There are many poems of great beauty and interest in the Irish language, several of which have become known to the English reader through the medium of a translation. Of those poems there is a particular class known to Irish scholars by the name of the “Fenian Tales”--an appellation which they derive from Finn, or Fionn, the son of Cumhail (the Fingal of Macpherson), and his heroes the FIONNA EIRONN. Fionn, renowned for his martial exploits, flourished about the beginning of the third century, under Cormac,[1] of whose forces he was the commander-in-chief. He has been to the Milesian bards what King Arthur was to the Britons, the theme of many a marvellous achievement and poetic fiction. Oisin, his son, was equally celebrated as a warrior and a poet; and of him it might be said, as of Achilles, Æschylus, Alfred, Camoens, Cervantes, and many another, that “one hand the sword and one the harp employed.” Numerous poems have been ascribed to him; but there is no proof that he has a legitimate claim to any composition extant. As for the impostures of Macpherson, they have been sufficiently exposed; and no one who has taken pains to investigate the subject, or who has the least knowledge of Irish history, antiquities, or language, will pretend that he is worthy of the slightest credence. The date and origin of the Fenian Tales, from which he drew many of the materials of his centos, are altogether uncertain. It may seem, however, not unreasonable, from slight internal evidence, to conjecture that some of them may have been composed soon after the introduction of Christianity, though they must since have suffered many changes and modifications.[2] In few countries, if in any, did the Christian religion win its way more easily than in Ireland; and yet it can scarcely be supposed that its triumph became universal without some reluctance on the part of the people, whose habits it condemned, and to whose superstitions it was strenuously opposed. It attempted to produce such a complete revolution in their tastes and occupations, that it would be surprising had not various objections been started to its reception. The quiet and devotion of the monastic life formed a melancholy contrast to the spirit-stirring excitements of the chase, and to those games of strength and skill in which the heroes of the Ossianic age delighted. They who rejoiced in the clash of arms, in the music of hounds and horns, and in the feast and the revel, could have small taste for the chiming of bells in the services of religion, for the singing of psalms, and still less for fasting--