Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

Ossianic and other Early Legends.
Until the grass of the plain is numbered,
And every grain of sand on the seashore.
All who fell by my son
Cannot be counted.
Many a mail of noble warriors
Many a fair head-piece
And shield lay on the plain,
With chiefs bereft of life.
I found my son lying down
On his left side, by his shield.
The sword clutched in his right hand,
And the red blood pouring through his mail.
—
' We raised the manly Oscur
Aloft on the shafts of our spears,
Bearing him to another pure mound,
To remove his bloody harness.
' We buried Oscur of the red weapons
On the north side of Gabhra,
With Oscur Mac Garraidh of great deeds.
And Oscur, son of the King of Lochlann."
Of Fion, the man honourably mentioned in the Book
of Leinster, and by the Four Masters, there was never
related more than that he was a redoubted champion ;
but the poets and romancers seized on him, and his sons
and grandson, and elevated them and their immediate
friends into heroes of surpassing might, round whom
moved at a greater or less distance other heroes—friends
and foes—and all fertile in exploits and adventures suf-
ficient to fill libraries entire. And while the people,
generation after generation, took comparatively slight