Ossian Collection > Waifs and strays of Celtic tradition > Volume 4

158 The Fians.
view of the Fians as the representatives of bodily strength. One
of the Fians {aon de'tt Fheiiut), looking at the sea breaking in
foam, was told that it was laughing at him. He was for rushing
out to chastise it.
The idea of personification is, however, entirely lost sight of by
reciters, and it belongs to the poet's skill that, while his words are
singularly descriptive of the angry Sea, such should be the case.
The lines enclosed within brackets (pp. 138-39), written down in
1870, from the dictation of James Cameron, a native of Morven
resident in Coll, are illustrative of ihis, and of the manner in which
modern ideas become involved with old tradition.