10. A quarto parchment medical MS. beautifully written. No date or name, but the MS. appears to be very ancient.
11. A quarto paper MS., partly prose, partly verse, written in a very coarse and indifferent hand. No date or name.
12. A small quarto MS. coarse. Bears date 1647, without name.
13. A small long octavo paper MS. the beginning and end lost, and without any date. It is supposed to have been written by the Macvurichs of the fifteenth century. Two of the poems are ascribed to Tadg Mac Daire Bruaidheadh, others to Brian O’Donalan.
14. A large folio parchment MS. in two columns, containing a tale upon Cuchullin and Conal, two of Ossian’s heroes. Without date or name and very ancient.
15. A large quarto parchment of 7½ leaves, supposed by Mr Astle, author of the work on the origin and progress of writing, to be of the ninth or tenth century. Its title is Emanuel, a name commonly given by the old Gaelic writers to many of their miscellaneous writings. Engraved specimens of this MS. are to be seen in the first edition of Mr Astle’s work above-mentioned, 18th plate, Nos. 1 and 2, and in his second edition, plate 22. Some of the capitals in the MS. are painted red. It is written in a strong beautiful hand, in the same character as the rest. This MS. is only the fragment of a large work on ancient history, written on the authority of Greek and Roman writers, and interspersed with notices of the arts, armour, dress, superstitions, manners, and usages, of the Scots of the author’s own time. In this MS. there is a chapter titled, “Slogha Chesair an Inis Bhreatan,” or Cæsar’s expedition to the island of Britain, in which Lechlin, a country celebrated in the ancient poems and tales of the Gäel, is mentioned as separated from Gaul by “the clear current of the Rhine.” Dr Donald Smith had a complete copy of this work.
16. A small octavo parchment MS. consisting of a tale in prose, imperfect. Supposed to be nearly as old as the last mentioned MS.
17. A small octavo paper MS. stitched, imperfect; written by the Macvurichs. It begins with a poem upon Darthula, different from Macpherson’s, and contains poems written by Cathal and Nial Mor Macvurich, (whose names appear at the beginning of some of the poems,) composed in the reign of King James the Fifth, Mary, and King Charles the First. It also contains some Ossianic poems, such as Cnoc an àir, &c. i. e. The Hill of Slaughter, supposed to be part of Macpherson’s Fingal. It is the story of a woman who came walking alone to the Fingalians for protection from Taile, who was in pursuit of her. Taile fought them, and was killed by Oscar. There was another copy of this poem in Clanranald’s little book—not the Red book, as erroneously supposed by Laing. The Highland Society are also in possession of several copies taken from oral tradition. The second Ossianic poem in this MS. begins thus:
Sè la gus an dè
O nach fhaca mi fein Fionn.