Heroes of the Gael: A History of Fionn and the Fianna, by Natasha Sumner, Princeton University Press, 376 pp, £37, ISBN 978 0691204734.

Fenian is the title of Kneecap’s latest album, which was released earlier this year. Now a derogatory slur for Irish nationalists (or a reclaimed badge of pride, as Kneecap have it), the term Fenian is layered, contested and evolving. Since the eighteenth century, however, it has been used to describe the literary adventures of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his band of warriors, the Fianna.

Kneecap’s album title is just one example of how the Fianna continue to permeate national consciousness. They have lent their name to political parties (Fianna Fáil) and to sports clubs (Na Fianna GAA club) and they are conjured in the opening lines of the national anthem (‘Sinne Fianna Fáil, tá faoi gheall ag Éirinn’). The names of some of the most famous members of the Fianna can be heard in playgrounds across the country: both Fionn and Oisín (Fionn mac Cumhaill’s son) were among the top ten boys’ names in 2025, while Finn (an anglicised version of Fionn), ranked fifteenth. (Although women make cameo appearances in tales concerning these heroes, the Fianna was strictly a boys’ club.)

Fionn mac Cumhaill’s enduring relevance is a theme that runs throughout Natasha Sumner’s Heroes of the Gael: A History of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. This broad-stroke study draws extensively on written and oral material from the earliest available to the present day, to chart the ups and downs of the Fianna as they traverse the Irish and Scottish landscapes. It follows their many adventures, victories and defeats, but above all seeks to explain their enduring popularity over roughly 1,400 years. The book is divided into three chronologically ordered sections: the first charts the rise of the Fianna’s popularity in literature from 600 to 1760; the second assesses the impact of James Macpherson’s creative adaptations (or fraudulent translations, depending on one’s point of view) on the Fianna’s renown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the third explores how the Fianna have fared against the backdrop of the modern Scottish and Irish nations.

Some of the tales relating to Fionn and the Fianna are still widely known. They are embedded in our geography and our education system. Anyone who has visited the Giant’s Causeway in Co Antrim will know that its unusual rock formation was created by a giant Fionn mac Cumhaill when he flung great chunks of the coastline into the sea to forge a pathway to Scotland. It is common knowledge among locals that Benbulbin (Binn Ghulbain) in Co Sligo formed the backdrop to the tragic ending of Diarmaid and Gráinne’s ill-fated elopement. The story of Oisín and Niamh in ‘Tír na nÓg’ (the ‘Land of Youth’) is still popular and features on the Irish Leaving Certificate curriculum, and tales such as the ‘Salmon of Knowledge’ (in which Fionn gains his supernatural knowledge by burning his thumb while cooking the legendary bradán feasa) are primary school staples.

Yet these popular narratives barely scratch the surface of the vast body of written and oral literature on Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. Sumner’s narrative history references a dizzying number of stories, poems, lays and songs, many of which are little-known today. These include an alternate, earlier explanation of how Fionn obtained his supernatural knowledge: an eighth century account tells us that he gained his magical ability by sucking his thumb after getting it caught in the door of an otherworldly residence (or sídh). Getting caught in enchanted dwellings is a theme found in other lesser-known Fenian narratives: in the Early Modern Irish romantic tale ‘Bruidhean Chaorthainn’ (‘The Rowen-Tree Dwelling’) some of the Fianna are lured by an enemy into a magical dwelling, where they become stuck to the floor so that they cannot escape, until they are rescued by their own Diarmaid ó Duibhne. When one member of the Fianna, Conán Maol mac Mórna, is pulled free, the skin of his heels, shoulders and backside are left behind, a detail that explains the epithet maol (‘bald’). (The reference to Conán’s backside was omitted by Patrick Pearse who published a sanitised edition of the tale at the beginning of the twentieth century.)

‘A story is never just a story,’ writes Sumner. Her work seeks to give an overview of a dynamic literary tradition and to understand why stories about Fionn mac Cumhaill continue to be told and how they resonate with audiences. Fenian narratives have always entertained, but they also reflect deeper contemporary values and concerns. Thus, the Fianna’s somewhat slow emergence on to the literary scene (in comparison with that of heroes from Ulster Cycle, such as Cú Chulainn), might be explained by the negative attitude of the church towards the warrior bands (called fíana) which existed in early Irish society and on which the literary Fianna were modelled. Similarly, it is suggested that the Fianna’s growing popularity during the early Middle Irish period (900-1200) might be understood by their association with the legendary third century king, Cormac mac Airt, which portrayed them as something akin to a legitimate national defence force and afforded them a new relevance and respectability.

The incorporation of Saint Patrick into the Fenian cycle in the later Middle Irish period heralded another change for the Fianna who, by now, had the blessing of the church. In ‘Agallamh na Seanórach’ (‘The Colloquy of the Ancients’), the patron saint travels around Ireland with Oisín and Caoilte, who have outlived the rest of their pagan comrades. One of the most important Fenian texts, the ‘Agallamh’ is thought to have been composed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, perhaps in a monastic setting. As well as espousing Christian values, it subtly reflects contemporary attitudes to the recent Anglo-Norman Invasion, with a nostalgic Oisín and Caoilte lamenting not only the loss of their pagan way of life, but the changes to the landscape.

Reactions to the later (and more traumatic) invasion of Ireland are, similarly, reflected in the popularity of Fenian ‘invasion tales’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many Fenian texts from this period involve arrogant but ultimately unsuccessful would-be conquerors of Ireland. One example is the sixteenth century ‘Bodach an Chóta Lachtna’, a humorous tale in which an otherworldly character in disguise saves Fionn and the Fianna from a hostile invader by challenging him to a race from Sliabh Luachra to Howth. This tale is found in over 60 manuscript witnesses, giving us some idea of the widespread appeal to an Irish audience of the theme of routing a hostile enemy.

Though the enduring appeal of the Fianna in Ireland (and in Scotland, where many of their adventures take place) might be expected, more surprising is the height of their popularity on an international stage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was due, largely, to the Ossianic controversy. In 1760 the Scottish scholar James Macpherson published ‘fragments’ of the poems of Ossian (Oisín), which were purported to be translations from originals but bore little resemblance to native Fenian texts. Perhaps even more outrageously, according to some of his contemporaries, Macpherson claimed that the Fianna had Scottish, rather than Irish, origins. Rather than casting Macpherson as a fraud, however, Sumner, in line with recent thought, offers a more balanced assessment and sees these publications as an act of cultural preservation at a time when highland Scots were suffering persecution and prejudice.

Rather than focusing on the already well-documented details of the controversy, Sumner focuses on its immense impact on the Fianna’s popularity at home and abroad. Macpherson’s initial and subsequent publications caused something of a Fenian craze in Britain and beyond (similar, perhaps, to the Harry Potter mania of the early 2000s). In Britain Macpherson’s epics were the subject of operas, ballets, dramas and pantomimes; they also inspired visual art (including a now-lost ceiling mural in Penicuik House in Scotland). Further afield, there was great demand for translations of these Fenian epics. Among the most famous of the European translators was Goethe, who translated some of the epics to German (and who, in the process, was also inspired to learn to read Irish).

The impact of the controversy was also felt within Gaelic scholarship. In Scotland it prompted a drive to collect lays (Fenian poems) to prove (or disprove) the authenticity of Macpherson’s translations. In Ireland it led to scholarly endeavours, including the collection and publishing of Fenian texts, and a drive to reclaim Fionn and the Fianna as national symbols. The Fianna were embraced by political nationalists in the nineteenth century (including the North American branch of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, ‘the Fenian Brotherhood’) and later by cultural nationalists, including Douglas Hyde and Patrick Pearse and, in the English-language sphere, Standish James O’Grady and Lady Gregory. As we have already seen, the Fianna continued to flourish even after the establishment of the Irish free state.

The broad-stroke approach taken by Sumner is likely to whet the appetite of many readers who may wish to explore some of the many texts referenced (sometimes only briefly). But where to find this material? Sumner has, to some extent, provided the answer in the excellent Fionn Folklore Database. This website enables users to discover a rich corpus of orally collected Fenian stories and songs. The database includes material in Irish, English, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and English, all collected between the eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries and held in archives across Ireland, Scotland, England, the Isle of Man, Canada and the United States. The website also tells us where and by whom the stories were collected (when this information is known) and categorises the tales according to type. Users are provided with links to any of the stories and songs that have been digitised.

The database contains many gems. One account in Scottish Gaelic tells us how Oscar, the grandson of Fionn mac Cumhaill, got his name: originally called ludair an Eanraich (Soup Ladle) because of his fondness of soup, he was finally given the name ‘Oscar’ (meaning ‘strength’) after surviving a brutal encounter. In another story we learn that Fionn and his two dogs, Bran and Sceolán, are cousins: it transpires that Fionn’s aunt had been transformed into a dog while she was pregnant. Users will also find more familiar tales in the database, including the story of Diarmaid and Gráinne’s elopement, which existed in some form as early as the tenth century and is recorded 262 times, each instance in its own unique telling and bearing witness to the dynamic and creative process of oral transmission.

More difficult to access are the literary version of Fenian narratives referenced throughout this book. These literary texts are preserved in Irish-language manuscripts, some of which have been digitised on the wonderful Irish Script on Screen website. (‘Agallamh na Seanórach’, for example, can be viewed online in the fifteenth century manuscript known as the ‘Book of the Lismore’, which was gifted recently to University College Cork by the Duke of Devonshire.)

While most Fenian texts have been edited from their manuscript sources, many of the existing editions are outdated or out of print (or both) and often do not include an English translation. The tale of the ‘Bruidhean Chaorthainn’, for example, in which the Fianna are stuck to the floor of a magical dwelling, has not been edited since Patrick Pearse’s bowdlerised edition appeared in 1908 (without translation). Another tale, ‘Tóraigheacht an Ghiolla Dheacair’, in which the Fianna are affixed to a horse who carries them away (and which was exceedingly popular, if the number of manuscripts in which it is preserved is any indication), has not been edited since it appeared in Standish Hayes O’Grady’s Silva Gadelica in the nineteenth century. As Sumner points out, there is a great deal of primary-source work to be done before the full range of Fenian texts will be accessible to a wider readership.

There is an eleventh century poem that describes Fenian literature as fáth cen dochta, ‘an inexhaustible subject’. Given the breath and richness of the surviving body of Fenian material, it’s surprising that only a handful of modern monographs have been written on the subject. Sumner’s masterful contribution is particularly welcome. Remarkably well-researched, detailed and rigorous, it is accessible, lucid and engaging. Readers can enjoy this work unburdened by academic footnotes or can delve a little deeper into the scholarship by accessing extensive and scholarly endnotes provided at the end of the book. With the publication of Heroes of the Gael and her online database, Sumner has ensured the Fianna will continue to inspire and entertain in the twenty-first century.