Completely unrelated to Irish mythology or pre-christian indigenous Irish religious practice, but maybe of interest for those on the continent:
Eostre: The Making of a Myth
“…if the concocted Eostre story proves anything, it proves that neopagans are just as capable of disseminating lies and propaganda about other religions as the Christians ever were. “
Confessions of a Hedge Witch 
Nice to see such a scholarly work, so thank you. I may reblog this on Ostara.
Reblogged this on Blau Stern Schwarz Schlonge and commented:
I waited until today to reblog this post from Confessions of a Hedge Witch from earlier this week. It is a reblog of her reblog so just follow her link to a long history of Eostre. Blessings.
I don’t dispute the fact that Eostre is only referenced once (by a Christian), and if this were the extent of our knowledge on the subject I would be inclined to think that the goddess was a mistaken assumption by Bede. However, a lot of work has been done to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) mythology and language from which the Pagan religions of the Celts and Gauls, Germans and Norsemen, Slavs, Greeks, Romans, Hittites, Persians and Vedic Indians were all descended.
One goddess with a very well reconstructed name is Xáusōs (the ‘X’ is like a Germanic ‘ch’ in the back of the throat). She is the ancestor of Greek Eos, Roman Aurora, Vedic Uṣas, Avestan Ušā, Lithuanian Aušrine and Ausra, and Baltic Aushrine. It is not hard to imagine that a cognate exists in Germanic mythology too. The suggested reconstruction is Austrō(n), rather than Ostara or Eostre, but I feel that it is sufficiently close as Gto be accurate.
The other goddesses mentioned are goddesses of the dawn, rather than of the spring. It is here that I cross into speculation, rather than hard fact, but bear with me. It has been suggested (I admit, not proven) that the reason why the Mediterranean PIE descendants do not have a calendar based on solstices and equinoxes, while the more northerly ones link their calendar closely with the cycles of the sun is simply that the seasons are more contrasting the further north you go. This could result in a celebration of the return of the warmth and light of the sun after long, cold winter nights; and the obvious goddess to invoke in this celebration would be the one who opens the gates to allow the sun to rise every morning. Austro/Eostre would have retained her role as goddess of the dawn, but also take on a spring-goddess aspect.
If you can forgive a little speculation, then I hope I have provided a better explanation of the origins of Easter. If you can’t, then I hope I have at least refuted the claim that Eostre is an almost completely fabricated goddess, with no real evidence to support her existence.
As an aside, the goddess ‘Schoolholidays’ made me smirk, not least because as a fluff-bunny-teeny-Pagan of 12 years old, I did celebrate a festival at the start of the summer break and worshipped just such a goddess. I also performed thanksgiving rituals to her on snow days.
Thanks for sharing! Please do post this response to the author’s LJ discussion. I think it is an avenue worth exploring.