Alas! could destiny afford

No other arm, no other sword,

In Leinster of the pointed spears,

On Munster's plains, or in fierce Cruachan's*

host,

To quench in blood my filial light,

And spare my arm the deed, my eyes the sight!

Why was it not in Sora's barbarous lands

My lovely Conloch fell?

Or by fierce Pictish chiefs †, whose ruthless bands
Would joy the cruel tale to tell;

Whose souls are trained all pity to subdue;
Whose savage eyes, unmov'd, that form could view.

But what for me-for me is left!

Of more, and dearer far, than life bereft !
Doom'd to yet unheard of woe!

A father doom'd to pierce his darling's side!
And, oh! with blasted eyes abide

To see the last dear drops of filial crimson flow!

Alas! my trembling limbs !—my fainting frame!
Grief is it thou?—

O conquering grief, I know thee now !
Well do thy sad effects my woes proclaim !——
Poor Victor!-see thy trophies where they lie!—
Wash them with tears!-then lay thee down and die!

* Cruachan, the regal palace of Connaught.

"The period when the Picts first invaded North Briton has not, I believe, been exactly ascertained. We here find that country divided between the Picts and the Albanians, and the former mentioned as a bloody and cruel people. It

Alas, I sink!-my failing sight

Is gone! 'tis lost in night!

Clouds and darkness round me dwell,
Horrors more than tongue can tell!

Lo, the sad remnant of my slaughter'd race,
Like some lone trunk, I wither in my place!
No more the sons of USNOTH to my sight
Give manly charms, and to my soul delight;
No more my Conloch shall I hope to see,
Nor son nor kinsman now survives for me!

my lost son, my precious child, adieu,
No more these eyes that lovely form shall view;
No more his dark-red spear shall AINLE wield,*
No more shall Naoise thunder o'er the field;
No more shall ARDAN Sweep the hostile plains,
Lost are they all, and nought but woe remains!
Now, cheerless earth, adieu thy every care-
Adieu to all but horror and despair.

Cuchullin probably did not long survive his son, his death being recorded in the second year of the Christian era.† Scarcely fifty years had elapsed from the above period, when a storm gathered over the head of the bards, which threatened destruction to their whole order. With that tendency to abuse which

A. D. 40.

was not until two centuries after this that a third colony from Ireland was established there under Carby Riada."

*"Ainle, Naoise, and Ardan were the three sons of Usnoth."

+ O'Halloran places the incidents of this poem about the year B.C. 54, but as Cuchullin is here represented in the decline of life, it is not a probable supposition that he should have survived his grief fifty or sixty years, and he then at an advanced age. From this period the chronology becomes much more certain, however.

A. D. 254.

clings to all, even the best, human institutions, and in which the possession of great and undefined authority by any body of men is almost certain to result, the Brehons came in time so grossly to pervert their judicial influence, that the popular indignation was roused to such a pitch of fury as threatened the expulsion of the whole order from the kingdom. By the timely interference, however, of Concovar, one of the provincial monarchs, such a reformation was effected, by limiting their power and reducing their number, from the great magnitude to which it had swelled, to about two hundred, as pacified the popular clamour and prevented so desperate an alternative. The reign of CORMAC ULFADA, or, as he is variously termed by different writers, Mac Art and O'Con (that is, son of Art and grandson of Con), forms, perhaps, the most brilliant period in our pagan annals. This royal sage, who ascended the throne as supreme monarch of Ireland about the middle of the third century, was possessed of every princely quality that could give lustre to the crown. The nobility of the man eclipsed the dignity of the monarch. Losing the sight of one of his eyes, he became incapacitated, according to an absurd law, which, however, is found to coincide with the custom of some eastern nations, from holding the reins of government; he therefore vacated the throne, and like Charles V., in later times, spent the remainder of his life in philosophic retirement. Among many important acts of his reign was the founding of three additional academies at Tara, for the study of jurisprudence, history, and military science. Cormac's own

writings, combined with his military fame and the splendour of his court, have shed a lustre round his age, which has been heightened by the contemporary renown of Finn Mac Cumhal or Mac Cool (the Fingal of Macpherson), who has figured as a sort of hero-demi-god, in the legends of subsequent times. The names of Finn and his son Oisin, or Ossian, are intimately connected with the subject of Irish poetry. The first of these celebrated heroes was the son of Cumhal, and lineally descended from the royal family of Leinster. He was commanderin-chief of the famous Fianna Eireann, or Fenian Militia, whose exploits were such a favorite theme with the bards of the middle ages. Finn was instrumental in founding the colony of Scoti, from this country, in Argyleshire, North Britain* (afterwards known as Dalriada), which ultimately changed the name of that country from its ancient titles of Caledonia and Albania to that of Scotia, and from which, as the Scottish historians themselves are obliged to acknowledge, was derived the royal line of the Stuarts.†

* "Cormac (says Walker) at the head of the Fiann, and attended by our hero (Finn), sailed into that part of North Britain which lies opposite to Ireland, where he planted a colony of Scots (the name which the Irish then bore) as an establishment for Carbry Riada, his cousin-german. This colony, which the Irish monarch fostered with the solicitude of a parent, was often protected from the oppressive power of the Romans by detachments of the Fiann, under the command of Finn, whom one of their writers has dignified with the title of King of Woody Morven,' and hence the many traditions concerning him which are still current on the west coast of Scotland."-Hist. Mems. Irish Bards, pp. 37-8.

Sir WALTER SCOTT (History of Scotland, vol. i. chap. 2) acknowledges that in the Scoto-Irish chiefs of Argyleshire "historians must trace the original roots of the royal line;" and James I., in a speech which he made at Whitehall

But though Finn bore a high character for proficiency in the various accomplishments of his age, especially poetry and music, in which indeed all the Fenii were required to be skilled, yet it appears he was outshone in those arts, if not in all others, by his son Oisin, whose name has descended with the united wreaths of the hero and the bard.

Though no well authenticated specimens of the remains of Oisin have survived the devastations of time and of civil war, yet his name, coupled with the productions of a variety of anonymous bards of the middle ages, known by the name of the Fenian poems, in which he is made, with great art, the narrator of the exploits of his Fenian compeers, have served as the groundwork of one of the most singular literary impostures of modern times. As the historical affinities existing between Scotland and Ireland in early times, joined to the original similarity of their language, and the profound ignorance of the history of the latter country which generally prevailed, can alone account for the remarkable fact of these poetic fragments, and the traditions concerning Oisin and the Fenian heroes having, by means of oral recitations, become naturalized in the Highlands of Scotland, a few explanatory remarks are here requisite to set the matter in its true light.

It has already been stated, that in the course of the age now under consideration, an Irish colony was led into Argyleshire by Carbry Riada (the kinsman of King Cormac),

in 1613, said that "there was a double reason why he should be careful of the welfare of that people (the Irish)-first as king of England . . . . . . and also as king of Scotland, for the ancient kings of Scotland were descended of the kings of Ireland."..(Cox's Hibern. Anglican,