Herder's conception of "das Volk"

by Georgiana Rose Simpson

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.