But in Highland ballads collected in the sixteenth century by the Dean of Lismore, as well as in Irish ballads found in MSS. dating from the seventeenth century onwards, the saint is a sour and intolerant cleric, and the Fians are equally intolerant and blasphemous pagans.  There is no attempt at compromise; the saint rejoices that the Fian band are in hell, and Oisin throws contempt on the God of the shaven priests.  But sometimes this contempt is mingled with humour and pathos.  Were the heroes of Oisin’s band now alive, scant work would be made of the monks’ bells, books, and psalm-singing.  It is true that the saint gives the weary old man hospitality, but Oisin’s eyes are blinded with tears as he thinks of the departed glories of the Fians, and his ears are tormented “by jangling bells, droning psalms, and howling clerics.”  These ballads probably represent one main aspect of the attitude of the Church to Celtic paganism.  How, then, did the more generous Colloquy come into being?  We must note first that some of the ballads have a milder tone.  Oisin is urged to accept the faith, and he prays for salvation.  Probably these represent the beginning of a reaction in favour of the old heroes, dating from a time when the faith was well established.  There was no danger of a pagan revival, and, provided the Fians were Christianised, it might be legitimate to represent them as heroic and noble.  The Colloquy would represent the high-water mark of this reaction among the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge by popular tales, the Fians had never been regarded in other than a favourable light.  The Colloquy re-established the dignity of the Fian band in the eyes of official Christianity.  They are baptized or released from hell, and in their own nature they are virtuous and follow lofty ideals.  “Who or what was it that maintained you in life?” asks Patrick.  And Caoilte gives the noble reply, “Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms, and fulfilment in our tongues.”  Patrick says of Fionn:  “He was a king, a seer, a poet, a lord with a manifold and great train; our magician, our knowledgeable one, our soothsayer; all whatsoever he said was sweet with him.  Excessive, perchance, as ye deem my testimony of Fionn, although ye hold that which I say to be overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King that is above me, he was three times better still.”  Not only so, but Caoilte maintains that Fionn and his men were aware of the existence of the true God.  They possessed the anima naturaliter Christiana.  The growing appreciation of a wider outlook on life, and possibly acquaintance with the romances of chivalry, made the composition of the Colloquy possible, but, again, it may represent a more generous conception of paganism existing from the time of the first encounter of Christianity with it in Ireland.