Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

382 OSSIAN
were wandering flames, amidst disordered locks. For-
ward is her white arm, with the spear ; her high
heaving breast is seen, white as foamy waves that rise,
by turns, amidst rocks. They are beautiful but terrible,
and mariners call the winds ! "
"Come, ye dwellers of Loda!" she said, "come. Car-
char, pale in the midst of clouds ! Sluthmor that stridest
in airy halls ! Corchtur, terrible in winds ! Receive,
from his daughter's spear, the foes of Suran-dronlo. No
shadow, at his roaring streams ; no mildly-looking form
he! When he took up his spear, the hawks shook their
sounding wings : for blood was poured around the steps
of dark-eyed Suran-dronlo. He lighted me, no harmless
beam, to glitter on his streams. Like meteors, I was
bright, but I blasted the foes of Suran-dronlo."
Nor unconcerned heard Sul-malla, the praise of Cath-
mor of shields. He was within her soul, like a fire in
pompous, that for the sake of the inventors I shall conceal
them.
The wildly beautiful appearance of Runo-forlo made a deep
impression on a chief some ages ago, who was himself no con-
temptible poet. The story is romantic but not incredible, if we
make allowances for the lively imagination of a man of genius.
Our chief, sailing in a storm along one of the islands of Orkney,
saw a woman in a boat near the shore whom he thought, as he
expresses it himself, as beautiful as a sudden 7-ay of the S2(n on the
dark heaving deep. The verses of Ossian, on the attitude of
Runo-forlo, which was so similar to that of the woman in the
boat, wrought so much on his fancy that he fell desperately in
love. The winds, however, drove him from the coast, and after
a few days he arrived at his residence in Scotland. There his
passion increased to such a degree that two of his friends, fearing
the consequence, sailed to the Orkneys to carry to him the object
of his desire. Upon inquiry, they soon found the nymph, and
carried her to the enamoured chief ; but mark his surprise when,
instead of a ray of the sun, he saw a skinny fisherwoman more
than middle-aged appearing before him. Tradition here ends
the story, but it may be easily supposed that the passion of the
chief soon subsided.