The Story of Abarta and the Pursuit of the Gilla Decair and his Horse.

Did you ever wonder where we got the name from? We often get asked this question as it is an unusual name. There is a river in Galway called the Abartagh, and a townland in County Waterford by the name of Abartach, that the Rev. Canon Power translates as the ‘peat or puddle-abounding place‘. This is very appropriate for Irish archaeologists, but it’s not where our Abarta came from. We were contacted by Frank McNally of the Irish Times back in 2013, who was curious about our name. He had come across a description by P.W. Joyce of a custom called ‘Abarta‘ – ‘The custom was called abarta, he said, and even the word was ancient. It was no longer used in Irish, but it formerly referred to “a blessing conferred by a workman on completion of any job”. As such, it went back “more than 1,000 years”. A blessing for the completion of hard work, and muddy puddles? All very appropriate for us indeed, but we found our Abarta in a strange old Irish story.

Abarta, [or Abartach], is an enigmatic figure that features in the Fenian Cycle of tales that surrounds  Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. He appears chiefly in the story The Pursuit of the Gilla Decair and his Horse.

The story describes how Abarta wished to impress Finn with his cunning so he may be considered for membership of the Fianna. He came up to Finn and the Fianna and posed as the ‘Gilla Decair’, meaning the ‘Lazy Servant’, [in the text it appears that the ‘lazy’ part somewhat counter-intuitively doesn’t mean that the servant is the lazy one, rather that his master is the one who can afford to be lazy as the Gilla Decair would do all the work]. Abarta appears to have found the Fianna a bit cliquey and sneery, and not quite what he had hoped from a famous band of noble warriors.

Abarta discovered he would be paid twice as well if he had a horse, so he promptly summoned his own steed. This was an enormous, ferocious beast, and once it was released from its halter it brutally killed all the Fianna’s horses. As you might imagine, this went down like a lead balloon amongst the Fianna. However, though they were outraged, they also appear to have been a little impressed by the size and ferocity of Abarta’s horse. One of the Fianna mounted on its back, though he was a powerful warrior he couldn’t get the horse to budge. Another member of the Fianna jumped up behind him to help out, again the horse was unimpressed and refused to move. This continued until no less than fourteen of the Fianna were mounted on the back of the horse. Seeing this, Abarta decided to teach Finn and the Fianna a lesson. He mounted up behind the fourteen warriors and the horse shot off at unbelievable speed, much to Finn’s surprise.

Finn and the remaining Fianna set off in pursuit, as Abarta led the Fianna on a whirlwind tour of Ireland, from Sliabh Luachra in the uplands of Munster, to the beautiful Corca Dhuibhne (Dingle Peninsula) and across the ocean to the Otherworld.

After a great deal of trouble, they eventually caught up with Abarta and forced him to end his tour and to return the now somewhat tired warriors back to the Fianna. In punishment, they made Abarta give Finn fourteen of his own beloved people, and in one version of the tale Abarta himself was forced to be dragged on the same tour by holding onto his own horse’s tail, as beautifully illustrated above by Catherine Jackman, Neil’s far more talented sister.

As a resourceful character who enjoyed whisking people on tours to magical places, Abarta seemed like a good match for what we wanted to do. In some places he appears also to have the epithet  ‘Doer of Deeds’, we certainly like to try to do a few of those too – and so we felt he would be as good a name as any to inspire our company!