OSSIAN
Herder places the people among whom this body of literature arose in the islands known as the “Hebrides,” in the highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland.
Rugged mountains covered with roaring forests or spotted with desert tracts surround the inhabitants. Mists and clouds, midnight and storm, abound both on mountain tops and in the intervening valleys. Their huts are bordered by rocks and narrowly shut in by foggy darkness or from rough cliffs; they overlook the sea.
At the time at which we see them these highland dwellers look often upon wilderness full of sacred views, upon battlefields, lonesome graves, and blotted-out footsteps.
These old Highlanders believed in an all-high Being, whom they conceived to be self-existing. The cloud was the dwelling place of patriotism and love. The voice of renown, that is of song sung by friends yet alive to the honor of their departed ones, still highly esteemed, introduced these departed to their ancestors. With a sigh and tear as password, they were received at once into the smiling presence of their forefathers, who had clear, transparent figures like to the curled clouds. Their hands were weak, their voices deep and soft. They swayed themselves over the entire abode of their race and rejoiced in boundless space. Space they prized above everything else. Fright and horror were considered as narrow and shut in. Hence they called the grave the narrow house, and weak courage, the breath of a narrow soul.
The noble dead never became old, but grew constantly wiser because they conversed with the good of other times. On the other hand, the souls of the wicked were driven whirling into a thick fog which always hung over an offensive smelling morass. They never came out of this fog, and never saw the sun. One did not know the name of the other. The black water of the morass lake was their only converse; the voice of the Heron and the quacking of ducks their music.
Ossian’s folk attributed every sudden death to an invisible hand which threw a stone out of the clouds and which they called an “arrow of the destroying woman.”
“Their chief conception of the highest being was that it governs the clouds and heavenly bodies and rejoices at bravery and fortune of mankind; that it remained ever invisible ... that the entire earth out of fear would like to catch and imprison it.”
The dead were mourned in funeral dirges sung on the graves of the departed; in the case of heroes, often amid battle tumult, these songs were directed to ancestral heroes who awaited the dead in the clouds.
One of their myths which Herder extracts from Ossian shows a certain phase of their religion:
“As they sing in the moonlight to the moon goddess, Mona, this maiden of the heavens comes with gentle movement, with silent, beautiful cheek; her playmates, the stars, stand in rows to receive her; the clouds bordered with gold trip before them as servants; she outshines all her rivals so that they blush and conceal themselves in veils. On such an occasion as this the hero Ossian turns his sad song to the thought, How would it be if she should once disappear from the heavens, if she should then go into her little hut to cry and cry as he does? He wonders if she like him has lost friends, and he begins to comfort the beautiful girl and to cheer her up so that she quite joyfully smiles again.”
The family feeling is strong, and it is the foundation of nearly all good feeling toward fatherland and friend, tribe and neighbor. There are common among these people scenes full of innocence, of friendship, of fatherly, brotherly, in fact family, love in general. Fingal is hero and leader but also lover, bridegroom, husband, friend, father. Ossian is warrior, but also son of noble Fingal, and in this very relation the singer of the praises of his ancestors, of his friends, of his brothers, of his sons.
It is out of the sadness of separated loved ones that we hear the most touching tones and the harp is made to resound to praises sung to ancestors. Although these tribes are said to be wild, they are in many respects closely bound to customs and forms. The harp is their musical instrument to whose touching tones their legends are fitted into song.
Herder points out that the stage in the history of Ossian’s people from which this collection of poetry wins its character is the time of the extinction of the race of heroes of whom Ossian the brave is the chief and sad singer. He is the last of his courageous tribe; the witness to the deeds of noted Fingal and his colleagues; the departing voice of a heroic age to its weaker descendants. His mournful strains are accompanied by no awakening call for an age yet to come. His race was not, like Homer’s on Ionian shores, a growing people in the dawn of splendor looking toward a flowering in the future.
The cause of the mournful strain in the life of Ossian’s race may have been subjection by a foreign power or the invasion of monks bringing the Christian religion. The poems suggest both. Ossian’s songs must have had a powerful effect upon the people out of whose midst they grew. As long as there were bards this people’s strength was irrepressible. But now we see a patient, subject race trying to revive itself on the renown and happy existence of departed ancestors.
When Herder brings to our attention the difference between the mournful tones of Ossian and the arousing strains of Homer, when he reminds us of the differing stages of history commemorated by each, the points entirely unlike at which each writer halts and from which he extracts for his art character, he sets forth a definite theory; namely, that each writer, speaking as his people would speak, characterizes his poetry with the individual content and feeling of his race; that each race has its personality, and each spontaneously expresses this personality in its song:
Und Ossian? Es ist ungerecht von einem Baume Früchte zu erwarten, die er, seiner Art nach, nicht bringen kann; Ossian sei an seinem Orte das was Homer war; nur stand er auf einer ganz andern Stelle. In jedem Lande bildet sich der Volksgesang nach innnern und äussern Veranlassungen der Nation.
The eye and the ear of these people are wide open to every sight and sound which their physical environment presents. The ear is strong, quick, lasting; the eye keen, embracing, receptive. A certain perceptual power expressed in alertness, boldness, and noble aspect pervaded their entire being. According to Herder’s philosophy, as expressed in Erkennen und Empfinden, the senses present to the mind pictures which receive the stamp of feeling and which in turn are given back through some medium of expression.
In Ossian, the material for these pictures is first and foremost Nature; Nature robed in the peculiar majesty of the north. The sun is a rash youth, the moon a maiden who has had as sisters other moons in the heavens. The evening star is a lovely boy who comes out, winks, and goes away again. All objects are personified, filled with life and movement, whether it be wind or wave, or even the down of a thistle. As soon as possible the object itself becomes a voice, and we hear moanings of sadness and songs of the harp. These figures are often of the mist, coming out of clouds through which the stars twinkle.
Ossian sings, also, deeds, happenings of history, the bygone fates of forefathers, and old legends.
In outline all these pictures are delineations, which are snappy, strong, manly, abrupt, wild, lively. They are not painted in detail, and their content does not stream forth slowly in regular and measured intervals. Less harsh and wild are they, however, than the songs of the so-called “Northmen,” because Ossian’s soul possesses a charm giving out lonesomeness, love, and gentleness mingled with courage and strength of feeling.
The language is crisp, short, true, and exact, and penetrates by its simplicity. A single word literally seizes a whole thought and the two break forth together upon a voice tender and sad. When the singer would exhort his comrades to courage, he painted his pictures through tones that fell upon the ear.
In general, Ossian makes us see and hear the living world in scenes that pass quickly, singly, one by one, without arranging themselves in a regular and formal procession. Rough, strong sublimity is their character. The colors which burst upon the eye and the tones which storm the ear come forth without premeditation and polish; the natural outlet of a people to whom nature has given an eye and heart and mind for wild beauty, and in whom manners, customs, and language of civilization have wrought no marring effects. These peoples see and feel, but they do not think and ponder. Here Herder makes spontaneity a child of unwarped nature.