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Another fateful fight for Find was the battle of Kinvarra, among the southern rocks of Galway Bay; for though he broke through the host of his foeman Uincé, that chieftain himself escaped, and, riding swiftly with a score of men, came to Find's own dwelling at Druim Dean on the Red Hills of Leinster, and burned the dwelling, leaving it a smoldering ruin.
A banquet was set in the great House of Mead, and Find and his men were there, Diarmuid son of Duibné being also there, best beloved among Find's warriors. There was a custom, much in honor among the chieftains, that a princess should send her goblet to the guests, offering it to each with gentle courtesy.
Of this army, Find, son of Cumal, was the most renowned leader a warrior and a poet, who embodied in himself the very genius of the time, its fresh naturalness, its ripeness, its imagination. No better symbol of the spirit of his age could be found than Find's own "Ode to Spring": "May-day! delightful time! How beautiful the color! The blackbirds sing their full lay. Would that Laigay were here!
Find's large and imaginative personality is well drawn in one of the poems of his golden-tongued son Ossin, though much of the beauty of Ossin's form is lost in the change of tongue: Ossin likewise tells, and how, overcome, they fell at last into a deathlike trance and stupor, till the sunlight woke them lying on the heathery hillside, the house utterly vanished away.
They were three pillars of gold about their hills, abiding in strength; great is their loss since the third son has fallen." Seventeen centuries ago, two hundred summers after the death of Cuculain the hero, came the great and wonderful time of Find the son of Cumal, Ossin the son of Find, and Find's grandson Oscur.
But enmity grew between Find with his warriors and Cormac the king, till at last a battle was fought where Find's men fell, and Cairbré, the well-instructed son of Cormac also fell. Thus passed away the ruling spirits of that age, the flowering time of the genius of Erin. The valor of Fergus and Cuculain, the rich imaginative life of Find and Ossin, were the flower of heroic centuries.
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