THE LEGENDS OF OISIN, BARD OF ERIN.
BY AUBREY DE VERE.
INTRODUCTORY.
Among the mountains and on the wild shores of Western Ireland are still recited, in the Gaelic, to eager listeners legends relating to Fionn Mac Cumbal and his son Oisin, known to the English reader chiefly under the names of Fingal and Ossian. Some of these “rhapsodies” have been recently published, with an English version, by the Irish “Ossianic Society,” and others by Mr. Hawkins Simpson, in a valuable volume called Oisin, the Bard of Ireland. Many poems on the same subject are included also in The Dean of Lismore’s Book, a work consisting of ancient Gaelic poetry, selected from a MS. collection made about A.D. 1514, by Sir James MacGregor, Dean of Lismore, an island in Argyllshire. The early Irish settlements in Western Scotland are largely referred to by the chroniclers and archæologists of Scotland. W. F. Skene, Esq., in his learned Introduction to the Dean’s book, informs us (though for Scotland, also, he claims Ossianic poetry) that, during the four centuries in which the great Celtic house of the “Lord of the Isles” held sway, there existed “not only a close political connection between the Western Highlands and Islands and Ireland, but the literary influence was equally close and strong; the Irish sennachies and bards were heads of a school which included the Western Highlands, and the Highland sennachies were either of Irish descent, or, if of native origin, resorted to bardic schools in Ireland for instruction in the language and accomplishments of their art.” ... “The oldest of the Gaelic MSS. preserved in the library of the Faculty of Advocates belongs to this period. They are all written in the Irish character; the language is the written language of Ireland; and they contain numerous specimens of the poetry of these Irish masters.”
Among the Ossianic poems still chanted in Ireland, not a few consist of dialogues between Oisin and Saint Patrick. They descend from a very remote antiquity, though they have been much modified in the course of ages. The bard, last of his race and clan, is represented as the guest of Saint Patrick in one of his convents. He accepts the Christian faith, though with misgivings, for he fears that he is thus false to the friends of his youth, and now and then his wrath blazes out against the monks, who have no faith in the chiefs of Inisfail. The saint beguiles his outbreaks by praying him to sing the old glories of the land.
Fionn, the father of Oisin, was the great commander of the Irish Feine, a standing army elected from all parts of the country, and invested with privileges which made it almost a kingdom within a kingdom. Individually, he belonged to the Feine of Leinster, the celebrated “Baoigne Clan.” Alarmed by the regal attributes assumed by Fionn, all the provincial kings of Ireland banded themselves together against him, and the battle of Gahbra, near Tara, in Meath, was fought, A.D. 286. In that battle almost all the chiefs of both sides perished, including Oscar, Oisin’s son, who commanded the Feine. Oscar is always represented as the gentlest, not less than the bravest of the Feine—the Hector of the Irish Troy.
Fionn and Oisin flourished, despite these poetic disputations, nearly two centuries before the time of Saint Patrick! Some have supposed, accordingly, that the Patrick of the Ossianic poems was some precursor of the Irish apostle. But the chronological discrepancy would probably have proved no counterweight to the strength of that instinct which made the national imagination insist on connecting the heroic with the saintly period of Ireland. A theme full of pathos and interest was presented by the blind old warrior bard, divided between his devotion to his father and his son on the one hand, and his reverence, on the other, for the teachers of the better faith—between old affections and new convictions—patriotic recollections and religious hopes.
I.
THE CONTENTION OF OISIN WITH PATRICK.[55]
[FROM ANCIENT IRISH SOURCES.]
When Patrick the faith to Oisin had preached,
He believed, and in just ways trod;
Yet oft for old days he grieved, and thus
Stormed oft at the saint of God.
“Woe, woe, for the priestly tribe this hour
On the Feine Hill have sway!
Glad am I that scarce their shapes I see;
Half-blind am I this day.
“Woe, woe, thou Palace of Cruachan!
Thy sceptre is down and thy sword,
The chase goes over thy grassy roof,
And the monk in thy courts is lord!
“Thou man with the mitre and vestments broad,
And the bearing of grave command,
Rejoice that Diarmid this day is dust!
Right heavy was his clinched hand!
“Thou man with the bell! I rede thee well,
Were Diorraing living this day,
Thy book he would take, and thy bell would break
On the base of yon pillar gray!
“Thou man with miraculous crosier-staff,
Though puissant thou art, and tall,
Were Goll but here, he would dash thy gear
In twain on thy convent wall!
“Were Conan living, the bald-head shrill,
With the flail of his scoff and gibe,
He would break thy neck, and thy convent wreck,
And lash from the land thy tribe!
“But one of our chiefs thy head had spared—
My Oscar—my son—my child:
He was storm in the foray, and fire in the fight,
But in peace he was maiden-mild.”
Then Patrick answered: “Old man, old man,
That pagan realm lies low.
This day Christ ruleth. Forget thy chiefs,
And thy deeds gone by forego!
“High feast thou hast on the festal days,
And cakes on the days of fast—”
“Thou liest, thou priest, for in wrath and scorn
Thy cakes to the dogs I cast!”
“Old man, thou hearest our Christian hymns:
Such strains thou hadst never heard—”
“Thou liest, thou priest! for in Letter Lee wood
I have listened its famed blackbird!
“I have heard the music of meeting swords,
And the grating of barks on the strand,
And the shout from the breasts of the men of help
That leaped from the decks to land.
“Twelve hounds had my sire, with throats like bells,
Loud echoed on lake and bay:
By this hand, they lacked but the baptism rite
To chant with thy monks this day!”
Oisin’s white head on his breast dropt down,
Till his hair and his beard, made one,
Shone out like the spine of a frosty hill
Far seen in the wintry sun.
“One question, O Patrick! I ask of thee,
Thou king of the saved and the shriven:
My sire, and his chiefs, have they their place
In thy city, star-built, of heaven?”
“Oisin, old chief of the shining sword,
That questionest of the soul,
That city they tread not who lived for war:
Their realm is a realm of dole.”
“By this head, thou liest, thou son of Calphurn!
In heaven I would scorn to bide,
If my father and Oscar were exiled men,
And no friend at my side.”
“That city, old man, is the city of peace:
Loud anthems, not widows’ wail—”
“It is not in bellowings chiefs take joy,
But in songs of the wars of Fail!
“Are the men in the streets like Baoigne’s chiefs?
Great-hearted like us are they?
Do they stretch to the poor the ungrudging hand,
Or turn they their heads away?
“Thou man with the chant, and thou man with the creed,
This thing I demand of thee:
My dog, may he pass through the gates of heaven?
May my wolf-hound enter free?”
“Old man, not the buzzing gnat may pass,
Nor sunbeam look in unbidden:
The King there sceptred knows all, sees all:
From him there is nothing hidden.”
“It never was thus with Fionn, our king!
In largess our Fionn delighted:
The hosts of the earth came in, and went forth
Unquestioned, and uninvited!”
“Thy words are the words of madness, old man,
Thy chieftains had might one day;
Yet a moment of heaven is three times worth
The warriors of Eire for aye!”
Then Oisin uplifted his old white head:
Like lightning from the hoary skies
A flash went forth ‘neath the shaggy roofs
Low-bent o’er his sightless eyes:
“Though my life sinks down, and I sit in the dust,
Blind warrior and gray-haired man,
Mine were they of old, thou priest overbold,
Those chiefs of Baoigne’s clan!”
And he cried, while a spasm his huge frame shook,
“Dim shadows like men before me,
My father was Fionn, and Oscar my son,
Though to-day ye stand vaunting it o’er me!”
Thus raged Oisin—’mid the fold of Christ,
Still roaming old deserts wide
In the storm of thought, like a lion old,
Though lamblike at last he died.
[55] The substance of this poem will be found among the translations of the Irish Ossianic Society.