The ideal of the saint and that of the hero: “Dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick”
As a prelude to the brief review proposed we shall do well to consider for a moment the contrariety between the new ideal of the Christian monk and the old ideal of the pagan hero as this oppositeness emerges in the so-called “Dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick.”[643] This poem discloses most impressively the vast revolution which the incoming of Christianity effected in the moral feelings and judgments of men.
Oisin, “the blind Homer of Erin,” is represented as in his old age entering into a controversy with the saint respecting the relative merits of the monk’s and the hero’s conception of worthiness. The dialogue runs as follows:
St. Patrick. Oisin, long is thy slumber, arise and listen to the psalm; forsaken is thy activity, forsaken thy strength, yet wouldst thou delight in battle and wild uproar.
Oisin. My swiftness and my strength have deserted me since the Fenii, with Fionn their chief, are no longer alive; for clerks I have no attachment, and their melodies are not sweet to me.
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O Patrick, hard is thy service, and shameful is it for you to reproach me for my appearance; if Fionn lived, and the Fenii, I would forsake the clergy of the cross.
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Patrick, pray thou to the God of heaven for Fionn of the Fenii and for his children, making entreaty of the prince, whose equal I have never heard of.
St. Patrick. O learned man, I desire not strife with thee, but I will not make request to heaven for Fionn, for all the actions of his life were to be in love and to urge the sounding chase.