The facts of Cairbre fighting on horseback and the Ogam on the stone seem to point back to early times, though alternatively the ideas might be used afterwards to give an air of antiquity to the piece. Ossian’s second describes the great fair and festival games of Liffey, and sketches a visit he paid with his father and accompanying warriors to the court of the King of Munster. These are the only poems of the bard that O’Curry knew, that could positively be traced as far back as the twelfth century. The earliest written pieces superscribed with his name that we have in Scotland are the nine in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. Mr. J. F. Campbell was of opinion that the Dean regarded them as actual compositions of the warrior-bard, contemporary with Cormac Mac Art. Of one of these, well known as a lament of Ossian in his old age, Professor Blackie has given an English rendering from the Dean’s text, and Dr. Douglas Hyde another more recently from a similar text in the Belfast Museum. The latter runs thus:— Long was last night in cold Elphin, More long is to-night on its weary way. Though yesterday seemed to me long and ill, Yet longer still was this dreary day. And long for me is each hour new-born, Stricken, forlorn, and smit with grief For the hunting lands and the Fenian bands, And the long-haired, generous, Fenian chief. I hear no music, I find no feast, I slay no beast from a bounding steed, I bestow no gold, I am poor and old, I am sick and cold, without wine or mead. I court no more, and I hunt no more, These were before my strong delight I cannot slay, and I take no prey; Weary the day and long the night. No heroes come in their war array, No game I play, there is nought to win; I swim no stream with my men of might, Long is the night in cold Elphin. Ask, O Patrick, thy God of grace, To tell me the place he will place me in, And save my soul from the Ill One’s might, For long is to-night in cold Elphin. As in the beautiful poem entitled “Finn’s Pastimes,” so in the following verses from the Dean’s Book, the bard shows that he is in intimate touch with nature, revelling in her sights and sounds:— Binn guth duine an tir an ôir, Binn a ghlòir a chanaid na h’eoin; Binn an nuallan a ni a chorr, Binn an tonn am Bun-da-treoir, Binn am fabhar a ni a ghaoth; Binn guth cuach os Cas-a’choin, Aluinn an dealradh a ni grian, Binn a nithear feadail nan lon, etc.