Hiding in plain sight – Brehon Laws, fairies and forbidden words

What if ancient stories and forgotten laws could help us imagine new ways of living with the Earth?

Ireland’s old traditions are not only relics of the past. They are fragments of ecological memory, sometimes hidden, sometimes disguised, but still alive. In this blogpost we explore how Ireland’s ancient legal traditions and mythologies can inspire new forms of eco-mythology, and why some knowledge survives precisely because it learns to hide in plain sight.

If you are interested in helping to co-create new eco-mythologies for Ireland, this blogpost (and this new page Irish Mothers-Plants: an eco+myth 2026) is for you.

Once Were Warriors … and Brehons

Long ago, Ireland was a Celtic land of tribes and warriors. Yet beneath the heroic tales and clan rivalries lay a sophisticated and widely respected legal system that held society together.

The Brehon Laws governed everyday life. They covered land disputes, compensation for theft and violence, marriage and divorce, and even the care of trees and animals. Rather than focusing on punishment, these laws often emphasised restitution and restoration of balance.

The brehons were the keepers of this system. Their knowledge was transmitted orally for generations before being written down by monks around the fifth century. What survives today was later translated and studied by nineteenth-century scholars.

These laws belonged to the Fénechas, the law of the common people, a remarkable legal tradition rooted in relationships between humans, land and other living beings.

A Chance Encounter

I first encountered the Brehon Laws during a visit to Ireland in January 2022.

Among the books I discovered was one by Jo Kerrigan, which immediately caught my attention.

Like many travellers, I returned home with a small stack of books and many scattered notes. Years later, while packing to move from Norway to the Netherlands for a new job, I rediscovered them. Alongside travel notes stored somewhere in my Google Drive, I found the beginnings of an academic idea. Back in 2022, I had been invited to contribute to a special issue on the multispecies circular economy. I had very little time (I was working at a start-up), but I decided that if I was going to write anything at all, it would have to be radical.

I was really intrigued by the Brehon Laws and saw them as interesting entry point for a circular economic model that is already there, but perhaps hidden too much? In an early draft abstract I wrote:

“In the isolated landscapes of western Ireland, folklore and the ancient Brehon Laws played a role in protecting natural and cultural heritage for centuries, and may inspire twenty-first-century circular laws protecting hawthorn trees and hedgerows.”

I wanted to explore the Brehon Laws through the lens of a multispecies circular economy, connecting legal traditions with ecological relationships and living landscapes.

The Rooted Abstract

To my surprise, the abstract was accepted. Perhaps because it was so rooted and unconventional? But when I began writing the paper, I realised that I lacked both the materials and the time needed to develop the Irish case properly. I had too little evidence about fairy trees, local practices, and the application of Brehon law.

Reluctantly, I removed Ireland from the article.

Still, the idea never disappeared.

Now, as we prepare a new Eco-Mythology online symposium on Ireland, it feels like the right moment to return to these questions … beginning with this blogpost.

Laws That Survived by Hiding

Some traditions say the Brehon Laws originated in the time of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the mythical people later remembered as the fairy folk. According to legend, they retreated into the hidden world beneath the hills when new powers arrived in Ireland.

Whether history or myth, the image is striking: knowledge surviving underground.

Similar stories appear in Christian tradition, such as the legends of saints preserving learning in remote places. Over centuries, Irish culture survived in out-of-the-way locations, like hedge schools, rural communities, and oral traditions, far from centres of imperial control.

Empire often seeks uniformity: one language, one law, one culture, one way of using land. This pressure can lead to the erasure of languages, customs, and even words themselves.

Judgements were once delivered at gathering places, high hills or sacred trees, where druids and brehons acted as knowledge holders. Over time, these systems were gradually replaced by more punitive legal models based on retribution rather than restoration.

Still, the older traditions never entirely disappeared and the Brehon Laws endured..

Almost Erased

Jo Kerrigan describes repeated attempts to suppress the Brehon Laws: by Celts, Christians, Vikings and Normans, and later through Elizabethan policies and the Penal Laws.

More than once, the tradition came close to vanishing. Yet somehow it survived … often in fragments, in manuscripts, and in memory.

Like many forbidden texts, manuscripts were hidden in unlikely places: inside castle walls, between the bindings of other books, or concealed among permitted writings. Librarians at great collections such as the Bodleian Library in Oxford still occasionally discover unexpected texts hidden within old bindings.

It let me remind that hiding is not a sign of weakness. It was and it still is a survival strategy.

The Art of Coding

When knowledge becomes dangerous, people learn to encode it.

In Victorian times, flowers carried hidden meanings. Colours and arrangements allowed messages to be passed discreetly. Similar forms of symbolic language appear throughout history.

Subtle forms of coding have also been used in queer cultures, through dress, gesture and language, allowing recognition without exposure. I have this experience that especially queer people are good in reading subtext in movies and books, because they have been forced to read between the lines.

Encoding is not only about secrecy. It is also about continuity, finding ways for knowledge to survive hostile times.

Forbidden Words

Today we see new forms of erasure emerging. Certain words become politically uncomfortable or institutionally inconvenient. Words such as climate or gender are restricted in for example funding proposals in the USA, but not only there. I heard gossips that in the Netherlands, local governments also adapt to accommodate agenda’s of the more right wing national agenda. Instead of speaking of climate change, we might hear discussions about energy consumption, efficiency, or resilience.

Reframing can sometimes be strategic. Like earlier forms of coding, it allows conversations to continue even when direct language becomes difficult.

But it also reminds us how fragile language can be … and how easily ideas can disappear when the words for them are lost.

Eco-Mythology: Reawakening Hidden Knowledge

Eco-mythology invites us to reconnect ecological knowledge with stories, traditions and landscapes.

Ireland offers a particularly rich terrain for this work: fairy trees and sacred places, legal traditions that recognised relationships with land and animals, and stories that preserve ecological memory.

Much of this knowledge survives only in fragments … in books, folklore, landscapes and personal memories. That is precisely why it invites collaboration, so we can bring all these fragments together… in a cauldron. Together we can explore what has been hidden and imagine what might grow from it.

Join the Conversation

We are building a growing community of people interested in eco-mythology and Ireland, researchers, artists, storytellers, community leaders and curious explorers. I created a new project page: Irish Mothers-Plants: an eco+myth 2026

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References

• Kerrigan, J., 2020. Brehon laws: the ancient wisdom of Ireland. The O’Brien Press Ltd.