Fionn or Finn is a nickname meaning " fair" and several legends tell how he gained the nickname when his hair turned prematurely white.
Fionn was a king, a seer, a poet, a Druid and a knowledgeable man.
Everything he said was sweet-sounding to his people.
Of his justice it used to be said, that if his enemy and his own son had come before him to be judged, it is a fair judgement he would have given between them.
The stories of Fionn and his followers, the Fianna, form the Fenian cycle, much of it purported to be narrated by Fionn's son, the poet Oisin.
As a seven-year old boy, he met on the banks of the Boyne with a seer called Finneigeas, who had dedicated the past seven years of his life to catching the Salmon of Knowledge, which swam in the river and would impart the knowledge of the world on the first person to taste it.
While Fionn was there, Finneigeas caught the salmon, and with much joy put it on the spit to cook, entrusting the cooking to Fionn but warning him not to taste it.
After a time, Fionn went to see if the fish was cooked, however he touched it with his thumb and burnt himself, leaving a blister.
To ease the pain, he put his thumb in his mouth, and thus became the first person to taste the salmon.
Ever after that, if Fionn needed to know something, he put his thumb into his mouth and the knowledge came to him.
Fionn met his famous wife, Sadhbh, when he was out hunting.
She had been turned into a deer by a druid, for she had refused to marry him.
Fionn's hounds, which were once human themselves, recognised she was human and Fionn spared her.
She transformed back into a beautiful woman the moment she set foot on Fionn's land.
One of Fionn's earliest achievements was the creation of Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, which he scooped out with his two bare hands, and tossed into the Irish Sea where it became the Isle of Man.
He later destroyed all of Ireland's serpents, a story later appropriated by St. Patrick.
Fionn is portrayed as a great hunter of deer and wild pigs, and had many hounds, including two especially great ones, Bran and Sceolaing.
ReplyDeleteThis is how he got them.
The king of the Dal nAraidhe, in CO Antrim and CO Down, desired Fionn's aunt Uirne as a wife, and Fionn agreed to the marriage.
However, the king's first wife was jealous and turned Uirne into a hound.
The warrior Luaghaidh Lagha slew the king as a result, and Uirne regained her shape and married Luaghaidh.
She bore him triplets, but at the same time brought forth two pups.
They were the cousins of Fionn, and became Bran and Sceolaing, his two hunting dogs.
ReplyDeleteOne of Ireland's many stunning natural wonders is the Giant's Causeway, located on the island's north-east coast just a few miles from the town of Bushmills, in County Antrim. Like much of Irish lore, the Giant's Causeway is steeped in as much myth and legend as actual fact. Certainly, the causeway was known to hunter-gatherer tribes who inhabited these lands for millennia, but its modern discovery is credited to the Bishop of Derry in 1692. In academic circles, the debates ranged from it being built by men with tools, to it being made by natural forces, to even being created by a giant.
Legends and myths purport that the causeway was built by an Irish giant named Finn McCool as a way to walk to Scotland in order to fight his Scottish nemesis, Bernandonner. The story goes that Finn fell asleep before he could cross to Scotland, and Bernandonner came across to Ireland looking for Finn. His wife, Oonaugh, upon seeing that the Scotsman was much larger than her husband, cleverly wrapped him up, and passed him off to Bernandonner as her baby. Upon seeing this enormous baby, the giant Scot, thinking that the father must indeed be a larger giant than he, went back to Scotland, tearing up the causeway as he went, to keep the giant Irishman from coming for him in Scotland. The legend made sense to people for many years, as there are similar formations across the water on the Scottish side.