Ossian Collection > Poems of Oisin, bard of Erin

44
I have not heard music so good as this of
nature from the beginning of the great world up
to this time; I am aged, gloomy, and grey-headed,
and my regard is not towards the clerks on hills.*
O Patrick, hard is thy service, and shameful is
it for you to reproach me for my appearance ; if
Fionn lived, and the Fenii, I would forsake the
clergy of the cross.
The small dwarf who attended Fionn had pal-
try bones ; yet he played melodiously on the
harp, whilst I am here in grief with the clergy.
Fionn had twelve dogs ; when he let them hunt
through the glen they were more melodious than
the singing birds, or anything to be found from
the Suir out.
When Fionn the breaker of hosts would sit on
the hill and play the JDord-FIdan^f ah, my grief!
he was more musical than clergy.
* The first missionaries took possession of tlie groves,
cells, and high places of the druids ; the places to which the
pagans had been accustomed to resort.
f Dord-FUan, supposed to have been an instrument pro-
ducing a liumming sound {dord means hum), probably
made out of a shell.