Bards who were themselves composers as well as reciters, besides composing poems on the subjects of the day in which they lived, would likewise select the Fenian legends as their themes, and become imitators of the older Ossianic poetry. The prose narrative would form the basis of their poem; and thus would arise the third stage of their poems, in which they were reconstructed from the prose tales, and again appear as long poems, the names and incidents being the same as in the older poems, and the fragments of them preserved in the prose tale, imbedded in the new poem.
The poems of the first stage were probably common to Ireland and to Scotland, and traces of them are to be found wherever the Feinne were supposed to have once existed; though, in countries where their successors were of a different race, and spoke a different language, the continuity of the tradition would be at once broken.
Among the ancient poems in the Welsh language which have been preserved, there exists an Ossianic poem called Marwnad Coire map Daire, or the death-song of Curoi, son of Daire, the traditionary head, according to Irish history, of the Fenian militia of Munster, but who, as we have seen, appears to belong to the body called the Feinne of Breatan; and the poem, no doubt, belongs to the northern Cumbrian kingdom, which had Dunbreatan for its chief seat. Curoi is called Chief of the Southern Sea, and the contest between him and Cuchullin is mentioned.[37]
Poems of the same character seem also to have been known in the Isle of Man, as O’Connor, in his catalogue of the Stow ms., mentions a MS. containing “Finn and Ossian,—a Manx coronach, with Manx on one side of the page, and Irish on the other.”
The oldest which has been found in any MSS. preserved in the Highlands is a poem of five quatrains, at the end of a glossary contained in a MS. written prior to the year 1500. It is in old Gaelic, and there is an interlineal gloss, explaining the meaning of the expressions in more familiar language. At the end there is a line stating that Ossian was the author of the poem.
It may be not uninteresting to insert here the text of the poem, with its glosses:—
.i. do chodladar mo shuile Tuilsither mo dherca suain .i. mo sleagh .i. mo sgiath mo ruibhne mum luibhne ar lo .i. mo cladhiomh um dhorn mo ghenam um dhuais ro bhaoi .i. mo dhorn fam chluais agus mo dhuais fam o
.i. aislinge .i. tarla Adhbhul fisi ar mo ta .i. dar leiges .i. mo chu dar cinnius go dian mo chuib .i. ar mhuic ar criobhais a leirg ar art .i. saill go fiacuil a carbui fo cheird bracht go feic a cuil
.i. throigh .i. gun broigh Triocha treathan damh gun naibh .i. go moing a srona iona taoibh go a tul moing tuinn .i. orladh .i. na fiacuil Triocha nena Finn na feic .i. a sa cionn amach asseicsi tuas re fa thuinn
.i. coimed re coire gach sul di Meidis re habhron a dherc meidis re mes afert fo .i. tesgus mo cladhiomh a muineal Sealus mo ghenam a muin .i. mo chu as a cluais agus mo chuibh as a ho