Mac Cana, Proinsias. “Women in Irish Mythology.”
The Crane
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Vol. 4 No. 1 (1980): 7
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O’Meara, J. J., ed. “Giraldus Cambrensis,
Topographia
Hibernie
. Text of the first recension.”
Proceedings of the
Royal Irish Academy
52C no. 4 (1948−1950): 113–178.
Simms, Katharine. From Kings to Warlords: The Changing
Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the later Middle Ages.
Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1987.
See also Diarmait mac Cerbaill; Giraldus
Cambrensis; Inauguration Sites; Kings
and Kingship; Túatha
FENIAN CYCLE
Fíanaigecht (later spelling, Fiannaíocht) (Fenian
Cycle) refers to the stories centered on the legendary
character Finn mac Cumaill, his fían (warrior band),
his son Oisín, and his grandson Oscar. From the ear-
liest literary attestation in the seventh century among
the Laigin, cultivation of this material spread and
became associated in the Old Irish period with places
as far apart as south Tipperary, west Cork, the Mid-
lands, and east Ulster. Classified by modern scholars
as one of the four medieval Irish literary cycles (along
with the Ulster cycle, the cycle of Historical Tales [or
cycles of the Kings] and the Mythological cycle), it
emerged from fragmentarily documented beginnings
to become the dominant literary genre of the post-
Norman period in Ireland.
The warrior band, an institution with Indo-European
roots, was an integral part of medieval Irish society,
occupying an important position on its boundaries.
Some scholars have argued, however, that the fían’s
existence on the margins of society contributed to the
early literary neglect of Fíanaigecht material by
Christian redactors and scribes who wished to discour-
age warrior bands and associated practices. The lack
of relevance of this material to a society obsessed with
history and genealogy is another reason cited for its
initial lack of cultivation. Its rise in popularity in the
post-Norman period has been attributed to a lessening
of church opposition to the genre and its adaptability
to changing literary tastes.
Similar to the figure of Arthur in Britain, the cult
of Finn grew from its localized beginnings to spread
throughout Ireland and the rest of the Gaelic-speak-
ing world. During this process, particularly under the
influence of the synthetic historians in the tenth and
eleventh centuries, a position was found for Finn and
his fían in the historical and literary record. They
were often portrayed as the standing army of King
Cormac mac Airt, defending Ireland in the third cen-
tury against foreign invasion, often from a base at
Cnoc Ailinne (Knockaulin, County Kildare) in Laigin
territory.
Fenian lays and ballads began to be composed at
least as early as the eleventh century, and these
became the dominant literary form of the tradition
from the late medieval period onward. The two most
important extant ballad collections are those pre-
served in the sixteenth-century Scottish manuscript,
the Book of the Dean of Lismore, and the seventeenth-
century Duanaire Finn, compiled among the Irish
exiles in Ostend, Belgium. The fame of Fenian bal-
ladry had spread all over Europe by the nineteenth
century, thanks to James Macpherson. He published
three works in the 1760s that purported to be trans-
lations of epic poems written by Finn’s son, Oisín (in
Macpherson’s spelling Ossian). These “translations”
were, in the main, creations of his own imagination,
although they were partly based on genuine ballad
tradition. From Macpherson’s “Ossian” the term
“Ossianic” emerged, a word that is still occasionally
used to refer to the cycle as a whole and to the ballad
tradition in particular.
Prose material was also extensively cultivated and
includes the Middle Irish texts To c hmarc Ailbe and
Macgnímrada Find, the later Feis Tighe Chonáin,
and the very well known Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada
agus Ghráinne, a classic example of the love triangle.
The central text in Fíanaigecht tradition, however, is
Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Ancients),
recently translated by Dooley and Roe. This long tale
that focuses, inter alia, on the accommodation reached
between the native and Christian traditions, features
the encounters between St. Patrick and the last surviving
Fenian warriors, most notably Caílte. In this frame-
tale, the journey of saint and warrior around fifth-
century Ireland is recounted, and the different moral
codes of the fían and the church are compared, con-
trasted, and ultimately harmonized. It is a veritable
treasure trove of Fíanaigecht material, described by
Murphy as “a reservoir into which a brilliant late-
twelfth-century innovator had diverted several streams
of tradition which previously had normally flowed in
separate channels.” The single largest medieval Irish
text, it was written in approximately 1200 in prose
interspersed with poetry, the “prosimetrum” form so
favored in Irish tradition.
The human and mythic characteristics of Finn mac
Cumaill are very fully documented in Fíanaigecht tra-
dition. These range from comparisons with Lug and
with the Welsh Gwynn ap Nudd; to Finn’s role of seer
in the early literature; to the magical and supernatural
environment that surrounds Finn, his fían, and his fam-
ily in the later material. His attractiveness to an audi-
ence is ensured, however, by his continual presentation
as a character with all too human qualities and failings.
We see him as an unsympathetic and isolated youth,
a successful and a spurned lover, a wise and learnedFEIS