Diarmuid and Gráinne

At a Glance

• Central figures: Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, warrior of the fianna and bearer of a love-spot that no woman could resist; Gráinne, daughter of Cormac mac Airt, High King of Ireland; Fionn mac Cumhaill, captain of the fianna and Gráinne’s betrothed.
• Setting: Ireland, moving from the hall of Tara across the wild country of Connacht, Munster, and the west - the world of the Fenian Cycle.
• The turn: At her own betrothal feast, Gráinne places a geis on Diarmuid, compelling him to take her from Tara before morning.
• The outcome: Diarmuid and Gráinne flee together for years, pursued by Fionn and the fianna, until a fragile peace is made - and then broken when Fionn allows Diarmuid to die on the slopes of Ben Bulben.
• The legacy: The lovers’ flight left its mark across the Irish landscape in dolmens and stone beds called “the beds of Diarmuid and Gráinne,” scattered from Kerry to Donegal.

The feast at Tara was loud with it - drink, music, the hounds settled by the fire. Cormac mac Airt had arranged the match himself: his daughter Gráinne to Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader of the fianna, the most celebrated warrior in Ireland. Fionn was old. His hair had gone white. But he was Fionn, and no king would refuse him.

Gráinne sat beside her father and looked at the man she was meant to marry. Then she looked down the table at the rest of the fianna - Oisín, Oscar, Goll mac Morna, Caílte, and among them a young man with a dark mark on his forehead, just above the brow. She asked who he was.

The Love-Spot

The mark on Diarmuid’s forehead was called the ball seirce - the love-spot. A woman of the sídhe had placed it there, and any woman who saw it would fall into love with him. Diarmuid kept his hair low over his brow. He was careful. He had no wish to destroy himself.

Gráinne saw it.

She sent her handmaid down the table with a question: which of the warriors would be worthy of a woman who did not want the man chosen for her? The answer came back: Diarmuid. That was all she needed. She drugged the wine. The hall of Tara slowed and thickened. Fionn’s head dropped. Cormac’s head dropped. The hounds did not stir. Only the men Gráinne had left sober remained upright - Oisín, Oscar, Diarmuid, a few others.

She stood in the torchlight and spoke directly to Diarmuid.

I put a geis on you, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, to take me out of this hall before Fionn and my father wake.

Diarmuid looked at Oisín. Oisín would not meet his eye. He looked at Oscar. Oscar said what they both knew: a geis could not be refused. To break it was to die - not someday, not perhaps, but as certainly as a spear through the chest. The geis was the spear.

Diarmuid did not love Gráinne. He loved Fionn. Fionn had raised him, trained him, trusted him. But the geis was on him, and he left through the back of the hall with Gráinne before dawn.

The Flight

They ran. For sixteen years, by some tellings, they ran.

Fionn woke to an empty hall and a rage that did not cool. He took the fianna and followed. Diarmuid and Gráinne slept in a different place each night - in forests, in caves, on open hillsides where the stone was their bed. The dolmens that still stand across the west of Ireland are called leaba Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne, the bed of Diarmuid and Gráinne, and there are dozens of them. The country kept the memory of their passage.

Diarmuid’s foster-father was Aonghus Óg, the god of love, who lived at Brú na Bóinne. Aonghus came to them more than once and helped - carried Gráinne away under his cloak when Fionn’s men were closing in, counseled Diarmuid on which rivers to cross, which fords to avoid. But Aonghus could not be there always.

At first, Diarmuid placed his sword between them at night. He would not touch Gráinne. He owed Fionn that much. But the flight wore on, and the country was wet, and they had only each other for warmth and talk and the small kindnesses that hold a person together. In time the sword was put away. In time Diarmuid loved her.

Fionn knew. He always knew.

The Peace That Was Not Peace

Eventually a truce was arranged. Aonghus Óg brokered it, and Cormac mac Airt leaned on Fionn to accept. Diarmuid and Gráinne were given land - some versions say in Sligo, near Ben Bulben. They settled. They had children. For a stretch of years the thing seemed finished.

Fionn came to visit. He was gracious. He ate their bread. He admired their children. Gráinne, who had spent years sleeping on stone, allowed herself to believe the old man had forgiven them.

Diarmuid was less sure.

Ben Bulben

Fionn proposed a hunt on Ben Bulben. There was a great boar on the mountain, and Fionn wanted the fianna to bring it down. Diarmuid agreed.

What Diarmuid may not have remembered - or what he remembered and could not avoid, because fate in these stories is always already set - was this: when he was a boy, his father’s hall had seen a killing. Diarmuid’s half-brother had died, and the boy’s father, a steward of Aonghus Óg, had crushed the dead child’s body and from it rose a boar without ears or tail, a venomous thing. A druid pronounced that this boar would one day kill Diarmuid. A geis was laid on Diarmuid never to hunt boar.

Fionn knew the prophecy. He had always known.

The boar of Ben Bulben was massive, bristled, and fast. It gored Diarmuid through the thigh before the spears could reach it. Diarmuid brought it down even as he fell, but the wound was mortal.

He lay on the slope with the mountain above him and Fionn standing over him. There was one way to save him. Fionn had the gift: water drunk from his cupped hands could heal any wound. Diarmuid asked him to bring water from the stream.

Fionn walked to the stream. He cupped his hands. He started back. Halfway there, he thought of Gráinne in the torchlit hall, choosing another man over him. He let the water fall through his fingers.

He went back. He cupped the water again. He thought of the sword between them at night, the sword that was later put away. He let the water fall.

Oscar, Fionn’s own grandson, stood up and said that if Fionn let the water fall a third time, one of them would not leave this mountain alive.

Fionn went back. He brought the water. But Diarmuid was dead.

The Slope After

Aonghus Óg came to Ben Bulben and took Diarmuid’s body back to Brú na Bóinne, to the great passage tomb on the Boyne. He could not bring Diarmuid back to life, but he breathed a temporary soul into the body so that he could speak with his foster-son from time to time.

Gráinne’s grief was absolute. Some accounts say she turned her rage on Fionn and would not rest until her sons avenged Diarmuid. Others - and this is the version that stings - say that Fionn, patient and relentless, eventually talked Gráinne around, and she married him after all.

The dolmens stand in the rain. The boar’s tusk-mark is on the mountain. The water fell through Fionn’s fingers twice.