FINN AND THE FENIANS[223]
The epoch of Emain Macha is followed in the annals of ancient Ireland by
a succession of monarchs who, though doubtless as mythical as King
Conchobar and his court, seem to grow gradually more human. Their line
lasts for about two centuries, culminating in a dynasty with which
legend has occupied itself more than with its immediate predecessors.
This is the one which began, according to the annalists, in A.D. 177,
with the famous Conn “the Hundred-Fighter”, and, passing down to the
reign of his even more famous grandson, Cormac “the Magnificent”, is
connected with the third Gaelic cycle—that which relates the exploits of
Finn and the Fenians. All these kings had their dealings with the
national gods. A story contained in a fifteenth-century Irish
manuscript, and called “The Champion’s Prophecy”,[224] tells how Lugh
appeared to Conn, enveloped him in a magic mist, led him away to an
enchanted palace, and there prophesied to him the number of his
descendants, the length of their reigns, and the manner of their deaths.
Another tradition relates how Conn’s son, Connla, was wooed by a goddess
and borne away, like the British Arthur, in a boat of glass to the
Earthly Paradise beyond the sea.[225] Yet another relates Conn’s own
marriage with Becuma of the Fair Skin, wife of that same Labraid of the
Quick Hand on Sword who, in another legend, married Liban, the sister of
Fand, Cuchulainn’s fairy love. Becuma had been discovered in an intrigue
with Gaiar, a son of Manannán, and, banished from the “Land of Promise”,
crossed the sea that sunders mortals and immortals to offer her hand to
Conn. The Irish king wedded her, but evil came of the marriage. She grew
jealous of Conn’s other son, Art, and insisted upon his banishment; but
they agreed to play chess to decide which should go, and Art won. Art,
called “the Lonely” because he had lost his brother Connla, was king
after Conn, but he is chiefly known to legend as the father of Cormac.
Many Irish stories occupy themselves with the fame of Cormac, who is
pictured as a great legislator—a Gaelic Solomon. Certain traditions
credit him with having been the first to believe in a purer doctrine
than the Celtic polytheism, and even with having attempted to put down
druidism, in revenge for which a druid called Maelcen sent an evil
spirit who placed a salmon-bone crossways in the king’s throat, as he
sat at meat, and so compassed his death. Another class of stories,
however, make him an especial favourite with those same heathen deities.
Manannán son of Lêr, was so anxious for his friendship that he decoyed
him into fairyland, and gave him a magic branch. It was of silver, and
bore golden apples, and, when it was shaken, it made such sweet music
that the wounded, the sick, and the sorrowful forgot their pains, and
were lulled into deep sleep. Cormac kept this treasure all his life;
but, at his death, it returned into the hands of the gods.[226]
King Cormac was a contemporary of Finn mac Coul[227], whom he appointed
head of the _Fianna[228] Eirinn_, more generally known as the “Fenians”.
Around Finn and his men have gathered a cycle of legends which were
equally popular with the Gaels of both Scotland and Ireland. We read of
their exploits in stories and poems preserved in the earliest Irish
manuscripts, while among the peasantry both of Ireland and of the West
Highlands their names and the stories connected with them are still
current lore. Upon some of these floating traditions, as preserved in
folk ballads, MacPherson founded his factitious _Ossian_, and the
collection of them from the lips of living men still affords plenty of
employment to Gaelic students.
How far Finn and his followers may have been historical personages it is
impossible to say. The Irish people themselves have always held that the
Fenians were a kind of native militia, and that Finn was their general.
The early historical writers of Ireland supported this view. The
chronicler Tighernach, who died in 1088, believed in him, and the
“Annals of the Four Masters”, compiled between the years 1632 and 1636
from older chronicles, while they ignore King Conchobar and his Red
Branch Champions as unworthy of the serious consideration of historians,
treat Finn as a real person whose death took place in 283 A.D. Even so
great a modern scholar as Eugene O’Curry declared in the clearest
language that Finn, so far from being “a merely imaginary or mythical
character”, was “an undoubtedly historical personage; and that he
existed about the time at which his appearance is recorded in the Annals
is as certain as that Julius Caesar lived and ruled at the time stated
on the authority of the Roman historians”.[229]
The opinion of more recent Celtic scholars, however, is opposed to this
view. Finn’s pedigree, preserved in the Book of Leinster, may seem at
first to give some support to the theory of his real existence, but, on
more careful examination of it, his own name and that of his father
equally bewray him. Finn or Fionn, meaning “fair”, is the name of one of
the mythical ancestors of the Gaels, while his father’s name,
Cumhal[230], signifies the “sky”, and is the same word as _Camulus_, the
Gaulish heaven-god identified by the Romans with Mars. His followers are
as doubtfully human as himself. One may compare them with Cuchulainn and
the rest of the heroes of Emain Macha. Their deeds are not less
marvellous. Like the Ultonian warriors, they move, too, on equal terms
with the gods. “The Fianna of Erin”, says a tract called “The Dialogue
of the Elders”,[231] contained in thirteenth and fourteenth century
manuscripts, “had not more frequent and free intercourse with the men of
settled habitation than with the Tuatha Dé Danann”.[232] Angus, Mider,
Lêr, Manannán, and Bodb the Red, with their countless sons and
daughters, loom as large in the Fenian, or so-called “Ossianic” stories
as do the Fenians themselves. They fight for them, or against them; they
marry them, and are given to them in marriage.
A luminous suggestion of Professor Rhys also hints that the Fenians
inherited the conduct of that ancient war formerly waged between the
Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors. The most common antagonists of Finn and
his heroes are tribes of invaders from oversea, called in the stories
the _Lochlannach_. These “Men of Lochlann” are usually identified, by
those who look for history in the stories of the Fenian cycle, with the
invading bands of Norsemen who harried the Irish coasts in the ninth
century. But the nucleus of the Fenian tales antedates these
Scandinavian raids, and mortal foes have probably merely stepped into
the place of those immortal enemies of the gods whose “Lochlann” was a
country, not over the sea—but under it.[233]
The earlier historians of Ireland were as ready with their dates and
facts regarding the Fenian band as an institution as with the
personality of Finn. It was said to have been first organized by a king
called Fiachadh, in 300 B.C., and abolished, or rather, exterminated, by
Cairbré, the son of Cormac mac Art, in 284 _A.D._ We are told that it
consisted of three regiments modelled on the Roman legion; each of these
bodies contained, on a peace footing, three thousand men, but in time of
war could be indefinitely strengthened. Its object was to defend the
coasts of Ireland and the country generally, throwing its weight upon
the side of any prince who happened to be assailed by foreign foes.
During the six months of winter, its members were quartered upon the
population, but during the summer they had to forage for themselves,
which they did by hunting and fishing. Thus they lived in the woods and
on the open moors, hardening themselves for battle by their adventurous
life. The sites of their enormous camp-fires were long pointed out under
the name of the “Fenians’ cooking-places”.
It was not easy to become a member of this famous band. A candidate had
to be not only an expert warrior, but a poet and a man of culture as
well. He had practically to renounce his tribe; at any rate he made oath
that he would neither avenge any of his relatives nor be avenged by
them. He put himself under bonds never to refuse hospitality to anyone
who asked, never to turn his back in battle, never to insult any woman,
and not to accept a dowry with his wife. In addition to all this, he had
to pass successfully through the most stringent physical tests. Indeed,
as these have come down to us, magnified by the perfervid Celtic
imagination, they are of an altogether marvellous and impossible
character. An aspirant to the _Fianna Eirinn_, we are told, had first to
stand up to his knees in a pit dug for him, his only arms being his
shield and a hazel wand, while nine warriors, each with a spear,
standing within the distance of nine ridges of land, all hurled their
weapons at him at once; if he failed to ward them all off, he was
rejected. Should he succeed in this first test, he was given the
distance of one tree-length’s start, and chased through a forest by
armed men; if any of them came up to him and wounded him, he could not
belong to the Fenians. If he escaped unhurt, but had unloosed a single
lock of his braided hair, or had broken a single branch in his flight,
or if, at the end of the run, his weapons trembled in his hands, he was
refused. As, besides these tests, he was obliged to jump over a branch
as high as his forehead, and stoop under one as low as his knee, while
running at full speed, and to pluck a thorn out of his heel without
hindrance to his flight, it is clear that even the rank and file of the
Fenians must have been quite exceptional athletes.[234]
But it is time to pass on to a more detailed description of these
champions.[235] They are a goodly company, not less heroic than the
mighty men of Ulster. First comes Finn himself, not the strongest in
body of the Fenians, but the truest, wisest, and kindest, gentle to
women, generous to men, and trusted by all. If he could help it, he
would never let anyone be in trouble or poverty. “If the dead leaves of
the forest had been gold, and the white foam of the water silver, Finn
would have given it all away.”
Finn had two sons, Fergus and his more famous brother Ossian[236].
Fergus of the sweet speech was the Fenian’s bard, and, also, because of
his honeyed words, their diplomatist and ambassador. Yet, by the irony
of fate, it is to Ossian, who is not mentioned as a poet in the earliest
texts, that the poems concerning the Fenians which are current in
Scotland under the name of “Ossianic Ballads” are attributed. Ossian’s
mother was Sadb, a daughter of Bodb the Red. A rival goddess changed her
into a deer—which explains how Ossian got his name, which means “fawn”.
With such advantages of birth, naturally he was speedy enough to run
down a red deer hind and catch her by the ear, though far less
swift-footed than his cousin Caoilte[237], the “Thin Man”. Neither was
he so strong as his own son Oscar, the mightiest of all the Fenians,
yet, in his youth, so clumsy that the rest of the band refused to take
him with them on their warlike expeditions. They changed their minds,
however, when, one day, he followed them unawares, found them giving way
before an enemy, and, rushing to their help, armed only with a great log
of wood which lay handy on the ground, turned the fortunes of the fight.
After this, Oscar was hailed the best warrior of all the Fianna; he was
given command of a battalion, and its banner, called the “Terrible
Broom”, was regarded as the centre of every battle, for it was never
known to retreat a foot. Other prominent Fenians were Goll[238], son of
Morna, at first Finn’s enemy but afterwards his follower, a man skilled
alike in war and learning. Even though he was one-eyed, we are told that
he was much loved by women, but not so much as Finn’s cousin, Diarmait
O’Duibhne[239], whose fatal beauty ensnared even Finn’s betrothed bride,
Grainne[240]. Their comic character was Conan, who is represented as an
old, bald, vain, irritable man, as great a braggart as ancient Pistol
and as foul-mouthed as Thersites, and yet, after he had once been shamed
into activity, a true man of his hands. These are the prime Fenian
heroes, the chief actors in its stories.
The Fenian epic begins, before the birth of its hero, with the struggle
of two rival clans, each of whom claimed to be the real and only Fianna
Eirinn. They were called the Clann Morna, of which Goll mac Morna was
head, and the Clann Baoisgne[241], commanded by Finn’s father, Cumhal. A
battle was fought at Cnucha[242], in which Goll killed Cumhal, and the
Clann Baoisgne was scattered. Cumhal’s wife, however, bore a posthumous
son, who was brought up among the Slieve Bloom Mountains secretly, for
fear his father’s enemies should find and kill him. The boy, who was at
first called Deimne[243], grew up to be an expert hurler, swimmer,
runner, and hunter. Later, like Cuchulainn, and indeed many modern
savages, he took a second, more personal name. Those who saw him asked
who was the “fair” youth. He accepted the omen, and called himself
Deimne Finn.
At length, he wandered to the banks of the Boyne, where he found a
soothsayer called Finn the Seer living beside a deep pool near Slane,
named “Fec’s Pool”, in hope of catching one of the “salmons of
knowledge”, and, by eating it, obtaining universal wisdom. He had been
there seven years without result, though success had been prophesied to
one named “Finn”. When the wandering son of Cumhal appeared, Finn the
Seer engaged him as his servant. Shortly afterwards, he caught the
coveted fish, and handed it over to our Finn to cook, warning him to eat
no portion of it. “Have you eaten any of it?” he asked the boy, as he
brought it up ready boiled. “No indeed,” replied Finn; “but, while I was
cooking it, a blister rose upon the skin, and, laying my thumb down upon
the blister, I scalded it, and so I put it into my mouth to ease the
pain.” The man was perplexed. “You told me your name was Deimne,” he
said; “but have you any other name?” “Yes, I am also called Finn.” “It
is enough,” replied his disappointed master. “Eat the salmon yourself,
for you must be the one of whom the prophecy told.” Finn ate the “salmon
of knowledge”, and thereafter he had only to put his thumb under his
tooth, as he had done when he scalded it, to receive fore-knowledge and
magic counsel.[244]
Thus armed, Finn was more than a match for the Clann Morna. Curious
legends tell how he discovered himself to his father’s old followers,
confounded his enemies with his magic, and turned them into faithful
servants.[245] Even Goll of the Blows had to submit to his sway.
Gradually he welded the two opposing clans into one Fianna, over which
he ruled, taking tribute from the kings of Ireland, warring against the
Fomorian “Lochlannach”, destroying every kind of giant, serpent, or
monster that infested the land, and at last carrying his mythical
conquests over all Europe.
Out of the numberless stories of the Fenian exploits it is hard to
choose examples. All are heroic, romantic, wild, fantastic. In many of
them the Tuatha Dé Danann play prominent parts. One such story connects
itself with an earlier mythological episode already related. The reader
will remember[246] how, when the Dagda gave up the kingship of the
immortals, five aspirants appeared to claim it; how of these five—Angus,
Mider, Lêr, Ilbhreach son of Manannán, and Bodb the Red—the latter was
chosen; how Lêr refused to acknowledge him, but was reconciled later;
how Mider, equally rebellious, fled to “desert country round Mount
Leinster” in County Carlow; and how a yearly war was waged upon him and
his people by the rest of the gods to bring them to subjection. This war
was still raging in the time of Finn, and Mider was not too proud to
seek his help. One day that Finn was hunting in Donegal, with Ossian,
Oscar, Caoilte, and Diarmait, their hounds roused a beautiful fawn,
which, although at every moment apparently nearly overtaken, led them in
full chase as far as Mount Leinster. Here it suddenly disappeared into a
cleft in the hillside. Heavy snow, “making the forest’s branches as it
were a withe-twist”, now fell, forcing the Fenians to seek for some
shelter, and they therefore explored the place into which the fawn had
vanished. It led to a splendid _sídh_ in the hollow of the hill.
Entering it, they were greeted by a beautiful goddess-maiden, who told
them that it was she, Mider’s daughter, who had been the fawn, and that
she had taken that shape purposely to lead them there, in the hope of
getting their help against the army that was coming to attack the
_sídh_. Finn asked who the assailants would be, and was told that they
were Bodb the Red with his seven sons, Angus “Son of the Young” with his
seven sons, Lêr of Sídh Fionnechaidh with his twenty-seven sons, and
Fionnbharr of Sídh Meadha with his seventeen sons, as well as numberless
gods of lesser fame drawn from _sídhe_ not only over all Ireland, but
from Scotland and the islands as well. Finn promised his aid, and, with
the twilight of that same day, the attacking forces appeared, and made
their annual assault. They were beaten off, after a battle that lasted
all night, with the loss of “ten men, ten score, and ten hundred”. Finn,
Oscar, and Diarmait, as well as most of Mider’s many sons, were sorely
wounded, but the leech Labhra healed all their wounds.[247]
Sooth to say, the Fenians did not always require the excuse of fairy
alliance to start them making war on the race of the hills. One of the
so-called “Ossianic ballads” is entitled “The Chase of the Enchanted
Pigs of Angus of the Brugh[248]”. This Angus is, of course, the “Son of
the Young”, and the Brugh that famous _sídh_ beside the Boyne out of
which he cheated his father, the Dagda. After the friendly manner of
gods towards heroes, he invited Finn and a picked thousand of his
followers to a banquet at the Brugh. They came to it in their finest
clothes, “goblets went from hand to hand, and waiters were kept in
motion”. At last conversation fell upon the comparative merits of the
pleasures of the table and of the chase, Angus stoutly contending that
“the gods’ life of perpetual feasting” was better than all the Fenian
huntings, and Finn as stoutly denying it. Finn boasted of his hounds,
and Angus said that the best of them could not kill one of his pigs.
Finn angrily replied that his two hounds, Bran[249] and Sgeolan[250],
would kill any pig that trod on dry land. Angus answered that he could
show Finn a pig that none of his hounds or huntsmen could catch or kill.
Here were the makings of a pretty quarrel among such inflammable
creatures as gods and heroes, but the steward of the feast interposed
and sent everyone to bed. The next morning, Finn left the Brugh, for he
did not want to fight all Angus’s fairies with his handful of a thousand
men. A year passed before he heard more of it; then came a messenger
from Angus, reminding Finn of his promise to pit his men and hounds
against Angus’s pigs. The Fenians seated themselves on the tops of the
hills, each with his favourite hound in leash, and they had not been
there long before there appeared on the eastern plain a hundred and one
such pigs as no Fenian had ever seen before. Each was as tall as a deer,
and blacker than a smith’s coals, having hair like a thicket and
bristles like ships’ masts. Yet such was the prowess of the Fenians that
they killed them all, though each of the pigs slew ten men and many
hounds. Then Angus complained that the Fenians had murdered his son and
many others of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, indeed, were none other than
the pigs whose forms they had taken. There were mighty recriminations on
both sides, and, in the end, the enraged Fenians prepared to attack the
Brugh on the Boyne. Then only did Angus begin to yield, and, by the
advice of Ossian, Finn made peace with him and his fairy folk.
Such are specimens of the tales which go to make up the Fenian cycle of
sagas. Hunting is the most prominent feature of them, for the Fenians
were essentially a race of mighty hunters. But the creatures of their
chase were not always flesh and blood. Enchanters who wished the Fenians
ill could always lure them into danger by taking the shape of boar or
deer, and many a story begins with an innocent chase and ends with a
murderous battle. But out of such struggles the Fenians always emerge
successfully, as Ossian is represented proudly boasting, “through
truthfulness and the might of their hands”.
The most famous chase of all is, however, not that of deer or boar, but
of a woman and a man, Finn’s betrothed wife and his nephew
Diarmait.[251] Ever fortunate in war, the Fenian leader found disaster
in his love. Wishing for a wife in his old age, he sent to seek Grainne,
the daughter of Cormac, the High-King of Ireland. Both King Cormac and
his daughter consented, and Finn’s ambassadors returned with an
invitation to the suitor to come in a fortnight’s time to claim his
bride. He arrived with his picked band, and was received in state in the
great banqueting-hall of Tara. There they feasted, and there Grainne,
the king’s daughter, casting her eyes over the assembled Fenian heroes,
saw Diarmait O’Duibhne.
This Fenian Adonis had a beauty-spot upon his cheek which no woman could
see without falling instantly in love with him. Grainne, for all her
royal birth, was no exception to this rule. She asked a druid to point
her out the principal guests. The druid told her all their names and
exploits. Then she called for a jewelled drinking-horn, and, filling it
with a drugged wine, sent it round to each in turn, except to Diarmait.
None could be so discourteous as to refuse wine from the hand of a
princess. All drank, and fell into deep sleep.
Then, rising, she came to Diarmait, told him her passion for him, and
asked for its return. “I will not love the betrothed of my chief,” he
replied, “and, even if I wished, I dare not.” And he praised Finn’s
virtues, and decried his own fame. But Grainne merely answered that she
put him under _geasa_ (bonds which no hero could refuse to redeem) to
flee with her; and at once went back to her chair before the rest of the
company awoke from their slumber.
After the feast, Diarmait went round to his comrades, one by one, and
told them of Grainne’s love for him, and of the _geasa_ she had placed
upon him to take her from Tara. He asked each of them what he ought to
do. All answered that no hero could break a _geis_ put upon him by a
woman. He even asked Finn, concealing Grainne’s name, and Finn gave him
the same counsel as the others. That night, the lovers fled from Tara to
the ford of the Shannon at Athlone, crossed it, and came to a place
called the “Wood of the Two Tents”, where Diarmait wove a hut of
branches for Grainne to shelter in.
Meanwhile Finn had discovered their flight, and his rage knew no bounds.
He sent his trackers, the Clann Neamhuain[252], to follow them. They
tracked them to the wood, and one of them climbed a tree, and, looking
down, saw the hut, with a strong seven-doored fence built round it, and
Diarmait and Grainne inside. When the news came to the Fenians, they
were sorry, for their sympathies were with Diarmait and not with Finn.
They tried to warn him, but he took no heed; for he had determined to
fight and not to flee. Indeed, when Finn himself came to the fence, and
called over it to Diarmait, asking if he and Grainne were within, he
replied that they were, but that none should enter unless he gave
permission.
So Diarmait, like Cuchulainn in the war of Ulster against Ireland, found
himself matched single-handed against a host. But, also like Cuchulainn,
he had a divine helper. The favourite of the Tuatha Dé Danann, he had
been the pupil of Manannán son of Lêr in the “Land of Promise”, and had
been fostered by Angus of the Brugh. Manannán had given him his two
spears, the “Red Javelin” and the “Yellow Javelin”, and his two swords,
the “Great Fury” and the “Little Fury”. And now Angus came to look for
his foster-son, and brought with him the magic mantle of invisibility
used by the gods. He advised Diarmait and Grainne to come out wrapped in
the cloak, and thus rendered invisible. Diarmait still refused to flee,
but asked Angus to protect Grainne. Wrapping the magic mantle round her,
the god led the princess away unseen by any of the Fenians.
By this time, Finn had posted men outside all the seven doors in the
fence. Diarmait went to each of them in turn. At the first, were Ossian
and Oscar with the Clann Baoisgne. They offered him their protection. At
the second, were Caoilte and the Clann Ronan, who said they would fight
to the death for him. At the third, were Conan and the Clann Morna, also
his friends. At the fourth, stood Cuan with the Fenians of Munster,
Diarmait’s native province. At the fifth, were the Ulster Fenians, who
also promised him protection against Finn. But at the sixth, were the
Clann Neamhuain, who hated him; and at the seventh, was Finn himself.
“It is by your door that I will pass out, O Finn,” cried Diarmait. Finn
charged his men to surround Diarmait as he came out, and kill him. But
he leaped the fence, passing clean over their heads, and fled away so
swiftly that they could not follow him. He never halted till he reached
the place to which he knew Angus had taken Grainne. The friendly god
left them with a little sage advice: never to hide in a tree with only
one trunk; never to rest in a cave with only one entrance; never to land
on an island with only one channel of approach; not to eat their supper
where they had cooked it, nor to sleep where they had supped, and, where
they had slept once, never to sleep again. With these Red-Indian-like
tactics, it was some time before Finn discovered them.
However, he found out at last where they were, and sent champions with
venomous hounds to take or kill them. But Diarmait conquered all who
were sent against him.
Yet still Finn pursued, until Diarmait, as a last hope of escape, took
refuge under a magic quicken-tree[253], which bore scarlet fruit, the
ambrosia of the gods. It had grown from a single berry dropped by one of
the Tuatha Dé Danann, who, when they found that they had carelessly
endowed mortals with celestial and immortal food, had sent a huge,
one-eyed Fomor called Sharvan the Surly to guard it, so that no man
might eat of its fruit. All day, this Fomor sat at the foot of the tree,
and, all night, he slept among its branches, and so terrible was his
appearance that neither the Fenians nor any other people dared to come
within several miles of him.
But Diarmait was willing to brave the Fomor in the hope of getting a
safe hiding-place for Grainne. He came boldly up to him, and asked leave
to camp and hunt in his neighbourhood. The Fomor told him surlily that
he might camp and hunt where he pleased, so long as he refrained from
taking any of the scarlet berries. So Diarmait built a hut near a
spring; and he and Grainne lived there, killing the wild animals for
food.
But, unhappily, Grainne conceived so strong a desire to eat the quicken
berries that she felt that she must die unless her wish could be
gratified. At first she tried to hide this longing, but in the end she
was forced to tell her companion. Diarmait had no desire to quarrel with
the Fomor; so he went to him and told the plight that Grainne was in,
and asked for a handful of the berries as a gift.
But the Fomor merely answered: “I swear to you that if nothing would
save the princess and her unborn child except my berries, and if she
were the last woman upon the earth, she should not have any of them.”
Whereupon Diarmait fought the Fomor, and, after much trouble, killed
him.
It was reported to Finn that the guardian of the magic quicken-tree
lived no longer, and he guessed that Diarmait must have killed him; so
he came down to the place with seven battalions of the Fenians to look
for him. By this time, Diarmait had abandoned his own hut and taken
possession of that built by the Fomor among the branches of the magic
quicken. He was sitting in it with Grainne when Finn and his men came
and camped at the foot of the tree, to wait till the heat of noon had
passed before beginning their search.
To beguile the time, Finn called for his chess-board and challenged his
son Ossian to a game. They played until Ossian had only one more move.
“One move would make you a winner,” said Finn to him, “but I challenge
you and all the Fenians to guess it.”
Only Diarmait, who had been looking down through the branches upon the
players, knew the move. He could not resist dropping a berry on to the
board, so deftly that it hit the very chess-man which Ossian ought to
move in order to win. Ossian took the hint, moved it, and won. A second
and a third game were played; and in each case the same thing happened.
Then Finn felt sure that the berries that had prompted Ossian must have
been thrown by Diarmait.
He called out, asking Diarmait if he were there, and the Fenian hero,
who never spoke an untruth, answered that he was. So the quicken-tree
was surrounded by armed men, just as the fenced hut in the woods had
been. But, again, things happened in the same way; for Angus of the
Brugh took away Grainne wrapped in the invisible magic cloak, while
Diarmait, walking to the end of a thick branch, cleared the circle of
Fenians at a bound, and escaped untouched.
This was the end of the famous “Pursuit”; for Angus came as ambassador
to Finn, urging him to become reconciled to the fugitives, and all the
best of the Fenians begged Finn to consent. So Diarmait and Grainne were
allowed to return in peace.
But Finn never really forgave, and, soon after, he urged Diarmait to go
out to the chase of the wild boar of Benn Gulban[254]. Diarmait killed
the boar without getting any hurt; for, like the Greek Achilles, he was
invulnerable, save in his heel alone. Finn, who knew this, told him to
measure out the length of the skin with his bare feet. Diarmait did so.
Then Finn, declaring that he had measured it wrongly, ordered him to
tread it again in the opposite direction. This was against the lie of
the bristles; and one of them pierced Diarmait’s heel, and inflicted a
poisoned and mortal wound.
This “Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne”, which has been told at such
length, marks in some degree the climax of the Fenian power, after which
it began to decline towards its end. The friends of Diarmait never
forgave the treachery with which Finn had compassed his death. The
ever-slumbering rivalry between Goll and his Clann Morna and Finn and
his Clann Baoisgne began to show itself as open enmity. Quarrels arose,
too, between the Fenians and the High-Kings of Ireland, which culminated
at last in the annihilation of the Fianna at the battle of Gabhra[255].
This is said to have been fought in A.D. 284. Finn himself had perished
a year before it, in a skirmish with rebellious Fenians at the Ford of
Brea on the Boyne. King Cormac the Magnificent, Grainne’s father, was
also dead. It was between Finn’s grandson Oscar and Cormac’s son Cairbré
that war broke out. This mythical battle was as fiercely waged as that
of Arthur’s last fight at Camlan. Oscar slew Cairbré, and was slain by
him. Almost all the Fenians fell, as well as all Cairbré’s forces.
Only two of the greater Fenian figures survived. One was Caoilte, whose
swiftness of foot saved him at the end when all was lost. The famous
story, called the “Dialogue of the Elders”, represents him discoursing
to St. Patrick, centuries after, of the Fenians’ wonderful deeds. Having
lost his friends of the heroic age, he is said to have cast in his lot
with the Tuatha Dé Danann. He fought in a battle, with Ilbhreach son of
Manannán, against Lêr himself, and killed the ancient sea-god with his
own hand.[256] The tale represents him taking possession of Lêr’s fairy
palace of Sídh Fionnechaidh, after which we know no more of him, except
that he has taken rank in the minds of the Irish peasantry as one of,
and a ruler among, the Sídhe.
The other was Ossian, who did not fight at Gabhra, for, long before, he
had taken the great journey which most heroes of mythology take, to that
bourne from which no ordinary mortal ever returns. Like Cuchulainn, it
was upon the invitation of a goddess that he went. The Fenians were
hunting near Lake Killarney when a lady of more than human beauty came
to them, and told them that her name was Niamh[257], daughter of the Son
of the Sea. The Gaelic poet, Michael Comyn, who, in the eighteenth
century, rewove the ancient story into his own words,[258] describes her
in just the same way as one of the old bards would have done:
“A royal crown was on her head;
And a brown mantle of precious silk,
Spangled with stars of red gold,
Covering her shoes down to the grass.
“A gold ring was hanging down
From each yellow curl of her golden hair;
Her eyes, blue, clear, and cloudless,
Like a dew-drop on the top of the grass.
“Redder were her cheeks than the rose,
Fairer was her visage than the swan upon the wave,
And more sweet was the taste of her balsam lips
Than honey mingled thro’ red wine.
“A garment, wide, long, and smooth
Covered the white steed,
There was a comely saddle of red gold,
And her right hand held a bridle with a golden bit.
“Four shoes well-shaped were under him,
Of the yellow gold of the purest quality;
A silver wreath was on the back of his head,
And there was not in the world a steed better.”
Such was Niamh of the Golden Hair, Manannán’s daughter; and it is small
wonder that, when she chose Ossian from among the sons of men to be her
lover, all Finn’s supplications could not keep him. He mounted behind
her on her fairy horse, and they rode across the land to the sea-shore,
and then over the tops of the waves. As they went, she described the
country of the gods to him in just the same terms as Manannán himself
had pictured it to Bran, son of Febal, as Mider had painted it to Etain,
and as everyone that went there limned it to those that stayed at home
on earth.
“It is the most delightful country to be found
Of greatest repute under the sun;
Trees drooping with fruit and blossom,
And foliage growing on the tops of boughs.
“Abundant, there, are honey and wine,
And everything that eye has beheld,
There will not come decline on thee with lapse of time.
Death or decay thou wilt not see.”
As they went they saw wonders. Fairy palaces with bright sun-bowers and
lime-white walls appeared on the surface of the sea. At one of these
they halted, and Ossian, at Niamh’s request, attacked a fierce Fomor who
lived there, and set free a damsel of the Tuatha Dé Danann whom he kept
imprisoned. He saw a hornless fawn leap from wave to wave, chased by one
of those strange hounds of Celtic myth which are pure white, with red
ears. At last they reached the “Land of the Young”, and there Ossian
dwelt with Niamh for three hundred years before he remembered Erin and
the Fenians. Then a great wish came upon him to see his own country and
his own people again, and Niamh gave him leave to go, and mounted him
upon a fairy steed for the journey. One thing alone she made him
swear—not to let his feet touch earthly soil. Ossian promised, and
reached Ireland on the wings of the wind. But, like the children of Lêr
at the end of their penance, he found all changed. He asked for Finn and
the Fenians, and was told that they were the names of people who had
lived long ago, and whose deeds were written of in old books. The Battle
of Gabhra had been fought, and St. Patrick had come to Ireland, and made
all things new. The very forms of men had altered; they seemed dwarfs
compared with the giants of his day. Seeing three hundred of them trying
in vain to raise a marble slab, he rode up to them in contemptuous
kindness, and lifted it with one hand. But, as he did so, the golden
saddle-girth broke with the strain, and he touched the earth with his
feet. The fairy horse vanished, and Ossian rose from the ground, no
longer divinely young and fair and strong, but a blind, gray-haired,
withered old man.
A number of spirited ballads[259] tell how Ossian, stranded in his old
age upon earthly soil, unable to help himself or find his own food, is
taken by St. Patrick into his house to be converted. The saint paints to
him in the brightest colours the heaven which may be his own if he will
but repent, and in the darkest the hell in which he tells him his old
comrades now lie in anguish. Ossian replies to the saint’s arguments,
entreaties, and threats in language which is extraordinarily frank. He
will not believe that heaven could be closed to the Fenians if they
wished to enter it, or that God himself would not be proud to claim
friendship with Finn. And if it be not so, what is the use to him of
eternal life where there is no hunting, or wooing fair women, or
listening to the songs and tales of bards? No, he will go to the
Fenians, whether they sit at the feast or in the fire; and so he dies as
he had lived.
-----
Footnote 223:
The translations of Fenian stories are numerous. The reader will find
many of them popularly retold in Lady Gregory’s _Gods and Fighting
Men_. Thence he may pass on to Mr. Standish Hayes O’Grady’s _Silva
Gadelica_; the _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_, especially Vol.
IV; Mr. J. G. Campbell’s _The Fians_; as well as the volumes of the
_Revue Celtique_ and the _Transactions of the Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 224:
See O’Curry’s translation in Appendix CXXVIII to his _MS. Materials_.
Footnote 225:
The story, found in the Book of the Dun Cow, appears in French in De
Jubainville’s _Épopée Celtique_.
Footnote 226:
This famous story is told in several MSS. of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. For translations see Dr. Whitley Stokes, _Irische
Texte_, and Standish Hayes O’Grady, _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_, Vol. III.
Footnote 227:
In Gaelic spelling, Fionn mac Cumhail.
Footnote 228:
Pronounced _Fēna_.
Footnote 229:
O’Curry: _MS. Materials_, Lecture XIV, p. 303.
Footnote 230:
Pronounced _Coul_ or _Cooal_.
Footnote 231:
_Agalamh na Senórach._ Under the title _The Colloquy of the Ancients_,
there is an excellent translation of it, from the Book of Lismore, in
Standish Hayes O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 232:
O’Grady: _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 233:
_Hibbert Lectures_, p. 355.
Footnote 234:
See _The Enumeration of Finn’s Household_, translated by O’Grady in
_Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 235:
For a good account, see J. G. Campbell’s _The Fians_, pp. 10-80.
Footnote 236:
In more correct spelling, _Oisin_, and pronounced _Usheen_ or
_Isheen_.
Footnote 237:
Pronounced _Kylta_ or _Cweeltia_.
Footnote 238:
Pronounced _Gaul_.
Footnote 239:
Pronounced _Dermat O’Dyna_.
Footnote 240:
Pronounced _Grania_.
Footnote 241:
Pronounced _Baskin_.
Footnote 242:
Now Castleknock, near Dublin.
Footnote 243:
Pronounced _Demna_.
Footnote 244:
This and other “boy-exploits” of Finn mac Cumhail are contained in a
little tract written upon a fragment of the ninth century Psalter of
Cashel. It is translated in Vol. IV of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 245:
Campbell’s _Fians_, p. 22.
Footnote 246:
See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
Footnote 247:
From the _Colloquy of the Ancients_ in O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 248:
It is translated in Vol. VI of the _Transactions of the Ossianic
Society_.
Footnote 249:
Pronounced _Brăn_, not _Brān_.
Footnote 250:
Pronounced _Skōlaun_ or _Scolaing_.
Footnote 251:
A fine translation of the _Pursuit of Diarmait and Grainne_ has been
published by S. H. O’Grady in Vol. III of the _Transactions of the
Ossianic Society_.
Footnote 252:
Pronounced _Navin_ or _Nowin_.
Footnote 253:
The mountain-ash, or rowan.
Footnote 254:
Now called Benbulben. It is near Sligo.
Footnote 255:
Pronounced _Gavra_.
Footnote 256:
See O’Grady’s _Silva Gadelica_.
Footnote 257:
Pronounced _Nee-av_.
Footnote 258:
_The Lay of Oisin in the Land of Youth_, translated by Brian O’Looney
for the Ossianic Society—_Transactions_, Vol. IV. A fine modern poem
on the same subject is W. B. Yeats’ _Wanderings of Oisin_.
Footnote 259:
See the _Transactions of the Ossianic Society_. They are generally
called the _Dialogues of Oisin and Patrick_.
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