaving him the richer of the two, and when the two bulls finally met, neither survived the fight.
Q 27The oldest partial text of the Táin survives in which manuscript?
Book of the Dun Cow
Book of the Dun Cow. Legend says its vellum came from the hide of a pet cow belonging to St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, the monastery where the book was compiled around 1100.
Q 28How did the dying Cú Chulainn make sure he would face his enemies on his feet?
Tied himself to a stone
Tied himself to a stone. His enemies still hung back until a bird settled on his shoulder, and even then the sword that dropped from his dead hand cut off the hand of the man who came to behead him.
Q 29How did Fionn mac Cumhaill gain his wisdom?
Eating the Salmon of Knowledge
Eating the Salmon of Knowledge. He was only cooking it for a poet who had long tried to catch it, but he burned his thumb, put it in his mouth and got the gift meant for his master.
Q 30What are the names of Fionn's two hounds?
Bran and Sceólang
Bran and Sceólang. They were his own kin: their mother, a woman of his family, had been turned into a hound by magic while she was carrying them, and they were born as pups.