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He spoke of the old Irish legend of Mongan and the Bard, and Evelyn begged of him to tell it her. "Mongan," he said, "had been Fin MacCool two hundred years before. When he was Fin he had been present at the death of a certain king. The bard was singing before Mongan, and mis-stated the place of the king's death.
Indeed, we boys regarded the Irish champion boxer with the admiration we would have bestowed upon Finn MacCool or some other of the ancient Fenians, could they have appeared in bodily form amongst us. Little we then thought that we should be welcoming on the same platform the Fenians of our own days.
"We have been waiting for your ship for six hours, and we have only five dozen apples to sell. It's a great man he is. Sure he's as big as Finn MacCool." Some one pulled the steward behind a ventilator and revived him by squirting him with water from the hose which he had tried to turn upon the old woman. The third officer slipped quietly away.
"I and the file yonder have made a wager about the death of Fothad Airgtech," said Mongan. "The file said he died at Dubtar in Leinster; I said it was false." "Then the file has lied," said the warrior. "Thou wilt repent of that," cried Forgoll. "That is not a good speech," said the warrior. "I will prove what I say." Then he turned to Mongan. "We were with thee, Finn MacCool," said he,
The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages.
You remember Kelly, lovable Kelly, who in his youth, trotting the swate ould bogs of Cohhacht, heard poetry in every sigh of the wind, saw the hosts of the Danaan Sidhe riding their flamey steeds through the twilight, listened, by the cabin peat-fire in the evenings, to tales of Finn MacCool and Cuculain and the ancient heroes and Gods of Ireland? Behold this very Kelly now!
Take, for instance, the first of the plays, Grania, which is founded on the story of the pursuit of Diarmuid and Grania by Finn MacCool, to whom Grania had been betrothed. When Finn, disguised as a blind beggar, visits the lovers in their tent, Grania, who does not recognize him, bids him give Finn this message from her: Give heed to what I say now.
It was when he heard the boy repeat a story of Finn MacCool to the old crone in the kitchen that Mr. Conneally awoke to the idea that he must educate his son. He began, naturally enough, with Irish, for it was Irish, and not English, that Hyacinth spoke fluently.
The universal doctrine survived in that way in Ireland, as it survived as a rumor in the folk-lore in Wales. There is the story, for instance, of Mongan son of Fiachta, a historical chieftain killed in 625. According to Tigernach, the oldest of the Irish annalists, Finn MacCool died in A.D. 274.
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