Y’know, I wasn’t going to start this. The plan wasn’t to record and put these on Substack; I was just going to share ‘em at in-person venues here and there. But three things have been nagging on me and got me to change my mind.

* It would be dishonest, in a way. These stories continue to take up a great deal of my time and attention. I can’t treat this here Substack as some kind of curated persona in which I only share what would scale well; I don’t have the energy for that. This is what I’m into, so this is what I’m sharing.

* The difficulty presented a problem. I pride myself on what I’ve been able to track down in terms of old and new recordings of these stories. I’m not half bad at finding pre-modern texts, either. But I was looking past the obvious here: recordings and older texts are hard to track down because there aren’t that many. That’s a bit of a tragedy. But it’s also one I can try to do something about.

* I keep thinking about a piece of advice from Gary Snyder, who in turn got his from old myths and fables: never be stingy.

So okay, let’s get into it then. Let’s dip our toes into the Fenian Cycle.

But let’s do it with some care and consideration, eh?

We can do better than CEOs, can’t we?

Unlike the fine fiction and historical writing here on Substack, it’s my opinion that these stories aren’t best suited as reading material. In the context of myth, I see books as temporal transports; a kind of train across the centuries. Sure, they’re quite handy for taking a story from the sixth century to our time and place, but it’d be ludicrous to expect them to live on the thing that brought them here.

So, oral storytelling it is, and while source material is paramount to what we’re going to be up to, this isn’t going to be recitation. We have some further work to do.

Oral storytelling is in a strange place today. There are few venues in which it’s still done, and I have to say, most aren’t too flattering. God bless the librarians who gather the kids around for Story Time at the library, but as important as that is, I think that’s a separate activity. Outside of folk festivals and story swaps, I can only think of a few places in which live, unscripted storytelling is likely to be experienced in our daily routines.

You’ll see it sometimes at weddings, but you’re also just as likely to watch the best man reading from note cards. Ever think about why he’s reading from note cards? Because he wants to do his buddy a solid, yet he’s terrified at screwing up. He’s terrified because like the rest of us, he hates what he’d refer to as “public speaking.” Like the rest of us, he doesn’t swap jokes or family stories around the dinner table anymore. He doesn’t shoot the breeze with the guys in the factory because there is no factory and just as likely today, there are no guys; phones and remote work have seen to that. Outside of that wedding, he may never speak in public again. It’s another tragedy that doesn’t have to happen. Everybody can participate in this.

On the other hand, there’s another group who practices this sort of thing all the time. They have no inhibitions whatsoever, despite being terrible at it. I’m talking of course about CEOs and, if you’ll allow me the double misnomer, “thought leaders.” They have the benefit of speaking to a captive audience in a literal sense. I once watched a CEO spend twenty minutes explain the plot of Frozen to a group of adults who, unlike the CEO, had kids of their own and could (and did) act out entire scenes of the movie during every morning carpool. He was using his patronizing summary as a metaphor for open and honest communication, and the need for employee feedback. Some of the folks who gave it were subsequently laid off. Management had to restructure, you know how it is.

Aside from weddings, retirement parties and CEO absurdist performance art, you also have icebreakers at workshop retreats, unplanned digressions behind the lectern in Business 101, open mic nights and folk festivals. That’s about it. That’s where you’re most likely to encounter oral storytelling today. An ancient technology to bring us together and orient ourselves to the land, our ancestry and each other has been downgraded to begrudged social custom, entertainment or corporate allegory.

Now is no time to wait for ideal conditions.

We need stories like this now. I’m crazy enough to think that some great things would happen for ourselves and for the stories if we started getting reacquainted again. Myths, fables and folklore shared through a community of oral telling allow you to sit with ideas at a depth that description and mere “talking it out” can’t do. The practice reinforces cultural identity while at the same time keeps it alive in the present. It anchors stories to a community instead of keeping them stuck within a text. And they get us to use our imagination in the service of navigating the world instead of providing mere entertainment.

This isn’t an ideal format because you aren’t here in the room with me, but we’re not going to let that stop us. Maybe we’ll pretend that after sunset, we have a fire going in the back yard. We’re circling around the big red glow like we used to at camp, but unlike before, we’re preparing to do something very old, occasionally profound and always terribly good fun.

Silver stags and hazel wands

The Fenian Cycle is one of four great mythological cycles of Ireland. The other three are the Invasion Tales, the Ulster Cycle and the Cycle of Kings. The Fenian Cycle is about Fionn mac Cumhaill and his captaincy of the Fianna, the fighting men of Ireland. The events trace as far back as the third century and unlike the Ulster Cycle, the stories of Fionn have always been more vernacular than that of Cú Chulainn. And unlike Greek mythology, Fenian stories have a much more tangled timeline to them. They’re tied to their place, but the stories were shared and preserved by different tellers and communities, never fully consolidating into anything resembling an official canon. Each town, region or area had their own versions.

Fionn wasn’t a king as we might understand it. He led his group of warrior-hunter volunteers who’d hunt, move camp to follow the seasons, and work as needed in service to Conn the Hundred Fighter, the high king of Ireland. Joining the Fianna was no easy business. You had to be able to leap over a branch as tall as your forehead and pass under one as low as your knee—without breaking your stride. You had to know the twelve books of poetry. They’d stick you waist-deep in a pit, and you had to be able to defend yourself against nine warriors with only a shield and a hazel staff. The deer and the wolf were both symbols they would self-apply.

And once you were in, buddy, you were in. Your previous status outside in the broader world was put on hold for awhile. None of the baggage or obligation you brought with you mattered; you had to show who you were through your skills and conduct.

Fionn’s rules were very clear. Among other requirements, the Fianna were expected at all times to defend women. Protect children. Shield poets and non-combatants. Share and be always generous, especially to those who have less. And never, ever refuse anyone hospitality. (Not even wily granddaughters of the Gentry.)

Make no mistake: they’re strange, these stories. There’s no Ragnarok to work against, no Mount Olympus calling the shots, no chasing of the Grail. They were some of Yeats’s all-time favorite tales, and I can understand why. He was inclined to put it this way: “Whatever they do, whether they listen to the harp or follow an enchanter over-sea, they do for the sake of joy, their joy in one another, or their joy in pride and movement; and even their battles are fought more because of their delight in a good fighter than because of any gain that is in victory. They live always as if they were playing a game; and so far as they have any deliberate purpose at all, it is that they may become great gentlemen and be worthy of the songs of poets.”

It’s part of the circular and wheeling nature of the Fenian Cycle that each story relates to all of the others, so the more we go through these, the clearer their picture is going to be. Let’s see how far we get, eh? We’ll start right in the middle of things.

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