As a short follow-up to this, there's a tale that Saint Patrick met Oisin, last living member of the Fianna, on his deathbed. If you're not familiar with the Fianna, it's the band of warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhail (Finn McCool).
There are variations to the story, but the one I first read was that Patrick tries to convert Oisin to Christianity, saying that if he doesn't, he'll be condemned to the flames of hell.
Oisin asks him if that means the rest of the Fianna are in hell. Patrick replies that naturally, being heathens they are in hell, and again persuades Oisin to convert to save him from this fate.
Oisin then basically tells Patrick to fuck off, saying that he'd rather be in hell with his brothers than in heaven with some fuck who would cast the souls of the Fianna into the pits.
That's fucking cool. Got to love a man who stands up for their convictions.
Reminds me of this one time when my new girlfriends father offered me $250,000 cash to stop seeing her daughter and I told him to fuck off, I should have took the money, the bastard died a week later
Interesting. In all those types of stories I hear, the proaginist gets to the end, finally meats Patrick (or Columbanus) and meekly converts to christianity. It's painfully obvious how the monks recording the story just jammed it on at the end, but who knows, maybe they had no choice. They were far more resistant to abandoning their cultural heritage than most places.
Oh yeah, if you look up Oisin and St. Patrick you can easily find versions where he converts instead. But given the tales surrounding Oisin, honestly turning his back on the Fianna doesn't fit his character at all.
Yeah, He literally left a life of bliss living with the gods because he missed his buds.
Fionn isn't pronounced Finn as your google search would say, it's more like vee-un. And Oisín is spelt Oisín.
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