An Chraobh Airgid

Person

Goll mac Morna

Goll mac Morna

The one-eyed warrior who killed Fionn’s father.

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Born Áed, son of Daire the Red (whose other name was Morna Wryneck), he lost an eye to a warrior called Luchet at the battle of Cnucha, and from then on he was Goll, “the one-eyed”. He killed Luchet, and then Cumhall, whose head he carried off; so began the long feud between Fionn and the sons of Morna. A poem in Macgnímartha Finn says that afterwards “they made peace, Finn and Goll of the hundred deeds” (Kuno Meyer’s translation, 1904). In Lady Gregory’s retelling (1904) Goll leads the Fianna when the young Fionn comes to Tara, and chooses to give Fionn his hand rather than leave Ireland.

Kin and bonds

In the tales

  • The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn A druid and a warrior woman hide a hunted boy in the woods. Years later a poet on the Boyne gives him a salmon to cook, and tells him not to taste it.
  • 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

  • Cnucha Castleknock. Where Fionn’s father fell.

Sources

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

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