The poet of the Fenian cycle and the poems that made him famous across Europe
Ossian
In Irish mythology, Oisín, known in English as Ossian, is the great poet and warrior of the Fianna, and the narrator of much of the Fenian cycle. In the 18th century his name gave its title to a set of poems published by James Macpherson, whose authenticity was disputed for generations. Scholars now largely agree that Macpherson wrote most of the work himself, yet it influenced literature, music and nationalism across Europe.
Oisín (in English, Ossian, roughly “o-shin”) is one of the best-loved names in Irish mythology. According to tradition, he is the son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and Sadbh, daughter of Bodb Dearg. Legend remembers him as the greatest poet in Ireland and as a warrior of the Fianna, the band of champions who served the kings of the island. He narrates much of the Fenian cycle, also called the Ossianic cycle, a body of stories about heroes, hunts, love and battle.
His name means, literally, “little deer” or fawn, and the explanation lies in his origins. According to the myth, his mother was turned into a deer by the druid Fer Doirich, also called Fear Doirche. One day, while hunting, Fionn caught the doe but did not kill her, and she regained her human shape. Fionn gave up hunting and war to live with her. She soon became pregnant, but Fer Doirich tricked her and turned her back into a deer, and she returned to the wild. Seven years later, the story goes, Fionn found a naked boy at Benbulbin, in Sligo, who turned out to be his son.
Other versions say that Oisín first met his father as an adult, and that the two competed over a roast pig before recognising each other. Such differences are typical of oral tradition, and the ancient texts do not always agree on the details of the hero’s birth and youth.
The most famous tale about Oisín is Oisín in Tír na nÓg, an echtra, or adventure story. In it, a fairy named Níamh Chinn Óir, “Niamh of the Golden Hair”, one of the daughters of Manannán mac Lir, a sea god, comes to Oisín to tell him she loves him and takes him to Tír na nÓg, “the land of the young”, also called Tír Tairngire, “the promised land”. Their union produces Oscar and a daughter, Plor na mBan, “Flower of Women”. After what seems to be three years, Oisín longs to return to Ireland. When he arrives, three hundred years have passed.
Niamh lends him her white horse, Embarr, with a warning: he must never dismount, for if his feet touch the ground, the centuries will catch up with him and he will age at once. Oisín finds the hill of Almu, where Fionn once lived, abandoned and in ruins. While he tries to help some men lift a stone onto a cart, the stirrup breaks and he falls to the ground. In that moment he grows old, just as Niamh had foretold. The horse goes back to Tír na nÓg alone.
In another tale, Acallam na Senórach, “Colloquy of the Old Men”, Oisín and his companion Caílte mac Rónáin survive into the age of Saint Patrick and tell the saints the stories of the Fianna. This text inspired William Butler Yeats’s poem The Wanderings of Oisin.
The figure of Ossian also lent its name to a very different work. In 1760 James Macpherson, a poet who wrote in English, published Fragments of Ancient Poetry, which he said he had translated from Gaelic. The following year he claimed to have found an epic poem about Fingal written by Ossian. The translations were gathered in 1765 in The Works of Ossian. The most famous was Fingal, dated 1762 in the edition. The texts were written in a poetic prose of short, simple sentences, with endless battles, unhappy loves and characters who die of grief or of joy. The misty, grey landscape weighs more than the people, and religion and daily life hardly appear.
The poems were an international success. Napoleon and Diderot admired them, Thomas Jefferson considered Ossian the greatest poet who had ever lived, and they were proclaimed the Celtic equivalent of Homer. From the start, however, there were accusations of fraud. Samuel Johnson dismissed them as a forgery, and Irish historians protested that Macpherson was appropriating their heritage of Fenian tales, even though Scotland and Ireland shared a single Gaelic culture in the period in which the poems are set.
The work also entered debates about national identity. European historians agree that the cycle helped spread Celtic mythology across the continent and contributed to the rise of enlightened patriotism and Romantic nationalism. In Scandinavia and Germany, for example, the Celtic setting was ignored or misunderstood, and Ossian was treated as a Nordic or Germanic figure. In 1799, the French general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte named his only son Oscar, at the suggestion of Napoleon, an admirer of Ossian. Bernadotte later became king of Sweden and Norway, and his son took the name Oscar I. The name then spread as a common male first name in several European countries.
The debate over authenticity went on for decades. In the late 19th century it was shown that the supposed original Gaelic manuscripts were in fact translations made from the English text. In 1952, the Scottish scholar Derick Thomson concluded that Macpherson had collected genuine Gaelic ballads, but had adapted them, changing characters and ideas and adding much material of his own. Today it is generally held that Macpherson composed much of the work himself, drawing on real traditions. Many readers feel that the question of authenticity should not hide the literary and cultural worth of a work that helped shape the image of Celtic mythology in Europe.