Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE 237
by our harpers at great men's feasts. But now the Talkenn, 182
Patrick, has come into Ireland, and has preached to us the One
God and Christ His Son, by whose might these old days and
ways are done away with; and Finn and his Fianna, with their
feasting and hunting and songs of war and of love, have no such [276]
reverence among us as the monks and virgins of Holy Patrick,
and the psalms and prayers that go up daily to cleanse us from
sin and to save us from the fire of judgment.” But Oisīn replied,
only half hearing and still less comprehending what was said to
him: “If thy God have slain Finn and Oscar, I would say that God
is a strong man.” Then they all cried out upon him, and some
picked up stones, but the overseer bade them let him be until the
Talkenn had spoken with him, and till he should order what was
to be done.
Oisīn and Patrick
So they brought him to Patrick, who treated him gently and
hospitably, and to Patrick he told the story of all that had befallen
him. But Patrick bade his scribes write all carefully down, that
the memory of the heroes whom Oisīn had known, and of the
joyous and free life they had led in the woods and glens and wild
places of Erin, should never be forgotten among men.
This remarkable legend is known only in the modern Irish
poem written by Michael Comyn about 1750, a poem which may
be called the swan-song of Irish literature. Doubtless Comyn
worked on earlier traditional material; but though the ancient
Ossianic poems tell us of the prolongation of Oisīn's life, so that
he could meet St. Patrick and tell him stories of the Fianna,
the episodes of Niam's courtship and the sojourn in the Land of
Youth are known to us at present only in the poem of Michael
Comyn.
The Enchanted Cave
182 Talkenn, or “Adze-head,” was a name given to St. Patrick by the Irish.
Probably it referred to the shape of his tonsure.