Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

264 THE POETRY OF THE [iX.
encloses a whole world of legend as native to the Gael
of Scotland and Ireland, as the Arthurian legend is to
the lands of the Cymri. Where Arthui-'s story ends,
that of Fion and his Feinne begins.
Within that mountain barrier, all the Highlands of
Perthshire, Inverness-shire, and Argyll are fragrant with
memories of an old heroic race, called the Feinne, or
Fianntainean. Not a glen, hardly a mountain, but
contains some rock, or knoll, or cairn, or cave, named
from the Fenian warriors, whose memories people those
mountains like a family of ghosts. The language of the
native Gael abounds with allusions to them ; their names
are familiar in proverbs used at this hour.
Who were these Feinne ? To what age do they
belong ? Mr. Skene, our highest authority on all Celtic
matters, replies that they were one of those races which
came from Lochlan, and preceded the Milesian Scots,
both in Erin and in Alban. Lochlan is the most ancient
name of that part of North Germany which lies between
the mouths of the Rhine and the Elbe, before the name
was transferred to Scandinavia. From that North
German sea-board came the earliest race that peopled
Ireland, and Alban or the Scottish Highlands. During
their occupation, Ireland and the north of Scotland
were regarded as one territory, and the population
passed freely from one island to the other at a time
'when race, not territory, was the great bond of asso-
ciation.' Hence it came that the deeds and memories