In the libraries to read the ancient writings; in the bars to recover from the books and listen to the conversation; along miles and miles of misty country road to find the old storytellers who still spun their tales in occasional cottages, and who, I had been assured, could tell me stories never written. Every night I made a few notes about what I had seen and heard. Reading them over, I see that they may serve to set the stage for the entrance of that slender blue-eyed boy who did or did not live eighteen hundred years ago but who is more alive now than most. Conversation in a bar near Trinity College Library, Dublin: “Why Finn? Why not Cormac, or Cuchulain, Hound of Ulster? Or Conn of a Thousand Battles? Or Boru? What about McHuegal of the Terrible Hand? Or the Fighting Sons of Usnach? Why Finn McCool?” “Because he loses sometimes.” “What—Finn a loser? Is that what you’re saying?” “I think I’m saying he’s the greatest hero of all. His world wasn’t quite so simple.
