Fianna

A fian was made up of freeborn young men, often from the Gaelic nobility of Ireland, "who had left fosterage but had not yet inherited the property needed to settle down as full landowning members of the túath".

Scholars believe the fian was a rite of passage into manhood, and have linked fianna with similar young warrior bands in other early European cultures.

[6] Geoffrey Keating, in his 17th-century History of Ireland, says that during the winter the fianna were quartered and fed by the nobility, during which time they would keep order on their behalf, but during the summer/autumn, from Beltaine to Samhain, they were obliged to live by hunting for food and for pelts to sell.

[8] Hubert Thomas Knox (1908) likened the fianna to "bodies of Gallowglasses such as appeared in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but then under command of adventurers who were not inhabitants of the province, Free Companies who sold their services to any one who could raise their wages".

[9] Joseph Nagy writes that the fían seemingly "served a vital function in siphoning off undesirable elements [...] providing an outlet for rambunctious behaviour", and was a rite of passage that prepared young men for adult life.

[2] Katharine Simms writes that "While most members eventually inherited land, married and settled down, some passed their lives as professional champions, employed by the rest of the population to avenge their wrongs, collect debts, enforce order at feasts and so forth".

[6] Churchmen sometimes referred to them as díberga (which came to mean 'marauders') and maicc báis ('sons of death'),[2][10] and several hagiographies tell of saints converting them from their "non-Christian and destructive ways".

[11] Scholars have linked the fianna with similar young warrior bands in other early European cultures, and suggest they all derive from the *kóryos which is thought to have existed in Proto-Indo-European society.