Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 4

HEROES OF OSSIAN AUTHORITIES. 3 3
Poems attributed to Finn Mac Cumhail, his sons
Oisin and Fergus Finnbheoil, and his kinsman Caeltè,
do exist in Gaelic MSS. seven hundred years old. Five
of these poems are attributed to Finn himself, and exist
in the book of Leinster, which is said to have been com-
piled from older books in the latter part of the tweKth
century; and in the book of Leacan, compiled 1416. Two
poems attributed to Oisin are in the book of Leinster.
One consists of seven quatrains, and records the deaths
of Oscar the son of Oisin, and Cairbre Lifeachair,
monarch of Erinn, who fell by each other's hands at
the battle of Gabhra, " fought a.d. 284." The second
is longer, and records early races on the Curragh of Kil-
dare, wherein Oisin, Caeltè, and Finn were gentlemen
riders, and magical personages acted the part of modern
sharpers, and tempted the heroes into unhallowed dens
near Killarney, where they spent a wild night after the
races. Another Gaelic poem of undoubte'd antiquity
is attributed to Fergus, and tells how Oisin his brother
was enticed into a fairy cave, and discovered himself to
Finn by letting chips cut from his spear-shaft float
down a stream ; as Diarmaid betrayed his retreat to
Fionn in the tradition (page 43, voL iii.) Another is
a love story, wliich Caelte is supposed to have recited
to St. Patrick.
Professor O'Curry nowhere says that the "poems of
Ossian," as published in 1760 and 1807, or anything
like them from which they could have been translated,
exist in ancient Irish manuscripts, and gives no support
to the argument of his countryman ; but he also says,
" Of MacPherson's translations, in no single instance
VOL. IV, D