Ossian (Irish warrior poet)

Ossian (aw-shun) is a mythological warrior-poet from Irish legend. Known in the Irish language as Oisín (oh-sheen), he serves as both a major character and the narrator of the Fenian Cycle, an ancient body of Irish literature about Celtic hero Fionn mac Cumhail, which is often transliterated to Finn Mac Cool in English. Ossian was Fionn's son, and together the pair led a group of powerful warriors called the Fianna through many adventures.

Background

Ossian was the child of Fionn mac Cumhail and Sadhbh (sive), a member of the fairy people called the sidhe. According to legend, Fionn was returning from a hunt with his dogs when he encountered a beautiful doe. Rather than being frightened by either Fionn or his dogs, she calmly laid down before him. Amazed at her courage, he took the deer home with him. That night, a beautiful woman approached Fionn and told him that by welcoming her into his home he had broken a curse placed upon her by a druid. The couple spent many years together in happiness. Fionn was eventually called away to fight the Vikings. During his absence, the druid who had originally cursed her turned the now-pregnant Sadhbh back into a deer. Fionn spent many years looking for her, but he was unable to find her. One day, his hunting dogs came upon an unkempt boy who proved to be his son. After the boy learned to talk, he told his father that his deer-mother had fed him and kept him safe in the fairylands until the evil druid returned. He took her away again and banished the boy to the mortal world. In honor of his mother, Fionn named him Oisín, which means "fawn" in Irish. Ossian is the English equivalent of Oisín. Like his father, Ossian proved to be a powerful warrior, and the other members of the Fianna quickly embraced him. He became the bard of the group, which was a very important character in ancient Irish culture. In this role, he often served as the narrator of stories in the Fenian Cycle.

Perhaps the best-known story about Ossian involves his romance with Niamh (nee-iv). After many adventures with the Fianna, a sidhe named Niamh Chinn Óir, meaning "Niamh of the Golden Hair," came in search of Ossian so that she might marry him. Ossian immediately fell in love with Niamh, and the pair returned to Niamh's home in Tir na nÓg, the mythological Land of the Young, on a magical horse. They lived in complete happiness for what Ossian believed to be only three years. However, time passed more slowly in Tir na nÓg, and three hundred years had actually elapsed in the mortal world. Together, the couple had two children: a son, Oscar, and a daughter, Plúr na mBan.

Eventually, Ossian began to grow homesick. Although Niamh tried to talk him out of returning home, she reluctantly lent him a magical horse for the trip. Before he left, Niamh warned him that the mortal world would not be how he remembered it and that he must never get off the horse or touch the earth. Upon his return, Ossian found that the human world had lost its magic and become a mundane place where few people remembered the feats of the Fianna. Even worse, his family was long gone. Despite his suffering, he agreed to help several men move a boulder out of their way. As a half-fairy member of the Fianna, Ossian had little trouble accomplishing this feat. While moving the stone, his saddle came undone. He fell to the earth and aged three hundred years in only a few moments. In some versions of the story, the dying Ossian is brought before Saint Patrick in a symbolical passing of the torch from Ireland's mythological past to its Christian present.

James Macpherson's Ossian Poems

James Macpherson was a Scottish poet who published a cycle of poems that were reputedly reconstructed from material that was originally written by an ancient poet named Ossian. These poems were an important collection of literature that helped establish the literary movement known as romanticism. However, many scholars of Gaelic and Celtic literature quickly called the authenticity of these works into question. Despite academic misgivings about the work, Macpherson's Ossian poems proved to be hugely popular across Europe, and many amateur poets emulated the "Ossian" style in creating their own verses.

Macpherson was a tutor and little-known poet before publishing his first collection of Ossian poems called Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language (1760). Macpherson claimed to have found traces of original works by Ossian in both the oral legends of the Scottish highlands and in written fragments of early Gaelic poetry. After Fragments of Ancient Poetry debuted to great success, Macpherson declared that he had found an original manuscript of a third century C.E. poem written by Ossian that he adapted into Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem (1761). Another unearthed manuscript led to a third work entitled Temora: An Ancient Epic Poem (1763). To support his claims about the authenticity of this poetry, he produced a series of manuscripts that he argued proved the age of the original works.

During his lifetime, great debates raged about whether Macpherson was just a clever forger or if he had actually unearthed a previously unknown cycle of epic folklore. By the nineteenth century, studies of his work led to a near-consensus opinion among academics that Macpherson's poems were likely derived from Scottish folklore and materials based upon the Ossian figure found in the Fenian Cycle.

Overview

For many years, Irish identity was repressed under English rule. In 1889, Irish poet William Butler Yeats published The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems as his first book-length work. Based upon the Oisín of legend, the work marked an important step in the development of the Irish literary revival. As Ireland moved toward nationhood in the twentieth century, the country increasingly embraced critical pieces of its mythological past to help build a unique Gaelic identity. As a result, Ossian and the Fenian Cycle remain important parts of Irish culture even in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

"Forging a Collection: James Macpherson and the Ossian Poems." University of Delaware Library, Special Collections Department, 21 Dec. 2010, www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/forgery/ossian.htm. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Hart, Aoife Assumpta. "The Cartography of Dreams or the Landscape of Nation?" Ancestral Recall: The Celtic Revival and Japanese Modernism. McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016, pp. 55–116.

Kennedy, Patrick. "Ossianic and Other Early Legends." Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts. Macmillan, 1891, pp. 179–275.

Lady Gregory. "Oisin and Patrick." Tales from the Emerald Isle and Other Green Shores: Classic Irish Stories. Edited by Michael Quinlin, LP, 2015, pp. 135–140.

Lynch, Jack. "Recognizing a Fake When You See One." Deception and Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Ashgate, 2008, pp. 11–30.

Moore, Dafydd. "'Caledonian Plagiary': The Role and Meaning of Ireland in the Poems of Ossian." Historical Writing in Britain, 1688–1830: Visions of History. Edited by Ben Dew and Fiona Price, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 92–108.

"Ossian." Education Scotland, Government of Scotland, www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/jacobitesenlightenmentclearances/ossian/. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Welch, Robert Anthony. "Reciting from the Finger-Ends: The Bards and Ossians." The Cold of May Day Monday: An Approach to Irish Literary History. Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 28–38.