I wrote down the following story from the mouth of John Cunningham of Ballinphuill, Co. Roscommon, on the high road between Frenchpark and Ballaghaderreen, about twenty years ago. Oscar's flail is well known in Irish tradition. The poet O'Kelly, in his series of English curses on Doneraile, alludes to it—
May Oscar with his fiery flail
To pieces dash all Doneraile.
Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., found a variant of this story in Donegal and has given a spirited poetic version of it. The story is also known in Waterford. It is probably spread all over the lands occupied by the Gael, and contains elements that are exceedingly old. The very verses about "the humming gnat or the scintilla of a beam of the sun" which I wrote down from the mouth of old John Cunningham in the Co. Roscommon, had been already jotted down in phonetics by Magregor, the Dean of Lismore, in Argyllshire in the year 1512. I printed the whole story with a French translation and introduction in the "Revue Celtique," vol. 13, p. 425, showing how in the Tripartite life of St. Patrick the story of piercing a penitent's foot is told of a son of the King of Munster. But, as his name was doubtless soon forgotten, the story got fathered upon Oisín.
The story had its rise, no doubt, in the sorrow felt by the people when the clerics told them that their beloved Fenians and Oisín and Finn were damned, and the story was probably invented by some clever person to save them from perdition. There are scores of MSS. which contain disputes between St. Patrick and Oisín, or Ossian as the Scotch call him, on this very subject. See "Religious Songs of Connacht," vol. I., p. 209. For the allusion to Elphin, see the poem which follows.
THE STORY
Saint Patrick came to Ireland, and Oisín met him in Elphin and he carrying stones.
And whatever time it might be that he got the food,
It would be long again till he would get the drink.
"Oisín," says he, "let me baptize you."
"Oh, what good would that do me?" says Oisín.