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Mar a fhuair Oisean bean agus mar a thachair dha an dèidh a...

Date June 1957
Track ID 34796
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1957.48.B2

Original Tape ID

SA1957.048

Summary

How Ossian got a wife and what became of him after she left.

In the time after the Fingalians, Ossian was in a sheiling bothy. One night an ugly woman came and no one in the other bothies would let her in, but Ossian did. They ate and slept together, but Ossian put an unsheathed sword in the bed between them. In the morning the most beautiful woman he had ever seen was before him. They stayed together, but she made him promise never to cast up her original ugliness.

Years later Ossian was in the hills one day when his bitch was due to have a litter of puppies. He told his wife to make sure she didn't give away the first-born pup. A man came to the door and made her give him the first pup. She and Ossian fell out over it and he reminded her of how ugly she was originally.

She left and Ossian was full of remorse. He followed her. She flew in the air in the form of a raven. She said she couldn't return, but gave him a ring which would protect him from harm while it was on his finger.

Ossian was an old man and he told the boy who attended him stories of the Fingalians. One day the boy returned from the hill with a deer and asked if the Fingalians had ever killed one so big. Ossian said he had seen bigger blackbirds' thighs. The boy threw the books of the Fingalians in the fire.

Ossian asked the boy to carry him to the hill. They got one of the Fingalians' dogs. Ossian was deaf and blind. They came to a certain place, Ossian called out, and the boy saw the biggest deer he had ever seen. Ossian kept calling out until a deer came that was big enough and he sent the dog after it.

He asked the boy to make a fire to roast the deer. He ate a piece of the meat as he was cooking it. Ossian ate it and his strength returned, but he had a blister on his eye.

They went to the forest and killed a blackbird. The boy ate his fill and took the talon home. He threw it on the table and the table legs broke. The talon was bigger than the deer the boy had brought home.

One day Ossian asked the boy to take him to the stream and wash him. He took the ring from his finger and the raven picked it up. Ossian killed the boy so that he couldn't tell anyone where they had been and then Ossian himself died.

The contributor heard this story from her father.

Item Subject/Person

Ossian

Recording Location

County - Sutherland

Parish - Farr

Language

Gaelic

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good