Gráinne

Irish · mortal · fenian cycle · mortal

She is the one who acts. The treatment is explicit that the geasa are hers, placed on him, at her instigation — which makes the most famous elopement in Irish literature a woman's decision and a man's obligation, and is worth a registry recording accurately rather than as a romance. The tale survives in many variants, all in Modern Irish, the earliest from the sixteenth century, with elements going back to the tenth; that dating is on the census rather than the record.

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