Aengus (Aengus Óg)

God of love and youth, conceived and born inside a single day so that nobody would notice.

Aengus is the son of the Dagda and Bóinn, the goddess of the Boyne, who was married to someone else at the time. The Dagda held the sun still for nine months so that the whole pregnancy and the birth happened within what appeared to be one day. The trick is characteristic of the family.

He is called Óg, young, and he is the god of love, youth and poetry. Four birds fly about his head in some descriptions, and they are usually read as his kisses.

His own love story is the one that lasts. He dreams of a woman and wakes wanting her so badly that he sickens. It takes a year to find out her name, Caer Ibormeith, and more to find her: she lives as a swan every second year, among a hundred and fifty other swans on a lake, each pair chained together in silver. He is told he may have her if he can pick her out. He does, turns himself into a swan to do it, and the two of them fly away singing a music that puts everyone who hears it asleep for three days.

He also takes the Brú na Bóinne, the great passage tomb on the Boyne, from his own father, by asking to stay there for a day and a night and then pointing out that all of time is days and nights.