Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/76

 When a priest told him that not even a midge could slip into Heaven without God's knowledge, he recalled the generosity and hospitality of Finn. If the leaves of autumn were gold, he said, and the sea waves silver, Finn would have given all away. Thousands of men could enter his hall, feast at his board, and leave without being questioned. The heroes, he said, used to speak truth and keep their promise as well as any priest. Patrick stood looking at him, his head not much above the end of the bloodstains on Ossian's spear. He would have been willing that all men should be giants if they had been as noble as the sons of Finn. He knew little men who were far more monstrous.

Whatever a priest said, Ossian was too old and mild to be often sad, except when the wind was from the east. Then the long and cold nights wearied him, and he remembered the chase and the warfare with the long-haired sons of Finn. He knew then that he could no longer hunt, or fight, or play, or swim in the torrents, that he was a poor old man without strength or music. He was left alone on the earth, and would have been glad to be with Finn his father and Oscar his son, wherever they were. It still irked him that he had not been there to aid his father in the battle when every inch of the great Finn was stretched cold and still beside the Boyne. Nor did he share the last battle of the Fena, when Oscar slew Cairbre and died himself, and only the swift-footed one of the tribe escaped. It was his own fault that Ossian had missed these battles. Strange it was that such an adventure of youth should have been the means of drawing out his life to so great an age! He told Patrick the tale.

On a misty spring morning Finn and the Fena, and Ossian among them, were hunting among the Lakes of