Maria Tanner Cohen

Those beautiful rolling earthen mounds known as the Sidhe shape the character of our ancient Irish landscape. Inside the Sidhe, the hallowed halls of Eire’s ancient dream is where Áes Sidhe dwell, Irelands noble fairy folk.

With any bit of reading on the subject one soon discovers there are many names given to the inner, otherworld of the Áes Sidhe. When I first crossed paths with the word Ildathach (the many coloured place) It rang in my imagination. I loved the very sound of the word and the ideas it evoked.

Ildathach/The many coloured place, it is said, could be reached by entering through the Sidhe, into the darkness of the belly of the earth. What becomes apparent is that the Sidhe is also a metaphor for our ability to turn inward and find ourselves in another dimension of our experience. When the endless streams of external stimuli ceases, in the darkness of our own inner landscape a rainbow particles can dance on the inner eye, realities unnamable become visible, yet should we try to touch them they are fleeting like a cloud, it is then, in this illusive place we know we have reached the here and almost there of Ildathach.