When Carbri of the Liffey, son of Cormac Mac Art, ascended the throne of Ireland, one of his first acts was to disband and outlaw the Clann Baskin; and he took into his service in their place their rivals and deadly enemies, the Clann Morna from Connaught. Whereupon the Clann Baskin marched southwards, and entered the service of Fercorb, king of Munster, Finn's grandson, in direct disobedience to king Carbri's commands. This led to the bloody battle of Gavra, celebrated in Ossianic literature, which was fought A.D. 284, at Garristown, in the north-west of the county Dublin, where the rival clanns slaughtered each other almost to annihilation. In the heat of the battle, Carbri and Oscar met in single combat; and, after a long and terrible fight, the heroic Oscar fell pierced by Carbri's spear, and died on the evening of the same day. But Carbri himself was dreadfully wounded; and, while retiring from the field, his own kinsman, Semeon, whom he had previously banished from Tara, fell on him, and despatched him with a single blow. This battle is the subject of a poem which the bards ascribe to Oisin, and which has been published, with translation, in the first volume of the Ossianic Transactions. In this poem there is an affecting description of the death of Oscar, surrounded by his few surviving companions, and in presence of his father Oisin. FOOTNOTES: [CLXXX.] For a full account of the Highland traditions regarding Dermat, and of the Highland monuments that commemorate his name, see "Loch Etive and the Sons of Uisnach" (p. 255), a very valuable and interesting book, recently published, which came into my hands after I had written the above. [CLXXXI.] The above legend is taken from "The Boyish Exploits of Finn Mac Cumal," published, with translation, by John O'Donovan, LL.D., in the fourth volume of the Ossianic Society's Transactions, from a MS. _transcribed_ in 1453, now lying in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But the internal evidence of the language shows that the piece is far more ancient than the fifteenth century. The legend of Finn and the Salmon of Knowledge is still current among the peasantry; and a modern popular version of it may be seen in the _Dublin Penny Journal_, Vol. I. page 110. As to the process of putting his thumb under his tooth of knowledge, even the English-speaking peasantry of the south still retain a tradition that it was painful; for they say that Finn "chewed his thumb from the skin to the flesh, from the flesh to the bone, from the bone to the marrow, and from the marrow to the _smoosagh_." LIST OF PROPER NAMES. ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL PROPER NAMES OCCURRING IN THIS VOLUME, WITH THEIR ORIGINAL GAELIC FORMS, AND, IN MANY CASES, THEIR MEANINGS.