In both The Tain and in Deirdre we find the love of fighting, the brave joy of the strong man when he finds a gallant foe.  The Tain is such history as those far-off times afforded, but it is history touched with fancy, wrought with poetry.  In the Three Sorrows we have Romance.  They are what we might call the novels of the time.  It is in stories like these that we find the keen sense of what is beautiful in nature, the sense of “man’s brotherhood with bird and beast, star and flower,” which has become the mark of “Celtic” literature.  We cannot put it into words, perhaps, for it is something mystic and strange, something that takes us nearer fairyland and makes us see that land of dreams with clearer eyes.

BOOKS TO READ

The Celtic Wonder World, by C. L. Thomson.  The Enchanted Land (for version of Deirdre), by L Chisholm.  Three Sorrows (verse), by Douglas Hyde.

Chapter IV THE STORY OF A LITERARY LIE

Who wrote the stories which are found in the old Gaelic manuscripts we do not know, yet the names of some of the old Gaelic poets have come down to us.  The best known of all is perhaps that of Ossian.  But as Ossian, if he ever lived, lived in the third century, as it is not probable that his poems were written down at the time, and as the oldest books that we have containing any of his poetry were written in the twelfth century, it is very difficult to be sure that he really made the poems called by his name.

Ossian was a warrior and chief as well as a poet, and as a poet he is claimed both by Scotland and by Ireland.  But perhaps his name has become more nearly linked to Scotland because of the story that I am going to tell you now.  It belongs really to a time much later than that of which we have been speaking, but because it has to do with this old Gaelic poet Ossian, I think you will like to hear it now.

In a lonely Highland village more than a hundred and fifty years ago there lived a little boy called James Macpherson.  His father and mother were poor farmer people, and James ran about barefooted and wild among the hills and glens.  When he was about seven years old the quiet of his Highland home was broken by the sounds of war, for the Highland folk had risen in rebellion against King George ii., and were fighting for Prince Charlie, hoping to have a Stewart king once more.  This was the rebellion called the ’45, for it was fought in 1745.

Now little James watched the red coats of the southern soldiers as, with bayonets gleaming in the sun, they wound through the glens.  He heard the Highland battle-cry and the clash of steel on steel, for fighting came near his home, and his own people joined the standard of the Pretender.  Little James never forgot these things, and long afterwards, when he grew to be a man and wrote poetry, it was full of the sounds of battle, full, too, of love for mountain and glen and their rolling mists.