Erinn." Then the overseer said, "Thou art daft, old man, and thou hast
made us daft to take thee for a youth as we did a while agone. But we
at least have now our wits again, and we know that Finn son of Cumhal
and all his generation have been dead these three hundred years. At
the battle of Gowra fell Oscar, son of Oisin, and Finn at the battle
of Brea, as the historians tell us; and the lays of Oisin, whose death
no man knows the manner of, are sung by our harpers at great men's
feasts. But now the Talkenn,[25] Patrick, has come into Ireland and
has preached to us the One God and Christ His Son, by whose might
these old days and ways are done away with, and Finn and his Fianna,
with their feasting and hunting and songs of war and of love, have no
such reverence among us as the monks and virgins of holy Patrick, and
the psalms and prayers that go up daily to cleanse us from sin and to
save us from the fire of judgment." But Oisin replied, half hearing
and still less comprehending what was said to him, "If thy God have
slain Finn and Oscar, I would say that God is a strong man." Then they
all cried out upon him, and some picked up stones, but the overseer
bade them let him be until the Talkenn had spoken with him, and till
he should order what was to be done.

[25] Talkenn or "Adze-head" was a name given to St Patrick by
the Irish. Probably it referred to the shape of his tonsure.

So they brought him to Patrick, who entreated him gently and
hospitably, and to Patrick he told the story of all that had befallen
him. But Patrick bade his scribes write all carefully down, that the
memory of the heroes whom Oisin had known, and of the joyous and free
life they had led in the woods and glens and wild places of Erinn,
should never be forgotten among men. And Oisin, during the short span
of life that yet remained to him, told to Patrick many tales of the
Fianna and their deeds, but of the three hundred years that he had
spent with Niam in the Land of Youth he rarely spoke, for they seemed
to him but as a vision or a dream of the night, set between a sunny
and a rainy day.

THE HISTORY OF KING CORMAC

CHAPTER XVI

I

THE BIRTH OF CORMAC

Of all the kings that ruled over Ireland, none had a better and more
loyal servant than was Finn mac Cumhal, and of all the captains and
counsellors of kings none ever served a more glorious and a nobler
monarch than did Finn, for the time that he served Cormac, son of A