The cry of the eagle of Assaroe O'er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet, And sweet is the cry of the bird below Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet. Finn Mac Cool is the father of me, Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear. When he launches his hounds on the open lea, Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer. The last verse is eloquent as to the common traditions of the Scots and Irish Gael. Ossian is dealt with separately under his own proper heading, however, and we need not discuss here his interest, literary and historical. Turning to St. Patrick, let us accept provisionally the account that makes him of Gaelo-Brythonic race, born about 387 A.D. at Kilpatrick on the Clyde,--Strathclyde being an old famous region of the northern Brythonic stock. The remains, in prose and verse, of the early Scottish literature dealing with St. Patrick are of course not so numerous as the Irish; but as the two were freely interchangeable[A] in the early period when his record was being written down, it follows that where Irish memoranda of his true and his legendary history, his hymns, and so forth, existed, the Scottish chroniclers and bards would accept them without feeling the need of making a separate record. Nor must we forget, in speaking of St. Patrick, that the pre-Christian romantic mythology, with its Firbolgs and ancient heroic gods, giants, and men, is just as much to be limned into the background of the picture in the case of early Scottish as in that of Irish Gaelic tradition and its earliest scriptive forms. [A] "The early literature of the Scottish Gael," says the Rev. Nigel MacNeill in his interesting work 'The Literature of the Highlanders,' "cannot be well understood apart from early Irish literature. The ballads of the two countries describe the same struggles, the characters engaging in the strife are the same and bear the same names." Curiously enough, if Scotland gave Ireland the saint that in course of time became almost its national symbol,--Patrick,--Ireland in turn gave Scotland its dearest saint,--Columba. He was born in 521, near Temple Douglas (_Tulach-Dubh-glaise_); in 545 founded a church in Derry; later, the famous church at Kells; and in 563, after some jealousy had been at work against him, he left for Ireland, and after pausing at Colonsay, he went on to Ia, now known the world over as Iona. Iona has become now the _locus classici_ of the Gaelic, not to say the whole Scottish race. Recently, a writer of profound imagination, Miss Fiona Macleod, has dated from its lonely shores the dedication of that impressive book 'The Sin-Eater, and Other Tales,' showing how it still keeps for those of the true faith its old effect:-- "I mo cridhe, i mo ghraidh," (Isle of my heart, isle of my love,)