Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

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Fictions of the Irish Celts.
sonage of military fame— Fion, son of Cumhail—with the
title of their commander in the days of King Cairbre.
This hero was slain at the Boyne, A.D.283,and xht Fiauna
stood in such a defiant attitude towards the monarch
some twelve years later, that he assailed them, with the
assistance of the Connaught portion of the body, in the
memorable battle of Gavra (Garris-town, in Meath),
where most of their chiefs were slain, and an end put
to the institution. This battle is sung in a poem ascribed
to Oisin, son of Fion, preserved in the Book of Leinster,
a manuscript of Finn !M'Gorman, Bishop of Kildare,
who died 1160.
, ,] The following quatrains are not from this version, but
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will give a good idea of the style of the old heroic poetry,
when divested of the peculiar aids of alliteration, position,
and rhyme. Oisin, who alone of all the Fenian heroes
survived the fight, remained in life in Tir-na-n-Oge till
the arrival of St. Patrick, to whom he related the strife
where he lost all his loved comrades, together with his
son, Oscur the Invincible, whom he mentions as treacher-
ously slain by King Cairbre.
" My son urged his course
Through the battahons of Tara,
Like a hawk through a flight of birds,
Or a rock rushing down a steep.
" As many as two score shields
In each fierce onset,
Mac Garraidh, the pure, and my own son,
liroke in the fight of Gavra.