The Giant Who Lost His Hair

The legend begins with a beautiful young woman sitting at the edge of a dark lake on the summit of Sliabh gCuillinn (Slieve Gullion). She was weeping, and she told the warrior Fionn Mac Cumhaill that she had dropped her golden ring into the water. Would he dive in and retrieve it for her? Fionn — the greatest hero of the Fianna, the giant who had built a causeway to Scotland — was not the sort to refuse.

He dived into the lake. The water was black and cold, as summit lakes in these mountains always are. But when Fionn surfaced, ring in hand, he was no longer himself. His golden hair had turned white. His broad shoulders had narrowed. His skin hung loose on his bones. He had entered the lake as a warrior in his prime and emerged as a frail old man. The young maiden was gone. In her place stood the Cailleach Beara — the hag goddess, ancient and terrible — and she was laughing.

The Cailleach Beara was no ordinary figure. In Irish mythology, she is the goddess of winter, the shaper of landscapes, the one who hammered mountains into existence and filled valleys with rivers. She is old beyond reckoning — older than the ring dyke that forms the Ring of Gullion, older than the passage tomb on the summit nearby. And she had a grudge against Fionn.

The Fianna, Fionn's warrior band, were horrified. They forced the Cailleach to brew a potion that would restore him. It worked — mostly. Fionn recovered his strength and his youth. But his hair never changed back. It stayed white for the rest of his life, a permanent mark of the trick at the summit lake. The storytellers say that Fionn means “fair” or “white” in Irish — and this is why.

The thing about this story is that the place is real and visitable. The summit lake — Calliagh Berra's Lake — is still there, dark and still at 573 metres above sea level. It sits in a shallow bowl near the top of Slieve Gullion, encircled by heather and bog cotton. On a clear day, the views stretch from the Mourne Mountains to the Cooley Peninsula. On a misty day, the water is black and the silence is absolute. You can see why the storytellers set their tale here.

And just metres from the lake stands the south cairn — a Neolithic passage tomb built around 3000 BC. Five thousand years old, older than the pyramids, perched on a mountaintop in South Armagh. You can crouch down and enter the chamber. The lintel stones are low. Inside it is dark and cool and extraordinarily old. Between the lake and the tomb, you are standing in a place where myth and archaeology press against each other, and neither gives way.