Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE 215doom. Ardnurchar, the Hill of the Sling-cast, in Westmeath, 173brings to mind the story of the stately monarch, the crowd ofgazing women, and the crouching enemy with the deadly missilewhich bore the vengeance of Mesgedra. The name of Armagh,or Ard Macha, the Hill of Macha, enshrines the memory of theFairy Bride and her heroic sacrifice, while the grassy rampartcan still be traced where the war-goddess in the earlier legenddrew its outline with the pin of her brooch when she foundedthe royal fortress of Ulster. Many pages might be filled withthese instances. Perhaps no modern country has place-namesso charged with legendary associations as are those of Ireland.Poetry and myth are there still closely wedded to the very soil ofthe land—a fact in which there lies ready to hand an agency foreducation, for inspiration, of the noblest kind, if we only had theinsight to see it and the art to make use of it.[252]CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THEOSSIANIC CYCLEThe Fianna of ErinAs the tales of the Ultonian Cycle cluster round the heroicfigure of the Hound of Cullan, so do those of the Ossianic Cycleround that of Finn mac Cumhal, 174 whose son Oisīn 175 (or Ossian,as Macpherson called him in the pretended translations from the173 The name is given both to the hill, ard, and to the ford, atha beneath it.174 Pronounced “mac Cool.”175 Pronounced “Usheen.”