Can a vague statement of this character not satisfy the inquiring student? To the patriotic Celtic inquirer, next in importance to the evangelisation of the Highlands by Columba, stands the great question of the Féinne, who have so indelibly impressed their individualities on the Gaelic imagination of Scotland. To the more inquiring spirits of recent times these brilliant heroes have appeared very strange and mysterious indeed. They have had a Melchisedec kind of existence in our traditional history; no one has been able to suggest whence they came, or whither they have gone. The names of their leaders have become woven with fable, song, and story; with the hills and glens of Albin and Erin; with the warlike struggles which the various conflicting races have fought on our Ero-Albinic shores. So vague and romantic however, has their history been, that a few clear-sighted writers, conversant with comparative mythology, have come almost to the conclusion that the Féinne were, as we have already seen, a mere Gaelic expression of a world-wide mythus, whose various component elements can be found from Japan to the Hebrides. The popular tales and the bardic ballads have been regarded as the _debris_ that may be still collected on the shores of the ages. The plain Highlander living in the mere tents of history and literature, has been reluctant to accept so vague an account of a very heroic ancestry. Has not he the poems of Ossian still in his hands? Are not the names of Finn and fellow-heroes stamped on a thousand hills in Albin and Erin? So the invariable conclusion has been that in some mysterious way and during some mysterious period “Fingal lived and Ossian sang.” The disappointing question all along has been, however, where can any account be found of these people in our accredited national histories? The inquiring spirits among our patriotic youth examine recent histories in vain. Our antiquaries write of names and places, but they have failed to assign a local habitation and a name to the Finian people. The only approach to a definite representation of the race we have in the famous mystifications of James Macpherson in his dissertations, notes, and poems. But the geography of Macpherson appears to have been as mistily convenient for himself as it has been perplexing to his commentators. Not even the genius of Dr Waddell in his goodly volume has been able to identify the localities of Macpherson, or remove the veil of ghost-like existence in which the Ossianic heroes are enshrouded.