“Finn’s Pastimes
“Oh, croaking Patrick, I curse your tale.
Is the King of the Fenians in hell this night?
The heart that never was seen to quail,
That feared no danger and felt no spite.3
What kind of a God can be yours, to grudge
Bestowing of food on him, giving of gold?
Finn never refused either prince or drudge;
Can his doom be in hell in the house of cold.4
The desire of my hero who feared no foe
Was to listen all day to Drumderrig’s sound,
To sleep by the roar of the Assaroe,
And to follow the dun deer round and round.
The warbling of blackbirds in Letter Lee,
The strand where the billows of Ruree fall,
The bellowing ox upon wild Moy-mee,
The lowing of calves upon Glen-da-vaul.
The blast of a horn around Slieve Grot,
The bleat of a fawn upon Cua’s plain,
The sea-birds scream in a lonely spot,
The croak of the raven above the slain.
The wash of the waves on his bark afar,
The yelp of the pack as they round Drumliss,
The baying of Bran upon Knock-in-ar,
The murmur of fountains below Slieve Mis.
The call of Oscar upon the chase,5
The tongue of the hounds on the Fenians’ plain,
Then a seat with the men of the bardic race,
—Of these delights was my hero fain.
But generous Oscar’s supreme desire,
Was the maddening clashing of shield on shield,
And the hewing of bones in the battle ire,
And the crash and the joy of the stricken field.”6
In entire accordance with this enthusiastic love of nature is Ossian’s delightful address to the blackbird of Derrycarn, a piece which was a great favourite with the scribes of the last century.7 Interpenetrated with the same almost sensuous delight at the sights and sounds of nature, are the following verses which the Scotsman, Dean Macgregor, wrote down—probably from the recitation of a wandering harper or poet—some three hundred and eighty years ago.
“Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,8
And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.
Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze
The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun,
The blackbird is warbling amongst the trees,
And soft is the kiss of the warming sun.
The cry of the eagle at Assaroe
O’er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet;
And sweet is the cry of the bird below,
Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet.
Finn mac Cool is the father of me,
Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear,
When he launches his hounds on the open lea,
Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.”
Caoilte [Cweeltya] too, the third great Fenian poet, was as impressionable to the moods of nature as his friends Ossian and Finn. Compare with the foregoing poems his lay on the Isle of Arran, in Scotland.9
THE ISLE OF ARRAN.
“Arran of the many stags, the sea inpinges upon her very shoulders! An isle in which whole companies were fed, and with ridges among which blue spears are reddened.
“Skittish deer are on her pinnacles, soft blackberries on her waving heather; cool water there is in her rivers, and musk upon her russet oaks.10
“Greyhounds there were in her and beagles, blackberries and sloes of the dark blackthorn, dwellings with their backs set close against her woods, while the deer fed scattered by her oaken thickets.
“A crimson crop grew on her rocks, in all her glades a faultless grass; over her crags affording friendly refuge leaping went on, and fawns were skipping.
“Smooth were her level spots, fat her wild swine, cheerful her fields... her nuts hung on the boughs of her forest hazels, and there was sailing of long galleys past her.
“Right pleasant their condition, all, when the fair weather set in. Under her river-banks trouts lie; the seagulls wheeling round her grand cliff answer one the other—at every fitting time delectable is Arran!”
In another poem that Caoilte is fabled to have made after he met and consorted with St. Patrick is a vivid description of a freezing night as it appeared to a hunter. A great frost and heavy snow had fallen upon the whole country, so that the russet branches of the forest were twisted together, and men could no longer travel. “A fitting time it is now,” said Caoilte, “for wild stags and for does to seek the topmost points of hills and rocks; a timely season for salmons to betake them into cavities of the banks,” and he uttered a lay.
“Cold the winter is, the wind is risen, the high-couraged unquelled stag is on foot, bitter cold to-night the whole mountain is, yet for all that the ungovernable stag is belling.11
“The deer of Slievecarn of the gatherings commits not his side to the ground; no less than he, the stag of frigid Echtgé’s summit who catches the chorus of the wolves.
“I, Caoilte, with Brown Diarmuid,12 and with keen, light-footed Oscar; we too in the nipping nights’ waning end, would listen to the music of the [wolf] pack.
“But well the red deer sleeps that with his hide to the bulging rock lies stretched, hidden as though beneath the country’s surface, all in the latter end of chilly night.
“To-day I am an aged ancient, and but a scant few men I know; once on time, though, on a cold and icebound morning I used to vibrate a sharp javelin hardily.
“To Heaven’s King I offer thanks, to Mary Virgin’s Son as well; often and often I imposed silence on [daunted] a whole host, whose plight to-night is very cold [i.e., who are all dead now].”
It is curious that in the more modern Ossianic pieces, such as the scribes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries delighted in transcribing, there is little mention made of Caoilte, and the complaints about surviving the Fenians and being vexed by the clerics are more usually put into the mouth of Ossian.
Here is one of the moans of Ossian in his old age, when fallen on evil times, and thwarted at every turn by St. Patrick and his monks.
Long was last night in cold Elphin,13
More long is to-night on its weary way,
Though yesterday seemed to me long and ill,
Yet longer still was this dreary day.
And long for me is each hour new born,
Stricken, forlorn, and smit with grief
For the hunting lands and the Fenian bands,
And the long-haired, generous, Fenian chief.
I hear no music, I find no feast,
I slay no beast from a bounding steed,
I bestow no gold, I am poor and old,
I am sick and cold, without wine or mead.
I court no more, and I hunt no more,
These were before my strong delight,
I cannot slay, and I take no prey:
Weary the day and long the night.
No heroes come in their war array,
No game I play, there is nought to win;
I swim no stream with my men of might,
Long is the night in cold Elphin.
Ask, O Patrick, thy God of grace,
To tell me the place he will place me in,
And save my soul from the Ill One’s might,
For long is to-night in cold Elphin.”
There is a considerable thread of narrative running through these poems and connecting them in a kind of series, so that several of them might be divided into the various books of a Gaelic epic of the Odyssic type, containing instead of the wanderings and final restoration of Ulysses, the adventures and final destruction of the Fenians, except that the books would be rather more disjointed. There is, moreover, splendid material for an ample epic in the division between the Fenians of Munster and Connacht and the gradual estrangement of the High-king, leading up to the fatal battle of Gabhra; but the material for this last exists chiefly in prose texts, not in the Ossianic lays. It is very strange and very unfortunate that notwithstanding the literary activity of Gaelic Ireland before and during the penal times, no Keating, or Comyn, or Curtin ever attempted to redact the Ossianic poems and throw them into that epic form into which they would so easily and naturally have fitted. These pieces appear to me of even greater value than the Red Branch sagas, as elucidating the natural growth and genesis of an epic, for the Irish progressed just up to the point of possessing a large quantity of stray material, minor episodes versified by anonymous long-forgotten folk-poets; but they never produced a mind critical enough to reduce this mass to order, coherence, and stability, and at the same time creative enough to itself supply the necessary lacunæ. Were it not that so much light has by this time been thrown upon the natural genesis of ancient national epics, one might be inclined to lay down the theory that the Irish had evolved a scheme of their own, peculiar to themselves, and different altogether from the epic, a scheme in which the same characters figure in a group of allied poems and romances, each of which, like one of Tennyson’s idylls, is perfect in itself, and not dependent upon the rest, a system which might be taken to be a natural result of the impatient Celtic temperament which could not brook the restraints of an epic.
The Ossianic lays are almost the only narrative poems which exist in the language, for although lyrical, elegiac, and didactic poetry abounds, the Irish never produced, except in the case of the Ossianic épopées, anything of importance in a narrative and ballad form, anything, for instance, of the nature of the glorious ballad poetry of the Scotch Lowlands.
The Ossianic metres, too, are the eminently epic ones of Ireland. It was a great pity, and to my thinking a great mistake, for Archbishop Mac Hale not to have used them in his translation of Homer, instead of attempting it in the metre of Pope’s Iliad—one utterly unknown to native Ireland.
I have already observed that great producers of literature as the Irish always were—until this century—they never developed a drama. The nearest approach to such a thing is in these Ossianic poems. The dialogue between St. Patrick and Ossian—of which there is, in most of the poems, either more or less—is quite dramatic in its form. Even the reciters of the present day appear to feel this, and I have heard the censorious self-satisfied tone of Patrick, and the querulous vindictive whine of the half-starved old man, reproduced with considerable humour by a reciter. But I think it nearly certain—though I cannot prove it14—that in former days there was real acting and a dialogue between two persons, one representing the saint and the other the old pagan. It was from a less promising beginning than this that the drama of Æschylus developed. But nothing could develop in later Ireland. Everything, time after time, was arrested in its growth. Again and again the tree of Irish literature put forth fresh blossoms, and before they could fully expand they were nipped off. The conception of bringing the spirit of Paganism and of Christianity together in the persons of the last great poet and warrior of the one, and the first great saint of the other, was truly dramatic in its conception, and the spirit and humour with which it has been carried out in the pieces which have come down to us are a strong presumption that under happier circumstances something great would have developed from it. If any one is still found to repeat Macaulay’s hackneyed taunt about the Irish race never having produced a great poem, let him ask himself if it is likely that a country, where, for a hundred years after Aughrim and the Boyne, teachers who for long before that had been in danger, were systematically knocked on the head, or sent to a jail for teaching; where children were seen learning their letters with chalk on their father’s tombstones—other means being denied them; where the possession of a manuscript might lead to the owner’s death or imprisonment, so that many valuable books were buried in the ground, or hidden to rot in walls15—whether such a country were a soil on which an epic or anything else could flourish. How, in the face of all this, the men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries preserved in manuscript so much of the Ossianic poetry as they did, and even rewrote or redacted portions of it, as Michael Comyn is said to have done to “Ossian in the Land of the Ever-Young,” is to me nothing short of amazing.
Of the authorship of the Ossianic poems nothing is known. In the Book of Leinster are three short pieces ascribed to Ossian himself, and five to Finn, and other old MSS. contain poems ascribed to Caoilte, Ossian’s companion and fellow survivor, and to Fergus, another son of Finn; but of the great mass of the many thousand lines which we have in seventeenth and eighteenth century MSS. there is not much which is placed in Ossian’s mouth as first hand, the pieces as I have said generally beginning with a dialogue, from which Ossian proceeds to recount his tale. But this dramatic form of the lay shows that no pretence was kept up of Ossian’s being the singer of his own exploits.16 From the paucity of the pieces attributed to him in the oldest MSS. it is probable that the Gaelic race only gradually singled him out as their typical pagan poet, instead of Fergus or Caoilte or any other of his alleged contemporaries, just as they singled out his father Finn, as the typical pagan leader of their race; and it is likely that a large part of our Ossianic lay and literature is post-Danish, while the great mass of the Red Branch saga is in its birth many centuries anterior to the Norsemen’s invasion.17
Notes
1 In Irish Oisín, pronounced “Esheen,” or “Ussheen.” However, the Scotch Gaelic form has, thanks to the genius of Macpherson, so overshadowed the Irish one that it may be allowed to remain.
2 Standish Hayes O’Grady, in the third vol. of the Ossianic Society, gives the names of thirty-five of these poems, amounting to nearly 11,000 lines. The Ossianic Society printed about 6,000 lines. The Franciscans have shown me a MS. with over 10,000 lines, none of which has been printed.
3 In the original Ossian asks—
“An éagcóir nár mhaith le Dia
Ór a’s biadh do thabhairt do neach?
Nior dhiultaigh Fionn treun ná truagh
Ifrionn fuar má ’s é a theach.”
4 Irish writers always describe Hell as cold, not hot. This is so even in Keating. The “cold flag of hell.”
5 In the original—
“Glaodh Oscair ag dul do sheilg
Gotha gadhar ar leirg na bh Fiann
Bheith ’na shuidhe ameasg na ndámh
Ba h-é sin de ghnáth a mhian.
Mian de mhianaibh Oscair fhéil
Bheith ag éisteacht re béim sgiath,
Bheith i gcath ag cosgar cnámh
Ba h-é sin de ghnáth a mhian.”
6 Literally: “O Patrick, woful is the tale that the Fenian king should be in bonds, a heart devoid of spite or hatred, a heart stern in maintaining battles.
“Is it an injustice at which God is not pleased to bestow gold and food on any one? Finn never refused either the strong or the wretched, although cold Hell is his house.
“It was the desire of the son of Cúmhal of the noble mien to listen to the sound of Drumderg, to sleep by the stream of the Assaroe, and to chase the deer of Galway of the bays.
“The warbling of the blackbird of Letter Lee, the wave of Ruree [Dundrum Bay in the County Down] lashing the shore, the bellowing of the ox of Moy Meen, the lowing of the calf of Glendavaul.
“The cry of the hunting of Slieve Grot, the noise of the fawns around Slieve Cua, the scream of the seagulls over yonder Irris, the cry of the ravens over the host.
“The tossing of the hulls of the barks by the waves, the yell of the hounds at Drumlish, the voice of Bran at Knockinar, the murmur of the streams around Slieve Mis.
“The call of Oscar, going to the chase, the cry of the hounds at Lerg-na-veen—(then) to be sitting amongst the bards: that was his desire constantly.
“A desire of the desires of generous Oscar, was to be listening to the crashing of shields, to be in the battle at the hewing of bones: that was ever his desire.” (See Ossianic Society, vol. iv. The Colloquy between Ossian and Patrick.)
7 Printed by O’Flanagan in the “Transactions of the Gaelic Society,” 1808, and translated by Dr. Sigerson in his “Bards of the Gael and Gall.” I cannot refrain from the pleasure of quoting the following verses from his beautiful translation:—
“The tuneful tumult of that bird,
The belling deer on ferny steep:
This welcome in the dawn he heard,
These soothed at eve his sleep.
Dear to him the wind-loved heath,
The whirr of wings, the rustling brake;
Dear the murmuring glens beneath,
And sob of Droma’s lake.
The cry of hounds at early morn,
The pattering deer, the pebbly creek,
The cuckoo’s call, the sounding horn,
The swooping eagle’s shriek.”
8 See p. 59 of the Gaelic part of the book of the Dean of Lismore. The first verse runs thus in modern Gaelic:—
“Binn guth duine i dtir an óir,
Binn an glór chanaid na h-eóin,
Binn an nuallan a gnidh an chorr,
Binn an tonn i mBun-da-treóir.”
9 See “Silva Gadelica,” p. 109 of the English, p. 102 of the Irish volume. I retain Mr. O’Grady’s beautiful translation of this and the following piece.
10 “Oighe baetha ar a bennaib
Monainn maetha ar a mongaib,
Uisce fuar ina h-aibhnib,
Mes ar a dairghib donnaib.”
Note the exquisite metre of this poem of which the above verse is a specimen.
11 This, like most of the couple of thousand verses scattered throughout the “Colloquy of the Ancients,” is in Deibhidh metre, which would thus run in English:—
“Cold the Winter, cold the Wind,
The Raging stag is Ravin’d,
Though in one Flag the Floodgates cling,
The Steaming Stag is belling.”
12 This was Diarmuid of the Love-spot, who eloped with Gráinne, and was killed by the wild boar, from whom the Campbells of Scotland claim descent, as is alluded to in Flora Mac Ivor’s song in “Waverley”:—
“Ye sons of Brown Diarmuid who slew the wild boar.”
13 “Is fada anocht i n-Ailfinn,
Is fada linn an oidhche aréir,
An lá andhiu cidh fada dham,
Ba leór-fhad an lá andé.”
See p. 208 of my “Religious Songs of Connacht” for the original of this poem, which I copied from a MS. in the Belfast Museum. The Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted this poem down in phonetic spelling nearly four hundred years ago, but the name of Elphin, being strange to him, he took the words to be na neulla fúm, “the clouds round me,” ni nelli fiym he spells it. Elphin is an episcopal seat in the county Roscommon, where St. Patrick abode for a while when in Connacht. I often heard in that county the story of Ossian meeting St. Patrick when drawing stones in Elphin, but always thought that the people of Roscommon localised the legend in their own county. But the discovery of the Belfast copy—and I believe there is another one in the British Museum—shows that this was not so, and the Dean of Lismore’s book proves the antiquity of the legend. That Ailfinn (Elphin) was the original word is proved by rhyming to linn, sinn and Finn, which Fiym (= fúm) could not do.
14 I once saw a letter in an Irish-American paper by some one whose name I forget, in which he alleged that in his youth he had actually seen the Ossianic lays thus acted.
15 Like the Book of Lismore and others. See Sullivan’s preface to O’Curry’s “Manners and Customs.”
16 “Ich vermuthe,” says Windisch (“Irische Texte,” I. i. p. 63), “dass Ossin (Ossian) auf dieser Wege zu einer Dichtergestalt geworden ist. Die Gedichte die ihm in der Sage in den Mund gelegt werden, galten als sein Werk und wurden allmählig zum Typus einer ganzen Literaturgattung.” But the same should hold equally true of Caoilte, in whose mouth an equal number of poems are placed.
17 The following Ossianic poems have been published in the “Transactions of the Ossianic Society.” In vol. iii., 1857, “The Lamentation of Ossian after the Fenians,” 852 lines. In vol. iv., 1859, “The Dialogue between Ossian and Patrick,” 684 lines: “The Battle of Cnoc an Áir,” 336 lines; “The Lay of Meargach,” 904 lines; “The Lay of Meargach’s Wife,” 388 lines; “The names of those fallen at Cnoc an Áir,” 76 lines; “The Chase of Loch Léin,” 328 lines; “The Lay of Ossian in the Land of the Ever-Young,” 636 lines; and some smaller pieces. Vol. vi., 1861, contains: “The Chase of Slieve Guilleann,” 228 lines; “The Chase of Slieve Fuaid,” 788 lines; “The Chase of Glennasmóil,” 364 lines; “The Hunt of the Fenians on Sleive Truim,” 316 lines; “The Chase of Slieve-na-mon,” 64 lines; “The Chase of the Enchanted Pigs of Angus of the Boyne” [son of the Dagda], 280 lines; “The Hunt on the borders of Loch Derg,” 80 lines; “The Adventures of the Great Fool” [which, however, is not an Ossianic poem], 632 lines.
I have in my own possession copies of several other Ossianic poems, one of which, “The Lay of Dearg,” in Deibhidh metre, consisting of 300 lines, is ascribed to Fergus, Finn’s poet, not to Ossian.
“Is mé Feargus, file Fhinn
De gnáith-fhéinn Fhinn mhic Cúmhail,
O thásg na bhfear sin nár lag
Trian a ngaisge ni inneósad.”
In the library of the Franciscans’ Convent in Dublin there is a seventeenth-century collection of Ossianic poems, all in regular classical metres, containing, as I have computed, not less than 10,000 lines. Not one of these poems has been, so far as I know, ever published. The poems printed by the Ossianic Society are not in the classical metres, though I suspect many of them were originally so composed, but they have become corrupted passing from mouth to mouth.