Section VIII.—Fiachra.
Fiachra, or Fiaghra, is, as the Fiach is in Irish, a raven. Fiachere MacFhinn is a son of Fingal, who does his part among the traditions of the Fenians; and another Fiachra was the father of the last pagan king of Ireland, who, as Erse lore relates, reigned over Erin, Albin, and Britain, and as far as the mountains of the Alps. He succeeded his uncle Niall of the Nine Hostages, in 405, and went to the Alps to revenge his death. Being still a pagan, he demolished a tower of sods and stones sixty feet high, in which lived a saint, eleven feet from the light, and was accordingly cursed by the saint, and killed by a flash of lightning; but his servants put a lighted sponge in his mouth to imitate his breath, by way of concealing his death for some time.
Fiachra was the name of a hermit who left home to seek for solitude in France, and lived at Brenil, about two leagues from Meaux. He particularly applied himself to the cultivation of his little garden, and has ever since been considered as the patron of gardeners; and his austerity was such, that no woman was allowed to come within his precincts. He died about 670, and his relics began to obtain a miraculous reputation, which increased so much, that, though little known in his own country, France is full of churches dedicated to him.
Anne of Austria was particularly devoted to him; she thought the recovery of her husband, and the birth of the great Louis XIV. himself, were due to his intercessions; and she made a pilgrimage to his shrine, remembering so well his objections to womankind, that she never attempted to cross his threshold, but knelt before the door.
It does not appear, however, that the name of Fiacre was adopted by any one in deference to this devotion, except, perhaps, the Fiak of Brittany. All it did was to pass to the first hackney-coaches of Paris, which, from being used as a commodious mode of going on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Fiacre, received the appellation they have had ever since. It is a whimsical concatenation that has named the fiacres of Paris after the misty raven of the race of Fingal.
Rín means a seal or sea-calf in Gaelic. Ronan is the derivative. He is a hero whose death is lamented in the Ossianic poetry, and his name was afterwards borne by a large number of Irish and Scottish saints, from whom came Ronan in Scotland, Ronayne in Ireland, once with the feminine Ronat.[[98]]
[98]. O'Donovan; Macpherson; Maitland, History of Scotland; Cosmo Innes; Saturday Review; Butler.
Section IX.—Names of Complexion.
Names of complexion were very frequent among the various branches of Kelts, often as mere affixed soubriquets, but growing from thence into absolute individual names. Dhu and ciar, the black; dorchaid, the dark; dearg and ruadh, red; don, brown; boid, yellow; finn, white; odhar, pale; flann and corcair, ruddy; lachtna and uaithne, green; glas, which is blue in Wales, green in Ireland, and grey in the Highlands; gorm, blue; liath, grey; riabhach, greyish, have all furnished their share of names and epithets.