(European mythology)
Or Finn mac Cumaill; Fionn MacCumal. The Fianna, the old cycle of epic tales concerning Finn and his son Oisin, celebrate the splendours of the Irish kings in the third century. One of them, ‘The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Grianni’, is the prototype for the story of Tristan and Iseult.
A band of tried warriors, the Fenians, ‘Finn's people’, only admitted to their ranks the brave, the learned, and the able. One test would have disqualified most candidates: ‘No man was taken till in the ground a hole had been made, such as would reach to the waist, and he put into it with his shield and a forearm's length of a hazel stick. Then must nine warriors, having nine spears, with a ten furrows's width between them and him, assail him and at the same time let fly at him. If he sustained injury, he was not received into the fellowship.’
