After Tara and Uisneach, Knock Aillinn is the most historic hill in Ireland—that is, if it was really the seat of the celebrated Finn, the son of Cumhail. It is a different hill from the hill of Allen, which is about nine miles north of it, and must not be confounded with it, although, as it will be shown further on, the confusion of the two hills seems to have taken place very long ago indeed. Knock Aillinn is some five or six miles south of Newbridge, in the County Kildare. Apart from its historic interest, it is well worth visiting, for it is situated in a rich and beautiful part of the country, and the view from its summit is one of the fairest and most extensive to be seen in any of the eastern counties. Eastward the view is obstructed by the Wicklow mountains, but on every other side it is very extensive, for Knock Aillinn is 600 feet high. So fine is the view from this hill that O’Donovan, the celebrated Gaelic scholar, was inspired by it to write a poem in Irish in praise of it, when he was employed on the Government Survey in 1837. The poem may be seen in his unpublished letters in the Royal Irish Academy. One verse of it, translated into English, will show that it is a composition of more than ordinary merit:—

“Beautiful the view from the hill of Aillinn,
Over lofty hills and fair plains,
Over mountains wreathed in veils of cloud;—
The view will remain in my memory for ever.”

But beautiful and extensive as the prospect is from Knock Aillinn, and greatly as the lovers of the beautiful may enjoy it, the chief interest possessed by this hill is historic rather than scenic. On its summit is to be seen the most gigantic of all Irish raths. O’Donovan called it “prodigious.” The whole top of the hill is surrounded by a mighty rampart of earth, four hundred yards in diameter, that encloses over twenty acres. After nearly two thousand years those earthen ramparts are still of great height; and when, according to the fashion of the times, they were topped with a strong palisade of timber, Knock Aillinn might be said to be an almost impregnable fortress. To render it still stronger, the hill on which it is placed is steep, and its ascent difficult. It was on this hill that some think the renowned in Celtic song and legend, Finn, the son of Cumhail, had his stronghold; but others, and it must be confessed that they are the most numerous, think that Finn’s dun was on the hill of Allen, some eight or nine miles to the north.

That the vast dun, or enclosure, on Knock Aillinn was an ancient residence of the Kings of Leinster is generally admitted; and that it was erected long previous to the Christian era is also the opinion of those best acquainted with early Irish history and literature. Proofs of this can be obtained from the most reliable and ancient Gaelic writings. There is hardly a vestige of antiquity to be seen on the summit of Knock Aillinn save the vast earthen rampart. When one stands within it, and recalls to mind what it must have been in days long gone by, when a large population dwelt in it, and when armed multitudes issued from it, he will be tempted to exclaim with Byron:—

“Shrine of the mighty! can it be
That this is all remains of thee?”

He will wonder that no vast masses of ancient masonry are to be seen. But stone buildings of the kind that have been in use in these islands for nearly a thousand years were unknown when the vast earth-works on Knock Aillinn were erected. Walls built of dry stone have been used in Ireland as fortresses from the most remote antiquity; but the art of building with mortar was entirely unknown until after the introduction of Christianity.

The hill of Allen is the one on which, it is over and over again stated by the most ancient and trustworthy Gaelic documents extant, Finn, the son of Cumhail, had his palace. We are even told how, partly by force and threats, he obtained Allen from his grandfather, Tadg; that he went to live on it, and that it was his habitation as long as he lived. But here a great difficulty meets us—there is not a vestige of dun or fort on the hill of Allen. O’Donovan says in his unpublished letters, while on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, that Knock Aillinn was, according to various ancient Irish authorities, one of the royal residences of the Kings of Leinster, and that it received the name of Aillinn from the ail, or stone which was placed in the mound of the rath. On speaking of the hill of Allen, where the celebrated Finn Mac Cool or Cumhail is said to have had his seat, he says, “There are no traces of forts nor any other monuments excepting one small mound called Suidhe Finn, or Finn’s chair, which occupies the highest point of the hill. On every side of this mound there are faint traces of field works, but so indistinct that I could not with any certainty decide whether they are traces of forts or of recent cultivation, for the hill was tilled on the very summit. I travelled all the hill, but could find upon it no monument from which it could be inferred that it was ever a royal seat like Tara, Emania, Maistean, or any of the other places of ancient celebrity whose localities have been identified; and still in all Fingallian or Ossianic poems this hill (the hill of Allen) is referred to as containing the palace of the renowned champion, Finn Mac Cool, who seems to have been a real historical character, who flourished here in the latter end of the third century.”

O’Donovan says also in the same unpublished letters that “The antiquary may draw his own conclusion from the non-existence of a dun on the hill of Allen at this day. It is possible that there were forts on it a thousand years ago, and that the progress of cultivation has effaced them; but it is strange that these alone should disappear, while those of Tara, Emania, Aileach, Naas, Maistean, and Raoirean remain in good preservation.... It is curious to remark that all the monuments mentioned in the Dinnseanchus and the authentic annals still exist, while no trace is to be found of Finn Mac Cool’s palace on the hill of Allowin (Allen).... If he had such a palace as this on Aillinn, near Kilcullen, on his hill of Allowin, it would not disappear, because the labour of levelling it would be so great that no agriculturist would undertake to level it.”

It would seem as if the two hills, Aillinn, or Knock Aillinn as it is now called, and Allen got confounded, and at an early date too. Allowing liberally for exaggeration and discounting tradition, one has to believe in the extent of Finn’s house or palace, however rude and barbaric its arrangements may have been. He was the most powerful man in Ireland, more powerful even than the chief king. The fame of his household was spread abroad, not only over all Ireland, but all Scotland. This we know by the publication of the poems collected in the Highlands by the Dean of Lismore in the sixteenth century, and translated by the late Mr T. M’Lauchlan, and also from a host of other poems. They abound with allusions to Finn and his house and household, as does almost all the folk-lore of the Celtic-Scotch. One thing seems certain, that neither Finn nor his house or palace were myths; his house must have existed, and, like all places of its kind in the days when it existed, it must have been surrounded with an earthen rampart no less high than that to be seen on Knock Aillinn. But no vestige of house or rampart can be traced on the hill of Allen. A still greater difficulty meets one in the size of the summit of the hill. It is not much over half an Irish acre in extent, and where would there be room on such a limited space for the vast household of Finn? His residence was known from far-back times as “Almhuin riogha leathan mÓr Laighean,” the kingly, great-broad Allen of Leinster; but no dun or habitation situated on the narrow space on the top of the hill of Allen could be “great-broad;” but the existing remains on Knock Aillinn would suit the description almost exactly. We may be sure that if any man in Ireland in those days had a big house, it was Finn. The names Allen and Aillinn are so much alike, and both hills are so comparatively near each other, and both seem to have been abandoned as strongholds at such an early date, that confusion of one with the other could easily have taken place; besides, Finn’s name does appear to be, in some measure at least, associated with Knock Aillinn. Here is a passage from the “Dinnseanchus” at page 162 of the “Book of Leinster.” Treating of Knock Aillinn, these lines occur:—

“Faichthi ruamand ruamnad rinn
Co failgib flatha for Fhind.”

Irish scholars may interpret these lines as they like, but it would seem that the last word is a proper name, and that it relates to Finn.

But whether Finn lived in Knock Aillinn or in Allen, or whether he lived in both places off and on, is a matter of minor importance. The real wonder about him is the way he impressed himself not only on the age in which he lived but on every age since then. No other man in any age or country seems to have so fastened himself in the memories of the people of his own race and lineage. It may be safely said that neither Julius Caesar nor Charlemagne have impressed themselves on popular imagination so much as Finn and those associated with him have. Those who have not studied the Celtic folk-lore of Ireland and Scotland can form but an incomplete idea of the overwhelming immensity of the folk-lore about Finn and his cycle that exists even yet. But with the decay of Gaelic speech it is rapidly fading away. It is hardly too much to say that when Gaelic was the language of the fireside all through Ireland and a large part of Scotland, and that is only a few centuries ago, there was not a parish from Kerry to Caithness in which dozens of different stories about Finn and his contemporaries did not exist; and it is equally safe to say that not the tenth, probably not the twentieth, part of them was ever committed to writing. Finn, Ossian, and Caoilte were the dramatis personÆ of the most extensive, if not the choicest, popular, unwritten folk-lore that probably ever existed in any country. But one of the strangest things connected with the cycle of Finn and Ossian is that its folk-lore hardly appears at all in really ancient Gaelic literature. The Gaelic scribes of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries took but little notice of it; it was to the events of the Cuchulainn cycle that they gave almost their entire attention. In the “Book of Leinster,” the greatest repertory of Gaelic literature that exists in one volume, there is only one story that can be called an Ossianic or Finnian one, while nearly half the book is taken up with tracts and stories relating to the cycle of Cuchulainn, which was nearly three centuries earlier than that of Ossian and Finn. But the Cuchulainn cycle, from whatever cause will probably be never known, seems to have entirely failed to take hold of the popular imagination. Folk-lore relating to the Cuchulainn cycle is rare. There are a few in which Cuchulainn is mentioned, and M’Pherson in his Ossian mixes the Ossianic and Cuchulainn cycles together, although they were three centuries apart. Of all the prominent names belonging to the Cuchulainn cycle, Queen Medb or Meave was one of the most prominent, but not a single story exists about her in the oral Gaelic folk-lore of Ireland or Scotland of which the writer has ever heard. She seems to have found her way into the folk-lore of England, but not into that of Ireland or the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland. She figures very prominently in Irish history and literature, but in folk-lore she does not figure at all. The reason of this may be that Finn, Ossian, and others of their “set” were supposed to have lived so long that they met St Patrick and were converted to Christianity by him; but there is no foundation for such a belief, for authentic Irish history says that Finn was killed in the year 283 at Ath Brea on the Boyne.

It is not easy to see clearly why Finn so impressed his memory and his cycle on the minds of his countrymen, for he does not appear to have been an altogether amiable personage. There are very many discreditable things told of him in the multitudinous stories of which he is the central figure. In one of them, the “Pursuit of Dermot and GrÁine,” he plays the part of a revengeful, unforgiving, bad man; while his great enemy, Dermot O’Duibhne, is a bold, open-hearted hero, the very opposite of his unrelenting pursuer. With all the absurdities and impossibilities of the “Pursuit,” the leading characters in it are sustained with a consistency that would do credit even to Shakespeare. Finn at the end of the story is just what he was at the beginning, unforgiving and bad; and GrÁine, who is bad at the beginning is bad also at the end; while Dermot, a hero at the beginning of the story, is still a hero at its close. It may interest some to know that most Irish historians and scholars think that Dermot O’Duibhne was the person from whom the barony of Corcaguiney, in the County Kerry, is called. In correct orthography it would be Corc Ui Dhuibhne, and would be pronounced very nearly as the name of the barony is written at present. If it be true that Corcaguiney got its name from Dermot O’Duibhne, and there seems no reason to doubt that it did, another proof is given of the general correctness of at least the salient points in Irish history. It may also interest some to know that the Campbells of Argyll are popularly believed, even in their own country, to be descended from this same Dermot O’Duibhne. They have been known for centuries as the Clann Diarmid, or children of Dermot, as will be remembered by any one who has read Scott’s “Legend of Montrose.” The real name of the Argyll Campbells seems to be really O’Duibhne. It was so that they generally signed their names up to a comparatively recent date. Bishop Carsewell, who translated John Knox’s Prayer Book into Gaelic in 1567, the first Gaelic book that was ever printed, dedicates it to the Duke of Argyll, whom he calls Gilleasbuig O’Duibhne.[5] Carsewell would hardly have dared to address his patron, and the most powerful nobleman in Scotland, by a false name or a sobriquet. The Campbells seem to have been called O’Duibhne down to the middle of the seventeenth century, for in the national manuscripts of Scotland there is a very fine Gaelic poem on the death of a Campbell, who is styled “O’Duibhne” in the Gaelic.

Translations that have been recently made from Gaelic manuscripts of high authority have thrown considerable light on Finn, and the events of his epoch. We are told in the tract called the “Boramha,” or “Tribute,” to which reference has been already made, that when Bresal, a king of Leinster, in the third century, was given his choice to pay the tribute or fight the rest of Ireland, he asked help from Finn. A person called Molling was sent to ask Finn to help the men of Leinster. Molling told Finn that he should not come with a small army to fight the chief king, who had the national army with him. The number of men that Finn had, was, we are told in the “Boramha,” fifteen hundred chiefs, each having thirty men under him, making the total number of men that Finn brought to help Leinster forty-five thousand, a very large army in those days. They joined the Leinster men, inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of the chief king, so that the tribute was not paid for many years after. Nine thousand of the “men of Ireland,” as the “Book of Leinster” almost invariably calls the national forces, were slain in the battle.

The militia of which Finn was the Commander-in-Chief, and of which his father and grandfather had also been commanders, are the heroes of hundreds of Ossianic tales and poems. It would appear that they numbered twenty-one thousand men on a peace footing, but could raise their numbers to double that amount in time of need. They became so extortionate and arrogant in the long run, that the chief king, Cairbre, and it would seem all the provincial rulers except the King of Leinster, determined to crush them. So a great battle was fought at Garristown in the County Dublin in the year 290 or 296, and the militia of Finn was totally destroyed. It would seem that neither Knock Aillinn nor the hill of Allen has been since then inhabited.

It may not be out of place to state here that students of Gaelic are often puzzled on seeing the name of Finn spelt Fionn. It seems certain that Finn is the proper orthography. The name is invariably so spelt in all cases in the “Book of Leinster,” one of the most correct of all the great Gaelic books; but the editor of “Silva Gadelica” makes it Fionn in all cases except in the genitive. It is difficult to understand why, when copying from a manuscript of such high authority as the “Book of Leinster,” he did not follow its orthography. In the northern half of Ireland the name is pronounced according to its correct orthography, but in the south of Ireland it is pronounced as if written Fyun.

Those who visit Knock Aillinn and its mighty dun should also visit the hill of Allen. If there is nothing to be seen on it, there is a great deal to be seen from it, for the view is very extensive. If any one wanted to know how vast the bog of Allen is, he should ascend the hill of Allen, from which he will see a very large part of it. If he is in any doubt as to the exact place in which Finn had his dwelling and dun, he will at least be in the locality that has given birth to the most colossal folk-lore that perhaps ever existed,—stories that in the far-back past, before the world was tormented by newspapers and bewildered by politicians, beguiled many a tedious hour and delighted many a sad heart.