Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

TEMORA 249
white-bosomed maid to Atha. Bards raise the song
in her presence. Joy dwelt round the daughter of
Cathmin.
"The pride of Turloch rose, a youth who loved
the white-handed Con-lama. He came with battle to
Alnecma ; to Atha of the roes. Cormul went forth to
the strife, the brother of car-borne Crothar. He went
forth, but he fell. The sigh of his people rose. Silent
and tall, across the stream, came the darkening strength
of Crothar : he rolled the foe from Alnecma. He
returned, midst the joy of Con-lama.
" Battle on battle comes. Blood is poured on blood.
The tombs of the valiant rise. Erin's clouds are hung
round with ghosts. The chiefs of the south gathered
round the echoing shield of Crothar. He came with
death to the paths of the foe. The virgins wept, by
the streams of Ullin. They looked to the mist of
the hill : No hunter descended from its folds. Silence
darkened in the land. Blasts sighed lonely on grassy
tombs.
" Descending like the eagle of heaven, with all his
rustling wings, when he forsakes the blast, with joy,
the son of Trenmor came ; Conar, arm of death,
from Morven of the groves. He poured his might along
green Erin. Death dimly strode behind his sword. The
sons of Bolga fled, from his course, as from a stream,
that bursting from the stormy desert, rolls the fields to-
gether with all their echoing woods. Crothar* met him
* The delicacy here, with regard to Crothar, is proper.
As he was the ancestor of Cathmor, to whom the episode is
addressed, the bard softens his defeat by only mentioning
that his people fled. Cathmor took the song of Fonar in an
unfavourable light. The bards, being of the order of
the Druids, who pretended to a foreknowledge of events,
were supposed to have some supernatural prescience of futur-
ity. The king thought that the choice of Fonar's song
proceeded from his foreseeing the unfortunate issue of the
war ; and that his own fate was shadowed out in that of his