Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/285

Rh in Ireland are still known as "the beds of Diarmaid and Gralnne." Some incidents of the pursuit are also told separately, as when one story relates that after an old woman had betrayed the pair to Fionn, they escaped in a boat in which was a man with beautiful garments, viz. the god Ocngus.$67$

Various reasons for the final quarrel between Fionn and Goll are given, but in the end Goll was driven to bay on a sea-crag with none beside him but his faithful wife, where, though overcome by hunger and thirst, he yet refused the offer of the milk of her breasts. Noble in his loneliness, he is represented in several poems as recounting his earlier deeds. Then for the last time he faced Fionn, and fighting manfully, he fell, covered with wounds.$68$

The accounts of Fionn's death vary, some placing it before, some after, the battle of Gabhra, which, in the annalistic scheme, was the result of the exactions of the Féinn. Cairbre, High King of Ireland, summoned his nobles, and they resolved on their destruction, whereupon huge forces gathered on both sides, and "the greatest battle ever fought in Ireland" followed. Few Féinn survived it, and the most mournful event was the slaying of Oisin's son Oscar by Cairbre—the subject of numerous laments, purporting to be written by Oisin,$69$ full of pathos and of a wild hunger for the brave days long past. In Fionn's old age he always drank from a quaigh, for his wife Smirgat had foretold that to drink from a horn would be followed by his death; but one day he forgot this and then, through his thumb of knowledge, he learned that the end was near. Long before, Uirgreann had fallen by his hand, and now Uirgreann's sons came against him and slew him.$70$ In another version, however, Goll's grandson plotted to kill him with Uirgreann's sons and others, and succeeded.$71$ There is no mention of the High King here, and it suggests the longdrawn clan vendetta and nothing more. Thus perished the great hero, brave, generous, courteous, of whom many noble things are spoken in later literature, but none nobler than