'Ossian after
the Fianna' is a phrase which has become the synonym of all
survivors' sorrow. Blinded by tears, broken by age, the hero bard
when he returns to earth has no fellowship but with grief, and thus
he sings:-
'No hero now where heroes hurled,--
Long this night the clouds delay--
No man like me, in all the world,
Alone with grief, and grey.
Long this night the clouds delay--
I raise their grave carn, stone on stone,
For Finn and Fianna passed away--
I, Ossian left alone.'
++Pronounced Isheen' in Munster, Osh'in in Ulster.
In more senses than one Irish folk-lore is Irish history. At least
the traditions that have been handed down from one generation to
another contain not only the sometimes authentic record of events,
but a revelation of the Milesian temperament, with its mirth and its
melancholy, its exuberant fancy and its passion. So in these weird
tales there is plenty of history, and plenty of poetry, to one who
will listen to it; but the high and tragic story of Ireland has been
cherished mainly in the sorrowful traditions of a defeated race, and
the legends have not yet been wrought into undying verse. Erin's
songs of battle could only recount weary successions of Flodden
Fields, with never a Bannockburn and its nimbus of victory; for, as
Ossian says of his countrymen, "they went forth to the war, but they
always fell"; but somewhere in the green isle is an unborn poet who
will put all this mystery, beauty, passion, romance, and sadness,
these tragic memories, these beliefs, these visions of unfulfilled
desire, into verse that will glow on the page and live for ever.
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