In the yellow sunset of ancient Celtic glory appear the band of warriors known as the Ossianic heroes. Under the magnifying and beautifying influence of that sunset they tower upon our sight with a stature and illustriousness more than human. Of these heroes, the greatest and best was Fionn or Fingal. Unless our traditions are extensively falsified he was a man in whom shone all those virtues which are the boast of our race. The unflinching performance of duty, the high sense of honour, the tenderness more than woman's, and the readiness to appreciate the virtues of others were among his more conspicuous characteristics. Now that Celtic anthropology is being so extensively discussed, is it not remarkable that Fingal, who so truly personifies the character of that race, is not adduced as the representative Celt? He was a Celt to the very core, and Celtic character has been in no small degree moulded by copying his example. He was, in truth, not the ultimus but the Primus Gaelorum.

Nevertheless, it must be confessed that to many English readers Fingal is nothing but a name, and that even to most of them he looms dark and dim through the mist of years. Unhappily, a nature so transcendently humane and heroic as his is not the sort to win the admiration of the vulgar. Nay, so far is its simple grandeur removed above the common materialism of modern life that the most refined cannot, at first sight, appreciate its exalted loveliness.

The fullest and, we believe, the truest account of him is to be found in Ossian's poems. That the poetry so denominated was, in substance, composed by Ossian we have no doubt. At any rate the descriptions of Fingal therein contained are not only consistent throughout, but also in accordance with all that we know of him from other sources. But were we even to adopt the absurd theory that Fingal is a creation of Macpherson's imagination, the intrinsic beauty of the picture well deserves our study.

An old man retaining all the energy, but not the rashness of youth; age with vigour instead of decrepitude, delighting in the words of sound wisdom rather than the usual tattle of second childhood; and, withal, an old man who is prone to moralise as old men are; a man able and willing to do his duty in the present though his heart is left in the past; such is the most prominent figure in these poems. He is pourtrayed as of tall, athletic frame and kingly port, his majestic front and hoary locks surmounted by the helm and eagle plume of the Celtic kings.

Though the idea of Fingal pervades most of Ossian's poems he is seldom introduced in propria persona. Even when attention is directed to him the poet merely and meagerly sketches the herculean outline, and leaves our imagination to do the rest:—

At intervals a gleam of light afar
Glanced from the broad, blue, studded shield of war,
As moved the king of chiefs in stately pride;
With eager gaze his eye was turned aside
To where the warriors' closing ranks he sees;
Half-grey his ringlets floated in the breeze
Around that face so terrible in fight
And features glowing now with grim delight.—Tem. B. V.

In order to introduce his hero with the greater eclat, the bard first places his friends in great straits; represents them, though brave, as overcome by the enemy and without hope, apart from Fingal. Both friends and foes speak of him in terms of respect, and even the greatest leaders acknowledge his superiority. When Fingal appears on the scene the poet rouses himself to the utmost. He piles simile on simile to give an adequate idea of his first charge—

Through Morven's woods when countless tempests roar,
When from the height a hundred torrents pour,
Like storm-clouds rushing through the vault of heaven,
As when the mighty main on shore is driven,
So wide, so loud, so dark, so fierce the strain
When met the angry chiefs on Lena's plain.
The king rushed forward with resistless might,
Dreadful as Trenmor's awe-inspiring sprite,
When on the fitful blast he comes again
To Morven, his forefather's loved domain.
Loud in the gale the mountain oaks shall roar,
The mountain rocks shall fall his face before,
As by the lightning's gleam his form is spied
Stalking from hill to hill with giant stride.
More terrible in fight my father seemed
When in his hand of might his weapon gleamed,
On his own youth the king with gladness thought
When in the furious highland wars he fought.—Fingal B. III.

The notion that Ossian drew in part, at least from real life, is favoured by the wonderful calmness and absence of effort evinced in delineating so great a character. Expressions that go far to heighten our admiration of Fingal are employed in a quiet matter of course way. "The silence of the king is terrible," is an expressive sentence. Or this again, "The heroes ... looked in silence on each other marking the eyes of Fingal."

Nor are the gentler feelings less fully brought out in Ossian's favourite character. Nothing could speak more for his affability than the attachment shown by his followers. "Fear, like a vapour winds not among the host! for he, the king, is near; the strength of streamy Selma. Gladness brightens the hero. We hear his words with joy."[A]

Gallantry and philanthropy we might expect to find in his composition, but the tenderness he frequently displays strikes us as remarkable in an uncivilized chief. His lamentation over the British city on the Clyde is as pathetic as any similar passage in our language.

Another surprising trait is the generosity he invariably displays to his vanquished foes. All the more surprising is it that a "savage" should show magnanimity when the heroes of civilized Greece, Rome, and Judea, counted it virtuous to torture their captured enemies. "None ever went sad from Fingal," he says himself. Over and over he is represented as lamenting the death of enemies when they fall, or granting them freedom and his friendship when they yield—"Come to my hill of feasts," he says to his wounded opponent Cathmor, "the mighty fail at times. No fire am I to lowlaid foes. I rejoice not over the fall of the brave."

A notable fact about Fingal is, that though he lived in times of war, in disposition he was a man of peace. "Fingal delights not in battle though his arm is strong." "When will Fingal cease to fight?" he complains, "I was born in the midst of battles, and my steps must move in blood to the tomb." Under the influence of this desire for peace he formally gave up his arms to Ossian—

My son, around me roll my byegone years,
They come and whisper in the monarch's ears.
"Why does not grey-haired Fingal rest?" they say
"Why does he not within his fortress stay?
Dost thou in battle's gory wounds delight?
Lovest thou the tears of vanquished men of might?"
Ye hoary years! I will in quiet lie,
Nor profit nor delight in blood have I.
Like blustering storms from wintry skies that roll,
Tears waste with grief and dreariness the soul.
But when I stretch myself to rest, I hear
The voice of war come thundering on my ear
Within the royal hall, with loud command,
To rouse and draw again th' unwilling brand.—Tem. B. VIII.

Limited as were the means of communication in those pre-telegraphic times the fame of such a man must have spread. Accordingly, we read of his name being known and respected far and near. Foreign princes speak of him with admiration, and refugees from distant lands seek his protection.

But it is on the power of his name in after times that we wish more particularly to dwell. There have been no people who honoured their heroes so much as the Celts. With them valour and value were synonymous terms. Theirs was not a nobility of money, or literature, or Æsthetics, or even of territory. Nobleness should be the qualification of a nobleman, and strange as it may seem, it was among the uncivilised Celts of Ireland and Scotland that such a character was properly appreciated. But they held nobleness and heroism to be identical. They seem to have thoroughly believed that cowardice was but the result of vice. A fearless man, they felt, must be a true man, and he was honoured accordingly. Flath-innis, the Isle of the Noble, was their only name for heaven. Allail or divine they applied to their heroic men. To imitate such was the old Celtic religion as it was the primitive religion of most other peoples.

Among all the heroes whom the ancient Gael worshipped there was no name so influential as Fingal's. Through the ages he has been the idol and ideal of the Celt. His example was their rule of justice. His maxims were cited much as we would quote Scripture. To the youth he was held up as the model after which their lives should be patterned, and where Christianity had not yet eradicated the old creed, a post mortem dwelling with him in Flath-innis was deemed no mean incentive to goodness. He was, in fact, the god of the Gaelic people, worshipped with no outward altar, but enshrined in the hearts of his admirers. How far the more admirable traits of Highland character may be attributed to the assimilating influence of the idea of Fingal we cannot decide. That our character as a people has been largely influenced for good by the power of his example we have no doubt. The bards, an order of the old Druidic hierarchy, became the priests of the Fingalian hero-worship. Songs, elegies, and poetic legends formed their service of praise. To induce their countrymen to reverence and imitate so great and glorious a Gael as Fingal was the object of many of their bardic homilies. Taking into account the nature and circumstances of the ancient Caledonians, we must conclude that from position and influence none were more suitable to become their ethical and Æsthetical advisers than these minstrel ministers of the Fingalian hero-olatry.

Of course such a faith could not long withstand the more generous and cosmopolitan spirit of Christianity, yet we venture to assert that it was vastly preferable in its effects to some abortions of our common creed. That there was a conflict between the two religions we know. As late as the sixteenth century a Christian ecclesiastic complains that the leaders of Gaelic thought of the period were heathen enough to delight in "stories about the Tuath de Dhanond and about the sons of Milesius, and about the heroes and Fionn (Fingal), the son of Cumhail with his Fingalians ... rather than to write and to compose and to support the faithful words of God and the perfect way of truth."

Down to the present day the name of Fionn is reverenced by the less sophisticated Highlanders and Islanders. That his name will in future be more extensively, if less intensely, respected we may confidently predict. As men's views become more broad and just, and their feelings become more cultivated and refined, we may hope that a superior character such as Fingal will by-and-bye be appreciated. Even now he is widely admired and we begin to read in the signs of the times the fulfilment of his own words:—

When then art crumbled into dust, O! stone;
Lost in the moss of years around thee grown;
My fame, which chiefs and heroes love to praise,
Shall shine a beam of light to future days,
Because I went in steel and faced th' alarms
Of war, to help and save the weak in arms.—Tem. B. VIII.

MINNIE LITTLEJOHN.

[A] The quotations in prose are from Macpherson's translation.