James MacKillop Posts
You can find James MacKillop books, James MacKillop quotes and quotes, James MacKillop authors, James MacKillop reviews and reviews on 1000Kitap.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.