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.
[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.
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.
[6] In Seán Ó Seanacháin's song An Buachaill Caol Dubh, Aoibheal appears to the "Dark Slender Boy" (representing alcohol addiction) and his friend the drinker.
AND Aoibhell, another woman of the Sidhe, made her dwelling-place in Craig Liath, and at the time of the battle of Cluantarbh she set her love on a young man of Munster, Dubhlaing ua Artigan, that had been sent away in disgrace by the King of Ireland.
And it was Aoibhell gave a golden harp to the son of Meardha the time he was getting his learning at the school of the Sidhe in Connacht and that he heard his father had got his death by the King of Lochlann.
In the opening section of the poem, a hideous female giant appears to the poet and drags him kicking and screaming to the court of Queen Aoibheal of the Fairies.
On the way to the ruined monastery at Moinmoy, the messenger explains that the Queen, disgusted by the twin corruptions of Anglo-Irish landlords and English Law, has taken the dispensing of justice upon herself.
She complains that, despite increasingly desperate attempts to capture a husband via intensive flirtation at hurling matches, wakes, and pattern days, the young men insist on ignoring her in favour of late marriages to much older women.
She mocks his impotent failure to fulfill his marital duties with his young wife, who was a homeless beggar who married him to avoid starvation.
Finally, in the judgement section Queen Aoibheal rules that all laymen must marry before the age of 21, on pain of corporal punishment at the hands of Ireland's women.
To the poet's horror, the younger woman angrily points him out as a 30-year-old bachelor and describes her many failed attempts to attract his interest in hopes of becoming his wife.