May, 4, 71. Niddry Lodge,
Kensington.
My Dear Sir,
I sent you a Times review of Clerk’s Ossian the other day to amuse you; also a paper with an account of fighting in Paris, where I was at Easter.
I got your letter and parcel of May 1, last night, and I have just read the story. It is extremely well written, and the language is vernacular and perfectly genuine: as I have now got 20 volumes, and half another, I am able to judge. Yours is a version of the story of which I sent you the abstract. If ever I publish the story I see that I must fuse versions, and select from the majority of various readings, under the name of “The Leching of Khene is legg.” The story is mentioned in the Catalogue of the Earl of Kildare’s library amongst the Irish Books, A.D. 1526 (Harleian MSS., 3756, Brit. Museum). I gave this information to Kildare, who has been hunting high and low to find out what was meant, they could not tell him in Ireland. I met him at Lorne’s marriage and lent him my copy, 142 pages from oral recitation. Now you send me 19 more pages, and 3 of another version, 22. Between us we have already recovered something of a story 345 years old at least.
Therefore Tradition is respectable; a comparison of versions gives a fair measure of the power of popular memory, so that written Gaelic folk-lore is a kind of measure for other and older written traditions. But as all that is old in history was tradition at first, the study is worth trouble as I judge. The more we can get written the better pleased I shall be. I am exceedingly obliged to you, and hope to thank you in person some of these days.
I am,
Yours truly,
J. F. CAMPBELL.
[32] The helm was worked by being caught by the shoulders of the steersman as it worked backwards and forwards (’g a cheapadh le ’shlinneanan a null ’s a nall).