John S. Blackie.
Conan House, Dingwall, September, 1875.
My Dear Professor Blackie,—In the last number of The Gael I find a translation by you from a German essay, and a quotation from a German writer who calls Macpherson's Ossian "the most magnificent mystification of modern times." The mists which surround this question need the light of knowledge to shine from the sitter on that rising Gaelic chair which you have done so much to uplift. In the meantime let me tell you three facts. On the 9th December 1872, I found out that Jerome Stone's Gaelic collection had been purchased by Mr Laing of the Signet Library, and that he had lent the manuscript to Mr Clerk of Kilmallie. On the 25th November 1872, I found a list of contents and three of the songs in the Advocates' Library, but too late to print them. The learned German relied on Stone's missing manuscript as proof of the antiquity of Macpherson's Ossian, because it was of older date. It contains versions of ten heroic ballads, of which I had printed many versions in "Leabhar na Feinne." There is not one line of the Gaelic printed in 1807 in those songs which I found. I presume that Mr Clerk would have quoted Stone's collection made in 1755 if he had found anything there to support his view, which is that Ossian's poems are authentic. Stone's translation is a florid English composition, founded upon the simple old Gaelic ballad which still survives traditionally. I got the old music from Mrs Mactavish at Knock, in Mull, last month. She learned it from a servant in Lorn, who sung to her when she was a girl.
2d, The essayist relied upon a lost manuscript which was named "A Bolg Solair" (the great treasure.) That designation seems to be a version of a name commonly given by collectors of Scotch and Irish popular lore to their manuscripts. The name seems rather to mean "rubbish bag." The idea was probably taken from the wallet of the wandering minstrel of the last century who sang for his supper. A very great number of paper manuscripts of this kind are in Dublin and in the British Museum. I own two; but not one of these, so far as I have been able to discover, contains a line of the Gaelic Ossian printed in 1807, which one learned German believed to be old and the other a mystification.
3d, The essayist relies upon the "Red Book." In 1873 Admiral Macdonald sent me the book, which he had recovered. Mr Standish O'Grady helped me to read it, and translated a great part of it in June and July 1874 in my house. It is a paper manuscript which does not contain one line of Macpherson's Ossian. It does contain Gaelic poems by known authors, of which copies are in other manuscripts preserved in Ireland. I do not question the merits of Ossian's poems. Readers can judge. They are Scotch compositions, for the English is Macpherson's, and the Gaelic is Scotch vernacular. A glance at old Gaelic, of which many samples are printed in late numbers of the Parisian Revue Celtique, ought to convince any reader of Ossian that modern Scotch vernacular Gaelic cannot possibly represent the language of St Patrick's time. I have hunted popular lore for many years, and I have published five volumes. I have gathered twenty-one thick foolscap volumes of manuscript. I have had able collectors at work in Scotland; I had the willing aid of Stokes, Hennessy, Standish O'Grady, Crowe, and other excellent Irish scholars in ransacking piles of Gaelic manuscripts in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, and elsewhere. I could never find an uneducated Highlander who could repeat any notable part of the Gaelic poems which were circulated gratis soon after 1807. Nobody ever has found one line of these poems in any known writing older than James Macpherson. I agree with many speakers of Scotch Gaelic who have studied this question. We hold that the Gaelic Ossian of 1807 is, on the face of it, a manifest translation from English; and that the English was founded upon an imperfect acquaintance with genuine old Scotch Gaelic ballads. These are still commonly sung. They are founded upon the mythical history which still is traditionally known all over Scotland and Ireland. It was old when Keating wrote; it was old when the Book of Leinster was written about 1130. It really is a strange thing that so little should be known in Great Britain about this curious branch of British literature. I suppose that no other country in Europe can produce uneducated peasants, fishers, and paupers, who sing heroic ballads as old as 1130 and 1520, which have been orally preserved. Some fragments about Cuchullin, which I have gathered can be traced in the Book of Leinster. Many ballads which I have heard sung in the Scotch Isles were written by the Dean of Lismore in 1520. By travelling to Tobermory, you may still hear Wm. Robertson, a weaver there, tell the story of Cuchullin, and sing the song of "Diarmaid," the "Burning of the Fenian Women," and many other heroic ballads. I heard him sing them in 1872, when he said that he was eighty-seven.—I am, yours very truly,
J. F. Campbell.
Kilmallie Manse, September 25, 1875.
Sir,—There is no man living who has done so much for Gaelic literature as Mr Campbell, and, just in proportion to my sense of the greatness of his services, is my reluctance to put myself, even for a moment, in opposition to him. But his opinion on the Ossianic question, expressed in his letter, constrains me to oppose him.