Fenian or Ossianic Period.— Though Cu chulain is the great hero of the heroic age of the Gad there is another of a later age who comes closer than he to the popular heart. Fionn, or Finn, mac Cumhail, if one may judge by the affectionate reverence with which his name and the records of his deeds are preserved in peasant lore, is without question the most popular of the traditional heroes. While the wonderful achievements of the elder hero are familiar to the scholar, those of Fionn are known to every unlettered peasant and are em balmed in folksongs and folktales without number. Moreover, the whole body of Fenian story is intimately bound up in the popular in terest. Hyde points out that for a period of from 1,200 to 1,500 years these tales showed a most remarkable instance of continuous literary evolution. Century after century saw accre tions in the form of stories and poems about Finn and the Fenians, and there are to-day ex tant in Gaelic-speaking communities numberless stories that have never been reduced to writing in which Finn is the central figure. This was never, at any time, true of Cuchulain and the Red Branch Cycle. Finn is distinctively the popular hero, the hero who stands in the popu lar imagination for all that is heroic and patriotic.
Like Cuchulain, he is the central figure of a cycle of romance, almost as important as the Red Branch Cycle. The Fenian Cycle, so called from the fact that it deals largely with the Fianna, or Irish Militia; or the Ossianic Cycle, from Ossian, or more Oisin, the son of Finn, who is credited with the authorship of many of the poems, comes nearer than either of the other cycles to the limits of authentic history. These sagas treat of such historical personages as Conn of the Hundred Battles, Ard-Ri• (High-King), whom the an nalists assign to the 2d century; his son, Art the Lonely; his grandson, Cormac mac Art (A.n. 227, according to the °Four Masters ;* 213, according, to Keating) ; and his great grandson, Cairbre of the Liffey. Finn, himself, is generally accepted as an historical figure, though much of myth and romance has been woven into his history. The earliest, in point of the chronology of the romances of this pe riod, is the tale of the 'Battle of Cnucha,' in which Cumhail, the father of Finn, is killed by Conn of the Hundred Battles. Thence through a long cycle of romances the many adventures of Finn and his redoubtable band of warriors, Oisin, his son, Oscar, his grandson, Caoilte, the poet, Diarmidh and many another, are related until in the 'Battle of Gabhra,' which closes the series, is told how Cairbre of the Liffey broke the power of the Fenians forever.
The most fascinating, and when everything is considered, perhaps the most meritorious of the Fenian sagas is the 'Pursuit of Diarmidh and Grainne.' Like the story of 'Deirdre,'
despite its antiquity the human appeal is almost modern, so close does it come to our own man ner of thought. It tells of Finn's suit for the hand of Grainne, daughter of Cormac mac Art, the High-King; Grainne's passion, developed while the negotiations for her hand were in progress, for Diarmidh of the Love-Spot, one of Finn's warriors; the flight of the pair and the pursuit of the vengeful Finn.
Miscellaneous Besides the stories of the three main groups above enumer ated, there is a considerable number of sagas, some as old as those of the Red Branch Cycle, and some more recent, which cannot well be in cluded under any of these headings. The most important is the 'Bruidhean of Da Derga,' a Leinster tale of the Red Branch period; and others that fall under this same heading are 'The Dream of Mac Conglinne,' a satire full of an irresistible humor; the 'Voyage of Mael duin) and the 'Battle of Moy Rath.' Early Christian With the coming of Christianity came a new phase of Gaelic lit erature. Saint Patrick and his followers found a soil ready to receive the seed of Christianity. Theirs was a bloodless conquest, and although the Bardic Schools struggled long against the innovation of Christianity they at length suc cumbed and the subsequent literature of Ireland is thoroughly Christian and largely devotional in tone. Saint Patrick himself was a man of works rather than a man of letters, and yet it is to him that the earliest literature of Chris tian Ireland and, if we except Ogam in scriptions, the earliest authentic writings now in existence can be traced. Of the 'Canon Phaidraig,' or 'Patrick's Testament,' a MS. copy of the late 8th or early 9th century is still in existence, and this, it has been demonstrated, was made from an older copy in the saint's handwriting. The authenticity of 'Saint Pat rick's Confession,' which, strictly speaking, is not a confession but an apology, has been ques tioned, but it is vouched for by such eminent authorities as Stokes, Todd and Hyde. These two works, it is true, are in Latin and might be excluded from a consideration of purely Gaelic literature, but as they are the first literary utterance of Christian Ireland, they are worthy of note, despite the alien tongue in which they are written. This objection, how ever, does not apply to the 'Epistle to Coroti cus) and 'The Cry of the Deer,' two com positions in Gaelic which are also attributed to Saint Patrick. Seachnall, a nephew of the great apostle, is looked upon as the first Chris tian poet in Ireland, although he, too, wrote in Latin.