The inter-tribal struggles described in these ballads—the patriotic resistance against the Norse attempts to obtain the supremacy, mixed up as they are with the encroachments of Christianity within the realms of heathenism—took place mainly within the Albinic area. The geographical limits of this area in those early times were very vague and shifting. In a general way they may be said to have embraced the Western Islands, the North-west, and part of the central Highlands, as well as the Isle of Man and Ireland. Over all these regions we watch in these ballads the shadowy movements of our brave ancestors. We hear the faint echoes of their names, and the fame of their deeds, the war-cries and voices of their almost semi-mythic heroes. We regard the tribes whose deeds are celebrated in these productions under two classes—those of the Cruithne or Albinic race and those who have become known as the Scottish Iro-Gaelic race. At that period there were Cruithne or Picts in Erin as well as in Albin. Previous to the arrival of Patrick in Ireland and to that of Columba in the Highlands, there is strictly speaking no chronological history of either country. Of the earlier movements of the clans and their battles we have no authentic account. But there are traditions with a highly probable basis of truth sufficient for the purposes of the present Ossianic discussion. Two or three of the central facts of the Finian period, as related in a preceding section, are as follows:— Finn MacCumhaill lived in the reign of Cormac MacArt who ruled from A.D. 227 to 266, and whose daughter Gràinne he married. Goll MacMorni was a contemporary. Finn was slain in 283, but the bards bring him somehow alive next year to pronounce a eulogy on his grandson, Oscar, who fell in the battle of Gabhra. Ossian and Caoilte lived for a hundred and fifty years longer; and the blind old heathen bard relates the heroic achievements of his departed fellow-heroes to St. Patrick who arrives in Ireland about 432. Chronology did not trouble the old ballad-makers of Albin and Erin. Such an anachronism as brings Ossian of the third, into conjunction with Patrick of the fifth century, did not disturb their heroic muse.