lubitavish ossian s grave

A Neolithic court-tomb of c.3000 B.C. with a forecourt of low stones facing south-eastwards and giving access to a two-chambered gallery placed in an ill-defined oval mound. Local tradition explains it as the grave of Finn MacCumhaill's poet-warrior son Ossian (Oisin). His faked 'songs' as 'translated' by James MacPherson in 1762-3 led to the start of the romantic movement in literature when published in Scotland, which can suitably be seen in the distance from this evocative site in the Glens of Antrim. No wonder, then, that it was the 'chosen ground' of the Ulster poet John Hewitt (1907-87) who is commemorated by a small stone 'beehive' monument erected at the entrance to the field in 1989. In his 1962 poem Ossian's Grave, he contrasted the archaeology and oral tradition of the monument: We stood and pondered on the stones whose plan displays their pattern still' The small blunt arc, and, sill by sill, the pockets stripped of shards and bones. The legend has it, Oisin lies beneath this landmark on the hill, asleep till Fionn and Oscar rise to summon his old bardic skill in hosting their last enterprise. This, stricter scholarship denies, declares this megalithic form millenniums older than his time - if such lived ever, out of rime- ...