Dublin Mythology, Folklore & Legends Walking Tour

Temple Bar and Ireland's Mythical Origins

The walk begins in Temple Bar, the oldest surviving street pattern on Dublin's south bank, where the guide opens with the story of how Ireland began. Medieval scribes wrote down tales of waves of mythical settlers arriving across the sea, among them the Tuatha Dé Danann, a shining, magical people who were said to have been defeated by the Gaels and to have withdrawn into the hills and burial mounds of the land.

From that belief grew the Irish idea of an Otherworld living alongside our own. Your guide explains the Celtic year and its fire festivals, above all Samhain at the start of November, when the boundary between the worlds was thought to open, and the warrior bands and heroes whose deeds were sung in royal halls. It is the perfect introduction to Irish myths and legends before the walk moves on.

Dublin's Old Lanes: Fairies, the Banshee and the Púca

Weaving through the quieter lanes behind the quays, the guide turns to the creatures of Irish folklore. The banshee, bean sí or woman of the fairy mound, is heard keening at night before a death in certain old families. The púca is a shape-shifter that appears as a black horse, a goat or a hare and is blamed for spoiling the blackberries after Samhain, while the leprechaun is a solitary fairy shoemaker guarding hidden gold.

You also hear why farmers across Ireland still refuse to cut down a lone hawthorn or plough through a ring fort, and how a road project in County Clare was redesigned in 1999 to spare a fairy bush. These stories are told with humour, but the guide shows how seriously they were taken in rural Ireland until very recently.

The Georgian Quarter: Rebels and Body Snatchers

In the 18th century Dublin was the second city of the British Empire, and its wealthy families built the elegant brick terraces, colourful doors and fanlights of the Georgian Quarter. Behind the fine facades lies a much darker story, and this is where the tour leaves the usual tourist route. The guide tells of the rebellions plotted in these streets and of the revolutionaries hunted through them by the authorities.

Then comes the macabre part: the body snatchers, known as resurrection men, who dug up fresh graves at night to sell corpses to the city's anatomy schools. Families paid watchmen to guard cemeteries, and some graveyards built watchtowers against the thieves. It is a gripping chapter of Dublin's past, told with enough tact to keep younger listeners interested rather than frightened.

The Abbey Theatre

On Abbey Street stands the Abbey Theatre, the national theatre of Ireland. It opened in December 1904 as part of the movement to create a theatre of Irish stories and voices, and in 1925 it became the first state-subsidised theatre in the English-speaking world. Several of its actors fought in the 1916 Rising, and one of them was killed on the first day near City Hall.

The tragic history continued in July 1951, when fire destroyed the original building; the company played in another theatre for fifteen years until the present building opened in 1966. Your guide explains how the plays staged here, some of which caused riots in the audience, revived the old myths for a new nation, linking the folklore of the earlier stops with modern Irish identity.

O'Connell Street and the Gaelic Revival

The walk ends on O'Connell Street, the broad main avenue of the Northside, with the GPO and the tall steel Spire rising above it. Here the guide tells the story of the Gaelic revival: by the late 19th century the Irish language was disappearing, and in 1893 the Gaelic League was founded to save it, followed by a wave of interest in Irish sports, music, dance and storytelling.

That revival fed directly into the push for independence, and today Irish is the first official language of the state, seen on every street sign around you. The tour ends with a look at some of Dublin's contemporary street characters, and you are just across the river from Temple Bar and the city centre to continue your afternoon.