Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

266 T E M R J. BOOK vi.
I saw, along Moi-lena, the wild tumbling of battle, the strife of
death, in gleaming rows, disjoined and broken round. Fillan is
a beam of fire : from wing to wing is his wasteful course. The
ridges of war melt before him. Tlicy are rolled, in smoke, from
the fields.
Now is the coming forth of Cathmor, in the armour of kings !
Dark-rolled the eagle's wing above his helmet of fire. Uncon-
cerned are his steps, as if they v/ere to the chase of Atha. He
raised, at times, his dreadful voice \ Erin, abashed, gathered round.
Their souls returned back, like a stream : they wondered at the
steps of their fear : for he rose, like the beam of the morning on
a haunted heath : the traveller looks back, with bending eye, on
the 'field of dreadful forms. Sudden, from the rock of Moi-lena,
are Sul-malla's trembling steps. An oak took the spear from her
hand ; half-bent she loosed the lance : but then are her eyes on
the king, from amidst her wandering locks. " No friendly strife
is before thee : no light contending of bows, as when the youth
of Cluba* came forth beneath the eye of Con-mor."
As the rock of Runo, which takes the passing clouds for its
robe, seems growing, in gathered darkness, over the streamy heath ;
so seemed the chief of Atha taller, as gathered his people round.
As different blasts fly &ver the sea, each behind its dark-blue wave,
so Cathmor's words, on every side, poured his warriors forth.
Nor silent on his hill is Fillan ; he mixed his words with his echo-
ing shield. An eagle he seemed, with sounding wings, calling
the wind to his rock, when he sees the coming forth of the roes,
on Lutha'sf rushy field.
Now they bent forward in battle : death's hundred voices rose ;
for the kings, on either side, were like fires on the souls of the
people. I bounded along : high rocks and trees rushed tall be-
tween the war and me. But I heard the noise of steel, between
* Clu-ba, imnmncr bay ; an arm of the sea in Inis-huna, or the western coast of
South-Britain. It was in this bay that Cathmor was wind-bound when Sul-malla
came, in the disguise of a young warrior, to accompany him in his voyage to Ire-
land. Con-mor, the father of Sul-malla, as we learn from her soliloquy, at the close
of the fourth book, was dead before the departure of his daughter.
f Lutha was the name of a valley in I\iorven, in the days of Osslan. There
dwelt 'i'oscar the son of Conloch, the father of Malvina, who, upon that account,
io often called the maid of Lutha. Lutha signifies sivi/t stream.