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# 562: (fâr'gus moc lä'de) The Wee Folk and Fergus mac Leda; visited by Eisirt, King of Wee Folk's bard; visited by Iubdan, King of Wee Folk. The blemish of Fergus: Fergus was never tired of exploring the depths of the lakes and rivers of Ireland; but one day, in Loch Rury, he met with a hideous monster, the Muirdris, or riverhorse, which inhabited that lake, and from which he barely saved himself by flying to the shore. With the terror of this encounter his face was twisted awry; but since a blemished man could not hold rule in Ireland, his queen and nobles took pains, on some pretext, to banish all mirrors from the palace, and kept the knowledge of his condition from him. One day, however, he smote a bondmaid with a switch, for some negligence, and the maid, indignant, cried out: 'It were better for thee, Fergus, to avenge thyself on the river-horse that hath twisted thy face than to do brave deeds on women!' Fergus bade fetch him a mirror, and looked in it. 'It is true,' he said; 'the river-horse of Loch Rury has done this thing.' The conclusion may be given in the words of Sir Samuel Ferguson's fine poem on this theme. Fergus donned the magic shoes, took sword in hand, and went to Loch Rury:
"For a day and a night Beneath the waves he rested out of sight, But all the Ultonians on the bank who stood Saw the loch boil and redden with his blood. When next at sunrise skies grew also red He rose - and in his hand the Muirdris' head. Gone was the blemish! On his goodly face Each trait symmetric had resumed its place: And they who saw him marked in all his mien A king's composure, ample and serene. He smiled; he cast his trophy to the bank, Said, 'I, survivor, Ulstermen!' and sank."This fine tale has been published in full from an Egerton MS., by Standish Hayes O'Grady, in his SILVA GADELICA. The humorous treatment of the fairy element in the story would mark it as belonging to a late period of Irish legend, but the tragic and noble conclusion unmistakably signs it as belonging to the Ulster bardic literature, and it falls within the same order of ideas, if it were not composed within the same period, as the tales of CuChulain.
# 166: A Red-Branch warrior. Not to be confused with Fergus mac Roich.
See also: FERGUS MAC LEIDE, THE DEATH OF.
# 166 - 562
The title of this story, like many other titles in early Irish literature, is not precisely indicative of the main interest of the narrative. Though most of the tale is devoted to the visit of the king of the Lepracauns to the court of Ulster, the story belongs essentially to the Tom Thumb tradition, and many of the amusing incidents remind us of the adventures, later recounted by Swift, of Gulliver in the Country of Brobdingnag. The setting is ostensibly that of the old Ulster cycle, for Fergus mac Leide was one of the Red Branch warriors, although he is seldom mentioned in the stories of the Ulster group. He gains a certain prestige in Irish narrative literature, perhaps, through being confused with the famous Fergus mac Roig. The strange narrative of his death as related in Cross' and Slover's ANCIENT IRISH TALES is not mentioned in the early stories dealing with the heroes of Emain Macha. Their account is usually regarded as having been composed about 1100, and the reader of this story will recall that in modern Irish folk-lore the lepracaun's are diminutive fairy shoemakers.
# 166
# 166: (moc rô'eh)
# 562: Son of Roy, Facthna's half-brother; succeeds to kingship of Ulster; loves Nessa; sent to invite return of Naisi and Deirdre to Ireland; the rebellion of Fergus mac Roi; compact with CuChulain; reputed author of the 'Tain'; slain by Ailell.
# 454: King of Ulster before Nessa begged him to relinquish his reign for one year, in favour of her son Conchobar who thereafter ruled and Fergus was permanently dethroned. For this insult, Fergus helped Maeve and the forces of Connact. Because he was one of CuChulain's fosterers and teachers, he refused to engage in combat with him at the ford, making an agreement to spare CuChulain if CuChulain agreed to let him run away on a later occasion. He was the messenger of Conchobar to persuade Deirdriu and the sons of Usnach to return to Ulster. Later he became a voluntary exile in Connacht in protest against the killing of the sons of Usnech. He was slain at the instigation of Ailill who found him swimming with Maeve in a lake.
# 166 - 188 - 454 - 562
Son of Erc; stone of Scone used for crowning; ancestor of British Royal Family.
# 562
Rescued from enchanted cave by Goll.
# 562
Quoted; his description of King Fergus mac Leda's death. See: FERGUS MAC LEDA.
# 562
A knight who made various assertions to Arthur and Meliodas, among them that he was never jealous of his beauteous wife, Verseria. They tested him in this but, although they arranged for him to find Verseria in the embraces of Gawain, he did not become jealous.
# 156
The Manx name for the Fairy host. Their hearing was omniscient and for this reason, people would speak very carefully or quietly about them.
# 454
See: CREATIVE DEITIES.
# 454: Often translated as the Fairies, Fferyllt is probably derived from the Welsh for Virgil 'Fferyll', who had a reputation in medieval times for being a magician and alchemist. Ceridwen is said to have consulted the books of the Fferyllt in preparing her cauldron of inspiration which Gwion drank. 'Fferyllt' means chemist in modern Welsh.
# 439 - 454 - 562 - 711
A name common all over England for a double or Co-Walker, very similar to the North Country Waff. When seen at night, it is said to be a death portent, and is at all times ominous. Aubrey in his MISCELLANIES records that: The beautiful Lady Diana Rich, daughter to the Earl of Holland, as she was walking in her father's garden at Kensington, to take the fresh air before dinner, about eleven o'clock, being then very well, met with her own apparition, habit, and every thing, as in a lookingglass. About a month after, she died of the small-pox. And it is said that her sister, the Lady Isabella Thynne, saw the like of herself also, before she died. This account I had from a person of honour.
# 38 - 100
(Fler) Nearly all traces of Fflur's legend have been lost. Her name, meaning Flower, establishes her as one with the other Flower Maidens of British mythology - Blanaid, Guinevere, Blodeuwedd. She was beloved as Caswallawn, but was carried off by Julius Caesar, according to the meagre evidence of the TRIADS. Caswallawn's quest in search of her, even to the gates of Rome, suggests that Fflur may indeed be one of the many faces of Sovereignty.
# 104 - 439 - 454
An ancestor of Arthur in the maternal pedigree in BONEDD YR ARWR.
# 156
A well in Caernarvon with oily-looking water which was said to have acquired this appearance from animal fat in Arthur's kitchen.
# 156
(fe'âc al moc con'hin) Husband of Finn's aunt and one of Finn's fosterers.
# 166
(fe'âh a)
The story of the birth of King Fiacha Broad-crown begins, according to O'Grady in SILVA GADELICA, in the same way as that of Cormac and ends like that of Conchobar. The night before the battle in which he (as well as Art) was killed, Eogan, King of Munster, cohabited with the daughter of a druid at her father's request. The girl conceived and when her time came her father said it was an ill thing she was not brought to bed the following morning, for had it been then, the child would have overtopped all Ireland. She replied that the child would not be born before then unless it came through one of her sides. She sat astride a stone in the mid ford, appealing to the rock to maintain her. When she was loosened next day she died, and the child's head had been flattened against the stone - hence he was called Fiacha Broad-crown.
# 504 - 548
(Fe-ah-ra) One of the Children of Lir. He was turned into a swan by his step-mother, Aoife.
# 454 - 562
(fe'âh ra moc fâr'gu sa) Fiachra Caech, son of Fergus mac Roich.
# 166
(fe'al) Daughter of Forgall Monach; sister of Emer; rejected by CuChulain on account of her relations with Cairpre Niafer.
# 166
(Fee-an-KHEEV-eh)
# 166: Fian (fe'ân), plur. Fianna (feen-a). The Fianna of Erin was a kind of military Order composed mainly of the members of Clan Bascna and Clan Morna, and who were supposed to be devoted to the service of the High King and to the repelling of foreign invaders; almost all the Fianna of Erin slain in battle of Gowra.
# 454: The warband of Ireland, composed of 150 chiefs, each having under them twenty-seven men. The requirements for joining the Fianna were vigorous. Each man had to know by heart the poet's repertoire, submit to an initiatory test of his skills and courage, including having spears thrown at him, and being able to withdrawn a thorn from his foot while stooping under a low branch and running. Besides warriors, they had druids, physicians and musicians amongst their number. As it was a warband which upheld the country, each man was free of tribal retribution if he killed a member of any family, nor might his own family avenge him if he was killed on active service. The most famous leader of the Fianna was Fionn mac Cumhal - they are analogous to the Round Table Knights and King Arthur. The modern English equivalent is Fenians.
# 100: The account of the Fianna and of the career of Finn Mac Cumhal, drawn from the Ancient Manuscripts of Ireland, is to be found in Lady Gregory's GODS AND FIGHTING MEN and also in O'Grady's SILVA GADELICA. An account of the manuscript sources of these tales is given in Professor O'Curry's LECTURES ON THE MS. MATERIALS OF ANCIENT IRISH HISTORY. James Stephen's IRISH FAIRY TALES, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, gives a delightfully humorous turn to some of the stories. The Fianna were an order of chivalry whose qualifications were even more rigid than those of King Arthur's Round Table. They are given in detail in GODS AND FIGHTING MEN: And the number of the Fianna of Ireland at that time was seven score and ten chief men, every one of them having three times nine fighting men under him. And every man of them was bound to three things, to take no cattle by oppression, not to refuse any man, as to cattle or riches; no one of them to fall back before nine fighting men. And there was no man taken into the Fianna until his tribe and his kindred would give securities for him, that even if they themselves were all killed he would not look for satisfaction for their death. But if he himself would harm others, that harm was not to be avenged on his people. And there was no man taken into the Fianna till he knew the twelve books of poetry. And before any man was taken, he would be put into a deep hole in the ground up to his middle, and he having his shield and a hazel rod in his hand. And nine men would go the length of ten furrows from him and would cast their spears at him at the one time. And if he got a wound from one of them, he was not thought fit to join with the Fianna. And after that again, his hair would be fastened up, and he put to run through the woods of Ireland, and the Fianna following after him to try could they wound him, and only the length of a branch between themselves and himself when they started. And if they came up with him and wounded him, he was not let join them; or if his spears had trembled in his hand, or if a branch of a tree had undone the plaiting of his hair, or if he had cracked a dry stick under his foot, and he running. And they would not take him among them till he had made a leap over a stick the height of himself, and till he had stooped under one of the height of his knee, and till he had taken a thorn out from his foot with his nail, and he running his fastest. But if he had done all these things, he was of Finn's people. It was good wages Finn and the Fianna got at that time; in every district a townland, in every house the fostering of a pup or a whelp from Samhain (sov'an) to Beltaine (baalt'an), and a great many things along with that. But good as they pay was, the hardships and the dangers they went through for it were greater. For they had to hinder the strangers and robbers from beyond the seas, and every bad thing, from coming into Ireland. And they had hard work enough in doing that. This royal band were served by a great retinue of Druids, physicians, minstrels and musicians, messengers, door-keepers, cup-bearers and huntsmen, besides fifty of the best serving-women in Ireland, who worked all the year round making clothes for the Fianna in a rath on Magh Femen. There was constant intercourse with the Tuatha De Danann; many of the men had fairy mistresses and fairy brides; Finn's chief musician was the fairy Cnu Deireoil, the 'little Nut', a little man with golden hair, about four feet high, said to be a son of Lugh of the Long Hand; a fairy helper would suddenly join them, and they would be constantly assailed by hideous supernatural Hags, Giants and Wizards. It was an active life, full of delights and dangers, and it went on until old age overtook Finn, and his Fianna went down under dissensions, jealousies and deaths.
# 100 - 166 - 267 - 454 - 467 - 503 - 504 - 562 - 619
See: FEENS.
Decorated clasps.
# 730
(fi'hel) A game played with pieces on a board, probably similar to chess.
# 166
See: CONSTANTINOPLE.
A knight who lent Guinevere a stone which he had obtained from his fairy mistress. Guinevere coveted the stone which made the wearer beautiful, wise and invincible. When she had returned it, she sent Gawain to retrieve it which he did by fighting Finbeus.
# 156
Dectera's sister, foster-mother to CuChulain; mother of Conall.
# 562
Island of Finchory.
# 562
# 562: Findabair of the Fair Eyebrows. Daughter of Maev; offered to Ferdia if he will meet and fight CuChulain.
# 454: Daughter of Ailill mac Matach of Connacht and Medb. She loved Fraoch but he would not pay her dowry, until bribed by Medb (sometimes called Maeve), he agreed to take her in return for his help in battle against Ulster. Secretly Maeve offered Findabair to every champion who would fulfil this task, but all refused, save Fraoch, because they knew they would face the invincible CuChulain. When that hero killed Fraoch, Findabair died of a broken heart.
# 166 - 367 - 454 - 562
(Feen-ban-ah)
It was one of the four cities from which the Tuatha de Danaan came to Ireland. Its master of wisdom, Uscias, gave Nuadu his sword. See: HALLOWS.
# 166 - 454
# 562: Druid, of whom Finn learns poetry and science.
# 454: A poet who lived by the Boyne. He guarded the Salmon of Knowledge for seven years, knowing that whoever ate of it would have all knowledge. His pupil, Demne (Fionn mac Cumhal in disguise) helped him roast it and sucked his thumb where the hot juices spurted out upon him. And so Fionn gained all knowledge.
# 267 - 454 - 562 - 583
Fionn mac Cumhal is sometimes called this in Gaelic Scotland. The name also derived some popularity from the bogus epic, OSSIAN, written by MacPherson in the late eighteenth century; drawing on oral stories about the Fianna. James MacPherson fabricated a set of romantic Celtic poems which impressed and fired Europe to a reconsideration of Celtic culture, though his work was soon discovered to be a fake. See also: BRODICK, ARRAN and STAFFA and LOCH ASHIE, HIGHLAND.
# 454
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