14th January, 2021 in Folklore

The making of Finn and the Fianna

By Daniel Allison

It is this spirit, which runs like a vein of gold through the entire cycle, that compelled me to write Finn & the Fianna. 

Western culture has long been infatuated with Greek culture and, by extension, Greek myths. In recent years, Norse mythology has encroached on the hold that the Olympians exert over the Western imagination. Neil Gaiman’s masterly retellings of the Norse myths have played a huge part in this, as has the role of the Norse gods Thor and Loki in a string of Marvel movies.

Lurking in the shadow of the Norse and Greek mythologies are the tales of the Celts. Will their time come to emerge into the light? Most people nowadays could name you a few Greek and Norse deities, but far fewer could name a Celtic god or a Celtic tale. Yet there was a time when this wasn’t the case. For a number of years in the eighteenth century, the tales of a certain Celtic warrior gripped Europe. Napoleon is said to have slept with a book of these stories under his pillow. That warrior was Finn Maccoull; the book was The Ossianic Poems, James Macpherson’s translation of a lost Celtic saga which he had discovered among the Gaelic-speakers of the Scottish highlands.

The hype faded after it emerged that Macpherson may have penned the verses himself, or at least widely embellished the originals. Nowadays, the Ossianic Verses and their heroes are largely forgotten; yet not in Ireland. In Ireland, everyone knows the name of Finn MacCoull, the giant warrior who built the Giant’s Causeway. Yet in Scotland, where everyone once knew Finn’s name, he has been forgotten. Across Europe and the rest of the English-speaking world, Finn is either forgotten or was never known at all.

I believe it’s time that changed. The stories of Finn MacCoull and his warriors, which I have gathered and retold in my book Finn & the Fianna, rival anything the Greek and Norse canons can offer. There are comedies and tragedies; hero quests and riddle tales; stories of monsters, epic battles, love affairs and shapeshifters. The stories are more primal than those of King Arthur; they offer richer and more complex characters than the other Irish cycles.

At the centre of them all is Finn MacCoull.