Conle
Conle, or Connla, is a legendary character in Irish Mythology. He was the Red son of the high king of Ireland Conn of the Hundred Battles. He was with his father on the hill of Usnech when he saw a beautiful woman, invisible to the rest of the company. She tempted him to go with her to the Plain of Delight and live forever, until Conn's druid Coran drove her off by singing, but not before she threw a magic apple at the boy.
A month later on the plain of Archommin she came again, and this time Conle jumped into a glass coracle with her, and they sailed off never to be seen again.
Adventures
The adventures, or echtrae, are a group of stories of visits to the Irish Other World. The most famous, Oisin in Tir na nOg belongs to the Fenian Cycle, but several free-standing adventures survive, including The Adventure of Conle, The Adventure of Bran mac Ferbail and The Adventure of Laegaire.
From Paton: "When the hero is drawn into the fay's realm, he is bewildered, forgetful of the mortal world and of time itself, and is only conscious of the delights offered him." An Irish example: Conle, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, High King of Ireland in the 2nd century AD, whose adventures date from 8th-century manuscripts, was invited by a woman to "the Plain of Delight," a place without weeping or sorrow. She tosses an apple to him and disappears, and each bite gives him more longing for the woman and her land. A month later she returns and invites him again, saying it was a country "which delights the mind of anyone who goes there," and that "there are no people there save for women and girls." The two sail away in the woman's ship of glass, and Connle is not seen again.
The White Goddess summons the God Bran to the Land of Youth with a “silver white-blossomed apple branch from Emain in which the bloom and branch were one.” When the Irish hero, Oisin, is taken to the Land of Youth, he sees himself mounted on a white horse, pursuing a beautiful girl on a dark horse who bears in her hand a golden apple. A beautiful woman gives another Irish hero, Conle, son of Conn, an apple, which nourishes him for a month but also makes him long for her home, the island of women. In Scandinavian myth, the goddess Iðunn keeps golden apples in Asgard which confer immortality.
References
- The Lugodoc Irish Historical Cycle
- School Of The Seasons
- CelticNetwork's Irish Mythology
- SukiPot Reflections