The Colloquy of Fintan and the Hawk of Achill

Key takeaways: this late Middle Irish poem stages a conversation between Ireland’s two oldest creatures, the Flood-survivor Fintan mac Bóchra and an ageless grey hawk of Achill Island; their exchanged memories span the whole mythological history of Ireland; the hawk’s claims include keeping Nuada’s severed hand in its nest for seven years and being wounded by the dying Cú Chulainn; and the poem closes both lives with a Christian death-scene.

The two ancients meet

The oldest man in Ireland and the oldest bird in Ireland met with one day left to live.

The poem brings together Fintan mac Bóchra, the oldest living being in Ireland, and a hawk of obviously great antiquity. Tradition sets the encounter on Achill Island, the hawk’s lifelong home, though the surviving translated stanzas leave the meeting-place open: in Hull’s stanzas the hawk comes “hither from the west” to Fintan and later departs “to cold Achill,” which suggests the meeting itself happens elsewhere. Speaking in énbérla, the language of birds that he learned during his centuries in animal form, Fintan calls out: “Arsaidh sin, a eoúin Accla”, “Ancient that, O bird of Achill.” He asks the hawk to tell its story.

The hawk deflects the greeting back at him: you yourself are no young thing, it says; you have not been young since you lived in Dún Tulchu where the sea comes in. Fintan agrees it is a greater wonder that he is alive at all. The grief of Ros Gredha lies on his heart, and the death of his son Illann has pained him above all else (the poem’s surviving stanzas do not explain either grief further). He asks why the hawk lives where it does. The hawk gives a small, unhurried account of contentment: bright air, warm thickets, fish, venison, gentle harbours, and solitude. Every night of its life on Achill it has taken its fill of the island’s abundance. Then it turns the question: tell me your age and your life.

Fintan begins: he was fifteen years old before the black Flood came. After the Flood, the gods granted him five thousand five hundred more years; he has lived a further ten centuries beyond that. He asks the hawk’s age. The hawk’s answer is exact and deliberate: cert-inann ré, precisely the equivalent time. The two creatures are perfectly matched, their memories between them containing the full archive of Ireland’s past.

The night at Assaroe

The hawk presses Fintan to tell the worst things he has witnessed. Fintan speaks of the deaths of Illann and white-handed Cessair. But the night that stands out beyond all others was a night on the Erne. After the Flood had taken Ladra and Bith, the gods put Fintan in the shape of a salmon, and he swam every river and sea-inlet of Ireland. He names them in a great catalogue of waterways: the Boyne, Bann, Bru, Suck, Suir, Shannon, Slaney, Liffey, Moy (Múaidh), Sligo (Sligech), Erne, a geography of the island learned from the inside of its currents. He came at last to Assaroe at the mouth of the Erne, and there he spent a night at the northern wave such as he had never felt from the beginning of the world to its end. The cold came down like “mur ghlain nguirmm”, “deep-blue glass”, pressing him between ice and cataract. He could not stay below the falls. He leapt, and as he fell, a hawk came stooping from above and tore out one of his eyes.

Of all the nights since the beginning of the world, that was the one he kept.

The swallowed eye

The hawk acknowledges quietly that the bird at Assaroe was itself. “Is misi do sluig do súil”, “It is I who swallowed your eye.” It is the grey hawk alone in the heart of Achill. Fintan invokes Irish legal custom: blinding a man requires éraic, blood-compensation. The hawk’s response is a piece of bleak comedy: the only compensation it can offer is to swallow the other eye as well. Fintan absorbs this and says: your song is harsh, but since I still have the sweeter voice, let us speak together. He continues his story: five hundred years as a one-eyed salmon, then fifty years as an eagle, then a century in high spirits (fa muirn) as a blue-eyed hawk. Then the King of the Sun restored him to his own human form, and with that came the full weight of all those years.

Nuada’s hand in the nest

The hawk then speaks its own memory: “fiss gach catha cenn a ceand”, “knowledge of every successive battle that was fought in Ireland.” At the First Battle of Mag Tuired at Cong, where the Tuatha Dé Danann fought the Fir Bolg, it took from the bodies of Fintan’s twelve fallen sons, from each limb, an arm, a half-leg, or an eye. Moving through the field after the battle, it came upon an arm lying separate from any body. On each of the arm’s fingers gleamed a ring of red gold, bright as blood. A sleeve of glossy silk covered it to the shoulder. The hawk lifted the arm, no small effort, and carried it over terrible terrain to Druim Ibar of the estuaries. There it kept the arm in its nest for seven years. It was the hand of Nuada, “airdrígh Thúaithe Dé Danann”, high-king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, severed at Mag Tuired. This nest-episode is unique to the poem; it is not found in the primary texts of Cath Maige Tuired.

The hawk then marks the thirty years between the two battles of Mag Tuired: the second, in the north, where Balor fell. After the destruction of the Fomorians came a season of peace, no raiding, no plague, no treachery. Then the brilliance of Lugh Lámhfhada; after his son’s death the sky above the field was thick with scald-crows. The hawk declares it has never seen a warrior like Lugh since the day Lugh was born.

The three sacred trees

Fintan speaks of the coming of the sons of Míl. Of thirty-two sons, only seven came safe to Ireland; Ír and Donn were drowned in the monster-haunted sea. Cath Tailtin was fought; the land divided between Éber and Érimón; a year without war. He names the place-names of Connacht, Tír Maine, Cnoc Medhbha, Cenn Mara, and notes that Éber fell to Érimón. He then describes a meeting at Tara: a great and beautiful stranger appeared before the assembly, carrying a flowering branch. His name was Trefuilngid Tre-eochair, and he had come from the west of the world, from beyond the place where the sun sets. He carried a branch of three fruits, nut, apple, and blackthorn, with healing properties: eating the northern fruit restores youth to the old; eating the southern fruit wards off disease as long as the blackthorn lasts. After three days at Tara he departed, leaving the three fruits in the soil. Fintan planted them himself as the three sacred trees of Ireland: Eo Rossa, the Branch of Mugna, and the bile of Tortan.

Cú Chulainn’s dart

The hawk resumes. During the reign of Conchobar mac Nessa its fame and beauty were at their height, ranging over hills and glens as king of the birds of Ireland. It watched Cú Roi mac Dáire fall to Cú Chulainn’s treachery and drank its fill. It watched Garb mac Staírn fall to the Hound who fed scald-crows, and ate the eyes of a Greek soldier at the start of that day. From Naoise it often got flesh and plunder, but it would not eat Naoise’s flesh or blood because of his excellence in battle. The head of Cet fell to it; the body of Monódar mac Cecht. From the hand of Conall Cernach it found body upon body: the rivers ran with blood from Conall’s spear as long as he lived.

Then comes the death of Cú Chulainn at the Slaughter of Mag Muirthemne, the hero fighting until he was too weak to stand, his back set against the pillar-stone. The hawk descended, not to kill him, but to eat his eyes, believing him already dead: “d’ithi a súla nír thoisc áigh”, “to eat his eyes was not my battle-desire.” But Cú Chulainn felt the wings on his face, raised his weakened hand, and drove his hero’s dart through the hawk’s body at the first stroke. The hawk fled on a terrible flight to Inis Geidh across the sea, and there drew out the shaft with great pain. The barb stayed in its body, tormenting its heart ever since. “Co slán ní fuilimm ó h-soin”, “since then I have not been sound.” It does not conceal this.

From champions to blackbirds

The hawk then measures its decline against the reigns of high kings. In the time of Lugh it carried champions’ bodies to its nestlings without effort. By the time of Conn of the Hundred Battles it could manage only a fawn of six months’ growth. By Cormac mac Airt, a pig or piglet. In the time of Niall of the Nine Hostages it met only peril, strife, and madness; and now, in the time of Diarmait son of Fergus mac Cerbaill, it would grow weary carrying a blackbird three or four times over. The bird that had carried the high-king’s arm now found a blackbird a burden.

This accounting, precise and unsentimental, a bird recording its own diminishment through the sequence of kings, is the poem’s most devastating passage.

Two deaths foretold

The hawk says it has come to meet Fintan because tomorrow it will die. It asks Fintan to seek pardon from the gods for it. Fintan reassures it: tomorrow its soul will be alive in the heaven of clouds, with the singing of angels. Then he adds, simply: “Rachaid misi a n-dáil éga / isin laithi chóir chétna”, “I will go to meet death / on that same correct day.” He closes with a profession of faith in Christ, king of the starry heaven, who shapes every young thing and every ancient one alike.

Tradition holds that sunrise found both creatures lying side by side, dead, on Achill Island. The surviving translated stanzas do not quite confirm this: Hull’s version has the hawk departing from Fintan “to cold Achill” to die, and the final stanza of the poem is untranslated in her published study, so the shared death-scene remains a beloved but unverified reading.

However the ending ran, the hawk’s home is not in doubt: Achill, the island in the west where every night of its long life it took its fill.