OSIUIOENE 



OSS I AX 



Osrhoone. a .li-tii,-t in the north-west of 

 Meso|M>tanii:i,, containing EJeasa (q.v.). 



Oftftit, the ancient name of a mountain on the 



east side oi Thes-aly . near Pelion |o. v. ), mill separ- 

 ated fniin Olympus liy tin- vale <if Tcni|>e. The 

 ancients placed the seat of the Centaur* ami 

 <;i.mis in the neighbourhood of 1'elion and Osaa. 

 See TITANS. 

 Ossetes. See CAUCASUS. 



Osxinn. the great heroic poet of tlie Gael. In 

 form the name is a diminutive Ouean, Oixiii, the 

 little of or deer. In Gaelic story Ossi.in was the 

 son of Kionn MacCiimhail, a celebrated hero who 

 flourished in the 3d century A. I). Kionn gathered 

 ahont him a kind of warriors like himself, who 

 were collectively termed the f'finii. The adventures 

 and exploits of these heroes, and especially of the 

 pi-im-ipal figure* in the group of Fionn himself, 

 magnanimous ami wise ; <if his (grandson Oscar, 

 chivalrous and daring: of hU nephew Dinrmail, 

 handsome ami lirave ; of his rival Goll, the one- 

 eyed ; and ( 'oiian, the villain of the liand their 

 jealousies, dimensions, iiml final overthrow con- 

 Ktitnte the literature of the Feinn. The story goes 

 that Ossian was carried away by his fairy hind 

 mother to Kilaiit mi h-Oige, ' the isle of the ever 

 young.' from whence he returned Iwtimes ; and 

 now old. blind, and alone, 'Ossian after the Feinn,' 

 he lolil the story of tlie heroes to St Patrick. 



The legends of the Feinn are hut a fragment of 

 the heroic literature of the Gael, and in the oldest 

 MSS. i lie deeds of Kionn and his companions occupy 

 but little space. There were two earlier cycles. 

 The first of these extended from unknown antiquity 

 until the settlement of the Gael in Ireland. The 

 legends of this periexl preserve traditions of the 

 old divinities of the race, notably the Titattta de 

 ItiiHitnii, iiiuler the guise of earlier colonists whom 

 the Gael ron<|iiered and displaced. Several tales 

 of this cycle are preserved, among which the Fate 

 of the Children of Tuirenn and the Kate of the 

 Children of Lir are the liest known. The second, 

 and by far the richest, epoch in Gaelic romance is 

 that of Cuchullin, Conail Cearnach, Fergus, and 

 the Sons of Uisncach. The date is ul>oul the com- 

 meneement of the Christian era, when Conchobar 

 MocNessa ruled Ulster and Queen Meavc ruled 

 Connaiiglit. The great literary product of this 



Jieriod is the Tnin or Cattle S|>oil of Cuailgne, the 

 liail of the Gael. Another noted Saga recounts 

 the death of the Sons of Uisneach and suicide 

 of the Lady Mcirdre, the 1 >ai llmla of .lames Mae- 

 phcrson. Eventually the legends of the Keinn 

 paitly absorbed anil totaljy eclipsed the earlier tra- 

 ditions; so that Ossianic literature is now but 

 another name for the hen>ic literature of the Gael. 



These traditions have come down from the misty 

 past in tale and ballad. They were early reduced 

 to writing, and as time goes on we observe great 

 development in incident and detail. In ballads 

 preserved in the Hook of Leinster (ritra 1150 A.I). ) 

 <n is represented as old and blind, surviving 

 father and son. A l.ltli -eentury MS. recounts the 

 iMivish exploits .if Kionn. As we comedown, the 

 volume of tradition gets fuller, while eyries tend 

 to lieromc confused. The lender of the Keinn i- :it 

 one time a god, at others a hero, a king, a giant, 

 but usually a great warrior, as wine as brave. In 

 the Ixxik of the Dun Cow his mother is Muirn 

 of the Fair Neck;' in later traditions we hear 

 of Fionn as the son of a sister of Cuchullin; at 

 line. lie -i time a Scandinavian princess is his mother. 

 Hut the literary form in which the legends are 

 preserved remains practically unchanged. A Gaelic 

 tale is of a distinct tyi>e--narrative prose with 

 verse interspersed. Gaelic poetry, older and later, 

 U ever rhymed lyric verse. 



To the majority of ]>cople Ossian is known 

 through the puldii-ali.ni- of .lames Murpher-on 

 I q.v. |. In 1700-62-03 this lemarkable man 

 published Fini/n/, an epic poem, in six IHIO^S ; 

 Temora, another epic, in eight Looks; with a nuni- 

 U-r of shorter pieces, epic mid drumatii all pur- 

 porting to lie translations of poems composed by 

 Ossian, the son of Fingal. 'The translation,' Mr 

 Ulair is made to ~..\ in the preface to the Fray- 

 infills printed in 17lil, 'is evtremely literal.' These 

 publications, in the opinion of the most competent 

 judges, possessed great literary merit. They 

 brought wealth and fame to the author, anil 

 before the end of the century a translation of 

 them up|>cared in nearly every European language. 

 Encouraged by the success that attended Mac- 

 pherson's venture, other publications of a some- 

 what similar kind followed. In 1780 Mr Smith 

 of Camplieltown issued a volume of Scan Dunn, 

 or ancient poems, 'composed by ( Issian, Orran, 

 rilin,' i\.r. ; and in 1787 Karon Edmund de 

 Harold, an Irishman in the service of the Elector 

 Palatine, printed at Diisseldoi f seventeen so-called 

 Ossianic poems in English. The genuineness of 

 Macpherson's Ossian was early called in question 

 by Mr Johnson and others. An angry controversy 

 followed. It was maintained that Macpherson 

 had jumbled together persons ami periods to an 

 unwarrantable extent ; that his originals, so far 

 as he had any, were not Scottish, but Irish. If 

 this were all that could be said one would feel 

 justified in regarding, with Professor AVindisch 

 of Leipzig, Macpherson's Oxsinn as a legitimate 

 development of the old traditions. For the legends 

 of the Keinn are the common property of the Gael, 

 whether in Ireland, Scotland, or Man. They are 

 located in Scottish toixigraphy time out of mind, 

 and within the last four hundred years quite as 

 rich a harvest of ballad and tale has U-en rrrovned 

 in Scotland as in Ireland. It is no doubt absurd 

 to represent Fionn, whom Macpherson after Itarlxmr 

 culls Fingal, as a mighty Caledonian monarch, at 

 one time successfully fighting the Homan legions 

 in the 3d century, at another assisting Cuchullin, 

 who lived in the lieginning of the 1st century, to 

 expel from Ireland the Norsemen who made their 

 appearance for the liitst time in the end of the 8th. 

 Hut Macpherson had warrant in genuine tradition 

 for mixing up names and epochs. In the ' Hattle 

 of Ventry' Kionn defeats the kings of the world. 

 According to a Gaelic tale, his father Cumhal sets 

 up as kin},' of Alba, and the kings of Ireland ami 

 Scandinavia combine to .-fleet his overthrow ; while 

 the son is ever lighting Norsemen. Ximnier has 

 propounded the theory that the whole of these 

 Fiiinnage are in their origin traceable to Teutonic 

 sources, the very names by which the hero and his 

 band are known being liorrowcd from the Norse. 

 l-'ini/. Jinn, Finn ii this distinguished Celtic scholar 

 regards as a translation of lintr, 'white;' while 

 fia>iii,feinn are merely fjaiulii, ' foe,' later ' fiend." 

 Again, in genuine Gaelic ballad Fionn and Cuchullin 

 are not directly brought together, but we find (inrlili 

 or the Rough, son of Starno, now lighting the latter 

 hero, and again opposed to Caoilte, a distinguished 

 companion of the former. According to some 

 spirited verses composed in Perthshire liefore 

 James Macpherson was liorn, the tailor of the 

 Feinn passes, in the exercise of his calling, from 

 the house of Goll to Miimlealgan. the abode of 

 Cuchulliit, and hock again to the palace of Kionn, 

 without the least consciousness of anachronism. 



Hut in Macphcrson's Onsinn there is a wide 

 departure from genuine Gaelic literature and tradi- 

 tion. In his magnifying of the past, in his sym- 

 pathy with nature, and in his powerful desriip 

 tions of the scenery of his own mountain-land 

 James Mucphenxm is true to the genius of las 



