My eyes slumbered in sleep,
My spear was with my shield,
My sword was in my hand,
And my hand under my ear.
A strange dream happened to me,
I set swiftly my dogs
On a sow in the plain upon flesh.
She was fat to the tusk in her jaw,
Thirty feet for me with my shoes
In her side to the beard of her snout.
Thirty inches for Finn in her tusk
Fat above on her under her hide.
Large as a caldron was each eye,
Large as a vessel the hollow beneath.
My sword hewed in her neck,
And my dogs fixed on her ear.
Sow of the sea of eastern Tallann,
Which strikes the rock where the wave touches.
My limbs were to me a protection to me strong,
As thyself not weak like thee.
Ossian sung this at the shore of the sea of Tallann, for the champion
of the sow.[38]
[38] The scene of this poem is in Scotland, the sea of Tallann being
said to be in the east, and it must have been written in Scotland, as
the accent is placed on the first syllable of the name Oisin.
The Highlanders call a whale _muic mhara_, and, from the description,
this creature appears to have been a whale.
On communicating this curious poem to Professor O’Curry, he informs
me that there is a copy of it in the Book of Leinster, an MS. of the
thirteenth century. The text is the same, but the glosses a little
different.
I may take this opportunity of calling attention to Professor O’Curry’s
admirable Lectures on the MS. literature of Ireland, just published.
They are most interesting and instructive, and for the masterly and
complete survey taken of the subject, as well as for accurate and
minute detail, they are almost unexampled in the annals of literature.
They will well repay perusal.
The tales of Cuchullin and Conlaoch, and the tale of the Sons of
Uisneach, are good specimens of the second class. The latter is one
of three tales, called the Three Woes, the two others relating to
families of the Tuatha De Danann; but though these tales may be Irish,
and of this period, they contain fragments of poems probably much
older, and which may have been derived from another source. One of the
poems in the tale of the Children of Uisneach contains such a tender
recollection of and touching allusion to Highland scenery, that it is
hardly possible to suppose that it was not originally composed by a
genuine son of Alban.
It is the lament of Deirdre or Darthula over Alban, and the following
is a translation:--
Beloved land that Eastern land,
Alba, with its wonders.
O that I might not depart from it,
But that I go with Naise.
Beloved is Dunfidhgha and Dun Finn;
Beloved the Dun above them;
Beloved is Innisdraighende,
And beloved Dun Suibhne.
Coillchuan! O Coillchuan!
Where Ainnle would, alas! resort;
Too short, I deem, was then my stay
With Ainnle in Oirir Alban.
Glenlaidhe! O Glenlaidhe!
I used to sleep by its soothing murmur;
Fish, and flesh of wild boar and badger
Was my repast in Glenlaidhe.
Glenmasan! O Glenmasan;
High its herbs, fair its boughs.
Solitary was the place of our repose
On grassy Invermasan.
Gleneitche! O Gleneitche!
There was raised my earliest home.
Beautiful its woods on rising,
When the sun struck on Gleneitche.
Glen Urchain! O Glen Urchain!
It was the straight glen of smooth ridges.
Not more joyful was a man of his age
Than Naoise in Glen Urchain.
Glendaruadh! O Glendaruadh!
My love each man of its inheritance.
Sweet the voice of the cuckoo on bending bough,
On the hill above Glendaruadh.
Beloved is Draighen and its sounding shore;
Beloved the water o’er pure sand.
O that I might not depart from the east,
But that I go with my beloved![39]
[39] The oldest copy of this tale, which was the foundation of
Macpherson’s Darthula, is in the Glenmasan MS., in the collection
in the Advocates’ Library, which bears the date of 1238, and this
translation is made from it.
The scenery is all in Argyllshire. Inis Draighen is Inistrynich
in Loch-awe; Dun Suibhne, Castle Sween; Glenlaidhe is now called
Glenlochy, where is Benlaoidhe; Glenmasan still bears the name;
Gleneitche, in another copy called Loch Eitche, is Glenetive and
Loch Etive; Glenurchain is Glenurchay; and Glendaruadh is now called
Glendaruail.
The third class of Ossianic poems belongs principally to that period
when, during the sway of the Lords of the Isles, Irish influence was
so much felt on the language and literature of the Highlands, and when
the Highland bards and sennachies were trained in bardic schools,
presided over by Irish bards of eminence. It was at this period mainly
that the Irish poems assumed so much the shape of a dialogue between
the Ossianic poets and St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland; and the
Highland bards imitated this form, often adding or prefixing a few
sentences of such dialogue to older poems, or composing poems in
imitation of Ossian in this form; but the imitation, in this respect,
of Irish poems by native bards is apparent from this, that Patrick is
in the Irish poems correctly called Mac Calphurn or M’Alphurn, his
father, according to his own “Confessio,” having been Calphurnius, but
the Highland bards, to whom Patrick’s history was strange, and this
epithet unintelligible, have substituted the peculiarly Scotch form of
Alpine, and styled him Patrick Mac Alpine.
One of the poems in Macpherson’s fragments has been one of these--the
sixth fragment,--which begins and ends with a dialogue between Ossian
and the son of Alpin.
It was at the same period that the collection of Gaelic poems was
made by the Dean of Lismore, and it includes many poems in which this
dialogue occurs, but in most the saint is termed Macalpine, showing its
non-Irish source.
The Ossianic poems in this collection attributed to Ossian, Fergus
Filidh, and Caoilte, the three Fenian bards, and those which are either
anonymous or composed by imitators, as Gillecalum Mac an Olla and Allan
Mac Ruadhri, with the other poems which are not Ossianic, afford a fair
specimen of the poetic literature current in the Highlands of Scotland
at the close of this period, and before the fall of the Lords of the
Isles, and the Reformation again severed that country from Ireland,
and ushered in a period of reaction and return towards the native
dialect and literature.
On the whole, then, we fully admit the claims of Ireland to Fenian
legends and tales, and their attendant poems, but not to an exclusive
possession of them.
We admit that its Fenian topography is authentic, but it is not the
only one.
We admit its claim to an early written and cultivated speech, but not
to the only dialect of Gaelic in which such poems once existed.
We hold that Scotland possesses likewise Fenian legends and Ossianic
poetry derived from an independent source, and a Fenian topography
equally genuine; and we consider her dialect of the common Gaelic
tongue not undeserving of the attention of philologers.