Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

296 THE FIVE BARDS.
The hoary-headocl minstrel bring,
The deeds of other times to sing,—
Of mighty kings, renown'd of old,
Of chiefs that we no more behold !
Thus pass away the cheerful night,
Till the first gleams of morning light ;
Then youths the twanging bow assume,
And through the night's withdrawing gloom,
With tuneful dogs the morning cheer,
And climb the hills, and wake the deer !*
* We find the following account of an extraordinary chase in a
poem entitled the " Fingalian's Greatest Hunting" : — " Fingal sat
with Bran upon the plain beneath the hill. Every Fingalian sat
upon the hill of the chase till the stag had started. "We let loose
our three thousand hounds. Great was their strength, and match-
less their swiftness. Every hound killed two stags before the end of
the chase. Bran was only a whelp, yet he killed one stag more than
the rest. We killed six thousand and one stags on the plain beneath
the hill. In all my experience I never saw a chase like this."
Perhaps it may appear to some incredible, that so many deers as
are mentioned in this poem, were killed in one day. But w^hen we
consider that the Fingalians lived for the most part on venison, and
that they kept a vast number of grey-hounds, we may easily believe
that they might have performed deeds by means of then- dogs, that
appear astonishing to us now. It is probable, that the scene of this
great chase was in the Isle of Skye, on the estate of Lord M'Donald.