FINGALIAN RHYMES. 261 



tlie balladist himself, the last remnant of the Fingalian host, are 

 represented as going to hunt in the " Glen of Mist," attended by- 

 fifty dogs a piece, or five hundred in all — surely an unnecessary, if 

 not an impossible number. In these ballads, besides, you find 

 frequent reference to scarcity of food, and the shifts the " heroes " 

 were often put to, to provide for the barest wants of the passing 

 day ; and yet, if such an army of dogs was necessary, it also had to 

 be fed, which one conceives must have been a matter of some 

 difficulty, when the heroes themselves were, as the ballads inform 

 us, frequently reduced to the necessity of splitting " marrow bones," 

 when all the flesh that covered them had already been used up. 

 The whole question of the natural history of these old ballads 

 is well worth more attention than has yet been bestowed on 

 it. Some day or other we shall devote a special chapter to it. 

 Meantime, let us merely say that we decided many years ago 

 against the authenticity and genuineness of one at least of Dr. 

 Smith's so-called Ancient Lays, because of the incorrectness of a 

 reference to the natural history of a well-known bird, the common 

 pigeon. Here are the lines in Gaul which first made us shake 

 our head in dubiety over the genuineness of the composition — 



" Mar cholum an carraig na h-XJlacha, 

 'S i solar dhearca da h-kl beag, 

 'S a' pilltiim gu trie, gun am blasad i fein, 

 Tra dh'eireas an t-seabhag 'na smuainte. " 



As a dove on the rook of XJUa, 

 That gathereth berries for her young ; 

 Oft she returns, nor tastes herself the food, 

 When rises the hawk within her thoughts. 



On which passage we would first of aU remark that pigeons are not 

 berry eaters, and even if they were, they would not carry them to 

 their young in such wise as the poet clearly implies. A pigeon 

 itself eats the food meant for its young, and only after undergoing 

 a certain process of maceration and digestion in the parent's crop, 



