Nyx in the House of Night

more than three decades ago when I first discovered that the Scots and Irish had a mythos that centered around two great bulls eternally locked in combat, the stories stuck in my mind.
    I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for years. I mean, obviously I’m interested in them, as they play a major part in the House of Night. But it was in the middle of my second research trip to the Highlands for the House of Night when I came to my first tattoo—literally.
    Seoras had been leading me through the Highlands, but when he noticed how interested I was in the old stories of the bulls, he said that I really needed to speak with one of his Irish Clan brothers. Trusting Seoras’ intuition completely, I went with him from Glasgow to a little town about an hour and a half outside Dublin, Carraig Mhachaire Rois, where I met Alan Mac au Halpine, a tattoo artist who was more Shaman than modern ink guy (though Alan would not describe himself that way—authentic Shamans rarely do). I talked with him at length about the connection I felt with my earth sign, and he began to speak of the Irish mythology of the bulls. As he told the ancient stories I could finally see my own tattoo: the figure of a bull, the form of a goddess held within the beast.
    I asked Alan if he would design the tattoo for me, and all the while he sketched, and then during the three hours he tattooed me, Alan’s lilting voice spun stories of bulls and times gone by. It is from Alan’s stories that I found a path to create a belief system in the House of Night world that predated Nyx—that was earthy and wild and uncivilized—that represented Light and Darkness in their purest forms.
    Perhaps it was the ritualistic, tribal act of the tattoo itself that helped to shape the primeval aspect of the religion I expanded within the House of Night world. Alan did honor me by making the first mark of my tattoo in the ancient way—with a sharpened stick he’d hand-carved, which he dipped in ink and tapped into my flesh. Maybe it was the combination of the pain of the tattoo mixed with the beauty of Alan’s artwork, wrapped in the stories he told. Or maybe the sibh (pronounced shee—fairy folk) were drawn to me, a modern shenachie absorbing their ancient homeland stories, and they gathered around the little tattoo shop in the heart of the Irish village so that some of their tales could find their way into the world today, and their magick could touch us all.
    Let’s see what you think after I share with you a small sample of some of the stories Alan told me that day. Close your eyes, just for a moment. Breathe in deeply. Exhale slowly. Let your imagination take you to verdant Ireland and listen to Alan’s lilting voice . . .
The bulls were the incarnation of two powerful druids; each was a keeper of the spirits of each half of Ireland. They started out as friends, but got into an argument over whose powers were stronger. They fought as different incarnations for hundreds and hundreds of years: first as great eagles, then as great sea monsters, then two great stags, then two warriors, then two phantoms, then two great dragons. Then, exhausted, they became two maggots.
One of the maggots got into the water of Cronn at Cuailinn, where a cow drank it up and gave birth to the Dun Cuailinn, which means the Brown Bull of Cuailinn. This Bull of Cuailinn was dark, dire, haughty with young health. He was horrific, overwhelming, ferocious, full of craft, with furious, fiery flanks. Brave, brutal, thick-breasted, curly-browed, with a true bull’s brow, snorting, mighty in muzzle and eye. He had a royal wrath, and a beast’s rage—a bandit’s stab, a lion’s fury, and a bellow that only the thunder could match. Thirty grown boys could take their place from his rump to his nape. He was a hero and beloved, was the great Brown Bull of Cuailinn.
The other maggot got into the wellspring garden in Connaught and was drunk by another cow. She gave birth to Finn Bennach, the White Bull of the Ai Plain. This bull had a white head, and white hooves, and a red body the color of blood, as if bathed in blood, or dyed in the red bog under his breast and on his back and his heavy mane. With a ponderous tail, and a stallion’s breast, and a cow’s apple eye, and a salmon snout, and a hind’s haunch, he romps in rut. Born to bear victory, bellowing in greatness, his charge is a tempest.
And these two mighty, virile creatures, each representing the spirits of their nation, are