Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/258

 CHAPTER XIII THE HEROIC MYTHS

(Continued)

II. FIONN AND THE FÉNN

HE annalists gave a historic aspect and a specific date and ancestry to Fionn and his men, the Féinn, but they exist and are immortal because they sprang from the heroic ideals of the folk; if they were once men, it was in a period of which no written record remains. Their main story possesses a framework and certain outstanding facts, but whatever far distant actuality the epos has is thickly overlaid with fancy, so that we are in a world of exaggerated action, of magic, whenever we approach any story dealing with the Feinn. The annalistic scheme added nothing to the epos; rather is it as if to the vague personalities of folk-tale had been given a date, names, and a line of long descent, which may delight prosaic minds, though it spoils the folk-tale for the imaginative.

Traces of the annalistic scheme occur in the chronological poem of Gilla Caemhain (ob. 1072) and in the Annals of Tighernach (ob. 1088), which regarded the Féinn as a hireling militia defending Ireland, consisting of seven legions or Fianna (also Féinn, literally "troops"), each of three thousand men with a commander. The Féinn of Leinster and Meath comprised those of our epos—the clanna Baoisgne, its later chiefs being Cumhal, Goll (of the clanna Morna), and Fionn. We are told of their arms, dress, and privileges, and of the conditions of admission to their ranks—some almost superhuman;$1$ and we learn that their exactions became so heavy that king and people rose against them and routed them