An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Diarmuid Ua Duibhne

Diarmaid Ua Duibhne

The Fianna’s great lover and champion, foster-son of Aengus.

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Grandson of Duibhne and son of Donn, he was fostered from nine months old by Aengus at the Brú. The Pursuit calls him Diarmuid of the white teeth, the best lover of women in the world, and binds him by geasa never to pass through a wicket-gate and never to hunt a pig. He kept the geis Gráinne laid on him, and it brought him at last to the boar on Binn Ghulbain. The love spot that no woman could see without loving him belongs to folk tradition, not to the story the Pursuit tells.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • 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.

See also

  • Binn Ghulbain Benbulben. The Sligo mountain where Diarmuid met the boar.
  • Brú na Bóinne Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. The mansion of the Boyne: a tomb older than the pyramids, and a house of the gods.
  • Caílte mac Rónáin The swift runner of the Fianna, who outlived them and told their stories to St Patrick.

Sources

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

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