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Poems of Oisin, Bard of Erin : "The Battle of Ventry Harbour," &C. from the Irish

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Poems of Oisin, Bard of Erin : /l,í / ^ i-^^ 9 POEMS OF OISIN, ETC. fnms OISIN, BAED OF EEIN. '* THE BATTLE OF YENTEY HAEBOUE," &c. Emm i\^ S^rfeij. BY JOHN HAWKINS SIMPSON. AUTHOR OF " AN ENGLISHMAN'S TESTIMONY TO THE URGENT NECESSITY FOR A TENANT RIGHT BILL FOR IRELAND." LONDON: BOSWOPtTH & HAPRÍSON, 21.% REGENT STREET. EDINBURGH : JOHN MENZIES. DUBLIN: M'GLASHAN AND GILL. 1857. [The Right of Transkition is reserved.] LONDOM : Printed bv 04, J. Paljiek. 27, Lamb's Conduit Street. PEEFACE, Mr. John Mac Faden, a highly intelligent young farmer in Mayo, and Mr. James O'Sul- LiVAN, a native of the county Kerry, have greatly aided me in the translation of these ancient poems ; to each of them I take this opportunity of tendering my -svarmest thanks for their kind assistance. There are many in Ireland ^Yho could ])roduce far better works on the poems of Oisin, and it is to be hoped that some of them will, ere long, give to the public good translations of the old and beautiful literature of their native land. VI PREFACE. I shall esteem it a great favour on the part of any one who will famish me with corrections of this little volume, or with materials for additional notes, explanatory of the Fenian Heroes and their exploits ; and shall gratefully acknowledge any contributions towards another work, should this be deemed worthy a successor. J. H. S. London, Oct. 2Sth, 1857. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface ...... v OlSIN, BARD OF ErIN ..... 1 Deardra . .12 conloch, son of cuthullin . .24 The Fenii of Erin and Fionn Mac Cumhal . 31 Dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick . 42 : Battle of the Hill Containing — of Slaughter . 61 Tailc, son of Trean, invades Erin . 71 Meargach comes to Erin . .75 Arrival of Aile Geal Snuadh . 109 Lamentation of Aile Geal Snuadh . .112 Continuation of the Battle . 123 The Chase . .136 The Enchantment of Fionn and the Fenii . 152 Oisin's last day .... 184 — Vlll CONTENTS. Mayo Mythology—Containing: Oisin comes from the Youthful City . 189 Conversion of Oisin . .195 ">( Fionn Mac Cumhal goes to Graffee . .199 ^ Fionn Mac Cumhal goes to Loughlin . 209 y^ , of Enchantment the Giants in Ceash . 217 Oisin bom of a Doe in Cremlin . 222 Death of Erraran, son of Fionn . 225 A Grecian Piincess comes to Erin . 227 The B.\ttle of Ventry Harbour . 237 ^jcrem^ é Qxún, t^c. oism, BAED OF EEIN. Old Irish songs about the Fenii of Erin, mixed up with others relating to heroes who lived more than two hundred years before the time of Fionn, or Fingal, were the foundation upon which has been raised " that splendid fabric of imposture which, under the assumed name of Ossian, has for so long a period dazzled and deceived the world." With these songs Macpherson inter- wove the fragments of Erse poetry then extant in the Highlands of Scotland, and which were but versions of Irish songs— relating to Cuthullin, Conloch, Fionn MacCumhal, Osgur, Goll or Gaul, &c.—attributed to Oisin son of Fionn, but generally supposed to be the productions of bards of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Perhaps, however, those bards only collected and arranged songs which, even in their days were old in Ireland. 2 oisix, As a natural consequence, from the constant intercourse between the two countries, the High- landers of Scotland would, in course of time, adopt the heroes and songs of Erin, and vice versa. Macpherson therefore boldly transformed Fionn, an Irish chief of the third century, into a native of Caledonia, and assigned him the imaginary kingdom of Morven, gave him Cuthullin for a contemporary, who had flourished about the time of Christ's birth, and performed with reference to Caracalla and Cathmor other ' flights of impro- bability and absurdity, upon which (as Moore says) " none but a writer so conscious of his own powers of imposture could have ventured." These chronological blunders were exposed at the time, and Macpherson was accused of having altered Irish songs and then presenting them to the public as professedly almost literal transla- tions of Erse poems collected by himself during a tour through the Hebrides. Instead of meeting those accusations boldly, as an honest translator would, he assumed an air of offended dignity, de- clining to produce the originals of his translations, or to particularize the sources whence they were derived. A committee of the Highland Society of Scot- land was appointed to inquire into the nature and authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, and a report BARD OF ERIN. .3 was drawn up, according to the directions of the committee, by H. Mackenzie, Esq., its chairman, ^Yhich was published in 1805. All the exertions of the committee failed to obtain any one poem, the same in title and tenor with the poems pub- lished by Macpherson. When the attention of the public was drawn to the Irish poems of Oisin, an endeavour was made (in the " Dissertation on the poems of Ossian ") to overcome the evidence they furnished that Fionn and Ossian were Irishmen, by First, referring to the dialogue between Oisin and St. Patrick as affording such a chronological blunder as would suffice to throw contempt upon any claim which the Irish might advance on the strength of it. To this might fairly be returned a tu quoque reply, " What do you think of your own Fingal, and not only Fingal but even his grandson Osgur enjoying the company of heroes who flourished at the time when Christ was in the world ?" Besides, as has been already suggested, by means of an imaginary dialogue, a poet living se- veral centuries after Oisin might seek to connect, and put into a form more likely to insure their preservation, poems which in his days were known to be songs of Oisin. It seems to me that no- thing is more likely than that the early Christian B 2 4 OISIN, clergy should endeavour, when they saw how their flocks delighted in songs about their pagan ancestors, to convey the first principles of Christi- anity by means of a dialogue between their old blind bard Oisin and St. Patrick. A dialogue of this description would both interest and instmct the people, and would be all the more likely to rivet their attention if it formed, as it were, a thread upon which their beads of songs were strung.* The second argument, in this Dissertation, against the antiquity of the Irish poems is set forth in these words,—" Unluckily for the antiquities of Ireland, they appear to be the work of a very modern period. Every stanza, nay almost every line, afford striking proofs that they cannot be three centuries old. Their allusions to the man- ners and customs of the fifteenth century are so many, that it is matter of wonder to me, how any one could dream of their antiquity. They are entirely writ in that romantic taste which pre- vailed two ages ago. Giants, enchanted castles, ^- Indeed, I am inclined to attrilmte much of the influence possessed by the 1 rish Priest of the present day over his flock to his intimate acquaintance and symjiathy with the traditions and songs so interesting to his people, rather than to superstitious awe inspired by his spiritual calling ; and this because I have, during several years, observed that the peasant really loves his priest, and we ai'e not naturally inclined to love a person of whom we stand in slavish dread. — BARD OF ERIN. O dwarfs, palfreys,* witches and magicians, form the whole circle of the poet's invention." This means hecause in the fifteenth century poets sang of enchanted castles, witches, magi- cians and giants : therefore any poem in which re- ference is made to such individuals, cannot be older than the fifteenth century. Admitting that the poems of the fifteenth cen- tury, in Europe generally, do abound with stories about magicians, enchanters, giants, &c., from what source did the w^riters of them derive their ideas ? Either, they were indebted solely to their own fertile imaginations, in which case alone Macpherson's argument has any weight : or else, with their own fictions they interwove legends then extant. Now, if we find mention made of witches, magicians, &c., in Avorks of indisputably greater antiquity than these poems of the fifteenth cen- tury, then the whole argument falls to the ground. The Bible tells of magicians, enchanters, and witches : from early ages enchantments, witch- crafts, magic, and astrology, w^ere throughout the East allied with religious ceremonies. In Gen. xli. 8, we read that Pharaoh " called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream." Exod. vii. * By-the-bye, I have never yet, in all the Irish poems, met with any mention of a palfrey. 6 OISIN, 11, 12, they appear as worters of magic or en- chanters, " Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers : now the magicians of Egypt they also did in like manner with their en- chantments. For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents." No optical de- lusion, no feat of jugglery such as those of An- derson, " the Wizard of the North." In the same chapter, verse 22, it is said that the waters of Egypt were turned into blood by the enchant- ments of the magicians. Exod. viii. 18, the ma- gicians ti'ied to create lice, but failed. Joshua was commanded to drive out the Ca- naanites because they used enchantments, wor- shipped the hosts of heaven in gioves and on high places. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 5, 6, we read of Ma- nasseh that " he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.
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