fawn

Like the deer and the stag, the fawn exercised great power over the early Celtic imagination. The Eacute;rainn King Lugaid Laígde pursued a fawn, probably a divine personification of Ireland itself. Aige and Sadb were transformed into fawns. Donn mac Midir used yet another woman transformed into a fawn to lure Fionn mac Cumhaill and his men. But some fawns are male, like Fionn's son Oisín, whose name is still the Irish word for fawn. The fawn appears to be an antecedent of the stag in the Perceval legend. Folk etymology (wrongly) glosses the place-name Uisnech as ‘place of the fawn’. Old Irish and Modern Irish oisín; Scottish Gaelic laogh féidh, fiadh òg; Manx minjeig; Welsh elain, hydd ifanc; Cornish yorghyk; Breton menn-karvez.