136 



and they prove nothing on the subject, except that the name of Fin 

 Mac-Cumhal was not to them altogether unknown. But Ireland 

 goes to higher sources ; and she has the steady beacon light of chro- 

 nology and history to guide her. She has written annals to which 

 she appeals, handed down in various transcripts from generation to 

 generation ; and almost all writers who have treated of her history and 

 antiquities,, notice the fondness of her natives for music and poetry, 

 her bards and senachies, her fictions, romances, and superstitions, 

 as connected with the names of Fionn and Oisin. Camden says of 

 the Irish, "they suppose the soules of such as are deceased, goe into 

 the company of certaine men, famous in those places, touching 

 whom they reteine still fables and songs, as of giantes, Fyn Mac- 

 Huyle, Osker Mac-Oshin ; and they say, that by illusion they often- 

 times doe see such."* And again, their " potentates also have their 

 historians about them, who write downe their acts and deeds ; they 

 have their phisitians also, and Rymers whom they call bards, yea, 

 and their harpers, who have every one of them their severall livelods 

 and lands set out for them ; and of these there be in each territorie 

 severall professours, and those liable to some certaine and severall 

 families. "-f" Thus Campion also, in his History, pubhshed in Dublin, 

 1633, says of the Irish, " greedy of praise they bee, and fearefull of 

 dishonour, and to this end they esteeme their poets who write 

 Irish learnedly, and penne their sonnetts heroical, for the which they 

 are bountifully rewarded. But if they send out libells in dis- 

 prayse, thereof the gentlemen, especially the meere Irish, stand in 

 great awe." — p. 14. 



non excedunt, Barbourii nempe, et Boethii.— Vide Report of the Committee of the High- 

 land Society, p. 21."— O'Conor, Ilib. Script. 



* Camden's Ireland, p. 147, Lond. 1610. f Id. Ireland, p. 141. 



