“Patrick! there is to thee my story,
As it occurred to myself without a lie,
My going and my adventures in certain,
And my returning from the ‘Land of Youth.’”
Such is the picture we have of Ossian and his life in some of the Irish ballads. There is no resemblance between this poetry and that which Macpherson has given us. Oisin an Tirna-h-Oige is the production of a writer who lived not many centuries ago. It is certainly much more modern than even the Oisian of the older ballads, in which dialogues between the saint and the poet occur.
A very fine specimen of the old heroic poem of the Gael is the Battle of Cnoc-an-air. Here we have terrible fighting among the “Seven battalions of the standing Fenians.” The Irish versions of the dialogues between Patrick and Ossian are very much like those of Scotland.
CHAPTER VII.
MEDIEVAL BARDS.
“Gach fili ’s bard, gach léigh, aosdan is draoi,