An Chraobh Airgid
In bright light Arran's steep granite peaks, purple with heather and wooded below, rise from a white-crested blue sea, seabirds wheeling, red deer on the ridge.

Alba · Scotland

Eilean Arainn

The Isle of Arran · Firth of Clyde, Scotland

The island of many stags, where the Fianna had the best hunting they ever had.

Open it on the full site There it is marked on the map of the five fifths, where the road of a tale can be traced.

The largest island in the Firth of Clyde, between Ayrshire and Kintyre, with red deer on its northern hills; its highest peak, Goat Fell, is 875 metres. In The Colloquy of the Ancients Caílte tells Patrick that the three battalions of the Fianna went over to it every Lughnasadh and hunted there until the cuckoo called in Ireland, and he makes a poem in its praise: “Arran of the many stags” (Kuno Meyer, 1911).

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.
  • Lughnasadh The start of autumn. Lugh’s assembly, and the first of the harvest.
  • Saint Patrick Ireland’s patron saint, and in the later tales the last listener of the Fianna.

Sources

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