THE FENIAN CYCLE
Cuchulain's life and love and death entranced the ears of the great
for many centuries, and into hundreds of bright eyes tears of pity
had for a thousand years been conjured up by the pathetic tones of
bards reciting the fate of her who perished for the son of Usnach. The
wars of Mève and of Conor mac Nessa were household words in the hall
of Muirchertach of the leather cloaks, and in the palace at the head
of the weir--Brian Boru's Kincora. Whosoever loved what was great in
conception, and admired the broad sweep of the epic called upon his
bards to recite the loves, the wars, the valour, and the deaths of the
Red Branch knights.[1]
But there was yet another era consecrated in story-telling, another
age of history peopled by other characters, in which the households
of many chieftains and some even of the chiefs themselves delighted.
These are pictured in the romances that were woven around Conn of the
Hundred Battles, his son Art the Lonely, his grandson Cormac mac Art,
and his great-grandson Cairbré of the Liffey. This cycle of romance
may be called the "Fenian" Cycle, as dealing to some extent with Finn
mac Cúmhail and his Fenian[2] militia, or the "Ossianic" Cycle since
Ossian, Finn's son, is supposed to have been the author of many of the
poems which belong to it.
In point of time--as reckoned by the Irish annalists and
historians--the men of the Fenian Cycle lived something over two
hundred years later than those of the Cuchulain era[3] and in none
of the romances do we see even the faintest confusion or sign of
intermingling the characters belonging to the different cycles. One of
the surest proofs--if proof were needed--that Macpherson's brilliant
"Ossian" had no Gaelic original, is the way in which the men and
events of the two separate cycles are jumbled together.
As the war between Ulster and Connacht, which followed the death of
the children of Usnach, is the great historic event which serves as
basis to so many of the Red Branch romances, so the principal thread
of history round which many of the Fenian stories are woven, is the
gradual and slowly increasing enmity which proclaimed itself between
the High-kings of Erin and their Fenian cohorts, resulting at last in
the battle of Gabhra, the fall of the High-king, and the destruction of
the Fenians.
Thus in the battle of Cnucha is related how Cúmhail[4] [Cool], the
father of Finn, made war upon Conn of the Hundred Battles because he
had raised Criomhthan of the Yellow Hair to the throne of Leinster,
and how he obtained the aid of the Munster princes in the war. At the
battle of Cnucha or Castleknock, near Cool's rath--now Rathcoole some
ten miles from Dublin--Cool was routed and slain by the celebrated
Connacht champion Aedh mac Morna, who lost an eye in the battle and
was thenceforth called Goll (or the blind)[5] mac Morna. Many of the
Munster Fenians followed Cool in this battle, and we find here the
broadening rift between the Fenians of Munster and of Connacht which
ultimately tended to bring about the dissolution of the whole body.
Again we find in the fine tale called the Battle of Moy Muchruime how
Finn, through spite at his father Cool being thus killed by Conn of the
Hundred Battles, kept out of the way when Conn's son Art was fighting
the great battle of Moy Muchruime and gave him no assistance.
And again it was partly because Finn kept out of the way on that
occasion that Conn's great-grandson fought the battle of Gabhra
against Finn's son Ossian and his grandson Oscar, a battle which put an
end to Fenian power for ever.
Of many of these tales we find two redactions, that of the old vellum
MSS. and that of the modern paper ones, the latter being as a rule much
longer and more decorative. Here, for instance, is the later version
of one passage out of many which is slurred over or disregarded in the
old one[6]; it is the sailing of Cúmhail, Finn's father, to Ireland to
take the throne of Leinster. I translate this from a modern manuscript
of the battle of Cnucha, in my own possession, as a good instance of
the decorative, and in places inflated style of the later redactions of
many of the Fenian sagas.
THE SAILING OF CÚMHAIL.
"Now the place where Cúmhail chanced to be at that time was between
the islands of Alba and the deserts of Fionn-Lochlan, for he was
hunting and deer-stalking there. And the number of those who were
with the over-throwing hero Cúmhail in that place, was thrice fifty
champions of his own near men. And he heard at that time that his
country was left without any good king to defend it, and that Cáthaoir
Mór [king of Leinster] had fallen in the pen of battle, and that there
was no hero to keep the country. Thereupon, those chieftains were
of a mind to proceed unto the isolated green isle of Erin, there to
maintain with valour and might the red-hand province of Leinster. And
joyfully they proceeded straight forwards towards their ship.[7]
"And there they quickly and expeditiously launched the towering,
wide-wombed, broad-sailed bark, the freighted full-wide, fair-broad,
firm-roped vessel, and they grasped their shapely well-formed
broad-bladed, well-prepared oars, and they made a powerful
sea-great, dashing, dry-quick rowing over the broad hollow-deep,
full-foamed, pools [of the sea], and over the vast-billowed, vehement,
hollow-broken rollers, so that they shot their shapely ships under the
penthouse of each fair rock in the shallows nigh to the rough-bordered
margin of the Eastern lands, over the unsmooth, great-forming,
lively-waved arms of the sea, so that each fierce, broad,
constant-foaming, bright-spotted, white-broken drop that the heroes
left upon the sea-pool with that rapid rowing, formed [themselves]
like great torrents upon soft mountains.
"When that valiant powerful company perceived the moaning of the
loud billow-waves and the breaking forth of the ocean from her
barriers, and the swelling of the abyss from her places, and the
loud convulsion of the sea from her smooth streams, it was then they
hoisted the variegated, tough-cordaged, sharp-pointed mast with
much speed. And when the great foundation-blasts of the angry wind
touched the even upright-standing, sword-straight masts, and when
the huge-flying, loud-voiced, broad-bordered sails swallowed the
wind attacking them suddenly with sharp voice, that stout, strong,
active, powerful crew rose up promptly and quickly, and every one went
straight to his work with speed and promptitude, and they stretched
forth their ready courageous, white-coloured, brown-nailed hands most
valiantly to the tackling, till they let the wind in loud, sharp,
fast, voice-bursts into the shrouds of the mast, so that the ship
gave an eager, very quick, vigorous leap forward, right straight
into the salt-ocean, till they arrived in the delightfully-clear,
cold-pooled, querulously-whistling, joyfully-calling reaches of the
sea, and the dark sea rose speedily around them in desperate-daring
floodful _doisleana_, in hardly-separated ridges and in rough-grey,
proud-tongued, gloomy-grim, blue-capacious valleys, and in
impetuous shower-topped wombs [of water]; and the great merriment
of the cold wind was answered by the chieftains, strong-workingly,
stout-enduringly, truly-powerfully, and they proceeded to manage
and attend the high-ocean, until at last the strong and powerful
sea overcame the intention of the high wind, and the murmur and
giddy voice of the deep was humbled by that great rowing, till the
sea became restful, smooth, and very calm behind them, until they
took port and harbour at Inver Cholpa, which is at this time called
Drogheda."
The stories about Cormac mac Art, his grandfather Conn of the Hundred
Battles, and his son Cairbré of the Liffey, which are numerous, are
mostly more or less connected with the Fenians, and may, as they deal
with the same era and the same characters, be conveniently classed
along with the Fenian sagas. One of the best known of these sagas is
the Battle of Moy Léana[8] in which Conn of the Hundred Battles slew
his rival Owen, who had forced from him half his kingdom. Owen had
lived for six years in Spain, and had married a daughter of the Spanish
king. At the end of this time he was seized with great home-sickness
and he proposed to return to Ireland. When his father-in-law heard
this, he said to him:--
"If that Erin of which you speak, Owen, were a thing easily moved,
we would deem it easier to send the soldiers and warriors of Spain
with you thither to cut it from its foundation and lay it on wheels
and carry it after our ships and place it a one angle of Spain"--a
grandiloquent speech which Owen did not relish; "He did not receive it
with satisfaction, and it was not sweet to him," says the saga.
The King perceived this however, and offered him just what he wanted,
two thousand warriors to help him and his exiles in acquiring the
kingdom. The account of their embarcation and voyage is perhaps as
good a specimen of exaggerated verbosity and of the rhetoric of the
professed story-teller as any other in these sagas, which abound with
such things, and it is perhaps worth while to give it at length. It
will be seen that the story-teller or prose-poet, passes everything
through the prism of his imagination, and aided by an extraordinary
exuberance of vocabulary and unbounded wealth of alliterative
adjectives, wraps the commonest objects in a hurricane of--to use
his own phrase--"misty-dripping" epithet. The Battle of Moy Léana is
recorded in the Annals of Ulster, by Flann in the eleventh century, and
by the Book of Leinster, and no doubt the essence of the saga is very
ancient, but the dressing-up of it, and especially the passage I am
about to quote, is, in its style--not to speak of the language which is
modern--almost certainly post-Norman.
THE SAILING OF OWEN MÓR.
"Then that vindictive unmerciful host went forward to the harbours
and ports where their vessels and their sailing ships awaited them;
and they launched their terrible wonderful monsters; their black,
dangerous, many-coloured ships; their smooth, proper-sided, steady,
powerful scuds, and their cunningly-stitched _Laoidheangs_ from
their beds and from their capacious, full-smooth places, out of the
cool clear-winding creeks of the coast, and from the calm, quiet,
well-shaped, broad-headed harbours, and there were placed upon
every swift-going ship of them free and accurately arranged tiers
of fully-smoothed, long-bladed oars, and they made a harmonious,
united, co-operating, thick-framed, eager-springing, unhesitating,
constant-going rowing against currents and wild tempests, so that
loud, haughty, proud-minded, were the responses of the stout,
fierce-fronted, sportive-topped billows in conversing with the scuds
and beautiful prows.
"The dark, impetuous, proud, ardent waters became as white-streaked,
fierce-rolling, languid-fatigued _Leibhiona_, upon which to cast the
white-flanked, slippery, thick, straight-swimming salmon, among the
dark-prowling, foamy-tracked heads [of sea monsters] from off the
brown oars.
"And upon that fleet, sweeping with sharp rapidity from the sides and
borders of the territories, and from the shelter of the lands, and
from the calm quiet of the shores, they could see nothing of the globe
on their border near them, but the high, proud, tempestuous waves of
the abyss, and the rough, roaring shore, shaking and quivering, and
the very-quick, swift motion of the great wind coming upon them, and
long-swelling, gross-springing, great billows rising over the swelling
sides of the [sea] valleys, and the savage, dangerous, shower-crested
sea, maintaining its strength against the rapid course of the vessels
over the expanse, until at last it became exhausted, subdued,
drizzling and misty, from the conflict of the waves and fierce winds.
"The labouring crews derived increased spirits from the bounding
of the swift ships over the wide expanse, and the wind coming from
the rear, directly fair for the brave men, they arose manfully and
vigorously to their work, and lashed the tough, new masts to the
brown, smooth, ample, commodious bulwarks, without weakness, without
spraining, without overstraining. Those ardent, expert crews put their
hands to the long linen [sails] without shrinking, without mistake,
from _Eibhil_ to _Achtuaim_, and the swift-going, long, capacious
ships, passed from the hand-force of the warriors, and over the deep,
wet, murmuring pools of the sea, and past the winding, bending,
fierce-showery points of the harbours, and over the high-torrented,
ever-great mountains of the brine, and over the heavy, listless walls
of the great waves, and past the dark, misty-dripping hollows of the
shores, and past the saucy, thick-flanked, spreading, white-crested
currents of the streams, and over the spring-tide, contentious,
furious, wet, overwhelming fragments of the cold ocean, until the sea
became rocking like a soft, fragrant, proud-bearing plain, swelling
and heaving to the force of the anger and fury of the cold winds.
"The upper elements quickly perceived the anger and fury of the
sea growing and increasing. Woe indeed was it to have stood
between those two powers, the sea and the great wind when mutually
attacking each other, and contending at the sides of strong ships
and stout-built vessels and beautiful scuds. So that the sea was in
showery-tempestuous, growling, wet, fierce, loud, clamorous, dangerous
stages after them, whilst the excitement of the murmuring dark-deeded
wind continued in the face and in the sluices of the ocean from its
bottom to its surface. And tremulous, listless, long-disjointed,
quick-shattering, ship-breaking, was the effect of the disturbance,
and treacherous the shivering of the winds and the rolling billows
upon the swift barks, for the tempest did not leave them a plank
unshaken, nor a hatch unstarted, nor a rope unsnapped, nor a nail
unstrained, nor a bulwark unendangered, nor a bed unshattered, nor a
lifting uncast-down, nor a mast unshivered, nor a yard untwisted, nor
a sail untorn, nor a warrior unhurt, nor a soldier unterrified, nor a
noble unstunned--excepting the ardour and sailorship of the brave men
who attended to the attacks and howlings of the fierce wind.
"However, now, when the wind had exhausted its valour and had not
received reverence nor honour from the sea, it went forward, stupid
and crestfallen, to the uppermost regions of its residence; and the
sea was fatigued from its roarings and drunken murmurings, and the
wild billows ceased their motions, so that spirit returned to he
nobles and strength to the hosts, and activity to the warriors, and
strength to the champions. And they sailed onwards in that order
without delay or accident until they reached the sheltered smooth
harbour of Cealga and the shore of the island of Greagraidhe."
Who or what the Fenians were, has given rise to the greatest diversity
of opinion. The school of Mr. Nutt and Professor Rhys would, I fancy,
recognise in them nothing but tribal deities, euhemerised or regarded
as men.[9] Dr. Skene and Mr. Mac Ritchie believed that they were an
altogether separate race of men from the Gaels, probably allied to, or
identical with, the Picts of history; and the latter holds that they
are the _sidhe_ [shee] or fairy folk of the Gaels. The native Irish, on
the other hand, who were perfectly acquainted with the Picts, and tell
us much about them, have always regarded the Fenians as being nothing
more or less than a body of janissaries or standing troops of Gaelic
and Firbolg families, maintained during several reigns by the Irish
kings, a body which tended to become hereditary. Nor is there in this
account anything inherently impossible or improbable, especially as the
Fenian régime synchronises with a time when the Irish were probably
aggressively warlike. Keating, writing in Irish about the year 1630,
gives the traditional account of them as he gathered it from ancient
books and other authorities now lost, and this certainly preserves
some ancient and unique traits. He begins by rejecting the ridiculous
stories told about them, such as the battle of Ventry and the like, as
well as the remarks of Campion and of Buchanan, who in his history of
Scotland had called Finn a giant.
"It is proved," writes Keating, "that their persons were of no
extraordinary size compared with the men that lived in their own
times, and moreover that they were nothing more than members of a
body of _buanadha_ or retained soldiers, maintained by the Irish
kings for the purpose of guarding their territories and of upholding
their authority therein. It is thus that captains and soldiers are at
present maintained by all modern kings for the purpose of defending
their rule and guarding their countries.
"The members of the Fenian Body lived in the following manner. They
were quartered on the people from November Day till May Day, and their
duty was to uphold justice and to put down injustice on the part of
the kings and lords of Ireland, and also to guard the harbours of the
country from the oppression of foreign invaders. After that, from May
till November, they lived by hunting and the chase, and by performing
the duties demanded of them by the kings of Ireland, such as
preventing robberies, exacting fines and tributes, putting down public
enemies, and every other kind of evil that might afflict the country.
In performing these duties they received a certain fixed pay....
"However, from May till November the Fenians had to content themselves
with game, the product of their own hunting, as this [right to hunt]
was their maintenance and pay from the kings of Ireland. That is,
the warriors had the flesh of the wild animals for their food, and
the skins for wages. During the whole day, from morning till night
they used to eat but one meal, and of this it was their wont to
partake towards evening. About noon they used to send whatever game
they had killed in the morning by their attendants to some appointed
hill where there were wood and moorland close by. There they used to
light immense fires, into which they put a large quantity of round
sandstones. They next dug two pits in the yellow clay of the moor,
and having set part of the venison upon spits to be roasted before
the fire they bound up the remainder with sugàns--ropes of straw or
rushes--in bundles of sedge, and then placed them to be cooked in one
of the pits they had previously dug. There they set the stones which
they had before this heated in the fire, round about them, and kept
heaping them upon the bundles of meat until they had made them seethe
freely, and the meat had become thoroughly cooked. From the greatness
of these fires it has resulted that their sites are still to be
recognised in many parts of Ireland by their burnt blackness. It is
they that are commonly called _Fualachta na bhFiann_, or the Fenians'
cooking-spots.
"As to the warriors of the Fenians, when they were assembled at the
place where their fires had been lighted, they used to gather round
the second of those pits of which we have spoken above, and there
every man stripped himself to his skin, tied his tunic round his
waist, and then set to dressing his hair and cleansing his limbs, thus
ridding himself of the sweat and soil of the day's hunt. Then they
began to supple their thews and muscles by gentle exercise, loosening
them by friction, until they had relieved themselves of all sense of
stiffness and fatigue. When they had finished doing this they sat down
and ate their meal. That being over, they set about constructing their
_fiann-bhotha_ or hunting-booths, and preparing their beds, and so put
themselves in train for sleep. Of the following three materials did
each man construct his bed, of the brushwood of the forest, of moss,
and of fresh rushes. The brushwood was laid next the ground, over it
was placed the moss, and lastly fresh rushes were spread over all. It
is these three materials that are designated in our old romances as
the _tri Cuilcedha na bhFiann_--the three Beddings of the Fenians."
Every man who entered the Fenian ranks had four _geasa_ [gassa, _i.e._,
tabus] laid upon him,
"The first, never to receive a portion with a wife, but to choose her
for good manners and virtues; the second, never to offer violence to
any woman; the third, never to refuse any one for anything he might
possess; the fourth, that no single warrior should ever flee before
nine [_i.e._, before less than ten] champions."
There was a curious condition attached to entrance into the brotherhood
which rendered it necessary that
"Both his father and mother, his tribe, and his relatives should first
give guarantees that they should never make any charge against any
person for his death. This was in order that the duty of avenging his
own blood [wounds] should rest with no man other than himself, and in
order that his friends should have nothing to claim with respect to
him however great the evils inflicted upon him."
All the Fenians were obliged to know the rules of poetry,[10] for no
figure in Irish antiquity, layman or cleric, could ever arrive at the
rank of a popular hero unless he could compose, or at least appreciate
a poem.
The Fenian tales and poems are extraordinarily numerous, but their
conception and characteristics are in general distinctly different
from those relating to the Red Branch. They have not the same sweep,
the same vastness and stature, the same weirdness, as the older cycle.
The majority of them are more modern in conception and surroundings.
There is little or no mention of the war chariot which is so important
a factor in the older cycle. The Fenians fought on foot or horseback,
and we meet, too, frequent mention of helmets and mail-coats, which
are post-Danish touches. Things are on a smaller scale. Exaggeration
does not run all through the stories, but is confined to small parts of
them, and it is set off by much that is trivial or humorous.
The Fenian stories became in later times the distinctly popular ones.
They were far more of the people and for the people than those of
the Red Branch. They were most intimately bound up with the life
and thought and feelings of the whole Gaelic race, high and low,
both in Ireland and Scotland, and the development of Fenian saga,
for a period of 1,200 or 1,500 years, is one of the most remarkable
examples in the world of continuous literary evolution. I use the word
evolution advisedly, for there was probably not a century from the
seventh to the eighteenth in which new stories, poems, and redactions
of sagas concerning Finn and the Fenians were not invented and put
in circulation, while to this very day many stories never committed
to manuscript are current about them amongst the Irish and Scotch
Gaelic-speaking populations. We have found no such steady interest
evinced by the people in the Red Branch romances, and in attempting to
collect Irish folk-lore I have found next to nothing about Cuchulain
and his contemporaries, but great quantities about Finn, Ossian, Oscar,
Goll, and Conan. The one cycle, then, antique in tone, language, and
surroundings, was, I suspect, that of the chiefs, the great men,
and the bards; the other--at least in later times--more that of the
un-bardic classes and of the people.
I do not mean to say that many of the Cuchulain stories were not
copied into modern MSS. and circulated freely among the people all
over Ireland during the eighteenth century and the beginning of this,
especially Cuchulain's training, Conlaoch's (his son's) death, the
Fight at the Ford, and others, but these appear never to have put out
shoots and blossoms from themselves and to have generated new and
yet again new stories as did the ever-youthful Fenian tales; nor do
they appear to have equally entwined themselves at this day round the
popular imagination.
A striking instance of how the Ossianic tale continued to develop down
to the eighteenth century was supplied me the other day when examining
the Reeves Collection.[11] I there came upon a story in a Louth MS.,
written, I think, in the last century, which seemed to me to contain
one of the latest developments of Ossianic saga. It is called "The
Adventures of Dubh mac Deaghla," and tells us of how a prophet was born
of the race of Eiremóin, "and all say," adds the writer, "that it was
he was the druid who prophesied to Fiacha Sreabhtainne that he should
fall in the battle of Dubh-Cumair by the three brothers, Cairioll,
Muircath, and Aodh." He also "prophesied to the race of Tuathal that
Cairbré of the Liffey was that far-branching tree which was to spread
round about through the great circuit of Erin, around which smote
the powerful wind from the south-west, overthrowing it wholly to the
ground--which wind meant the Fenians, as had been announced by the
smith's daughter."[12] The Fenians it seems heard that this Torna had
prophesied about them and intended to kill him, and he and his family
had to emigrate to Britain. From there he sends a letter in true
epistolary style to an old friend of his, one Conor son of Dathach,
beginning "Dear Friend"--an evident mark of seventeenth or possibly
eighteenth century authorship, for there are no letters written in
this style in the older literature, and this piece evidently follows
a Latin or a Spanish, or possibly an English model. However this may
be, Torna's letter asks Conor for news of the situation, and in time
receives the following answer:
"_To Torna son of Dubh, our dear friend in Glen Fuinnse in Britain in
Saxony._
"Thy affectionate missive was read by me as soon as it arrived, and it
had been a cause of joy to me, were it not for the way we are in at
Tara at this moment.
"For we never felt until the Munster Fenians came and encamped at the
marsh of Old Raphoe and Treibhe to the south-west; the warriors of
Leinster also and _Baoisgnidh_, together with Clan Ditribh and Clan
Boirchne, were to the south of them, towards the bottom of the stream
of Gabhra and on the west towards the old fort of Mève; and that same
evening the King having received an account of the encamping of the
Fenians urges messengers secretly to Connacht to the Clan of Conal
Cruachna that they might come, along with all the king's friends from
the western border of Erin; and other messengers he despatches to
Scotland for the Clan of Garaidh Glúnmhar, desiring Oscar of the blue
Javelin, Aodh, Argal, and Airtre to come from abroad without delay,
and that secretly.
"On the early morning of the morrow, before the stars of the air
retired, the King urged the druids of Tara against the Fenians to
argue with them, and ask what was the cause of their rebelling in this
guise, or who it was with whom they had now come to do battle, because
they appeared not in habiliments of peace or friendship, but a flush
of anger appeared in the face and countenance of every several man of
them.
"'And there is another unlawful thing of which ye are guilty,' said
the druids, 'which shows that ye have broken the vow of allegiance
and obedience to your king, in that ye have come in array and garb
of battle to the door of his fortress without receiving his leave or
advice, without giving him notice or warning. To what point of the
compass do ye travel, or on what have ye set your mind [that ye act
not] as is the right and due of a prince's subjects, and as was always
before this the habitude of the bands that came before ye; and as
shall last with honest people till the end of the world.'
"However, now the druids are a-preaching to them and casting at
them bold storm-showers of reproofs by way of retarding them till
the coming back of the messengers who went abroad, for Mac Cool is
not amongst them to excite them against us, and we hope that they
will remain thus until help come to us. For this is the eleventh day
since the druids went from us, and our watchmen who observe what
approaches and what goes, disclose all tidings to us, and they are
ever a-listening to the loud argument of the druids and the captains
against one another. Moreover, the desire of the Fenians to make a
rapid assault upon Tara is the less from their having heard that
Cairbré was gone on his royal round to Dun Sreabhtainne to visit
Fiacha,[13] though he is really not gone there, but to a certain place
under cover of night with his women and the royal jewels of Tara. And
it was lucky for him that he did not go to Dun Sreabhtainne, for the
Fenians had sent Cairioll and nine mighty men with him to plunder Dun
Sreabhtainne. In that, however, they miscarried, for his tutor was
gone off before that with Fiacha, by order of the King, to the same
place where the women were. That, however, we shall pursue no further
at present.
"But it is easy for you who are knowledgeable to form a judgment upon
the state in which the inhabitants of a country must be, over which
such a whelming calamity is about to fall. Let me leave off. And here
we send our affectionate greeting to you, and to you all, with the
hope of some time seeing you in full health, but I have small hope of
it.
"From your faithful friend till death, Conor, son of Dathach in Tara,
the royal fortress of Erin. Written the 20th day of the month of March
in the year of the age of the world ... " [The figures in the MS. are
not legible].
The romance, which is a long one, is chiefly occupied with events
relating to the family of Dubh mac Deaghla in Britain. But later on in
the book the Conor who despatched this letter turns up and gives in
person a most vivid description of the Battle of Gowra, and the events
which followed his letter.
I have only instanced and quoted from this comparatively unimportant
story, as showing one of the very latest developments of Fenian
literature, and as proving how thoroughly even the seventeenth and
eighteenth century Gaels were imbued with, and realised the spirit
of, the Fenian Cycle, and also as a peculiar specimen of what rarely
happens in literature, but is always of great interest when it does
happen--a specimen of unconscious saga developing into semi-conscious
romance.
There are comparatively few ancient texts belonging to the Finn saga,
compared with the wealth of old vellum books that contain the Red
Branch stories. There is, however, quite enough of documentary proof
to show that so early as the seventh century Finn was looked on as a
popular hero.
The actual data that we have to go upon in estimating the genesis
and development of the Fenian tales have been lucidly collected by
Mr. Nutt. They are, as far as is known at present, as follows. Gilla
Caemhain, the poet who died in 1072, says that it was fifty-seven years
after the battle of Moy Muchruime that Finn was treacherously killed
"by the spear points of Urgriu's three sons."[14] This would make
Finn's death take place in 252, for Moy Muchruime was fought according
to the "Four Masters" in A.D. 195. Tighearnach the Annalist, who died
in 1088, writes that Finn was killed in A.D. 283, "by Aichleach, son of
Duibhdrean, and the sons of Urgriu of the Luaighni of Tara, at Ath-Brea
upon the Boyne." The poet Cinaeth O Hartagain, who died in A.D. 985,
wrote: "By the Fiann of Luagne was the death of Finn at Ath-Brea upon
the Boyne." All these men in the tenth and eleventh centuries certainly
believed in Finn as implicitly as they did in King Cormac.
The two oldest miscellaneous Irish MSS. which we have, are the Leabhar
na h-Uidhre and the Book of Leinster. The Leabhar na h-Uidhre was
compiled from older MSS. towards the close of the eleventh century,
and the Book of Leinster some fifty years later. The oldest of them
contains a copy of the famous poem ascribed to Dallán Forgaill in
praise of St. Columcille, which was so obscure in the middle of the
eleventh century that it required to be glossed. In this gloss, made
perhaps in the eleventh century, perhaps long before, there is an
explanatory poem on winter, ascribed to Finn, grandson of Baoisgne,
that is our Finn mac Cool, and in the same commentary we find an
explanation of the words "diu" = long, and "derc" = eye, in proof
of which this verse is quoted, "As Gráinne," says the commentator,
"daughter of Cormac, said to Finn."
"There lives a man
On whom I would love to gaze long,
For whom I would give the whole world,
O Son of Mary! though a privation!"
This verse, quoted as containing two words which required explanation
in or before the eleventh century, pre-supposes the story of Diarmuid
and Gráinne. In addition to this we have the apparently historical
story of the "Cause of the Battle of Cnucha." We have also the story
of the Mongan, an Ulster king of the seventh century, according to
the annalists who declared that he was not what men took him to be,
the son of the mortal Fiachna, but of the god Mananán mac Lir, and a
re-incarnation of the great Finn, and calls back from the grave the
famous Fenian, Caoilte, who proves it. This account is strongly relied
upon by Mr. Nutt to prove the wild mythological nature of the Finn
story, but it is by no means unique in Irish literature, for we find
the celebrated Tuan mac Cairrill had a second birth also, and the
great Cuchulain too has his parentage ascribed to the god Lugh, not
to Sualtach, his reputed father. Consequently, supposing Finn to have
been a real historical character of the third century, there would be
nothing absolutely extraordinary in the story arising in half pagan
times that Mongan, also an historical character, was a re-incarnation
of Finn.
In the second oldest miscellaneous manuscript, the Book of Leinster,
the references to Finn and the Fenians are much more numerous,
containing three poems ascribed to Ossian, Finn's son, five poems
ascribed to Finn himself, two poems ascribed to Caoilte the Fenian
poet, a poem ascribed to one of Finn's followers, allusions to Finn
in poems by one Gilla in Chomded and another, passages from the
Dinnsenchas or topographical tract about Finn, the account of the
battle of Cnámhross, in which Finn helps the Leinstermen against King
Cairbré, the genealogy of Finn, and the genealogy of Diarmuid O'Duibhne.
Again, in the Glossary ascribed, and probably truly, to Cormac,
King-Bishop of Cashel, A.D. 837-903, there are two allusions to Finn,
one of which refers to the unfaithfulness of his wife. This, indeed,
is not contained in the oldest copy, but Whitley Stokes, than whom
there can be no better authority, believes these allusions to belong
to the older portion of the Glossary, a work which is probably much
interpolated.
But there is yet another proof of the antiquity of the Finn stories
which Mr. Nutt does not note, and in some respects it is the most
important and conclusive of all. For if, as D'Arbois de Jubainville
has, I think, proved, the list of 187 historic tales contained in the
Book of Leinster was really drawn up at the end of the seventh or
beginning of the eighth century, we find that even then Finn or his
contemporaries were the subjects of, or figure in, several of them, as
in the story of "The Courtship of Ailbhe, daughter of King Cormac mac
Art, by Finn," "The Battle of Moy Muchruime," where King Art, Cormac's
father, was slain; "The Cave of Bin Edair," where Diarmuid and Gráinne
took shelter when pursued by Finn; "The Adventures of Finn in Derc
Fearna (the cave of Dunmore)," a lost tale; "The Elopement of Gráinne
with Diarmuid," and perhaps one or two more.
Thus Finn is sandwiched in as a real person along with his other
contemporaries, not only in tenth and eleventh century annalists and
poets, but is also made the hero of historic romance as early as the
seventh or eighth century. Side by side in our list with the battle
of Moy Muchruime we have the battle of Moy Rath. Copies of both,
coloured with the same literary pigments, exist. The last we _know_
to be historical, it can be proved; why should not the first be also?
It is true that the one took place 438 years before the other, but
the treatment of both is absolutely identical, and it is the merest
accident that we happen to have external evidence for the latter and
not for the former. I can see, then, no sufficiently cogent reasons for
viewing Finn mac Cúmhail with different eyes from those with which we
regard his king. Cormac mac Art is usually acknowledged to have been
a real king of flesh and blood, whose buildings are yet seen on the
site of Tara, after whose daughter Gráinne one of them is named, why
should Finn, his chief captain, who married that Gráinne, be a deity
euhemerised? I do not see any arguments sufficient to differentiate
this case of Finn, to whom no particular supernatural qualities (except
the knowledge he got when he chewed his thumb) are attributed, from
that of Cormac and other kings and heroes who were the subjects of
bardic stories, and whose deaths were recorded in the Annals, except
the accident that the creative imagination of the later Gaels happened
to seize upon him and make him and his contemporaries the nucleus of
a vast literature instead of some earlier or later group of perhaps
equally deserving champions. Finn has long since become to all ears a
pan-Gaelic champion just as Arthur has become a Brythonic one.
Of the Fenian sagas the longest--though it is only fragmentary--is that
known as the Dialogue or Colloquy of the Ancients, which is preserved
in the Book of Lismore, and would fill about 250 of these pages. The
plot of it is simple enough. Caoilte [Cweeltya] the poet and Ossian,
almost sole survivors of the Fenians--who had lived on after the
battle of Gabhra, where Cairbré, the High-king, broke their power for
ever--meet in their very old age St. Patrick and the new preachers of
the gospel. Patrick is most desirous of learning the past history of
the island from them, and the legends connected with streams and hills
and raths and so forth, and these are willingly recounted to him, and
were all written[15] down by Brogan Patrick's scribe for posterity to
read hereafter. The saga describes their wanderings along with the
saint, the stories they relate to him, and the verses--over a couple
of thousand--sung or repeated by them to the clerics and others.[16]
Some of these pieces are exceedingly beautiful. Here is a specimen, the
lament which Credé made over her husband who was drowned at the battle
of Ventry. Caoilte repeats the verses to Patrick:
"The haven roars, and O the haven roars, over the rushing race of
_Rinn-da-bharc_. The drowning of the warrior of _Loch-da-chonn_,
that is what the wave impinging on the strand laments.[17] Melodious
is the crane, and O melodious is the crane, in the marshlands of
_Druim-dá-thrén_. 'Tis she who may not save her brood alive. The wild
dog of two colours is intent upon her nestlings. A woful note, and O a
woful note is that which the thrush in Drumqueen emits, but not more
cheerful is the wail which the blackbird makes in Letterlee. A woful
sound, and O a woful sound, is that the deer utters in Drumdaleish.
Dead lies the doe of Drumsheelin,[18] the mighty stag bells after
her. Sore suffering, and O suffering sore, is the hero's death, his
death, who used to lie by me.... Sore suffering to me is Cael, and O
Cael is a suffering sore, that by my side he is in dead man's form;
that the wave should have swept over his white body, that is what hath
distracted me, so great was his delightfulness. A dismal roar, and
O a dismal roar, is that the shore's surf makes upon the strand....
A woful booming, and O a boom of woe, is that which the wave makes
upon the northward beach, butting as it does against the polished
rock, lamenting for Cael now that he is gone. A woful fight, and O
a fight of woe, is that the wave wages with the southern shore. A
woful melody, and O a melody of woe, is that which the heavy surge of
Tullacleish emits. As for me the calamity which has fallen upon me
having shattered me, for me prosperity exists no more."
Perhaps the Fenian saga, next in length and certainly in merit, is
the well-known "Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne."[19] Diarmuid of the
Love-spot unwittingly causes Gráinne, daughter of Cormac mac Art, the
High-king, to fall in love with him, just on the eve of her marriage
with his captain, Finn mac Cool. He is driven to elope with her, and
is pursued round Ireland by the vengeful Finn, who succeeds after many
years in compassing the death of the generous and handsome Diarmuid by
a wild boar, and then winning back to himself the love of the fickle
Gráinne.
The Enchanted Fort of the Quicken Tree, the Enchanted Fort of Céis
Corann,[20] the Little Brawl at Allen,[21] the Enchanted Fort of
Eochaidh Beag the Red,[22] the Pursuit of Sive, daughter of Owen Óg,
the Pursuit of the Giolla Deacar,[23] the Death of the Great Youth
the King of Spain's son,[24] The Feast in the House of Conan,[25]
the Legend of Lomnochtan of Slieve Riffé,[26] the Legend of Ceadach
the Great,[27] the Battle of Tulach na n-each,[28] the Battle of
Ventry,[29] the Battle of Cnucha, the Battle of Moy Muchruime,[30] the
Battle of Moy Léana,[31] the youthful Exploits of Finn mac Cool,[32]
the Battle of Gabhra,[33] the Birth of King Cormac,[34] the Battle
of Crinna,[35] the Cause of the Battle of Cnucha,[36] the Invitation
of Maol grandson of Manannán to the Fenians of Erin,[37] the Legend
of the Clown in the Drab Coat,[38] the Lamentation of Oilioll after
his children,[39] Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise,[40] the
Decision about Cormac's Sword,[41] an ancient fragment about Finn and
Gráinne,[42] an ancient fragment on the Death of Finn[43]--are some of
the remaining prose sagas of this cycle.
[1] Moore's genius has stereotyped amongst us the term Red Branch
knight, which, however, has too much flavour of the mediæval about
it. The Irish is _curadh_, "hero." The Irish for "Knight" in the
appellations White Knight, Knight of the Glen, etc., is Ridire
(pronounced "Rĭd-ĭr-yă," in Connacht sometimes corruptly "Rud-ir-ya"),
which is evidently the mediæval "Ritter," _i.e._, Rider.
[2] Moore helped to bring this word into common use under the form of
Finnian in his melody, "The wine-cup is circling in Alvin's hall."
It is probable that he derived the word from Finn, and meant by it
"followers of Finn mac Cool." The Irish word is Fiann (pronounced
"Fee-an") and has nothing to do with Finn mac Cúmhail. In the genitive
it is nà Féine (na Fayna). It is a noun of multitude, and means the
Fenian body in general. The individual Fenian was called Féinnidhe,
_i.e._, a member of the Fenian force. The bands of militia were called
Fianna [Fee-ăn-a], The word is declined _An Fhiann, na Féinne, do'n
Fhéinn_ [In Eean, nă Fayn-a, don Aen] and its resemblance to the proper
name Finn is only accidental. The English translation of Keating made
early in the last century, by Dermot O'Conor, does not use the term
"Fenian" at all, but translates the word by "Irish Militia." Nor does
O'Halloran, in 1778, when he published his history, seem to have known
the term. The first person who appears to have used it is Miss Brooke,
as early as 1796: in her translation of some Ossianic pieces, I find
the lines--
"He cursed in rage the Fenian chief
And all the Fenian race."
I have been told that Macpherson had already used the word, but I have
looked carefully through his Ossian and have not been able to find
it. Halliday in his edition of Keating, in 1808, talks in a foot-note
of "Fenian heroes." It was John O'Mahony the head-centre of the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, a brilliant Irish scholar and translator of
Keating, who succeeded in perpetuating the ancient historic memory by
christening the "men of '68" the "Fenians."
[3] Cormac mac Art came to the throne, A.D. 227, according to the "Four
Masters"; A.D. 213, according to Keating.
[4] See ch. XX, note 9.
[5] The word is long obsolete. Goll is a stock character in Fenian
folk-lore, a kind of Ajax.
[6] Contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a volume copied about the
year 1100, and printed in "Revue Celtique," vol. ii. p. 86.
[7] With this thunderous description, all sound and fury, and
signifying very little, compare the Homeric description of a like
scene, clear, accurate, cut like a gem:
τοῖσιν δ᾿ἴκμενον οὖρον ἵει ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων,
οἱ δ᾿ἱστὸν στήσαντ᾿, ἀνά θ᾿ ἱστία λευκὰ πέτασσαν
ἐν δ᾿άνεμος πρῆσεν μέσον ἱστίον, ἀμφὶ δὲ κῦμα
στείρῃ πορφύρεον μεγάλ᾿ ἴαχε, νηὸς ἰούσης
῾η δ᾿ ἔθεεν κατὰ κῦμα, διαπρήσσυσα κέλευθα.
ILIAD I., p. 480.
But the Irish passage, though quoted here to exemplify a common feature
of the Fenian tales, really dates from a time of decadence.
[8] Published by Eugene O'Curry for the Celtic Society. I adhere to his
admirable, and at the same time perfectly literal, translation.
[9] Mr. Nutt seems to believe that the whole groundwork of the Fenian
tales is mythical. His position with regard to them is fairly summed
up in this extract from his note on Mac Innes' Gaelic stories. "Every
Celtic tribe," he writes, "possessed traditions both mythical and
historical, the former of substantially the same character, the latter
necessarily varying. Myth and history acted and reacted upon each
other, and produced heroic saga which may be defined as myth tinged
and distorted by history. The largest element is as a rule suggested
by myth, so that the varying heroic sagas of the various portions of a
race, have always a great deal in common. These heroic sagas, together
with the official or semi-official mythologies of the pre-Christian
Irish are the subject-matter of the Annals. They were thrown into a
purely artificial chronological shape by men familiar with biblical and
classical history. A framework was thus created into which the entire
mass of native legend was gradually fitted, whilst the genealogies of
the race were modelled, or it may be remodelled in accord with it.
In studying the Irish sagas we may banish entirely from our mind all
questions as to the truth of the early portions of the Annals. The
subject matter of the latter is mainly mythical, the mode in which it
has been treated is literary. What residuum of historic truth may still
survive can be but infinitesimal." (_See_ Mr. Nutt's valuable essay on
Ossianic or Fenian Saga in "Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition," vol.
ii. p. 399.)
[10] "Of all these," says, with true Celtic hyperbole, the
fifteenth-century vellum in the British Museum, marked "Egerton, 1782,"
"not a man was taken until he was a prime poet versed in the twelve
books of poetry. No man was taken till in the ground a large hole had
been made such as to reach the fold of his belt, and he put into it
with his shield and a forearm's length of a hazel stick. Then must nine
warriors having nine spears, with a ten furrows' width between them and
him, assail him, and in concert let fly at him. If he were then hurt
past that guard of his, he was not received into the Fian-ship. Not a
man of them was taken until his hair had been interwoven into braids
on him, and he started at a run through Ireland's woods, while they
seeking to wound him followed in his wake, there having been between
him and them but one forest bough by way of interval at first. Should
he be overtaken he was wounded and not received into the Fian-ship
after. If his weapons had quivered in his hand he was not taken. Should
a branch in the wood have disturbed anything of his hair out of its
braiding he was not taken. If he had cracked a dry stick under his
foot [as he ran] he was not accepted. Unless that [at full speed] he
had both jumped a stick level with his brow, and stooped to pass under
one on a level with his knee, he was not taken. Unless also without
slackening his pace he could with his nail extract a thorn from his
foot he was not taken into the Fian-ship. But if he performed all this
he was of Finn's people." (_See_ "Silva Gadelica," p. 100 of English
vol.)
[11] These MSS. volumes, fifty-four in number, had most of them
belonged to Mr. MacAdam, editor of the "Ulster Journal of Archæology,"
from whom Bishop Reeves bought them. On the lamented death of that
great scholar they were put up to auction, when the Royal Irish Academy
bought some thirty volumes, the rest unfortunately were allowed to be
scattered again to the four winds of heaven. For his exertions and
generosity in securing even so many of these MSS., especially those
which at first sight looked least important, but which contained
treasures of folk-lore and folk-song, the Hon. Treasurer, the Rev.
Maxwell Close, has placed Irish-speaking Ireland under yet another debt
of gratitude to him. It is not always that which is most ancient which
is most valuable from a literary or a national point of view. The pity
of it is that any Irish MS. that comes into the market should not be
bought up for the nation with the money assigned by the Government and
confided to the Royal Irish Academy for Irish studies, unless a special
search should show _that the Academy already possesses a copy of each
piece in it_. I am convinced that many hundreds or thousands of pieces
have been through neglect to do this irreparably lost to the nation. Oh
the pity of it!
[12] This is in allusion to the romance of Moy Muchruime, where we read
of the prophecy and what followed. For Cairbré _see_ above, p. 32.
[13] Fiacha was the King's son, and succeeded him in the sovereignty.
He was finally slain by his nephews, the celebrated Three Collas--they
who afterwards burned Emania and caused the Ultonian dynasty and the
Red Branch knights, after a duration of more than seven hundred years,
to set in blood and flame, never to rise again.
[14] "There were many among the Fenians," says Keating, "who were
more remarkable for their personal prowess, their valour, and their
corporeal stature than Finn. The reason why he was made king of the
Fiann, and set over the warriors, was simply because his father and
grandfather had held that position before him. Another reason also
why he had been made king of the Fiann was because he excelled his
contemporaries in intellect and learning, in wisdom and in subtlety,
and in experience and hardihood in battlefields. It was for these
qualities that he was made king of the Fiann, and not for his personal
prowess or for the great size or strength of his body."
"Warrior better than Finn," says an old vellum MS. in the British
Museum, "never struck his hand into chiefs, inasmuch as for service he
was a soldier, a hospitaller for hospitality, and in heroism a hero. In
fighting functions he was a fighting man, and in strength a champion
worthy of a king, so that ever since and from that until this, it is
with Finn that every such is co-ordinated."
And in another place the same vellum says, "A good man verily was he
who had those Fianna, for he was the seventh king ruling Ireland, that
is to say, there were five kings of the provinces, and the King of
Ireland, he being himself the seventh conjointly with the King of all
Ireland."
In a MS. saga in my own possession, called "The Pursuit of Sadhbh
(Sive)," there is an amusing account of the truculence of the Fenians
about their exclusive right of hunting, and the way they terrorised the
people they were quartered on, but I have not space for this extract.
[15] _See_ above, p. 116.
[16] This has been edited by Standish Hayes O'Grady in his "Silva
Gadelica," from the Book of Lismore.
[17]
"Géisid cuan, ón géisid cuan
Os buinne ruad rinnda bharc,
Badad laeich locha dhá chonn
Is ed cháinios tonn re trácht."
"Silva Gadelica," p. 113 of Gaelic volume, p. 122 of English volume. I
have not altered Dr. O'Grady's beautiful translation.
[18] This passage and that about the crane are not explained in the
"Colloquy," but curiously enough I find the same passage in the saga
called the Battle of Ventry, which Kuno Meyer published in "Anecdota
Oxoniensia" from a fifteenth-century vellum in the Bodleian. The lady
is there called Gelges [white swan], and as she sought for Cael among
the slain "she saw the crane of the meadow and her two birds and the
wily beast yclept the fox a-watching of her birds, and when she covered
one of the birds to save it he would make a rush at the other bird,
so that the crane had to stretch herself out between them both, so
that she would rather have found and suffered death by the wild beast
than that her birds should be killed by him. And Gelges mused on this
greatly and said, 'I wonder not that I so love my fair sweetheart,
since this little bird is in such distress about its birdlets.'" She
heard, moreover, a wild stag on Drum Reelin above the harbour, and it
was vehemently bewailing the hind from one pass to the other, for they
had been nine years together and had dwelt in the wood that was at the
foot of the harbour, the wood of Feedesh, and the hind had been killed
by Finn, and the stag was nineteen days without tasting grass or water,
mourning for the hind. "It is no shame for me," said Gelges, "to find
death with grief for Cael, as the stag is shortening his life for grief
of the hind," etc.
[19] Pronounced "Graan-ya." This story has been edited and translated
in the third volume of the Ossianic Society by Standish H. O'Grady, and
has been since reprinted from his text. Dr. Joyce also translated it
into English in his Old Celtic romances, but omits the cynical but most
characteristic conclusion. The story was only known to exist in quite
modern MSS., but I find an excellent copy written about the year 1660
in the newly-acquired Reeves Collection in the Royal Irish Academy.
This saga was in existence in the seventh century, for it is mentioned
in the list in the Book of Leinster. It is the subject of a recent
cantata by the Marquis of Lome and Mr. Hamish Mac Cunn.
[20] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[21] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[22] The Irish text published without a translation by Patrick O'Brien
in his _Bláithfleasg_.
[23] Published by O'Grady in his "Silva Gadelica."
[24] I published in a periodical a translation of this from a MS. in my
own possession.
[25] Published in vol. ii. of Ossianic Society.
[26] Is being published in the "Gaelic Journal" by the editor.
[27] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady, but I have met no copies of it,
though I have heard a story of this name told orally.
[28] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady.
[29] Published from a fifteenth-century vellum in the Bodleian by Kuno
Meyer in a volume of the "Anecdota Oxoniensia."
[30] Published by Standish H. O'Grady in "Silva Gadelica" from the Book
of Leinster. I have a seventeenth-century paper copy of the same saga
which is completely different.
[31] Published by O'Curry for the Celtic Society.
[32] Edited by O'Donovan for the Ossianic Society and by Mr. David
Comyn with a translation into modern Irish for the Gaelic League.
[33] Edited by O'Kearney for the Ossianic Society, vol. i.
[34] Published in "Silva Gadelica."
[35] Published in "Silva Gadelica."
[36] A brief tale in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, published in "Revue
Celtique," vol. ii.
[37] Mentioned by Standish H. O'Grady in his preface to Diarmuid and
Gráinne, but unknown to me.
[38] Published without a translation by O'Daly of Anglesea Street in
"Irish Self-taught," and with a translation in the "Silva Gadelica."
[39] Usually joined on to the modern version of the Battle of Mochruime.
[40] Published by Standish H. O'Grady for the Ossianic Society, vol.
iii. p. 212, from a modern MS.; and by Whitley Stokes in "Irische
Texte," iii. Serie, Heft. i. p. 203, from the Book of Ballymote and
Yellow Book of Lecan.
[41] Published by Stokes in the same place as the last.
[42] "Zeitschrift für Celt Phil.," Band I. Heft. 3, p. 458, translated
by Kuno Meyer.
[43] _Ibid._, and O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica."