SGIATHANACH.
FINGAL.
In the yellow sunset of ancient Celtic glory appear the band of warriors known as the Ossianic heroes. Under the magnifying and beautifying influence of that sunset they tower upon our sight with a stature and illustriousness more than human. Of these heroes, the greatest and best was Fionn or Fingal. Unless our traditions are extensively falsified he was a man in whom shone all those virtues which are the boast of our race. The unflinching performance of duty, the high sense of honour, the tenderness more than woman's, and the readiness to appreciate the virtues of others were among his more conspicuous characteristics. Now that Celtic anthropology is being so extensively discussed, is it not remarkable that Fingal, who so truly personifies the character of that race, is not adduced as the representative Celt? He was a Celt to the very core, and Celtic character has been in no small degree moulded by copying his example. He was, in truth, not the ultimus but the Primus Gaelorum.
Nevertheless, it must be confessed that to many English readers Fingal is nothing but a name, and that even to most of them he looms dark and dim through the mist of years. Unhappily, a nature so transcendently humane and heroic as his is not the sort to win the admiration of the vulgar. Nay, so far is its simple grandeur removed above the common materialism of modern life that the most refined cannot, at first sight, appreciate its exalted loveliness.
The fullest and, we believe, the truest account of him is to be found in Ossian's poems. That the poetry so denominated was, in substance, composed by Ossian we have no doubt. At any rate the descriptions of Fingal therein contained are not only consistent throughout, but also in accordance with all that we know of him from other sources. But were we even to adopt the absurd theory that Fingal is a creation of Macpherson's imagination, the intrinsic beauty of the picture well deserves our study.
An old man retaining all the energy, but not the rashness of youth; age with vigour instead of decrepitude, delighting in the words of sound wisdom rather than the usual tattle of second childhood; and, withal, an old man who is prone to moralise as old men are; a man able and willing to do his duty in the present though his heart is left in the past; such is the most prominent figure in these poems. He is pourtrayed as of tall, athletic frame and kingly port, his majestic front and hoary locks surmounted by the helm and eagle plume of the Celtic kings.
Though the idea of Fingal pervades most of Ossian's poems he is seldom introduced in propria persona. Even when attention is directed to him the poet merely and meagerly sketches the herculean outline, and leaves our imagination to do the rest:—