SLIEVE GULLION - THE HAG'S RING AND FINN MAC COOL
Slieve Gullion, at 573 m (1,894 ft) the highest point in Co. Armagh, is the long-eroded remnant of a primodial volcano. Slieve Gullion is on the 30.435 degree line, close to Newry and just a few fields away from the Labbacalle Line to Belfast.
Slieve Gullion, at 573 m (1,894 ft) the highest point in Co. Armagh, is the long-eroded remnant of a primodial volcano. Slieve Gullion is on the 30.435 degree line, close to Newry and just a few fields away from the Labbacalle Line to Belfast.
Slieve Gullion
You must go to this site to see a super interactive view of Slieve Gullion and surrounding countryside.
Kevin Murphy tells the story ofthe hag and Finn Mac Cool
Finn was one time out on the green of Almhuin, and he saw what had the appearance of a grey fawn running across the plain. He called and whistled to his hounds then, but neither hound nor man heard him or came to him, but only [the hounds] Bran and Sceolan. He set them after the fawn, and near as they kept to her, he himself kept nearer to them, till at last they reached Slieve Cuilinn, in the province of Ulster. But they were no sooner at the hill than the fawn vanished from them, and they did not know where she was gone, and Finn went looking for her eastward, and the two hounds went towards the west.
It was not long till Finn came to a lake, and there was sitting on the brink of it a young girl, the most beautiful he had ever seen, having hair of the colour of gold, and a skin as white as lime, and eyes like the stars in time of frost; but she seemed to be some way sorrowful and downhearted. Finn asked her did she see his hounds pass that way. “I did not see them,” she said; “and it is little I am thinking of your hounds or your hunting, but the cause of my own trouble.” “What is it ails you, woman of the white hands?” said Finn; “and is there any help I can give you?” he said. “It is what I am fretting after,” she said, “a ring of red gold I lost off my finger in the lake. And I put you under bonds, Finn of the Fianna,” she said, “to bring it back to me out of the lake.”
With that Finn stripped off his clothes and went into the lake at the bidding of the woman, and he went three times round the whole lake and did not leave any part of it without searching, till he brought back the ring. He handed it up to her then out of the water, and no sooner had he done that then she gave a leap into the water and vanished.
And when Finn came up on the bank of the lake, he could not so much as reach to where his clothes were; for on the moment he, the head and leader of the Fianna of Ireland, was but a grey old man, weak and withered.
Bran and Sceolan came up to him then, but they did not know him, and they went on round the lake, searching after their master.
…
Caoilte and the rest of the chief men of the Fianna set out then looking for Finn, and they got word of him; and at last they came to Slieve Cuilinn, and there they saw a withered old man sitting beside the lake, and they thought him to be a fisherman. “Tell us, old man,” said Caolite, “did you see a fawn go by, and two hounds after her, and a tall fair-faced man along with them?”
…
Then Finn told them the whole story; and when the seven battalions of the Fianna heard him, and knew it was Finn that was in it, they gave three loud sorrowful cries. And to the lake they gave the name of Loch Doghra, the Lake of Sorrow.
…
[The Fianna dig into the passage tomb (Calliagh Berra’s House) and take the antidote from the fearsome hag.]
…And no sooner did Finn drink what was in the vessel than his own shape and his appearance came back to him. But only his hair, that used to be so fair and so beautiful, like the hair of a woman, never got its own colour again…7