Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

4 OSSIAN
Lutha, Malvina, call back his soul to the bard. I look
forward to Lochlin of lakes, to the dark billowy bay of
U-thorno, where Fingal descends from Ocean, from the
roar of winds. Few are the heroes of Morven, in a
land unknown !
Starno sent a dweller of Loda to bid Fingal to the
feast ; but the king remembered the past, and all his
rage arose. "Nor Gormal's mossy towers, nor Starno,
shall Fingal behold. Deaths wander like shadows over
his fiery soul I Do I forget that beam of light, the
white-handed daughter * of kings ? Go, son of Loda !
His words are wind to Fingal : wind, that, to and fro,
drives the thistle, in autumn's dusky vale. Duth-maruno,t
is generally prefixed to it. Two years after he took to wife
Ros-crana, the daughter of Cormac, king of Ireland, Fingal
undertook an expedition into Orkney, to visit his friend Cathulla,
king of Inistore. After staying a few days at Carric-thura, the
residence of Cathulla, the king set sail, to return to Scotland ;
but, a violent storm arising, his ships were driven into a bay of
Scandinavia, near Gormal, the seat of Starno, king of Lochlin,
his avowed enemy. Starno, upon the appearance of strangers
on his coast, summoned together the neighbouring tribes, and
advanced, in a hostile manner, towards the bay of U-thorno,
where Fingal had taken shelter. Upon discovering who the
strangers were, and fearing the valour of Fingal, which he had,
more than once, experienced before, he resolved to accomplish
by treachery what he was afraid he should fail in by open force.
He invited, therefore, Fingal to a feast, at which he intended to
assassinate him. The king prudently declined to go, and Starno
betook himself to arms. The sequel of the story may be learned
from the poem itself.
* Agandecca, the daughter of Starno, whom her father
killed, on account of her discovering to Fingal a plot laid
against his life. Her story is related at large in the third book
of Fingal.
t Duth-maruno is a name very famous in tradition. Many of
his great actions are handed down ; but the poems, which con-
tained the detail of them, are long since lost. He lived, it is
supposed, in that part of the north of Scotland which is over
against Orkney. Duth-maruno, Cromma-glas, Struthmor, and