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

33^ WEST HIGHLAXD TALES.
He threw down the arms altogether on the ground.
Then Fionn got his sword, and said he then —
" This is the one of my right hand."
Then he returned to the people he had left. He
got the t-ord fiannta (? Dord) of the Fian, and he
sounded it. (See illustration, page 287, for an ancient
horn, sculptured on a stone in the east of Scotland.)
There gathered all that were in the southern end of
Alba of the Fiantaichean to where he was. He went
with these men, and they went to attack the Loch-
laners, and those which he did not kill he swept them
out of Alba.*
* This, then, seems to be popular history, interlarded with
Celtic mythology. History of a successful rising of Celts in
Scotland, headed by a leader who was a Scandinavian by the
mother's side ; against the Scandinavians who had beaten them
twice before. Once and for a long time in Ireland, whence they
retired to Scotland, and again long afterwards, treacherously and
by the help of Irish allies in Scotland.
The mythology has to do with fish ; so has that of the two
stories which follow ; so, as an illustration, T have copied all the
fish which are figured in the " sculptured stones of Scotland,"
together with some of the characteristic ornaments which accom-
pany them.
It is remarkable that, with the exception of two, all these are
swimming from the left to the right of an observer, and that a
nondescript creature which is often figured on the same stones
with fish, heads the same way. I take the monster to be a repre-
sentation of a water animal, a walrus, by an artist who had never
seen one.
As no explanation has yet been found for the symbols, as fish
clearly have to do with Celtic mythology, and as Celtic mytho-
logy appears to have been mixed with solar and well worship,
it seems worth considering whether these symbols may not
have an astronomical n)eaning. One of the signs of the
Zodiac is and has been for many a day Pisces ; and the symbol is
K. The sua passes northwards through the constellation in