Caoilte mac Rónáin

Also Known As: the modern Irish spelling; Caílte mac Rónáin in Old and Middle Irish; also Cailte and Keelta; “Caoilte son of Rónán”
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Irish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Caoilte mac Rónáin is the swiftest runner of the Fianna, a warrior, hunter and teller of tales who outlives his age by centuries.
Role in Mythos: He is the kinsman and companion of Finn mac Cumhal who survives the ruin of the Fianna and carries their stories to Saint Patrick in the Acallam na Senórach.
Relation to Humans: He is a mortal man who serves Finn in war and in the hunt, and in old age walks Ireland with Patrick naming every hill and ford for the dead who made it famous. Through him the stories of the Fianna are written down by the saint’s scribes.

The priests saw the dogs first. They were wolfhounds, far too big, coming up the slope ahead of a band of men who were bigger still. The clerics had been chanting. They stopped. The tallest of them, on his feet, came no higher than the waist or the shoulder of these strangers when the strangers sat down. One of the visitors was grey, long in the leg, and carried himself like a man who had once outrun everything in Ireland. He had. His name was Caoilte mac Rónáin, and everyone he had ever run beside was dead.

So opens the Acallam na Senórach, the Colloquy of the Ancients, a huge Irish book put together around the year 1200. Its idea is simple and strange. The Fianna, the roving war-bands of Finn mac Cumhal, were broken in a string of battles ending at Gabhra. A few old men lived on. Long years later, when even their sorrow has worn thin, the last of them part company. Oisín, Finn’s son, goes north to his mother’s people in a fairy mound. Caoilte takes his handful of followers the other way and walks straight into Saint Patrick.

Patrick shakes holy water over the giants, and a great host of demons that had been hanging above their heads scatters into the hills. Then, being a practical man, he asks whether anyone knows of a good well nearby. Caoilte does. He leads the saint to a clear spring thick with watercress and speaks a poem in its praise. The two get on from that moment. When Patrick asks what kind of lord Finn was, and what kept such men alive through so many years of fighting, the old runner gives him three things: truth in their hearts, strength in their arms, and doing what their tongues had promised.

The saint worries that listening to such tales is a holiday from prayer. His two guardian angels tell him otherwise. They instruct him to have the old warrior’s stories written on tablets, since they will be a delight to good people until the end of time. Caoilte is baptised and pays for it with a great mass of gold, the last of the wages Finn ever gave him.

What follows is a walking tour of a country that has forgotten itself. Patrick points at a mound, a ford, a standing stone, and asks. Caoilte answers. A hound died here. A woman was buried there. On that ridge three hundred men sat down to eat after a hunt, and he can still say who sat beside whom. Sometimes he weeps and has to stop. A scribe trots along behind, writing it all down.

No description of his face survives. What the stories remember is his legs. In one early tale Finn means to marry Gráinne, daughter of the high king Cormac, and the girl, who does not want him, asks for a bride-gift she thinks nobody can deliver: a pair of every wild animal in Ireland, driven in a single herd to the rampart of Tara. Caoilte offers to do it and does. He runs the whole island and brings the lot back, snapping and bleating, onto the king’s green. Asked which beast cost him the most trouble, he names the fox. A longer version, kept as a poem in the Acallam, makes the animals a ransom for Finn himself, held prisoner by Cormac, and lists the creatures hill by hill.

His family is given two ways. The name calls him son of Rónán. The Gráinne story says his mother was a daughter of Cumhall, which makes him Finn’s nephew, and traces his father’s side to a smith of Munster. Another tale calls him Finn’s foster-son. All of them agree that he was close kin and always nearby.

The oldest story about him may be the best. Mongán, a real king in Ulster who died in the seventh century, quarrels with a poet named Forgoll about where an ancient king called Fothad Airgthech met his death. The poet says Leinster. Mongán says he is wrong, and the poet, stung, threatens to satirise the king’s land into barrenness. In the end Mongán stakes his own wife on the answer, with three days to prove it. She weeps. He tells her to hush, because he can hear the feet of a man coming to help them, wading the rivers of the far south-west, then nearer, then nearer still.

On the third evening a stranger vaults all three ramparts of the fort on a spear-shaft with no head and lands in the middle of the hall. He says the poet is mistaken. Fothad died in the north, beside the river at Larne, and he should know, because he threw the spear. He tells them where the grave is, what silver rings and neck-torque lie in the stone chest, and what is cut on the pillar above it. Then he turns to Mongán and starts to say that they were there together, with Finn. Mongán cuts him off. The storyteller adds, flatly, that the stranger was Caoilte, and that Mongán was Finn come again, though he would not have it told.

In the Acallam he is still dangerous. Three she-wolves come out of the cave of Cruachan every year to kill sheep, and they cannot be caught. Caoilte has a young harper of the fairy folk, Cas Corach, play to them until they lie down in human shape to listen, side by side. Then he puts one spear through all three. The people of the mounds, whom he helps in their own wars, treat his old wounds in return.

He can outrun any creature that lives. He can speak verse for any occasion, kill at a distance, and carry the whole of a lost age in his head without dropping a name. But his gifts all belong to the body or the memory, and both wear out. He is stiff, he is sad, and he knows it. He was not a god.

No telling says how he died. The great book breaks off before its end, with the old man still talking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Caoilte mac Rónáin?

Caoilte mac Rónáin is a hero of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. He is a kinsman of Finn mac Cumhal, usually his nephew, and the fastest runner in the Fianna. He is best known as the old survivor who tells the stories of the Fianna to Saint Patrick.

What is Caoilte mac Rónáin famous for?

Caoilte mac Rónáin is famous for his speed and for his memory. In one tale he rounds up a pair of every wild animal in Ireland and drives them to Tara. In the Acallam na Senórach he travels Ireland with Saint Patrick and explains the story behind each place they pass.

How did Caoilte meet Saint Patrick?

In the Acallam na Senórach, Caoilte outlives the Fianna by many years and meets Patrick and his clerics while wandering with a few followers. Patrick sprinkles them with holy water, asks Caoilte to find him a well, and questions him about Finn. Patrick’s angels then tell him to have Caoilte’s stories written down.

Who killed Fothad Airgthech?

Caoilte mac Rónáin killed Fothad Airgthech with a spear cast beside the river at Larne. In an Old Irish tale he appears as a stranger, long after his own age, to settle a wager between King Mongán and the poet Forgoll about where Fothad died. The same tale says that Mongán was Finn mac Cumhal reborn.

How did Caoilte mac Rónáin die?

No surviving story tells how Caoilte mac Rónáin died. He survives the last battles of the Fianna and is still alive and telling stories when the Acallam na Senórach breaks off, since the end of that text is lost.