Ossian Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 3

THE STORY OF THE LAY OF THE GREAT FOOL. I 49
He put over the list and he drove the brain out of
him. "Be there, then, thou fifty over worse, as is
Donald the nurse's son, with an oaken skewer through
his ear."
He went in where the king was. " Creud orm,"
said he.
" Wlio art thou," said the king — " of the gentles or
ungentles of the realm, that hast such a speech ? "
" I am the great fool, the son of the knight's wife,
the nursling of the nurse, and the foster-brother of the
nurse's son, going to make folly for myself, and if need
were, it is I that could make a fool of thee also."
" Well, then, it is not thou that made me that, but
my coimsellor, on the day that I slew thy father, and
did not slay thy mother."
Then the king went with him. Every one, then,
that he fell in with in the town, they were going with
him, and that was their blessing, " Creud orm."
There was a splendid woman in the realm, and
there was a great "Fachach" that had taken her
away. The people thought, if they could bring him to
the presence of this woman, that he would set his head
upon her, and that he would let the people away ; that
it was likely they would come between himself and the
Fachach, and that the Fachach would kill him. That
time he was an utter fool.
[Of the poem, MacLean remarks: — "Some of the phrase-
ology and pronunciation is such as is considered Irish ; for ex-
ample, the particle ni for cha, dho for dha, cos for cas ; but these
forms of expression were common in the Highlands ; add to
which, a cultivated dialect was probably common to both coun-
tries. The versification is exceedingly harmonious and varied.
In some lines the number of syllables is shorter, to give room
for the emphasis and slow utterance required by the sense. In
reciting the poem, the pronunciation of the reciter was peculiar,
and differed widely from that of his conversational dialect.