  PREFACE. I wrote down the following story from the mouth of John Cunningham of Ballinphuill, Co. Roscommon, on the high road between Frenchpark and Ballaghaderreen, about twenty years ago. Oscar's flail is well known in Irish tradition. The poet O'Kelly, in his series of English curses on Doneraile, alludes to it— Mr. Stephen Gwynn, M.P., found a variant of this story in Donegal and has given a spirited poetic version of it. The story is also known in Waterford. It is probably spread all over the lands occupied by the Gael, and contains elements that are exceedingly old. The very verses about "the humming gnat or the scintilla of a beam of the sun" which I wrote down from the mouth of old John Cunningham in the Co. Roscommon, had been already jotted down in phonetics by Magregor, the Dean of Lismore, in Argyllshire in the year 1512. I printed the whole story with a French translation and introduction in the "Revue Celtique," vol. 13, p. 425, showing how in the Tripartite life of St. Patrick the story of piercing a penitent's foot is told of a son of the King of Munster. But, as his name was doubtless soon forgotten, the story got fathered upon OisÍn. The story had its rise, no doubt, in the sorrow felt by the people when the clerics told them that their beloved Fenians and OisÍn and Finn were damned, and the story was probably invented by some clever person to save them from perdition. There are scores of MSS. which contain disputes between THE STORY Saint Patrick came to Ireland, and OisÍn met him in Elphin and he carrying stones. And whatever time it might be that he got the food, It would be long again till he would get the drink. "OisÍn," says he, "let me baptize you." "Oh, what good would that do me?" says OisÍn. "OisÍn," says St. Patrick, "unless you let me baptize you, you will go to hell where the rest of the Fenians are." "If," says OisÍn, "Diarmaid and Goll were alive for us, and the king that was over the Fenians, if they were to go to hell they would bring the devil and his forge up out of it on their back." "Listen, O gray and senseless OisÍn, think upon God, and bow your knee, and let me baptize you." "Patrick," says OisÍn, "for what did God damn all that of people?" "For eating the apple of commandment," says St. Patrick. "If I had known that your God was so narrow-sighted that he damned all that of people for one apple, we would have sent three horses and a mule carrying apples to God's heaven to Him." "Listen, O gray and senseless OisÍn, think upon God, and bow your knee, and let me baptize you." OisÍn fell into a faint, and the clergy thought that he had died. When he woke up out of it, "O Patrick, baptize me," says he—he saw something in his faint, he saw the thing that was before him. The spear was in St. Patrick's hand, and he thrust it into OisÍn's foot purposely; and the ground was red with his share of blood. "Oh," says St. Patrick to OisÍn, "you are greatly cut." "Oh, isn't that for my baptism?" says OisÍn. "I hope in God that you are saved," says St. Patrick, "you have undergone baptism and ...?" "Patrick," says OisÍn, "would you not be able to take the Fenians out of hell"—he saw them there when he was in his sleep. "I could not," says St. Patrick, "and any one who is in hell, it is impossible to bring him out of it." "Patrick," says OisÍn, "are you able to take me to the place where Finn and the Fenians of Erin are?" "I cannot," says St. Patrick. As much as the humming gnat Or a scintilla of the beam of the sun, Unknown to the great powerful king Shall not pass in beneath my shield. "Can you give them relief from the pain?" says OisÍn. St. Patrick then asked it as a petition from God to give them a relief from their pain, and he said to OisÍn that they had found relief. This is the relief they got from God. Oscar got a flail, and he requested a fresh thong to be put into the flail, and there went a green rush as a thong into it, and he got the full of his palm of green sand, |
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