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THE
LITERATURE OF THE HIGHLANDERS.

THE

LITERATURE OF THE HIGHLANDERS:

A HISTORY OF GAELIC LITERATURE FROM THE
EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY.

BY

NIGEL MACNEILL,

Author of “Nenlæ: with other Poems;” “The Highland Hymnal,” etc.
Minister of Bedford Church, London.

“Móra ic senaib bar senscéla.”—Togail Troi.

INVERNESS:

JOHN NOBLE, CASTLE STREET

1892.

JOHN NOBLE, PRINTER, INVERNESS

PREFACE.

It is hoped that the readers of the following chapters will bear in mind the fact that this is the first complete account of Gaelic literature that has yet been offered to the public, and that it must inevitably exhibit traces of the natural imperfections of all pioneer works. To other workers in the same field I am of course greatly indebted; and if any of them had published a fairly full history of our Highland literature it is quite unlikely that the present volume would ever see the light.

The names of about one hundred and eighty composers of Gaelic poetry alone occur in this volume, while not more than a third of that number will be found in any previous work on the subject. Still I am aware that some mistakes and omissions will be met with, but these, I trust, will not elicit so much reprehension as material for correction hereafter.

On the subject of the science of language and race movements glanced at in the Introduction, the student will find the latest views in the works of Penka, Schrader, Sayce, Hyde Clarke, and others. The “Ultonian Hero-Ballads” of Mr Hector MacLean and the Reliquæ Celticæ of the late Dr Alexander Cameron will be prized by those interested in the fields on which the great Cuchulin fought and Ossian sang.

My studies in the Celtic field have been carried on in the midst of duties of a sacred and exacting character; and I have often been hindered by the thought that the attraction in this direction ought to be resisted. Still I have felt like many others the need of making a speciality of some helpful study; and what for me could be more natural as a mental exercise than to be found searching out in those obscure fields of an ancient literature for the intellectual products of my forefathers?

I am much indebted to several friends who encouraged me from time to time. It gives me great pleasure to mention among these the name of Dr Stoddart, late editor of The Glasgow Herald whose kindness and generosity to myself personally I will always cherish with gratitude, and whose sympathies with all that is good and noble in any people were the natural outcome of the cultured heart of a gentleman and a Christian. To him I owe the title of this book as well as the privilege, through the columns of his influential journal, of showing some of the treasures of our Gaelic literature to the great English world beyond our Highland Israel. With his name ought to be associated in this matter that of the able manager of the paper, Mr Alexander Sinclair, an Argyleshire Highlander. The articles then published in 1881 were the first of the kind to appear in a newspaper of such high standing. The names of other gentlemen from whom I have received kindness occur to me also as I write: Mr D. H. Macfarlane, ex-M.P.; Mr Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P.; Dr R. Macdonald, M.P.; Mr Duncan Macneill; and Mr John Mackay, C.E. I have also much pleasure in acknowledging the readiness with which the Messrs Nisbet, publishers, London, have granted me permission to use in the following chapters some articles I contributed to The Catholic Presbyterian.

This book may be described as the child of the peaceful Highland revolution on which the political and Christian genius of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone stamped imperial sanction and approval in the Crofters Act of 1886. Its growth and delivery in various lectures, magazine articles and otherwise, during seventeen years, have been coincident with the workings of the spirit of racial fusion and union which recent political struggles after a Brito-Irish brotherhood have well-nigh perfected. On the following pages, therefore, I am occasionally an advocate of the just rights and claims of a noble race and an obscure literature; but at the same time I remain a lover of the great English people. I have learned during a residence of upwards of ten years to appreciate and love the generous qualities of my English fellow-citizens.

N. MACNEILL.

67 Lady Margaret Road, London, N.W.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

“Forchubus caichduini imbia arrath inlebrán colli aratardda bendacht foranmain intruagáin rodscribai.”

Gaelic (Scot.) MS. of 9th Cent.

The Celts and the Teuton started westward from the cradle of the human race, spreading themselves over Europe; while other members of the same stock went eastward, extending themselves over wide tracts of Asia. From the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons have sprung the chief nations in whose possession Europe still remains. It is interesting to think that the brothers who parted thousands of years ago, somewhere in teeming Asia, the one going east and the other west, are now meeting again on the plains of Hindostan. Their movements during those thousands of years have encircled the whole earth. Fiercely have they fought and disputed over every inch of the ground which one or other of their tribes at one time or other occupied. Theirs has always been the chief ruling power in the world. They begin to know one another again. From the extreme west of Europe, across the New World, the Anglo-Celt arrives in India and recognises the Hindoo as his brother.

The Aryans migrated into Europe in a somewhat advanced state of civilisation. According to Sayce their advent was from the north, a theory which subverts nearly all previously accepted opinions on the subject. Some of them, however, such as the Greeks first and the Romans afterwards, favoured by the maritime countries in which they settled, made more rapid progress than the others. It was largely their self-conceit that led the Greeks and Romans to describe all the nations beyond their bounds as “barbarian.” Our ancestors in these islands, whether Celtic or Teutonic, were never mere savages. They had a religion, if not radically the same, fully as enobling in its tendency as that of Greece and Rome. They evidently made some progress in the useful arts, while in the days of Rome’s greatest splendour they were in possession of military weapons which were not much inferior to her own. The form of government among the Celts was patriarchal, and this continued for a long time among the Gaels of Scotland. There was the king or chief, who was regarded as the father of the clan, tribe, or nation. With him was associated a council of chieftains or elders, and in important matters the mot of the whole people. But with all this political organisation they could not make such progress in civilisation as the Greeks and Romans, who mostly dwelt in cities. The Gaels who along with the Germans acted the part of pioneers on the plains of Europe, and living a rural life, could not compete successfully in the race for higher civilisation with the brother races who inhabited the maritime cities of Greece and Italy, and who, besides, obtained much of an earlier civilisation from Phœnicia and Egypt.

The early migrations of the Gael are involved in much obscurity. By the study of topography, however, we can follow many of his footsteps westward. This study, however, is rendered very difficult, and at times very uncertain, because the discoverable traces of the presence of the Celt lie embedded in the soil of the life of the powerful pre-Celtic races. The Celt and the Teuton have always been close neighbours. The progress of the two westward appears to have been somewhat simultaneous, at least on the Continent. The geographical positions of France and Germany at the present day represent not inaccurately the attitude of the Gaelic and Teutonic races towards one another in their earlier movements from the east. It has been said that the Celts came too soon into Europe, just as the Slaves came too late. It would be difficult to verify this remark in the light of history and in the face of existing facts. While admitting that the remark may have an element of truth in it, we must remember, with regard to the Slaves, that it is premature to anticipate what they may become. We see them a mighty threatening wave on a westward course. The Chinese hordes, who are already a trouble, press behind the Russians; and the growing power of the latter in Europe is a matter of serious concern to our statesmen. The struggle between Celt and Teuton again cannot be said to be at an end as long as France and Germany maintain their present watchful and hostile attitude. As to their racial composition respectively the former may be said to be as much Celtic as the latter is Teutonic. But on the other hand, in the United Kingdom, Celt and Teuton may be said virtually to agree. They have so blended for centuries that, notwithstanding boasts on both sides, which science cannot sustain, it is impossible almost to produce a pure Saxon or a pure Gael. It cannot certainly be done in Scotland. This intermingling of races in the British Islands has produced a national character very unlike our Continental neighbours. The Anglo-Celtic power of the British Empire is not so immobile or sluggish as the German, nor so light and airy as the French; and its rule appears almost to have arrived at the incipient stage of universal dominion.

Great Britain was peopled in the north and in the south simultaneously from the Continent, and Ireland was similarly peopled from the north and south of Britain. The Gaels of Ireland and of Scotland were the same people, having the same language and music; and all the elements of civilisation about them were the common property of both. At the same time there are evidences that the Gaels of the North of Ireland stood in closer relationship to those of Scotland than those in the South of Ireland. And this holds true even to this very day. It should always be borne in mind that there have been different tribes of pre-Celts, Celts and Teutons in Ireland, which has hitherto prevented that national cohesion in the time of danger which alone could secure the independence of the country. Ireland being peopled at a later period, has taken a longer time in developing a full-orbed nationality. On the other hand there has been an earlier homogeneity among the Scottish Celts; whether called Picts, Gaels, Scots, or Albanaich, they were always one against the common foe, whatever might be the feuds among themselves. In more recent days the reformation of religion in the 16th century helped to produce in the Scottish Gael a distinctively different character from that of the Gael of Ireland; it also destroyed in Scotland many of the old Gaelic things which were associated with a religion that was regarded as superstitious. Thus much of the history and the literature of the Scottish Gael was lost. In Ireland, where no violent changes took place in the condition and religious beliefs of the people, we find very extensive manuscript literature—rich with interesting spoils of the past—as well as more relics even of earlier Gaelic life in Scotland.

Chiefly through the great labours of Zeuss, the distinguished Bavarian, the Gael is now, as already remarked, universally admitted to belong to the Aryan family. No student of the science of language will now contend that he has any special affinity to the Semitic race. The Keltae of the Greek, the Galli of the Roman, and the Gàidheil of Scotland and Ireland, are the same people. In the east and in the west Galatia, or in Gaelic [Gaidhealtachd, contracted] and pronounced Gaeltachd, is the Celtica, or land of the Celts or Gaels. Gaeltachd or Galatia is literally Gaeldom, or the country of the Gaels. The term “Gael” is the same as “Celt,” the only difference being that the original Gaidel comes to us through Latin in the former and through Greek in the latter. So the two may be used indiscriminately, although some writers have endeavoured to preserve a distinction, using “Gaelic” for the language spoken in Scotland and Ireland, and “Celtic” as a more generic term, embracing all the Gaelic Brythonic dialects. “Gael”—the Roman “Gaul”—and the original “Gaidel,” aspirated into “Gaidhel,” which in its aspirated form at last drops the dh, and becomes “Gael” or Gaul, is just the same word. The Gael stands in the same relation to the Welsh, the Cornishman, and the Armorican, that the Englishman and German, the Roman and Greek, stand to one another. The Gael, the Manx, and the Irish constitute one branch of the stock, while the Welsh, the Cornish, and the Breton constitute the other.

The Celtic element enters largely into the population of the United Kingdom. Just as Celtic dialects were spoken at one time throughout the whole of the British Islands, so to the present day a powerful Celtic element pervades the people of Great Britain and Ireland from the lowest to the highest classes. John Knox and Robert Burns, two representative Scotchmen, were more Celtic than Teutonic. The national perfervid spirit and genius are so still. The name of the great Reformer is from the Gaelic Cnoc. Ireland can produce many Anglo-Celtic names, among which we find that of the Duke of Wellington. The mothers of the greatest epic poet and the greatest general that England ever produced were Celts. Sarah Caston, the mother of Milton, was the daughter of a Welsh gentleman; and Elizabeth Steward, the mother of Cromwell, was the daughter of William Steward, in Ely, a descendant of the Celtic Stewards of Scotland. Professor H. Morley says:—“The main current of English literature cannot be disconnected from the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. The Celts do not form an utterly distinct part of our mixed population. But for early, frequent, and various contact with the race that, in its half-barbarous days, invented Ossian’s dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened afterwards the Northerner’s blood in France. Germanic England would not have produced a Shakespeare.” It is only the other year that a Cambrian Celt disappeared from our midst—one of the greatest names in English literature—Mary A. Evans, better known by her assumed name of George Eliot. This other quotation from Professor Morley’s “Library of English Literature” is as true as it is suggestive:—“The Celts are by nature artists. Mr Ferguson has felt this in his own art, and said in his ‘History of Architecture:’—‘The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence. It is, perhaps, not too much to assert that without his intervention we should not have possessed in modern times a Church worthy of admiration or a picture or a statue we could look at without shame.’ It would be far too much to assert this of books; but certainly Teutonic England could not have risen to the full grandeur and beauty of that expression of all her life in all her literature ... without a wholesome blending of Teutonic with Celtic blood. The Celts are a vital part of our country, and theirs were the first songs in the land.”

Before parting with this subject let me note three remarkable facts which the history of Gaelic Scotland presents. They have not always been fully recognised. The first is that the Caledonians were never fully conquered by the Roman Power which brought almost all other nations of the world into subjection. The second is that a Gaelic people gave its present name to the country. The third is that a Gaelic King has given us the line of monarchs which we have still represented in the present sovereign of the British Empire. To these another fact might be added—that the earliest modern literature is to be found among the Scoto-Irish Gael. After the decadence of Greece and Rome the Celts were the first of the European tribes to cultivate letters. While the Germans and the Northmen were yet roving heathen tribes the Gael in Ireland and in Scotland had their seminaries of learning, where literature was loved and cherished. And from the Colleges of Durrow and Iona missionaries, whose well-trained minds and zealous hearts fitted them for their great undertaking, went forth to Christianise the people of England and the Teutonic tribes on the Continent. The extant manuscripts in Gaelic and Latin which came from their pens are monuments of their learning and piety, as well as of the reverence in which they were held by the people to whom they brought the light of the Christian truth. Some of these manuscripts, now studied with such rich results by Continental Celtic scholars, are to be found in some of the great libraries on the Continent; in St. Gall, Milan, Wurtzburg, and Carlsruhe, Zeuss found those Gaelic ones on which he based his great work the “Grammatica Celtica,” published in 1853. These facts ought to make the study of Gaelic interesting—the oldest living language in Europe that can boast of such early relics of culture.

It is now necessary that some remarks should be made on the language in which the literature we are to examine is to be found. The Celtic forms a branch of the Indo-European group of languages. It is divided into two nearly distinct languages, which are thus classified:—

The differences between Gaelic, Irish, and Manx are merely dialectic. The Cornish became extinct last century. The Gaulish is also extinct; and what remains of it is found only in the names of places.

To Zeuss is due the credit of having assigned its proper place to Celtic in the family of languages. The problem before his great publication in 1853 was the relationship in which the Gaels, the Welsh, and the old Gaulish people stood to one another and to the other nations of the world. Numerous publications on this question appeared during the last two centuries. But from a scientific point of view they are of very little value. Errors and unscientific theories abound in every work. At that time the scholars of France and Germany never mastered the Celtic languages; indeed, there were few reliable grammars by which they could be acquired. The native scholars were deficient in linguistic training, in common sense, and frequently in common honesty. No Gaelic scholar was conscientious enough to learn Welsh, no Welsh scholar to learn Gaelic; but each and all were ready enough to compare their languages with Phœnician, Persian, Etruscan, Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, &c., of which, again, they knew in reality next to nothing; though a few of them might know a little Hebrew. There was one remarkable exception, however, to this—the great Welsh scholar Edward Llhuyd, of whom it may be said that he lived a century and a half before his time; but, incapable of following him, the native school of philologists sank into chaotic and puerile etymological dreams. The Celtic problem became more hopeless than ever, and Gaelic philology became distasteful to sober minds.

At the same time many Celts insisted “on the lofty claim they used to advance of speaking the primeval language.” It is only recently that they have learned “to submit to the logic of facts and listen to the voice of science.” A Gaelic poet, in an elaborate poem on his native language, thus declares his conviction on the much-debated subject, what language was spoken in Paradise—

“By Adam it was spoken

In Eden, I believe,

And sweetly flowed the Gaelic

From the lovely lips of Eve.”

Some fifty years ago the science of comparative philology began to make itself felt, and Celtic scholars tried to apply its principles to Celtic. Pritchard, Bopp, Diefenbach, Pictet, and others worked in the right direction, but they failed fully to solve the Celtic problem. J. Caspar Zeuss, a Bavarian Highlander, at last succeeded, by combining with a mind of unusual power a devotion to the subject which amounted well-nigh to a sacrifice of his life. This devotion might not even have been sufficient if he had not possessed what no one before him possessed—the really oldest manuscripts of both the Irish and Welsh dialects. The labours of Zeuss have shown:—That the Gaelic and Welsh languages were originally one; that dialectic differences in Cæsar’s time were so small that an old Gael would be at once understood in Wales; and that the Gaels and Cambrians were identical with the Celts of the Continent—with those of Spain, Gaul, Lombardy, and the Alpine countries; that this Celtic tongue is one of the branches of the Aryan stock of languages.

The consequence of these established facts is to put an end to all attempts at connecting the Celtic with the Semitic class of tongues.

We know the Gaelic language now in three stages:—

1. Old Gaelic up to 1000 A.D. The most ancient relics of this period are the glosses of St. Gall in Switzerland, the Ambrosian [Library of Milan], &c., discovered by Zeuss.

2. Middle Gaelic, from 1000-1500 A.D., is represented by an extensive mass of manuscript literature.

3. Modern Gaelic from the sixteenth century, when books began to be printed, to the present day.

The softening caused by excessive aspiration is the greatest change which the language has undergone.

As spoken in Scotland at the present day the chief dialectic differences are:—

1. The ia of the North for the eu of the South and West Highlands, illustrated by Bial, Beul, mouth; Fiar, Feur, grass.

2. The vowel-tone difference, illustrated in such words as Oran, song. The o is pronounced in three different ways; in Islay and other parts of Argyll like o in old; in Mull and other place like ou in foul; in the North generally like aw in law.

3. The consonantal difference illustrated [in the pronunciation] of c and chd.

4. The accentual or rhythmic tone difference, observed in the conversation of natives of different places.

In Arran and Perthshire, and to some extent in Caithness and Sutherland, the people in speaking cut off the terminal syllables of many words. In the North Highlands they speak with a slow, sometimes swinging emphasis; in the South Highlands they are more hurried in their utterance. Any Highlander, speaking distinctly, will be readily understood, North and South.

Gaelic appears to possess wonderful vitality. While English has stamped out Gaelic among the Celts of Galloway and Ayrshire, Gaelic has stamped out the Norse language in the Western Isles, where the people are largely of pre-Celtic and Norse origin. It is remarkable that although of the same family of languages, Gaelic and English, like oil and water, cannot readily commingle.

Other subjects associated with early Gaelic literature are the Druids and the Féinne. That dim, indefinite, prehistoric period of our annals which terminated in the contact of heathenism with the living forces of Christianity may be termed pre-Celtic. In the dawn of the historical period a mysterious class of men called Druids, and a mysterious body of heroes called the Féinne or Fianna, emerge into view, just as we mark the vanishing or absorption of the pre-Celtic peoples. Whatever they were, a certain class of Magi existed once in these islands. But their sudden disappearance in history, like that of the Féinne, has induced many to question whether such an order of men ever lived. But it is historically certain that a class of men, answering to the description, met and tried to oppose Columba from Iona when he visited King Brudeus at Inverness. They have been called Druids, but that term should be regarded in a general or conventional sense. They were without doubt the priests of learning and religion among the ancient Scots. In possession of some knowledge, meagre as it probably was, they were invested with mystic importance by the ignorant and superstitious. With the introduction and enlightenment of Christianity it would be seen that this exclusive order and priestly caste found their supremacy undermined. Their teaching, whatever it was, appears to have had a beneficial influence on the formation of the national character. They do not seem to have indulged in any enervating services or gross idolatry in the kind of worship which was maintained among the people. We see the moral significance of their influence more fully when we contrast the ancient Gaels with the ancient Greeks. With all their fine ethical and æsthetic perceptions, we find that the latter throughout their whole history were never a very moral people. Just as their bodily senses were enslaved by their keen sense of the beautiful in form, colour, &c., so were their moral energies by many vices. The sensual and luxurious life of the Romans also soon sapped the foundations of the empire, and made it a prey to the less civilised nations around. But from the earliest times down to the present we find among the people once influenced by the Druids a very high moral tone. Guilty as they might be of plundering other races with whom they openly waged warfare, strict honesty among themselves as neighbours was inculcated and observed. The internecine quarrels and the mutual plundering of the later periods arose from the dissensions purposely sown by the Scottish kings. To weaken the clans and the bond of union existing between them unrighteous charters were granted to certain lands in favour of pretenders that could present no valid claim. Hence the majority of the clan feuds which frequently drenched the Highland hills and glens with blood.

One particular result of the early teaching has been the national respect for woman. It is one of the finest moral traits in the character of the Gael. At this day it is among the Gael of the Outer Hebrides and of the more recognised Celtic districts of Ireland, such as Munster and Connaught, that the Registrar General finds the smallest percentage of illegitimacy. The high-toned morality which the poems of Ossian exhibit in this respect has been used as an argument against their authenticity. And yet it should be no argument at all for one who can trace out and analyse the early sources whence developed the moral elements of the national character.

The Celt has been generally very religious. The religion of the Gael of Scotland, like that of the Kymry of Wales, whether in ancient or in modern Christian times, has always flourished in an atmosphere of deep severity. The rigid ethics of the early religion, combined with a hard life at a distance from enervating centres of civilisation, help to explain this. This sternness of doctrine also, no doubt, prepared the modern Gael to accept with such absolute entirety, and with such earnest heartiness, the Calvinistic system of Christian truth which many regard as severe and harsh. The higher results of the literary and moral culture of the Druidic religion we have embodied in the relics of Ossianic poetry. The order of Druids, with their ideals of philosophy and religion, have vanished; but their power for good remains embedded in the foundation of the national name, with its educating influences and its inspiring associations. In this power lay the moral strength of our early ancestors. Christianity, in its early Celtic and Reformed stages, developed into higher and purer issues this national virtue; and the character of the people is exponent of the results of the process. Other tribes and communities have had Christianity among them too, but with different results. This line of thought suggests an explanation of why, as has been already remarked, the Irish Gael appears to be somewhat unlike the Scottish Gael.

A glance may now be appropriately bestowed upon that other somewhat mysterious body—those heroes called the Féinne.

Chief among the early Gaelic inhabitants was the renowned order of heroes known as the Féinne, the Fianna, or the followers of Fingal, or Finn, the leader. They are supposed to have lived in the second and third centuries of our era, and to have been the Caledonians who checked the progress of the legions of Rome. Very little reliable help can be found regarding this question in the extant annals of the Gael. In general it may be held that this race of Finn came from the shores of the Baltic to North Britain, and that they were not unrelated to the ancient Norse. Recently a new theory has been adopted by some, like Mr Campbell of Islay, whose views are entitled to much respect. They argue that the existence of the Féinne is only a myth—part and parcel of an old world system, not unconnected with the classical and oriental—a system of which we have the same with variations in the Militia of Ireland, and in the Knights of the Round Table of the ancient British. It is held that Fingal and King Arthur are the same personages; that Graine, the faithless wife of Fingal is the same as the faithless Guinevere, the spouse of Arthur; and that the unhallowed love of Diarmad and Graine has a suggestive similitude in that of Sir Launcelot and Guinevere. On the other hand, it is argued that the similarity of these relations, however systematic in appearance, may still be adequately explained by the fact that human nature is much the same in all lands and amongst all races; that this symbolic theory does not seem to be supported by the well-grounded conviction of the people in whose traditions the memory of the heroes of the Féinne has been handed down to us; that it is not at all probable that the names of merely fictitious heroes would live in the topography of a hundred hills, like the name of Finn; that it does not find support in the more philosophic theory regarding the heroes of ancient peoples—that all the mythological characters are only exaggerations of real ones; that human nature is never satisfied with the barely mythic and unreal, and that the patriotic and other affections never derive sustenance from false and unbelievable characters.

Can a vague statement of this character not satisfy the inquiring student? To the patriotic Celtic inquirer, next in importance to the evangelisation of the Highlands by Columba, stands the great question of the Féinne, who have so indelibly impressed their individualities on the Gaelic imagination of Scotland. To the more inquiring spirits of recent times these brilliant heroes have appeared very strange and mysterious indeed. They have had a Melchisedec kind of existence in our traditional history; no one has been able to suggest whence they came, or whither they have gone. The names of their leaders have become woven with fable, song, and story; with the hills and glens of Albin and Erin; with the warlike struggles which the various conflicting races have fought on our Ero-Albinic shores. So vague and romantic however, has their history been, that a few clear-sighted writers, conversant with comparative mythology, have come almost to the conclusion that the Féinne were, as we have already seen, a mere Gaelic expression of a world-wide mythus, whose various component elements can be found from Japan to the Hebrides. The popular tales and the bardic ballads have been regarded as the debris that may be still collected on the shores of the ages.

The plain Highlander living in the mere tents of history and literature, has been reluctant to accept so vague an account of a very heroic ancestry. Has not he the poems of Ossian still in his hands? Are not the names of Finn and fellow-heroes stamped on a thousand hills in Albin and Erin? So the invariable conclusion has been that in some mysterious way and during some mysterious period “Fingal lived and Ossian sang.” The disappointing question all along has been, however, where can any account be found of these people in our accredited national histories? The inquiring spirits among our patriotic youth examine recent histories in vain. Our antiquaries write of names and places, but they have failed to assign a local habitation and a name to the Finian people. The only approach to a definite representation of the race we have in the famous mystifications of James Macpherson in his dissertations, notes, and poems. But the geography of Macpherson appears to have been as mistily convenient for himself as it has been perplexing to his commentators. Not even the genius of Dr Waddell in his goodly volume has been able to identify the localities of Macpherson, or remove the veil of ghost-like existence in which the Ossianic heroes are enshrouded.

Our ordinary historians appear to have avoided treating of so perplexing a period or class of men. Browne is satisfied with a statement on the Ossianic question. He does not touch on the history of the Finnic period. Keltie ignores the whole question. MacLauchlan in his “Early History of the Scottish Church,” which embraces the Ossianic age, has nothing to say of the Finnic environment. In his introduction to his edition of Ossian, Clerk is equally silent as to the accurate identification of the people of whom Ossian became the laureate bard. Nor is anything very definite to be found even in the learned works of Skene. When such admirable authorities are almost universally silent, it becomes a very hazardous matter to attempt any statement on the question.

It must be admitted that hitherto the sources of much of our definite accounts have been Irish compilations. Notwithstanding Macpherson’s comparative contempt for the character of the Irish Finian heroes, and for the Irish Ossianic compositions, yet much of the ground work of his own historic ideals was furnished by Irish productions. But any historic truth the Irish compositions may have had perished in the using in the hands of Macpherson. The result has been a system of chronology that neither he nor his friends have ever been able to explain.

The question still remains, Who were the Féinne? The answer in general has been that they were Gaelic heroes of the second and third centuries of the Christian era; who fought with Romans, with Danes, and with one another; and finally struggled with the converting powers of Christianity. In Ireland they have appeared under the guise of a Milesian militia, a conception which is thoroughly in harmony with the chivalrous ideals of that interesting island. The following sentences contain the gist of all the information that is now available:—“It is quite a mistake to suppose Finn Mac Cumhaill to have been merely imaginary or mythical character. Much that has been narrated of his exploits is, no doubt, apocryphal enough; but Finn himself is an undoubtedly historical personage; and that he existed about the time at which his appearance is recorded in the annals, is as certain as that Julius Cæsar lived and ruled at the time stated on the authority of the Roman historians. I may add here that the pedigree of Finn is fully recorded on the unquestionable authority of the Book of Leinster, in which he is set down as the son of Cumhall, who was the son of Trenmor, son of Snaelt, son of Eltan, son of Baiscni, son of Nuada Necht, who was of the Heremonian race, and monarch of Erinn about A.M. 5090, according to the chronology of the Four Masters, that is, 110 years before Christ. Finn himself was slain, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, in Anno Domini 283, in the reign of Cairbre Lifeachair.” Little can be added to this statement by O’Curry. The great battle of Gabhra—Garristown in Meath—took place in 284; and the ballads represent the brave Oscar, and Cairbre Lifeachair as falling by each others’ hands in the deadly struggle. Oscar was the beloved son of Ossian, and his grandfather Finn, who died a year before the battle of Gabhra, is brought back to life by the Romancists to pronounce a eulogy on the fallen Oscar.

Irish annalists are satisfied that the fatherland of Finn and his heroes was Ireland; but no one appears to be able to point out the territories over which Finn reigned. It is an undoubted fact that Cairbre Lifeachair was the monarch of Erin when Finn died, and when the battle of Gabhra was fought. What can be more natural then than to suppose with Macpherson that Finn was monarch of Albin? In Macpherson’s works Finn is represented always as going from Albin to Erin, a rendering of history which the Irish authorities refuse to accept. When we look for the Kingdom of Finn in Scotland where Macpherson has located it, we certainly fail to ascertain its boundaries by means [of his mystifying] phrases. That his Morven is not the Morvern of Argyllshire has been pointed out long ago; nor is much satisfaction to be found in Dr Clerk’s interpretation of Mor Bheanna, the Great Hills, as a general characteristic of Scotland. It is another illustration of Macpherson’s prudent indefiniteness behind which the secret of his works has been preserved.

Now it appears to me that I am led aright in my studies of this period of Albin’s history, when I regard the Féinne as the last leaders of the great race in Albin and Erin who disappeared in history before the extension of the Gaelic conquest and supremacy. The spirit of their struggle is truly recorded in the ballads when it is repeatedly declared that they went forth to the battle, but that they always fell. This is the melancholy key-note of the Ossianic poetry. This is the passionate patriotism—a brave, resolute and chivalrous race, ever ready for the fight, ever ready to go forth to battle—and has always appealed to the popular heart. The brave Finians, however, seemed to go forth to die. The fate of possible extinction appears to have pressed heavily on the heart of the people. And when the leaders were all dead and gone, Ossian the immortal singer of their exploits and enterprises mourned in his blindness and solitude the departure of his brother heroes and hunters,—dwelling with pathetic tenderness on the oft-recurring refrain: “The last of my race!”

The Albinian monarchy, whose head-quarters were situated near Loch Ness, exercised rule over various tribes. Early in our era its sway appears to have extended, to use the proverbial sayings, from the Ord of Caithness to the Rhinns of Islay, from the Hen of Lewis to the Cock of Arran: O’n Ord Ghallach gus an Roinn Ilich, ’s o’n Chirc Leoghaisich gus a’ Choileach Arranach. This Albinian kingdom was, no doubt, the scene of the Finian exploits which have formed the subjects of poetic romance. It was frequently assailed by the Norse on the north-west and east; and by Celts on the south-east. The latter finally prevailed, bestowing their Celtic tongue on the conquered Albinians. The Féinne appear to have been the last leaders of the national cause. They were probably bilingual, as the more educated classes were in the days of Columba. Many of them may have been fully Gaelicised, while resisting the encroachments of an alien civilisation. Ossian and his fellow-leaders would be of this class. And just as many patriot bards in our own time in Ireland and Britain, lament the decay of Celtic nationalities in the language of the Teutonic conqueror, so the laureate bard of the Albinian people has sung of “the last of his race” in the tongue of the conquering Gael.

The kindred of these remarkable heroes appeared in those early ages in various lands. They were the immediate predecessors, not only of the Celtic, but in some cases also of other races. They were the most ancient Lochlins that ploughed the German Ocean with their trembling barks. They were the earliest Vikings that sailed round the Orkneyan skerries; that visited their kindred and fought with them on the shores of Albin, of Erin, and of Breatun. And clearly it is their connections we have in the north-east of Europe, where they survive in a trying climate with shrunk proportions and exhausted national energies. The famous ballad on the Battle of Gabhra represents four companies of Finians as engaged in the terrible fight—the Féinne of Albin, the Féinne of Erin, the Féinne of Breatun, and the Féinne of Lochlin.

The names of these heroes are still to be found in Lochlin, Erin, and Albin, the lands in which their celebrated deeds were chiefly performed. We find them in the pages of Adamnan like the shadows of a departing people. Finn or Fionn, appears in various forms, as in Findchanus, Fintenus, &c. Here we have also the first, or most ancient, written form of the name of the great bard himself, in Latin disguise, “Oisseneo nomine.”

The territory of the Caledonians lay from Loch Long eastward to the Firth of Tay and the German Ocean, and northward in later times to the Moray Firth. The Caledonian Forest is represented as extending in a north-eastern direction from Loch Lomond to the river Isla. The Caledonian territories, however, were always shifting. Like the Celtica of the Continent of Europe, the Gaeltachd of the British Islands [was always under] a process of change, but at the same time it was ever the region or the land of the Gael. Lands were won from the tribes whom the Gaels conquered, while territories were surrendered to those who pressed on behind them. At first the Gaeltachd was in South Britain; but as the Gaels moved northward, Albin contracted, and the land of the Gael extended. Finally, the Caledonians became the general term for all the Gaelic clans who opposed the legions of Rome.

The etymology of Caledonia has not been satisfactorily explained. The celebrated James Macpherson explains it as follows:—“When South Britain yielded to the power of the Romans, the unconquered nations to the north of the province were distinguished by the name of Caledonians. From their very name, it appears that they were of those Gauls, who possessed themselves originally of Britain. It is compounded of two Celtic words, Gael, signifying Celts or Gauls, and Dun or Don, a hill; so that Gael don, or Caledonians, is as much as to say Celts of the hill country.” In the very next sentence Macpherson unconsciously suggests quite a different and better etymology: “The Highlanders to this day call themselves Gael, their language Gaelic or Galic, and their country Gaeldoch, which the Romans softened into Caledonia.” Consideration for Latin Inflections would readily transform Caeldachd into Caledonia. A rival explanation has found place in many school books—Coille-daoine, rendered Men of the Wood. This, however, is not the accurate translation. The compound is absurd and unnatural. It reads to a Gael like Men-Wood in English. Another explanation has been Gaedhil dhonna, brown-haired Gaels; but physiological facts and the laws of phonology do not support this derivation. The Welsh have given us its meaning from a Cymric standpoint; and as the word is unknown in Gaelic in its historic form the Welsh suggestions appear very reasonable. The Caledonian Forest in Welsh has always been Calydin or Celydin, a term which means Wood. Its Gaelic cognate would be Coilltean, which also supplies the representative consonants of Caledonia. The great forest of the Central Highlands would be very naturally spoken of as the Woods, Coiltean; Caledonii being only a Latin derivative.

With the spread of Christianity the Caledonians became the great people in Albin. In the later ages they consisted of Gaelicised Albinians, Gaels, and Brythonised Gaels. Among them appeared those who stand first on the roll of literary Scots: the poetry and tales of the Féinne developed into their present shape in the hands of the ancient Christian Gaels of our land. The poetic compositions which relate to this period furnish us with gleams of life from the borderland of decadent heathenism and Christianity.

From the first proclamation of the latter onwards the outlines of Scottish story become continually clearer, shining more and more until the day of national freedom and independence shone on a brave and struggling people. In glancing very briefly at the history of the Gael of Albin we find that it naturally suggests the following periods, described by terms which indicate the fresh elements introduced on fresh changes taking place:—

I. The Pre-Celtic Period embraces the unrecorded ages which partially terminated in the third century, when the influence of Christianity began to be felt. The Roman province in Scotland became nominally Christian by the Imperial adoption of Christianity by Constantine in the year 313.

II. The Celtic Period extends from the third century to the year 1068. During these dark and unsettled times there was much intercourse carried on between the old inhabitants of Albin and the people of Lochlin; generally the intercourse took the form of a fierce struggle for supremacy. In 1068 Malcolm III. married an English princess, known afterwards as the saintly Queen Margaret; Gaelic afterwards ceased to be the language of the Scottish Court. At that time Picts and Scots being united under one monarchy the sway of the Northmen in the north-west became much enfeebled. The power of the latter was completely broken by the disastrous defeat of Haco, at Large, in 1263.

III. The Norman or Feudal Period extends from 1068 to 1567. Few of the Gaelic preachers, or representatives of the early Scottish Church, survived the repressing influence of Queen Margaret, who was a zealous Roman Catholic. The Norman conquest of England caused many Saxons to seek refuge in Scotland, where they were welcomed by the Queen and her royal husband, Ceann-Mor. Norman influences also began to be felt in Scotland. The lands of Celtic chiefs were chartered away by the King to Norman barons, of whom many became as Celtic and as identified with the Gaelic inhabitants as the Celtic mormaers whom they supplanted. The patriarchal system began to decay, and feudalism was gradually introduced.

IV. The Protestant and Jacobite Period extends from the middle of the sixteenth century to the year 1745, when Jacobitism on Culloden Moor received its death-blow. The nominal first, afterwards the actual, acceptance of the Reformation doctrines by the Scottish Celts in the sixteenth century has very vitally affected their literature, as well as completely changed their relations with the Irish Celts.

V. The Anglo-Gaelic Period begins in 1745. The influence of the English language and English thought has been extending in the Highlands since then; while through the general intermingling of races, and a better mutual understanding, the prejudices of Celt and Saxon respectively have been everywhere dying away, especially among the classes by whom the force of the democratic tendencies of our age has been felt and acknowledged.

The dates assigned to the above periods are only approximately accurate, but they may serve to shadow forth some of the chief influences which have been at work in the history of Celtic Scotland, and of which we have traces in the literary annals of the Gael. Perhaps the surprising thing in connection with these meagre annals is the fact that there are any literary remains at all, when it is remembered how frequent and how violent have been the changes which have occurred in the course of the history of Albin.

The Anglo-Gaelic era of Highland history commences, as has been pointed out, with the decay of the Jacobite cause. The changes that have taken place since 1745 have deeply affected the destiny and character of the people. In some respects the contact with the fresh forces brought into play was beneficial, in other respects it was a moral loss; but it is to be hoped that on the whole there has been considerable gain, and that not altogether material.

Under the social and educational changes that have been taking place during the last century the Highlanders have shown wonderful adaptableness in the course of the process they have been undergoing. The revival of a more earnest spirit of Christianity in many districts has completely altered the social habits of the people, while the influence of educational agencies has reached the most secluded glen and remote headland.

The English language is everywhere taught, the people, knowing its use in the sphere of secular success, preferring to have their children educated in a purely English rather than in a Gaelic school. The present rising generation all understand and talk a little Saxon of some sort, but Gaelic will be the language of the mass of the population for some generations yet. English thought and culture also reach the people through the hundreds of University-bred ministers who preach Gaelic in Highland pulpits.

These important changes in the Celtic world are not effected without many venerable regrets being uttered by sentimentalists both in Ireland and Scotland. If we look across the channel we find that the Irish Gael indulges in the same unpractical wail over an irrevocable past, that we find so prevalent with his brother of Albin. The cry of the sentimentalist there is even more intense, more persistent. The unpromising present of the Gael there appears to attract like a magnet all the revolutionary sympathies of the usually stolid Teutonic heart, after a little contact of the races. Just as in their political difficulties the Irish have always looked for help from Spain, France, or America, so unless the gods somehow interfere to preserve their native tongue, all they can or will do, waiting for external or divine deliverance, is to take up the refrain—“It is dying.” This is how an Irish poet, the Rev. M. Mullin, Clonfert, sings with incomparable sadness:—

“It is fading! it is fading! like the leaves upon the trees;

It is dying! it is dying! like the Western Ocean breeze!

It is fastly disappearing, as footsteps on the shore,

Where the Barrow, and the Erne, and Lough Swilly’s waters roar;

Where the parting sunbeam kisses the Corrib in the West,

And the ocean, like a mother, clasps the Shannon to its breast;

The language of old Erin, of her history and name—

Of her monarchs and her heroes, of her glory and her fame—

The sacred shrine where rested, through her sunshine and her gloom,

The Spirit of her martyrs, as their bodies in the tomb!

The time-wrought shell where murmured, through centuries of wrong,

The secret voice of Freedom in annal and in song

Is surely, fastly sinking into silent death at last,

To live but in the memories and relics of the Past!”

It must be very consoling to give one’s grief utterance in this highly poetical fashion; it is a question whether the poetry loses or gains in force, when it is remembered that the singer perhaps never put forth any effort to preserve the life of that ancient tongue which he is harping into her grave. Perhaps he does not know the language at all. He may be among those who first spurned and then starved her scholars; of the sentimentalists who, after learned devotees gave to the world in books the results of a life’s labour, on the publication of which they had expended more than all their own means, might borrow but would not buy a copy. The accomplished Archbishop MacHale of Tuam, found out to his cost the full meaning of this remark. Few were the copies of his excellent Græco Irish Homer that were sold; and here we have an illustration of the extent of the encouragement that real Irish scholarship receives. At the same time it must be admitted that the writers of Celtic books are frequently much to blame. They bury their productions in expensive volumes which can never obtain general circulation, or they do not furnish the precise thing required; or if they do, it is not always in a saleable popular fashion. Thus we have to regret the evil results of contemptuous neglect on the one hand, and extravagant claims and impracticable theories on the other, as well as an imaginary sense of loss and wrong, on the part of those who ought to give a more practical direction to the people’s sentiments.

But the Celt is neither dead nor dying. He is still an important factor in the making of the world’s history. Apart from the very large Celtic element that has been absorbed in the Anglo-Celtic intermingling of races under the supremacy of Teutonic rule in these islands we find some four or five millions of people talking one or other of the Celtic dialects. The number of Gaelic speaking Highlanders is not much under half a million. There will be about 300,000 of a Gaelic-speaking population within the geographical limits of the Highlands, the area of which is upwards of three-fifths of Scotland. There is a larger Gaelic population in Glasgow than the whole population of Greenock. The Gaelic bard of to-day has thus as large an audience to sing his lays to as the great Ossian himself had in ancient Albin.

Still it is constantly asserted that whether or not the Gaelic language is dead and ready for burial it has no literature; and the assertion has been repeated for several generations with emphatic persistence. The following chapters are intended to show that there is a literature; and that it does not altogether deserve the contempt with which it has been hitherto regarded. And the English-reading public have a right to know from the pens of Gaelic scholars what is the value of the literature still extant in the ancient language of a people with whom they are so closely united, and who form an important integral portion of their common empire. All have an interest in bringing the reign of ignorance, apathy, and prejudice to an end.

At last in the midst of neglect and apathy, of petty rivalries and discords which so readily breed within circumscribed spheres, when our Gaelic scholars, MacLauchlan and Clerk, Skene and J. F. Campbell, and others, were giving to the world the results of their laborious efforts to uphold the character and literary prestige of their countrymen, and were thus paving the way, one voice began to be heard on behalf of a despised language and literature. That voice crying in the Highland wilderness was that of Professor Blackie! By inimitable eloquence and unwearied energies he interested high and low at once and for years in the establishment of a Celtic Chair in the University of Edinburgh. From the Queen, from lord and laird, and from peasant, he charmed, by his sweet and natural manner, the gold on which that Chair is now so successfully founded. Not only that, but he has also given us the fullest account hitherto published of the language and literature of the Scottish Highlands. It is needless to speak of the affection and gratitude which Highlanders cherish towards the learned and venerable Professor, who has been a most potent Celtic force in this generation. “Saoghal fada ’n deagh bheatha dhuit!”

Irish scholars have recently laboured hard and successfully in furthering the interests of their native literature. It is enough here to mention the names of O’Donovan, O’Currie, Whitley Stokes, Joyce, Standish O’Grady, and Bourke—men whose learning and talents would adorn the literary annals of any nation. While the Irish have accomplished more than the Scottish Gael, the Welsh have done more than either to preserve their language and cultivate their literature. Under systematic efforts to suppress it entirely the Kymry have adhered to their ancient tongue with unwearying pertinacity. While the Gael of Ireland and Scotland have not yet been successful in supporting one purely Gaelic newspaper, the Celt of Wales has his Welsh newspaper in every town of importance in the Principality. It is to the Kymry that we owe the best work yet published on Celtic philology—the “Welsh Philology” of Professor Rhys of the Celtic Chair at Oxford. So now it may fairly be said that we are in the midst of a Celtic Renaissance. Books of a certain useful character do sell, notwithstanding the well founded complaint referred to above. The first edition of Canon Bourke’s “Aryan Origin of the Gaelic Race” was exhausted in a very short time. Campbell’s “Tales” are out of print. These are signs of the times which, along with the establishment of Celtic Chairs at the central seats of learning, decisively indicate a reviving interest in Celtic studies. In talking once of the emotional element of the Celtic nature, an enthusiastic Irish scholar jocularly remarked to the writer that the Gael was dying away in song. If this turns out to be true, it is evident that his remains will be examined with pious and scientific care.

It is interesting to find that, meagre as Gaelic literature is—and the great wonder is that what we have should have been produced in so unpromising a field—it extends over sixteen centuries. Its stream issued from that fount of Gaelic heroism which began to burst forth in the first centuries of our era, when the ground of the old European world was on every side shaken by the heavy tramp of the Roman legions and by the consequent disturbance of equilibrium among the clans and races everywhere. Epic products of genius, of course, there are not in Gaelic literature. Perhaps the pure Celtic genius, as Mathew Arnold held, is incapable of producing epic works—is too emotional, and is only rich in lyrical and ballad power. Great works requiring leisure, quietness, and perseverance there are not; the life of our ancestors, active, earnest, and practical—its energies ceaselessly being called forth to combat the ruthless forces of nature—did not admit of the necessary cultivation and ease for such productions. Extensive fruits of Gaelic thought and letters we do still possess, however, although much has been lost, especially of what was produced in earlier days. But these should not for a moment be spoken of in comparison with the magnificent monuments of intellectual endeavour which Greece and Rome and Anglo-Celtic Britain have reared. But Gaelic literature will compare favourably with that of many other countries, especially when united with its sister product, Irish literature. And Welsh literature, no doubt, should also be added. English literature, because of the basis it has in the soil of Christianity, is the grandest product of the human intellect, the master works of Greece and Rome not excepted. It is great; it is partly Celtic; and we, as Anglo-Celts, admire it. But we may with advantage look beyond the bounds of our English studies, and then see more clearly the foundation of our Anglo-Celtic empire when we have examined with tender and sympathetic care the interesting relics of Celtic thought enshrined in the ancient language of the British Islands.

It ought perhaps to be acknowledged that the English-speaking peoples of these islands are, at present peculiarly ready to accept any authentic information respecting Celtic history and literature. The same remark replies to Continental scholars. In our own islands the stirring of nationalities in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that simultaneously with the movements of the practical politics of the parties of the day and the advocacy of the reform of our land laws, has deepened the interest in all questions relating to Celtic life and thought.

It is a mere truism to remark that the language and literature of the Gael have been much neglected. All attempts to bring their claims before the English-speaking world were, till recently, treated with systematic indifference if not with contempt. The national, historical, and scientific value of the study of both does not appear to have occurred even to many who ought to know better. Interesting and inviting as the field was, it lay long unoccupied. Highlanders conscious of some talent were attracted by the rich prizes and honour obtainable within the sphere of English letters. A few who dipped into Celtic studies found them either unprofitable or turned away with disgust from a path in which they were met on all sides with petty jealousies and ignorant pretence. The Rev. Dr John Smith, of Campbeltown, distinguished alike for his learning and general culture, sacrificed much of his time and means to Gaelic studies; and, finding them unprofitable, turned in his leisure hours to farming on his glebe. He was also annoyed by a truthless, pedant schoolmaster, Duncan Kennedy, of Lochgilphead, who laid claim to the authorship of some ballads which Dr Smith had published. The English Republic of letters could not be blamed for disregarding the intellectual history of a people who ignored their own productions and all that they inherited from their ancestors. Yet is it a reproach to Irish and British scholars that Continental students should be the first to create interest in Celtic studies and place them on a scientific basis. The real parties, however, who ought to bear the blame are the Celts themselves—the Kymry of Wales, and the Gael of Ireland and Scotland. It is with much propriety that Professor Geddes of Aberdeen, thus addresses British Celts with regard to their languages:—“Your advantages are great. To you it is a mother-speech, whereas to others like myself it has to be laboriously learned, and after all imperfectly, so that it can hardly be said to be a speech at all in such mouths as mine. It is otherwise with you; you are within the shrine, such as I are without, and just as the radiance of a cathedral window, rich with the spoils of time, looks blurred and poor to the eye that seeks to comprehend it from without, but streams in full glory on the eye that gazes from within, so your native speech rightly studied ought to be to you resplendent with linguistic treasures, such as no stranger can be expected to unveil.” The Highlander alone can fully know and appreciate the language and literature of his race. But if he takes up the obsolete harp of his fathers, and rehearses in melancholy strains that his people are perishing and that his language is dying, it is quite natural, that his Teutonic neighbour should chime in with an emphatic and not always a sympathetic amen.

This sort of harping is the species of music with which many Highlanders, and Irish Gaels also, have been pleased to humour and feed their patriotic feelings over the general neglect of Celtic interests. Well may the disinterested spectator declare that they are not much in earnest—that the wail is partly hypocritical; for they have done so little to preserve their language and nationality. And no doubt the cry is to a certain extent hypocritical with not a few self-constituted patriots, and the bulk of the people disregard it. The latter do not take up the wail, and they are mainly in the right. The enthusiast and the sentimentalist, who indulge in the dirge, run away with one small truth, or the phase of a truth—with a pathetic misconception of the true state of things. Sometimes they hire themselves to do the coronach, like the Irish professional mourners who do the wailing over the departed. But the people in general are not drawn by the charming of the sentimentalist; they are more practical. They know and feel the power of circumstances and destiny which they have to overcome and bear, and act accordingly. While they find their native hills barren, and their native glens inhospitable, they betake themselves to the rich woods of Canada and the prairies of the United States. Witness what a large body of the Glengarry Highlanders once did. Again, when they find the want of the English language a bar to their secular success in life, they protest, while cherishing dearly their native tongue, against pure Gaelic schools being thrust upon them, and demand English teaching first. This has been the case not so long ago in the Long Island. And the reason is quite patent. Before arriving at school age the children are in possession of their mother-tongue; and the parents consider, and very rightly, that the sooner their sons and daughters acquire good English the better for their own comfort, interest, and success in the great English-speaking world in which they have necessarily to perform a part. English ought to be taught from the first through, and simultaneously with, the Gaelic. In all this the people show that their utilitarianism is sensible, intelligent. They recognise the facts of their surroundings. They listen to the charming of the sentimentalist, but they go on their own practical way rejoicing. Hundreds of Highlanders in our large towns never enter a Gaelic church. English-speaking mothers and children do not find the arrangement of services convenient and, consulting the general good of all the members of the family, they take their seats elsewhere. In this they cannot be deeply blamed. In Scotland we are quite familiar with the stereotyped arguments and phraseology which are applied to depopulation and other matters. But many of those who rehearse the one on public platforms and weave the other into elegiac verse do not always give us a practical illustration of their theories and teaching by living in the Highlands and by having Gaelic taught in their own families.

This conviction and cry of the imaginative Celt that the world is slipping from his grasp—that his affairs are in a hopeless condition—has done much injury to his own interests. And it is not at all surprising although his neighbours and the rising generation of his own people have regarded his language and literature with persistent indifference. Ossian himself is proverbially known to us—“Oisein an déigh na Féinne”—as the “last of the race.” It would almost seem that every generation of Gaels during the last millennium regarded itself as the last of the “race.” Yet, strange to say, the Gaelic language is spoken to-day within pretty nearly the same limits as it was a thousand years ago, a fact encouraging to the sanguine and poetic natures of men like William Livingston, that very original Islay bard, who once sang as follows:—

“Cànain àigh nam buadhan òirdhearc,

A b’ fharsuing cliù air feadh na h-Eòrpa;

Bithidh i fathast mar a thòisich,

Os ceann gach cainnt ’na h-iuchair eòlais.”

English:—

Strange mystic pow’rs lie in that tongue,

Whose praise through Europe wide has rung;

As ’twas of yore in school and college,

It shall be first—the key of knowledge.

CHAPTER I.
[EARLY GAELIC] LITERATURE—PATRICK.

“Si labhair Padric ’nnínse Fail na Riogh,

’S an faighe caomh sin Colum náomtha ’n I.”—

Maclean in Lhuyd’s Ar. Brit. (1707.)

English: ’Twas it that Patrick spoke in Inis-Fayle,

And saintly Calum in Iona’s Isle.

The present state of our knowledge does not enable us to assign an exact date to the first beginnings of Gaelic literature. The most ancient ballads have certainly come down to us through the hands of Gaelic Churchmen; and it may be taken as absolutely certain that writing was unknown until it was introduced by Christian missionaries. The monuments of Runes and Oghams, the study of which may be pursued in the works of Stephens, Anderson, and Ferguson, can scarcely be regarded as literature in the proper sense of the term. At the threshold of the temple of Gaelic letters we are confronted with one name which can not be ignored—that of Ossian which we see inscribed on the portals.

In his days and those of his peculiar people, the Féinne, the Pagan and pre-Celtic Period was coming to a close. Let us look a little at the picture that has been handed down to us of this great bard with whom the heathen dispensation ended.

That a Fingal lived and an Ossian sang is a proposition that cannot be successfully disputed. It was in the eighteenth century, when James Macpherson published his fragments of ancient Gaelic poetry, that the controversy which rages yet around the name of Ossian arose. This controversy, as well as the poems, English and Gaelic, published by Macpherson, will be afterwards considered. In the meantime, the name of Ossian is used in a conventional sense, just as the name Homer is frequently used. He lived, let us say, in the third or fourth century, when the heathen dispensation of the pre-Celts and of the Gaels was drawing to a close, when the Druidic period, with its mysteries, was coming to an end. It is neither affirmed nor denied here at this stage that Ossian was the author of the Gaelic poems at present in circulation, and from which Macpherson ostensibly translated. But what may be safely affirmed is, that there was in the days of Gaelic heathenism an eminent bard of the name of Ossian, who started the key-note of some poetry, which may be styled Ossianic. That fragments of his compositions have been handed down to us may with equal safety be affirmed. But of the early poems and ballads contained in Campbell’s “Leabhar na Féinne” we are absolutely unable to say which was composed by Ossian or which by his imitators and others. In that vast and valuable collection there may be pieces of Ossian’s; and certainly the authorship of many poems is directly attributed to him, though evidently in many cases by loose tradition. His name is also attached to several productions which can easily be proved to belong to some unknown authors. “A hoodir Oisein” would be readily prefixed by reciters and scribes to any anonymous piece of merit to gain currency for it.

But granting that Ossian is not a myth, but a veritable man who was a great bard among his people, a further question arises, Was the poet Irish or Scottish? The Irish have all along declared that the true and original Ossian belonged to them, and lived in their country. Their indignation over Macpherson’s productions knew no bounds. All Macpherson’s heroes are represented as going from Alba to Erin, which harmonizes well with the recent deliverances of Sayce and Rhys. He described all the Irish Ossians as fictions and fables manufactured by monks in the Middle Ages, and as so far inferior to the genuine remains of Ossian as the most insipid heroics of the present day are to the immortal productions of Homer. He showed that their system of chronology could not be harmonised—that it was, in fact, absurd. As represented in the everlasting dialogues between the poet and the saint, he asked how could Ossian, who was supposed to live in the third century, hold converse with St. Patrick, who did not arrive in Ireland till the fifth century? No such objections could be brought against Macpherson’s Ossian, whose chronology was, perhaps conveniently vague, fairly consistent with itself. The Irish literati then betook themselves to the manufacture of poems a la Macpherson, whom they denounced first as a thief and afterwards as a forger. When they failed to produce any poems of such superior merit as those of Macpherson, the theory of theft from the Irish was given up, and that of forgery substituted. It was quite evident that the Scottish “Ossian” published by Macpherson was very different from the composer of Irish ballads and Finian tales. It was admitted by the Scottish patriots that there was a Scottish Ossian very like the Irish one—that of the later or heroic ballads and of the popular tales. But they held that this was a spurious, inferior, and more recent bard or bards, who attached the name of the great father of Gaelic poetry to their own productions; and that the genuine, true, and original poems of Ossian, the immortal poet of the ancient Caledonians, were translated and published by Macpherson. The claims of the two countries cannot be satisfactorily adjusted or reconciled. History, however, conclusively shows that the Gaels of the North of Ireland and those of Scotland were at this period very closely related—were, indeed, but one people. Just as Shakespeare is claimed by all sections of the English-speaking world as their common heritage, so Ossian would be regarded by all the Gaelic-speaking tribes or clans as their common property.

Ossian occupies the same place in both the Irish and Scottish genealogies of the great Finian family. He is the son of Finn or Fingal, the father of the brave and peerless Oscar, the chief bard of his people.

Fionn, whose name means fair, the leader, and king of the Féinne, is the most remarkable figure in the annals of the Gael. The popular conception of his prowess may be gathered from the following grand passage of Highland poetry:—

“With loud-sounding strides he rush’d westward

In the clank of his armour bright;

And he looked like the Spirit of Loda, that scatters

Dismay o’er the war-way and fight!

“Like a thousand waves on a crag that roll, yelling,

When the ugly storm is at its height,

So awful the clash of mail and his weapons,

While his face wore the winter of fight!

“His smooth claymore glittered aloft,

In his champion hand it was light;

And the snoring winds kept moving his locks

Like spray in the whirlpool’s might!

“The hills on each side they were shaken,

And the path seemed to tremble with fright!

Gleamed his eyes, and his great heart kept swelling—

Oh! cheerless the terrible sight!”

This is a picture of Fingal going to battle, and a “terrible sight,” indeed it must have been, especially to his foes. The leader of the Féinne was surrounded by a worthy band of followers. The bards and senachies, or oralists, agree in the character, outlines, and abilities of these heroes. Ossian, the son of Fingal, was himself a hero; but, being generally a supposed narrator, gives us little insight into his own distinctive character. He was a great bard, a brave warrior, but an unobtrusive man. His son Oscar was the pride and hope of Selma, peerless as to strength and skill in arms, generous to a fallen foe, and ever ready to meet the fiercest champion that ever came from Lochlin. Gaul or Goll is stout and valiant, and next to Oscar in prowess, but is at times morose. He is never worsted, but he never courts danger for its own sake. The beautiful and brown-haired Diarmad cannot be seen by any woman without being loved. He is devoted to his brothers in arms, and when necessary he can combine sleight of hand with heroic daring. Cailte is a poet, and celebrated for his swiftness of foot. Then there is the hardy Rayne, the majestic Cochulin, and the faithful though rash Conan. Fingal himself has been limned from more than one point of view by the oralists. His greatness and courage in battle are indisputably pre-eminent. He is a prudent, cautious general, and disapproves of unnecessary bloodshed. In affairs of the heart he is relentless towards a rival, generous though he is in other respects. The worst thing that can be recorded of him is his unfeeling and revengeful conduct towards his nephew, the gallant Diarmid, when the latter eloped with Queen Gràine. These were the principal warriors of that gallant band of Finian heroes whose names are indelibly engraven on the hills and straths of their native land, while their deeds are recorded in a thousand songs. They lived at a time when the world was undergoing . Tribes were beginning to assume a national cast, and as organised nations [to develop an] individuality. They were preparing to run the race sketched out to them by destiny, the path of each bounded by a particular line or limit of sea, stream, mountain, or valley, and were throwing aside all the encumbrances of superseded customs and laws that might clog their progress. Fingal and his followers appeared in immortal brilliance, crowned with the laurels of deathless heroism on the stage of the world, and soon they disappeared from the scene. They were seen but for a short time like the sun in a wintry day. And the picture is beautifully brought before us in the following verses translated by Pattison:—

“Like a sun-gleam in wild wintry weather

That hastens o’er Lena’s wide heath,

So the Féinne have faded together,

They were the beam the showery clouds sheathe,

When down stoops the dark rain-frown of heaven,

To snatch from the hunter the ray,

And wildly the moaning bare branches are driven,

While the weak herbs all wither away.

“But the sun, in his strength yet returning,

The fair-freshened woods will espy,

In the springtime that laugh for their mourning,

As they look on the Son of the sky,

Kindly unveilling his lustre,

Through the soft and the drizzling shower,

All their wan heads again will he muster,

From their drear and their wintry bower.

“Then with joy will their small buds keep swelling;

Not so they who sleep in the tomb—

No sunbeam that darkness dispelling,

Shall waken them up from their gloom.”

Ossian, the blind warrior-poet, survives them all. And now, as he muses on the departure of his kindred heroes and hunters, and on the loneliness of his own state, led by the white-armed Malvina, the betrothed of his fallen son Oscar, he seeks their former haunts, and breathes as he rests in the well-known shades the pathetic lamentation, “the last of my race!”

“Chula tu bàrda nam fonn:

’S taitneach, ach trom do ghuth;

’S taitneach a Mhalmhìne nan sonn;

Leaghaidh bròn am bochd an am tha dubh.”

Croma.

From the picture of Ossian in his shadowy Pagan domain it is refreshing to turn to those names which have played a great part in connection with our earliest Christian civilization and literature. They are the names of Patrick of Strathclyde, Bridget of the South Gaels of Albin, and Columba of Donegal, subsequently of Iona.

The first glimpse we have of Albin on the canvas of written record is a very confusing one. The one outstanding fact is the Roman occupation. The next fact that strikes and enchains the eye is the presence of Christianity in the land. Among the Gaels of the south-west of Scotland we mark the person of Ninian, around whom we see across the ages the light of the gospel shining. This preacher of the cross, of whose labours in Galloway very interesting traces were discovered quite recently, appears to have carried the gospel not only to the Gaels of the south-west, but also to the southern Picts north of the Forth and Clyde. His labours began as early as the year 397, and resulted in the first church organization known in Scotland. The evengelisation of Ninian extended over probably the whole of Romanised Scotland towards the end of the fourth century. The races embraced in his sphere of operations were Latin-speaking peoples of various nations, Brythons, and Gaels.

Among the last-mentioned, the Gaels of the Strathclyde kingdom, whose chief seat was Alcluaidh, now Dumbarton, there appeared the family of Patrick, whose name has shed holy lustre on the early annals of that period. This family had been Christians for two generations. The father of Patrick was a decurio, one of the council or magistracy of a Roman provincial town. His name was Calphurnius, which some have rendered by the familiar form of MacAlpine. Being recognised as a Roman magistrate he thus took his place among the local aristocracy of Banavem in Taberniæ, where villas of the Roman style could be seen, and the sonorous Latin could be heard mingling with the kindred accents of the ancient Gaelic. This place was probably not far from that attractive spot on the banks of the Clyde where a topographical monument has been reared to the celebrated Irish apostle in Kilpatrick. Calphurnius was not only a magistrate; he was also a deacon in the Christian church. His own father, the grandfather of Patrick, was called Potitus, and filled the office of Presbyter in the Strathclyde church. It is also stated that this family cultivated a small farm.

As there is a great deal of literature extant on the nativity of Patrick which conflicts with the results of recent discussion, it may be satisfactory to many to have the [latest authoritative] declarations on the subject before them. No one has ever attempted to deprive the north of Ireland of the honour of having supplied the Highlands with the great gospel preacher who evengelised the north-west; who revived the Christianity of the Lowlands; whose earnest disciples supplied the north of England with the teachers who converted its people to the power of Christ. But while Protestant Scotland has made no attempts to deprive Ireland of its Columban honours Catholic Ireland has persistently endeavoured to denude Scotland of its legitimate claims to the honour of being the fatherland of Patrick. Ireland’s misrepresentations have been acquiesced in by Scotsmen, especially by timid historical writers, of a certain ecclesiastical type, who have made needless concessions to Romanist claims in connection with a question which is purely historical. It is with peculiar pleasure that we are now able to assign Patrick, the son of the Gaelic Church of Strathclyde, his true place on the roll of Gaelic Scots; and to regard him as a link in the Gospel succession which Columba brought with him to the West Highlands.

In the Catholic Dictionary, issued a few years ago, and compiled by Addis and Arnold of the Royal University of Ireland, with the approving seal of his Eminence Cardinal Manning on its publication, the following satisfactory sentence occurs: “The general conversion of the Irish nation was reserved for St. Patrick, who was probably born at the place now called Kilpatrick on the Clyde whence he was carried as a slave into the north of Ireland while still a youth.” To this there is appended a foot-note referring to the excellent article of an Irish bishop on St. Patrick in one of the Irish periodicals: “Dr Moran, Bishop of Ossory, who formerly leant to the opinion that the place was near Boulogne in France, has lately written convincingly in favour of the Scottish site.” The Bishop’s article has finally decided the question; and has enabled the Gaels of Scotland, with the tacit consent of their Irish brethren, to add to the list of their heroic Christian missionaries, a name whose brilliant halo of holy effort is unsurpassed in the ancient annals of the Christian Church of these islands.

We are thus enabled to point out the first home of Christianity among the Gaels of Scotland. We find it on the banks of the Clyde, where many Christians of the same people, still talking the same tongue, may still be found, rejoicing in the same Gospel. The picture of this early Gaelic Church of Strathclyde from whose bosom the devoted Patrick came forth, is in itself a sufficient reason why the Early History of the Gaels should be re-written. It is a chapter added to the Celtic civilisation of the Highland people, which has been hitherto ignored or hidden through Roman, Teutonic, or Norman influences.

A good deal has been written about Patrick’s visit to Rome, where it was necessary to take him by the Romanist writers of later times in order that he might receive consecration from an order of Ecclesiastical Fathers which had scarcely yet developed. The Catholic Dictionary, already quoted, is forced to confess, after reference to Patrick’s autobiography in his Confession as follows:—“He does not mention the Pope or the Holy See.” We thus find that in his own authentic writings Patrick makes no reference to, or acknowledgment of, the Roman Bishop of his day. The reason for this is not far to seek.

Patrick does not appear to have come in contact with any Christianity except that which he was taught on the banks of the Clyde in the Gaelic Church of his fathers. He had neither been to Rome nor known the Roman Bishop (Celestine) of his time, so he makes no reference to either in his genuine writings. On this question his own words in his Epistle to Coroticus deserve quotation—Ego, Patricus, indoctus, scilicet, Hibernione, constitutum episcopum me esse reor: a Deo accepi, id quod sum. “I, Patrick, an unlearned man, to wit, a bishop constituted to Ireland: what I am I have received from God.” Thus in the establishment of his Church Patrick in no instance appeals to any foreign Church, Pope, or Bishop. On authority received from God he superintended the Irish Church for 34 years. These clear statements of his are utterly at variance with the fabricated ones which adorn the lives of him which appeared centuries afterwards, and which are now regarded as authorities by the fabulously inclined.

In his own writings Patrick gives us in a somewhat unconscious manner a beautiful picture of his devoted character:—“I was born free. I was the son of a father who was a decurio. I sold my nobility for the advantage of this nation. But I am not ashamed, neither do I repent; I became a servant for Jesus Christ our Lord, so that I am not recognised in my former position.” Elsewhere he says—“I was about 16 years old; but I knew not the true God, and was led away into captivity to Hibernia, with a great many men, according to our deservings.” His occupation for six years in Antrim was keeping cattle. But the spirit of the Eternal took possession of him. “My constant business was to keep the flocks; I was frequent in prayers, and the love and fear of God more and more inflamed my heart. My faith and spirit were enlarged, so that I said a hundred prayers in a day and nearly as many at night, and in the woods and on the mountain I remained, and before the light I arose to my prayers, in the snow, in the frost, and in the rain; and I experienced no evil at all. Nor was I affected with sloth, for the spirit of God was warm in me.” This was the man that the Gaels of Strathclyde gave for the conversion of Ireland to Christianity.

There are several interesting questions suggested by the nativity and life of Patrick. The land of his birth is now clearly ascertained; but there are subsidiary questions in connection with that fact which require further consideration. Was Patrick a Gael, a Brython or one of non-Aryan races which as recently as the fifth century were a powerful people? What language did he speak, or what language did he acquire in his Christian conquest of Ireland? Who were the Irish as a race, and how far they had been Christianised before his arrival? As to the question of race, the evidence appears to lean distinctly in favour of the conclusion that he was a Gaidel and not a Brython, notwithstanding the Brythonic suggestiveness of the letter P in his name. It ought not to be forgotten also in connection with this question that the radical differences between the Brythonic and Gaidelic dialects at this time were far less important than they are now; and that the capital of the district of Patrick’s birth-place had its earlier Gaidelic designation of Alcluaidh before it received its Brythonic name of Dunbretton. Philologists tell us of the loss of the letter P in the Gaidelic dialects; but the phonologists on this question have not fully cleared up the difficulties which are suggested by the fact that in some of the most north-westerly districts of the Highlands at the present time many of the non-Anglicised natives are incapable of making a clear distinction between the letters P and B, and hard C and G. If we take the evidence afforded by literature, we can come to no other conclusion than that Patrick was of the Gaidelic or Gaelic race; for if we have not actual compositions in the Gaelic language by him we have productions in that language ascribed to him by ancient countrymen who must have known what his native tongue had been.

The language which Patrick appears to have acquired in course of his missionary labours for Ireland’s conversion could have been no other than that of the non-Aryan races, or Cruthnic—the prevailing Erinic—probably related closely to the Albinic, which at that time was spoken all over the north-west of Scotland. In the north-east of Ireland he no doubt found considerable numbers of the Gaidelic race, his kinsmen who had preceded him. But the language of those who had been already partly converted by Palladius, a semi-mythic saint, who is at least as much connected with Albin as with Erin, was certainly different from that of the large mass of the Irish people. To extend the conquests of Christianity over the fair fields of Erin south as well as north, it was necessary that Patrick should master the tongue of the non-Aryan races. There can be no doubt that his labours in this direction helped also to extend the area of the Gaelic-speaking regions,—the more literary language of the incoming saint and his race making natural acquisitions in every direction. Similar results followed the Gospelising efforts of Columba in the Highlands in a subsequent age.

The conclusions fairly deducible from a consideration of Patrick’s life point to many interesting matters in connection with the History of the Highland People. We obtain first a clear conception of a living Christian church existing among the Romanised Gaels of Strathclyde. We also learn that from the bosom of the Gaelic Church of Ninian, decayed as it possibly may have been, there came forth the great messenger of the Cross, who recalled to life if he did not originate the forces of Christianity in Ireland. Again we find the gospel succession of the spirit of truth, coming back in a generation or two into the Highlands of Scotland in the person of Columba. The lamp of heavenly wisdom, lighted on the banks of the Clyde, which Patrick flashed over the fields of Erin, became the holy beacon which the fervid fingers of Columba planted on the shores of Iona.

The Scottish missionary that went to Ireland and became its patron saint is often referred to in the early ballads, Irish and Scottish. His Creed-Prayer is given here. It is a curious mixture of dogma and poetry; but undevotional as it may seem to us had the “green” and other coloured Finians of the day appropriated its earnest petitions and aspirations they would be saved the troubles of many “Pursuits.” It begins thus in prose: “Patraicc dorone innimmunsa.” Patrick made this hymn. It then states that it was made in the time of Leogaire, son of Neill. The cause assigned to its composition was the need of “protection with his monks against the mortal enemies who were in league against the clerics.” It was to be a corslet of faith for soul and body against demons, men, and vices. Demons could not stand before the face of him who sang it; envy and poison could do no harm; in this life it would be a safeguard against sudden death; and it would be a covering of defence (lurech in Gaelic, from the Latin lorica) after death. When Patrick sang it as he went forth to sow the faith the opposition of Leogaire gave way.

Then the hymn properly begins: The singer declares his belief in the Trinity—in Threeness—confession of Oneness in the Creator of the world.

I bind myself to-day—

To the power of the Trinity;

To belief in the all-gracious Three;

To confession that the Three are one

In the Maker of the world and sun.

I bind myself to-day—

To the power of the birth of Christ;

To the truth that Jesus was baptised,

To the fact that path of death He trod,

That three days He lay beneath the sod;

To the pow’r of Resurrection morn,

That from the earth to heaven he was borne;

To the power of His Judgment call,

When final state shall be assigned to all.

I bind myself to-day—

To the power of the Cherubs high;

In obedience of the angels nigh;

In attendance of archangels’ might;

In the hope of resurrection’s light;

In the prayers of the sires of eld;

In the visions that the seers beheld;

In the precepts the apostles taught;

In the faith by which confessors wrought;

In the innocence of virgins pure;

In the deeds of just men that endure.

I bind myself to-day—

To the power of Heaven,

To the lustre, sun-given;

To the pureness, snow-driven;

To fiery flames brightening;

To the swiftness of lightning;

To the speed of the breeze;

To the depth of the seas;

To the firmness of land,

And the rocks that there stand.

I bind myself to-day—

To God’s pow’r to be controlled;

To His might me to uphold;

To His wisdom me to bow;

To His eye the path to show;

To His ear to hear my cry;

To His word to speak my sigh;

To His hand me to protect;

To His way me to direct;

To His shield as my defence;

To His host till I go hence.

Against demons’ dire devices;

Against allurements of all vices;

Against strong solicitations

Of our nature’s inclinations;

Against all the bad desires

With which sin men’s hearts inspires,

Afar or near where’er I be

In solitude or company.

Thus I have sought protection from on high

Against the powers of ill and cruelty;

Against deceitful prophets’ incantations;

Against the black laws of the gentile nations;

Against the false laws of all heretics;

Against the craft of the idolator’s tricks;

Against the spells of druids, smiths, and women;

Against all lore that taints the spirit human.

Let Christ protect me to-day against poison—

Against burning, drowning, against wound,

Until abundance of reward comes round.

Christ be with me, Christ before, behind,

Christ without me, Christ within my mind,

Christ above me, and in breadth, length, height,

Christ below me, at my left and right.

Let Christ in all who think of me reside,

And on all lips that speak to me abide;

Christ be in every eye that sees my walk,

Christ be in every ear that hears my talk.

I bind myself to-day—

To the power of the Trinity,

To belief in the all-gracious Three,

To confession that the Three are One,

In the Maker of the earth and sun.

Dr Cameron, who has a learned article on “St. Patrick’s Hymn” in The Scottish Celtic Review, and to whose accurate prose translation as well as to Dr Stokes’s in his Goidelica. I am so much indebted in the above rendering, makes the following remark:—“This hymn forms one of the Irish hymns in the ‘Liber Hymnorum,’ a MS. belonging to Trinity College, Dublin, and written, as Dr Stokes conjectures, about the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century. The hymn itself, however, belongs to a much earlier date.”

The chief dates in the life of Patrick, who was probably born about 387, are his landing in Ireland in 432 when he is represented as attending the assembly of the Irish Kings and Chieftains which was held on the hill of Tara that year; his celebrated letter against Coroticus in 453 to regulate church discipline; and his death which occurred in 493.

A very remarkable incident, related in the “Book of Armagh” and quoted in Todd’s “Life of Patrick,” which bears internal evidence of high antiquity, and now evidently written at a time when paganism was not yet extinct in the country, illustrates the way in which Patrick set before the Celtic mind the faith which he proclaimed. One morning he and his attendants repaired to a fountain called Clebach at Cruachan, now Rath-croghan, an ancient residence of the kings of Connaught. Thither came the two daughters of King Laogharie, and on seeing the strangers supposed them to be Duine Sidhe fairies, “men of the hills,” and said to them, “Who are ye?” And Patrick said unto them, “It were better for you to confess to our true God, than to inquire concerning our race.”

‘The first Virgin said,—

“Who is God?

“And where is God?

“And of what nature is God?

“And where is his dwelling place?

“Has your God sons and daughters, gold and silver?

“Is He everliving?