It has been found impossible to print the whole of the contents of the MS., but the selection which has been made, chiefly with reference to the literature of the Highlands, will also afford a fair specimen of the shades of difference which characterized the language in which the poems are written. Some are in pure Irish, and must have been transferred from the Irish orthography into that used in the MS. Others are in pure Scotch Gaelic, as the poems of Duncan, son of Dougall Maol, Finlay M’Nab, the bard roy, and John of Knoydart. Others are in a mixed dialect, in some of which the Irish idiom, in others the Scotch, predominates.
In general, it will be found that the language approaches more or less nearly to the Irish, as the writers appear to have had more or less cultivation in the written language, or were more or less removed from Irish influence; and the MS. may be viewed as the only known record of those vernacular dialects of Gaelic in the sixteenth century which differed in any degree from the written and cultivated language.
But while the Dean of Lismore’s MS. has in this respect a philological value, it has likewise no mean literary value, from the circumstance that it contains no fewer than twenty-eight Ossianic poems, extending to upwards of 2500 lines, nine directly attributed to Ossian, two to Farris or Ferghus Filidh, and one to Caolte M’Ronan, the three bards of the Feine; two to Allan M’Ruadri, and one to Gillecallum Mac an Olla, bards hitherto unknown; and eleven poems, Ossianic in their style and subject, to which no author’s name is attached.
The circumstances under which the controversy regarding the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, published by James Macpherson, arose, and the extent to which it for the time agitated the minds of the literati of England and Scotland, are well known.
In the summer of 1759, Mr. John Home, the author of Douglas, met Mr. James Macpherson, then a tutor in the family of Graham of Balgowan, at Moffat. Mr. Home had previously been told by Professor Adam Fergusson, a native of Atholl, and acquainted with Gaelic, that there existed in the country some remains of ancient Gaelic poetry. Mr. Home mentioned the circumstance to James Macpherson, also a Highlander, and a native of Badenoch, and was told by him that he had some pieces of ancient Gaelic poetry in his possession. After some difficulty, Mr. Home obtained translations of them from Macpherson, and took them to Edinburgh, and showed the translations to Drs. Blair, Fergusson, and Robertson, by whom they were much admired. Macpherson was importuned to translate all he had, and the translations furnished by him were published in a little volume in June 1760, under the title of “Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland.”
There seems little reason to doubt that these translations were made from genuine fragments in Macpherson’s possession. If they existed at all, they were in his possession before any talk had arisen of translating Gaelic poetry. There was no pretext of going to the Highlands to collect them. There was no idea, at the time the translations were produced, that such poetry could have any value in the eyes of the literary world, and there seems no motive for any deception. In the fragments, or rather short poems, contained in this little work, the proper names are smoothed down from their original Gaelic form to suit English ears; and Macpherson had already hit upon that happy prose version, the conception of which has great merit, and had no little share in the popularity which immediately attached to them; but, in other respects, they have every appearance of having been translations from short Gaelic poems which really existed. The admiration which they excited in the minds of men of the great literary reputation of Home, Blair, Fergusson, and Robertson, must have first astonished, and then greatly flattered, a man of the disposition of Macpherson. He was urged to undertake a journey to the Highlands, to collect all that remained of poetry of this description, and a subscription was raised to defray the expense. This proposal must have raised a prospect sufficiently dazzling before the poor Highland tutor, who seemed likely to exchange a life of poverty, obscurity, and irksome duty, for one of comparative independence and literary fame; and he acceded to it with affected reluctance. At that time, anything like that spirit of severe and critical antiquarianism, which attaches the chief value to the relics of past ages from their being genuine fragments of a past literature, and demands a rigid and literal adherence to the form and shape in which they are found, was totally unknown. That feeling is the creation of subsequent times. At that time literary excellence was mainly looked to, their authority was usually taken on trust, and it was thought that the claims of such criticism were sufficiently satisfied when the remains of the past were woven into an elegant and flowing narrative. With Homer and other classical epics before him, such a proposal as the publication of the ancient poetry of the Highlands, assuming, as we now know to be the fact, that Ossianic poetry of some kind did exist, and looking to the high expectations formed, must have at once suggested to him the idea that he should not do justice to the task he had undertaken if he could not likewise produce a Gaelic epic. This idea seems early to have suggested itself to Macpherson’s mind; it is obscurely hinted at in the preface to the Fragments; and Macpherson seems to have started on his tour with the preconceived determination to view any short poems and fragments he might find as parts of longer poems, and, if possible, by welding them together, to produce a national epic which should do honour to his country, and confirm his own reputation as its recoverer and translator. He was accompanied, in the earlier part of his journey, by a countryman of his own, Mr. Lachlan Macpherson of Strathmashie, who was a better Gaelic scholar than he was himself, and an excellent Gaelic poet. It is certain that, in this tour, a number of MSS. were collected by them, and poetry taken down from recitation; and that he was joined in it by another Gaelic scholar, Captain Alexander Morrison, who likewise assisted him. On his return, he proceeded to Badenoch, his native place and that of Lachlan Macpherson, and here he remained till January 1761, engaged, with the assistance of Lachlan Macpherson and Alexander Morrison, in preparing the materials for the next publication of Ossian; and then proceeded to Edinburgh, from whence he writes to the Rev. James M’Lagan, in a letter dated 16th January 1761,—“I have been lucky enough to lay my hands on a pretty complete poem, and truly epic, concerning Fingal. . . . I have some thoughts of publishing the original, if it will not clog the work too much.”
His task, whatever it was, had then been accomplished; and after remaining some time in Edinburgh, engaged in preparing the English version for the press, he went to London, and early in 1762 issued a quarto volume, containing the epic poem of Fingal, in six books, and sixteen other poems. In the following year another quarto appeared, containing another epic poem in eight books, called Temora, and five other poems. This volume also contained what was called “a specimen of the original of Temora,” being a Gaelic version of the seventh book, and the only Gaelic bearing to be the original of any of the poems which appeared.
The English version, contained in these two quartos, possessed the same character as the English of the Fragments; the same accommodation of the Gaelic proper names to the supposed requirements of English ears, and the prose style, originated by Macpherson, sustained with equal spirit; the poems, however, were longer, and more elaborate.
The literary public, who had welcomed the Fragments with admiration, received the volume containing the epic of Fingal with startled but silent acquiescence, and exploded under the eight books of Temora. It seemed incredible that poems such as these could have been handed down by oral recitation from the supposed age of Ossian; the refined manners described, and the allusions to the Roman Emperors, awakened suspicion, and a storm of adverse criticism and questioning incredulity arose, in which Dr. Johnson—at that time in the zenith of his reputation—took the lead.
Macpherson, who found the fair breeze of flattery and laudation, before which he had been sailing so smoothly on his heavy quartos, without a suspicion that he had not attained the full success he aimed at, so suddenly changed into an adverse storm of criticism and depreciation, knew not how to meet the crisis. He had not courage to avow the truth, and state candidly to the world how much of his work was based on original authority, and to what extent he had carried the process of adapting, interpolating, and weaving into epic poems. He took refuge first in sulky silence, and eventually seemed to find a sort of compensation for his denunciation, as a detected forger, in the necessary alternative, the credit of having been a successful composer, and by half hints encouraged that view.[28]