Finnabair

Overview

The prize

Finnabair is the daughter of Ailill and Medb. On the first stage of the march her tent is pitched next to her mother's, with Flidais beyond her. Kinsella's note says her name corresponds to Guinevere and warns against confusing her with Finnabair in Cuailnge, the rath where the armies later divide.

For most of the Táin she is used for one purpose. Cúchulainn kills every champion who is sent against him, and every one of them is offered her first. Nadcranntail will not come unless they give him Finnabair. Medb says he can have her if he goes against that man there, and he goes and is cut into four pieces. Ferbaeth is called into the tent and told to sit by her side, and told that she has picked him. She handles his wine herself. He says Cúchulainn is his foster-brother and sworn to him for ever, and he will still hack off his head. When the great warriors run out, Ailill gives the rule: wine, Finnabair at the right hand, and she is his if he brings the head of the Warped One. Each night a champion is called in, and each is killed.

At last they turn to Láréne mac Nois and put Finnabair at his right hand with the wine. Medb looks at the pair and says they would make a fine match. Lóch mac Mofemis is offered the girl with land, harness and a chariot. His brother Long takes the offer, and Long is the one who dies.

The tresses and the pillar-stone

Ailill offers her to Cúchulainn himself if he will leave the armies alone. Cúchulainn does not trust them, and Lugaid tells him it is the word of a king. The plan is to send the camp fool Tamun, in a king's crown, to betroth her from a distance. Cúchulainn knows the fool by his speech and kills him with a sling-stone. He cuts off her two long tresses and thrusts a pillar-stone under her cloak and tunic, and another up through the fool's middle. Their standing-stones are there still, Finnabair's Pillar-Stone and the Fool's Pillar-Stone. Ailill and Medb's people come looking for them because they stay away so long, and see their condition, and the story spreads through the whole encampment. There is no further truce.

Ferdia

When Medb has Ferdia brought into the tent, Finnabair is put beside him. She hands him the goblets and cups with three kisses for every cup. At the neck-opening of her shirt she offers him fragrant sweet apples, and tells him he is her darling and her chosen beloved of the whole world. Medb lists the price, and Finnabair for his wife is in it. Ferdia takes six princes as sureties and a brooch. Cúchulainn, in the verse he chants at the ford, calls her nothing but a snare who played false with the others and ruined them as she ruins Ferdia.

Rochad

Rochad mac Faithemain comes south to help Cúchulainn with a hundred warriors. Ailill's plan is to send out a hundred warriors with Finnabair in front and a horseman to say she wants a word with him alone. She does love Rochad, the handsomest hero in Ulster, and has already told her mother so. Her parents tell her to sleep with him that night and ask for a truce. Rochad goes to talk to her alone and is seized by the troop. He is let go on his promise not to fight the armies until all Ulster comes, and she is offered to him, and he takes her. She sleeps with him that night.

The seven kings of Munster hear of it. Each says she was promised to him, one with fifteen hostages as a guarantee. They go for Ailill's sons in Glenn Domain, and Medb, the Galeóin, Ailill and Fergus all rise against them, and seven hundred die. When Finnabair hears that seven hundred men have died because of her deceit, she falls dead of shame. That gives the name Finnabair Slébe, Finnabair in the Mountains.

At Slemain Midi, Fergus names Rochad as Ailill's own son-in-law, who took his daughter Finnabair. In the final paragraph of the book she stays with Cúchulainn. Kinsella's note calls this part of the storyteller's final flourish, which ignores her death and the fact that Emer was Cúchulainn's wife.