Watching The Mists of Avalon last night I was struck by the many ways in which this story reflects that of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Especially the parallel worlds of Avalon and Glastonbury, co-existing in the same physical place yet in different realms or dimensions. Avalon accessible only through the mists. Within other realms the Tuatha and faery folk co-exist with the Irish in the Sligo and Benbulben landscape. When the veils are thin, in those misty liminal times of Samhain and Beltaine – and indeed daily dusk and dawn – the threshold opens and the worlds meet. The abundance of faery stories from that area, many collected and recorded by W. B. Yeats, are a testament to these meetings.

How the Tuatha came to inhabit a parallel dimension….well, that’s another story. An epic story.