An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Cael ua Nemhnainn

Cael ua Neamhnainn

A young warrior of the Fianna who won Créde with a poem, and was drowned at Ventry.

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Son of Crimthann and grandson of Nemhnann, he was “the valiant and hundred-slaying” young man of Fionn’s people, as Standish Hayes O’Grady translates the Acallam (1892). A woman was shown to him in a dream, Créde, and he won her with a poem on her house that his nurse, Muirenn daughter of Derg, had given him. Caílte tells how he outdid all three battalions of the Fianna at the battle of Ventry and was drowned on its last day, and how the strand south of Ventry has been called Cael’s Strand ever since.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • The Colloquy of the Ancients The last two of the Fianna part in tears. One goes into a hill to his mother; the other finds Patrick blessing Fionn’s old fort, and tells him the story of every hill.

See also

  • Caílte mac Rónáin The swift runner of the Fianna, who outlived them and told their stories to St Patrick.
  • Ceann Trá Ventry. The white strand where the Fianna fought the foreigners, and Cael was drowned.
  • Fionn mac Cumhaill Leader of the Fianna: poet, hunter and seer. In later folklore, a giant.

Sources

Medieval manuscript. Written down by Irish scholars between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

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