"Cold the Winter, cold the Wind,
The Raging stag is Ravin'd,
Though in one Flag the Floodgates cling,
The Steaming Stag is belling."
[12] This was Diarmuid of the Love-spot, who eloped with Gráinne, and was killed by the wild boar, from whom the Campbells of Scotland claim descent, as is alluded to in Flora Mac Ivor's song in "Waverley":—
"Ye sons of Brown Diarmuid who slew the wild boar."
[13] "Is fada anocht i n-Ailfinn,
Is fada linn an oidhche aréir,
An lá andhiu cidh fada dham,
Ba leór-fhad an lá andé."
See p. 208 of my "Religious Songs of Connacht" for the original of this poem, which I copied from a MS. in the Belfast Museum. The Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted this poem down in phonetic spelling nearly four hundred years ago, but the name of Elphin, being strange to him, he took the words to be na neulla fúm, "the clouds round me," ni nelli fiym he spells it. Elphin is an episcopal seat in the county Roscommon, where St. Patrick abode for a while when in Connacht. I often heard in that county the story of Ossian meeting St. Patrick when drawing stones in Elphin, but always thought that the people of Roscommon localised the legend in their own county. But the discovery of the Belfast copy—and I believe there is another one in the British Museum—shows that this was not so, and the Dean of Lismore's book proves the antiquity of the legend. That Ailfinn (Elphin) was the original word is proved by rhyming to linn, sinn and Finn, which Fiym (= fúm) could not do.
[14] I once saw a letter in an Irish-American paper by some one whose name I forget, in which he alleged that in his youth he had actually seen the Ossianic lays thus acted.
[15] Like the Book of Lismore and others. See Sullivan's preface to O'Curry's "Manners and Customs."
[16] "Ich vermuthe," says Windisch ("Irische Texte," I. i. p. 63), "dass Ossin (Ossian) auf dieser Wege zu einer Dichtergestalt geworden ist. Die Gedichte die ihm in der Sage in den Mund gelegt werden, galten als sein Werk und wurden allmählig zum Typus einer ganzen Literaturgattung." But the same should hold equally true of Caoilte, in whose mouth an equal number of poems are placed.
[17] The following Ossianic poems have been published in the "Transactions of the Ossianic Society." In vol. iii., 1857, "The Lamentation of Ossian after the Fenians," 852 lines. In vol. iv., 1859, "The Dialogue between Ossian and Patrick," 684 lines: "The Battle of Cnoc an Áir," 336 lines; "The Lay of Meargach," 904 lines; "The Lay of Meargach's Wife," 388 lines; "The names of those fallen at Cnoc an Áir," 76 lines; "The Chase of Loch Léin," 328 lines; "The Lay of Ossian in the Land of the Ever-Young," 636 lines; and some smaller pieces. Vol. vi., 1861, contains: "The Chase of Slieve Guilleann," 228 lines; "The Chase of Slieve Fuaid," 788 lines; "The Chase of Glennasmóil," 364 lines; "The Hunt of the Fenians on Sleive Truim," 316 lines; "The Chase of Slieve-na-mon," 64 lines; "The Chase of the Enchanted Pigs of Angus of the Boyne" [son of the Dagda], 280 lines; "The Hunt on the borders of Loch Derg," 80 lines; "The Adventures of the Great Fool" [which, however, is not an Ossianic poem], 632 lines.
I have in my own possession copies of several other Ossianic poems, one of which, "The Lay of Dearg," in Deibhidh metre, consisting of 300 lines, is ascribed to Fergus, Finn's poet, not to Ossian.