Note 13 — Chapter XXXVII

"Is fada anocht i n-Ailfinn, Is fada linn an oidhche aréir, An lá andhiu cidh fada dham, Ba leór-fhad an lá andé."

See p. 208 of my "Religious Songs of Connacht" for the original of this poem, which I copied from a MS. in the Belfast Museum. The Dean of Lismore in Argyle jotted this poem down in phonetic spelling nearly four hundred years ago, but the name of Elphin, being strange to him, he took the words to be na neulla fúm, "the clouds round me," ni nelli fiym he spells it. Elphin is an episcopal seat in the county Roscommon, where St. Patrick abode for a while when in Connacht. I often heard in that county the story of Ossian meeting St. Patrick when drawing stones in Elphin, but always thought that the people of Roscommon localised the legend in their own county. But the discovery of the Belfast copy—and I believe there is another one in the British Museum—shows that this was not so, and the Dean of Lismore's book proves the antiquity of the legend. That Ailfinn (Elphin) was the original word is proved by rhyming to linn, sinn and Finn, which Fiym (= fúm) could not do.