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
aesthetics, 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, w