A person living in ancient (pre-Christian) Ireland

My name is Fionn and I am a farmer in Celtic Ireland. I live in a place called a rath. My home is built of wattle and daub walls and it has a thatch roof. Other people also live beside me and we have a big wooden fence around our group of houses. Some other people in our area who are called nobles live in crannogs, which are houses built on little islands in the middle of lakes.

Most of us are farmers and we keep a close guard on our great herds of cattle, which are very important to us. Some great battles have even taken place because of cattle. We keep them inside the great fence at night for safety. We grow lots of crops such as wheat, barley and oats and we make meal by grinding the wheat in a quern. We eat lots of porridge as well as cheese and meat. We make ale from the barley and sometimes a drink called mead from honey. We sometimes use slaves that we captured in battle to help us in our farming. We make all our own clothing from wool and linen, which we get from the flax that we grow. We collect many berries and mosses to use for different colours for the tunics and cloaks that everyone wears.

The area in which we live is called a tuath and we have a king who is the most important person. He owns a large number of cattle. There are also people called the Aos Dána who are very important. One of these is the druid who is in charge of all our religious feasts. We have four great religious feast days in the year. They are all very important to farmers. One of these is the feast of Lughnasa when we worship the god called Lug so that we can have a very good harvest. We cook large pieces of meat on these feast days. We cook in a place called a fulacht fia, which is a special hole in the ground lined with oak and filled with water. We then use lots of hot stones to cook the meat, which is wrapped in straw. When I die I believe that I shall go to a place called Tír na nÓg where I shall be forever young.