{"id":10879,"date":"2021-02-15T11:14:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T11:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=10879"},"modified":"2021-02-15T11:14:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T11:14:07","slug":"the-dog-and-deer-with-fionn-mac-cumhaill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/02\/15\/the-dog-and-deer-with-fionn-mac-cumhaill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dogs and Deer with Fionn mac Cumhaill"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve lost Fionn and his Fianna, the stories that were told for hundreds, thousands of generations by firesides in Ireland and Scotland. Our language gone from us, and with it these science-fiction-like stories have drained away.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stories of the poets<\/a><\/span> and hunters and warriors may, it seems to me, have been part of a Neolithic shamanistic<\/a><\/span> religion.<\/p>\n

This was Ireland\u2019s Dreamtime, our golden age, the perfection of time and place that we long for, we remember, we memorialise, we identify with, we idolize.<\/p>\n

All of the important names of these idols of the Fianna\u00edocht<\/em> relate to deer. Fia<\/em> is a deer in Irish, a fianna<\/em> is a deer herd; Fionn, named for his white-blond hair, was originally Deimne, a fawn; the name of his magically-acquired wife, Sadhbh, means a doe, and Ois\u00edn and Oscar, his son and grandson, are both words for young male deer.<\/p>\n

Both Sadbh and Ois\u00edn came to Fionn in deer form \u2013 they were hunted down by the Fianna\u2019s hounds, but defended from the hunting-pack by the enchanted superdogs Bran and Sceolan.<\/p>\n

T\u00edr na n\u00d3g<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Fianna and their wit and prowess are part of the language \u2013 of our lost language in Ireland. To someone arriving late and bewildered we used to say they were \u201cOis\u00edn i ndhiadh na F\u00e9inne<\/em>\u201d \u2013 Ois\u00edn long after the Fianna, searching hopelessly for them. It\u2019s a saying that came from the story of Ois\u00edn, lured to the land of youth, T\u00edr na n\u00d3g, by a seductive blonde on a white horse; he comes home for a visit and finds himself crumbling into a man of three hundred years old as soon as his foot touches the soil of Ireland.<\/p>\n

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Ossian playing his harp, by Fran\u00e7ois Pascal Simon G\u00e9rard, 1801.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For equality we said cothrom na F\u00e9inne<\/i>, the equality of the Fianna, because equal shares and equal respect were their watchword. Even our picnics and barbecues were fulacht fia<\/em>, the word coming from the ancient method of pit cookery. We said \u201cDar fia!<\/em>\u201d for \u201cby Jove!\u201d Our ancient board game was fiachall<\/em>, played with pieces called fia<\/em>. It\u2019s not for nothing that our national anthem starts \u201cSinn na F\u00edanna F\u00e1il<\/em>\u201d, identifying us as Destiny\u2019s deer.<\/p>\n

All of the stories might be medieval fanfic; or they might have been written by monks schooled through childhood in the oral tradition, who took their chance to undercut the Christianity from which they were now making a nasty, brutish and short living. Or they might be ancient b\u00e9aloideas<\/em> given written form by those transgressive monks. Wherever they come from, their echo rings out from our hearts.<\/p>\n

Fionn mac Cumhaill<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fionn, the leader of the Fianna, started his life, as did many heroes in stories everywhere in the world, hidden from those who had killed his family and were hunting for him. Brought up by poet aunts deep in the woods of Slieve Bloom<\/span><\/a>, he sallied out and became the leader of the royal guard that included his father\u2019s killers.<\/p>\n

In between battles and contests, hunts and hero-deeds the Fianna loved to sit around on mountain-tops composing poetry. In one of the beloved stories of these poem-contests, one of the lads asked what was everyone\u2019s favourite sound. The pretty boy Diarmuid said it was the cries of women in love; Ois\u00edn said it was a cuckoo calling from a hedge; Oscar, the sound of a spear on a shield. Then they asked Fionn, and he said the best music in the world was \u201cthe music of what happens\u201d.<\/p>\n

But back to the dogs. The Fianna\u2019s dogs were central to their stories, and especially Bran and her brother Sceolan: \u201cWe went westward one time to hunt at Formaid of the Fianna [aka Ballyfermot], to see the first running of our hounds.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

These are the words of Fionn Mac Cumhaill\u2019s son Ois\u00edn, a few days earlier a buff young man in his prime, now suddenly three hundred years old and feeling it.<\/p>\n

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Lady Gregory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was Fionn was holding Bran, and it is with myself Sceolan was; Diarmuid of the Women had Fearan, and Oscar had lucky Adhnuall,\u201d he says, in Lady Gregory\u2019s translation of the debate between the the two ill-tempered old gentlemen, St Patrick and Oisin,<\/em> in her book Gods and Fighting Men.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cConan the Bald had Searc; Caoilte, son of Ronan, had Daol; Lugaidh\u2019s Son and Goll were holding Fuaim and Fothran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the first day we loosed out a share of our hounds to a hunting; and Och! Patrick, of all that were in it, there is not one left living but myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ois\u00edn had landed back from his T\u00edr na n\u00d3g love nest and gone around Ireland looking for his family and friends. Everyone he met told him these were people from a myth, or had lived hundreds of years ago. He was at the south end of Glenasmole, in the Dublin Mountains, when he went to help some puny little fellows who were trying to shift a boulder out of the way of a road they were building. The girth of his horse broke and he got a shocking land, his burden of years coming on him in a moment. St Patrick took him in, in the hope of bringing him to the Christian way of thinking. But they had one big problem with each other: their attitude to dogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFionn, the son of Uail, delighted in dogs,\u201d wrote James Stephens in one of the best children\u2019s books ever written, Irish Fairy Tales<\/em>[ii]<\/a>, a reworking of the Fianna\u00edocht stories. \u201cAnd he knew everything about them from the setting of the first little white tooth to the rocking of the last long yellow one. He knew the affections and antipathies which are proper in a dog; the degree of obedience to which dogs may be trained without losing their honourable qualities or becoming servile and suspicious; he knew the hopes that animate them, the apprehensions which tingle in their blood, and all that is to be demanded from, or forgiven in, a paw, an ear, a nose, an eye, or a tooth; and he understood these things because he loved dogs, for it is by love alone that we understand anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fairy Child<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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John Duncan ‘Riders of Sidhe’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fionn was the son of Uail Mac Baiscne. He was, in the way of mythic heroes, also a child of the Sidhe<\/em>; his mother, Muirne, was the granddaughter of Nuadha Airgeadl\u00e1mh, the Tuatha de Danann<\/em>\u2019s silver-handed king.<\/p>\n

Fionn was also \u2013 in one of those family problems we don\u2019t talk about \u2013 a cousin of his dogs Bran and Sceolan. Fionn\u2019s mother\u2019s sister, Tuiren, made the mistake of falling for and marrying Iollan, a man of the Sidhe<\/em>, but Iollan\u2019s old partner, Uct Dealv, took grave exception to his marriage.<\/p>\n

She kidnapped Tuiren and turned her into a bitch, as you do, and handed her over to Fergus Fionnlaith, the man in Ireland who most disliked dogs. However, Tuiren\u2019s charms were just as powerful in doggy as in human form, and Fergus was soon as besotted as anyone with a new puppy.<\/p>\n

Fionn tracked down his auntie and disenchanted her, but in the meantime she\u2019d had two pups which remained in dog form, and were Old Irish superhero dogs \u2013 Bran and Sceolan.<\/p>\n

Bran, whose name meant \u2018raven\u2019 was the kind of dog we nowadays call a merle. \u201cSpeckled back over the loins; two ears scarlet, equal-red\u2026 Yellow feet that were on Bran, two black sides and belly white, greyish back of hunting colour,\u201d as Douglas Hyde translated the bitch\u2019s description in his collection Beside the Fireside, adding \u201cBran would overtake the wild geese, she was that swift.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Some 1,969 years later, Led Zeppelin underlined this good taste, singing, \u201cYou can tell all your friends around the world, ain\u2019t no companion like a blue-eyed merle<\/em>.\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n