e first story in which Finn actually occurs. But it
is remarkable that in no case do tales belonging to the Finn cycle
contain any of the old rhetorics which occur in the oldest of the Ulster
romances. Already in LL., by the side of Finn, Ossian, Cailte and Fergus
Finnbel are represented as poets, and the strain of lament over the
glories of the past, so characteristic a feature of the later
developments of the legend, is already sounded. Hence by the 12th
century the stories of the Fiann and their destruction at the battle of
Gabra must have been fully developed, and from this time onward they
appear gradually to have supplanted the Cuchulinn cycle in popular
favour. Several reasons have been assigned for this. In the first place
until the time of Brian Boroime the high-kings of Ireland had almost
without exception been drawn from Ulster, and consequently the northern
traditions were pre-eminent. This exclusiveness on the part of the north
was largely broken down by the Viking invasions, and during the 11th
century the leading poets were attached to the court of Brian and his
descendants. In this manner an opportunity was afforded to the
Leinster-Munster Fenian cycle to develop into a national saga. John
MacNeill has pointed out Finn's connexion with a Firbolg tribe, and
maintains that the Fenian cycle was the property of the subject race.
Zimmer has attempted to prove with great plausibility that Finn and his
warriors were transformed on the model of the Ulster heroes. Thus one
text deals with the boyish exploits of Finn in the manner of Cuchulinn's
youthful feats recorded in the _Tain_. And it is possible that the
_Siaburcharpat Conchulainn_ gave rise to the idea of connecting Ossian
and Cailte with Patrick. As Cuchulinn was opposed to the whole of
Ireland in the _Tain_, so Finn, representing Ireland, is pitted against
the whole world in the _Battle of Ventry_.

We have already stated that the form assumed by the stories connected
with Finn in the earliest MSS. is that of the ballad, and this continued
down to the 18th century. But here again the Irish poets showed
themselves incapable of rising from the ballad to the true epic in
verse, and in the 14th century we find the prose narrative of the older
cycle interspersed with verse again appearing. The oldest composition of
any length which deals with the Ossianic legends is the _Acallam na
Senorach_ or Colloquy of the Old Men, which is mainly preserved in three
15th-