lic currents began to separate, if
almost imperceptibly, even then; and only in century-long stages,
after passing the point marked by the mediaeval recapitulators of
Ossian and St. Patrick. How closely intermingled these currents were
up to that point may be learnt from the evidence of such exquisite
lines as those preserved by the Scottish Dean Macgregor, entitled
'Ossian Sang':--

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze
The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun,
The blackbird is warbling among the trees;
And soft is the kiss of the warming sun.

The cry of the eagle of Assaroe
O'er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet,
And sweet is the cry of the bird below
Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet.

Finn Mac Cool is the father of me,
Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear.
When he launches his hounds on the open lea,
Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.

The last verse is eloquent as to the common traditions of the Scots
and Irish Gael. Ossian is dealt with separately under his own proper
heading, however, and we need not discuss here his interest, literary
and historical.

Turning to St. Patrick, let us accept provisionally the account that
makes him of Gaelo-Brythonic race, born about 387 A.D. at Kilpatrick
on the Clyde,--Strathclyde being an old famous region of the northern
Brythonic stock. The remains, in prose and verse, of the early
Scottish literature dealing with St. Patrick are of course not so
numerous as the Irish; but as the two were freely interchangeable[A]
in the early period when his record was being written down, it follows
that where Irish memoranda of his true and his legendary history, his
hymns, and so forth, existed, the Scottish chroniclers and bards would
accept them without feeling the need of making a separate record. Nor
must we forget, in speaking of St. Patrick, that the pre-Christian
romantic mythology, with its Firbolgs and ancient heroic gods, giants,
and men, is just as much to be limned into the background of the
picture in the case of early Scottish as in that of Irish Gaelic
tradition and its earliest scriptive forms.

[A] "The early literature of the Scottish Gael," says the Rev.
Nigel MacNeill in his interesting work 'The Lite