115 



handed down to our times, few will have the hardihood to affirm. In 

 fact, the language in which they wrote or spoke, as we have before 

 had occasion to remark, would not be intelligible at the present 

 time. 



Fin, from his warlike achievements, was regarded as the prince 

 of heroes, and in the romantic imaginations of his countrymen, he 

 became at last invested with supernatural strength. Hence, many of 

 the rude monuments of stone, found in different districts of Ireland, 

 the rocky circle^ the kist-vaens, and the huge trilithon, are ascribed 

 by the vulgar, to the architectural power of Fin and his associates. 

 Hence also his exploits became the frequent subject of song. He 

 was to Ireland, as Arthur and the knights of the round table to 

 England, the theme of many a legend, and the hero of many a tale. 



Walker, in his History of the Irish bards, (p. 110,) says that " se- 

 veral of the poems attributed to Oisin are the production of bards of 

 the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as may be easily proved from some 

 terms of language unknown to the Irish in earlier times." This may 

 also be inferred from the change which took place in the application 

 of poetry to subjects of fiction. At first it was the only vehicle of 

 true history, and it was employed down to a very late period as the 

 most eligible mode of recording real events. The Cronykil of 

 Wyntown, and The Bruce of Barbour, though written in verse, are 

 appealed to by Dalrymple and other historians, as to veracious 

 authority. To such use was early Irish poetry devoted, and though 

 it does not seem necessary to suppose that it excluded all fiction, a 

 marked distinction must have been preserved between poems of real 

 history, and those of imagination. Our native Irish historians of 

 more modern times, such as Keating and O'Flaherty, frequently refer 

 to ancient poems for proof or illustration, and nothing can exceed 

 the bald and unpoetical character of many of the passages which 



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