Chapter 1
Fionn mac Uail was the most prudent chief of an army in the
world, but he was not always prudent on his own account. Discipline
sometimes irked him, and he would then take any opportunity that
presented for an adventure; for he was not only a soldier, he was a
poet also, that is, a man of science, and whatever was strange or
unusual had an irresistible at-traction for him. Such a soldier was
he that, single-handed, he could take the Fianna out of any hole
they got into, but such an inveterate poet was he that all the
Fianna together could scarcely retrieve him from the abysses into
which he tumbled. It took him to keep the Fianna safe, but it took
all the Fianna to keep their captain out of danger. They did not
complain of this, for they loved every hair of Fionn's he
