X] 



130 



Such testimonies as these prove more than the cause for which 

 they are cited requires, and that the common traditional opinion, 

 respecting Fin Mac-Cumhal, is hostile to that which is necessary to 

 the Ossianic hypothesis. According to Buchanan, Eugenius IL 

 died A. D. 432, more than a century and a half after the days of 

 Fingal. 



A quotation is next given from Bishop Douglas's '^ Palice of 

 Honour,'^ as not inconsistent with the idea, that Fingal and his 

 h^Qes Mevs of Scottish extraction : 



'OT ?a'H '.Hi «.^jeat Gow-Mac-Mome, and Fyn-Mac-Cowl, and how 

 ;'y lo ' They suld be goddis in Ireland, as they say." 



The observation upon these words is extraordinary. " Those 

 heroes might certainly be born in Scotland, though they might be 

 accounted gods in Ireland !" It is possible, but by no means pro- 

 bable. Barbarous nations are not in the habit of deifying any 

 heroes but their own. But, " the general tenor of the quotation," 

 Sir John Sinclair thinks, " seems to justify that explanation. (We 

 should think the contrary.). That this was the bishop's meaning 

 is the more probable, because in a poem written about the same 

 period, namely, in the reign of James IV., called ' The Interlude of 

 the Droichis/ Fyn Mac-Cowl is given to the Highlands :" 



, ** " My fore grandsyr, hecht Fyn Mac-Cowl, 



That dang the devil and gart him yowll, 

 "'■" The skyis rained when he wald scowU, 



And trublit all the air : 



of modems carefully collected by D. Roth, Bishop of Ossory, an advocate for Ireland. But 

 Ward, in the Life of Saint Rumold,* says, as follows, of the present age : " We are certainly 

 called at this very day Scots in Germany, as I shall demonstrate elsewhere from the engraved 

 epitaphs of the Irish, and from the printed books of Germans of the first litemry abilities yet 

 liwB^."— Ogygia, voL ii. p. 262. Dub. 1793. -sfcaB hir.siuioaB l 



• Written in 1631. t;- 



