"I bade my white sails to rise, before the roar of Cona's wind. Three hundred youths looked, from their waves, on Fingal's bossy shield. High on the mast it hung, and marked the dark-blue sea. But when night came down, I struck, at times, the warning boss: I struck, and looked on high, for fiery-haired Ul-erin'. Nor absent was the star of heaven. It travelled red between the clouds. I pursued the lovely beam, on the faint-gleaming deep. With morning Erin rose in mist. We came into the bay of Moi-lena, where its blue waters tumbled, in the bosom of echoing woods. Here Cormac, in his secret hall, avoids the strength of Colc-ulla. Nor he alone avoids the foe. The blue eye of Ros-crána is 1 Ul-erin, the guide to Ireland, a star known by that name in the days of Fingal, and very useful to those who sailed, by night, from the Hebrides, or Caledonia, to the coast of Ulster. We find from this passage, that navigation was considerably advanced, at this time, among the Caledonians. MACPHERSON, 1st edit. The genuine Ossian must have understood the navigation of his own times, which he practised himself. But the translator, ignorant that, in every direction, it was necessary to steer by the bear or pole star, has created two stars, UL-ERIN and ULLOCHLIN, the guides to Erin and Lochlin (Cath-loda, ii. 9.) as if it were sufficient, in order to reach Lochlin or Ireland, te steer in pursuit of a certain star in the east or in the west. there: Ros-crána, white-handed maid, the daughter of the king!" He saw "I see "Grey, on his pointless spear, came forth the aged steps of Cormac. He smiled, from his waving locks; but grief was in his soul. us few before him, and his sigh arose. the arms of Trenmor," he said; "and these are the steps of the king! Fingal! thou art a beam of light to Cormac's darkened soul. Early is thy fame, my son; but strong are the foes of Erin. They are like the roar of streams in the land, son of car-borne Comhal !” "Yet they may 2 be rolled away," I said, in my rising soul. Ros-crána, the beam of the rising sun; she was the mother of Ossian. The Irish bards relate strange fictions concerning this princess. Their stories, however, concerning Fingal, if they mean him by Fion Mac-Comnul, are so inconsistent and notoriously fabulous, that they do not deserve to be mentioned; for they evidently bear, along with them, the marks of late invention. MACPHERSON. Fingal's wife was Grania, or Graine (converted by the translator into Ros-crána), daughter of Cormac Ulfhada. She eloped with Diarmid O'Duine from her husband, who consoled himself with her sister Ailbhe, but received her again, after she had borne three sons to her paramour. These are the strange fictions related by the Irish bards concerning this princess, and so inconsistent with the sentimental purity of manners in Ossian. Toland, 95. Ogygia, 338. Keating, 267. "We are not of the race of the feeble, king of blue-shielded hosts! Why should fear come among us, like a ghost of night? The soul of the valiant grows, when foes increase in the field. Roll no darkness, king of Erin, on the young war !" in "The bursting tears of the king came down. He seized my hand in silence. "Race of the daring Trenmor!" at length he said, "I roll no cloud before thee. Thou burnest in the fire of thy fathers. I behold thy fame. It marks thy course in battle, like a stream of light. But wait the coming of Cairbar'; my son must join thy 3 Cairbar, the son of Cormac, was afterwards king of Ireland. His reign was short. He was succeeded by his son Artho, the father of that Cormac who was murdered by Cairbar, the son of Borbar-duthul. Cairbar, the son of Cormac, long after his son Artho was grown to man's estate, had, by his wife Baltanno, another son, whose name was Ferad-artho. He was the only one remaining of the race of Conar, the first king of Ireland, when Fingal's expedition against Cairbar, the son of Borbarduthul, happened. Sec more of Ferad-artho in the eighth book. MACPHERSON. According to Irish history, Cormac Ulfadha, Fingal's fatherin-law, was the father of Cairbre Liffecair, who slew Oscar at the battle of Gabhra, and who was himself killed, in the same battle, by Simeon Mackirbe. The rest is all the invention of Macpherson. Ogygia, 341. Keating, 286. sword. He calls the sons of Erin, from all their distant streams." "We came to the hall of the king, where it rose in the midst of rocks, on whose dark sides were the marks of streams of old. Broad oaks bend around with their moss. The thick birch is waving near. Half-hid, in her shady grove, Ros-crána raises the song. Her white hands move on the harp. I beheld her blue rolling eyes. She was like a spirit of heaven half-folded in the skirt of a cloud! 4 The attitude of Ros-crána is illustrated by this simile; for the ideas of those times, concerning the spirits of the deceased, were not so gloomy and disagreeable as those of succeeding ages. The spirits of women, it was supposed, retained that beauty which they possessed while living, and transported themselves, from place to place, with that gliding motion which Homer ascribes to the gods. The descriptions which poets, less ancient than Ossian, have left us of those beautiful figures, that appeared sometimes on the hills, are elegant and picturesque. They compare them to the rain-bow on streams; or, the gliding of sun-beams on the hills. A chief who lived three centuries ago, returning from the war, understood that his wife, or mistress, was dead. A bard introduces him speaking the following soliloquy, when he came within sight of the place, where he had left her at his depar ture. "My soul darkens in sorrow. I behold not the smoke of my 1 "Three days we feasted at Moi-lena. She rises bright in my troubled soul. Cormac beheld me dark. He gave the white-bosomed maid. She comes with bending eye, amid the wandering of her heavy locks. She came! Straight the battle roared. Colc-ulla appeared: I took my spear. My sword rose, with my people, against the rid gy foe. Alnecma fled. returned with fame. Colc-ulla fell. Fingal "Renowned is he, O Fillan, who fights in the hall. No grey dog bounds at my streams. Silence dwells in the valley of trees. "Is that a rain-bow on Crunath? It flies and the sky is dark. Again thou movest, bright on the heath, thou sun-beam clothed in a shower! Hah! it is she, my love: her gliding course on the bosom of winds !” In succeeding times the beauty of Ros-crána passed into a proverb; and the highest compliment that could be paid to a woman, was to compare her person with the daughter of Cor mac. 'S tu fein an Ros-crána. Siol Chormaec na n'ioma lan. MACPHERSON. The ghosts and spirits of the hills, as they are termed in Fingal, and in the preceding note, are now converted by the translator into spirits of heaven ("Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven"), without adverting, that to this, in the mythology ascribed to Ossian, there is no such correlatives as heaven and hell, much less any invidious distinctions between the spirits of either. |