In the oldest layers of Irish mythology recorded in the Metrical Dindshenchas, Carman (Carmán) is described as a sorceress-warrior from Athens who came to Ireland with her three sons — Dub (Darkness), Dother (Evil), and Dian (Violence) — intent on laying the land to waste. Where her sons trampled and plundered, she worked a subtler devastation, magically blighting the fruit of every tree and plant in the country. Four champions of the Tuatha Dé Danann rose against the invaders: Crichinbel, Lug, Bé Chuille, and Aoi. They drove Carman’s sons out of Ireland never to return, while Carman herself was bound and imprisoned at the place that would take her name.
The story
Held captive among the very gods she had tried to destroy, Carman wasted away from grief and longing for her homeland and her absent sons. She died in County Wexford, buried amongst oak trees, and the place became known as Carman — an echo still preserved in the modern Wexford landscape. Bres of the Tuatha Dé Danann himself is said to have dug her grave. The Metrical Dindshenchas poem composed in her honour records her last wish: that the Tuatha Dé Danann celebrate a great gathering at her tomb every three years on the first of August, the festival of Lughnasad.
The Óenach Carmán became the great fair of the province of Leinster, reportedly held every three years in early August. The LibraryIreland text of Social History of Ancient Ireland enumerates its events: horse-racing, markets, music, athletic contests, and the proclamation of Leinster law. The fair maintained its prestige well into the historical period, and Oxford Reference includes Carman in its dictionary of Celtic mythology. Her story is one of the rare Irish traditions in which a destructive supernatural interloper is converted, through defeat and death, into a beneficent genius loci whose grave becomes the centre of communal celebration.