Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

A POEM. 69
a stream of light. Who, among tlie m:iids, "was
like the love of heroes ?
Beneath the voice of the king we moved to
Crona * of the streams, Toscar of gi'assy Lutha,
and Ossian, young in fields. Three bards at-
tended v^ith songs. Three bossy shields were
borne before us : for we v/ere to rear the stone
. in memory of the past. By Crona's messy course
Fingal had scattered his foes : he had rolled away
the strangers like a troubled sea. We came to
the place of renown : from the mountains de-
scended night. I tore an oak from its hill, and
raised a flame on high. I bade my fathers to look
down from the clouds of their hall ; for, at the
fame of their race they brighten in the wind.
I took a stone from the stream, amidst the
song of bards. The blood of Fingal's foes hung
curdled in its ooze. Beneath I placed, at inter-
vals, three bosses from, the shields of foes, as rose
or fell the sound of Uliin's nightly song. Toscar
laid a dagger in earth, a mall of sounding steel.
We raised the mould around the stone, and bade
it speak to otlier years.
Oozy, daughter of streams that now art reared
on high, speak to the feeble, O stone ! after Sel-
* Crona, murmuring, was the name of a small stream
which discharged itself in the river Carron It is often
mentioned by Ossiau, and the scenes of many of his poems
are on its banks. The enemies whom Fii'gal defeated here
are not mentioned ; they were, probably, the provincial
Britons. That tract of countiy betv/een the Friths of Forth
and Clyde has been, through all antiquity, famous for bat-
tles and rencounte'S between the different nations who were
poisessed of North and South Britain. Stirling, a town
situated there, derives its name from that very circumstance.
It is a corruption of the GaUc name Strii.a, i, e. th-e kill or
mi of contd/iii'jn,
^OL. I. Y