Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE 217history of Gaelic literature. 176 It has been estimated 177 that ifall the tales and poems of the Ossianic Cycle which still remaincould be printed they would fill some twenty-five volumes thesize of this. Moreover, a very great proportion of this literature,even if there were no manuscripts at all, could during the lastand the preceding centuries have been recovered from the lipsof what has been absurdly called an “illiterate” peasantry in theHighlands and in the Gaelic-speaking parts or Ireland. It cannotbut interest us to study the character of the literature which wascapable of exercising such a spell.Contrasted with the Ultonian CycleLet us begin by saying that the reader will find himself in analtogether different atmosphere from that in which the heroesof the Ultonian Cycle live and move. Everything speaks of alater epoch, when life was gentler and softer, when men livedmore in settlements and towns, when the Danaan Folk were [254]more distinctly fairies and less deities, when in literature theelements of wonder and romance predominated, and the ironstring of heroism and self-sacrifice was more rarely sounded.There is in the Ossianic literature a conscious delight in wildnature, in scenery, in the song of birds, the music of the chasethrough the woods, in mysterious and romantic adventure, whichspeaks unmistakably of a time when the free, open-air life “underthe greenwood tree” is looked back on and idealised, but nolonger habitually lived, by those who celebrate it. There is alsoa significant change of locale. The Conorian tales were theproduct of a literary movement having its sources among thebleak hills or on the stern rock-bound coasts of Ulster. In theOssianic Cycle we find ourselves in the Midlands or South ofIreland. Much of the action takes place amid the soft witcheryof the Killarney landscape, and the difference between the two176 Subject, of course, to the possibility that the present revival of Gaelic as aspoken tongue may lead to the opening of a new chapter in that history.177 See “Ossian and Ossianic Literature,” by Alfred Nutt, p. 4.