An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Conn of the Hundred Battles

Conn Céadchathach · Old Irish Conn Cétchathach

King of Ireland, whose son Connla went away in a boat of crystal.

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

Cétchathach means “of the hundred battles”. The annals give him a reign as king of Ireland in the second century, and tradition seats him at Tara. In The Adventure of Connla he stands with his son Connla on the hill of Uisneach, hears every word of a woman he cannot see, and calls his druid Corann to sing against her; a month later he watches his son go out over the sea in her boat. In the Irish of that tale his other son, Art, was called Óenfer, the Solitary, because Connla’s going left him without a brother. Art’s son was Cormac mac Airt.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • 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.
  • The Adventure of Connla A woman only Connla can see calls him to a land without death, and throws him an apple that feeds him for a month and never grows smaller.

See also

  • Aillén mac Midgna The musician of the sídhe who burned Tara every Samhain, until the boy Fionn stayed awake.
  • Corann The druid of Conn of the Hundred Battles, who sang against a voice from the other world.
  • Cormac mac Airt The wise king of Tara.
  • Eochaid Mugmedón King of Ireland, father of Niall and of the four sons of Mongfind.
  • Fiacha mac Congha Cumhall’s trusted man, whose spear kept the boy Fionn awake at Tara.
  • Teamhair The Hill of Tara. Seat of the high kings, and of the stone that cried out.
  • Uisneach The Hill of Uisneach. The navel of Ireland, where the five fifths meet.

Sources

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

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