The ballads which we are now to consider are all genuine and old, and may be found in manuscripts written ages before Macpherson was born.
The Ossianic or Heroic Ballads will be found in the following publications:—The Dean of Lismore’s Book (1512, published 1862); Hill’s (1780); MacArthur’s (1784); Young’s (1784); Gillies’s (1786); Stewart’s (1804); Highland Society’s Report (1805); Turner’s (1813); Grant’s (1814); MacCallum’s (1816); Campbell’s great work (1872). Some of the ballads contained in these books were printed from old manuscripts; others were taken down during the last two or three centuries from the oral recitation of old men, living in all parts of the Highlands.
These collections represent a good deal of industry and literary activity, which reflect very creditably on men who had not the stimulus of a vast reading public to work upon their minds.
THE GENUINE GAELIC BALLADS.
The place in time occupied by these compositions is one of [considerable length]—it extends at least as far back as the third century of our era. It is very interesting to note that this body of oral popular literature has been loved, preserved, and rehearsed by the Gaelic clans of Albin for at least a thousand years; for a much longer period, indeed, if we rely on fairly credible tradition.
The inter-tribal struggles described in these ballads—the patriotic resistance against the Norse attempts to obtain the supremacy, mixed up as they are with the encroachments of Christianity within the realms of heathenism—took place mainly within the Albinic area. The geographical limits of this area in those early times were very vague and shifting. In a general way they may be said to have embraced the Western Islands, the North-west, and part of the central Highlands, as well as the Isle of Man and Ireland. Over all these regions we watch in these ballads the shadowy movements of our brave ancestors. We hear the faint echoes of their names, and the fame of their deeds, the war-cries and voices of their almost semi-mythic heroes.
We regard the tribes whose deeds are celebrated in these productions under two classes—those of the Cruithne or Albinic race and those who have become known as the Scottish Iro-Gaelic race. At that period there were Cruithne or Picts in Erin as well as in Albin.
Previous to the arrival of Patrick in Ireland and to that of Columba in the Highlands, there is strictly speaking no chronological history of either country. Of the earlier movements of the clans and their battles we have no authentic account. But there are traditions with a highly probable basis of truth sufficient for the purposes of the present Ossianic discussion. Two or three of the central facts of the Finian period, as related in a preceding section, are as follows:—
Finn MacCumhaill lived in the reign of Cormac MacArt who ruled from A.D. 227 to 266, and whose daughter Gràinne he married. Goll MacMorni was a contemporary. Finn was slain in 283, but the bards bring him somehow alive next year to pronounce a eulogy on his grandson, Oscar, who fell in the battle of Gabhra. Ossian and Caoilte lived for a hundred and fifty years longer; and the blind old heathen bard relates the heroic achievements of his departed fellow-heroes to St. Patrick who arrives in Ireland about 432. Chronology did not trouble the old ballad-makers of Albin and Erin. Such an anachronism as brings Ossian of the third, into conjunction with Patrick of the fifth century, did not disturb their heroic muse.
Ireland claimed this Ossian as her own, and her learned doctors declared that Macpherson stole his poems from their country. Two or three words will be sufficient to dispose of all this: 1. Macpherson never was in Ireland; and never kept up any correspondence with Irishmen. 2. The Ossianic poems published by the Dublin Gaelic Society and the Ossianic Society were all collected and made known subsequent to the publication of Macpherson’s Ossian. 3. [It is admitted] by the late Eugene O’Curry, one of the highest authorities, that prior to the 15th century there existed in Ireland only eleven Ossianic poems, which are extremely short, and which will be found in the Book of Leinster, compiled in the 13th, and in the Book of Lecan in the 15th century. Of these, seven are ascribed to Finn himself, two to Ossian, one to Fergus, and one to Caoilte. This clearly disposes of Ireland’s claim to possess anything like Macpherson’s work. Indeed it has been given up by some who advanced it, while at the same time these writers and others laboured to manufacture and publish poems a la Macpherson; but to the great chagrin of these learned sons of Erin the public will not assign them the same distinction and appreciation, which have been accorded to Macpherson’s productions.