The Dagda (An Daghdha)

The good god, where good means skilled at everything rather than virtuous.

The name is usually traced to a Celtic root meaning the good god or the great god, and the good has nothing to do with behaviour. It means good at things. He is a figure of enormous appetite and enormous capability, often comic, never small.

He carries three possessions and each one tells you what kind of god he is. The Coire Ansic is a cauldron from which no company ever went away unsatisfied. The Lorg Mór is a club so large it had to be dragged on wheels, which killed nine men with one end and brought them back to life with the other. The Uaithne is his harp of oak, which could set the seasons in their proper order and pull grief, laughter or sleep out of a room at will. Some versions give the name Uaithne to his harper rather than the instrument.

He is a king of the Tuatha Dé, a druid, a builder of fortresses and a father of several of the other gods, Aengus and Brigid among them. He owns the Brú, the great mound on the Boyne, until Aengus tricks it out of him.

The modern Irish spelling is An Daghdha. The older texts have Dagda, which is the form that reached English and the form most people still use.