Ossian Collection > Heroic and Ossianic literature

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Ossian had, however, before this, run away with the fairy Niam
to Tir-nan-og, the Land of the Ever-young. Here he remained two
hundred years. He returned, a great giant, still youthful, on a
white steed, from which he was cautioned not to dismount, if he
wished to return again to Tir-nan-og. He found eveiything
changed ; instead of the old temples of the gods, now there were
Christian churches. And the Feine were only a memory. He
saw some puny men raising a heavy block of stone. They could
not manage it ; so he put his hand to it and lifted it up on its
side ; but in so doing he slipped otf his horse, and fell to earth a
withered and blind old man. The steed at once rushed off.
Ossian was then brought to St Patrick, with whom he lived for
the I'est of his life, ever and anon recounting the tales of the
Feine to Patrick, the son of Calphurn, and disputing with him as
to whether the Feine were in heaven or not.
He tried once by magic means to recover his strength and
sight. The Gille Ruadh and himself went out to hunt, and he
brought down three large deer and carried them home. The old
man had a belt round his stomach with three skewers in it, so as
that he should not need so much food. The deer were set a-
cooking in a large cauldron, and the Gille Ruadh was watching it,
with strong injunctions not to taste anything of the deer. But
some of the broth spurted out on his hand and he put it to his
mouth. Ossian ate the deer one after the other, letting out a
skewer each time ; but his youth did not return, for the spell had
been broken by the Gille in letting the broth near his mouth.
Are the actors in these cycles- — those of Cuchulinn and Fionn
— historical personages 1 Is it history degenerated into myth,
or myth rationalised into history 1 The answer of the native
historian is always the same ; these legends and tales contain
real history. And so he proceeds to euhemerise and rationalise
the mythic incidents — a process which has been going on for the
last thousand years; mediteval monk and "ollamh," the seventeenth
century historians, the nineteenth century antiquarian and philo-
logist — all believe in the historical character and essential truth of
these myths. The late Eugene O'Curry considered the existence of
Fionn as a historical personage, as assured as that of Julius Csesar.
Pr-ofessor Windisch even is led astray by the vraisemblance of these
stories, and he looks on the mythic incidents of the Fionn Cycle
as borrowed from the previous Cuchulinn Cycle, and the myths
of the latter, especialy the birth incidents, he thinks drew upo.i
Christian legend. As a consequence, the myths and legends are
refined away, when presented as history, to such an extent that