The Book of Irish Writers, Chapt er 4
Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Fenian Cycle
The ‘Fenian Cycle’ gathers stories which are clustered ar ound the
towering f igure of Fionn Mac Cumhaill .
Unlike other heroes, Fionn is not simply concerned with battle, honour
and destiny. The wor ld in which he moves is of ten outside the
structures of high kings and tributar y kings, nobilit y and courts that
surround - and to some extent contain - Cúchulainn. Fionn is a f reer
spir it, mixing heroism with poetry and pr ophecy.
He is also diff icult to pin down precisely because so many stories over
so many cent uries have been told about him. In some he is noble and
heroic, but in others he can def eat his enemies only by cunning. Other
tales show him as a poet concerned with the beaut ies of the world – in
one f amous phrase he states that ‘the music of what happens’ is ‘the
finest music in the world ’. In others again he is a champion womaniser
f or whom the hunt f or deer can of ten lead to an encounter wit h a
beaut if ul woman. His enemies can be men f rom another clan, or
supernatural f igures f rom mythology. One story tells how he acquired
wisdom - by which is meant a f orm of supernatural knowledge - while
in other stories he is close to being a buf f oon!
In some ways Fionn Mac Cumhaill exists bet ween a m ythological, prehistor ic Ireland - and an Ireland of f olklore and the beginnings of
histor y. So, while scholars argue about whether a real counter part to
Fionn ever existed - and even if his or igins lie outside Ireland - we do
know that his f ollowers, the ‘Fianna’, have a basis in historical realit y .
They were landless warriors who existed outside the social st ructures
of early Chr istian Ireland. W hether they were protectors of Ireland and
its people - or marauders who preyed on settled comm unit ies - is less
clear.
There is no one central stor y - such as the Tain - associat ed with
Fionn, but it’s likely that many people will know some version of a
Fionn Mac Cumhaill tale.
In some stories he is credited with building the Giant’s Causeway, and
supposedly creating Lough Neagh and the Isle of Man by r ipping up a
clod of earth to throw at a f leeing enem y.
Two stor ies show very diff erent sides of Fionn. The stor y of Diarmuid
and Gráinne is one of the best -known Fenian tales; in this Fionn is t he
jealous old man who, when he cannot have the beautif ul young
Gráinne, br ings about the death of her beloved.
Another stor y, in a version by the nineteenth -cent ur y writ er W illiam
Carleton, was anthologised by W .B. Yeats in his ‘Fair y and Folk Tales
of the Irish Peasantry’. In this, Fionn runs home to hide f rom another
giant – who is conf usingly called Cucullin, but who is no relation to the
Cúchulainn of the ‘Táin Bó Cuailnge’
Fionn is rescued by his wif e’s wit: she dresses him as a baby and
convinces his enem y that this massive child is Fionn’s son: “Fin now
gave a skir l that star tled the giant, as coming from such a youngster
as he was represent ed to be… Cucullin secretly thanked his stars that
he had the good fortune to miss meeting Fin ” .
This rather knockabout version of Fionn carries over into stories about
his son Oisín and his f ollower Caílte - both f eature in stories in which
they encounter St Patrick. This meeting allows them to recount tales of
the Fianna, Fionn’s warrior f ollowers, and to reg ret the passing of an
old Ireland.
St Patrick and his new f aith ar e clearly in the ascendant at this time.
But Chr ist ianit y still can’t eclipse Fionn - and the oral tradition
continues to carr y him along.
His f ame has even made him the subject of f raud! James Macpherson
was an eighteenth -centur y Scotsman who claimed to have discovered
a manuscr ipt cont aining Scots Gaelic ver sions of the Fenian Cycle . He
published them in 1773 as ‘The Poems of Ossian’. Despit e being
hugely popular and inf luential in the R om antic period - with it s interest
in the wild and pr imit ive – it was all a con, a litera r y f raud invented by
Macpherson!
In contrast to Fionn, Cúchulainn enjoyed neither f ame nor notoriet y in
f olklore. W hile later literar y versions of Cúchulainn were res cuing him
f rom relative obscurity (he was only really known to scholars of Early
Irish literatur e) , Fionn needed no such rescuing ! He had lived on in the
mouths of so many storytellers.
However, while W .B. Yeats, and others, may have seen the nobilit y
and violence of Cúchulainn as an appropr iate symbol f or Ireland, Fionn
has one major lit erar y champion .
James Joyce much pref erred Fionn’s wiliness and resilience and made
him the bedrock of ‘Finnegans W ake’.