Findabair

Also Known As: Old Irish; also Finnabair; Modern Irish Fionnabhair; usually explained as “white phantom” or “fair spirit”, and cognate with Welsh Gwenhwyfar, the name behind Guinevere
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Irish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: Findabair is a mortal princess with no magic of her own, whose promised hand moves champions and armies and whose shame is strong enough to kill her.
Role in Mythos: She is the daughter of Ailill and Medb of Connacht, the lover of Fráech in Táin Bó Fraích, and the prize her parents offer to one warrior after another to make them fight Cú Chulainn in Táin Bó Cúailnge.
Relation to Humans: Men fight and die for the promise of her, most of them never knowing the same promise has been made to others. When she learns how many have fallen on her account, she dies of it.

A girl goes into a black river with a sword in her hand. Her father is on the bank and has forbidden anyone to help the man in the water, and he is angry enough to throw a five-pronged spear after his own daughter. It passes through her hair. She keeps swimming. The man in the pool is Fráech, the handsomest warrior in Ireland, a water monster has him by the side, and Findabair of Connacht has decided he is not going to die for want of a blade.

That is the Findabair of Táin Bó Fraích, the Cattle Raid of Fráech, and she is worth meeting there first, because the larger epic gives her far less room. She is the daughter of Ailill and Medb, king and queen of Connacht, raised in the royal fort at Cruachan. She falls in love with Fráech before she has laid eyes on him, on the strength of what travellers say about him. When he arrives with his horses, his hounds and his harpers, the reports turn out to be accurate. He asks her to run away with him. She refuses, on the grounds that a king’s daughter does not elope, tells him she will choose him openly, and gives him a gold ring to carry as her pledge.

Ailill finds the ring. While Fráech is swimming, the king goes through his purse, recognises his daughter’s ring and throws it into the river, where a salmon rises and swallows it. Fráech sees this, catches the fish and hides it on the bank. Then comes the request for a rowan branch from the far side of the dark pool, the monster, the sword and the spear. Fráech takes the creature’s head off and wades out. Findabair, watching him against the black water, says she has never seen anyone a third as beautiful. Later, when Ailill demands the ring back and swears she will die if she cannot produce it, a cooked salmon is carried in under honey and the ring is on the dish. The king gives way. The betrothal is agreed on one condition: Fráech must bring his warband on the coming raid for the cattle of Cúailnge.

The raid is the Táin Bó Cúailnge, and it does not go well for anyone in this story. Fráech is drowned by Cú Chulainn at a ford in the early days. After that Findabair appears in the epic mostly as a sentence in her mother’s mouth. Medb needs men to face Cú Chulainn in single combat, the men are understandably reluctant, and so the queen pours the wine and makes the same offer every time: fight him, and Findabair is yours. Nad Crantail is promised her. So is Láríne mac Nóis. So is Fer Báeth, and so, at the last, is Fer Diad, Cú Chulainn’s own foster-brother. Each goes to the ford. None comes back.

She was bait.

Once her parents send her to Cú Chulainn himself. No warrior can be found that day, so they offer him the girl in exchange for a truce, and to keep Ailill safe they dress the camp fool, Tamun, in the king’s clothes and send him out beside her. Cú Chulainn hears the man speak and knows at once what he is. A slingstone kills the fool where he stands. Then the hero walks up to Findabair, cuts off her two long tresses, and drives a pillar stone through her cloak and tunic, pinning the cloth to the ground. He plants a second stone through the body of the fool. The two stones were pointed out afterwards as Findabair’s Stone and the Fool’s Stone. There was no truce.

The end comes through a man she actually wants. Rochad mac Faithemain, an Ulster warrior, rides up with his company to join the fight, and Findabair tells her mother she has loved him for a long time. Medb sees a use for this. Spend the night with him, she says, and get his promise to stay out of the fighting until the final battle. Findabair does, and he agrees. But one of the kings of Munster, camped with Medb’s army, hears of it and announces that the girl was promised to him. Then the other Munster kings say the same, each of them, and the size of the fraud comes out all at once. They turn on the queen’s sons, the Maines. Ailill and Medb bring up their own troops. By the time the two sides are pulled apart, seven hundred men are dead by the older telling, eight hundred by the Book of Leinster.

When Findabair hears the number, she dies. The older version says she fell dead of shame. The Book of Leinster says her heart cracked in her breast like a nut. The place was called Findabair Sléibe, Findabair of the Mountain, ever after. Rochad went home without a scratch, and the armies named the episode after him: his bloodless fight.

The stories disagree on whether that was truly the end. The Book of Leinster, having killed her on the mountain, mentions in its closing lines that Findabair stayed with Cú Chulainn when the peace was made. Nobody has tidied that up.

Her own powers are few and human. She has nerve, shown once with a sword in cold water. She has a name that travels, the same name that in Wales became Gwenhwyfar and in the wider world Guinevere. Beyond that, her force in the epic belongs to other people: her beauty is something Medb spends, and it is ruinous in proportion to how freely it is promised. Her limits are plain. She cannot refuse her mother, she cannot protect the men sent out in her name, and her conscience, when it finally has the facts, is the thing that kills her.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Findabair in Irish mythology?

Findabair is the daughter of Queen Medb and King Ailill of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. She appears in Táin Bó Fraích as the lover of the hero Fráech, and in Táin Bó Cúailnge as the bride her parents promise to warrior after warrior to persuade them to fight Cú Chulainn.

How does Findabair die?

Findabair dies of shame during the Táin Bó Cúailnge. After she spends a night with the Ulster warrior Rochad mac Faithemain, the kings of Munster discover she had been promised to each of them, and the fight that follows kills seven hundred men in one version and eight hundred in another. When she learns this, she falls dead, and the Book of Leinster says her heart broke like a nut.

What is the story of Findabair and Fráech?

In Táin Bó Fraích, Findabair falls in love with Fráech from his reputation and gives him a gold ring. Her father Ailill throws the ring into a river, where a salmon swallows it, and then sends Fráech into a pool where a water monster attacks him. Findabair swims out with a sword so Fráech can kill the monster, and the ring is later recovered from the cooked salmon.

What did Cú Chulainn do to Findabair?

Cú Chulainn cut off Findabair’s two tresses and drove a pillar stone through her cloak and tunic. Her parents had sent her to him with the camp fool Tamun disguised as King Ailill, as a false offer of truce. Cú Chulainn recognised the trick, killed the fool, and left two standing stones known as Findabair’s Stone and the Fool’s Stone.

Is Findabair the same name as Guinevere?

Findabair is the Irish cognate of the Welsh name Gwenhwyfar, which became Guinevere in Arthurian legend. The name is usually explained as meaning white phantom or fair spirit. The two women are different characters in different traditions who share a name of common Celtic origin.