An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Caílte mac Rónáin

Caoilte mac Rónáin · older spelling Caílte

The swift runner of the Fianna, who outlived them and told their stories to St Patrick.

Open it on the full site There every name opens, and a web shows who is kin to whom.

Lady Gregory (1904) calls him “a grey thin man” and the best runner of all the Fianna, and in her retelling he remembers how he and Diarmuid and Oscar “used to be listening to the music of the wolves through the end of the cold night”. In the Acallam na Senórach, written about 1200, he and Oisín are the last two great men of the Fianna. When they part, Caílte comes to Patrick at Druim Derg, is baptised, gives him the gold that was Fionn’s last wage to him, and goes about Ireland with him telling the stories of the Fianna and of the places they pass, which Patrick has written down.

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.
  • The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne Promised to the ageing Fionn, Gráinne puts the feast to sleep and lays a geis on Diarmuid to take her away. Fionn hunts them for sixteen years.
  • Fionn and the Burning of Tara For twenty-three years a man of the sídhe has played Tara to sleep at Samhain and burned it. Then a boy of ten, an outlaw, offers to keep it till morning.

See also

  • Cael ua Nemhnainn A young warrior of the Fianna who won Créde with a poem, and was drowned at Ventry.
  • Créde The woman of the síd at Loch Cuire who married Cael, and died of grief beside him.
  • Diarmuid Ua Duibhne The Fianna’s great lover and champion, foster-son of Aengus.
  • Eilean Arainn The Isle of Arran. The island of many stags, where the Fianna had the best hunting they ever had.
  • Fiacha mac Congha Cumhall’s trusted man, whose spear kept the boy Fionn awake at Tara.
  • Oscar Oisín’s son and Fionn’s grandson: the young champion who stood by Diarmuid.

Sources

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

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.