THE STATE OF THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY.
[Concluded.]
In prosecuting the geological and geographical confirmation of Ossian on which we have lately been engaged, the most convincing proofs and the greatest difficulties alike are to be found in the Frith of Clyde. The levels of the water in that frith penetrating far inland, by Paisley, Rutherglen, and Kilsyth, assumed unconsciously as matter of fact in the text of Ossian, are in such obvious harmony with every word of the poems which relate to that region, that the poems in question cannot otherwise be understood; and we therefore cannot help believing not only that the poems themselves are genuine, but that they represent a geological phenomenon hitherto unsuspected in the world—are, in fact, a revelation in science. On the other hand, the levels thus assumed are so very far beyond anything admitted by geologists within the era assigned, as to seem not only extravagant but incredible; and if they cannot be maintained, their assumption as a fact will destroy the credibility of the poems in which the assumption is made. As regards the authenticity of these poems, however, the assumption itself is conclusive; for the translator did not see it, and could therefore never have fabricated the poems in which it appears. Such poems must have been written by some eye-witness of the fact, who did not require to exaggerate; and the only question as regards reliability now to be settled, is whether he did exaggerate or no? Was the Clyde a sea to Rutherglen, as he seems to affirm? Was the Kelvin a fiord to Kilsyth, or nearly so, as he implies? Was the Leven an estuary to Loch Lomond, as we are bound to conclude? Was the Black Cart a marine canal to Ardrossan in the days of Agricola? If so, the Clyde must have been from 60 to 80 feet above its present level at the date supposed—and then, where was the Roman Wall? Traces of that wall upon the Clyde at a much lower level, it is said, still exist; and the old fortifications between Dunglass and Kilpatrick only 50 feet or thereby above the present level, put an end to the reliability, if not to the authenticity of Ossian. This is the difficulty now to be disposed of; and of which, in passing, we need only say, that if Macpherson had seen it he would certainly have avoided it; and therefore, that whoever was the author of the poems in which it occurs, Macpherson was not.
But it is with the difficulty itself we are now concerned, and not with the authorship. I. First then, suppose any statement, direct or indirect, had occurred in any Greek or Roman writer of the time—Cæsar, Tacitus, Dion Cassius, or Ptolemy—affirming, or even implying, such a level in the Clyde at the date in question, notwithstanding the Roman Wall, would the testimony of such authors have been rejected? If not, how would our geologists have disposed of it? or how would they have reconciled it with existing matters of fact? One can imagine the jealousy with which such texts would have been criticised; the assiduity with which every crevice on the coast would have been surveyed, not to contradict but to confirm them; and the fertility of invention with which theories would have been multiplied to harmonise them. Strange as it may appear, however, facts and statements amounting very nearly to this do occur, and have hitherto been overlooked, or purposely omitted in silence. The Roman Wall, for example, stops short with a town at Balmulzie on one side of the Kelvin, and begins again with another town at Simmerton, nearly a mile distant, on the opposite side of the Kelvin; but why should such a gap be there, if the Kelvin, which flows between, had not been something like a fiord at the moment? Again, it is distinctly affirmed by Herodian that the marshes of Clydesdale south of the Wall were constantly—end of the third, or beginning of the fourth century—emitting vapours which obscured the sky. But how could this be the case, if volcanic heat had not already been operating underneath, and the waters of the frith were then beginning to subside from their original higher levels?
On the other hand, not only do statements to the effect alleged occur frequently in Ossian, but whole poems are founded on the assumption of their truth, and cannot be understood without them. Why then are not these taken into account by our geologists as contemporaneous testimony, in the same way as similar statements, if they had occurred in Cæsar or in Tacitus, would have been? Because Ossian hitherto has been looked upon by men of science as a fable; as a witness utterly unfit to be produced in court, and no more to be cared for or quoted in an ordnance survey, or in a professor's chair, than the Arabian Nights' Entertainments are in a pulpit. By which very oversight or contempt, the most important revelations have been lost, and the most elaborate theories will soon be rendered useless. Ossian, in fact, is as much an authority as either Cæsar, or Tacitus, or Ptolemy; and in estimating the physical conditions of the world to which he refers, and which he describes, can no longer be either ignored or doubted. If his text seems to be at variance with existing facts, it must be more carefully studied; and if new theories are required to harmonise details they must be accepted or invented. We have had theories enough already, which have perished with the using; something more in harmony with facts, or that will better explain the facts, must now be forthcoming.
II. But the Roman Wall itself, which is supposed to be the greatest barrier in the way of our accepting Ossian, has actually a literature of its own, little understood, in his favour. The three forts farthest west, and on which so much reliance has been placed as indicating the levels of the Clyde when they were built and occupied, are those at Chapel Hill, near Old Kilpatrick, at Duntocher, and at Castlehill a little farther to the east; all under the ridge of the Kilpatrick Hills, and all—one of them very closely—overlooking the Clyde. But in excavating the remains of Roman architecture in these forts, stones have been found with symbolical sculptures upon them which are still in existence, or which have been accurately copied for public use. On one of the stones at Chapel Hill, farthest west, we have the figure of a wild boar in flight; on one at Duntocher we have another wild boar, on two more there we have sea-dogs or seals and winged horses; on two more at Castlehill we have another boar, and another seal, and an osprey or sea-eagle on the back of the seal; but beyond this to the eastward, although a boar still occurs, not another seal appears. How then is all this descriptive or symbolical sculpture, so plain and so significant, to be accounted for, if the Frith of Clyde had not then been a sea flowing up into the recesses of the land, as high almost as Duntocher and Castlehill? The wild boar is traceable throughout, for he inhabited the woods on the Kilpatrick range, as far eastward, perhaps, as Simmerton; and we find him eating acorns, even beyond that. On the other hand, no seal is represented at Chapel Hill, for the water there was too deep, and the banks too precipitous. It appears first at Duntocher, and again at Castlehill, because the sea flowed up into quiet bays and inlets there, where such amphibia could bask—of which, more hereafter; but it totally disappears beyond that, because the salt water ceased in the distance. The winged-horse, or pegasus, is more difficult to account for, and has greatly perplexed the learned antiquarians who have commented on him; but if the Roman Legionaries who built and occupied these western stations ever heard the Caledonian harp, or listened to a Celtic bard, or received an embassy, as we are expressly told they did, from men like Ossian as ambassadors—the difficulty requires no farther explanation. The Romans were neither blind nor senseless, and knew well enough how to represent the poetical genius of the country which they were attempting in vain to conquer, as well as the wild boars of its woods, and the sea-dogs in its estuaries; and have thus left behind them, in rude but significant sculpture, as true a picture as could be imagined of the men on the soil, and the beasts in the field, and the fish so-called in the sea, and the bird in the air—between Simmerton and Duntocher, in absolute conformity with the text of Ossian. Nor is there any possible reply to this by our antiquarian friends. The Roman Wall itself, to which they constantly appeal, supplies the evidence, and they are bound, without a murmur, to accept it.
III. But the levels of the Wall, it may be said, as now ascertainable by actual survey—what other sort of evidence do they afford? This question implies—(1) A range of observation from the Kelvin at Simmerton westward to Duntocher in the first place, and then to Chapel Hill between Old Kilpatrick and Dunglass. The intermediate forts on that line are separated by equal distances, nearly as follows:—From Simmerton to New Kilpatrick, 1¾ miles; from New Kilpatrick to Castlehill, 1¾ miles; from Castlehill to Duntocher, 1¾ miles; the lowest point in which range at Duntocher is from 155 to 200 feet above the level of the Clyde, leaving sufficient room, therefore, for the Wall above the highest level assumed in the text of Ossian. From Duntocher to Chapel Hill there is a distance of 2½ miles, with no trace whatever of the Wall between. Chapel Hill is considerably lower than Duntocher, undoubtedly; but why is there so great a gap there, and no trace of a wall in the interval? Either, because there never was a wall so close to the tide; or because the tide itself washed the wall away, having been built too close to its confines; or for some other more probable reason yet to be assigned. The fort at Chapel Hill itself, indeed, is the most indistinct of them all; and if a regular fort of any importance ever existed there, it must have suffered either partial inundation, or some other serious shock, unquestionably.
(2) It implies also a corresponding survey of the ground intermediate between the Wall and the river. Now the intervening ground along the banks of the Clyde, from Chapel Hill to the Pointhouse at Glasgow, is a low-lying flat with a gradual rise inland, at the present moment, of not more than 25 or 30 feet. But according to Professor Geikie's latest survey, the Clyde must have been about 25 feet higher in the time of the Romans than it now is—and Professor Geikie, we presume, is an authority on such subjects, who may be quoted along with Hugh Miller and Smith of Jordanhill:—therefore the whole of that strath, and the strath on the opposite side, from Renfrew to Paisley, on this assumption, must have been submerged at the same time; and there could be no dwelling-place for human beings—neither local habitation nor a name—within the entire compass of that now fertile and populous region. But two or three Gaelic names survive on the northern verge of it, which not only indicate the presence of the sea there, but fix the very limits of its tide. Dalmuir, for example, which means the Valley of the Sea; and Garscadden, which means the Bay of Pilchards or of foul herring, must, in fact, have carried the waters up their respective streams to within less than a mile of the Roman Wall at Duntocher and Castlehill. It was in such retreats, then, that both salmon and herring (as the name of one of them imports) would take refuge in the spawning season; it was into such retreats also, they would be pursued by the seals; it was on the shore of such inlets the seals themselves would bask, when the Romans saw them; and it is at the two forts respectively at the head of these inlets—Duntocher and Castlehill—that they have been actually represented in Sculpture. Could anything be more conclusive as to the proximity of the tide, and very character of the shore, within a bowshot or two of the Wall in that neighbourhood, where there is now a distance of more than two miles between it and the river? and yet even more conclusive, in connection with this, is the fact that on the southern verge of the strath, right opposite to these, are other Gaelic names equally significant—such as Kennis, the Head of the island; Ferinis, the Hero's island; and Fingal-ton, which speaks for itself—at the same or a similar level with Dalmuir and Garscadden, that is from 100 to 200 feet above the present level of the Clyde, which seems to demonstrate beyond doubt that the whole intervening space of seven miles in breadth, with the exception of such small islands as those named above, was then an arm of the sea to the depth of 50 feet at least, if not more.
(3) Our survey is thus narrowed to a single point—the existence and alleged position of the fort at Chapel Hill, between Old Kilpatrick and Dunglass, on the banks of the river; and here it should be observed as between the two extremities of the Wall, east and west, that where it touches the Frith of Forth at Carriden the height of its foundation ranges from about 150 to 200 feet above the level of the sea, and where it approaches the Clyde at Duntocher it is nearly the same—which was probably its terminus. There is scarcely a vestige of it now traceable beyond that, and that it was ever carried farther in reality is a matter of acknowledged uncertainty. But scattered fragments of masonry, as we have seen, and the dimmest indications of a fort deep down in the earth have been discovered or imagined at Chapel Hill to the westward, which seems to be about 50 feet above the level of the Clyde—leaving still a very large margin beyond Professor Geikie's estimate; and a great deal of conjecture about what might, or might not have been there, has been indulged in by antiquarians. For the present, however, until proof to the contrary has been shown, let us accept as a fact that some military station had really been established there in connection with the Wall—then, how have its fragments been so widely scattered? how has it been so completely entombed that it can only be guessed at under the soil? and how has the connection between it and the Wall, more than two miles distant, been obliterated? No other fort on the line, that we know of, is now in the same condition; and therefore, we repeat, either the Romans were foolishly contending with the tide, by building too close to its confines, and the tide drove them back and overthrew their works; or the fort itself was originally on a higher level, and the shock of an earthquake, or a landslip from the mountains, or both together, carried the whole mass of masonry and earthwork at this particular point down to their present level, where they would be washed by the tide and silted up in their own ruins. This is a view of the matter, indeed, which no antiquarian, so far as we are aware, has hitherto adopted; but any one who chooses to look with an unprejudiced eye, for a moment, at the enormous gap in the hills immediately behind, reaching down to the shore and including this very region, must be satisfied that the case was so; and recent discoveries—one of a quay-wall or foundation of a bridge at Old Kilpatrick, about 4 feet deep in a field; and another of a causeway, more than 20 feet submerged and silted up under sea-sand, on the same side of the river, near Glasgow, will most probably confirm it.
One other question, however, yet remains, touching this mysterious fort, which we may be allowed to say only "Ossian and the Clyde" can enable us to answer—Why was such a fort ever thought of there at all? It was either to receive provisions and reinforcements from the sea; and if so, then it must have been on the very verge of the frith, and the water must have been sufficiently deep there. Or it was to watch the estuary of the Leven, and to prevent the native Caledonians either landing from the sea, or coming down from the hills to turn the flank of the Wall at Duntocher, and so surprising the Romans in the rear; and this, beyond doubt, was its most important purpose as a military station on the line. But we have elsewhere explained (in the work above alluded to) that there was a regular route for the Caledonians from Dunglass to Campsie, which still bears the name of Fingal; and Fyn-loch, the very first rendezvous on that line, is on the top of the hill immediately above the fort in question. The Romans, who must have been fully aware of this, made their own provision accordingly. In sight of that fort, therefore, Fingal and his people might embark or disembark on their expeditions through Dumbartonshire at pleasure; but it would require to be at a reasonable distance westward, on the sides of Dumbuck or in the quiet creek at Milton, if they wished to escape the catapults and crossbows of the conquerors of the world. Now the earthquake, which extended up the whole basin of the Clyde, seems to have changed all that. The fort was sunk or shattered, as we suppose, and the frith began to fall; and antiquarians who do not believe in Ossian, or who do not keep such obvious facts in view, have been puzzled ever since, and will be puzzled ever more, attempting to account for it.
IV. In adducing this evidence—partly antiquarian and partly geological—we have restricted our survey exclusively to the Roman Wall, for it is on this important barrier between the Forth and Clyde that those who object to the geography of Ossian are accustomed to fall back. But the sort of testimony it affords might be easily supplemented by a survey of the Clyde itself, which can be shown, and has been shown, by incontestable measurement on the coast of Ayrshire, to be sinking at the rate of ¾ of an inch annually for the last forty or fifty years at least; and if such subsidence has been going on for fifteen hundred years at the same rate, the level of the frith in the days of the Romans must have been even higher than we now allege. A critic in the Scotsman, who, himself, first demanded such a survey, and to whom the survey when reported in the same paper—August 30th, 1875—was troublesome, appeals boldly in an editorial note to the authority of Hugh Miller, and again demands that the survey be transferred from Girvan to Glasgow, because "the height to which the tide rises is a very fluctuating quantity"—in Ayrshire, we presume. As for Hugh Miller, we can find nothing whatever in his pages to the purpose; and if such a distinguished authority is to be relied on in the present controversy, we must insist on his very words being quoted. As for the fluctuation of the tide, if it fluctuates in one place more than another, what is the use of appealing to it at all? and as between the Ayrshire coast, and the Renfrewshire or Lanarkshire coast, on the same side of the frith, unless "the moon and one darn'd thing or another" have special disturbing influence in Ayrshire, what difference can there be in the regularity of flow between Girvan and Glasgow? This learned adversary in the Scotsman must surely have been at his wit's end when he took refuge in such an absurdity, and we may safely leave him where he is, to revise his own calculations and recover his composure.
All this might be insisted on anew; but the object of the present argument is simply to show to the readers of the Celtic Magazine that the Ossianic controversy must of necessity be removed to another and a higher sphere than ever. There are certain points, indeed, on which philological inquiries may still be of the utmost importance as regards the Gaelic original, and these we cheerfully consign for discussion to those whom they most concern; but these will never decide the question of authenticity in its proper form, or establish Ossian in his proper place as a witness-bearer of the past. The sense of Macpherson's translation, as it stands, must be honestly ascertained; its testimony verified, or otherwise, by direct appeal to the subject matter of its text; and its value in the literature of the world determined, on the same principles, and by the very same process as that of any other public record would be in the history of the world. Such investigation has now become indispensable. In Ossian's name alike, and in that of science, as well as of common sense, we demand it, and will never be satisfied until it has been accorded.
P. HATELY WADDELL.
We direct the reader's careful attention to the following interesting statistics regarding occupiers of land in Ireland:—The agricultural statistics of Ireland recently completed for 1873 show that in that year there were in that country 590,172 separate holdings, being 5,041 less than in the preceding year. The decrease was in the small holdings. The number of holdings not exceeding one acre fell to 51,977, a decrease of 908, and the number above one acre and not exceeding 15 acres, shows a decrease of 3,777. The holdings above one acre can be compared with the numbers in 1841. Since that date the total number has decreased 22 per cent. The number of farms above one and not exceeding five acres has fallen to 72,088 (in 1873), a decrease of 76.8 per cent.; the number of farms above five and not exceeding 15 acres has diminished to 168,044, a decrease of 33.5 per cent.; the number above 15 and not exceeding 30 acres has risen to 138,163, an increase of 74.1 per cent.; and the number above 30 acres has increased to 159,900, an increase of 228.8 per cent. Of the total number of holdings in 1873, 8.8 per cent. did not exceed 1 acre; 12.2 per cent. were above 1 and not exceeding 5 acres; 28.5 per cent., 5 to 15 acres; 23.4 per cent., 15 to 30 acres; 12.4 per cent., 30 to 50 acres; 9.4 per cent., 50 to 100 acres; 3.7 per cent., 100 to 200 acres; 1.4 per cent., 200 to 500 acres; 0.2 per cent., above 500 acres. More than 60 acres in every 100 of the land comprising farms above 500 acres are bog or waste. As the farms diminish in size, the proportion under bog and waste decreases until it amounts to only 7.1 per cent. on the smallest holdings. The average extent of the holdings not exceeding 1 acre is 1 rood and 32 perches, and of farms above 500 acres 1,371 acres and 19 perches. As in many instances landholders occupy more than one farm, it has been considered desirable to ascertain the number of such persons, and it has been found that in 1873 the 590,172 holdings were in the hands of 539,545 occupiers, or 2,293 fewer than in the preceding year. There were in 1873 50,758 occupiers whose total extent of land did not exceed 1 acre; 65,051 holdings above 1 and not exceeding 5 acres; 150,778 holdings above 5 but not exceeding 15 acres; 124,471 holdings above 15 but not exceeding 30 acres; 65,991 holdings above 30 and not exceeding 50 acres; 50,565 holdings above 50 but not exceeding 100 acres; 20,764 holdings above 100 but not exceeding 200 acres; 8,799 holdings above 200 but not exceeding 500 acres; and 2,368 holdings above 500 acres. The whole 590,172 holdings extended over 20,327,196 acres, of which 5,270,746 were under crops, 10,413,991 were grazing land, 13,455 fallow, 323,656 woods and plantations, and 4,305,348 bog and waste. The estimated population of Ireland in the middle of the year 1873 was 5,337,261.