Chapter CXLIV: Section IV: Cu, Cun, Gal

We have treated the name of Fionn alone, because that is, comparatively, plain sailing, while the second syllable of the name by which we call him is beset with interminable perplexities.

If he was only Fingal, it would be easy enough to translate him by ‘white courage;’ but unluckily we know that this was a Lowland contraction, used indeed in Barbour’s _Bruce_, in the fourteenth century, but not the original form. He was Finn Mac Cumhail; or, according to Hector Boece, in 1526, Finn, _filius Cœli_, Finn, the son of Heaven; thus making him—as every mythic worthy from Hercules to Arthur has been made—an astronomical parable.

In the first place, it may be observed that Cumhail is in pronunciation nothing but Coul, or Coyl. That murderous letter _h_ has destroyed the _m_, and itself into the bargain, and their only use is to testify to what the etymology of the word has been.

Here we unite with the other branch of the language in a most curious manner, for Col, Coel, or Coll, was a highly mythic personage in Kymric legend, connected with the original population of Britain.

He is one of the three great swineherds of Britain, in the _Triads_, the other two being Pwll and Tristram; also, he is one of those who conferred benefits upon Britain, and appears in company with Hu Gadarn.

The title of the swineherd is accounted for in the Welsh tale of a sow called Henwen, the old lady, who was placed under his charge, and came swimming straight for Britain, with Coll holding by her bristles, wherever she swam. There were predictions that Britain would suffer harm from her progeny, and Arthur therefore collected his forces to oppose her landing; but at Aber Tarrogi she came to the shore, and at Wheatfield in Gwent she laid three grains of wheat and three bees, whence corn and honey are the great pride of the district. At Dyved she produced a barleycorn and a pig, to the subsequent benefit of Dyved beer and bacon. She favoured Lleyn with rye, but on Snowdon she bestowed the wolf and the eagle, and on Mona a kitten.

Without going back, like Mr. Davies, to make the sow either into the ark, or a Phœnician ship, it is worth observing that there are traces in Ireland of some pig myth. There is a famous poem called _The Hunting of the Pig_, resulting in its being slain at Muckamore; and _muc_, a pig, and _torc_, a boar, are constantly found in old names of places, as if the swine cult had been of a higher kind than that at present received by the species.

Not wholly substantial is the next British Coel-ap-Cyllin, who with Bran the Blessed, and his own son Lleurig, makes up a triad of promoters of Christianity in Britain.

We are scarcely sure of more than his existence; not quite that he left his name to Colchester, and far less that he is the father of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.

Col or Gall was the name of a companion of St. Columbanus, and, like him, one of the great missionary saints of Ireland, who finished the imperfect work of conversion of the Kelts, scattered in the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland. His name of St. Gall is still attached to the great monastery near the Lake of Constance.

The prefix _cu_ is, in its primary meaning, a dog, and is thus declined: _cu_ (nom.), _con_ (gen.), _coin_ (dat.); thus showing its kindred with the Sanscrit _çvan_, Greek κυων (cyon), and Latin _canis_, the _chien_ of France, and _cane_ of Italy; _hund_ and _hound_ elsewhere. Only the land of the magnificent wolf-hound would have made his designation (elsewhere a term of scorn) into the title of the brave warrior, and thence into that of a chieftain. And so again it is the Kelts of Britain that transmuted the mungoose and snake of the Indian legend into the faithful dog and wild wolf of Bedgelert, the grave of the hound. Caleb, and an occasional Danish Hund, have alone elsewhere endured the name of the most faithful of animals; but in Gaelic it is a most favourite prefix. By the author of the _Annals of Ulster_, it is literally translated _Canis_, making us wonder whether, in the Scala family, Cane, so famous in Dante’s time, could have been a rendering of some ancient Celtic Cu.

Conn, when standing alone, as in the case of Conn of the Hundred Battles, means wisdom.

Several of the most distinguished Fenians have this prefix, and have handed it on to a great number of successors. Conghal would seem to have been the proper name of Finn’s father; and, in Macpherson’s poem, a Congal reigns over Ulster, as many a Congal assuredly did both before and after his time.

Connal, or Connel, a name sometimes said to mean friendship, is given to one of the Ossianic heroes, who makes a great figure in Macpherson’s epic, and is said to have named Tirconnel. The name continued in great favour, and the popular tales of the Highlands describe a certain ingenious Conall, whose adventures are a most curious mixture of those of Ulysses and Sindbad the Sailor, and are related in the same way as those of the Three Calenders and other worthies in the _Arabian Nights_. History says that Congal Claen, king of Ulster, slew Suibne, king of Ireland, but was then attacked and defeated by Domnall II., Suibne’s successor; that he then fled to Donald-brec, or the Freckled, king of the Scots, and brought him to Ireland to be defeated at Magrath, in 637. An Irish saint, called Congal, founded the Great Abbey of Ben-chor, in Ulster, answering to Ban-chor, in Wales, and thus formed the nursery of the great missions of the Irish Church in the sixth century.

Conan of small renown, as Macpherson calls him, was an unfortunate Fenian, who always served as the butt of the rest, and is called in other legends Conan Maol, the bald. He is in character a good deal like the Sir Kay of Arthur’s court. The M'Connans now have borrowed the English names of Kenyon and Canning. His name comes to light in the Cymric branch, in the person of the British Conan, or Kynan Meriadech, who is said to have led a migration of Britons to Armorica, and to be the patriarch of the Dukes of Brittany. Of him is told the pretty tale of the spotless ermine, that took refuge under his shield, and was spared by him, its skin thenceforth forming the cognizance of Brittany, with the motto, _Malò mori quàm fœdari_.

He is also said to have been the intended husband of St. Ursula; and, at any rate, suggested the name of many a Conan among the Breton princes, until the father of the unfortunate Constance, a name very possibly given as a supposed feminine to Conan, since Constantine has devoured all manner of varieties of _cu_ and _con_, and thus occasions the numerous occurrences of this imperial designation as labels to the grim portraits in the hall at Holyrood, who, after all, look more like Roman Constantines than Caledonian Congals, Conaires, or Conchobars.

Connchobhar is also translated as Cornelius and Charles. Here _conn_ means strength, and _cobhair_, aid, or if the spelling ought to be Conchobhar, it would be wolf-dog aid, and it is a word as variously rendered by those who wish to retain its native form as by those who try to change it into an ordinary name. Macpherson calls it Conachar, and thence we have the assumed name of the unfortunate young chieftain whom Sir Walter Scott placed in the deadly fight between Clan Chattan and Clan Kay, to exemplify the struggle between constitutional timidity and fear of shame. Conchabhar, who reigned in Scotland in 847, and Cunechat or Conquhare, who was Maormar of Angus in the tenth century, are both forms of Connchobhar, which in the North-East of Ireland is vulgarly called Crogher and Crohoore. The last is said to be the best representation of the spoken word; but Connor is the usual version, and much the most euphonious to English ears; but then it is said also to represent Connaire, one endowed with strength, _aire_ being a word added to form an adjective, and Conmor, also in use in the days of the Fenians. Indeed, Ireland had many royal Connors, one dignified as the Great; but Conchobar. Conmor, and Connaire, are all confused in them.

Constantine is used in the Maguire family as a rendering of Cú Connacht, the hound of Connaught; Munster’s hound is Cú Mumhan; Cashel’s, Cú Chaisil. The river Shannon has Cú Sionnan; the mountain has Cú-sleibhe; and, strangest of all, there is Cugan-mathair, hound without a mother. Cú-Mhidhe, hound of Meath, is simply pronounced Cooey; but in the O'Kane family has been turned into Quentin, and it may be concluded that a similar process in Scotland changed the hound of Meath into the Latin fifth, and accounts for the various Quentins.

Meath Cuchullin is the name of the hero with which Macpherson’s epic opens: “Cuchullin sat by Tara’s wall, by the tree of the rustling leaf.” His name is explained in the note, to mean, the voice of Ullin or Ulster; Gath Ullin, voice of Ulster; but Ullin does not mean Ulster at all. It was not the hero’s original name; but when young he killed a wolf-hound belonging to Culain, the smith of Ulster. He answered the owner’s complaints by saying, “I will be your hound,” and thus obtained the nickname of Cú Culain, Culain’s dog. Cuchullin was a great hero, and a Gaelic proverb, “as strong as Cuchullin,” is still in use. To Cuchullin belongs the Keltic version of the story of the single combat between the unknown father and son, only recognized too late by the tokens left with the mother. In Persia and Ireland the son is killed; in Greece, the father; in Germany alone the conclusion is happy!

As to the MacCuinns, they have dignified themselves as MacQueen in Scotland, while their cousins in Ireland from O'Cuinn have become Quin.