Category: great tales retold

Cessair was the granddaughter of Noah who built her own arc, then sailed all the way from the ancient city of Meroë in Sudan with forty nine other women and three men. She became the first person to set foot on the forested land of Ireland. There she and her friends separated into three groups, a man with each group. These men were Fintan mac Bóchra, his friends Ladhra and Bith. Unfortunately Ladhra died from exhaustion and the women buried him in Árd Ladhrann (Wexford). Not long after that Bith died and was buried in Slieve Beagh (Mountain between Monaghan and Fermanagh). One group of fifty women was left when Fintan the shape changer departed leaving Cessair with a broken heart that didn’t repair, and so the women buried her at Cúil Ceasra (Roscommon).

After that the flood of the world took the rest of the women. That group came and went, leaving nothing but the names on their graves, and the story recounted by Fintan of the first woman who sailed to Ireland all the way from Africa.

Fintan did not die however. He changed into the forms of a salmon, an eagle, then a hawk. He lived for five thousand years until eventually he returned to the shape of a man who had seen and could tell all the stories of the people who had come, gone, stayed, fought, won and lost.

Indeed it was Fintan who was called to the Settling of the Manor of Tara when the tribes of Ireland were in disagreement. Because he had lived so long and seen so much, he could recall the ancient arrangement that was the legacy of the Fir Bolg who had divided Ireland into five provinces. Ulster, Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Cúige, that was the sacred fifth at the centre in County Meath. Fintan described Cúige as the kidneys of a person or animal that maintains a vital balance for the whole body.

The story of Cessair can be found in my book SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology

My story of Fintan is written and will be in my next book in due course