Fionn mac Cumhaill

The Salmon of Knowledge

Fionn was raised in hiding by two warrior-women after his father Cumhall, leader of the Fianna, was killed by a rival clan before Fionn's birth. As a boy studying under the poet Finn Eces, he was set to cook the Salmon of Knowledge, a fish said to grant all the world's wisdom to whoever ate it first. Fionn burned his thumb on the cooking salmon and instinctively put it in his mouth to ease the pain, absorbing the fish's wisdom himself; from then on he could call on this knowledge by biting his thumb.

Leader of the Fianna

Using his new wisdom and considerable fighting skill, Fionn proved himself by defeating the fire-breathing being Aillen, who burned the royal hall at Tara every year, and was rewarded with leadership of the Fianna, the band of hunter-warriors sworn to defend Ireland and living apart from ordinary society under their own code.

Love and Loss

Many of the Fenian Cycle's stories concern Fionn's household and old age: his hound-nephews Bran and Sceolang, born after a shapeshifting curse turned his sister into a hound; the tragic hunt in which his son Oisin's mother Sadhbh is lost back into enchantment; and, most famously, the tale of Diarmuid and Grainne, in which Fionn's young bride-to-be Grainne elopes instead with one of his own warriors, Diarmuid, whom an aging and bitter Fionn eventually allows to die rather than save.