The Dean of Lismore's Book: A Selection of Ancient Gaelic Poetry

by Unknown

Little volume go boldly forth, Rouse whom you reach to pure and godly strains; Hail the generous land of the Feinne, The Roughbounds and the Western Isles.

The Roughbounds were the districts from Morvaren to Glenelg, which, with the Isles, are thus called the land of the Feinne.

The districts in which the Fenian names enter most largely into the topography of the Highlands are Atholl, Lochaber, Lorn, and Morvaren, Glenelg, and the districts about Loch Ness; and the antiquity of this topography in the Highlands of Scotland is proved by an old gloss to a charter by Alexander the Second to the monks of Kinloss of the lands of Burgyn, within the ancient Celtic province of Moray, which is preserved in the Chartulary of the Bishopric. The boundary of the lands passes by a place called Tuber na Fein, meaning literally the well of the Feinne, and the gloss is “or feyne, of the grett or kempis men callit ffenis, is ane well.”

Cuchullin was of the race of the Cruithne, and belongs both to Ulster and to Scotland. In Ulster his seat was Dundealgan, and the scene of his exploits the district of Cuailgne and the mountains of Sleave Cuillin; but even Irish tradition admits that he was reared by Sgathaig, in the Isle of Skye, and here we have Dunsgathaig and the Cuillin Hills.

The children of Uisneach were likewise Cruithne, and must have preceded the Scots, for the great scene of their Scotch adventures are the districts of Lorn, Loch Aw, and Cowall, afterwards the possessions of the Dalriadic Scots; thus, in the vicinity of Oban, we have Dun mhic Uisneachan, now corruptly called in guide-books Dun mac Sniachan, a fort with vitrified remains; and here we have on Loch Etive, Glen Uisneach, and Suidhe Deardhuil. The names of the three sons of Uisneach were Ainle, Ardan, and Naoise; and it is remarkable that Adomnan, in his life of St. Columba, written in the seventh century, appears to mention only three localities in connexion with St. Columba’s journey to the palace of the king of the Picts, near Loch Ness, and these are Cainle, Arcardan, and the flumen Nesae. Two vitrified forts in the neighbourhood of Lochness are called Dundeardhuil.[36]

The hunt of Diarmed O’Duine after the boar on Bengulbain, and his death by measuring his length against the bristles, enters into Scotch topography in three different localities; in Glenshee, where there is a hill called Bengulbain, also in Glenroy, where we have also a Bengulbain and an Eassroy, and also on the south bank of Loch Ness. Daire donn, who appears in the Cath Finntragha identified by the Irish with Ventry, has also deposited his name on a mountain in Ardgour, close to the west sea, called Meall Dayre donn.

The mountain streams and lakes in these districts of the Highlands are everywhere redolent of names connected with the heroes and actions of the Feinne, and show that a body of popular legends connected with them, whether in poetry or in prose, preserved by oral recitation or committed to writing, must have existed in the country when this topography sprung up, though it does not follow that the events, though now associated with the scenery of the country, originally happened there any more than does the Fenian topography of Ireland.

These legendary poems and tales seem to have passed through three different stages.

In the first and oldest form they were pure poems, of more or less excellence, narrating the adventures and deeds of these warrior bands, whose memory still lingered in the country; each poem being complete in itself, and constructed upon a metrical system which brought the aid of alliteration and of rhyme, or correspondence of sounds, to assist the memory in retaining what had been received by oral recitation, and to render it less easy to forget or lose a part. These poems seem generally to have been attributed to one mythic poet of the race they celebrate.

Then, as the language in which these poems were composed became altered or modified, or as the reciters were less able to retain the whole, they would narrate, in ordinary prose, the events of the part of the poem they had forgotten, and merely recite the poetry of what they recollected; and thus they would pass into the second stage of prose tales, interspersed with fragments of poetry.