Fenians

“ There is little or no mention of the war chariot which is so important a factor in the older cycle. The Fenians fought on foot or horseback, and we meet, too, frequent mention of helmets and mail-coats, which are post-Danish touches. Things are on a smaller scale. Exaggeration does not run all through the stories, but is confined to small parts of them, and it is set off by much that is trivial or humorous.
The Fenian stories became in later times the distinctly popular ones. They were far more of the people and for the [Pg 375] people than those of the Red Branch. ”

“ As to the warriors of the Fenians, when they were assembled at the place where their fires had been lighted, they used to gather round the second of those pits of which we have spoken above, and there every man stripped himself to his skin, tied his tunic round his waist, and then set to dressing his hair and cleansing his limbs, thus ridding himself of the sweat and soil of the day's hunt. ”

“ His Praise of Finn
It is a week from yesterday I last saw Finn; I never saw a braver man. A king of heavy blows; my law, my adviser, my sense and my wisdom, prince and poet, braver than kings, King of the Fenians, brave in all countries; golden salmon of the sea, clean hawk of the air, rightly taught, avoiding lies; strong in his doings, a right judge, ready in courage, a high messenger in bravery and in music.
His skin lime-white, his hair golden; ready to work, gentle to women; his great green vessels full of rough sharp wine. It is rich the king was, the head of his people. ”

“ It perhaps does not come with good grace from a Canadian to give any credit to the Fenians, who without any ground of complaint against us invade our country, and cause the loss of valuable lives among us, but as a truthful narrator of facts, I must give them credit on the only ground on which they can claim it. ”

“ During the day they saw three strange men coming towards them, and Fin said to the Fenians: "Let none of you speak to them, and if they have good manners they 'll not speak to you nor to any man till they come to me." ”

“ It has been contended that the Fenians were originally the gods or heroes of an aboriginal people in Ireland, the myths about them representing the pre-Celtic and pre-Aryan ideal, as the sagas of the Red Branch of Ulster embodied that of the Celtic Aryans. ”

“ That night I went with O’Mahony to the armory and drill rooms and other rooms of the Fenian Brotherhood societies. All the Fenians seemed to be soldiers or learning to be soldiers; many of them volunteering to go into the battlefields of America that they might be the better able to fight the battles of Ireland against England. ”

“ Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear,
When he launches his hounds on the open lea,
Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer."
Caoilte [Cweeltya] too, the third great Fenian poet, was as impressionable to the moods of nature as his friends Ossian and Finn. Compare with the foregoing poems his lay on the Isle of Arran, in Scotland. ”

“ The name of the Fians, belonging to Ireland as well as to the Scottish Highlands, and fitly represented in the dark doings of Fenians, may point to Finland, where small Laplanders still exist in flesh and blood. The “good people,” who long haunted Highland and Lowland glens,—but it seems they cannot abide the scratching of steel pens or the squeaking of slate pencils,—were apt to be tiny, of retiring habits, and in the way of disappearing underground. ”

“ Finn never refused any man: he never put away any one that came to his house. If the brown leaves falling in the woods were gold, if the white waves were silver, Finn would have given away the whole of it.
Oisin after the Fenians
Now my strength is gone from me, I that was adviser to the Fenians, my whole body is tired to-night, my hands, my feet, and my head; tired, tired, tired.
It is bad the way I am after Finn of the Fenians; since he is gone away, every good is behind me.
Without great people, without mannerly ways; it is sorrowful I am after our king that is gone. ”

“ The whiskey-drinking bouts that he records at the Fenian headquarters in the office of the Fenian newspaper had no existence but in his imagination, and the brutal murder of a landlord by the Fenians is an infamous creation of his too. If it is fated that the chains binding England to Ireland are to remain unbroken during this generation, and that the writer of that book lives to the end of the generation, those who live with him need not be surprised if they see him in receipt of a literary pension. He has earned it. ”

“ All the Fenians were obliged to know the rules of poetry, [10] [Pg 374] for no figure in Irish antiquity, layman or cleric, could ever arrive at the rank of a popular hero unless he could compose, or at least appreciate a poem.
The Fenian tales and poems are extraordinarily numerous, but their conception and characteristics are in general distinctly different from those relating to the Red Branch. They have not the same sweep, the same vastness and stature, the same weirdness, as the older cycle. The majority of them are more modern in conception and surroundings. ”

“ BODACH AN CHOTA-LACHTNA, OR THE CLOWN WITH THE GREY COAT,
A FENIAN TALE.
On a certain day a fair and a gathering were held at Bineadar, by the seven ordinary and seven extraordinary battalions of the Fenians of Erinn. In the course of the day, on casting a look over the broad expanse of the sea, they beheld a large, smooth-sided, and proud-looking ship ploughing the waves from the east, and approaching them under full sail. When the capacious vessel touched the shore and lowered her sails, the Fenians of Erinn counted upon seeing a host of men disembark from her ”

“ I am not qualified to judge that myself; but I know in my soul that the motives which prompted me were pure, patriotic, and unselfish. I know the motives that actuate the most active members of the Fenian organization; and I know that very few persons, except such contemptible wretches as Corridon, have profited by their connexion with Fenianism. My best friends lost all they ever possessed by it. Talbot and Corridon, I believe, have sworn on previous trials that it was the intention of the Fenians to have divided the lands of Ireland amongst themselves in the event of success. ”

“ The native Irish, on the other hand, who were perfectly acquainted with the Picts, and tell us much about them, have always regarded the Fenians as being nothing more or less than a body of janissaries or standing troops of Gaelic and Firbolg families, maintained during several reigns by the Irish kings, a body which tended to become hereditary. ”

“ Such are specimens of the tales which go to make up the Fenian cycle of sagas. Hunting is the most prominent feature of them, for the Fenians were essentially a race of mighty hunters. But the creatures of their chase were not always flesh and blood. Enchanters who wished the Fenians ill could always lure them into danger by taking the 215shape of boar or deer, and many a story begins with an innocent chase and ends with a murderous battle. ”

“ And it was usual for the Fenians in those days to go out hunting on the hills and mountains and in the woods of Erin, and when one of them went he always took five or six men with him to bring home the game.
On a day Oisin set out with his men and dogs to the woods; and he went so far and killed so much game that when it was brought together, the men were so tired, weak, and hungry that they could n't carry it, but went away home and left him with the three dogs, Bran, Sciolán, and Buglén, [1] to shift for himself. ”

“ After the death of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the Fenians were commanded by his son Oisin or Ossian, the celebrated warrior and bard; and at the time of the battle of Gaura, Osgar, another famous champion, the son of Oisin, commanded the Fenian forces. The army of Munster, commanded by Mogh Corb, a name which signifies the Chief of the Chariot, and by his son Fear Corb, that is, the man or warrior of the chariot, was composed of the Clanna Deagha and Dalcassian troops, joined by the Fenians and their Leinster forces ”

“ It is more than probable that the Fenians are endeavoring to obtain transportation to some point, audit is quite certain that they will be very closely watched, and find it very difficult to leave without discovery. ”

“ Baking, cooking for one thousand Fenians. They eat, drink, sleep. Are aroused for the line of march.
During the night of 31st May, the Fenian bands left Buffalo city, travelling by different outlets; but meeting on Niagara Street and Black Rock Road, they halted at Black Rock Ferry about five miles below, and north of Buffalo city; there they embarked in scows, which, with a steam tug, lay in readiness to receive and tow them over to the Canada [15] shore, distance about one thousand yards. They landed at the wharf called Lower Ferry, and marched westward towards the village of Waterloo. ”

“ Another more modern romantic element in the Fenian legends is the delight in hunting, and that more affectionate relation of men to animals which always marks an advance in civilization. Hunting, as in medieval romance, is one of the chief pleasures of the Fenians. Six months of the year they passed in the open, getting to know every part of the country they had to defend, and hunting through the great woods and over the hills for their daily food and their daily delight. ”

“ The firing continued for a little while after this, and I saw the Fenians advancing down the road. They were pushing forward their skirmishers and were advancing, as I thought, in a heavy column of companies. They continued their advance, and we received an order to retire. We then retired as skirmishers usually do in closing in on their supports. We came out, but found no support to close upon, and reached the open space where there was a large body of men formed into square. After reaching this open space I heard a cry of "Cavalry." ”

“ The ferry-boat is now stopped, but the Fenians appear to have full liberty to ply in tug boats as often as they please. A man on a white horse appeared to be very active, he being distinctly seen on the bank of the river riding amongst his men. About half past six the host of the Fenian army proper went over in canal boats and took with them twenty wagon loads of munitions of war. They have sentinels posted for miles around their encampment, and are enjoying their favorite occupation of stealing all the horses in the locality. ”

“ Some think the movement a blind to cover an attempt elsewhere.”
“Later. About two hundred more Fenians reached the city at 10 o’clock, and left the train as the others did—some distance out of the city. They have just marched into town. A meeting is now being held in Townsend Hall, the Fenian head-quarters. The men are boarded at various Irish boarding houses. There is only a force of fifty regulars at Fort Porter here. Warning has been given, however, to the commander of the revenue steamer Michigan.” ”

“ The Finns are a very ancient people. It is claimed, too, that they began earlier than any other European nation to collect and preserve their ancient folk-lore. Tacitus, writing in the very beginning of the second century of the Christian era, mentions the Fenni, as he calls them, in the 46th chapter of his De Moribus Germanoram. He says of them: "The Finns are extremely wild, and live in abject poverty. They have no arms, no horses, no dwellings; they live on herbs, they clothe themselves in skins, and they sleep on the ground. ”

“ Tacitus is the first author who mentions the Finns (Fenni) , but whether they are Lapps, Kvæns or another race cannot be determined. He says himself: “I am in doubt whether to reckon the Peucini, Venedi and Fenni among the Germans or Sarmatians (Slavs) .” He speaks of the Fenni apparently as dwelling far to the north-east, beyond the Peucini, or Bastarnæ, from whom they are separated by forests and mountains, which the latter overrun as robbers.
“Among the Fenni amazing savagery and revolting poverty prevail. They have no weapons, no horses, no houses [‘non penates,’ perhaps rather, no homes] ”

“ The beliefs of the ancient Finns, as described in the Kalevala, in the world as a divided egg, of which the white is the ocean, the yolk the sun, the arched shell the sky, and the darker portions the clouds; and of the Polynesians that the universe is the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, at the tapering bottom of which is the root of all things, are to us so grotesque that it is not easy to regard them as explanations seriously invented by the human mind. ”

“ They tell of Iceni, of Romans, fierce Norsemen marauders, Saxons, Danes, and the conquering Normans, but they cannot, or do not, breathe the breath of life into those ancient peoples, and make them live and love and hate, fight and vanquish or be vanquished. The geologists, too, can speculate learnedly upon the origin of the Fens, and can prove, to their own satisfaction at least, that this low-lying, once flooded country was produced by some natural convulsion that suddenly lowered it to the level of the sea ”

“ We must now turn our attention to the later heroic cycle, commonly called the Fenian or Ossianic. Unfortunately the origin of the stories and poems connected with Finn and his warriors is obscure, and scholars are by no means agreed over the question (see Finn Mac Cool) . Fenian or Ossianic cycle. In the earlier cycle the figures and the age in which they live are sharply drawn, and we can have no hesitation in assuming that the Táin represents in the main the state of Ireland at the beginning of the Christian era. ”