The Morrigan

No one who looks upon the face of the Morrigan comes away unchanged by it. Feared even by her fellow Tuatha, her dreadful reputation in battle is legendary. She appears most often as a lean, gray hag with iron strength and a wiry frame, and if she is seen in battle, she is usually soaked from head to foot in the blood of her foes. There are no weapons the Morrigan is not expert with, though her favorites are spear and sword. She can be beautiful, too, as when she appeared to the hero Cúchulainn to try to seduce him before the Second Battle of Moy Tura. With black or red hair and flashing eyes, her enchanting figure in this guise is tied to her role as a fertility figure. She is associated with cattle, a common fertility symbol in Irish mythology, but more traditionally with ravens, crows and other corvids. She can take the form of a crow or raven and is often found flying over battlefields, surveying the damage and descending to feast on the bodies of the dead. Among the Tuatha, the Morrigan is considered their greatest seer, especially adept at predicting the outcomes of battles and the deaths of men in war.