CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE

*The Fianna of Erin*

As the tales of the Ultonian Cycle cluster round the heroic figure of the

Hound of Cullan, so do those of the Ossianic Cycle round that of Finn mac

Cumhal,(174) whose son Oisīn(175) (or Ossian, as Macpherson called him in

the pretended translations from the Gaelic which first introduced him to

the English-speaking world) was a poet as well as a warrior, and is the

traditional author of most of them. The events of the Ultonian Cycle are

supposed to have taken place about the time of the birth of Christ. Those

of the Ossianic Cycle fell mostly in the reign of Cormac mac Art, who

lived in the third century A.D. During his reign the Fianna of Erin, who

are represented as a kind of military Order composed mainly of the members

of two clans, Clan Bascna and Clan Morna, and who were supposed to be

devoted to the service of the High King and to the repelling of foreign

invaders, reached the height of their renown under the captaincy of Finn.

The annalists of ancient Ireland treated the story of Finn and the Fianna,

in its main outlines, as sober history. This it can hardly be. Ireland had

no foreign invaders during the period when the Fianna are supposed to have

flourished, and the tales do not throw a ray of light on the real history

of the country; they are far more concerned with a Fairyland populated by

supernatural beings, beautiful or terrible, than with any tract of real

earth inhabited by real men and women. The modern critical reader of these

tales will soon feel that it would be idle to seek for any basis of fact

in this glittering mirage. But the mirage was created by poets and

storytellers of such rare gifts for this kind of literature that it took

at once an extraordinary hold on the imagination of the Irish and Scottish

Gael.

*The Ossianic Cycle*

The earliest tales of this cycle now extant are found in manuscripts of

the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and were composed probably a couple of

centuries earlier. But the cycle lasted in a condition of vital growth for

a thousand years, right down to Michael Comyn’s “Lay of Oisin in the Land

of Youth,” which was composed about 1750, and which ended the long history

of Gaelic literature.(176) It has been estimated(177) that if all the

tales and poems of the Ossianic Cycle which still remain could be printed

they would fill some twenty-five volumes the size of this. Moreover, a

very great proportion of this literature, even if there were no

manuscripts at all, could during the last and the preceding centuries have

been recovered from the lips of what has been absurdly called an

“illiterate” peasantry in the Highlands and in the Gaelic-speaking parts

or Ireland. It cannot but interest us to study the character of the

literature which was capable of exercising such a spell.

*Contrasted with the Ultonian Cycle*

Let us begin by saying that the reader will find himself in an altogether

different atmosphere from that in which the heroes of the Ultonian Cycle

live and move. Everything speaks of a later epoch, when life was gentler

and softer, when men lived more in settlements and towns, when the Danaan

Folk were more distinctly fairies and less deities, when in literature the

elements of wonder and romance predominated, and the iron string of

heroism and self-sacrifice was more rarely sounded. There is in the

Ossianic literature a conscious delight in wild nature, in scenery, in the

song of birds, the music of the chase through the woods, in mysterious and

romantic adventure, which speaks unmistakably of a time when the free,

open-air life “under the greenwood tree” is looked back on and idealised,

but no longer habitually lived, by those who celebrate it. There is also a

significant change of _locale_. The Conorian tales were the product of a

literary movement having its sources among the bleak hills or on the stern

rock-bound coasts of Ulster. In the Ossianic Cycle we find ourselves in

the Midlands or South of Ireland. Much of the action takes place amid the

soft witchery of the Killarney landscape, and the difference between the

two regions is reflected in the ethical temper of the tales.

In the Ultonian Cycle it will have been noticed that however extravagantly

the supernatural element may be employed, the final significance of almost

every tale, the end to which all the supernatural machinery is worked, is

something real and human, something that has to do with the virtues or

vices, the passions or the duties or men and women. In the Ossianic Cycle,

broadly speaking, this is not so. The nobler vein of literature seems to

have been exhausted, and we have now beauty for the sake of beauty,

romance for the sake of romance, horror or mystery for the sake of the

excitement they arouse. The Ossianic tales are, at their best,

“Lovely apparitions, sent To be a moment’s ornament.”

They lack that something, found in the noblest art as in the noblest

personalities, which has power “to warn, to comfort, and command.”

*The Coming of Finn*

King Cormac mac Art was certainly a historical character, which is more,

perhaps, than we can say of Conor mac Nessa. Whether there is any real

personage behind the glorious figure of his great captain, Finn, it is

more difficult to say. But for our purpose it is not necessary to go into

this question. He was a creation of the Celtic mind in one land and in one

stage of its development, and our part here is to show what kind of

character the Irish mind liked to idealise and make stories about.

Finn, like most of the Irish heroes, had a partly Danaan ancestry. His

mother, Murna of the White Neck, was grand-daughter of Nuada of the Silver

Hand, who had wedded that Ethlinn, daughter of Balor the Fomorian, who

bore the Sun-god Lugh to Kian. Cumhal son of Trenmōr was Finn’s father. He

was chief of the Clan Bascna, who were contending with the Clan Morna for

the leadership of the Fianna, and was overthrown and slain by these at the

battle of Knock.(178)

Among the Clan Morna was a man named Lia, the lord of Luachar in Connacht,

who was Treasurer of the Fianna, and who kept the Treasure Bag, a bag made

of crane’s skin and having in it magic weapons and jewels of great price

that had come down from the days of the Danaans. And he became Treasurer

to the Clan Morna and still kept the bag at Rath Luachar.

Murna, after the defeat and death of Cumhal, took refuge in the forests of

Slieve Bloom,(179) and there she bore a man-child whom she named Demna.

For fear that the Clan Morna would find him out and slay him, she gave him

to be nurtured in the wildwood by two aged women, and she herself became

wife to the King of Kerry. But Demna, when he grew up to be a lad, was

called “Finn,” or the Fair One, on account of the whiteness of his skin

and his golden hair, and by this name he was always known thereafter. His

first deed was to slay Lia, who had the Treasure Bag of the Fianna, which

he took from him. He then sought out his uncle Crimmal, who, with a few

other old men, survivors of the chiefs of Clan Bascna, had escaped the

sword at Castleknock, and were living in much penury and affliction in the

recesses of the forests of Connacht. These he furnished with a retinue and

guard from among a body of youths who followed his fortunes, and gave them

the Treasure Bag. He himself went to learn the accomplishments of poetry

and science from an ancient sage and Druid named Finegas, who dwelt on the

river Boyne. Here, in a pool of this river, under boughs of hazel from

which dropped the Nuts of Knowledge on the stream, lived Fintan the Salmon

of Knowledge, which whoso ate of him would enjoy all the wisdom of the

ages. Finegas had sought many a time to catch this salmon, but failed

until Finn had come to be his pupil. Then one day he caught it, and gave

it to Finn to cook, bidding him eat none of it himself, but to tell him

when it was ready. When the lad brought the salmon, Finegas saw that his

countenance was changed. “Hast thou eaten of the salmon?” he asked. “Nay,”

said Finn, “but when I turned it on the spit my thumb was burnt, and I put

it to my mouth.” “Take the Salmon of Knowledge and eat it,” then said

Finegas, “for in thee the prophecy is come true. And now go hence, for I

can teach thee no more.”

After that Finn became as wise as he was strong and bold, and it is said

that whenever he wished to divine what would befall, or what was happening

at a distance, he had but to put his thumb in his mouth and bite it, and

the knowledge he wished for would be his.

*Finn and the Goblin*

At this time Goll son of Morna was the captain of the Fianna of Erin, but

Finn, being come to man’s estate, wished to take the place of his father

Cumhal. So he went to Tara, and during the Great Assembly, when no man

might raise his hand against any other in the precincts of Tara, he sat

down among the king’s warriors and the Fianna. At last the king marked him

as a stranger among them, and bade him declare his name and lineage. “I am

Finn son of Cumhal,” said he, “and I am come to take service with thee, O

King, as my father did.” The king accepted him gladly, and Finn swore

loyal service to him. No long time after that came the period of the year

when Tara was troubled by a goblin or demon that came at nightfall and

blew fire-balls against the royal city, setting it in flames, and none

could do battle with him, for as he came he played on a harp a music so

sweet that each man who heard it was lapped in dreams, and forgot all else

on earth for the sake of listening to that music. When this was told to

Finn he went to the king and said: “Shall I, if I slay the goblin, have my

father’s place as captain of the Fianna?” “Yea, surely,” said the king,

and he bound himself to this by an oath.

Now there were among the men-at-arms an old follower of Finn’s father,

Cumhal, who possessed a magic spear with a head of bronze and rivets of

Arabian gold. The head was kept laced up in a leathern case; and it had

the property that when the naked blade was laid against the forehead of a

man it would fill him with a strength and a battle-fury that would make

him invincible in every combat. This spear the man Fiacha gave to Finn,

and taught him how to use it, and with it he awaited the coming of the

goblin on the ramparts of Tara. As night fell and mists began to gather in

the wide plain around the Hill he saw a shadowy form coming swiftly

towards him, and heard the notes of the magic harp. But laying the spear

to his brow he shook off the spell, and the phantom fled before him to the

Fairy Mound of Slieve Fuad, and there Finn overtook and slew him, and bore

back his head to Tara.

Then Cormac the King set Finn before the Fianna, and bade them all either

swear obedience to him as their captain or seek service elsewhere. And

first of all Goll mac Morna swore service, and then all the rest followed,

and Finn became Captain of the Fianna of Erin, and ruled them till he

died.

*Finn’s Chief Men: Conan mac Lia*

With the coming of Finn the Fianna of Erin came to their glory, and with

his life their glory passed away. For he ruled them as no other captain

ever did, both strongly and wisely, and never bore a grudge against any,

but freely forgave a man all offences save disloyalty to his lord. Thus it

is told that Conan, son of the lord of Luachar, him who had the Treasure

Bag and whom Finn slew at Rath Luachar, was for seven years an outlaw and

marauder, harrying the Fians and killing here a man and there a hound, and

firing dwellings, and raiding their cattle. At last they ran him to a

corner at Carn Lewy, in Munster, and when he saw that he could escape no

more he stole upon Finn as he sat down after a chase, and flung his arms

round him from behind, holding him fast and motionless. Finn knew who held

him thus, and said: “What wilt thou, Conan?” Conan said: “To make a

covenant of service and fealty with thee, for I may no longer evade thy

wrath.” So Finn laughed and said: “Be it so, Conan, and if thou prove

faithful and valiant I also will keep faith.” Conan served him for thirty

years, and no man of all the Fianna was keener and hardier in fight.

*Conan mac Morna*

There was also another Conan, namely, mac Morna, who was big and bald, and

unwieldy in manly exercises, but whose tongue was bitter and scurrilous;

no high or brave thing was done that Conan the Bald did not mock and

belittle. It is said that when he was stripped he showed down his back and

buttocks a black sheep’s fleece instead of a man’s skin, and this is the

way it came about. One day when Conan and certain others of the Fianna

were hunting in the forest they came to a stately dūn, white-walled, with

coloured thatching on the roof, and they entered it to seek hospitality.

But when they were within they found no man, but a great empty hall with

pillars of cedar-wood and silken hangings about it, like the hall of a

wealthy lord. In the midst there was a table set forth with a sumptuous

feast of boar’s flesh and venison, and a great vat of yew-wood full of red

wine, and cups of gold and silver. So they set themselves gaily to eat and

drink, for they were hungry from the chase, and talk and laughter were

loud around the board. But one of them ere long started to his feet with a

cry of fear and wonder, and they all looked round, and saw before their

eyes the tapestried walls changing to rough wooden beams, and the ceiling

to foul sooty thatch like that of a herdsman’s hut. So they knew they were

being entrapped by some enchantment of the Fairy Folk, and all sprang to

their feet and made for the doorway, that was no longer high and stately,

but was shrinking to the size of a fox earth—all but Conan the Bald, who

was gluttonously devouring the good things on the table, and heeded

nothing else. Then they shouted to him, and as the last of them went out

he strove to rise and follow, but found himself limed to the chair so that

he could not stir. So two of the Fianna, seeing his plight, rushed back

and seized his arms and tugged with all their might, and as they dragged

him away they left the most part of his raiment and his skin sticking to

the chair. Then, not knowing what else to do with him in his sore plight,

they clapped upon his back the nearest thing they could find, which was

the skin of a black sheep that they took from a peasant’s flock hard by,

and it grew there, and Conan wore it till his death.

Though Conan was a coward and rarely adventured himself in battle with the

Fianna, it is told that once a good man fell by his hand. This was on the

day of the great battle with the pirate horde on the Hill of Slaughter in

Kerry.(180) For Liagan, one of the invaders, stood out before the hosts

and challenged the bravest of the Fians to single combat, and the Fians in

mockery thrust Conan forth to the fight. When he appeared Liagan laughed,

for he had more strength than wit, and he said: “Silly is thy visit, thou

bald old man.” And as Conan still approached Liagan lifted his hand

fiercely, and Conan said: “Truly thou art in more peril from the man

behind than from the man in front.” Liagan looked round; and in that

instant Conan swept off his head, and then threw his sword and ran for

shelter to the ranks of the laughing Fians. But Finn was very wroth

because he had won the victory by a trick.

*Dermot O’Dyna*

And one of the chiefest of the friends of Finn was Dermot of the Love

Spot. He was so fair and noble to look on that no woman could refuse him

love, and it was said that he never knew weariness, but his step was as

light at the end of the longest day of battle or the chase as it was at

the beginning. Between him and Finn there was great love, until the day

when Finn, then an old man, was to wed Grania, daughter of Cormac the High

King; but Grania bound Dermot by the sacred ordinances of the Fian

chivalry to fly with her on her wedding night, which thing, sorely against

his will, he did, and thereby got his death. But Grania went back to Finn,

and when the Fianna saw her they laughed through all the camp in bitter

mockery, for they would not have given one of the dead man’s fingers for

twenty such as Grania.

*Keelta mac Ronan and Oisīn*

Another of the chief men that Finn had was Keelta mac Ronan, who was one

of his house-stewards, and a strong warrior as well as a golden-tongued

reciter of tales and poems. And there was Oisīn, the son of Finn, the

greatest poet of the Gael, of whom more shall be told hereafter.

*Oscar*

Oisīn had a son, Oscar, who was the fiercest fighter in battle among all

the Fians. He slew in his maiden battle three kings, and in his fury he

also slew by mischance his own friend and condisciple Linné. His wife was

the fair Aideen, who died of grief after Oscar’s death in the battle of

Gowra, and Oisīn buried her on Ben Edar (Howth), and raised over her the

great dolmen which is there to this day. Oscar appears in this literature

as a type of hard strength, with a heart “like twisted horn sheathed in

steel,” a character made as purely for war as a sword or spear.

*Geena mac Luga*

Another good man that Finn had was Geena, the son of Luga; his mother was

the warrior-daughter of Finn, and his father was a near kinsman of hers.

He was nurtured by a woman that bore the name of Fair Mane, who had

brought up many of the Fianna to manhood. When his time to take arms was

come he stood before Finn and made his covenant of fealty, and Finn gave

him the captaincy of a band. But mac Luga proved slothful and selfish, for

ever vaunting himself and his weapon-skill, and never training his men to

the chase of deer or boar, and he used to beat his hounds and his

serving-men. At last the Fians under him came with their whole company to

Finn at Loch Lena, in Killarney, and there they laid their complaint

against mac Luga, and said: “Choose now, O Finn, whether you will have us

or the son of Luga by himself.”

Then Finn sent to mac Luga and questioned him, but mac Luga could say

nothing to the point as to why the Fianna would none of him. Then Finn

taught him the things befitting a youth of noble birth and a captain of

men, and they were these:

*Maxims of the Fianna*

“Son of Luga, if armed service be thy design, in a great man’s household

be quiet, be surly in the narrow pass.

“Without a fault of his beat not thy hound; until thou ascertain her

guilt, bring not a charge against thy wife.

“In battle meddle not with a buffoon, for, O mac Luga, he is but a fool.

“Censure not any if he be of grave repute; stand not up to take part in a

brawl; have naught to do with a madman or a wicked one.

“Two-thirds of thy gentleness be shown to women and to those that creep on

the floor (little children) and to poets, and be not violent to the common

people.

“Utter not swaggering speech, nor say thou wilt not yield what is right;

it is a shameful thing to speak too stiffly unless that it be feasible to

carry out thy words.

“So long as thou shalt live, thy lord forsake not; neither for gold nor

for other reward in the world abandon one whom thou art pledged to

protect.

“To a chief do not abuse his people, for that is no work for a man of

gentle blood.

“Be no tale-bearer, nor utterer of falsehoods; be not talkative nor rashly

censorious. Stir not up strife against thee, however good a man thou be.

“Be no frequenter of the drinking-house, nor given to carping at the old;

meddle not with a man of mean estate.

“Dispense thy meat freely; have no niggard for thy familiar.

“Force not thyself upon a chief, nor give him cause to speak ill of thee.

“Stick to thy gear; hold fast to thy arms till the stern fight with its

weapon-glitter be ended.

“Be more apt to give than to deny, and follow after gentleness, O son of

Luga.”

And the son of Luga, it is written, heeded these counsels, and gave up his

bad ways, and he became one of the best of Finn’s men.

*Character of Finn*

Suchlike things also Finn taught to all his followers, and the best of

them became like himself in valour and gentleness and generosity. Each of

them loved the repute of his comrades more than his own, and each would

say that for all noble qualities there was no man in the breadth of the

world worthy to be thought of beside Finn.

It was said of him that “he gave away gold as if it were the leaves of the

woodland, and silver as if it were the foam of the sea”; and that whatever

he had bestowed upon any man, if he fell out with him afterwards, he was

never known to bring it against him.

The poet Oisīn once sang of him to St. Patrick:

“These are the things that were dear to Finn—

The din of battle, the banquet’s glee,

The bay of his hounds through the rough glen ringing,

And the blackbird singing in Letter Lee,

“The shingle grinding along the shore

When they dragged his war-boats down to sea,

The dawn wind whistling his spears among,

And the magic song of his minstrels three.”

*Tests of the Fianna*

In the time of Finn no one was ever permitted to be one of the Fianna of

Erin unless he could pass through many severe tests of his worthiness. He

must be versed in the Twelve Books of Poetry, and must himself be skilled

to make verse in the rime and metre of the masters of Gaelic poesy. Then

he was buried to his middle in the earth, and must, with a shield and a

hazel stick, there defend himself against nine warriors casting spears at

him, and if he were wounded he was not accepted. Then his hair was woven

into braids, and he was chased through the forest by the Fians. If he were

overtaken, or if a braid of his hair were disturbed, or if a dry stick

cracked under his foot, he was not accepted. He must be able to leap over

a lath level with his brow, and to run at full speed under one level with

his knee, and he must be able while running to draw out a thorn from his

foot and never slacken speed. He must take no dowry with a wife.

*Keelta and St. Patrick*

It was said that one of the Fians, namely, Keelta, lived on to a great

age, and saw St. Patrick, by whom he was baptized into the faith of the

Christ, and to whom he told many tales of Finn and his men, which

Patrick’s scribe wrote down. And once Patrick asked him how it was that

the Fianna became so mighty and so glorious that all Ireland sang of their

deeds, as Ireland has done ever since. Keelta answered: “Truth was in our

hearts and strength in our arms, and what we said, that we fulfilled.”

This was also told of Keelta after he had seen St. Patrick and received

the Faith. He chanced to be one day by Leyney, in Connacht, where the

Fairy Folk of the Mound of Duma were wont to be sorely harassed and

spoiled every year by pirates from oversea. They called Keelta to their

aid, and by his counsel and valour the invaders were overcome and driven

home; but Keelta was sorely wounded. Then Keelta asked that Owen, the seer

of the Fairy Folk, might foretell him how long he had to live, for he was

already a very aged man. Owen said: “It will be seventeen years, O Keelta

of fair fame, till thou fall by the pool of Tara, and grievous that will

be to all the king’s household.” “Even so did my chief and lord, my

guardian and loving protector, Finn, foretell to me,” said Keelta. “And

now what fee will ye give me for my rescue of you from the worst

affliction that ever befell you?” “A great reward,” said the Fairy Folk,

“even youth; for by our art we shall change you into a young man again

with all the strength and activity of your prime.” “Nay, God forbid,” said

Keelta, “that I should take upon me a shape of sorcery, or any other than

that which my Maker, the true and glorious God, hath bestowed upon me.”

And the Fairy Folk said: “It is the word of a true warrior and hero, and

the thing that thou sayest is good.” So they healed his wounds, and every

bodily evil that he had, and he wished them blessing and victory, and went

his way.

*The Birth of Oisīn*

One day, as Finn and his companions and dogs were returning from the chase

to their dūn on the Hill of Allen, a beautiful fawn started up on their

path, and the chase swept after her, she taking the way which led to their

home. Soon all the pursuers were left far behind save only Finn himself

and his two hounds Bran and Skolawn. Now these hounds were of strange

breed; for Tyren, sister to Murna, the mother of Finn, had been changed

into a hound by the enchantment of a woman of the Fairy Folk, who loved

Tyren’s husband Ullan; and the two hounds of Finn were the children of

Tyren, born to her in that shape. Of all hounds in Ireland they were the

best, and Finn loved them much, so that it was said he wept but twice in

his life, and once was for the death of Bran.

At last, as the chase went on down a valley-side, Finn saw the fawn stop

and lie down, while the two hounds began to play round her, and to lick

her face and limbs. So he gave commandment that none should hurt her, and

she followed them to the Dūn of Allen, playing with the hounds as she

went.

The same night Finn awoke and saw standing by his bed the fairest woman

his eyes had ever beheld.

“I am Saba, O Finn,” she said, “and I was the fawn ye chased to-day.

Because I would not give my love to the Druid of the Fairy Folk, who is

named the Dark, he put that shape upon me by his sorceries, and I have

borne it these three years. But a slave of his, pitying me, once revealed

to me that if I could win to thy great Dūn of Allen, O Finn, I should be

safe from all enchantments, and my natural shape would come to me again.

But I feared to be torn in pieces by thy dogs, or wounded by thy hunters,

till at last I let myself be overtaken by thee alone and by Bran and

Skolawn, who have the nature of man and would do me no hurt.” “Have no

fear, maiden,” said Finn; “we, the Fianna, are free, and our guest-friends

are free; there is none who shall put compulsion on you here.”

So Saba dwelt with Finn, and he made her his wife; and so deep was his

love for her that neither the battle nor the chase had any delight for

him, and for months he never left her side. She also loved him as deeply,

and their joy in each other was like that of the Immortals in the Land of

Youth. But at last word came to Finn that the warships of the Northmen

were in the Bay of Dublin, and he summoned his heroes to the fight; “For,”

said he to Saba, “the men of Erin give us tribute and hospitality to

defend them from the foreigner, and it were shame to take it from them and

not to give that to which we, on our side, are pledged.” And he called to

mind that great saying of Goll mac Morna when they were once sore bestead

by a mighty host. “A man,” said Goll, “lives after his life, but not after

his honour.”

Seven days was Finn absent, and he drove the Northmen from the shores of

Erin. But on the eighth day he returned, and when he entered his dūn he

saw trouble in the eyes of his men, and of their fair womenfolk, and Saba

was not on the rampart expecting his return. So he bade them tell him what

had chanced, and they said:

“Whilst thou, our father and lord, wert afar off smiting the foreigner,

and Saba looking ever down the pass for thy return, we saw one day as it

were the likeness of thee approaching, and Bran and Skolawn at thy heels.

And we seemed also to hear the notes of the Fian hunting-call blown on the

wind. Then Saba hastened to the great gate, and we could not stay her, so

eager was she to rush to the phantom. But when she came near she halted

and gave a loud and bitter cry, and the shape of thee smote her with a

hazel wand, and lo, there was no woman there any more, but a deer. Then

those hounds chased it, and ever as it strove to reach again the gate of

the dūn they turned back. We all now seized what arms we could and ran out

to drive away the enchanter, but when we reached the place there was

nothing to be seen, only still we heard the rushing of flying feet and the

baying of dogs, and one thought it came from here, and another from there,

till at last the uproar died away and all was still. What we could do, O

Finn, we did; Saba is gone.”

Finn then struck his hand on his breast, but spoke no word, and he went to

his own chamber. No man saw him for the rest of that day, nor for the day

after. Then he came forth, and ordered the matters of the Fianna as of

old, but for seven years thereafter he went searching for Saba through

every remote glen and dark forest and cavern of Ireland, and he would take

no hounds with him save Bran and Skolawn. But at last he renounced all

hope of finding her again, and went hunting as of old.

One day as he was following the chase on Ben Bulban, in Sligo, he heard

the musical bay of the dogs change of a sudden to a fierce growling and

yelping, as though they were in combat with some beast, and running

hastily up he and his men beheld, under a great tree, a naked boy with

long hair, and around him the hounds struggling to seize him, but Bran and

Skolawn fighting with them and keeping them off. And the lad was tall and

shapely, and as the heroes gathered round he gazed undauntedly on them,

never heeding the rout of dogs at his feet. The Fians beat off the dogs

and brought the lad home with them, and Finn was very silent and

continually searched the lad’s countenance with his eyes. In time the use

of speech came to him, and the story that he told was this:

He had known no father, and no mother save a gentle hind, with whom he

lived in a most green and pleasant valley shut in on every side by

towering cliffs that could not be scaled or by deep chasms in the earth.

In the summer he lived on fruits and suchlike, and in the winter store of

provisions was laid for him in a cave. And there came to them sometimes a

tall, dark-visaged man, who spoke to his mother, now tenderly, and now in

loud menace, but she always shrank away in fear, and the man departed in

anger. At last there came a day when the dark man spoke very long with his

mother in all tones of entreaty and of tenderness and of rage, but she

would still keep aloof and give no sign save of fear and abhorrence. Then

at length the dark man drew near and smote her with a hazel wand; and with

that he turned and went his way, but she this time followed him, still

looking back at her son and piteously complaining. And he, when he strove

to follow, found himself unable to move a limb; and crying out with rage

and desolation he fell to the earth, and his senses left him.

When he came to himself he was on the mountain-side on Ben Bulban, where

he remained some days, searching for that green and hidden valley, which

he never found again. And after a while the dogs found him; but of the

hind his mother and of the Dark Druid there is no man knows the end.

Finn called his name Oisīn (Little Fawn), and he became a warrior of fame,

but far more famous for the songs and tales that he made; so that of all

things to this day that are told of the Fianna of Erin men are wont to

say: “Thus sang the bard Oisīn, son of Finn.”

*Oisīn and Niam*

It happened that on a misty summer morning as Finn and Oisīn with many

companions were hunting on the shores of Loch Lena they saw coming towards

them a maiden, beautiful exceedingly, riding on a snow-white steed. She

wore the garb of a queen; a crown of gold was on her head, and a

dark-brown mantle of silk, set with stars of red gold, fell around her and

trailed on the ground. Silver shoes were on her horse’s hoofs, and a crest

of gold nodded on his head. When she came near she said to Finn: “From

very far away I have come, and now at last I have found thee, Finn son of

Cumhal.”

Then Finn said: “What is thy land and race, maiden, and what dost thou

seek from me?”

“My name,” she said, “is Niam of the Golden Hair. I am the daughter of the

King of the Land of Youth, and that which has brought me here is the love

of thy son Oisīn.” Then she turned to Oisīn, and she spoke to him in the

voice of one who has never asked anything but it was granted to her.

“Wilt thou go with me, Oisīn, to my father’s land?”

And Oisīn said: “That will I, and to the world’s end”; for the fairy spell

had so wrought upon his heart that he cared no more for any earthly thing

but to have the love of Niam of the Head of Gold.

Then the maiden spoke of the Land Oversea to which she had summoned her

lover, and as she spoke a dreamy stillness fell on all things, nor did a

horse shake his bit, nor a hound bay, nor the least breath of wind stir in

the forest trees till she had made an end. And what she said seemed

sweeter and more wonderful as she spoke it than anything they could

afterwards remember to have heard, but so far as they could remember it it

was this:

“Delightful is the land beyond all dreams,

Fairer than aught thine eyes have ever seen.

There all the year the fruit is on the tree,

And all the year the bloom is on the flower.

“There with wild honey drip the forest trees;

The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.

Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,

Death and decay come near him never more.

“The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire,

Nor music cease for ever through the hall;

The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth

Outshine all splendours ever dreamed by man.

“Thou shalt have horses of the fairy breed,

Thou shalt have hounds that can outrun the wind;

A hundred chiefs shall follow thee in war,

A hundred maidens sing thee to thy sleep.

“A crown of sovranty thy brow shall wear,

And by thy side a magic blade shall hang,

And thou shalt be lord of all the Land of Youth,

And lord of Niam of the Head of Gold.”

As the magic song ended the Fians beheld Oisīn mount the fairy steed and

hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she turned

her horse’s head and shook the ringing bridle, and down the forest glade

they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when clouds drive across

the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisīn son of Finn on earth again.

Yet what befell him afterwards is known. As his birth was strange, so was

his end, for he saw the wonders of the Land of Youth with mortal eyes and

lived to tell them with mortal lips.

*The Journey to Fairyland*

When the white horse with its riders reached the sea it ran lightly over

the waves, and soon the green woods and headlands of Erin faded out of

sight. And now the sun shone fiercely down, and the riders passed into a

golden haze in which Oisīn lost all knowledge of where he was or if sea or

dry land were beneath his horse’s hoofs. But strange sights sometimes

appeared to them in the mist, for towers and palace gateways loomed up and

disappeared, and once a hornless doe bounded by them chased by a white

hound with one red ear; and again they saw a young maid ride by on a brown

steed, bearing a golden apple in her hand, and close behind her followed a

young horseman on a white steed, a purple cloak floating at his back and a

gold-hilted sword in his hand. And Oisīn would have asked the princess who

and what these apparitions were, but Niam bade him ask nothing nor seem to

notice any phantom they might see until they were come to the Land of

Youth.

*Oisīn’s Return*

The story goes on to tell how Oisīn met with various adventures in the

Land of Youth, including the rescue of an imprisoned princess from a

Fomorian giant. But at last, after what seemed to him a sojourn of three

weeks in the Land of Youth, he was satiated with delights of every kind,

and longed to visit his native land again and to see his old comrades. He

promised to return when he had done so, and Niam gave him the white fairy

steed that had borne him across the sea to Fairyland, but charged him that

when he had reached the Land of Erin again he must never alight from its

back nor touch the soil of the earthly world with his foot, or the way of

return to the Land of Youth would be barred to him for ever. Oisīn then

set forth, and once more crossed the mystic ocean, finding himself at last

on the western shores of Ireland. Here he made at once for the Hill of

Allen, where the dūn of Finn was wont to be, but marvelled, as he

traversed the woods, that he met no sign of the Fian hunters and at the

small size of the folk whom he saw tilling the ground.

At length, coming from the forest path into the great clearing where the

Hill of Allen was wont to rise, broad and green, with its rampart

enclosing many white-walled dwellings, and the great hall towering high in

the midst, he saw but grassy mounds overgrown with rank weeds and whin

bushes, and among them pastured a peasant’s kine. Then a strange horror

fell upon him and he thought some enchantment from the land of Faëry held

his eyes and mocked him with false visions. He threw his arms abroad and

shouted the names of Finn and Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that

perchance the hounds might hear him, so he cried upon Bran and Skolawn and

strained his ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of

the world from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only

the sighing of the wind in the whins. Then he rode in terror from that

place, setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse

Ireland from side to side and end to end in search of some escape from his

enchantment.

*The Broken Spell*

But when he came near to the eastern sea, and was now in the place which

is called the Valley of the Thrushes,(181) he saw in a field upon the

hillside a crowd of men striving to roll aside a great boulder from their

tilled land, and an overseer directing them. Towards them he rode, meaning

to ask them concerning Finn and the Fianna. As he came near they all

stopped their work to gaze upon him, for to them he appeared like a

messenger of the Fairy Folk or an angel from heaven. Taller and mightier

he was than the men-folk they knew, with sword-blue eyes and brown, ruddy

cheeks; in his mouth, as it were, a shower of pearls, and bright hair

clustered beneath the rim of his helmet. And as Oisīn looked upon their

puny forms, marred by toil and care, and at the stone which they feebly

strove to heave from its bed, he was filled with pity, and thought to

himself, “Not such were even the churls of Erin when I left them for the

Land of Youth” and he stooped from his saddle to help them. He set his

hand to the boulder, and with a mighty heave he lifted it from where it

lay and set it rolling down the hill. And the men raised a shout of wonder

and applause; but their shouting changed in a moment into cries of terror

and dismay, and they fled, jostling and overthrowing each other to escape

from the place of fear, for a marvel horrible to see had taken place. For

Oisīn’s saddle-girth had burst as he heaved the stone and he fell headlong

to the ground. In an instant the white steed had vanished from their eyes

like a wreath of mist, and that which rose, feeble and staggering, from

the ground was no youthful warrior, but a man stricken with extreme old

age, white-bearded and withered, who stretched out groping hands and

moaned with feeble and bitter cries. And his crimson cloak and yellow

silken tunic were now but coarse homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle,

and the gold-hilted sword was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries

who wanders the roads from farmer’s house to house.

When the people saw that the doom that had been wrought was not for them

they returned, and found the old man prone on the ground with his face

hidden in his arms. So they lifted him up, and asked who he was and what

had befallen him. Oisīn gazed round on them with dim eyes, and at last he

said: “I was Oisīn the son of Finn, and I pray ye tell me where he dwells,

for his dūn on the Hill of Allen is now a desolation, and I have neither

seen him nor heard his hunting-horn from the western to the eastern sea.”

Then the men gazed strangely on each other and on Oisīn, and the overseer

asked: “Of what Finn dost thou speak, for there be many of that name in

Erin?” Oisīn said: “Surely of Finn mac Cumhal mac Trenmōr, captain of the

Fianna of Erin.” Then the overseer said: “Thou art daft, old man, and thou

hast made us daft to take thee for a youth as we did a while agone. But we

at least have now our wits again, and we know that Finn son of Cumhal and

all his generation have been dead these three hundred years. At the battle

of Gowra fell Oscar, son of Oisīn, and Finn at the battle of Brea, as the

historians tell us; and the lays of Oisīn, whose death no man knows the

manner of, are sung by our harpers at great men’s feasts. But now the

Talkenn,(182) Patrick, has come into Ireland, and has preached to us the

One God and Christ His Son, by whose might these old days and ways are

done away with; and Finn and his Fianna, with their feasting and hunting

and songs of war and of love, have no such reverence among us as the monks

and virgins of Holy Patrick, and the psalms and prayers that go up daily

to cleanse us from sin and to save us from the fire of judgment.” But

Oisīn replied, only half hearing and still less comprehending what was

said to him: “If thy God have slain Finn and Oscar, I would say that God

is a strong man.” Then they all cried out upon him, and some picked up

stones, but the overseer bade them let him be until the Talkenn had spoken

with him, and till he should order what was to be done.

*Oisīn and Patrick*

So they brought him to Patrick, who treated him gently and hospitably, and

to Patrick he told the story of all that had befallen him. But Patrick

bade his scribes write all carefully down, that the memory of the heroes

whom Oisīn had known, and of the joyous and free life they had led in the

woods and glens and wild places of Erin, should never be forgotten among

men.

This remarkable legend is known only in the modern Irish poem written by

Michael Comyn about 1750, a poem which may be called the swan-song of

Irish literature. Doubtless Comyn worked on earlier traditional material;

but though the ancient Ossianic poems tell us of the prolongation of

Oisīn’s life, so that he could meet St. Patrick and tell him stories of

the Fianna, the episodes of Niam’s courtship and the sojourn in the Land

of Youth are known to us at present only in the poem of Michael Comyn.

*The Enchanted Cave*

This tale, which I take from S.H. O’Grady’s edition in “Silva Gadelica,”

relates that Finn once made a great hunting in the district of Corann, in

Northern Connacht, which was ruled over by one Conaran, a lord of the

Danaan Folk. Angered at the intrusion of the Fianna in his

hunting-grounds, he sent his three sorcerer-daughters to take vengeance on

the mortals.

Finn, it is said, and Conan the Bald, with Finn’s two favourite hounds,

were watching the hunt from the top of the Hill of Keshcorran and

listening to the cries of the beaters and the notes of the horn and the

baying of the dogs, when, in moving about on the hill, they came upon the

mouth of a great cavern, before which sat three hags of evil and revolting

aspect. On three crooked sticks of holly they had twisted left-handwise

hanks of yarn, and were spinning with these when Finn and his followers

arrived. To view them more closely the warriors drew near, when they found

themselves suddenly entangled in strands of the yarn which the hags had

spun about the place like the web of a spider, and deadly faintness and

trembling came over them, so that they were easily bound fast by the hags

and carried into the dark recesses of the cave. Others of the party then

arrived, looking for Finn. All suffered the same experience—they lost all

their pith and valour at the touch of the bewitched yarn, and were bound

and carried into the cave, until the whole party were laid in bonds, with

the dogs baying and howling outside.

The witches now seized their sharp, wide-channelled, hard-tempered swords,

and were about to fall on the captives and slay them, but first they

looked round at the mouth of the cave to see if there was any straggler

whom they had not yet laid hold of. At this moment Goll mac Morna, “the

raging lion, the torch of onset, the great of soul,” came up, and a

desperate combat ensued, which ended by Goll cleaving two of the hags in

twain, and then subduing and binding the third, whose name was Irnan. She,

as he was about to slay her, begged for mercy—“Surely it were better for

thee to have the Fianna whole”—and he gave her her life if she would

release the prisoners.

Into the cave they went, and one by one the captives were unbound,

beginning with the poet Fergus Truelips and the “men of science,” and they

all sat down on the hill to recover themselves, while Fergus sang a chant

of praise in honour of the rescuer, Goll; and Irnan disappeared.

Ere long a monster was seen approaching them, a “gnarled hag” with

blazing, bloodshot eyes, a yawning mouth full of ragged fangs, nails like

a wild beast’s, and armed like a warrior. She laid Finn under _geise_ to

provide her with single combat from among his men until she should have

her fill of it. It was no other than the third sister, Irnan, whom Goll

had spared. Finn in vain begged Oisīn, Oscar, Keelta, and the other prime

warriors of the Fianna to meet her; they all pleaded inability after the

ill-treatment and contumely they had received. At last, as Finn himself

was about to do battle with her, Goll said: “O Finn, combat with a crone

beseems thee not,” and he drew sword for a second battle with this

horrible enemy. At last, after a desperate combat, he ran her through her

shield and through her heart, so that the blade stuck out at the far side,

and she fell dead. The Fianna then sacked the dūn of Conaran, and took

possession of all the treasure in it, while Finn bestowed on Goll mac

Morna his own daughter, Keva of the White Skin, and, leaving the dūn a

heap of glowing embers, they returned to the Hill of Allen.

*The Chase of Slievegallion*

This fine story, which is given in poetical form, as if narrated by Oisīn,

in the Ossianic Society’s “Transactions,” tells how Cullan the Smith (here

represented as a Danaan divinity), who dwelt on or near the mountains of

Slievegallion, in Co. Armagh, had two daughters, Ainé and Milucra, each of

whom loved Finn mac Cumhal. They were jealous of each other; and on Ainé

once happening to say that she would never have a man with grey hair,

Milucra saw a means of securing Finn’s love entirely for herself. So she

assembled her friends among the Danaans round the little grey lake that

lies on the top of Slievegallion, and they charged its waters with

enchantments.

This introduction, it may be observed, bears strong signs of being a later

addition to the original tale, made in a less understanding age or by a

less thoughtful class into whose hands the legend had descended. The real

meaning of the transformation which it narrates is probably much deeper.

The story goes on to say that not long after this the hounds of Finn, Bran

and Skolawn, started a fawn near the Hill of Allen, and ran it northwards

till the chase ended on the top of Slievegallion, a mountain which, like

Slievenamon(183) in the south, was in ancient Ireland a veritable focus of

Danaan magic and legendary lore. Finn followed the hounds alone till the

fawn disappeared on the mountain-side. In searching for it Finn at last

came on the little lake which lies on the top of the mountain, and saw by

its brink a lady of wonderful beauty, who sat there lamenting and weeping.

Finn asked her the cause of her grief. She explained that a gold ring

which she dearly prized had fallen from her finger into the lake, and she

charged Finn by the bonds of _geise_ that he should plunge in and find it

for her.

Finn did so, and after diving into every recess of the lake he discovered

the ring, and before leaving the water gave it to the lady. She

immediately plunged into the lake and disappeared. Finn then surmised that

some enchantment was being wrought on him, and ere long he knew what it

was, for on stepping forth on dry land he fell down from sheer weakness,

and arose again, a tottering and feeble old man, snowy-haired and

withered, so that even his faithful hounds did not know him, but ran round

the lake searching for their lost master.

Meantime Finn was missed from his palace on the Hill of Allen, and a party

soon set out on the track on which he had been seen to chase the deer.

They came to the lake-side on Slievegallion, and found there a wretched

and palsied old man, whom they questioned, but who could do nothing but

beat his breast and moan. At last, beckoning Keelta to come near, the aged

man whispered faintly some words into his ear, and lo, it was Finn

himself! When the Fianna had ceased from their cries of wonder and

lamentation, Finn whispered to Keelta the tale of his enchantment, and

told them that the author of it must be the daughter of Cullan the Smith,

who dwelt in the Fairy Mound of Slievegallion. The Fianna, bearing Finn on

a litter, immediately went to the Mound and began to dig fiercely. For

three days and nights they dug at the Fairy Mound, and at last penetrated

to its inmost recesses, when a maiden suddenly stood before them holding a

drinking-horn of red gold. It was given to Finn. He drank from it, and at

once his beauty and form were restored to him, but his hair still remained

white as silver. This too would have been restored by another draught, but

Finn let it stay as it was, and silver-white his hair remained to the day

of his death.

The tale has been made the subject of a very striking allegorical drama,

“The Masque of Finn,” by Mr. Standish O’Grady, who, rightly no doubt,

interprets the story as symbolising the acquisition of wisdom and

understanding through suffering. A leader of men must descend into the

lake of tears and know feebleness and despair before his spirit can sway

them to great ends.

There is an antique sepulchral monument on the mountain-top which the

peasantry of the district still regard—or did in the days before Board

schools—as the abode of the “Witch of the Lake”; and a mysterious beaten

path, which was never worn by the passage of human feet, and which leads

from the rock sepulchre to the lake-side, is ascribed to the going to and

fro of this supernatural being.

*The **“**Colloquy of the Ancients**”*

One of the most interesting and attractive of the relics of Ossianic

literature is the “Colloquy of the Ancients,” _Agallamh na Senorach_, a

long narrative piece dating from about the thirteenth century. It has been

published with a translation in O’Grady’s “Silva Gadelica.” It is not so

much a story as a collection of stories skilfully set in a mythical

framework. The “Colloquy” opens by presenting us with the figures of

Keelta mac Ronan and Oisīn son of Finn, each accompanied by eight

warriors, all that are left of the great fellowship of the Fianna after

the battle of Gowra and the subsequent dispersion of the Order. A vivid

picture is given us of the grey old warriors, who had outlived their

epoch, meeting for the last time at the dūn of a once famous chieftainess

named Camha, and of their melancholy talk over bygone days, till at last a

long silence settled on them.

*Keelta Meets St. Patrick*

Finally Keelta and Oisīn resolve to part, Oisīn, of whom we hear little

more, going to the Fairy Mound, where his Danaan mother (here called Blai)

has her dwelling, while Keelta takes his way over the plains of Meath till

he comes to Drumderg, where he lights on St. Patrick and his monks. How

this is chronologically possible the writer does not trouble himself to

explain, and he shows no knowledge of the legend of Oisīn in the Land of

Youth. “The clerics,” says the story, “saw Keelta and his band draw near

them, and fear fell on them before the tall men with the huge wolf-hounds

that accompanied them, for they were not people of one epoch or of one

time with the clergy.” Patrick then sprinkles the heroes with holy water,

whereat legions of demons who had been hovering over them fly away into

the hills and glens, and “the enormous men sat down.” Patrick, after

inquiring the name of his guest, then says he has a boon to crave of

him—he wishes to find a well of pure water with which to baptize the folk

of Bregia and of Meath.

*The Well of Tradaban*

Keelta, who knows every brook and hill and rath and wood in the country,

thereon takes Patrick by the hand and leads him away “till,” as the writer

says, “right in front of them they saw a loch-well, sparkling and

translucid. The size and thickness of the cress and of the _fothlacht_, or

brooklime, that grew on it was a wonderment to them.” Then Keelta began to

tell of the fame and qualities of the place, and uttered an exquisite

little lyric in praise of it:

“O Well of the Strand of the Two Women, beautiful are thy cresses,

luxuriant, branching; since thy produce is neglected on thee thy brooklime

is not suffered to grow. Forth from thy banks thy trout are to be seen,

thy wild swine in the wilderness; the deer of thy fair hunting crag-land,

thy dappled and red-chested fawns! Thy mast all hanging on the branches of

the trees; thy fish in estuaries of the rivers; lovely the colours of thy

purling streams, O thou that art azure-hued, and again green with

reflections of surrounding copse-wood.”(184)

*St. Patrick and Irish Legend*

After the warriors have been entertained Patrick asks: “Was he, Finn mac

Cumhal, a good lord with whom ye were?” Keelta praises the generosity of

Finn, and goes on to describe in detail the glories of his household,

whereon Patrick says:

“Were it not for us an impairing of the devout life, an occasion of

neglecting prayer, and of deserting converse with God, we, as we talked

with thee, would feel the time pass quickly, warrior!”

Keelta goes on with another tale of the Fianna, and Patrick, now fairly

caught in the toils of the enchanter, cries: “Success and benediction

attend thee, Keelta! This is to me a lightening of spirit and mind. And

now tell us another tale.”

So ends the exordium of the “Colloquy.” As usual in the openings of Irish

tales, nothing could be better contrived; the touch is so light, there is

so happy a mingling of pathos, poetry, and humour, and so much dignity in

the sketching of the human characters introduced. The rest of the piece

consists in the exhibition of a vast amount of topographical and legendary

lore by Keelta, attended by the invariable “Success and benediction attend

thee!” of Patrick.

They move together, the warrior and the saint, on Patrick’s journey to

Tara, and whenever Patrick or some one else in the company sees a hill or

a fort or a well he asks Keelta what it is, and Keelta tells its name and

a Fian legend to account for it, and so the story wanders on through a

maze of legendary lore until they are met by a company from Tara, with the

king at its head, who then takes up the _rôle_ of questioner. The

“Colloquy,” as we have it now, breaks off abruptly as the story how the

_Lia Fail_ was carried off from Ireland is about to be narrated.(185) The

interest of the “Colloquy” lies in the tales of Keelta and the lyrics

introduced in the course of them. Of the tales there are about a hundred,

telling of Fian raids and battles, and love-makings and feastings, but the

greater number of them have to do with the intercourse between the Fairy

Folk and the Fianna. With these folk the Fianna have constant relations,

both of love and of war. Some of the tales are of great elaboration,

wrought out in the highest style of which the writer was capable. One of

the best is that of the fairy _Brugh_, or mansion of Slievenamon, which

Patrick and Keelta chance to pass by, and of which Keelta tells the

following history:

*The Brugh of Slievenamon*

One day as Finn and Keelta and five other champions of the Fianna were

hunting at Torach, in the north, they roused a beautiful fawn which fled

before them, they holding it in chase all day, till they reached the

mountain of Slievenamon towards evening, when the fawn suddenly seemed to

vanish underground. A chase like this, in the Ossianic literature, is the

common prelude to an adventure in Fairyland. Night now fell rapidly, and

with it came heavy snow and storm, and, searching for shelter, the Fianna

discovered in the wood a great illuminated _Brugh_, or mansion, where they

sought admittance. On entering they found themselves in a spacious hall,

full of light, with eight-and-twenty warriors and as many fair and

yellow-haired maidens, one of the latter seated on a chair of crystal, and

making wonderful music on a harp. After the Fian warriors have been

entertained with the finest of viands and liquors, it is explained to them

that their hosts are Donn, son of Midir the Proud, and his brother, and

that they are at war with the rest of the Danaan Folk, and have to do

battle with them thrice yearly on the green before the _Brugh_. At first

each of the twenty-eight had a thousand warriors under him. Now all are

slain except those present, and the survivors have sent out one of their

maidens in the shape of a fawn to entice the Fianna to their fairy palace

and to gain their aid in the battle that must be delivered to-morrow. We

have, in fact, a variant of the well-known theme of the Rescue of

Fairyland. Finn and his companions are always ready for a fray, and a

desperate battle ensues which lasts from evening till morning, for the

fairy host attack at night. The assailants are beaten off, losing over a

thousand of their number; but Oscar, Dermot, and mac Luga are sorely

wounded. They are healed by magical herbs; and more fighting and other

adventures follow, until, after a year has passed, Finn compels the enemy

to make peace and give hostages, when the Fianna return to earth and

rejoin their fellows. No sooner has Keelta finished his tale, standing on

the very spot where they had found the fairy palace on the night of snow,

than a young warrior is seen approaching them. He is thus described: “A

shirt of royal satin was next his skin; over and outside it a tunic of the

same fabric; and a fringed crimson mantle, confined with a bodkin of gold,

upon his breast; in his hand a gold-hilted sword, and a golden helmet on

his head.” A delight in the colour and material splendour of life is a

very marked feature in all this literature. This splendid figure turns out

to be Donn mac Midir, one of the eight-and-twenty whom Finn had succoured,

and he comes to do homage for himself and his people to St. Patrick, who

accepts entertainment from him for the night; for in the “Colloquy” the

relations of the Church and of the Fairy World are very cordial.

*The Three Young Warriors*

Nowhere in Celtic literature does the love of wonder and mystery find such

remarkable expression as in the “Colloquy.” The writer of this piece was a

master of the touch that makes, as it were, the solid framework of things

translucent; and shows us, through it, gleams of another world, mingled

with ours yet distinct, and having other laws and characteristics. We

never get a clue as to what these laws are. The Celt did not, in Ireland

at least, systematise the unknown, but let it shine for a moment through

the opaqueness of this earth and then withdrew the gleam before we

understood what we had seen. Take, for instance, this incident in Keelta’s

account of the Fianna. Three young warriors come to take service with

Finn, accompanied by a gigantic hound. They make their agreement with him,

saying what services they can render and what reward they expect, and they

make it a condition that they shall camp apart from the rest of the host,

and that when night has fallen no man shall come near them or see them.

Finn asks the reason for this prohibition, and it is this: of the three

warriors one has to die each night, and the other two must watch him;

therefore they would not be disturbed. There is no explanation of this;

the writer simply leaves us with the thrill of the mystery upon us.

*The Fair Giantess*

Again, let us turn to the tale of the Fair Giantess. One day Finn and his

warriors, while resting from the chase for their midday meal, saw coming

towards them a towering shape. It proved to be a young giant maiden, who

gave her name as Vivionn (Bebhionn) daughter of Treon, from the Land of

Maidens. The gold rings on her fingers were as thick as an ox’s yoke, and

her beauty was dazzling. When she took off her gilded helmet, all

bejewelled, her fair, curling golden hair broke out in seven score

tresses, and Finn cried: “Great gods whom we adore, a huge marvel Cormac

and Ethné and the women of the Fianna would esteem it to see Vivionn, the

blooming daughter of Treon.” The maiden explained that she had been

betrothed against her will to a suitor named Æda, son of a neighbouring

king; and that hearing from a fisherman, who had been blown to her shores,

of the power and nobleness of Finn, she had come to seek his protection.

While she was speaking, suddenly the Fianna were aware of another giant

form close at hand. It was a young man, smooth-featured and of surpassing

beauty, who bore a red shield and a huge spear. Without a word he drew

near, and before the wondering Fianna could accost him he thrust his spear

through the body of the maiden and passed away. Finn, enraged at this

violation of his protection, called on his chiefs to pursue and slay the

murderer. Keelta and others chased him to the sea-shore, and followed him

into the surf, but he strode out to sea, and was met by a great galley

which bore him away to unknown regions. Returning, discomfited, to Finn,

they found the girl dying. She distributed her gold and jewels among them,

and the Fianna buried her under a great mound, and raised a pillar stone

over her with her name in Ogham letters, in the place since called the

Ridge of the Dead Woman.

In this tale we have, besides the element of mystery, that of beauty. It

is an association of frequent occurrence in this period of Celtic

literature; and to this, perhaps, is due the fact that although these

tales seem to come from nowhither and to lead nowhither, but move in a

dream-world where there is no chase but seems to end in Fairyland and no

combat that has any relation to earthly needs or objects, where all

realities are apt to dissolve in a magic light and to change their shapes

like morning mist, yet they linger in the memory with that haunting charm

which has for many centuries kept them alive by the fireside of the Gaelic

peasant.

*St. Patrick, Oisīn, and Keelta*

Before we leave the “Colloquy” another interesting point must be mentioned

in connexion with it. To the general public probably the best-known things

in Ossianic literature—I refer, of course, to the true Gaelic poetry which

goes under that name, not to the pseudo-Ossian of Macpherson—are those

dialogues in which the pagan and the Christian ideals are contrasted,

often in a spirit of humorous exaggeration or of satire. The earliest of

these pieces are found in the manuscript called “The Dean of Lismore’s

Book,” in which James Macgregor, Dean of Lismore in Argyllshire,wrote

down, some time before the year 1518, all he could remember or discover of

traditional Gaelic poetry in his time. It may be observed that up to this

period, and, indeed, long after it, Scottish and Irish Gaelic were one

language and one literature, the great written monuments of which were in

Ireland, though they belonged just as much to the Highland Celt, and the

two branches of the Gael had an absolutely common stock of poetic

tradition. These Oisīn-and-Patrick dialogues are found in abundance both

in Ireland and in the Highlands, though, as I have said, “The Dean of

Lismore’s Book” is their first written record now extant. What relation,

then, do these dialogues bear to the Keelta-and-Patrick dialogues with

which we make acquaintance in the “Colloquy”? The questions which really

came first, where they respectively originated, and what current of

thought or sentiment each represented, constitute, as Mr. Alfred Nutt has

pointed out, a literary problem of the greatest interest; and one which no

critic has yet attempted to solve, or, indeed, until quite lately, even to

call attention to. For though these two attempts to represent, in

imaginative and artistic form, the contact of paganism with Christianity

are nearly identical in machinery and framework, save that one is in verse

and the other in prose, yet they differ widely in their point of view.

In the Oisīn dialogues(186) there is a great deal of rough humour and of

crude theology, resembling those of an English miracle-play rather than

any Celtic product that I am acquainted with. St. Patrick in these

ballads, as Mr. Nutt remarks, “is a sour and stupid fanatic, harping with

wearisome monotony on the damnation of Finn and all his comrades; a hard

taskmaster to the poor old blind giant to whom he grudges food, and upon

whom he plays shabby tricks in order to terrify him into acceptance of

Christianity.” Now in the “Colloquy” there is not one word of all this.

Keelta embraces Christianity with a wholehearted reverence, and salvation

is not denied to the friends and companions of his youth. Patrick, indeed,

assures Keelta of the salvation of several of them, including Finn

himself. One of the Danaan Folk, who has been bard to the Fianna,

delighted Patrick with his minstrelsy. Brogan, the scribe whom St. Patrick

is employing to write down the Fian legends, says: “If music there is in

heaven, why should there not be on earth? Wherefore it is not right to

banish minstrelsy.” Patrick made answer: “Neither say I any such thing”;

and, in fact, the minstrel is promised heaven for his art.

Such are the pleasant relations that prevail in the “Colloquy” between the

representatives of the two epochs. Keelta represents all that is

courteous, dignified, generous, and valorous in paganism, and Patrick all

that is benign and gracious in Christianity; and instead of the two epochs

standing over against each other in violent antagonism, and separated by

an impassable gulf, all the finest traits in each are seen to harmonise

with and to supplement those of the other.

*Tales of Dermot*

A number of curious legends centre on Dermot O’Dyna, who has been referred

to as one of Finn mac Cumhal’s most notable followers. He might be

described as a kind of Gaelic Adonis, a type of beauty and attraction, the

hero of innumerable love tales; and, like Adonis, his death was caused by

a wild boar.

*The Boar of Ben Bulben*

The boar was no common beast. The story of its origin was as follows:

Dermot’s father, Donn, gave the child to be nurtured by Angus Ōg in his

palace on the Boyne. His mother, who was unfaithful to Donn, bore another

child to Roc, the steward of Angus. Donn, one day, when the steward’s

child ran between his knees to escape from some hounds that were fighting

on the floor of the hall, gave him a squeeze with his two knees that

killed him on the spot, and he then flung the body among the hounds on the

floor. When the steward found his son dead, and discovered (with Finn’s

aid) the cause of it, he brought a Druid rod and smote the body with it,

whereupon, in place of the dead child, there arose a huge boar, without

ears or tail; and to it he spake: “I charge you to bring Dermot O’Dyna to

his death”; and the boar rushed out from the hall and roamed in the

forests of Ben Bulben in Co. Sligo till the time when his destiny should

be fulfilled.

But Dermot grew up into a splendid youth, tireless in the chase, undaunted

in war, beloved by all his comrades of the Fianna, whom he joined as soon

as he was of age to do so.

*How Dermot Got the Love Spot*

He was called Dermot of the Love Spot, and a curious and beautiful

folk-tale recorded by Dr. Douglas Hyde(187) tells how he got this

appellation. With three comrades, Goll, Conan, and Oscar, he was hunting

one day, and late at night they sought a resting-place. They soon found a

hut, in which were an old man, a young girl, a wether sheep, and a cat.

Here they asked for hospitality, and it was granted to them. But, as usual

in these tales, it was a house of mystery.

When they sat down to dinner the wether got up and mounted on the table.

One after another the Fianna strove to throw it off, but it shook them

down on the floor. At last Goll succeeded in flinging it off the table,

but him too it vanquished in the end, and put them all under its feet.

Then the old man bade the cat lead the wether back and fasten it up, and

it did so easily. The four champions, overcome with shame, were for

leaving the house at once; but the old man explained that they had

suffered no discredit—the wether they had been fighting with was the

World, and the cat was the power that would destroy the world itself,

namely, Death.

At night the four heroes went to rest in a large chamber, and the young

maid came to sleep in the same room; and it is said that her beauty made a

light on the walls of the room like a candle. One after another the Fianna

went over to her couch, but she repelled them all. “I belonged to you

once,” she said to each, “and I never will again.” Last of all Dermot

went. “O Dermot,” she said, “you, also, I belonged to once, and I never

can again, for I am Youth; but come here and I will put a mark on you so

that no woman can ever see you without loving you.” Then she touched his

forehead, and left the Love Spot there; and that drew the love of women to

him as long as he lived.

*The Chase of the Hard Gilly*

The Chase of the Gilla Dacar is another Fian tale in which Dermot plays a

leading part. The Fianna, the story goes, were hunting one day on the

hills and through the woods of Munster, and as Finn and his captains stood

on a hillside listening to the baying of the hounds, and the notes of the

Fian hunting-horn from the dark wood below, they saw coming towards them a

huge, ugly, misshapen churl dragging along by a halter a great raw-boned

mare. He announced himself as wishful to take service with Finn. The name

he was called by, he said, was the Gilla Dacar (the Hard Gilly), because

he was the hardest servant ever a lord had to get service or obedience

from. In spite of this unpromising beginning, Finn, whose principle it was

never to refuse any suitor, took him into service; and the Fianna now

began to make their uncouth comrade the butt of all sorts of rough jokes,

which ended in thirteen of them, including Conan the Bald, all mounting up

on the Gilla Dacar’s steed. On this the newcomer complained that he was

being mocked, and he shambled away in great discontent till he was over

the ridge of the hill, when he tucked up his skirts and ran westwards,

faster than any March wind, toward the sea-shore in Co. Kerry. Thereupon

at once the steed, which had stood still with drooping ears while the

thirteen riders in vain belaboured it to make it move, suddenly threw up

its head and started off in a furious gallop after its master. The Fianna

ran alongside, as well as they could for laughter, while Conan, in terror

and rage, reviled them for not rescuing him and his comrades. At last the

thing became serious. The Gilla Dacar plunged into the sea, and the mare

followed him with her thirteen riders, and one more who managed to cling

to her tail just as she left the shore; and all of them soon disappeared

towards the fabled region of the West.

*Dermot at the Well*

Finn and the remaining Fianna now took counsel together as to what should

be done, and finally decided to fit out a ship and go in search of their

comrades. After many days of voyaging they reached an island guarded by

precipitous cliffs. Dermot O’Dyna, as the most agile of the party, was

sent to climb them and to discover, if he could, some means of helping up

the rest of the party. When he arrived at the top he found himself in a

delightful land, full of the song of birds and the humming of bees and the

murmur of streams, but with no sign of habitation. Going into a dark

forest, he soon came to a well, by which hung a curiously wrought

drinking-horn. As he filled it to drink, a low, threatening murmur came

from the well, but his thirst was too keen to let him heed it and he drank

his fill. In no long time there came through the wood an armed warrior,

who violently upbraided him for drinking from his well. The Knight of the

Well and Dermot then fought all the afternoon without either of them

prevailing over the other, when, as evening drew on, the knight suddenly

leaped into the well and disappeared. Next day the same thing happened; on

the third, however, Dermot, as the knight was about to take his leap,

flung his arms round him, and both went down together.

*The Rescue of Fairyland*

Dermot, after a moment of darkness and trance, now found himself in

Fairyland. A man of noble appearance roused him and led him away to the

castle of a great king, where he was hospitably entertained. It was

explained to him that the services of a champion like himself were needed

to do combat against a rival monarch of Faëry. It is the same motive which

we find in the adventures of Cuchulain with Fand, and which so frequently

turns up in Celtic fairy lore. Finn and his companions, finding that

Dermot did not return to them, found their way up the cliffs, and, having

traversed the forest, entered a great cavern which ultimately led them out

to the same land as that in which Dermot had arrived. There too, they are

informed, are the fourteen Fianna who had been carried off on the mare of

the Hard Gilly. He, of course, was the king who needed their services, and

who had taken this method of decoying some thirty of the flower of Irish

fighting men to his side. Finn and his men go into the battle with the

best of goodwill, and scatter the enemy like chaff; Oscar slays the son of

the rival king (who is called the King of “Greece”). Finn wins the love of

his daughter, Tasha of the White Arms, and the story closes with a

delightful mixture of gaiety and mystery. “What reward wilt thou have for

thy good services?” asks the fairy king of Finn. “Thou wert once in

service with me,” replies Finn, “and I mind not that I gave thee any

recompense. Let one service stand against the other.” “Never shall I agree

to that,” cries Conan the Bald. “Shall I have nought for being carried off

on thy wild mare and haled oversea?” “What wilt thou have?” asks the fairy

king. “None of thy gold or goods,” replies Conan, “but mine honour hath

suffered, and let mine honour be appeased. Set thirteen of thy fairest

womenfolk on the wild mare, O King, and thine own wife clinging to her

tail, and let them be transported to Erin in like manner as we were

dragged here, and I shall deem the indignity we have suffered fitly atoned

for.” On this the king smiled and, turning to Finn, said: “O Finn, behold

thy men.” Finn turned to look at them, but when he looked round again the

scene had changed—the fairy king and his host and all the world of Faëry

had disappeared, and he found himself with his companions and the

fair-armed Tasha standing on the beach of the little bay in Kerry whence

the Hard Gilly and the mare had taken the water and carried off his men.

And then all started with cheerful hearts for the great standing camp of

the Fianna on the Hill of Allen to celebrate the wedding feast of Finn and

Tasha.

*Effect of Christianity on the Development of Irish Literature*

This tale with its fascinating mixture of humour, romance, magic, and love

of wild nature, may be taken as a typical specimen of the Fian legends at

their best. As compared with the Conorian legends they show, as I have

pointed out, a characteristic lack of any heroic or serious element. That

nobler strain died out with the growing predominance of Christianity,

which appropriated for definitely religious purposes the more serious and

lofty side of the Celtic genius, leaving for secular literature only the

elements of wonder and romance. So completely was this carried out that

while the Finn legends have survived to this day among the Gaelic-speaking

population, and were a subject of literary treatment as long as Gaelic was

written at all, the earlier cycle perished almost completely out of the

popular remembrance, or survived only in distorted forms; and but for the

early manuscripts in which the tales are fortunately enshrined such a work

as the “Tain Bo Cuailgné”—the greatest thing undoubtedly which the Celtic

genius ever produced in literature—would now be irrecoverably lost.

*The Tales of Deirdre and of Grania*

Nothing can better illustrate the difference between the two cycles than a

comparison of the tale of Deirdre with that with which we have now to

deal—the tale of Dermot and Grania. The latter, from one point of view,

reads like an echo of the former, so close is the resemblance between them

in the outline of the plot. Take the following skeleton story: “A fair

maiden is betrothed to a renowned and mighty suitor much older than

herself. She turns from him to seek a younger lover, and fixes her

attention on one of his followers, a gallant and beautiful youth, whom she

persuades, in spite of his reluctance, to fly with her. After evading

pursuit they settle down for a while at a distance from the defrauded

lover, who bides his time, till at last, under cover of a treacherous

reconciliation, he procures the death of his younger rival and retakes

possession of the lady.” Were a student of Celtic legend asked to listen

to the above synopsis, and to say to what Irish tale it referred, he would

certainly reply that it must be either the tale of the Pursuit of Dermot

and Grania, or that of the Fate of the Sons of Usna; but which of them it

was it would be quite impossible for him to tell. Yet in tone and temper

the two stories are as wide apart as the poles.

*Grania and Dermot*

Grania, in the Fian story, is the daughter of Cormac mac Art, High King of

Ireland. She is betrothed to Finn mac Cumhal, whom we are to regard at

this period as an old and war-worn but still mighty warrior. The famous

captains of the Fianna all assemble at Tara for the wedding feast, and as

they sit at meat Grania surveys them and asks their names of her father’s

Druid, Dara. “It is a wonder,” she says, “that Finn did not ask me for

Oisīn, rather than for himself.” “Oisīn would not dare to take thee,” says

Dara. Grania, after going through all the company, asks: “Who is that man

with the spot on his brow, with the sweet voice, with curling dusky hair

and ruddy cheek?” “That is Dermot O’Dyna,” replies the Druid, “the

white-toothed, of the lightsome countenance, in all the world the best

lover of women and maidens.” Grania now prepares a sleepy draught, which

she places in a drinking-cup and passes round by her handmaid to the king,

to Finn, and to all the company except the chiefs of the Fianna. When the

draught has done its work she goes to Oisīn. “Wilt thou receive courtship

from me, Oisīn?” she asks. “That will I not,” says Oisīn, “nor from any

woman that is betrothed to Finn.” Grania, who knew very well what Oisīn’s

answer would be, now turns to her real mark, Dermot. He at first refuses

to have anything to do with her. “I put thee under bonds [_geise_], O

Dermot, that thou take me out of Tara to-night.” “Evil are these bonds,

Grania,” says Dermot; “and wherefore hast thou put them on me before all

the kings’ sons that feast at this table?” Grania then explains that she

has loved Dermot ever since she saw him, years ago, from her sunny bower,

take part in and win a great hurling match on the green at Tara. Dermot,

still very reluctant, pleads the merits of Finn, and urges also that Finn

has the keys of the royal fortress, so that they cannot pass out at night.

“There is a secret wicket-gate in my bower,” says Grania. “I am under

_geise_ not to pass through any wicket-gate,” replies Dermot, still

struggling against his destiny. Grania will have none of these

subterfuges—any Fian warrior, she has been told, can leap over a palisade

with the aid of his spear as a jumping-pole; and she goes off to make

ready for the elopement. Dermot, in great perplexity, appeals to Oisīn,

Oscar, Keelta, and the others as to what he should do. They all bid him

keep his _geise_—the bonds that Grania had laid on him to succour her—and

he takes leave of them with tears.

Outside the wicket-gate he again begs Grania to return. “It is certain

that I will not go back,” says Grania, “nor part from thee till death part

us.” “Then go forward, O Grania,” says Dermot. After they had gone a mile,

“I am truly weary, O grandson of Dyna,” says Grania. “It is a good time to

be weary,” says Dermot, making a last effort to rid himself of the

entanglement, “and return now to thy household again, for I pledge the

word of a true warrior that I will never carry thee nor any other woman to

all eternity.” “There is no need,” replies Grania, and she directs him

where to find horses and a chariot, and Dermot, now finally accepting the

inevitable, yokes them, and they proceed on their way to the Ford of Luan

on the Shannon.(188)

*The Pursuit*

Next day Finn, burning with rage, sets out with his warriors on their

track. He traces out each of their halting-places, and finds the hut of

wattles which Dermot has made for their shelter, and the bed of soft

rushes, and the remains of the meal they had eaten. And at each place he

finds a piece of unbroken bread or uncooked salmon—Dermot’s subtle message

to Finn that he has respected the rights of his lord and treated Grania as

a sister. But this delicacy of Dermot’s is not at all to Crania’s mind,

and she conveys her wishes to him in a manner which is curiously

paralleled by an episode in the tale of Tristan and Iseult of Brittany, as

told by Heinrich von Freiberg. They are passing through a piece of wet

ground when a splash of water strikes Grania. She turns to her companion:

“Thou art a mighty warrior, O Dermot, in battle and sieges and forays, yet

meseems that this drop of water is bolder than thou.” This hint that he

was keeping at too respectful a distance was taken by Dermot. The die is

now cast, and he will never again meet Finn and his old comrades except at

the point of the spear.

The tale now loses much of the originality and charm of its opening scene,

and recounts in a somewhat mechanical manner a number of episodes in which

Dermot is attacked or besieged by the Fianna, and rescues himself and his

lady by miracles of boldness or dexterity, or by aid of the magical

devices of his foster-father, Angus Ōg. They are chased all over Ireland,

and the dolmens in that country are popularly associated with them, being

called in the traditions of the peasantry “Beds of Dermot and Grania.”

Grania’s character is drawn throughout with great consistency. She is not

an heroic woman—hers are not the simple, ardent impulses and unwavering

devotion of a Deirdre. The latter is far more primitive. Grania is a

curiously modern and what would be called “neurotic” type—wilful,

restless, passionate, but full of feminine fascination.

*Dermot and Finn Make Peace*

After sixteen years of outlawry peace is at last made for Dermot by the

mediation or Angus with King Cormac and with Finn. Dermot receives his

proper patrimony, the Cantred of O’Dyna, and other lands far away in the

West, and Cormac gives another of his daughters to Finn. “Peaceably they

abode a long time with each other, and it was said that no man then living

was richer in gold and silver, in flocks and herds, than Dermot O’Dyna,

nor one that made more preys.”(189) Grania bears to Dermot four sons and a

daughter.

But Grania is not satisfied until “the two best men that are in Erin,

namely, Cormac son of Art and Finn son of Cumhal,” have been entertained

in her house. “And how do we know,” she adds, “but our daughter might then

get a fitting husband?” Dermot agrees with some misgiving; the king and

Finn accept the invitation, and they and their retinues are feasted for a

year at Rath Grania.

*The Vengeance of Finn*

Then one night, towards the end of the year of feasting, Dermot is

awakened from sleep by the baying of a hound. He starts up, “so that

Grania caught him and threw her two arms about him and asked him what he

had seen.” “It is the voice of a hound,” says Dermot, “and I marvel to

hear it in the night.” “Save and protect thee,” says Grania; “it is the

Danaan Folk that are at work on thee. Lay thee down again.” But three

times the hound’s voice awakens him, and on the morrow he goes forth armed

with sword and sling, and followed by his own hound, to see what is afoot.

On the mountain of Ben Bulben in Sligo he comes across Finn with a

hunting-party of the Fianna. They are not now hunting, however; they are

being hunted; for they have roused up the enchanted boar without ears or

tail, the Boar of Ben Bulben, which has slain thirty of them that morning.

“And do thou come away,” says Finn, knowing well that Dermot will never

retreat from a danger; “for thou art under _geise_ not to hunt pig.” “How

is that?” says Dermot, and Finn then tells him the weird story of the

death of the steward’s son and his revivification in the form of this

boar, with its mission of vengeance. “By my word,” quoth Dermot, “it is to

slay me that thou hast made this hunt, O Finn; and if it be here that I am

fated to die, I have no power now to shun it.”

The beast then appears on the face of the mountain, and Dermot slips the

hound at him, but the hound flies in terror. Dermot then slings a stone

which strikes the boar fairly in the middle of his forehead but does not

even scratch his skin. The beast is close on him now, and Dermot strikes

him with his sword, but the weapon flies in two and not a bristle of the

boar is cut. In the charge of the boar Dermot falls over him, and is

carried for a space clinging to his back; but at last the boar shakes him

off to the ground, and making “an eager, exceeding mighty spring” upon

him, rips out his bowels, while at the same time, with the hilt of the

sword still in his hand, Dermot dashes out the brains of the beast, and it

falls dead beside him.

*Death of Dermot*

The implacable Finn then comes up, and stands over Dermot in his agony.

“It likes me well to see thee in that plight, O Dermot,” he says, “and I

would that all the women in Ireland saw thee now; for thy excellent beauty

is turned to ugliness and thy choice form to deformity.” Dermot reminds

Finn of how he once rescued him from deadly peril when attacked during a

feast at the house of Derc, and begs him to heal him with a draught of

water from his hands, for Finn had the magic gift of restoring any wounded

man to health with a draught of well-water drawn in his two hands. “Here

is no well,” says Finn. “That is not true,” says Dermot, “for nine paces

from you is the best well of pure water in the world.” Finn, at last, on

the entreaty of Oscar and the Fianna, and after the recital of many deeds

done for his sake by Dermot in old days, goes to the well, but ere he

brings the water to Dermot’s side he lets it fall through his fingers. A

second time he goes, and a second time he lets the water fall, “having

thought upon Grania,” and Dermot gave a sigh of anguish on seeing it.

Oscar then declares that if Finn does not bring the water promptly either

he or Finn shall never leave the hill alive, and Finn goes once more to

the well, but it is now too late; Dermot is dead before the healing

draught can reach his lips. Then Finn takes the hound of Dermot, the

chiefs of the Fianna lay their cloaks over the dead man, and they return

to Rath Grania. Grania, seeing the hound led by Finn, conjectures what has

happened, and swoons upon the rampart of the Rath. Oisīn, when she has

revived, gives her the hound, against Finn’s will, and the Fianna troop

away, leaving her to her sorrow. When the people of Grania’s household go

out to fetch in the body of Dermot they find there Angus Ōg and his

company of the People of Dana, who, after raising three bitter and

terrible cries, bear away the body on a gilded bier, and Angus declares

that though he cannot restore the dead to life, “I will send a soul into

him so that he may talk with me each day.”

*The End of Grania*

To a tale like this modern taste demands a romantic and sentimental

ending; and such has actually been given to it in the retelling by Dr. P.

W. Joyce in his “Old Celtic Romances,” as it has to the tale of Deirdre by

almost every modern writer who has handled it.(190) But the Celtic

story-teller felt differently. The tale of the end of Deirdre is horribly

cruel, that of Grania cynical and mocking; neither is in the least

sentimental. Grania is at first enraged with Finn, and sends her sons

abroad to learn feats of arms, so that they may take vengeance upon him

when the time is ripe. But Finn, wily and far-seeing as he is portrayed in

this tale, knows how to forestall this danger. When the tragedy on Ben

Bulben has begun to grow a little faint in the shallow soul of Grania, he

betakes himself to her, and though met at first with scorn and indignation

he woos her so sweetly and with such tenderness that at last he brings her

to his will, and he bears her back as a bride to the Hill of Allen. When

the Fianna see the pair coming towards them in this loving guise they

burst into a shout of laughter and derision, “so that Grania bowed her

head in shame.” “We trow, O Finn,” cries Oisīn, “that thou wilt keep

Grania well from henceforth.” So Grania made peace between Finn and her

sons, and dwelt with Finn as his wife until he died.

*Two Streams of Fian Legends*

It will be noticed that in this legend Finn does not appear as a

sympathetic character. Our interest is all on the side of Dermot. In this

aspect of it the tale is typical of a certain class of Fian stories. Just

as there were two rival clans within the Fian organisation—the Clan Bascna

and the Clan Morna—who sometimes came to blows for the supremacy, so there

are two streams of legends seeming to flow respectively from one or other

of these sources, in one of which Finn is glorified, while in the other he

is belittled in favour of Goll mac Morna or any other hero with whom he

comes into conflict.

*End of the Fianna*

The story of the end of the Fianna is told in a number of pieces, some

prose, some poetry, all of them, however, agreeing in presenting this

event as a piece of sober history, without any of the supernatural and

mystical atmosphere in which nearly all the Fian legends are steeped.

After the death of Cormac mac Art his son Cairbry came to the

High-Kingship of Ireland. He had a fair daughter named _Sgeimh Solais_

(Light of Beauty), who was asked in marriage by a son of the King of the

Decies. The marriage was arranged, and the Fianna claimed a ransom or

tribute of twenty ingots of gold, which, it is said, was customarily paid

to them on these occasions. It would seem that the Fianna had now grown to

be a distinct power within the State, and an oppressive one, exacting

heavy tributes and burdensome privileges from kings and sub-kings all over

Ireland. Cairbry resolved to break them; and he thought he had now a good

opportunity to do so. He therefore refused payment of the ransom, and

summoned all the provincial kings to help him against the Fianna, the main

body of whom immediately went into rebellion for what they deemed their

rights. The old feud between Clan Bascna and Clan Morna now broke out

afresh, the latter standing by the High King, while Clan Bascna, aided by

the King of Munster and his forces, who alone took their side, marched

against Cairbry.

*The Battle of Gowra*

All this sounds very matter-of-fact and probable, but how much real

history there may be in it it is very hard to say. The decisive battle of

the war which ensued took place at Gowra (Gabhra), the name of which

survives in Garristown, Co. Dublin. The rival forces, when drawn up in

battle array, knelt and kissed the sacred soil of Erin before they

charged. The story of the battle in the poetical versions, one of which is

published in the Ossianic Society’s “Transactions,” and another and finer

one in Campbell’s “The Fians,”(191) is supposed to be related by Oisīn to

St. Patrick. He lays great stress on the feats of his son Oscar:

“My son urged his course

Through the battalions of Tara

Like a hawk through a flock of birds,

Or a rock descending a mountain-side.”

*The Death of Oscar*

The fight was _à outrance_, and the slaughter on both sides tremendous.

None but old men and boys, it is said, were left in Erin after that fight.

The Fianna were in the end almost entirely exterminated, and Oscar slain.

He and the King of Ireland, Cairbry, met in single combat, and each of

them slew the other. While Oscar was still breathing, though there was not

a palm’s breadth on his body without a wound, his father found him:

“I found my own son lying down

On his left elbow, his shield by his side;

His right hand clutched the sword,

The blood poured through his mail

“Oscar gazed up at me—

Woe to me was that sight!

He stretched out his two arms to me,

Endeavouring to rise to meet me.

“I grasped the hand of my son

And sat down by his left side;

And since I sat by him there,

I have recked nought of the world.”

When Finn (in the Scottish version) comes to bewail his grandson, he

cries:

“Woe, that it was not I who fell

In the fight of bare sunny Gavra,

And you were east and west

Marching before the Fians, Oscar.”

But Oscar replies:

“Were it you that fell

In the fight of bare sunny Gavra,

One sigh, east or west,

Would not be heard for you from Oscar.

“No man ever knew

A heart of flesh was in my breast,

But a heart of the twisted horn

And a sheath of steel over it.

“But the howling of dogs beside me,

And the wail of the old heroes,

And the weeping of the women by turns,

’Tis that vexes my heart.”

Oscar dies, after thanking the gods for his father’s safety, and Oisīn and

Keelta raise him on a bier of spears and carry him off under his banner,

“The Terrible Sheaf,” for burial on the field where he died, and where a

great green burial mound is still associated with his name. Finn takes no

part in the battle. He is said to have come “in a ship” to view the field

afterwards, and he wept over Oscar, a thing he had never done save once

before, for his hound, Bran, whom he himself killed by accident. Possibly

the reference to the ship is an indication that he had by this time passed

away, and came to revisit the earth from the oversea kingdom of Death.

There is in this tale of the Battle of Gowra a melancholy grandeur which

gives it a place apart in the Ossianic literature. It is a fitting dirge

for a great legendary epoch. Campbell tells us that the Scottish crofters

and shepherds were wont to put off their bonnets when they recited it. He

adds a strange and thrilling piece of modern folk-lore bearing on it. Two

men, it is said, were out at night, probably sheep-stealing or on some

other predatory occupation, and telling Fian tales as they went, when they

observed two giant and shadowy figures talking to each other across the

glen. One of the apparitions said to the other: “Do you see that man down

below? I was the second door-post of battle on the day of Gowra, and that

man there knows all about it better than myself.”

*The End of Finn*

As to Finn himself, it is strange that in all the extant mass of the

Ossianic literature there should be no complete narrative of his death.

There are references to it in the poetic legends, and annalists even date

it, but the references conflict with each other, and so do the dates.

There is no clear light to be obtained on the subject from either

annalists or poets. Finn seems to have melted into the magic mist which

enwraps so many of his deeds in life. Yet a popular tradition says that he

and his great companions, Oscar and Keelta and Oisīn and the rest, never

died, but lie, like Kaiser Barbarossa, spell-bound in an enchanted cave

where they await the appointed time to reappear in glory and redeem their

land from tyranny and wrong.