Lugh (Lugh Lámhfhada)

The god who was good at everything, who killed his own grandfather, and who still has a month named after him.

Lugh arrives at Tara and is refused at the door. The gatekeeper tells him the Tuatha Dé already have a smith, a wright, a champion, a harper, a poet, a historian, a sorcerer and a physician. Lugh asks whether they have anyone who is all of those at once. They do not, and he is let in.

That is the whole of him. His epithet Samildánach means skilled in many arts together, and it is the one thing every tale about him agrees on. The other, Lámhfhada, long arm or long hand, is usually taken to mean his reach with a spear or a sling rather than any deformity.

His family tree is the Irish mythological knot drawn tight. His father was of the Tuatha Dé, his mother Eithne was daughter of Balor of the Fomorians, and it had been prophesied that Balor would be killed by his own grandson. At the second battle of Mag Tuired, Lugh put a sling stone through Balor's single terrible eye and the prophecy closed.

He is also the foster father, or in some versions the father, of Cú Chulainn, which stitches the Mythological Cycle to the Ulster Cycle.

And he is still in the calendar. Lúnasa, the Irish for August, is named for the festival Lughnasadh, which the tales say Lugh founded as funeral games for his foster mother Tailtiu. The modern Irish for the month is the oldest surviving thing about him.