Aibell

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In Irish legend Aibell (sometimes Aoibheall (modern Irish spelling)), also anglicised as Aeval or Eevill) was a Pre-Christian goddess from the Irish mythology of Munster and the guardian spirit of the Dál gCais, the Delbhna, and the Clan Ó Bríen. She was demoted in popular belief, following the Christianisation of Gaelic Ireland, from a goddess to the Fairy Queen ruling over the Celtic Otherworld of Thomond, or north Munster. The entrance to her kingdom was believed to be at Craig Liath, the grey rock, a hill overlooking the Shannon about two miles north of Killaloe.^[1][2] Aibell also had a lover (called Dubhlainn Ua Artigan) and a magic harp (of which it was said "[w]hoever heard its music did not live long afterwards").^[2][3] In Irish folklore she was turned into a white cat by her sister, Clíodhna and is alleged to have appeared in a dream on the night before the Battle of Clontarf to Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, and prophesied his imminent death and that whichever of his sons he saw first would succeed him. In Modern literature in Irish, Aibell appears in many immortal 18th century Aisling poems composed in Munster Irish. Aibell also serves as the main antagonist in the very famous long comic poem (Irish: Cúirt an Mheán Oíche, "The Midnight Court") by Brian Merriman, in which she is the presiding judge during an Otherworldly lawsuit, in which the women of Ireland are suing the men for refusing to marry and father children.