Little volume go boldly forth,
Rouse whom you reach to pure and godly strains;
Hail the generous land of the Feinne,
The Roughbounds and the Western Isles.
The Roughbounds were the districts from Morvaren to Glenelg, which,
with the Isles, are thus called the land of the Feinne.
The districts in which the Fenian names enter most largely into the
topography of the Highlands are Atholl, Lochaber, Lorn, and Morvaren,
Glenelg, and the districts about Loch Ness; and the antiquity of this
topography in the Highlands of Scotland is proved by an old gloss to a
charter by Alexander the Second to the monks of Kinloss of the lands of
Burgyn, within the ancient Celtic province of Moray, which is preserved
in the Chartulary of the Bishopric. The boundary of the lands passes
by a place called Tuber na Fein, meaning literally the well of the
Feinne, and the gloss is “or _feyne_, of the grett or kempis men callit
_ffenis_, is ane well.”
Cuchullin was of the race of the Cruithne, and belongs both to Ulster
and to Scotland. In Ulster his seat was Dundealgan, and the scene of
his exploits the district of Cuailgne and the mountains of Sleave
Cuillin; but even Irish tradition admits that he was reared by
Sgathaig, in the Isle of Skye, and here we have Dunsgathaig and the
Cuillin Hills.
The children of Uisneach were likewise Cruithne, and must have preceded
the Scots, for the great scene of their Scotch adventures are the
districts of Lorn, Loch Aw, and Cowall, afterwards the possessions of
the Dalriadic Scots; thus, in the vicinity of Oban, we have Dun mhic
Uisneachan, now corruptly called in guide-books Dun mac Sniachan, a
fort with vitrified remains; and here we have on Loch Etive, Glen
Uisneach, and Suidhe Deardhuil. The names of the three sons of Uisneach
were Ainle, Ardan, and Naoise; and it is remarkable that Adomnan, in
his life of St. Columba, written in the seventh century, appears to
mention only three localities in connexion with St. Columba’s journey
to the palace of the king of the Picts, near Loch Ness, and these are
Cainle, Arcardan, and the flumen Nesae. Two vitrified forts in the
neighbourhood of Lochness are called Dundeardhuil.[36]
[36] It is remarkable that the ancient legends of Cuchullin and the
sons of Uisneach connect them with those remarkable structures termed
vitrified forts. Dun Scathaig, Dun mhic Uisneachan, and Dundheardhuil,
are all vitrified forts, and the latter is a common name for them.
There is probably a mythic meaning under this.
The hunt of Diarmed O’Duine after the boar on Bengulbain, and his
death by measuring his length against the bristles, enters into Scotch
topography in three different localities; in Glenshee, where there
is a hill called Bengulbain, also in Glenroy, where we have also a
Bengulbain and an Eassroy, and also on the south bank of Loch Ness.
Daire donn, who appears in the Cath Finntragha identified by the Irish
with Ventry, has also deposited his name on a mountain in Ardgour,
close to the west sea, called Meall Dayre donn.
The mountain streams and lakes in these districts of the Highlands are
everywhere redolent of names connected with the heroes and actions of
the Feinne, and show that a body of popular legends connected with
them, whether in poetry or in prose, preserved by oral recitation
or committed to writing, must have existed in the country when this
topography sprung up, though it does not follow that the events, though
now associated with the scenery of the country, originally happened
there any more than does the Fenian topography of Ireland.
These legendary poems and tales seem to have passed through three
different stages.
In the first and oldest form they were pure poems, of more or less
excellence, narrating the adventures and deeds of these warrior bands,
whose memory still lingered in the country; each poem being complete in
itself, and constructed upon a metrical system which brought the aid
of alliteration and of rhyme, or correspondence of sounds, to assist
the memory in retaining what had been received by oral recitation,
and to render it less easy to forget or lose a part. These poems seem
generally to have been attributed to one mythic poet of the race they
celebrate.
Then, as the language in which these poems were composed became altered
or modified, or as the reciters were less able to retain the whole,
they would narrate, in ordinary prose, the events of the part of the
poem they had forgotten, and merely recite the poetry of what they
recollected; and thus they would pass into the second stage of prose
tales, interspersed with fragments of poetry.
Bards who were themselves composers as well as reciters, besides
composing poems on the subjects of the day in which they lived,
would likewise select the Fenian legends as their themes, and become
imitators of the older Ossianic poetry. The prose narrative would form
the basis of their poem; and thus would arise the third stage of their
poems, in which they were reconstructed from the prose tales, and again
appear as long poems, the names and incidents being the same as in the
older poems, and the fragments of them preserved in the prose tale,
imbedded in the new poem.
The poems of the first stage were probably common to Ireland and to
Scotland, and traces of them are to be found wherever the Feinne
were supposed to have once existed; though, in countries where their
successors were of a different race, and spoke a different language,
the continuity of the tradition would be at once broken.
Among the ancient poems in the Welsh language which have been
preserved, there exists an Ossianic poem called Marwnad Coire map
Daire, or the death-song of Curoi, son of Daire, the traditionary head,
according to Irish history, of the Fenian militia of Munster, but who,
as we have seen, appears to belong to the body called the Feinne of
Breatan; and the poem, no doubt, belongs to the northern Cumbrian
kingdom, which had Dunbreatan for its chief seat. Curoi is called Chief
of the Southern Sea, and the contest between him and Cuchullin is
mentioned.[37]
[37] This poem, with a translation, is given in the Additional Notes,
pp. 143, 144.
Poems of the same character seem also to have been known in the Isle
of Man, as O’Connor, in his catalogue of the Stow ms., mentions a MS.
containing “Finn and Ossian,--a Manx coronach, with Manx on one side of
the page, and Irish on the other.”
The oldest which has been found in any MSS. preserved in the Highlands
is a poem of five quatrains, at the end of a glossary contained in a
MS. written prior to the year 1500. It is in old Gaelic, and there is
an interlineal gloss, explaining the meaning of the expressions in more
familiar language. At the end there is a line stating that Ossian was
the author of the poem.
It may be not uninteresting to insert here the text of the poem, with
its glosses:--
.i. do chodladar mo shuile
Tuilsither mo dherca suain
.i. mo sleagh .i. mo sgiath
mo ruibhne mum luibhne ar lo
.i. mo cladhiomh um dhorn
mo ghenam um dhuais ro bhaoi
.i. mo dhorn fam chluais
agus mo dhuais fam o
.i. aislinge .i. tarla
Adhbhul fisi ar mo ta
.i. dar leiges .i. mo chu
dar cinnius go dian mo chuib
.i. ar mhuic
ar criobhais a leirg ar art
.i. saill go fiacuil a carbui
fo cheird bracht go feic a cuil
.i. throigh .i. gun broigh
Triocha treathan damh gun naibh
.i. go moing a srona
iona taoibh go a tul moing tuinn
.i. orladh .i. na fiacuil
Triocha nena Finn na feic
.i. a sa cionn amach
asseicsi tuas re fa thuinn
.i. coimed re coire gach sul di
Meidis re habhron a dherc
meidis re mes afert fo
.i. tesgus mo cladhiomh a muineal
Sealus mo ghenam a muin
.i. mo chu as a cluais
agus mo chuibh as a ho
.i. muic
Criobais mhara Tallann tair
.i. ria cloic ris ambenann tonn
benus ria hail tairges tnu
.i. mo bhoill as comairce diob nert
mo leo uam fhaosamh domniadh
.i. ni lag mar tu
mar tusa ni triath mar tu
Oisin ro chan ann sin attraigh mara tallann.
ar nia na muice.