#finn maccool

[cosmics-canteen]

Imagine being so awesome your last name is MacCool

[lackadaisycal-art]

Fionn mac Cumhaill aka Finn McCool

Because who doesn't love a legendary hero with a magic thumb

[nogetron]

Fionn mac Cumhaill, pronounced Finn Macool, is an Irish folk hero. He became the leader of a warrior band called the Fiana after both defeating its leader and killing a fire spirit with his sword Mac an Luin. He accidentally gained the ability to tap into universal knowledge by sucking his thumb after being burnt by the fish of knowledge. Fionn met his future wife in the form of a deer, noticing that his dogs acted weird around the deer, Fionn was intrigued, bringing the deer back to his home. As soon as they stepped foot onto his land the deer transformed into a woman with Fionn falling in love with her, she confided that an evil Druid transformed her into her deer form. However one day when he was out hunting she was taken once more by the evil druid, never being seen again. When Fionn went out looking for her, he found a young fawn that once again piqued his interest, bringing it back to his home it transformed into a young boy, his son. Fionn isn’t believed to be dead, on the contrary it’s said that he’s in a deep slumber, and once Ireland is threatened he will emerge once more to defend his people.

Fionn’s name come from his light hair, Fionn meaning fair hair. Fionn mac Cumhaill is one of the most prolific and popular culture heroes from Ireland along with Cú chulainn and Lugh. According to some traditions, Fionn is the great grandson of Nuada, the god of hunting. Fionn’s genealogy doesn’t end there as he’s also commonly depicted as the descendant of the Firbolg warriors who fought the Tuatha dé Dannan.

[shamrocks-and-shenanigans]

Finn MacCool! Jameson Black Barrel, Irish Breakfast Tea, Lemon Bitters, Angostura Bitters, & Lemon Twist. Most delicious!

[laurasimonsdaughter]

In January I followed an online lecture by celticist Dr. Nike Stam, who is working on a 16th century Irish manuscript that is anticlimactically called VLQ7, but that contains two very exciting pieces of Irish Mythology:

The only prose version of a Finn MacCool tale that was later called “Finn and the Phantoms”.

This is cool because we only have two manuscript versions of this story: the poetic version from the Book of Leister and this prose version. The beginning seems to be missing (the first page of the text is damaged), but it features Finn and his Fianna get their asses kicked by a household of strange figures who all disappear at sunrise. (There is a note at the end of the story by the scribe, saying: what a wondrous story this is.)

A version of Fled Bricrenn (Bricriu 's Feast), which is present in 5 other manuscripts.

This is cool because Fled Bricrenn is the first mention of “the beheading game” that the Green Knight plays with Gawain and because this particular version of the text might have an ending that doesn’t exist anywhere else. 

This lost ending is primarily what they’re studying this manuscript for at the moment and it’s very tragic:

This manuscript used to have no cover, so the first and last pages got very worn and dirty. Fled Bricrenn is told at the end of the manuscript. It’s a whacky story about how Bricriu Poison Tongue makes fools out of the Lords and Ladies of Ulster by playing pranks and pitting them against each other.

All other known versions of the tale end rather abruptly, but in the 19th century a German scholar looked at this manuscript and made a note that even though the last page was too dirty to read properly, he suspected this version of Fled Bricrenn might actually continue there. (The celticist lamented that 19th century German in cursive is much harder to read than any medieval script.)

No one managed to decipher it however, and when an American scholar came to look at it in the 1990’s someone at the library of Leiden where it is held made the mistake of giving it to “a nun in the country who does these sorts of things”. She tried to wash the last page and thereby also washed away most of the ink, leaving the page clean, but completely illegible.

The researchers hope that they will be able to find remnants of the text using multi-spectral imaging. If all goes well they’ll be trying that this summer and I really really really hope it will turn up something interesting!

[readingpeacebypiece]

Ossian's Grave in Glenann, Country Antrim, Ireland

This incredible court cairn from the Stone Age is traditionally known as the grave of the warrior poet (awesome job) Ossian, a son of Finn MacCool

John Hewitt, poet of the glens, who is now buried in the same field, wrote a poem about the landmark:

We stood and pondered on the stones whose plan displays their pattern still; the small blunt arc, and, sill by sill, the pockets stripped of shards and bones. The legend has it, Ossian lies beneath this landmark on the hill, asleep till Fionn and Oscar rise to summon his old bardic skill in hosting their last enterprise. This, stricter scholarship denies, declares this megalithic form millennia older than his time - if such lived ever, out of rime - was shaped beneath Sardinian skies, was coasted round the capes of Spain, brought here through black Biscayan storm, to keep men's hearts in mind of home and its tall Sun God, wise and warm, across the walls of toppling foam, against this twilight and the rain. I cannot tell; would ask no proof; let either story stand for true, as heart or head shall rule. Enough that, our long meditation done, as we paced down the broken lane by the dark hillside's holly trees, a great white horse with lifted knees came stepping past us, and we knew his rider was no tinker's son.

[thedruidpath]

The Real Fionn Mac Cumhaill

Art by Jim FitzPatrick

Anyone who knows anything about Irish mythology is familiar the name Fionn Mac Cumhaill, or at least with its Anglicized version, Finn MacCool. Many doubtlessly know a few folktales about Fionn— such as his rather comical confrontation with the Scottish giant Benandonner— or have read some of the various version of the Fenian Cycle appearing in books.  Significantly fewer, however, may be aware that this is likely only a part of Fionn’s story, and that some of what we “know” about the hero may be completely incorrect.

I am referring in particular to Fionn’s origin.  Most versions of the Fenian cycle, from the twelfth-century Lebar na nUidre (the Book of the Dun Cow) onward provide the hero with noble-born parents, although the exact circumstances of his conception and birth sometimes vary a little.  But here’s the thing: all of them are likely wrong.  Why?  It comes down to one word, or, more specifically, one name.

Before we begin, however, it’s vital to understand that Celtic myths such as the Fenian Cycle (or the Ossian Cycle, as it was reputedly first created by Fionn’s son Oisin,) were oral traditions for centuries, possibly more than a millennia, before they were ever written down. This, along with the fact that some of the earliest writings have been lost, means that there can often be missing information and mistakes.  Add to that the tendency of the Medieval Catholic Church to rewrite old myths into Christianized morality tales, and it’s easy to see how parts of Fionn’s original story might be forgotten or changed.

With that being said, let’s continue to the aforementioned question of Fionn’s surname.  Cumhaill, also spelled Cumaill, is actually based on an old Gaelic word: cumhal, meaning bondwoman.  Thus Mac Cumhaill literally means “Son of the Servant Girl.”  As you can imagine, the only reason why a person would be known by such a name is if their father was either unknown or chose not to acknowledge them. Young Fionn was quite literally a Nobody.  

So why, then, was a chieftain named Cumhaill invented to be Fionn’s father?  The answer is simple.  It appears that the hero was given a noble lineage that was felt to be more appropriate.  This may, in part, be due to the time period during which these tales were transcribed.  Earlier texts concerning Fionn, from the eighth through tenth centuries, deal solely with his adult life.  (These include works such as Bruiden Âtha Í, Reicne Fothaid Canainne, and The Quarrel between Finn and Oisin.)  It’s only beginning in the twelfth century that we find references to Fionn’s birth and supposed noble parentage, with the most important reference to the hero’s early life coming from “Bodleian Laud Misc. MS 610,” an insert in the Book of the White Earl.  This is significant because, by the latter Middle Ages, the idea that God purposefully chose political leaders had become widely accepted—an idea that would eventually grow into the concept of the Divine Right of Kings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  The problem, of course, is that if a ruler is going to announce that he is king because God wants him to be king, he can’t very well have stories floating around about how the bastard son of s servant pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps to become a great leader.

It’s interesting to note that this does not appear to be the only character from Celtic myth who was given an invented noble lineage in later texts.  For example, Scathach, the warrior queen of An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, the modern day Isle of Skye, is called the Daughter of Ard-Greimne.  While a king by the name Ard-Greimne was later created, the word actually means “the High Place.”  As you can probably guess, only someone of common birth would have been named for the location of their village rather than for a renown ancestor, making it likely that her family were aithech, or independent farmers.

Indeed, Lebor na hUidre, or the Book of the Dun Cow, contains another tantalizing clue to Fionn’s common birth in Compert Mongáin ocus Serc Duibe-Lácha do Mongán, which suggests that Mongán and Fionn Mac Cumhaill are the same person.  This is important because, as is seen in hero myths from around the world, Mongán is fathered by a God, in this case Manannán Mac Lir, on a mortal woman.  Some argue that this may have been a common practice when storytellers either did not know the origins of a hero, or wanted to invent a more illustrious birth for them.  Thus it again hints and the possibility of an unknown father. (It’s also interesting to note here that all tales agree on the fact that Fionn was, indeed, part-Tuatha de Danann, although the stories vary on which Lord of the Sidhe the hero is related to, and just how close that blood tie is. If nothing else, the divine ancestry certainly explains a lot.)

But, if Fionn was really a Nobody, then how did he become the leader of his own warrior band?  Shouldn’t that have been impossible?  Far from it.  According to both The Celtic Realms by Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick as well as Cattle-Lords and Clansmen by Nerys Thomas Patterson, the pre-Christain Celts had a sort of fluid cast system. A person could rise or fall through the social ranks by honor, reputation, and achievements.  Essentially, who your parents were and where you came from mattered less than what you could do.  We even see that kings were chosen not based solely on lineage but by a ceremony called The Tarbfheis, in which a Druid would be offered a feast, with a cooked bull as a centerpiece, and would then use dreams and omens to determine who the next ruler would be.  Thus, it is actually not at all unusual, from an ancient Celtic perspective, for a person of common birth to rise to a higher rank, provided, of course, that he or she had a great enough reputation and of list of deeds.

So, could Fionn Mac Cumhaill have really been one of ancient Ireland’s greatest original rags-to-riches stories?  There is certainly evidence to suggest it.  In my opinion, that would make the hero’s tale even more interesting and impressive.  Unfortunately, with no records of the earliest oral versions of the cycles, it is impossible to be certain.  However, it is an undeniable, and very intriguing, possibility.

[vensohowlie]