e temper of their
composers is more civilized than that of those who conceived the tales
of the previous cycles; the manners, as I have already said, of their
personages are gentler, more chivalrous; and their atmosphere is so
much nearer to that of Christianity, that the new Christian elements
would find themselves more at home in them than in the terrible
vengeance of Lugh, the savage brutality of Conor to Deirdre, or the
raging slaughterings of Cuchulain. So much was this the case that a
story was skilfully invented which linked in imagination the Fenian
cycle to a Christianized Ireland. This story--_Oisin in the Land of
Youth_--is contained in this book. Oisin, or Ossian, the son of Finn,
in an enchanted story, lives for 300 years, always young, with his
love in Tir-na-n-Og, and finds on his return, when he becomes a
withered old man, St Patrick and Christianity in Ireland. He tells to
Patrick many tales of the Fenian wars and loves and glories, and in
the course of them paganism and Christianity are contrasted and
intermingled. A certain sympathy with the pagan ideas of honour and
courage and love enters into the talk of Patrick and the monks, and
softens their pious austerity. On the other hand, the Fenian legends
are gentled and influenced by the Christian elements, in spite of the
scorn with which Oisin treats the rigid condemnation of his companions
and of Finn to the Christian hell, and the ascetic and unwarlike life
of the monks.[4] There was evidently in the Fenian cycle of
story-telling a transition period in which the bards ran Christianity
and paganism in and out of one another, and mingled the atmosphere of
both, and to that period the last editing of the story of _Lir and his
Children_ may be referred. A lovely story in this book, put into fine
form by Mr Rolleston, is as it were an image of this transition
time--the story or _How Ethne quitted Fairyland_. It takes us back to
the most ancient cycle, for it tells of the great gods Angus and
Mananan, and then of how they became, after their conquest by the race
who live in the second cycle, the invisible dwellers in a Fairy
country of their own during the Fenian period, and, afterwards, when
Patrick and the monks had overcome paganism. Thus it mingles together
elements from all the periods. The mention of the great caldron and
the swine which always renew their food is purely mythological. The
cows which come from the Holy Land are Christian. Ethne herself