THE WARRIOR WOMAN PRECEDENT II: FINDABAIR: WHITE PHANTOM OR WOMAN WARRIOR? PART IV: FIANNA

Finn McCool Comes to Aid the Fianna, by Stephen Reid, 1932

The Morrigan is associated with the Irish mannerbünd groups called fianna.  The fianna played a big role in early Irish history, maybe even spilling over into Scotland and some of Britain.

Medb and Ailil employed several.  Nessa led one.  Cú Chulainn fought to avenge the fian of Ulster, which was wiped out in the Cattle Raid of Coolney.  (Fian is singular; fianna is plural, BTW).

What, you might ask, in the Name of Four Leaf Clovers is a fian?  Well, the fianna were lawless groups of young men, who banded together and took to the road – cue Easy Rider music – to make their living off the land and sometimes as mercenaries before settling down under one king or another to become model citizens.  (Cue John Bender: “What would you be doing if you weren’t out making yourself a better citizen?”)  And by the way, was that second sentence long enough for you?

From the look of things, fianna were alive and kicking and performing their feats of valor and daring-do and foolishness – depending on the tale involved – in Guinevere’s fifth century.  Look at the sundry Quest tales: Lancelot and Gawain, Perceval and Yvain and countless others, all embarked on some strange journey called a “quest”, looking for God-knows-what.

Recreation of a Fulacht Fiadh (Cooking Pit),
Associated with the Morrigan and Fianna Campsites
Photograph by David Hawgood

Well, actually, I have a pretty good idea of what they were looking for…besides trouble, which seems to hold a universal appeal for all young guys.  These so-called “quests” involved two things: 1) battles and/or a military campaign, and 2) a spiritual component.  Successful completion of a Quest involved some kind of sacred testing, coupled with a name-giving, lineage-discovering recognition – part blessing, part curse, part questioning (hence, questing) – followed either by abject failure, or divine metamorphosis and an elevation of the spirit.

The only three knights who were said to have “found” or “achieved” the Holy Grail, thereby successfully completing the Quest, were Perceval, Bors the Younger, and Lancelot’s son, Galahad.  No one else ever did.  Not Gawain, Kay, Yvain, or even the nonpareil Lancelot.  They were all too flawed.

Only the first three were without flaw.  (For some reason not apparent to me, this group even includes the Red Ravager Perceval, who was an unusually brutal man…even by fifth-century Scottish standards).

Back of Meigle II Pictish Stone; See the top third
For a Pictish Hunting Party Scene, complete with
Hunting Dogs; Photograph by Simon Burchell

The fianna put me in mind of an anecdote about how, on a boyhood lark, Arthur and Gawain once stole the hunting hounds of a local chieftain.  This story almost reads as if they did it on a dare, but its purpose is to illustrate the importance of dogs as a Picto-Celtic badge of fifth-century kingship.  I think it is also tied to the practices of contemporary mannerbünd groups.  Lawless groups of youths learning to be warriors and live off the land and prove their worth through dangerous feats of heroism…such as stealing the prized, symbolic hunting hounds of a more mature, established chieftain.

The story of the birth of Conchobar macc Nessa – you know, the scorned first husband of Queen Medb, from whom she stole the bull – involves just such a fian…but this one was led by a woman.  The story goes that Nessa, the mother of Conchobar, was so pliant a soul that her dozen foster fathers named her Assa, “The Gentle”.  One day, the druid, Cathbad, at the head of a fian, attacked their home, killing all twelve of them.

Assa’s father, the king of the Ulaid, declared that, as the perpetrators remained anonymous, he was powerless to redress the mass murder.  His incompetence, along with Cathbad’s senseless act of cruelty, provoked Assa.  So she changed her name to Nessa, the “Not-Gentle”, and went to war.

The newly-named Nessa formed her own fian of twenty-seven men, armed herself, and went on the hunt for her foster fathers’ murderer.  And she found him.  Unfortunately.

One day, while she was bathing – sans armor, weapons, and loyal fian, of course – Cathbad “happened upon” Nessa.  (These things always read like people just accidentally stumble over each other.  Most likely, the doughty druid had been tracking her for weeks, or at least was aware that Nessa was hunting him.  He probably doubled back on his tracks, hoping to ambush the princess and her guerrilla troops.  Funny.  The medieval chroniclers never ever mention anything like that).

Cathbad demanded that Nessa become his wife.  And she had no choice but to capitulate.  In fifth-century speak, this means that he raped the daughter of the king of Ulaid, thereby securing lands and a prominent position at court.

All this reads like a typical fifth-century set piece.  An earlier story about Conchobar’s conception says that one fine day Nessa found herself alone in her father’s court and bored.  She asked the older Wise Man, Cathbad, what it was a good day for.  He replied that it was a good day for begetting a king.  And the gullible girl just fell over with her legs in the air.

The point is that, in the Celtic Iron Age and possibly well into the Dark Ages, some sort of mother-right (read: matrilineal) succession obtained in the British Isles.  (In Ireland specifically, inheritance went from father to son, but some rights still seem to have passed through the daughter.  See my blog on Medb, if you don’t believe me).  Translation: in order to get the land, you needed to get the girl first.  And it looks to me like, one way or the other, that is exactly what Cathbad the Sneaky Druid was doing here.

Emain Macha, Co. Armagh; Conchobar's Fortress

‘Cause, sure enough, Nessa’s ineffectual father gave the couple land along the Conchobar River as a wedding present.  (Now we know where Medb’s future husband got his name).

And Cathbad got away with all of it.  The mass murders.  The rape.  The whole shebang.  Just walked away clean.  All because of some archaic law that probably read like something you said in sandbox, “I found it; it’s mine.”

What does all of this have to do with Guinevere?  (Or Findabair?  Or Gwenhwyfar)?

Guinevere was a member of the fifth-century world.  And, what that means is that its customs – such as mannerbünd groups or fianna or lawless warrior bands of itinerant youths, and banshees at the ford washing bloody armor or entrails and clearing battlefields of their dead, and woman warriors so prolific in battle that it was generally accepted that only they would instruct the most promising youths in the art of war – were part and parcel of her culture.  They would have affected and informed every aspect of her existence and that of her peers, and their deeds, behavior, and outlook would have reflected these forms and functions.

Perhaps that is why the medieval chroniclers often found their source material strange and foreign and even funny.  It explains the weird stories of testing and questing and sword bridges and water-swords and giants and elves and pixies and mermaids.  All part and parcel of the fifth-century world.