FILIDH
See Learning.
FINGAR OF GWINNEAR
A Cornish saint. He was the son of an Irish king called Clyto. When Patrick visited Clyto’s court in Ireland, Fingar alone honored him. Fingar was apparently disinherited and emigrated to Brittany (via Cornwall) where he founded monasteries with his sister Piala and 770 companions and seven bishops. They were accompanied by St. Hia, who traveled by herself on a leaf. This odd convoy landed at Hayle, where it was attacked by the local King Theodoric, a pagan who was afraid the missionaries would convert his subjects. He had been warned by Clyto that his son had sailed and fell on the rear of one party and killed them. According to one account, Fingar’s party then surrendered and were massacred. Fingar himself was beheaded, but he replaced his head and went on to perform several miracles.
FINNIAN OF CLONARD
Finnian was the “teacher of the saints of Ireland.” He founded Clonard, where he encountered the magus Fraychan.
Finnian’s mother founded a monastic house for women, together with the mother of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise.
Finnian lived on a simple diet of bread, vegetables, and water, and a little fish on feast days. He slept on the ground with a stone pillow. He died in 551.
His tradition was hard, rather like St. David’s, but without the harshness or arrogance that was attributed to David. Finnian was said to be full of learning and compassion.
FOGOU
A low-ceilinged subterranean passage in Cornwall. Fogous are similar to souterrains in being associated with settlements, but they are made in a different way. The Breton souterrains were burrowed out of sand, while the Cornish fogous were built in open trenches with side walls of stone and roofed with capstones; they were then covered with backfill. There is the same discussion about their function as with souterrains; on balance it is most likely that their primary use was as grain stores.
The fine fogou at Carn Euny in Cornwall was made in the first century BC. The passage is 66 feet (20m) long with, unusually, a circular side chamber.
FOILL
See Religion: Headhunting.
FOOD AND FEASTING
Ceremony surrounded the Celtic domestic hearth. Even more ceremony surrounded the provision of large meals. Banquets and feasting were major characteristics of the Celtic way of life.
Posidonius described a feast:
The Celts sit on hay and have their meals served up on wooden tables raised slightly above the earth. Their food consists of small numbers of loaves together with a large amount of meat, either boiled or roasted on charcoal or on spits. This food is eaten cleanly, but they eat like lions, raising up whole limbs in both hands and biting off the meat…
When a large number dine together they sit around in a circle with the most influential man in the centre, like the leader of the chorus, whether he surpasses the others in warlike skill, or lineage, or wealth. Beside him sits the host and next on either side the others in order of distinction…
The Celts sometimes engage in single combat at dinner. For they gather in arms and engage in mock battles, and fight hand-to-hand, but sometimes wounds are inflicted, and the annoyance caused by this may even lead to killing unless the bystanders restrain them. In former times, when the hindquarters were served up the bravest hero took the thigh piece, and if another man claimed it they stood up and fought in single combat to the death.
Feasts such as these were designed to reinforce the pecking order among the warriors, and to strengthen the ties among members of the band.
The main drinks in an Iron Age Celtic feast were beer and mead, though the nobility adopted wine as soon as the trade routes to the Mediterranean allowed. At first it was a very expensive luxury. There was even a tale current in Rome that the Celts had crossed the Alps and invaded Italy just to get closer to the vineyards.
FORTIFICATIONS
On some of the hilltops there were large hillforts, surrounded by complex ramparts and palisades. Although called forts, they had several functions. They were stock enclosures and refuges in times of danger, they housed permanent settlements, and they were the focus of tribal gatherings and feastings (See Food and Feasting, Tribes). They probably also had a ceremonial and religious function, as well as acting as clear territorial markers—literally landmarks—that would help to create a sense of cohesion among people who were normally scattered across the landscape in separate homesteads.
The hillfort was usually laid out on the summit of a hill and surrounded by an earthwork that was intended to be clearly visible from below. The massive squared ramparts were faced front and back by rows of upright timbers tied by horizontal crossbeams. The earthen rampart was topped by a stout palisade, to defend the fighting-platform behind it, as at Hollingbury in Sussex. All the timber breastworks have disintegrated now, and the earth and rock they supported has slipped sideways, yet the ramparts can still be imposing. Maiden Castle in Dorset is the most impressive of the hillforts, with a complex mazelike entrance; it was the capital of the Durotriges tribe.
In Galicia, there were lots of defended homesteads built on hilltops. The presence of these castros distinguishes Galicia from the rest of the Iberian peninsula; they are the hallmark of its ancient Celtic past. The castro is a hilltop settlement, like a miniature hillfort, defended by multiple walls. Within, there is an ordered settlement, mostly with round stone houses built to a high density. Castro de Baroña is a fine example (See Dwellings).
FUNERAL ODES
One of the duties of a Celtic bard was to write a funeral ode on the death of his king. A fine example has survived, entitled Marwnad Uthyr Pendragon, which can be translated as The Funeral Ode to the Wonderful Pendragon. For a long time this was thought to be the funeral ode for Uther, Arthur’s father, but the word “uter” can be an adjective meaning “terrible” or “wonderful,” while pendragon is a Celtic title for High King or dux bellorum. This means that the ode might have been addressed to Arthur himself:
The longing and lamentation of the multitude
Are unceasing throughout the host.
They earnestly yearn for the joyful prize of blue enamel.
There your stone with your name became a riddle.
They also wish for their Prince.
All around appears the rule of order at the head of the feast.
They seek to dress the head of the feast with black.
They unendingly shed blood among the war-bands,
Longing