This is the story of the great Gaelic hero Fionn MacCool and why he sucks his thumb. This traditional Gaelic tale is retold as an action story to read aloud. It introduces children to storytelling and to Gaelic oral tradition, language, culture, and belief systems. The action story presents gestures corresponding to nine keywords in the story. As the story is read aloud, children perform the matching gesture whenever they hear each keyword. The book contains two versions of the action story, the first entirely in English, and the second in English with Scottish Gaelic keywords. Once children become familiar with the all-English version, the second version with Gaelic action words can be introduced. The actions are the same in both versions, and act as a bridge to introduce the Gaelic vocabulary and increase awareness of the language. This story is one of the tales of the boyhood deeds of Fionn MacCool (or Fionn MacCumhail as he is known in Scottish Gaelic). The tale is rooted in the oral traditions of pre-Christian Celtic culture, and the earliest known written version dates to the 12th century CE. Tales of Fionn and his band of Fiana were popular across the Gaelic world, from Ireland to the Isle of Man and Scotland. Scottish Gaels brought tales of Fionn MacCool to Nova Scotia beginning in the 18th or 19th century and transmitted them orally from one generation to the next as part of their Gaelic culture. Fionn tales were recorded in Nova Scotia in the 1970s and form an important part of Canadian Gaelic heritage and culture. The book is suitable for reading aloud at Gaelic and Celtic cultural events, in community group activities, and in schools as a part of lessons on Gaelic culture, English language arts, public speaking, theatre or drama studies, geography, history, and child studies programs. Adults, teens, and older children can read the story aloud to a group, or adapt the story in various ways as the centrepiece of a lesson on Gaelic culture and beliefs. A free online teaching guide with a pronunciation video is available.

Set more than a thousand years ago in the soft green hills of Ireland, in a shifting time when enchanted creatures and the Fairy Kind still flickered in and out of the lives of men, the ancient stories of Finn MacCool and the brotherhood of the Fianna shimmer with magic. Here Rosemary Sutcliff breathes new life into adventures of these Irish heroes and their battles with strange and supernatural beings.

The Irish hero leaves his sick bed to assist in a kidnapping case.

The Gaelic hero Fionn mac Cumhaill (often known in English as Finn MacCool) has had a long life. First cited in Old Irish chronicles from the early Christian era, he became the central hero of the Fenian Cycle which flourished in the high Middle Ages. Stories about Fionn and his warriors continue to be told by storytellers in Ireland and in Gaelic Scotland to this day. This book traces the development of Fionn's persona in Irish and Scottish texts and constructs a heroic biography of him. As aspects of the hero are borrowed into English and later world literature, his personality undergoes several changes. Seen as less than admirable, he may become either a buffoon or a blackguard. Somehow these contradictions exist side by side. Among the writers in English most interested in Fionn are James Macpherson, the "translator" of The Poems of Ossian ( 17601, William Carleton, the first great fiction writer of nineteenth-century Ireland, and Fiann O'Brien, the multifaceted author of At Swim-Two-Birds. Aspects of Fiann appear as far apart as Mendelssohn's "Hebrides (or Fingal 's Cave) Overture" and a contemporary rock opera. But the most complex use of Fionn's story in modern literature is James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

This book tells the story of Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway, a traditional Irish folk tale. In it, the giant Finn MacCool learns the importance of thinking before acting, and that very often brains can beat brute strength!

The stories of Finn MacCoull and his warriors were once told at every fireside in Scotland and Ireland. After centuries in obscurity, this collection brings the tales soaring to life again. Here you will find Diarmuid, whom no woman can help but fall in love with, and Ossian, a warrior-poet raised in the woods by a wild deer. There is Grainne, ancient ancestor of Iseult and Guinevere, and Finn himself, whose name was once a byword for wisdom, generosity and beauty. Enter a world of feasting and fighting, battles and poetry, riddles and omens; join Finn and the Fianna on their never-ending quest to drink deeper and deeper of the cup of life.

An ALA Notable Children’s Book Fin’s wife saves him from the most feared giant in Ireland. This fixed-layout ebook, which preserves the design and layout of the original print book, features read-along narration by the author.