THE FATHER OF OSSIAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3247, 7 June 1916, Page 77

THE FATHER OF OSSIAN.

By Jessie Mackay.

The latest issue of the Celtic Monthly contains an article the significance of which at this moment the author could not have foreseen when he sent it to the press, seeing it dealt with that Irish Finn or Fingal who gave his name to the Fenian Brotherhood of last century, the prototype of the Sinn Fein of to-day. As a comment on the historicity of this lord of battles, father of the warrior-bard. Ossiau, the article carries weight by reason of its author's standing in the study of comparative mythology. Everyone remembers the name of Donald A. Mackenzie, who has compiled several volumes of the new and beautiful “ Myth and Legend ” series. We may first glance at the light cast by other experts on this common hero of the Ir sh and the Scottish Celts —for Scotland borrowed the court, the battlegrounds, and the grave of Finn as freely as the Bretons overseas annexed the scenes of British Arthur’s glory and tragic passing to the peace of Avilion. Naturally, Finn and his people figure largely in ‘'Celtic Myth and Legend, ’ by Charles Squire. The rise of the Fenian cycle followed the more wild and wonderful mass of legend round Cuchnllin, the Ulster hero. But, whereas no one could be a deed to believe in the Herculean Labours of 'Cuchnllin, crowded into 27 years of love and lighting, tears, triumph, and tragedy, many of Ireland's most p p.Jjr, if not most reliable, historians have held Finn to have been as real as any king or emperor of the third century, in which Irish annals place him. He is said to have died at the Boyne, lighting a, rebel hand, one year before the fatal battle of Gahhra, 284 a.d., where the F; nians under Oscar, Ossian’s famous son, were annihilated by the jealous kings of Ireland. Finn, in his historic aspect, was never called a king; he was the general of a marvellous body of warriors raised to protect the coast of Ireland. Finn lived mainly in the reign of the great ArdRigh, King Cormac, whose daughter Grania he married, and his adventures were localised in Leinster and in Munster, which latter province formed his regular summer hunting-ground. But Irish legend so wrought upon the life and times of Finn that, had he ever existed, it would have been as difficult to part truth from imagination as it was when the annalists of Britain strove to find the human realities under the vast Arthurian cycle. Like so many of the Aryan heroes, Finn was horn into peril and darkness, the son of a father already fallen by the spear of enemies, biding his time to show a young man’s prowess, like Perseus, Jason, Hercules, Arthur, and the rest. Very Celtic is the story that tells how he achieved all power of prophecy by inadvertently tasting the 'Salmon of Knowledge he had cooked for his master, also named Finn. Irish fancy supplied a thousand talcs of Finn’s meteor rise and leadership of that extraordinary guild of ancient Hibernian chivalry, the Fenian band. Wc read of his relations with Cormac, the High King ; his alternate wars and alliances with the Clan Morna, under the violent and untrusty Gaul or Gall; his family life; and the great deeds of Ossian and Oscar. But yet modern scholarship throws cold water on there historical testimonies. Mr Squire does not hesitate to pronounce him as truly a solar myth as the far-famed Cuchu 11in himself, basing his conclusions partly on the names of himself and fathei Fioun, “fair,” and C'umhal, “the sky,” clearly the Gaulish deity Camillas, the Gocl of the Upper Air, A F.nhcmeristic writer, indeed, denies Aryan parentage to Finn, and makes him and his warriors chiefs of the pre-Celtic aboriginals of Ireland, corresponding to

I the dark folk who withstood the i Aryan innr-.igiv.nls who poured into India I through the narrow gorge of the Indus I unknown age.s ago. Professor Dougias Hyde stakes his great scholarship on the real personality of the Fenians, "a body of danissarie- vlio actually lived, ruled, and hunted in King Cannae's time. 3ri:h tr?he-> !o Scotland in Lhe early eentuiies of our era fully account for their fame in the YYe tern Highlands. • but tentative. He does not disagree \vi;h | the theory of Finn as a man ' and the I leader of men. But be sees in the Fenian cycle a process of absorption of primiti 'e J myth which is common in the ease of other certainly human heroes. Particuj larly docs this appear to him in the Scot- ' tish idea that Finn and his followers were giants, whereas in Ireland they are mainly | related to fairies (see Niam, Ossian's fairy j wife). This idea of giants is deeply emI bedded in Scottish folklore, and operated I as late as the middle ages, in the gigantic ! proportions attributed to Wallace. These \ primitive giant-; ere originally nameless, ! pointing to a thought too earl;,- to identify i the worshipped powers of the elements or the seasons with any revealed attributes — j the "unknown gods" who ed on even in the elaborate Pantheon of the later ', Greeks. But these giants in later ages readily took on the name and story of ; anv hero who was ready to pass into | myth. Again, Finn becomes one of the "hammer gods" of ancient times, usually regarded as thunder-gods, best typified in Thor. Thus Finn's magic hammer, which, when struck against his shield in Scotland, is heard in Ireland and Scandinavia, links him with Tarkkn of Anatolia, Zeus of Hellas, and Indra of Hindostan Finn's followers exhibit the same far-drawn attributes. Diarmid, the handsome nephew ■ of Finn, and lover of Cranio, his wife, is ; one of the fair and beloved Adonis heroes, | slain in the one vulnerable spot by boar, ior spear, or sword, like Sigurd Achilles, I Krishna, and the rest. Goll, the fierce i one-eyed chief of the Morna elan, is I reminiscent of the Cyclops, and the one- ; eyed storm-kings of the north, and the Cailleoch (old woman) "with (die one eye on the flat of her forehead," is paralleled by the Black Demeter of Northern Greece, not to say akin to the hideous Mini of the Maori' Underworld. As in Greece, India, and elsewhere, Mr ! Mackenzie sees in these Scottish .legends i of Finn fragments of the m< st primitive ! beliefs, far ante-dating any possible Celtic 1 source either in Scotland or Ireland, such j stories as linger in the He Danaans and j M'lcsian cycles of Ireland, which give cir- ' eumstantial though incredible accounts of | the landing of their Aryan forefathers. j He finds dark and fair heroes among the j Fenians, pointing to a- time rf imperfect fusion between the old Iberians and the j fair invaders. Nor does he forget to remind us of the dark mother of most lof the world's culture find folk-lore, ! Egypt, from whence the Calendar was | derived ages ago. Tf a Calendar could ! survive, he asks, why not the heart of I tales which, were told by the Nile when i that time-measuring was in its appropriate i ao-o of culture? Inexplicable superstitions I like that of giving pieces of roasted mouse ; to dving children in Scotland and parts j of England even as late as last century.. ! are shown to have originated in imj memorial antiquity among the dark I dwellers of the Nile Valley. Wo can. therefore, only leave Finn where we find him, counting him man, myth, giant, or king of the Elements as we choose. One sure place he has, and that, is in the beautiful poetry that enshrines these heroes in the "light that never was on sea or land." the light that surrounds "pearl-pale Niani" of the sea and her bridegroom, the young Oism. And the young Oisin, grown old. -would not go alone to Patrick's heaven,, preferring to : Die and go to the Fenians, Be they at flame'or feast.