The book Arran; - Cook Clan

4 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
associations, is this, that in the primitive time of Irish legend
Arran was a remote and unfamihar island, far enough removed
from ordinary circumstances, so far as that countrywas
concerned, to be a haunt and harbourage of lorn divinities.
With the earlier mass of Irish mythological story Scotland
has little or nothing to do, though by the close of such literary
activity the west coast and islands are creeping into notice.
The Gael there was still a stranger in a strange land. But
by the time the great final saga of Finn and the Feinne is
taking its monstrous and alluring shape the gulf has been
bridged, and Scotland as much as or even more than Ireland
is the stage of its heroic action. And in the last scene of all
Arran looms up grandly as a place of splendid memories.
The battle of Gabhra has completed the destruction of the
Feinne : their leader was already dead. Only Ossian and
Caeilte of the original band, with eight followers for each,
survive to go their different ways, broken in heart and spirit.
Then the centuries are rushed over, and Caeilte with his
company is brought to meet St. Patrick and his monks, who
marvel at the sight of the big men and their huge wolf-dogs ;
men so tall that, when they sit down, the mere mortals reach
but to their waist or shoulder. But they are magnanimous
giants, of ' manners gentle-kind,' and ready to unfold to the
inquiring saint the tale of their heroic past. So when Patrick
asked Caeilte ' what was the best hunting that the Fianna
ever had, whether in Ireland or in Scotland ? ' the answer
came prompt and short, ' The hunting of Arran.' ' Where
is that land ? ' asked Patrick. ' Betwixt Scotland and
Pictland,' Caeilte replied ;
' on the first day of the trogan
month,! ^e^ to the number of the Fianna's three battalions,
practised to repair thither and there have our fill of hunting
until such time as, from the tree-tops, the cuckoo would call
• 'Which is now called lughnexadh, i.e. Lammas-tide'; or Lunasdae, Limadainn,
Aug. 1-12, early Irish hignilsad, 'festival of Lug,' the Celtic sun-god (Macbain's
Dictianm-y ; Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 410).