They heaved the stones; they heaped the cairn.

Said Ossian, "In a queenly grave

We leave her, 'mong her fields of fern

Between the cliff and wave."

The cliff behind stands clear and bare,

And bare, above, the heathery steep

Scales the clear heaven's expanse, to where

The Danaan Druids sleep.

And all the sands that, left and right,

The grassy isthmus-ridge confine,

In yellow bars lie bare and bright

Among the sparkling brine.

A clear pure air pervades the scene,

In loneliness and awe secure,

Meet spot to sepulchre a Queen,

Who in her life was pure.

Here far from camp and chase removed,

Apart in Nature's quiet room,

The music that alive she loved

Shall cheer her in the tomb.

The humming of the noontide bees,

The lark's loud carol all day long,

And, borne on evening's salted breeze,

The clanking sea-birds' song

Shall round her airy chamber float,

And with the whispering winds and streams,

Attune to Nature's tenderest note

The tenor of her dreams.

And oft at tranquil eve's decline,

When full tides lap the Old Green Plain,

The lowing Moynalty's kine

Shall round her breathe again.

In sweet remembrance of the days

When, duteous in the lowly vale,

Unconscious of my Oscar's gaze,

She filled the fragrant pail.

And, duteous, from the running brook,

Drew water for the bath; nor deem'd

A king did on her labor look,

And she a fairy seemed.

But when the wintry frosts begin,

And in their long-drawn, lofty flight

The wild geese with their airy din.

Distend the ear of night.

And when the fierce De Danaan ghosts,

At midnight from their peak come down.

When all around the enchanted coasts

Despairing strangers drown;

When mingling with the wreckful wail

From low Clontarf's wave-trampled floor,

Comes booming up the burthened gale

The angry Sand Bull's roar;

Or, angrier than the sea, the shout

Of Erin's hosts in wrath combined

When Terror heads Oppression's rout

And Freedom cheers behind:—

Then o'er our lady's placid dream,

When safe from storms she sleeps, may steal

Such joy as may not misbeseem

A queen of men to feel.

Such thrill of free, defiant pride,

As rapt her in her battle car

At Gavra, when by Oscar's side

She rode the ridge of war.

Exulting, down the shouting troops,

And through the thick confronting kings,

With hands on all their javelin loops

And shafts on all their strings;

E'er closed the inseparable crowds

No more to part for me, and show,

As bursts the sun through scattering clouds

My Oscar issuing so.

No more, dispelling battle's gloom,

Shall son to me from fight return;

The great green rath's ten-acred tomb

Lies heavy on his urn.

A cup of bodkin-pencilled clay

Holds Oscar; mighty heart and limb

One handful now of ashes grey:

And she has died for him.

And here, hard by her natal bower

On lone Ben-Edar's side we strive

With lifted rock and sign of power

To keep her name alive.

That, while from circling year to year,

Her Ogham-lettered stone is seen,

The Gael shall say, "Our Fenians here

Entombed their loved Aideen.

The Ogham from her pillar stone

In tract of time will wear away;

Her name at last be only known

In Ossian's echoed lay.

The long-forgotten lay I sing

May only ages hence revive,

(As eagle with a wounded wing

To soar again might strive.)

Imperfect, in an alien speech,

When, wandering here, some child of chance

Through pangs of keen delight shall reach

The gift of utterance,—

To speak the air, the sky to speak,

The freshness of the hill to tell,

When, roaming bare Ben-Edar's peak

And Aide en's briary dell,

And gazing on the Cromlech vast,

And on the mountain and the sea,

Shall catch communion with the past

And mix himself with me.

Child of the Future's doubtful night,

Whate'er your speech, whoe'er your sires,

Sing while you may with frank delight

The song your hour inspires.

Sing while you may, nor grieve to know

The song you sing shall also die;

Atharna's lay has perished so,

Though once it thrilled the sky.

Above us, from his rocky chair

There, where Ben-Edar's landward crest

O'er eastern Bregia bends, to where

Dun-Almon crowns the west:

And all that felt the fretted air,

Throughout the song-distempered clime,

Did droop, till Leinster's suppliant prayer

Appeased the vengeful rhyme.

Ah, me, or e'er the hour arrive

Shall bid my long-forgotten tones,

Unknown One, on your lips revive,

Here, by these moss-grown stones,

What change shall o'er the scene have cross'd

What conquering lords anew have come;

What lore-armed, mightier Druid host

From Gaul or distant Rome!

What arts of death, what ways of life,

What creeds unknown to bard or seer,

Shall round your careless steps be rife,

Who pause and ponder here:

And, haply, where yon curlew calls

Athwart the marsh, 'mid groves and bowers

See rise some mighty chieftain's halls

With unimagined towers:

And baying hounds and coursers bright,

And burnish't cars of dazzling sheen,

With courtly train of dame and knight,

Where now the fern is green.

Or by yon prostrate altar stone

May kneel, perchance, and free from blame,

Hear holy men with rites unknown

New names of God proclaim.

Let change as.may the name of Awe,

Let right surcease and altar fall,

The same one God remains, a law

Forever and for all.

Let change as may the face of earth,

Let alter all the social frame,

For mortal men the ways of birth

And death are still the same.

And still, as life and time wear on,

The children of the waning days

(Though strength be from their shoulders gone

To lift the loads we raise)

Shall weep to do the burial rites

Of lost ones loved; and fondly found

In shadow of the gathering nights

The monumental mound.

Farewell, the strength of men is worn;

The night approaches dark and chill;

Sleep till, perchance, an endless morn

Descend the glittering hill"—

Of Oscar and Aideen bereft

So Ossian sang. The Fenians sped

Three mighty shouts to heaven; and left

Ben-Edar to the dead.

The spirit of Ossian, the woe and desolation of a mortal world, and the resigned but not bitter sense of the vanity of all things, lives in this solemn elegy.

The charming lyrics of the later Irish Celtic poetry, which succeeded that of the bards, and were the voices of the peasant people themselves and of the professional descendants of the bards, the itinerant poets and musicians, who wandered from house to house with their harps, singing the praises of their entertainers, and were not extinct until the end of the last century, have found an adequate interpreter in Sir Samuel Ferguson. As in his reproductions of the bardic poetry, he has been able to seize the very spirit of these songs, their intoxication of love, their breath of hopeless longing and misfortune, the characteristics of the race and the results of their cruel fate at the hands of alien conquerors, and to interpret it in measures as melodious as the sad and sweet old airs, which are the most valuable gift which the intellectual life of Celtic Ireland has bestowed upon posterity. The genuine Irish melodies are to be found in these lyrics, which interpret the spirit as well as the language of the Celtic poets, and not in the rococo songs of Moore, in which artificial sentiment is tricked out in a mechanical melody, and in which the atmosphere of the drawing-room takes the place of the free air of the hillside. Of these Celtic lyrics the greater number have been lost, the airs alone surviving, but those which remain show how strong, sensitive, and impassioned was the poetic spirit of the Irish Celtic people, and which, but for the misfortunes of the nation, might have left as rich a treasury of lyric song as the Scotch. The following is a specimen of the impassioned spirit of these songs, almost an improvisation, the very cry of the heart finding vent at the lips. It is entitled Cean Dubh Deelish—The Dear Black Head.

Put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who with heart in breast could deny you love?

Oh, many and many a young girl for me is pining,

Letting her locks of gold to the cold wind free,

For me the foremost of our gay young fellows;

But I'd leave a hundred, pure love, for thee:

Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,

Your darling black head my heart above;

Oh, mouth of honey, with the thyme for fragrance,

Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?

The verses entitled The Fair Hair'd Girl express with great sweetness the sense of woe and sorrow which forms the burden of so much of the Celtic poetry, and which is only relieved by occasional flashes of intoxicated merriment with the glass of whiskey for its stimulus and inspiration.