Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting RuinsRussell, Thomas O'Neill
History
Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland: Being a Tourist's Guide to Its Most Beautiful Scenery & an Archæologist's Manual for Its Most Interesting Ruins
Russell, Thomas O'Neill
Ireland -- Antiquities; Ireland -- Description and travel
O'Duibhne down to the middle of the seventeenth century, for in the
national manuscripts of Scotland there is a very fine Gaelic poem on the
death of a Campbell, who is styled "O'Duibhne" in the Gaelic.
Translations that have been recently made from Gaelic manuscripts of high
authority have thrown considerable light on Finn, and the events of his
epoch. We are told in the tract called the "Boramha," or "Tribute," to
which reference has been already made, that when Bresal, a king of
Leinster, in the third century, was given his choice to pay the tribute or
fight the rest of Ireland, he asked help from Finn. A person called
Molling was sent to ask Finn to help the men of Leinster. Molling told
Finn that he should not come with a small army to fight the chief king,
who had the national army with him. The number of men that Finn had, was,
we are told in the "Boramha," fifteen hundred chiefs, each having thirty
men under him, making the total number of men that Finn brought to help
Leinster forty-five thousand, a very large army in those days. They joined
the Leinster men, inflicted a crushing defeat on the forces of the chief
king, so that the tribute was not paid for many years after. Nine thousand
of the "men of Ireland," as the "Book of Leinster" almost invariably calls
the national forces, were slain in the battle.
The militia of which Finn was the Commander-in-Chief, and of which his
father and grandfather had also been commanders, are the heroes of
hundreds of Ossianic tales and poems. It would appear that they numbered
twenty-one thousand men on a peace footing, but could raise their numbers
to double that amount in time of need. They became so extortionate and
arrogant in the long run, that the chief king, Cairbre, and it would seem
all the provincial rulers except the King of Leinster, determined to crush
them. So a great battle was fought at Garristown in the County Dublin in
the year 290 or 296, and the militia of Finn was totally destroyed. It
would seem that neither Knock Aillinn nor the hill of Allen has been since
then inhabited.
It may not be out of place to state here that students of Gaelic are often
puzzled on seeing the name of Finn spelt _Fionn_. It seems certain that
_Finn_ is the proper orthography. The name is invariably so spelt in all
cases in the "Book of Leinster," one of the most correct of all the great
Gaelic books; but the editor of "Silva Gadelica" makes it _Fionn_ in all
cases except in the genitive. It is difficult to understand why, when
copying from a manuscript of such high authority as the "Book of
Leinster," he did not follow its orthography. In the northern half of
Ireland the name is pronounced according to its correct orthography, but
in the south of Ireland it is pronounced as if written _Fyun_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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