At one time, the Fianna were called to defend Ireland’s shores from the invading King of Lochlann. They won the battle when their leader, Finn Mac Cumhaill killed the King of Lochlann and his sons, breaking the will of the invading army. Finn spared the youngest son, Miadach, who was just a boy, and brought him back to his home as a hostage and fosterling.

Finn treated all his fosterlings well, and held no grudge against Miadach for his father’s enmity. The same could not be said for Miadach. He took all Finn’s generosity with a smile, but he nursed a secret hatred all through the years. When he came of age, Finn gave Miadach lands on the coast, and Miadach left without a backward glance.

Some time later, the Fianna were hunting. Finn and a few of his companions followed the tracks of a giant boar, and were separated from the main part of the Fianna, and there on the road, who did they meet but Miadach!

Finn greeted him warmly, and Miadach seemed delighted to see them. He invited Finn and his friends to come with him to the Hostel of the Quicken Trees for a drink. Conan Maol Mac Morna, who was known for his blunt speech as much as his bald head, protested that Miadach had never been so friendly to Finn Mac Cumhaill before, so perhaps they shouldn’t trust him! But Finn reprimanded him for his bad manners.

All the same, just to be on the safe side, Finn split up his company. Taking Conan Maol and his brother Goll with him to the Hostel, he told his own son Oisín to wait for the rest of the hunt, along with Diarmuid O’Duibhne, Caoilte Mac Ronán, and three young warriors; Fodla, Caoilte’s son Fiachna, and Fiachna’s foster-brother Innsa, to wait on the hunt, while he went with Goll Mac Morna and his brother Conan Maol to share this drink with Miadach.

Miadach led them to a lovely hostel, with Quicken-Trees all around. They could see the walls of every colour, the coverings on the floor, and the fires giving off sweet smoke through the many windows and doors. Miadach ushered them in ahead of him, and the warriors were so busy admiring their surroundings and settling in that it took them a moment to realize that he hadn’t followed them at all. He was nowhere to be seen.

Goll spoke up. “Finn. Wasn’t there a window there just a moment ago?”

Finn agreed that there was.

“Then why is it only bare planks that I see now?”

Said Conan Maol, “And weren’t there rich tapestries on those walls a moment ago? And they bare now? And wasn’t there a fire in that grate, that’s cold now? And furthermore, weren’t we sitting on grand fine couches a moment ago, when there’s bare dirt under us now!?”
In fact, all the loveliness on the hostel had vanished, and now it was a mean, bare hut, with no windows and only one door, and a dirt floor under them.

At this the warriors realized that something uncanny was afoot. They tried, each one, to leap to their feet, but found that they were stuck fast to the cold earth floor! The more that they struggled, the faster they were stuck, till soon only Finn had so much as a hand free.

Conan Maol started to curse Miadach, and curse Finn for accepting his invitation to this treacherous place!

“There’s little use in you carrying on like that,” said Finn, “Oisin and the others are only a little way off. We’ll sound the Dord Fiann, and they’ll come running and help us.”

“And get themselves just as stuck as we are!” snarled Conan Maol.

That was a fair point, so Finn put his thumb between his teeth, that he had burnt long ago on the Salmon of Knowledge, and he could straightaway see the treacherous plans of Miadach.

“It’s worse than we thought,” said Finn.

“Worse!?” cried Conan Maol, “How could it be worse?”

“Miadach has brought over the armies of the King of Torrents to destroy us. This enchantment that’s on us is wrought by that king, and only his blood can wash it away, but there are armies on the plains over the river, and they’ll be here before long to kill us, and there’s little we can do to stop them when we’re fixed to the floor like this!”

The three men then sounded the Dord Fiann, the great battle cry of the Fianna, but only Fiachna and Innsa heard, and they came running.

“Don’t come in, you eejits!” Conan Maol cried, and Finn and Goll told them all that had happened.

The two young warriors took it upon themselves to find the armies of the King of Torrents. At the bottom of the hill, they found a ford that anyone coming to the Hostel of the Quicken Trees would have to cross, and they decided to make their stand there.

That night, one chieftain under the command of the King of Torrents decided that he would take his part of the army on ahead, and kill the famous Finn Mac Cumhaill himself, and win all of the glory, but when he got to the ford, Fiachna and Innsa were waiting for him. They fought long and hard, and when dawn broke, the ford was choked with the bodies of the dead, but Innsa too had died of his terrible wounds. Fiachna had to tell Finn, and Finn wept, for Innsa had been another of his foster-sons.

The brother of the chieftain who had hoped to steal all that glory came next to the ford, and found Fiachna waiting, desperately tired, but grim with purpose. They were too frightened to attack the young man who had clearly laid waste to all the chieftain’s followers, but Miadach came then, and challenged Fiachna to combat.

Now Oisin and the others had heard nothing of all of this, so when they came to find Fiacha and Innsa, they had a terrible shock. Oisin and Caoilte, being the fastest runners, went straight away to find the rest of the Fianna, leaving Diarmuid and Folda to follow the sounds of battle till they came upon Fiachna, fighting with Miadach. Diarmuid waded in and killed Miadach, but Fiachna did not long survive his wounds.

Fodla held the ford while Dirmuid brought Miadach’s head back to the Hostel, to show Finn that the two young warriors had been avenged, and promised to hold the ford till the rest of the Fianna could come.

As soon as Diarmuid came back to the ford, Fodla fell into an exhausted sleep, even that brief amount of time was too much for any ordinary warrior of the Fianna. Bur Diarmuid was no ordinary hero. He held the ford against all the armies of the King of Torrent’s sons, and as soon as Fodla woke up, the two of them were able to work together to drive the armies back! They hunted down the three sons of the King of Torrent and cut off their heads.

Leaving Fodla to hold the line at the ford once more, Diarmuid rushed to the Hostel of the Quicken Trees, with the blood running out of the heads all the while. He went first to Finn, and had to bathe him in blood before he was able to pull himself up off the floor. Then he wen to Goll Mac Morna, and poured blood all over him, and at last to Conan Maol. But by that time, almost all the blood had run out. He was able to get Conan’s arms and legs unstuck, but his back stayed firmly tethered.
Now Conan was not known for his fine manners at the best of times, but this was too much altogether. He was never overly fond of Diarmuid in the first place, judging him far too good-looking to be a proper warrior, and he roared abuse at him, “You wouldn’t leave me till last if I was a pretty woman, you useless preener!”

Finn and Goll staggered to their feet: the enchantment had taken the strength out of them. But what was to be done with Conan Maol. He was stuck to the ground, waving his arms and legs in the air like a beetle. “If you can’t break the spell,” cried Conan, “get me up anyway.”

They grabbed hold of his arms and legs and pulled. Finn and Goll had been struck by the same enchantment, so they knew how fast it held. Conan should have been in agony, but he only roared at them to pull harder, and braced with his legs against the floor of the hostel. At last, with a terrible tearing sound, Conan Maol was pulled to his feet, but he had left all the skin of his back behind him!

Bleeding terribly, they realized they would have to do something to help him. Finn sent Diarmiud back to the ford, as there was still an army on the other side, and he could see that the King of the World had arrived with his armies to help the King of Torrents! They were still in terrible danger. Finn and Goll were too weak from the enchantment to fight, and Conan would bleed to death if they didn’t find a way to help him. Then, Finn saw a black sheep grazing nearby. He felt about a match for a sheep at that moment, so he killed the sheep and took the skin off its back and put it over the wounded Conan Maol.

There must have been some magic of adhesion still left on Conan’s back, because the skin of the sheep stuck fast to him, and before long it grew in place of his old skin, as good as new, and warmer in the winter!

By this time, Oisin had found the rest of the Fianna, and as dawn broke, Finn, Goll and Conan felt their strength coming back to them. They raced down the hill to the ford, and the whole of the Fianna together made such a slaughter of the armies of the King of the World that there were few survivors left to tell the tale.

But every year after that, in the springtime, someone in the Fianna had to sheer the wool off Conan Maol’s back.

Caoilte Mac Ronan was a thin, grey man, and he was the best runner in all of the Fianna. Once, a king in Ireland asked all the fastest men he could find which of them would be able to fetch him sands from all the beaches in Ireland the quickest. They each gave him an answer: days or weeks or months; but when he got to Caoilte, Caoilte only smiled and held out a bag of sand. “I got it,” said he, “while ye were talking.”

Now, one time, the Fianna had stirred up a rebellion among the people of Ireland, and they were at odds with the High King himself, in Tara. He had no intention of starting a fight with the Fianna, so he asked Finn Mac Cumhaill to come peacefully as his hostage until the trouble had blown over, and Finn had agreed.

Caoilte was not there when this bargain was made. When he heard that his leader and friend was being held hostage, he was furious, and set out to avenge Finn. He went on a rampage of destruction, going in through every door that the red east wind blew on and destroying all before him, setting fire to the fields, and giving one man’s wife to another.

At last he came to Tara, and to get himself inside quietly, he took the clothes off the doorkeeper. He snuck into the king’s hall, and took the king’s sword right out of his sheath, replacing it with his own, which was thin as a blade of grass after all the fighting he’d done with it. Still disguised as a servant, he stood behind the king at the feast, holding a candle.

Now, the king was jumpy after hearing all these rumours of Caoilte’s rampage, and he thought he spotted Caoilte there in the shadows. But Finn dismissed this. “Caoilte has a high mind,” he said “And he wouldn’t go creeping about Tara with a candle, he only does high deeds!”

The king was at ease after that, till Caoilte handed him a glass of wine. “There’s a smell of Caoilte’s skin off that wine,” the king said. And at that, Caoilte knew he was discovered, and spoke out.

“Tell me what to do to get freedom for Finn Mac Cumhaill,” he said.

The high king thought about this. It wasn’t that he wanted Finn Mac Cumhaill as a hostage. If nothing else, this business of looking over his shoulder in case there was an enraged man of the Fianna coming for him was playing havoc with his nerves. It was time he wanted, for the rebellion to die down, and so he decided to set Caoilte a task that would surely take even him some time to achieve.

“I have a mind,” said the High King, “to see every creature in Ireland all together in the one place. A pair of each.”

“Right,” said Caoilte, and away he went.

He searched through all of Ireland, hunting down birds and beasts, wild and tame. The creatures were all startled, but Caoilte herded them and drove them on before them so fast that they hadn’t the time to fight amongst themselves. All the same, the deer did not like being so close to the wolves, nor the backbirds to the foxes, so it was a terrible time he had to bring them all together in one place and drive them. He almost had it, when a raven broke south, and a wild duck north, and he had to run them both down and bring them back by their necks before anything else could escape.

At last, he brought them all before the gates of Tara as evening was closing in, and shouted up at the walls for them to send out the king.

The king thought to himself, “This is far too soon,” so he had his men tell Caoilte to wait until morning: he wanted to see all the animals together in daylight. He had them direct Caoilte to a particular house to keep the creatures in all night.

It was a house with nine doors.

No sooner had Caoilte driven all the animals and birds inside, then they let out a dreadful screech, and every one of them did all they could to escape. There was no rest for Caoilte that night; he had to run from door to door all around the house, flinging back birds and beasts all desperately trying to get away from him and each other.

At last, when the sun rose, Caoilte brought all the creatures before the High King of Tara, and such a noise they were still making, that the people called them Caoilte’s Rabble!

As he looked out over the creatures, the High King thought to himself that this hadn’t been a bad plan at all. He had bought another bit of time with Finn Mac Cumhaill as his hostage, and after all, this was a fairly magnificent gift. What king in the world wouldn’t want a gathering of all the wild creatures in his land brought to him as tribute?

So he let Finn Mac Cumhaill go. And the second Caoilte stopped herding and circling the animals, they bolted off in all directions, fleeing from Tara, no two by the same road, so all the profit the High King had of them was that one glance.

Long ago in Ireland, in the time of the Fianna, one of the greatest and most famous warriors under Finn mac Cumhaill’s leadership was named Diarmuid O’Duibhne.

Diarmuid was the son of a man named Donn, and he was raised with his half-brother, the son of a man named Roc. One day, the son of Roc was frightened by an animal, and he ran between the legs of Diarmuid’s father Donn to hide. Donn squeezed the child between his thighs until he died. When the child’s father, Roc, found his son’s broken body, he wept and raged. Then he performed a magical ceremony, and brought his son back to life in the body of a wild boar. He put a geasa on it to kill Donn’s son Diarmuid, and sent the boar off into the wilds, because he knew that Diarmuid had a geasa on him never to pierce the skin of a pig, and would not be able to defend himself.

Besides the wild boar’s enmity, Diarmuid grew up to be a great warrior, and passed the rigorous tests to become one of the Fianna. The love and loyalty he had for Finn Mac Cumhaill was very strong, but Diarmuid was known for more than his fighting skills. He was a great favourite among women, being very beautiful, and he was born with the Bol Sherca in the middle of his forehead. This was a magical spot that made anyone who saw it fall in love with him. Diarmuid knew that this could cause all sorts of trouble, so he grew his hair down over his forehead to cover it, and tried to keep it out of sight.

Finn Mac Cumhaill was getting on in years, but was still the greatest warrior in all Ireland. He held onto his place as the head of the Fianna, but he was aware that someday, the years would start to tell, even on him. Every year on his birthday, he undertook to leap across a great chasm, because he would rather die as soon as his strength began to fail him, than to live on and slowly decline.

Finn loved all the finest things in life; feasting, storytelling, hunting and good company; and he decided that he had been too long without a wife. So he called his men together and asked for their advice on the matter. They all agreed that the only woman in Ireland fit to be the wife of the great Finn Mac Cumhaill was the daughter of the High King Cormac Mac Airt, called Gráinne. Now, Finn was aware that he was a good deal older than Gráinne, and he was shy of asking for her hand himself, so he sent two ambassadors to speak to Gráinne on his behalf.

Gráinne was the most beautiful woman in Ireland at that time. When she was twelve years old, she had seen a boy playing hurling, and the wind had blown his hair back from his face, and she had fallen in love with him, completely and irrevocably. And as the years passed, she had refused every man who had ever asked for her hand, for love of the boy on the hurling field. But when she heard that the great Finn Mac Cumhaill was asking for her hand, she was flattered. She decided that she had spent long enough waiting for this boy, and she did not know his name or where to find him, so she might as well marry Finn.

When her answer was given, a great feast was held to celebrate the upcoming wedding. Gráinne hid behind a curtain, to spy out and catch a glimpse of her husband-to-be. She Finn’s son Oisin sitting beside him, and was struck by the contrast between them: how much younger and more beautiful Oisin looked than his father. She wondered why Finn had asked for her for himself, and not for his son, and she began to regret her decision. And then Finn moved out of the way, and she saw the man seated on the other side of him: Diarmuid O’Duibhne. The boy from the hurling field who she had loved since she was twelve.

At that moment, Gráinne resolved that she was not going to marry Finn Mac Cumhaill.

She sat down to the feast, saying nothing, and passed around a cup of wine, into which she’d put a sleeping posset. She gave it to Finn, and to all of the Fianna, apart from the leaders of the Fianna. Then, one by one, she asked each of the leaders of the Fianna if they would run away with her. They all refused, such was their loyalty to Finn. Then Gráinne turned to Diarmuid and put him under a geasa to run away with her.

Diarmuid was torn. He had never betrayed Finn, and never wanted to, but he could not go against a geasa put on him by a woman. She told him that she was going to ready herself, and went to her chambers, and while she was gone, Diarmuid consulted with the other leaders of the Fianna. They all agreed: he had no choice. Even though it meant tearing his heart in two, and leaving one half of it with Finn Mac Cumhaill, he could not break a geasa.

Very unhappily, Diarmuid went away with Gráinne. Unused to hard travelling, Gráinne grew weary after a while and asked Diarmuid to carry her, but he refused, hoping she would give up and go back to Finn. Instead, she put him under a geasa to go and find horses for them, and he had no choice but to do as she asked.

They met with Aengus Óg, the god of love, who thoroughly approved of their match, and decided to help them. He told them that they were never going to be able to sleep in a cave with one opening, or a house with one door, or a tree with one branch, and that they would never be able to eat where they cooked, or sleep where they ate. They would have to keep moving if they were to stay ahead of Finn and the Fianna.

When Finn Mac Cumhaill awoke the next day from the sleeping potion, and realized what had happened, his heart broke. It was not Gráinne’s desertion that hurt him, but the fact that Diarmuid had betrayed him. He set out with a grimness and a set in his jaw to catch them up and get his revenge.

For a long time he chased them, and they were always one step ahead. Every time he came across their traces, he grew more and more furious, but every time he found one of the nests that Diarmuid had made for Gráinne, he found that Diarmuid had left a piece of raw meat or fish as a message to Finn that he had not touched Gráinne. Then one day, as Diarmuid and Gráinne were crossing a ford, a splash of water wet her thigh. She said to Diarmuid that whatever courage he might have in battle, that splash of water had more courage than he. And Diarmuid was shamed into making her his wife, and after that he left no messages of purity for Finn.

One night, they slept in a house with seven doors, and Finn and the Fianna caught up with them. A member of the Fianna stood at each door to make sure they couldn’t escape. Aengus Óg came down, and told them that he would spirit them away to safety, but Diarmuid refused. He sent Gráinne away with the god, and stayed behind. Diarmuid went to each door in turn, and at each door, the man who guarded it offered to let him go, till he came to the seventh door, guarded by Finn Mac Cumhaill. Roaring in anger, Finn told him he would kill him if he came out that door. Diarmuid opened the door to face him, and took to the fight. When the Fianna surrounded him, he leaped up with the leap of a salmon, jumped over their heads, and ran away to join Gráinne.

Later that year, Diarmuid got permission from a giant to hunt on his land, provided he did not eat any of the magical rowan berries that grew on the tree where the giant lived. But Gráinne, who was pregnant, longed for the berries, and so Diarmuid killed the giant for her. The berries high up in the tree were sweeter than those below, so the two climbed up into the tree to the giant’s bed, and ate berries and rested a while.

The Mac Morna clan, enemies of Finn Mac Cumhaill, came to make peace with him. Finn said that he would agree to a truce if they brought him either the head of Diarmuid O’Duibhne, or the magical berries of the rowan tree. They decided the berries would be easier to get, so they set out, but of course, they found the giant slain and many of the berries missing.

Finn knew that only Diarmuid could have killed that giant, since it wasn’t one of his men, and he and the Fianna spent that night camping under the tree. Finn had a good idea that Diarmuid was still up there. He challenged Oisin to a game of chess, and as Oisin began to make a move that would lead to Finn beating him, a berry dropped onto the square that he should move to. He made the move, and continued to follow the guidance of the rowan berries. Eventually, Oisin beat his father at chess for the very first time. Finn Mac Cumhaill sprang up, saying “There’s only one man in Ireland who could have beaten me at chess, and that’s Diarmuid O’Duibhne.” And there was Diarmuid, looking down on them from up in the tree. Diarmuid leaped to safety, while Aengus Óg spirited Gráinne away.

After years and years on the run, and all the time Diarmuid and Gráinne had spent living together as man and wife, raising their four sons and their daughter, and never able to stop or rest, they decided to try and make peace with Finn Mac Cumhaill. Finn agreed to put his anger aside, and welcomed them back with a great feast. They were finally able to settle down with their family and live in peace, and Diarmuid and Finn rebuilt their great friendship.

Some years later, Finn asked Diarmuid to go hunting with him. They came across a terrible beast: the wild boar of Ben Bulben. They tracked it through the wilds, and when they cornered it at last, the boar ran straight for Diarmuid. It was the son of Roc, who had been killed so many years before, and it had to fulfil the geasa to kill the son of Donn.

Finn saw the beast charging at him, and reminded Diarmuid of his geasa, to never pierce the skin of a pig. The boar gored Diarmuid, and Diarmuid hit it on the head with the hilt of his sword, killing it. But it was too late, and Diarmuid lay dying. He asked Finn Mac Cumhaill to give him a drink of water from his hands. Anyone who drank water from the hands of Finn Mac Cumhaill would be restored to health, because of his magical thumb. So Finn went to the river, and carried water back to Diarmuid, but at the last moment, he remembered with bitterness, how Diarmuid had run away with Gráinne, and he let the water trickle out between his fingers. But he saw Diarmuid didn’t have long, and the great friendship between them moved his heart, so he went back for water, only to let it trickle through his fingers a second time. The third time he went back for water, and there was no bitterness left in him. He poured the water in between Diarmuid’s lips, but it was too late. Diarmuid O’Duibhne was already dead.