Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

248 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[289]St. Patrick, Oisīn, and KeeltaBefore we leave the “Colloquy” another interesting pointmust be mentioned in connexion with it. To the general publicprobably the best-known things in Ossianic literature—I refer,of course, to the true Gaelic poetry which goes under that name,not to the pseudo-Ossian of Macpherson—are those dialogues inwhich the pagan and the Christian ideals are contrasted, oftenin a spirit of humorous exaggeration or of satire. The earliestof these pieces are found in the manuscript called “The Dean ofLismore's Book,” in which James Macgregor, Dean of Lismorein Argyllshire,wrote down, some time before the year 1518, allhe could remember or discover of traditional Gaelic poetry inhis time. It may be observed that up to this period, and, indeed,long after it, Scottish and Irish Gaelic were one language andone literature, the great written monuments of which were inIreland, though they belonged just as much to the Highland Celt,and the two branches of the Gael had an absolutely commonstock of poetic tradition. These Oisīn-and-Patrick dialoguesare found in abundance both in Ireland and in the Highlands,though, as I have said, “The Dean of Lismore's Book” is theirfirst written record now extant. What relation, then, do thesedialogues bear to the Keelta-and-Patrick dialogues with whichwe make acquaintance in the “Colloquy”? The questions whichreally came first, where they respectively originated, and whatcurrent of thought or sentiment each represented, constitute, asMr. Alfred Nutt has pointed out, a literary problem of the greatestinterest; and one which no critic has yet attempted to solve, or,indeed, until quite lately, even to call attention to. For thoughthese two attempts to represent, in imaginative and artistic form,the contact of paganism with Christianity are nearly identical inmachinery and framework, save that one is in verse and the otherin prose, yet they differ widely in their point of view.In the Oisīn dialogues 186 there is a great deal of rough humour186Examples of these have been published, with translations, in the