Fionn [pronounce Fewn to rhyme with "tune"] got his first
training among women. There is no wonder in that, for it is the
pup's mother teaches it to fight, and women know that fighting is
a necessary art although men pretend there are others that are
better. These were the women druids, Bovmall and Lia Luachra. It
will be wondered why his own mother did not train him in the
first natural savageries of existence, but she could not do it.
She could not keep him with her for dread of the clann-Morna. The
sons of Morna had been fighting and intriguing for a long time to
oust her husband, Uail, from the captaincy of the Fianna of
Ireland, and they had ousted him at last by killing him. It was
the only way they could get rid of such a man; but it was not an
easy way, for what Fionn's father did not know in arms could not
be taught to him even by Morna. Still, the hound that can wait
will catch a hare at last, and even Manana'nn sleeps. Fionn's
mother was beautiful, long-haired Muirne: so she is always
referred to. She was the daughter of Teigue, the son of Nuada
from Faery, and her mother was Ethlinn. That is, her brother was
Lugh of the Long Hand himself, and with a god, and such a god,
for brother we may marvel that she could have been in dread of
Morna or his sons, or of any one. But women have strange loves,
strange fears, and these are so bound up with one another that
the thing which is presented to us is not often the thing that is
to be seen.

However it may be, when Uall died Muirne got married again to the
King of Kerry. She gave the child to Bovmall and Lia Luachra to
rear, and we may be sure that she gave injunctions with him, and
many of them. The youngster was brought to the woods of Slieve