("Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Irish History," p. 319.)


IV. USHEEN

In the original legend, Oisin or Usheen is supposed to have told his tale
to St. Patrick on his arrival in Ireland; but as the ancient Feni were
idolaters, the hero bears but little goodwill to the saint. The Celtic
text of a late form of the legend (1749) with a version by Brian O'Looney
will be found in the transactions of the Ossianic Society for 1856 (Vol.
IV. p. 227); and still more modern and less literal renderings in P. W.
Joyce's "Ancient Celtic Romances" (London, 1879), p. 385, and in W. B.
Yeats's "Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems" (London, 1889), p. 1. The
last is in verse and is much the best. St. Patrick, who takes part in it,
regards Niam as "a demon thing." See also the essays entitled "L'Elysee
Transatlantique," by Eugene Beauvois, in the "Revue de L'Histoire des
Religions," VII. 273 (Paris, 1885), and "L'Eden Occidental" (same, VII.
673). As to Oisin or Usheen's identity with Ossian, see O'Curry's
"Lectures on the Manuscript Materials for Ancient Irish History" (Dublin,
1861), pp. 209, 300; John Rhys's "Hibbert Lectures" (London, 1888), p.
551. The latter thinks the hero identical with Taliessin, as well as with
Ossian, and says that the word Ossin means "a little fawn," from "os,"
"cervus." (See also O'Curry, p. 304.) O'Looney represents that it was a
stone which Usheen threw to show his strength, and Joyce follows this
view; but another writer in the same volume of the Ossianic Society
transactions (p. 233) makes it a bag of sand, and Yeats follows this
version. It is also to be added that the latter in later editions changes
the spelling of his hero's name from Oisin to Usheen.