Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

68 DISSERTATION ON
which alludes to the union ofthe kingdoms of Norway
and Denmark, a circumstance which happened under
Margaret de Waldemar, in the close ofthe fourteenth
age. Modem, however, as this pretended Ossianwas,
it is certain he lived before the Irish had dreamed of
appropriating Fion, or Fingal, to themselves. He con-
cludes the poem with this reflection :
Na faffha secomhtlirom nan n' arm,
Erragoii Mac Annir nan laiin glas
'Sail ii' Albinni n' abairtair Triath
Agiis ghlaoite an n' Fliiona as.
• Had Erragon, son of Annir of gleaming swords,
avoided the equal contest of arms (single combat), no
chief should have afterward been numbered in Albion,
and the heroes of Fion should no more be named.'
The next poem that falls under our observation is
• Cath-cabhra,' or ' Tlie Death of Oscar.' This piece
is founded on the same story which we have in the
first book of Temora. So little thought the author of
Cath-cabhra of making Oscar his countryman, that,
in the course of two hundred lines, of which the poem
consists, he puts the following expression thrice in the
mouth of the hero :
Albin au sa d' roina m' arach.—
Albion, where I was born and bred.
The poem contains almost all the incidents in the first
book of Temora. In one circumstance the bard differs
materially from Ossian. Oscar, after he was mortally
wounded by Cairbar, was carried by his people to a
neighbouring hill, which commanded a prospect of the
sea. A fleet appeared at a distance, and the hero ex-
claims with joy,
Loingcas mo shean-athair at' an
'S iad a tiachd le cabhair chugain,
O Albin na n' ioma stuagh.
* It is the fleet of my grandfather, coming with aid to
our field, from Albion of many waves !' The testimony
of this bard is sufiicient to confute the idle fictions
of Keating and O'Flaherty, for, though he is far from
being ancient, it is probable he flourished a full cen-
tury before these historians. He appears, however, to
liave been a much better Christian than chronologer ;