An Chraobh Airgid
On a bright early summer morning at Killarney, Fianna with hounds chase a doe along the shore as a golden-haired woman on a white horse rides across the lake.

Mumu · Munster

Loch Léin

Lough Leane · Co. Kerry

The lake at Killarney where Niamh found the Fianna hunting.

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.

P. W. Joyce glosses Loch Léin simply as “the Lakes of Killarney”; the name means the lake of Léan, a personal name. In the Lay of Oisín the Fianna, few now after Gabhra, were hunting a hornless doe along its shores when Niamh rode out of the west for Oisín. Innisfallen, an island in the lake, was a centre of learning in the early Middle Ages.

In the tales

  • Oisín in Tír na nÓg Niamh of the Golden Head carries Fionn’s son away to the Land of the Young. Three hundred years go by like three, and then he asks to go home.

See also

  • Niamh Niamh of the Golden Head: the daughter of the King of Tír na nÓg, who rode out of the west for Oisín.
  • Oisín Fionn’s son, the poet of the Fianna, who went to Tír na nÓg and came home three hundred years too late.

Sources

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