On me she smiled with look benign,

On me her love bestowed

With mutual flame our bosoms glowed, And she was wholly mine.

On deeds of high achievement bent,
To Drum-da-hore we boldly went,
Where Cormac for our coming lay
With seven armed bands in dense array.
Of triumph sure they thither came,
In all their shining pride,

Like to a bright and bickering flame
Along the mountain side.

V.

Eight champions strong to conflict bred,
Of Firbolg race, great Cormac led;
Stout Durra, marked with many a scar;
The son of Toscar, famed in war;
Macalla, Taog, Freasdal young,
A chief from Erin's monarchs sprung:
Daire ne'er in action slow or cold,
And stalwart Daol tough and bold;
Great Cormac's standard-bearer he,
Ne'er known to blench, to yield, or flee.

VI.

Eight champions, too, your Ossian leads,
All equal in heroic deeds.

Mulla, MacScein, and Fial strong,
And Schelecha, a chief among
The Fenian host; with Fillan paired
Rough Carol of the bushy beard;
Dunrivan, who, still undismayed,
Could wield in fight no gentle blade;
And Ogar, with his warlike band,
Against the Firbolgs took their stand.

VII.

Eager for fight, upon the green,

Two champions sprang the hosts between;
And there engaged in open space,

Ogar and Daol,* face to face,

And well each chief sustained his part
With ward and thrust, with strength and art.
Such contest storms with ocean wage,
When forth they sally in their rage,
And by the hoarse-resounding shore,
The thundering billows chafe and roar.
So fight, as foreign bards have sung,
Two lions fierce with fury stung;
And while they fought with equal skill
To push, to parry, and to ward,
The blood, in many a crimson rill,

Soon tinged the grass-green sward.
Till grappled close, in pressing need,
His skein brave Ogar seized with speed,
Deep plunged it in his foe-man's side,
And nine times sluiced life's crimson tide;
Yet Daol fought all drenched with gore-
Then fell to rise no more.

VIII.

As sledges on the anvils sound,
And stun the rustics gathered round,
So did their contest dire

Both armies stun-till foes with foes

Commingling fought-blows answered blows,

*In Dr. Young's copy of the original Gaelic, Toscair, it is presumed, has by mistake been substituted for Ogar-for Toscair and Daol were both in the army of Cormac. Moreover the names of the duellists are the Ogar and Dala of the fourth book of Macpherson's Fingal. "Ogar met Dala the strong, face to face, on the field of heroes. The battle of the chiefs was like wind, on ocean's foamy waves. The dagger is remembered by Ogar, the weapon which he loved. Nine times he drowned it in Dala's side. The stormy battle turned. Three times I broke on Cormac's shield: three times he broke his spear. But, unhappy youth of love! I cut his head away. Five times I shook it by the lock."

120 THE LAY OF OSSIAN'S COURTSHIP OF EVIRALLIN.

And Ossian, with resistless might,
Swept through the densest ranks of fight,
A hurricane of fire.

Full fifty bossy shields he cleft,

And on the blood-drenched mountain left.
And Cormac, too, with fracturing stroke,
Full fifty swords in fragments broke.
But ere night's sable shades were spread,
Had I from Cormac shorn the head.
By the grisly locks that head I shook,
As my station on a mound I took,
That the warrior chiefs of Innisfail
Might see-and loud our victory hail.
Stout should have been the chief, and bold—
Sharp, too, his steel-who then had told
That I should fall thus low.
Thus helpless, friendless, lie forlorn,
Of all my former glories shorn,
Thus sunk in want and woe.
Well would my keen avenging blade
Such coarse rude insult have repaid.

THE LAY

OF

THE CHASE OF SLIEVE-NA-MAN.

SLIABH-NA-MBAN, pronounced Slieve-na-Man, is a mountain in the county of Tipperary, a few miles distant from the honey-vale of Clonmel. It is marked in the Ordnance Survey, as 2,364 feet in height, and is a very conspicuous object to a wide extent of the surrounding country, which, Mrs. Hall "6 says, may be emphatically called an Ossianic locality." According to our learned antiquary, General Vallancey, it was once, as its name indicates, sacred to the Sun, the universal object of heathen worship.

"Mann, i.e. Deus. Dia Main, Dia Neimh, i.e. The God of Heaven, the Sun; (thus, A. Bishop Cormac, in his Gloss.) This was the Amanus of the Persians (Strabo)-written by the Old Persians, Mana, (Hyde, p. 178) Ammon nomen Jovis apud Ægyptios. He was named Orbson by the Old Irish, a corruption of Ormoz. This deity spread from North to South, in the Oriental world. * There are several mountains in Ireland dedicated to Mann."-VALLANCEY's Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland, pp. 507, 508.

The legend connected with the following Lay had its origin, probably, in the ambiguity of the term Mban, which signifies women. When the worship of Man, the Sun, ceased, the mountain still retained its name, but lost its primitive meaning. Then it became an object of inquiry, to know why it was called Slieve-na-Mban-the women's mountain. Invention being set to work, the words Fionna Eirion-the fair, or beautiful (women) of Erin, were added; and, as Mr. and Mrs. Hall's Ireland informs us, tradition assigns the following legend as the origin of the appellation:

"Fin-Mac-Cual wishing to take a wife, and being puzzled 'whom to choose' among the fair daughters of his land, caused all the beautiful women of Ireland to assemble at the foot of this mountain, declaring that whoever first reached the summit should be his bride. Fin then proceeded to the top of the mountain, and having taken his seat on the Druid's altar that crowns it, made a signal to the group of anxious fair ones that waited his signal below. Away, away, they went, through wood and heath, and furze, over crag and mountain-stream; all obstacles appeared nought with such a prize in view. But only one was destined to win. Graine, the daughter of Cormac, monarch of Ireland, arrived first at the summit, claimed the hand of the Fenian chief, to whom she was accordingly united, Such is the romantic origin of the name of this mountain. Slieve-na-man

G

is also celebrated in tradition as having been the scene of the most celebrated hunting-match of the Fenians, the best description of which is contained in an ancient poem in the possession of Mr. Wright, ascribed to Ossian, and taken from a collection made in the neighbourhood of the very mountain referred to in it. It is in the form of a dialogue between the Bard of Almhuin and St. Patrick. The reader will perceive the close coincidence between it and part of the conclusion of the sixth book of Macpherson's Fingal."

This account is followed by a "strictly literal" translation of the poem, with the exception of the two concluding stanzas. There is a copy of the original in the manuscript collections of the Royal Irish Academy, which Mr. Eugene Curry kindly translated for the author. The passage in Macpherson's Fingal, in which a "close coincidence" with the Irish poem has been observed, is the following:

"Call," said Fingal, "call my dogs, the long-bounding sons of the chase. Call white-breasted Bran, and the surly strength of Luath. * * Blow the horn that the joy of the chase may arise, that the deer of Cromla may hear and start at the lake of roes. The shrill sound spreads along the wood. The sons of heathy Cromla arise. A thousand dogs fly off at once, greybounding through the heath. A deer fell by every dog; three by the whitebreasted Bran."-Fingal, Book vi.

In the Irish poem, the number of hounds is three thousand, which Macpherson himself seems to have thought beyond credibility, and reduced the number to one thousand. Dr. C. O'Connor wonders that so extravagant a fiction should be ascribed to Ossian,

"Miror sane viros alioquin doctos, a partium studiis ita abreptos fuisse, ut ea quæ sequuntur de Finni venatione figmenta Oissino tribuenda censerent :

Solvimus ter mille canes

Celeriores et ferociores,

Et occidit quisque Canis duos cervos!”

Report of the Highland Society, Edinb. 1805, p. 258.

"Fausta quidem dies! Prospera venatio! Æneas esuriens septem tantum cervos in Libya occidit, Miser! si sorte ei evenisset Scotiam adire !”—RER. HIB, SCRIPT. I,, p. cxxvi.

The good Doctor should have remembered that we are now in the land of romance, and the very extravagance of the fiction is a sufficient guarantee against its being mistaken, or intended to be received, as a reality.

The chase of the wild boar was one of the most dangerous and exciting pastimes of the Ossianic heroes, who are occasionally designated by Macpherson as "stern hunters of the shaggy boar." In their conflicts with this formidable animal they were sometimes worsted. "Dargo, king of spears, fell before a boar;" but to slay the monster, was an achievement worthy of the song of the bard. "Trenmor pursued the boar that roared through the woods of Gormal; many had fled from its presence, but it rolled in death on the spear of Trenmor." The honour of killing such game was so highly prized that it became a subject of deadly contention. strife met two kings in Ithorno, Culgorm and Suran-dronlo: each from his echoing isle, stern hunters of the boar! They met a boar at a foamy stream:

"In