Chapter XXXVII The Ossianic Poems
Side by side with the numerous prose sagas which fall under the title of “Fenian,” and which we have already examined in Chapter XXIX., there exists an enormous mass of poems, chiefly narrative, of a minor epic type, or else semi-dramatic épopées, usually introduced by a dialogue between St. Patrick and the poet Ossian. Ossian1 was the son of Finn mac Cúmhail, vulgarly “Cool,” and he was fabled to have lived in Tír na n-og [T’yeer na nogue], the country of the ever-young, the Irish Elysium, for three hundred years, thus surviving all his Fenian contemporaries, and living to hold colloquy with St. Patrick. The so-called Ossianic poems are extraordinarily numerous, and were they all collected would probably (between those preserved in Scotch-Gaelic and in Irish) amount to some 80,000 lines. My friend, the late Father James Keegan, of St. Louis, once estimated them at 100,000. The most of them, in the form in which they have come down to us at the present day, seem to have been composed in rather loose metres, chiefly imitations of Deibhidh and Rannaigheacht mór, and they were even down to our fathers’ time exceedingly popular both in Ireland and the Scotch Highlands, in which latter country Iain Campbell, the great folk-lorist, made the huge collection which he called Leabhar na Féinne, or the Book of the Fenians.
Some of the Ossianic poems relate the exploits of the Fenians, others describe conflicts between members of that body and worms, wild beasts and dragons, others fights with monsters and with strangers come from across the sea; others detail how Finn and his companions suffered from the enchantments of wizards and the efforts made to release them, one enumerates the Fenians who fell at Cnoc-an-áir, another gives the names of about three hundred of the Fenian hounds, another gives Ossian’s account of his three hundred years in the Land of the Young and his return, many more consist largely of semi-humorous dialogues between the saint and the old warrior; another is called Ossian’s madness; another is Ossian’s account of the battle of Gabhra, which made an end of the Fenians, and so on.2
The Lochlannachs, or Norsemen, figure very largely in these poems, and it is quite evident that most of them—at least in the modern form in which we now have them—are post-Norse productions. The fact that the language in which they have for the most part come down to us is popular and modern, does not prove much one way or the other, for these small epics which, more than any other part of Irish literature, were handed down from father to son and propagated orally, have had their language unconsciously adjusted from age to age, so as to leave them intelligible to their hearers. As a consequence the metres have in many places also suffered, and the old Irish system, which required a certain number of syllables in each line, has shown signs of fusing gradually with the new Irish system, which only requires so many accented syllables.
It is, however, perfectly possible—as has been supposed by, I think, Mr. Nutt and others—that after the terrible shock given to the island by the Northmen, this people usurped in our ballads the place of some older mythical race; and Professor Rhys was, I believe, at one time of opinion that Lochlann, as spoken of in these ballads, originally meant merely the country of lochs and seas, and that the Lochlanners were a submarine mythical people, like the Fomorians.
The spirit of banter with which St. Patrick and the Church are treated, and in which the fun just stops short of irreverence, is a mediæval, not a primitive, trait, more characteristic, thinks Mr. Nutt, of the twelfth than of any succeeding century. We may remember the inimitable felicity with which that great English-speaking Gael, Sir Walter Scott, has caught this Ossianic tone in the lines which Hector McIntyre repeats for Oldbuck—
“Patrick the psalm-singer,
Since you will not listen to one of my stories,
Though you have never heard it before,
I am sorry to tell you
You are little better than an ass;”
to which the saint, to the infinite contempt of the unbelieving antiquary, is made to respond—
“Upon my word, son of Fingal,
While I am warbling the psalms,
The clamour of your old woman’s tales
Disturbs my devotional exercises.”
Whereat the heated Ossian replies—
“Dare you compare your psalms
To the tales of the bare-armed Fenians,
I shall think it no great harm
To wring your bald head from your shoulders.”
Here, however, is a real specimen from the Irish, which will give some idea of the style of dialogue between the pair. St. Patrick, with exaggerated episcopal severity, having Ossian three-quarters starved, blind, and wholly at his mercy, desires him to speak no more of Finn or of the Fenians.
“OSSIAN.
“Alas, O Patrick, I did think that God would not be angered thereat; I think long, and it is a great woe to me, not to speak of the way of Finn of the Deeds.
“PATRICK.
“Speak not of Finn nor of the Fenians, for the Son of God will be angry with thee for it, he would never let thee into his court and he would not send thee the bread of each day.
“OSSIAN.
“Were I to speak of Finn and of the Fenians, between us two, O Patrick the new, but only not to speak loud, he would never hear us mentioning him.
“PATRICK.
“Let nothing whatever be mentioned by thee excepting the offering of God, or if thou talkest continually of others, thou, indeed, shalt not go to the house of the saints.
“OSSIAN.
“I will, O Patrick, do His will. Of Finn or of the Fenians I will not talk, for fear of bringing anger upon them, O Cleric, if it is God’s wont to be angry.”
In another poem St. Patrick denounces with all the rigour of a new reformer.
“PATRICK.
“Finn is in hell in bonds, ‘the pleasant man who used to bestow gold,’ in penalty of his disobedience to God, he is now in the house of pain in sorrow....
“Because of the amusement [he had with] the hounds and for attending the (bardic) schools each day, and because he took no heed of God, Finn of the Fenians is in bonds....
“Misery attend thee, old man, who speakest words of madness; God is better for one hour than all the Fenians of Erin.
“OSSIAN.
“O Patrick of the crooked crozier, who makest me that impertinent answer, thy crozier would be in atoms were Oscar present.
“Were my son Oscar and God hand to hand on Knock-na-veen, if I saw my son down it is then I would say that God was a strong man.
“How could it be that God and his clerics could be better men than Finn, the chief King of the Fenians, the generous one who was without blemish?
“All the qualities that you and your clerics say are according to the rule of the King of the Stars, Finn’s Fenians had them all, and they must be now stoutly seated in God’s heaven.
“Were there a place above or below better than heaven, ’tis there Finn would go, and all the Fenians he had....
“Patrick, inquire of God whether he recollects when the Fenians were alive, or hath he seen east or west, men their equal in the time of fight.
“Or hath he seen in his own country, though high it be above our heads, in conflict, in battle, or in might, a man who was equal to Finn?
“PATRICK.
“(Exhausted with controversy and curious for Ossian’s story.)
“‘Ossian sweet to me thy voice,
Now blessings choice on the soul of Finn!
But tell to us how many deer
Were slain at Slieve-na-man finn.’
“OSSIAN.
“‘We the Fenians never used to tell untruth, a lie was never attributed to us; by truth and the strength of our hands we used to come safe out of every danger.
“‘There never sat cleric in church, though melodiously ye may think they chant psalms, more true to his word than the Fenians, the men who shrank never from fierce conflicts.
“‘O Patrick, where was thy God the day the two came across the sea who carried off the queen of the King of Lochlann in ships, by whom many fell here in conflict.
“‘Or when Tailc mac Treoin arrived, the man who put great slaughter on the Fenians; ’twas not by God the hero fell, but by Oscar in the presence of all.
“‘Many a battle victory and contest were celebrated by the Fenians of Innisfail. I never heard that any feat was performed by the king of saints, or that he reddened his hand.’
“PATRICK.
“‘Let us cease disputing on both sides, thou withered old man who art devoid of sense; understand that God dwells in heaven of the orders, and Finn and his hosts are all in pain.’
“OSSIAN.
“‘Great, then, would be the shame for God not to release Finn from the shackles of pain; for if God Himself were in bonds my chief would fight on his behalf.
“‘Finn never suffered in his day any one to be in pain or difficulty without redeeming him by silver or gold or by battle and fight, until he was victorious.
“‘It is a good claim I have against your God, me to be amongst these clerics as I am, without food, without clothing or music, without bestowing gold on bards,
“‘Without battling, without hunting, without Finn, without courting generous women, without sport, without sitting in my place as was my due, without learning feats of agility and conflict,’” etc.
Many of these poems contain lyrical passages of great beauty. Here, as a specimen, is Ossian’s description of the things in which Finn used to take delight. It is a truly lyrical passage, in the very best style, rhyme, rhythm and assonance are all combined with a most rich vocabulary of words expressive of sounds nearly impossible to translate into English. It might be thus attempted in verse, though not quite in the metre of the original. Finn’s pursuits as depicted here by Ossian show him to have been a lover of nature, and are quite in keeping with his poem on Spring; his are the tastes of one of Matthew Arnold’s “Barbarians” glorified.