Closer than Kin

Question: So Lugh is sometimes said to have been fostered by Goibniu, sometimes by Manannan Mac Lir and sometimes by Tailtiu. So was he fostered by all of them? And how does that work? Just something that I've been wondering about and figured you'd know more about it than I do.

Guys, let's talk about fosterage in ancient Irish culture!

Fosterage - the practice of farming your children out to be raised by a different family for a few years during their childhood - was an incredibly important feature of social life among the ancient Celts, especially prominent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Kids might be fostered anywhere between the ages of two to fifteen, although girls were fostered less often and younger since they were expected to come home and get married younger than boys were, and were generally kept by their host families for at least four to six years. The basic gist of the idea is that one family would send their child, along with some wealth (usually livestock, but it depended on the family) to make sure they were provided for, to live with another family for several years, learning their trade and basic schooling before returning home to enter their adult lives. Richer families fostered more often, since they were more likely to have the goods needed to support the kid they sent off; you couldn't send a child to a foster family with nothing, since then you would be placing an unfair burden on the fosterers to try to feed another mouth with no help. But people of all classes did do it, even those who didn't have a lot of money to start with, and often fostering ended up in a sort of trade arrangement, where two families swapped kids and then later swapped them back again.

There are two main points to fosterage. The first is that, by growing up for a while in another family with alternative parents and siblings, children gained with a strong sense of loyalty to more people in their clans and homelands than they would have had if they had only lived at home. In essence, as adults those people had two families who were not necessarily related but to both of whom they owed gratitude, respect and filial feeling, which in turn meant that they were more likely to keep solid alliances with others in the area and defend more than just their own homestead from invaders or famine. Especially during the periods of history when Celtic areas were populated by several only loosely-connected clans or tribes, fosterage helped make sure that there was a reason for people in the area to work together and respect one anothers' boundaries and honor.

The second reason for fosterage was simply to make sure that the child got a good education. Whenever possible, children would be fostered out to someone that could hopefully provide them good learning opportunities; druids, chiefs and lords were popular choices, as well as monks and other churchmen once Christianity was established. They would have the opportunity to learn different things than they could have learned at home, broadening their experiences and giving them a better perspective on their territory and neighbors, ally and enemy alike, than they could have gotten in only one household. For the lower-class children who went into fosterage, they were also often sent so that they could begin learning a useful trade from their new family, which might later lead into apprenticeship and eventually a career that would be able to feed a family.

While most children were only fostered to a single family, it wasn't unheard of for a child to be sent to more than one, particularly if he didn't get along with the people in his first foster home or there was a political falling-out between the two families, so Lugh could certainly have been fostered with more than one person. Lebor Gabala Erenn does indeed say that Lugh's father Cian gave him to Tailtu to foster, and he's called her foster-son in passing in the Cath Maige Tuiread as well; there is no more information about what happened to him during that time, but the only other thing said about Tailtu after that is that she died while Lugh was king and he founded the summer harvest festival in her honor. In the story of the Sons of Tuireann, Lugh is repeatedly referred to as the foster-brother of the sons of Manannan, and furthermore runs around liberally using a bunch of the sea-god's magical items with apparent impunity, so it seems like there's also a firm fostering relationship there (and indeed, Lugh goes on borrowing Manannan's shit pretty much forever). It's also possible that Lugh is foster-brothers with Manannan's children because they were also fostered with Tailtu at the same time that he was, although his relationship with their father seems too close for him not to have been fostered there as well. To add another layer of complexity, there's some theorization that Tailtu is herself a daughter of Manannan (although she also definitely has Fir Bolg blood connections, so this is up for debate), in which case she and her father could both have welcomed Lugh in as a foster-son at the same time. Finally, Goibhniu does raise Lugh for at least a while and teach him various crafts (which makes lots of sense, since fostering your kids out to their uncles was a common practice and at least one genealogy has Cian and Goibhniu as brothers), and in at least one version it's implied that Manannan might be the one who drops young Lugh off with him instead of Cian, implying a fosterage timeline. (Of course, in another version Goibhniu finds Lugh as an infant, so pick your flavor.)

Lugh's actually a great example of the fosterage system at work, because his special attributes all seem to be traceable back to his fostering adventures as a child. It's because Lugh lives in the family of Manannan mac Lir that he gets access to a bunch of sweet relics and prophetic insight and has ties to the wilder, sea-oriented half of the pantheon that isn't necessarily descended from Danu, which gives him a much better political understanding and position when he later becomes the High King; and because he fosters with Goibhniu, he also grows up knowing, understanding and eventually allying with his Tuatha relatives, even though he is also half Fomorian and grandson of the great Fomorian king Balor. And it's because Lugh lives in the family of Goibhniu that he learns countless different skills, trades and crafts from the craftsmen among the gods, and because he fosters with Manannan that he learns the esoteric arts of wizardry and medicine and herbalism, leading to him becoming the god most reknowned for knowing how to do everything.

It's possible, maybe even likely, that Irish mythology doesn't mean to be strictly literal about who Lugh's foster parents might have been; by referring to various people as his foster parents, it can imply that he has a wide breadth of experiences and training and therefore could be said to be able to do anything, illustrating his position as the most skilled among gods. But on the other hand, bonds of fosterage were considered extremely important, even trumping blood in some cases, so if you want to make some calls to determine where his deepest loyalties lie, that's a valid choice for any game. We personally are pretty comfortable with his status as the foster-son of Manannan mac Lir, but any of the others are good for a game, too.