Finn and Gráinne is a short Middle Irish anecdote of the Finn Cycle about Finn mac Cumaill and his wooing of and eventual divorce from Gráinne, daughter of King Cormac mac Airt. It is preserved in the Great Book of Lecan (RIA), ff. 181a, 2.

The story begins to relate how Finn úa Báiscni courted Gráinne, daughter of King Cormac mac Airt. Intending to shake off the warrior, whom she disliked, she came up with a seemingly impossible demand as her bridal gift: "a couple of every wild animal that was in Ireland to be brought in one drove, until they were on the rampart of Tara". However, Cáilte the "swift-footed" (coslúath), Finn's loyal companion, carried out the task for Finn and so Cormac had to give his daughter Gráinne in marriage to Finn. Gráinne detested her husband and the marriage proved to be an unhappy one. One time when the Feast of Tara was celebrated, with all the men of Ireland and the fiana present, Cormac observed the sad expression on his daughter's face. She whispered to him how the hatred for her husband had made her physically ill, thickening her blood and swelling her sinews. Overhearing Cormac's reaction to the sad news, Finn became aware of Gráinne's plight and announced their separation. The text ends with a number of difficult legal verses exchanged between Cormac and Finn on the subject of divorce.

A sequel to the story of Gráinne's divorce is Tochmarc Ailbe ("The Wooing of Ailbe"), in which Finn comes to an arrangement with Cormac to marry one of his other daughters and chooses Ailbe. In the 17th-century Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne, Gráinne elopes with another lover.

[edit] Sources

• Meyer, Kuno (ed. and tr.). "Finn and Grainne." Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 1 (1897): 458–61. Edition and translation available from CELT.