Every great god of the Celtic world had marvellous possessions, and Manannán mac Lir, lord of the sea, had some of the best. None was loved more than his horse, Enbarr — in Irish, Aonbharr or Énbarr, a name often explained as 'one mane' or 'froth', after the white crest of a wave.
Enbarr could run on land and on water with equal ease. To Manannán the sea was a plain, and to Enbarr it was simply more ground to gallop on. The horse's hooves struck the waves. Enbarr never tired, never sank, and could not be overtaken. Old descriptions say it was swifter than the naked cold wind of spring. In later tellings the rider was safe only for as long as they stayed in the saddle — which is why, when Oisín slips from the white horse and touches Irish soil, three hundred years fall on him at once.
Manannán did not keep the horse to himself. In the tale of the Children of Tuireann, it is Lugh of the Long Arm — the bright, many-skilled hero of the Tuatha Dé Danann — who rides Enbarr, borrowed from Manannán, when he comes to aid his people against the Fomorians. The sons of Tuireann, sent on an impossible quest, ask to borrow the horse too. Lugh refuses: Enbarr is a loan, he says, and not his to lend. They must make do with Manannán's boat instead.
In later stories, Enbarr is sometimes the horse that carries mortals to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, over the western sea. When Niamh of the Golden Hair comes for Oisín, son of Fionn mac Cumhaill, the white horse she rides over the waves is sometimes named as Enbarr — and it is on that horse that Oisín, years later, returns to Ireland.
Enbarr belongs to a whole herd of magical horses across the Celtic and classical worlds. Pegasus flies, where Enbarr runs on water. The kelpies of Scotland and the Welsh Ceffyl Dŵr are also horses of the water — but they drown their riders, where Enbarr carries its rider safely home. The Highland unicorn stands for purity and untameable strength. Enbarr's gift is speed, loyalty and the freedom to cross any boundary.
Wear Enbarr and you wear the horse that turns the sea into meadow — the one steed in Celtic myth that will always bring you home.