While I was thinking how I should repair my involuntary fault, the good natured priest said, with a smile, “You know, my dear Sir, that by one half of his English readers, Ossian is supposed to be a Scottish bard of ancient days; by the other he is esteemed the legitimate offspring of Macpherson’s own muse. But here,” he added, turning to me, “we are certain of his Irish origin, from the testimony of tradition, from proofs of historic fact, and above all, from the internal evidences of the poems themselves, even as they are given us by Mr. Macpherson.
“We, who are from our infancy taught to recite them, who bear the appellations of their heroes to this day, and who reside amidst those very scenes of which the poems, even according to their ingenious, but not always ingenuous translator, are descriptive—we know, believe, and assert them to be translated from the fragments of the Irish bards, or seanachies, whose surviving works were almost equally diffused through the Highlands as through this country. Mr. Macpherson combined them in such forms as his judgment (too classically correct in this instance) most approved; retaining the old names and events, and altering the dates in his originals as well as their matter and form, in order to give them a higher antiquity than they really possess; suppressing many proofs which they contain of their Irish origin, and studiously avoiding all mention of St Patrick, whose name frequently occurs in the original poems; only occasionally alluding to him under the character of a Culdee; conscious that any mention of the Saint would introduce a suspicion that these poems were not the true compositions of Ossian, but those of Fileas who, in an after day, committed to verse the traditional details of one equally renowned in song and arms.” *
* Samuir, daughter of Fingal, having married Cormac Cas,
their son (says Keating) Modk Corb, retained as his friend
and confidant his uncle Ossian, contrary to the orders of
Cairbre Liffeachair, the then monarch, against whom the
Irish militia had taken up arms. Ossian was consequently
among the number of rebellious chiefs.
Here, you will allow, was a blow furiously aimed at all my opinions respecting these poems, so long the objects of my enthusiastic admiration: you may well suppose I was for a moment quite stunned. However, when I had a little recovered, I went over the arguments used by Macpherson, Blair, &c., &c., &c., to prove that Ossian was a Highland bard, whose works were handed down to us by oral tradition, through a lapse of fifteen hundred years.
“And yet,” said the priest, having patiently heard me out—“Mr. Macpherson confesses that the ancient language and traditional history of the Scottish nation became confined to the natives of the Highlands, who falling, from several concurring circumstances, into the last degree of ignorance and barbarism, left the Scots so destitute of historic facts, that they were reduced to the necessity of sending Fordun to Ireland for their history, from whence he took the entire first part of his book. For Ireland, owing to its being colonized from Phoenicia, and consequent early introduction of letters there, was at that period esteemed the most enlightened country in Europe: and indeed Mr. Macpherson himself avers, that the Irish, for ages antecedent to the Conquest, possessed a competent share of that kind of learning which prevailed in Europe; and from their superiority over the Scots, found no difficulty in imposing on the ignorant Highland seanachies, and establishing that historic system which afterwards, for want of any other, was universally received.
“Now, my dear friend, if historic fact and tradition did not attest the poems of Ossian to be Irish, probability would establish it. For if the Scotch were obliged to Ireland, according to Mr. Macpherson’s own account, not only for their history but their tradition, so remote a one as Ossian must have come from the Irish; for Scotland, as Dr. Johnson asserts, when he called on Mr. Macpherson to show his originals, had not an Erse manuscript two hundred years old. And Sir George M’Kenzie, though himself a Scotchman, declares, “that he had in his possession, an Irish manuscript written by Cairbre Lifteachair, * monarch of Ireland, who flourished before St Patrick’s mission.
* Mr O’Halloran, in his Introduction to the study of Irish
History, &c.. quotes some lines from a poem still extant,
composed by Torna Ligis, chief poet to Niai the Great, who
flourished in the fourth century.
“But,” said I, “even granting these beautiful poems to be the effusions of Irish genius, it is strange that the feats of your own heroes could not supply your bards with subjects for their epic verse.”
“Strange indeed it would have been,” said the priest, “and therefore they have chosen the most renowned chiefs in their annals of national heroism, as their Achilleses, their Hectors, and Agamemnons.”
“How!” exclaimed I, “Is not Fingal a Caledonian chief? Is he not expressly called King of Morven?”