To appreciate the vigour and spirit of these remarkable sagas as they figure in the original, one requires to read them through. No quotations, however well chosen, can do full justice to their wealth of imagination and descriptive power, especially when depicting stirring incidents, curious customs, men, horses, chariots, arms, ornaments, vesture, and colours. Then they are profuse, fantastic, minute, and boldly original, tedious, sometimes through the very prodigality of their adjectival resources. In perusing them the reader feels that he is in a fresh field of literature and breathing an atmosphere entirely different to anything modern. Though Homeric in form, there is always the Celtic tinge in the literary style as well as in the facts seized on and made prominent. Within the last half century these early tales have been frequently translated into various languages, and excellent versions are now available from the pens of such distinguished scholars as Eugene O’Curry, Dr. Whitley Stokes and O’Flanagan, M. d’Arbois de Jubainville and M. Louis Duvan, Dr. Ernst Windisch, Dr. Kuno Meyer, Standish Hayes O’Grady and O’Beirne Crowe. CHAPTER X THE OSSIANIC CYCLE The old order changes—Who were the Feinn?—Ossian, his name and relation to the bardic literature—The Ossianic tales and poems very numerous—Earliest references—First remarkable development—Original home of the Ossianic romance—The leading heroes—A famous tract—Legends regarding Fionn, and curious details of his warrior-band—The literature divided into four classes—Most ancient poems of Ossian, and the Feinn—Quotations—“The Dialogue of the Ancients”—Ossian and Patrick—Story of Crede—Miscellaneous poems—Prose tales—“Pursuit of Diarmad and Grainne”—“Lay of Diarmad”—Norse Ballads—Dream figures, a remarkable Gaelic tradition. The Ossianic cycle brings us down to the middle of the third century A.D. It is clearly much later than the Heroic. For in the interval the old order peculiar to the days of Cuchulinn has passed away, and new manners and customs are in vogue. No longer is our attention engrossed with descriptions of chariots and war-horses and cow-spoils. The heroes are an organised body of men, who engage in the peaceful pastimes of hunting and feasting when not occupied with the more serious business of warfare. They appear less mythical than the demi-gods and champions of earlier times; yet they move in that dim background of history where figures are always seen in chiaroscuro, and we cannot even be remotely confident of their historical reality.