Laethanta Saoire: Cónal Creedon on his life-affirming odyssey into Cork's northside  

In the first of the 2024 series of summer reads, Cónal Creedon joins a harrier club, goes bowling and falls under the spell of the city's pigeon-fanciers 

Cónal Creedon on Patrick’s Bridge in Cork. 

When I stand on St. Patrick’s Bridge and look northwards to the Red City of Gurranabraher, I can identify the owners of the various flocks of pigeons flying above the city. My twelve-year-old niece insists it’s a superpower. I’m not convinced. I see it as an extraordinary gift I acquired in the company of exceptional people during the magical summer of 2007.

I’ve always been fascinated by the superpowers of na Fianna. The ancient manuscript, Agallamh na Seanórach (c.1200), records how the sole survivors of na Fianna, Oisín and Caílte mac Rónáin lived to tell the tale. Caílte, with his superpower of eloquence, spun a most colourful tapestry of tightly woven lyrics into an Irish epic to rival the Iliad. He conjured up the adventures of Fionn MacCumhail and his dogs, Bran and Sceólang, and how Setanta became Cú Chulainn with only a hurley and sliotar to defend himself. Caílte entranced his audience with fantastical tales of Tír na nÓg, the salmon of knowledge, the Táin Bull. And so the story of na Fianna and their mystical affinity with their animals lives on to the present day.