A.D. 608. Bass Fiachrach chraich mic Baedan la Cruithnechu.—(Tigh. An.)
[ [22] A.D. 717. Expulsio familiæ Ie trans dorsum Britanniæ a Nectano rege.
[ [23] The two oirirs were the Oirir a tuath and the Oirir a deas, which make up the district known as Oirir Gaedheal, or Oirir Alban, and in Latin, Argathelia.
[ [24] Highland Society’s Report, App. p. 6.
[ [25] Prose originally written in a vernacular dialect readily adapts itself to the changes in the language, or passes into a new and cultivated form of it; but not so ballad poetry. The poems of Burns, for instance, could not be written in English without sacrificing, to a great extent, the rhyme and cadence of the verses, and almost entirely their nerve and power.
[ [26] Mr. Donald Macintosh, the Keeper of the Highland Society’s MSS., in his list of MSS. then existing in Scotland in 1806, mentions that “Mr. Matheson of Fernaig has a paper MS., written in the Roman character, and in an orthography like that of the Dean of Lismore, containing songs and hymns, some by Bishop Carsewell.” This MS. has not been recovered; but if we had it, we might find that, while the Bishop resorted to Ireland for his prose translation of Knox’s Liturgy, his original poetry was in a different dialect and orthography.
[ [27] In the older life of St. Kentigern, written prior to 1164, it is said that Servanus, at Culross, when he heard of Kentigern’s birth, exclaimed, “A dia cur fir sin, quod sonat Latine O utinam sic esset.” In modern Scotch Gaelic the phrase would be, A dhia gur fior sin.
[ [28] In 1778 and 1780 a collection of Ossianic poems, in the original Gaelic, was made by Duncan Kennedy, schoolmaster. His MS. collection was purchased by the Highland Society, and is now in the collection of MSS. in the Advocates’ Library. There is appended to it a list of the persons from whose recitations the poems were taken down.
In 1780, Dr. Smith, of Campbellton, published a quarto volume, entitled Gaelic Antiquities, containing versions in English of poems attributed to Ossian, Ullin, etc.; and in 1787 the originals were published under the title of Sean Dana.
Unhappily, Dr. Smith, instead of publishing the poems as he got them, with a literal English version, was ambitious of shining, like Macpherson, as an editor of Ossian, and of sharing in his notoriety; but the poems of the latter had already lost their lustre, and Smith did not possess the wonderful tact and originality Macpherson really showed in producing his English version, and which alone made them bearable; his version was diffuse, heavy, and turgid, and his book fell dead from the press.