Gaul Mac Morna, the leader of the Clann Morna or Connaught Fena, one of the mightiest of all the heroes. He served under Finn, but the two chiefs bore no love to each other, for Gaul had slain Finn's father, Cumal, in the battle of Knocka (see note 27). Conan Mail or Conan the Bald, the best-marked and best-sustained character in the Ossianic romances; large-bodied, a great boaster, a great coward, and a great glutton. He had a venomous tongue, and hardly ever spoke a good word of any one. He belonged to the Clann Morna, and was always reviling the Clann Baskin. He was the butt for the gibes and mockery of the Fena, but they dreaded his foul tongue. The story-tellers never lose an opportunity of having a fling at Conan, and of turning him into ridicule for his cowardice, his big talk, and his gluttony. NOTE 24.--_Cooking-Places._ The Fena, as related in the beginning of the story of the Gilla Dacker, were quartered on the principal householders during the winter half-year; and maintained themselves chiefly by the chase during the summer months. When they were on their hunting expeditions, we are told that they ate only one meal a day; and for this meal they cooked the flesh of the animals brought down in the chase, in the following manner. They first dug a deep pit in the earth near their camping-place, and, having lighted a great fire beside it, they heated a number of round stones. They next covered the bottom of the pit with the hot stones, on which they placed the meat, bound up with sedge and grass ropes, and on this again they put another layer of heated stones; and, having closely covered up the whole with branches, they let it stand till the meat was sufficiently cooked. The remains of these old earth-ovens are still to be seen, and are called by the peasantry _fulachta-na-bhfiann_, the cooking-places of the Fena. NOTE 25.--_Finn's Tooth of Knowledge._ It had been prophesied of old that a man named Finn would be the first to eat of the salmon of knowledge, which swam in the pool of Linn-Fec, in the Boyne (near the present village of Slane); and that he would thereby obtain the gifts of knowledge and of divination. A certain old poet named Finn, knowing this, hoped that he might be the lucky man; so he took up his abode on the shore of Linn-Fec; and he fished in the pool every day from morn till night, in the hope of catching the salmon of knowledge. At this time, Finn the son of Cumal was a boy, fleeing from place to place from his hereditary enemies, the Clann Morna, disguised, and bearing the assumed name of Demna; and, happening to come to Linn-Fec, the old poet took him as his servant.