Oisín

[1] He is the demigod son of Fionn mac Cumhaill and of Sadhbh (daughter of Bodb Dearg), and is the narrator of much of the cycle and composition of the poems are attributed to him.

Fionn gave up hunting and fighting to settle down with Sadhbh, and she was soon pregnant, but Fer Doirich turned her back into a deer and she returned to the wild.

Niamh had given him her white horse Embarr and warned him not to dismount because if his feet touched the ground, those 300 years would catch up with him and he would become old and withered.

Later, while trying to help some men who were building a road in Gleann na Smól lift a stone out of the way onto a wagon, his girth breaks and he falls to the ground, becoming an old man just as Niamh had forewarned.

In return for killing the bull, Oisín asks to be buried facing the east on Slieve Gullion, Co. Armagh.

The megalithic court cairn is located on a hillside in Lubitavish, near the Glenann River, outside the village of Cushendall on the North Antrim Coast, and is believed to be the ancient burial place of Oísín.

Macpherson's poems had widespread influence on many writers including Goethe and the young Walter Scott,[9] although their authenticity was widely disputed.

Modern scholars have demonstrated that Macpherson based his poems on authentic Gaelic ballads, but had adapted them to contemporary sensibilities by altering the original characters and ideas and introducing a great deal of his own.