Finnbennach

Grass, and a great deal of it. The plain of Aí rolls out from the mounds of Cruachan in long green swells, good limestone land, and in the old stories the finest animal on it is a bull with a blood-red hide, a white head, white feet and a pair of white horns that give him his name. Finnbennach grazes among the king’s cattle with the unhurried weight of a creature that has never met anything larger than itself. Cows drift toward him. Herdsmen keep a respectful distance. On a still morning his bellow carries across the plain like a door slamming in an empty hall.

He is the reason for the most famous war in Irish literature, and he had no part in planning it. One night in the royal bed at Cruachan, Ailill and Medb fall to comparing fortunes. Buckets, rings and robes are carried out and counted. Sheep are matched against sheep, horses against horses, boars against boars, and at every turn husband and wife come out exactly even. Then the cattle are driven in, and there stands Finnbennach among Ailill’s herd, with nothing on Medb’s side to set against him. The sting is that he ought to have been hers. He was calved by one of Medb’s own cows, and when he was grown he looked at his situation, judged it beneath him to be a woman’s property, and walked across to the king’s cattle. Medb, who has just counted every cup she owns, finds that all of it together feels like nothing. There is one bull in Ireland to equal him, a dark one in Cooley in the north, and she means to have it.

The bull’s contempt has a history, and a short tale kept in the same manuscripts explains it. Long before, two pig-keepers served two kings of the Otherworld mounds: Friuch for Bodb of Munster, and Rucht for Ochall Ochne of Connacht. They were friends, each driving his pigs to the other’s province when the mast fell thick there, and both were masters of shape-changing. Other people could not leave the friendship alone and kept asking which of them had the greater power. A trial of spells on each other’s pigs left both herds lean and both men dismissed, and after that they went at it in earnest. They fought for two years as birds of prey, screaming over the two provinces. They fought as water beasts in the Shannon and the Suir, as stags, as armed champions, as phantoms. At the last they were two worms. One dropped into a spring in Cooley and was swallowed by a cow belonging to Dáire mac Fiachna. The other fell into a well in Connacht, and one of Medb’s cows drank it down with the water. Each cow dropped a bull calf. The dark one was Donn Cúailnge, who had been Friuch. The red and white one was Rucht.

So the animal on the plain of Aí is a very old enemy wearing a hide, and the tellings give him a man’s mind to go with it. He understands ownership well enough to reject it. He understands rank. The tradition also gives him a rehearsal for his ending: the Morrígan drives a Connacht cow east to be bulled by the Donn, and the calf of that mating, still young, fights Finnbennach on his own ground and only just loses. The beaten calf’s bellow is read at court as a boast that his father would have managed better. Medb takes note.

The war that follows belongs to other people. Armies cross Ireland, Cú Chulainn holds the fords alone, and Finnbennach goes on grazing. He comes back into the story only when it is nearly finished and the Brown Bull has been driven west to Cruachan with fifty heifers around him. The Donn lifts his head in strange country and roars three times. Finnbennach hears it. No bull had dared make a sound louder than a low on that plain while he lived, and he comes on at once, tossing his head, tearing up the sod.

The men of Ireland want a witness and pick Bricriu, a man known for being equally unpleasant to everyone and therefore fair. He takes his place in a gap at Tarbga, the bulls sight each other, and the first charge goes straight over him and drives him into the earth. That is the end of the judging. The two fight until dark with their horns locked and their eyes red, pawing the ground and flinging it back over their shoulders, and when night comes the armies can only listen to the stamping and the bellowing as the fight moves off through the dark and circles the whole of Ireland before morning. At one point the Donn stands with his hoof planted on the other’s horn and will not shift it for a day and a night, until a man strikes him along the back with a spear shaft and shames him into finishing. He breaks Finnbennach’s leg. The white horn goes into the Brown Bull’s side all the same.

At daybreak a single shape comes over the hill at Cruachan from the west, so hung about with torn meat that nobody can tell which bull it is. It is the Donn. He carries what is left of Finnbennach on his horns and scatters it across the country on the way home, and the old storytellers hang a map on the wreckage: the loin dropped at the great ford of the Shannon, which is Athlone, the liver at Trim, a shoulder blade at the stream called Finnlethe, a hind leg at Waterford. Then the Brown Bull reaches Cooley, and his own heart bursts.

Finnbennach’s strengths are easy to list. He is the largest bull in a province famous for cattle, he has several lifetimes of fighting behind him, and he has the wits of the enchanter he once was. He holds his own for a day and a night against the one creature in Ireland built to the same scale. His limits come from the same root. The quarrel is the oldest thing in him, older than the horns, and he cannot refuse it; the bull’s shape leaves him none of the spells that once thinned a rival’s pigs, only weight and bone. He is also a possession, whatever he thinks of the matter. He picked his owner and was still counted with the buckets. And for all the lives the two swineherds spent proving which was the stronger, the answer was that it made no difference. The winner outlived him by the length of one walk home.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Finnbennach in Irish mythology?

Finnbennach is the white-horned bull of Connacht in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. He belongs to the herd of King Ailill at Cruachan, and Queen Medb’s lack of a bull to match him is the cause of the cattle raid told in Táin Bó Cúailnge. He dies at the end of the story in a fight with Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley.

What does the name Finnbennach mean?

Finnbennach means “white-horned” in Old Irish. He is also called Finnbennach Aí, after the plain of Aí around Cruachan in Connacht where he grazed. The Book of Leinster telling describes him with a white head, white feet and white horns on a blood-red body.

Why did Finnbennach leave Medb’s herd?

Finnbennach was born to one of Queen Medb’s cows, but he thought it beneath him to be owned by a woman, so he went over to the herd of her husband Ailill. When the couple compared their wealth, Finnbennach was the one thing Ailill had that Medb could not match. Medb then set out to take Donn Cúailnge from Ulster so that she would own a bull his equal.

Was Finnbennach once a man?

Yes. In the tale of the two swineherds, Finnbennach was originally Rucht, pig-keeper to Ochall Ochne, king of the Connacht Otherworld mound. Rucht and his rival Friuch fought through a series of shapes, including birds, water beasts, stags, warriors and phantoms, and ended as two worms that were swallowed by two cows. The cows gave birth to Finnbennach and Donn Cúailnge.

How did Finnbennach die?

Finnbennach was killed by Donn Cúailnge after a fight that began at Tarbga near Cruachan and went on for a day and a night across Ireland. The Brown Bull came back at dawn with Finnbennach’s remains on his horns and dropped them around the country, which the story uses to explain place names such as Athlone and Trim. Donn Cúailnge died soon afterwards when he reached his home in Cooley.

Related Entries

Donn Cúailnge (The Brown Bull of Cooley), Medb, Ailill mac Máta, Cú Chulainn, Morrigan, Bodb Derg, Fer Díad, Conchobar mac Nessa, Étaín, Cretan Bull, Bull of Heaven, Apis