century MSS., the Book of Lismore, Laud 610 and Rawlinson 487. In
this text we have the framework common to so much of the later Ossianic
literature. Ossian and Cailte are represented as surviving the battle of
Gabra and as living on until the time of Patrick. The two warriors get
on the best of terms with the saint, and Cailte is his constant
companion on his journey through Ireland. Patrick inquires the
significance of the names of the places they visit, and Cailte recounts
his reminiscences. In this manner we are given nearly a hundred stories,
the subjects of some of which occur in the short ballads in older MSS.,
whilst others appear later as independent tales. A careful comparison of
the _Acallam_ with the Cuchulinn stories, whether from the point of view
of civilization or language or art, discloses that the first lengthy
composition of the Ossianic cycle is but a feeble imitation of the older
group. All that had become unintelligible in the Ulster stories, owing
to their primitive character, is omitted, and in return for that the
reminiscences of the Viking age play a very prominent part.

With the 16th century we reach the later treatment of the legend in the
_Battle of Ventry_. In this tedious story Daire, the king of the whole
world, comes to invade Ireland with all his forces, but is repulsed by
Finn and his heroes. The _Battle of Ventry_, like all later stories, is
a regular medley of incidents taken from the writers of antiquity and
European medieval romance. The inflated style to which the Irishman is
so prone is here seen at its worst, and we are treated to a nauseous
heaping up of epithet upon epithet, e.g. we sometimes find as many as
twenty-seven adjectives accompanying a substantive running in
alliterating sets of three.

Of greater literary interest are the later ballads connected with Finn
and Ossian. The latter has become the typical mouthpiece of the departed
glory of the Fenian warriors, and Nutt has pointed out that there is a
striking difference in spirit between the _Acallam na Senorach_ and the
15th-16th century poems. In the latter Ossian is represented as a
"pagan, defiant and reckless, full of contempt and scorn for the howling
clerics and their churlish low-bred deity," whilst Patrick is a sour and
stupid fanatic, harping with wearisome monotony on the damnation of Finn
and all his comrades. The earliest collection of these later Ossianic
poems is that made in Scotland by James Macgregor