J. F. Campbell Collection > Transactions of the Ossianic Society > Volume 4

0. I have a little story respecting Fionn,
We were but fifteen men ;
We took the king of the Saxons, of the feasts,
And we won a battle against the king of Greece.
We conquered India, the great,
Great was our strength and our might ;
The country of Lochlin and eastern India,
Their tribute of gold comes to the house of Fionn.
He fought nine battles in Spain,
And nine score battles in noble Erin ;
There is no country from the river in which Christ
was baptised,
Whose tribute did not come to the house of Fionn.
He fought eight battles in southern Spain,
And Lochlin's chief king was his captive ;
Full wholly the world was under tribute to him,
'T was he was king of Minor Greece.
The third, the goodly Barow, which doth hoord
Great heapes *t salmones in his deepe bosome ;
All which long sundred, doe at last accord
To ioine in one, ere to the sea they come.
So flowing all from one, all one at last become."'
Spenser must be in error when attributing the same source to these
rivers; as the Barrow rises in Sliabh Bladhma in the Queen's County.
But we must presume he followed Giraldus Cambreusis— he being the
only writer on Irish history who fell into this mistake. See Haliday's
Keating, p. 29, Dub. 1809. Cambremis Eversus, Vol. I., p. 123. This
river formed a fruitful theme for the Munster Poets of the last century ;
and Eoghan Ruadh O'áuiUiobliain, a native of Sliabh Luachra in Kerry,
who died A.D. 1784, and is buried at Nohoval near Mill-street, wrote a
very beautiful Jacobite ballad to the air of Caiseall Mumhan, in which
he introduces it thus : —
"2t)A|t)]ot) onúccA le b-Air V* Sjuirte 'r n)e 50 cini)AC..U5 rAorj."
Beside the Suir on a dewy morning I was feebly laid,
and a street ballad, which is very popular in Munster, commencing thus : —
" The very arst day I left Carrick,
Was the twenty-ninth day of last June."
describes it» scenery most graphically.