The Daltaí Boards: Pronunciation Irish goddess

aw-mend, aw-nya, fand (like hand), and shoney looks manx to me (being like Irish but with english phonetics, so sounds like it looks) Seonaí (?) in Irish. I could be wrong on fand, as I don't know if it is to have an accent making it fawn-d, but Áine is a common name.

Danu was some goddess...after the Milesians and the fir bolg invaded Ireland the Tuatha de Danann arrived (followers of the goddess Danu). They wiped them all out and drove the fir bolg to the islands, where they built forts like dun aonghus on inis mor, they swarmed the forts, dun aonghus being the last refuge, and hurled the firbolg into the sea where they turned into seals, or some such sea creatures. Then, when the Irish arrived in Ireland, the Tuatha de Danann went underground through the dolmens and became the faeries, which is why Irish faeries were traditionally not 6 inches tall but rather taller then mortals, fairer, and more intelligent. I could be mistaken on a point or two, as this is purely from memory of childhood tales, but that's the basic flow of it. This tale was one of the ones Tolkein drew upon for his Elves in LOTR (think of it, taller, fairer, smarter, yet their time was ending and the age of mortal men had come, what a ripoff, Tolkein wasn't very creative!).