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In spite of the figure’s instant recognizability, the leprechaun is neither the most striking instance of fairyhood within Irish tradition nor is it that tradition’s most representative character. In Irish tales the leprechaun is neither cute nor charming, qualities ascribed to him by Albion’s patronizing attitudes toward Hibernia.
The boar charges Diarmait as all expect and gores him mortally. This leads to Fionn’s most odious scene in the story. Standing over the wounded Diarmait, Fionn gloats that all the women of Ireland should see him now that his beauty has been so sullied. Nearly breathless, Diarmait nonetheless reminds his old captain that he has the power to heal this grievous wound by carrying water in his magical hands. Fionn’s grandson Oscar seconds this plea for help, with which Fionn reluctantly complies. Finding water nearby, he cups his hands to carry a quantity back to the stricken Diarmait, but when he arrives it has all drained away. This half-hearted attempt to save the rival is repeated twice more until, at last, Diarmait succumbs.
Heracles was the subject of an immense body of popular literature, not all of which survives, that inverted his most admirable virtues. By the time of Aristophanes’ The Frogs (405 BC) he had been reduced to a figure of slapstick motivated by gluttony and lust. Achilles, whose character is fixed in the Iliad, suffers no such transmogrification, and neither does Cúchulainn, whose character is kept in place by the Táin Bó Cuailnge. The popular Fionn, the Fionn of oral tradition, is a highly protean character, much cruder than the Fionn of manuscript tradition.
No matter what the sport, young Demne is victorious, even when all of the others are against him. The jealous chieftain of the nearby fortress urges the boys to be rid of the upstart by drowning him in a nearby lake, but Demne drowns nine of them. A spectator calls out, ‘Who is the fair boy?’ [ModIr. Cé hé an giolla fionn?]. And thus he becomes Fionn the son of Cumhall.
The capitalized Fianna Éireann are the creatures of the third cycle of Irish heroic literature, but the lower-case fianna were an everyday part of medieval Irish life. The Brehon Laws tell us that they were bands of non-subject, landless men, who were not foreigners. They stood apart from the rest of society and were responsible for defending Ireland against external enemies, both natural and supernatural. Their first allegiance was to the ard rí [high king]. In exchange for lodging and board, they might serve a regional king who did not maintain an army of his own.
Cúchulainn comes upon three crones, all blind in the left eye. They are cooking something on a rowan-tree spit over a fire; it is the carcass of a dog. As the crones also have poisons and spells, Cúchulainn is wary, much more because the eating of dog meat is a violation of a geis, incumbent upon him because of his name, ‘hound of Culann’. But he cannot simply withdraw because he would violate another geis if he visited any cooking hearth and did not accept food offered to him.
Cúchulainn's hair is usually thought to be of three colours, brown at the roots, blood red in the middle and blond at the crown. Some aspects of his person appear magical rather than what is usually thought handsome in a man. He has four dimples in each cheek, each dimple being of a different colour: yellow, green, crimson and blue. Seven pupils fill each eye. He clasps with seven fingers, and the seven toes on each foot allow him the grip of a hawk or griffin.
Suddenly, Cúchulainn seems transformed: his body is stretched like an extended bow, his face is distorted and his hair stands on end. This is an early instance of his empowering ríastrad, an untranslatable term known in English as his battle fury, battle frenzy or warp spasm. It usually comes upon him when he needs to draw on additional reserves of conviction and strength while threatened in combat.
A retainer cries out, ‘Never before have two such horses been seen to match these. They are the swiftest in all of Ireland!’
‘My wife is faster,’ boasts Crunniuc impetuously, forgetting his pledge.
Such a command is called in Irish a geís (pl. gessa), an idiosyncratic form of taboo found widely in early Irish literature. The unfortunate person receiving the geis may have done nothing to merit such a burden, and the person or forces applying it may appear wilful or capricious. Yet the geis is not to be escaped. To violate it is to risk death or catastrophe for one’s entire family.