Macpherson’s Ossian is never caught at “chess-playing,” or speaking of other things that might savour of more recent days. The course of Ossian and Niamh is thus described:—
“We turned our backs to the land,
And our faces directly due west;
The smooth sea ebbed before us,
And filled in billows after us.”
Before they arrive at the “Land of Youth,” Ossian rescues a distressed Princess from the hated hands of a giant; and
“We buried the great man
In a deep sod-grave, wide and clear;
I raised his flag and monument,