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THE HAWK OF ACHILL
The Hawk of Achill is a new radio play by Gabriel Rosenstock, inspired by a legendary, classic text written in Old Irish by an unknown cleric who flourished sometime around the 8th or 9th century. It is known in English as The Colloquy Between Fintan and The Hawk of Achill and can claim to be the oldest Irish play. The story goes that Fintan, a sage, accompanied Cessair, Noah’s grand-daughter, to Ireland. When the Flood came, Fintan survived in the form of a salmon. After a year in the waters, he turned into an eagle, then into a hawk before finally becoming human again. A magical hawk (named Seabhag, i.e. Seabhac Acla, or The Hawk of Achill) was born around the same time as the sage. Fintan lived on for five and a half thousand years after the Flood. He and the bird didn’t meet until it was time for them both to leave this earth in the era of the coming of the Christian faith. Fintan has become Christianised but is still halfpagan, between two worlds. The drama is one of life and death, the antiquity and longevity of Celtic civilisation, touching upon concepts such as memory, oblivion, metempsychosis or transmigration of souls, religious upheaval and the seismic changes to civilisation which mass conversions bring about. Old Irish and medieval Irish texts (such as Laoithe na Fiannaíochta) frequently highlight the conflict between the pagan world and the new religion, i.e. Christianity, a conflict often acted out verbally in colloquies or dramatic conversation between St Patrick and Oisín, the last of the warrior band, the