Matheson Collection > Popular tales of the west Highlands > Volume 1

INTRODUCTION. XXV
Gaelic, and to whom these stories are familiar, and
if this book should ever remind any of them of the
old country, I shall not have worked in vain in the
land which they call " Tir nam Beann, 's nan Gleann, s
nan Gaisgeach."*
So much, then, for the manner of collecting the tales,
and the people who told them. The popular lore which
I found current in the Avest, and known all over the
Highlands in a greater or less degree amongst the poorer
classes, consists of : —
1st. That Avhich is called Seanachas na Finne, or
Feinne, or Fiann, that is, the tradition or old history of
the Feene.
This is now the rarest of any, and is commonest,
so far as I know, in Barra and South Uist. There are
first fragments of poems which may have been taken
from the printed book, which goes by the name of the
History of the Finne in the Highlands, and the Poems
of Ossian elsewhere. I never asked for these, but I
was told that the words were " sharper and deeper "
than those in the printed book.
There are, secondly, poetical fragments about the
same persons, which, to the best of my knowledge, are
not in any printed book. I heard some of these re-
peated by three different men.
Patrick Smith, in South Uist, intoned a long frag-
ment ; I should guess, about 200 lines. He recited
it rapidly to a kind of chant. The subject was a fight
with a Norway witch, and Fionn, Diarmaid, Oscar and
Conan, were named as Irish heroes. There were
" ships fastened with silver chains, and kings holding
them ; " swords, spears, helmets, shields, and battles,
were mentioned ; in short, the fragment was the same
* The land of Hills, and Glens, and Heroes.