List if you wish to hear a lay
Of gentle folks long passed away,
Of him who was Prince; of Gulban's blue hill,
And sorrow-cursed Diarmid's sad legend of ill.
AUDIENCE.
Loved Ossian, sweetest voiced, what day
But sees us listeners to thy lay?
Such strains from no birds of the shoreland can float,
Though dawn give each leaf in the woodland a note.
OSSIAN.
My own good king was hunting gone,
They whom no deerlike terror won,
His Feinne, through the secret glens followed, and we
Descended the slopes that lead down to the sea.
Then saw our own great king, whose word
The Feinne, the brave, obeying heard,
A nine folded shaving of wood brightly curled,
Shining white, as to seaward the swift waters swirled.
He grasped it, scanning it, the coil
Hid five feet and a span of soil;
Then loudly he cried, "Ah, Diarmid is here,
No swordsman of Cormac, but Diarmid is near!"
In truth, my own good king then swore
To break his fast and drink no more,
Until were unearthed the vile face of his foe,
If the caves of all Erin should refuge bestow.
Our hounds we sent, and shouting went
Where o'er the vales the branches bent;
The wild-cat we chased from the glens, that the cheer
And cries of our hunting might fall on his ear.
He who was never weak in fight
Heard the loud voices strike the height;
To Grinie he cried, "Though the hounds do not bay,
I wait not their voice, to the hunt I'll away."