Knockmany Hill, rising above the Clogher Valley in County Tyrone, is the setting for one of the most beloved comic episodes in the Finn Cycle of Irish legend. When the feared warrior Cú Chulainn came searching for Fionn mac Cumhaill to settle the question of who was the greater fighter, Finn fled to Knockmany to seek help from Oonagh — his famously sharp-witted wife. Oonagh’s plan was characteristically ingenious: she dressed the vast Finn in a baby’s clothes, laid him in an enormous cradle, and greeted Cú Chulainn as the proud mother of an extraordinary infant.
The story
She prepared a batch of griddle bread for her guest, but the loaves she served Cú Chulainn were secretly baked around iron griddles; when he bit down, he recoiled in pain. She offered the ‘baby’ one of the real loaves, which the disguised Finn ate with apparent ease, implying to Cú Chulainn that if even the child had teeth that strong, the father must be unconquerable. Cú Chulainn asked to feel the baby’s teeth; Finn bit down on the warrior’s outstretched finger, severing it at the middle joint and by some accounts robbing Cú Chulainn of the source of his supernatural knowledge — for it was by sucking the same finger that he gained prophetic insight. Defeated without a blow being exchanged, Cú Chulainn fled from Knockmany.
The tale is classified by Story Archaeology scholars as a late addition to the Finn Cycle, drawing on older traditions of Ulster-Connacht rivalry. It survives in multiple late manuscript versions and was collected from oral tradition in the nineteenth century. Knockmany Hill itself preserves a Neolithic chambered cairn on its summit, whose presence may have contributed to the hill’s enduring reputation as a place where heroes and supernatural beings converge.