I shall be beside the noble ones.”

It was a poor triumph for Conchobar. Deirdre in all her beauty had escaped him by death. His own chief followers never forgave it. Fergus, when he returned from Borrach’s feast, and found out what had been done, gathered his own people, slew Conchobar’s son and many of his warriors, and fled to Ulster’s bitterest enemies, Ailill and Medb of Connaught. And Cathbad the Druid cursed both king and kingdom, praying that none of Conchobar’s race might ever reign in Emain Macha again.

So it came to pass. The capital of Ulster was only kept from ruin by Cuchulainn’s prowess. When he perished, it also fell, and soon became what it is now—a grassy hill.

CHAPTER XIV
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.