Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

INTRODUCTORY NOTE xvii
worthies. There is hardly a grown Highlander who
is not familiar with their names — they are household
words at the firesides of Irish peasants ; and the
characters and relationships of these mythical warriors
are almost invariably the same. They are the heroes
of Ossian.
Professor O' Curry holds that the "Fenians" were
historical Irish personages who flourished in the third
century, but he shows that Fer Fene was written
in the book of Ballymote in 1391, in a poem com-
posed in 1024, and he translates it "Fene men,
these were farmers." Still Finn's genealogy is traced
to no B.C.
Poems attributed to Finn Mac Cumhail, his sons
Oisin and Fergus Finnbheoil, and his kinsman Caelte,
do exist in Gaelic MSS., seven hundred years old.
Professor O'Curry says that the " Poems of
Ossian," as published in 1807 or 1760, or anything
like them from which they could have been trans-
lated, exist in ancient Irish manuscript; but he has
pointed out some of the incidents on which the first
book of Temora is founded, in one or two ancient
poems which were attributed to Oisin in the tenth
century.
According to Irish authorities, then, Gaelic poems
are preserved in ancient manuscript, and some of them
relate to the Ossianic heroes. But these were Irishmen
who lived, and loved, and fought in the third century,
and not Scotsmen ; while again, according to other
Irish authorities, these men flourished much later.
Scotch and British Fenians are mentioned, and Scotch
Oscars appear in Irish poems, even Danish Oscars are
named in Irish books ; and the feats attributed to the
ancient heroes who bore these Ossianic names, and
whose chief was Finn, are often the exploits of
giants and demigods.
"No tradition now current, and no ancient MS.
b