Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

264 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[307]But Oscar replies:“Were it you that fellIn the fight of bare sunny Gavra,One sigh, east or west,Would not be heard for you from Oscar.“No man ever knewA heart of flesh was in my breast,But a heart of the twisted hornAnd a sheath of steel over it.“But the howling of dogs beside me,And the wail of the old heroes,And the weeping of the women by turns,'Tis that vexes my heart.”Oscar dies, after thanking the gods for his father's safety, andOisīn and Keelta raise him on a bier of spears and carry him offunder his banner, “The Terrible Sheaf,” for burial on the fieldwhere he died, and where a great green burial mound is stillassociated with his name. Finn takes no part in the battle. Heis said to have come “in a ship” to view the field afterwards,and he wept over Oscar, a thing he had never done save oncebefore, for his hound, Bran, whom he himself killed by accident.Possibly the reference to the ship is an indication that he had bythis time passed away, and came to revisit the earth from theoversea kingdom of Death.There is in this tale of the Battle of Gowra a melancholygrandeur which gives it a place apart in the Ossianic literature.It is a fitting dirge for a great legendary epoch. Campbell tellsus that the Scottish crofters and shepherds were wont to putoff their bonnets when they recited it. He adds a strange andthrilling piece of modern folk-lore bearing on it. Two men, it issaid, were out at night, probably sheep-stealing or on some otherpredatory occupation, and telling Fian tales as they went, when