They 're bonnie fish and halesome farin',
Wha 'll buy my caller herrin',
New drawn frae the Forth.
There are other verses to Caller Herrin', but they were merely occasional, intended to serve as a benefit to Nathaniel Gow, the son of the famous fiddler, Niel Gow, the composer of the air, who was seeking patronage in Edinburgh, and they only injure the effect of the first and perfect stanzas.
The poetical work of Lady Nairne was smaller in bulk than that of her chief contemporaries, even than that of Allan Cunningham. She was without any personal literary ambition whatever, and her inspiration was smothered by domestic grief and an absorbing and narrow piety. A portion of what there is is also imperfect, ephemeral, and careless, but she has written one of the most perfect lyrics in the English language, and a number of others, which, in their melody, their interpretation of simple emotion, their vividness and strength, and their power upon the heart as well as the ear, have a place which few have equaled and none have surpassed in the lyric treasures of a land more rich than all others in the voice of poetry speaking to the heart in song.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON AND CELTIC POETRY.
The great controversy over the genuineness of the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson, which existed during his lifetime and was carried on for a considerable period after his death, has died away without being settled. Opinions of eminent Celtic scholars still differ as to whether the so-called Gaelic originals of his poems, published after his death, were genuine transcripts from ancient poems, or were translations into the Gaelic from Macpherson's English composition made by his friends to conceal the fraud and maintain provincial pride. He himself never produced the originals of his poems, and took refuge in a silence which went far to confirm the impression of fraud and forgery. But whether he had any direct originals or not, and the weight of probability is that he had not, his poems were unquestionably founded on the vast mass of Celtic poetry and legend existing in Ireland and Scotland in tradition and manuscript. The names of his heroes, their characters and their exploits, are to be found in this poetry, and many of his most admired episodes and descriptions, like that of Ossian's address to the sun, and the description of Cuchullin's chariot, were taken directly from it. Whatever the amount of transformation and interpolation, and whatever the change in the literary style, from the plain and simple expressions of primitive poetry to the vague and rhetorical imagery of inflated artifice, were made by Macpherson, he unquestionably preserved the pervading spirit of Celtic poetry, its melancholy, its sensitiveness to the impressions of nature, and its lofty and humane spirit, and was the first to make it known to the world. Critics like Hazlitt and Matthew Arnold, who were impressed simply by its spirit of pure poetry, and the most accomplished Celtic scholars of a later day, have alike agreed upon internal and external evidence as to the faithfulness of the reproduction of the spirit of Celtic poetry by Macpherson, and have regarded the faults of his literary style as those of the age, and his interpretation of the poems of Ossian by the spirit of the eighteenth century as not more faulty or less natural than Chapman's transfusion of Homer into the style of the Elizabethan era, or Pope's into that of Queen Anne. His great drawback was the suspicion of absolute fraud and forgery which attached to him, and which he was unable to dispel, from his mistake in not acknowledging in the beginning that his poems were derived from general tradition instead of being absolute translations from originals. But in spite of this discredit, which was more of a personal literary quarrel than a critical attack upon the quality of the poetry itself, its value was at once instinctively recognized as a new and original revelation, as an appeal to sensibilities in human nature which had been stifled by the narrow and dry reasoning of English and Continental poetry at the time, and as a breath from the wide air of nature itself. It touched the European spirit, then struggling to emancipate itself from the swaddling bands of authority and artificial society, with electric power, and was a powerful influence in the emancipation both of literature and human action. Ossian profoundly affected the intellectual awakening of Goethe and was a favorite with Napoleon, and throughout the whole of Europe its spirit was an inspiring and governing force. In English literature its effect was not less powerful, although less openly acknowledged owing to the discredit created by the charges of forgery, and both Byron's melancholy and Wordsworth's appreciation of the soul of nature were derived from this pervading spirit of ancient Celtic poetry.
So far as the direct study of Celtic poetry was concerned the Ossianic controversy was unquestionably a misfortune. It threw a cloud of suspicion and discredit upon the genuine fragments which remained, and discouraged the study which might otherwise have been given to them, so that, unquestionably, some traditional Celtic poetry has been lost by the decay of the language as a living speech, and it is only in later years that enlightened scholarship and patriotic feeling have led to the careful and appreciative study of the manuscript volumes which have survived time and neglect, for their inherent literary and historical value, and to a consideration of the influence of the Celtic spirit upon English literature. They have been found to be of great value and interest, to possess elements of pure poetry of marked and original quality, and a spirit which has had a strong effect upon English literature. Nevertheless there has not been found in the remains of Celtic literature any single poem which in itself would compare with the Nibelungen Lied or with the Song of Roland, in epic form and constructiveness, in clearness of diction and dramatic strength; nor even any prose legend or narrative history, which would compare with the clear and vigorous character drawing and lucid narration of the Icelandic and Scandinavian Sagas. What would have been the case had the original poems and histories of the sixth century been preserved can only be conjectured. Those which now exist are only in the transcripts of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, greatly transformed, altered, and confused in dates and characters, and bearing the marks of a great deterioration in style, like the degradation of Latin prose in its later era. The passages which competent Celtic scholars have pronounced from philological evidence to be of an earlier construction, are a good deal stronger as well as simpler in expression than those by which they are surrounded, and indicate that, if the earlier poetry had been preserved in its purity without being amplified and weakened by scholastic and artificial phraseology, it might have rivaled the early Teutonic poetry in force, directness and simplicity, and strength of construction. As it is, the Celtic poems and histories are not only confused and prolix with interminable genealogies and proverbial reflections, but are written in a style, with a redundance and complication of epithets, at once weakening and tiresome. Thus in an Irish history of the Triumphs of Turlogh O'Brien, written in the thirteenth century, there is the following description of the dress and arms of a hero:—"His noble garment was first brought to him, viz., a strong, well-formed, close-ridged, defensively-furrowed, terrific, neat-bordered, new-made, and scarlet-red cassock of fidelity; he expertly put on that gold-bordered garment, which covered him as far as from the lower part of his soft, fine, redwhite neck, to the upper part of his expert, snowwhite, round-knotted knee. Over that mantle he put on a full, strong, white-topped, wide-round, gold-bordered, straight, and parti-colored coat of mail, well-fitted, and ornamented with many curious devices of exquisite workmanship. He put on a beautiful, thick, and saffron-colored belt of war, embellished with clasps and buckles set with precious stones, and hung with golden tassels; to this belt was hung his active and trusty lance, regularly cased in a tubic sheath, but that it was somewhat greater in height than the height of the sheath; he squeezed the brilliant, gilt, and starry belt about the coat of mail; and a long, blue-edged, bright-steeled, sharp-pointed, broad-sided, active, whitebacked, half-polished, monstrous, smooth-bladed, small-thick, and well-fashioned dagger was fixed to the tie of that embroidered and parti-colored belt; a white, embroidered, full-wide, strong, and well-wove hood was put on him over his golden mail; he himself laid on his head a strong-cased, spherical, towering, polished-shining, branch-engraved, long-enduring helmet; he took his edged, smooth-bladed, letter-graved, destructive, sharp-pointed, fight-taming, sheathed, gold-guarded, and girded sword, which he tied fast in haste to his side."