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you think them a great multitude, but I will conquer "them. Then said Oscar of mighty strength, give to me "the king of Inistore, (isle of wild boars) his twelve nobles "have a sweet voice, I will quell them. Earl (Jarla) Mu"dan's glory is great, says brown Dermid, without malice; "I will quell him for thy heroes, or fall in the attempt. I myself took in hand, though I am this night without vigour, king Terman of the close battles, that I should "sever his head from his body. Deserve blessings and gain "the victory, said Comhall's son of the red cheeks; Mag"nus Macgharra of multitudes, I will conquer, though

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great is his fury in battle 4." "Mine," says Macpherson, "be the seven chiefs that come from Lano's lake. Let "Inistore's dark king, said Oscar, come to the sword of "Ossian's son, &c. Blest and victorious be my chiefs, said "Fingal of the mildest look; Swaran, king of roaring waves, thou art the choice of Fingal." i. 294. The sunbeam or standard set with golden stones, and the combat of the two kings, the son of Comhall of the drinking horns, and Magnus the unfortunate, are described in the original. "Clerk, was not that a dreadful case! like the strokes of "two hammers, the bloody battle of the two kings, whose "countenance was very furious. After their red shields "were broken, their countenance being very fierce, they "threw their weapons down, and struggled for victory. "There were stones and heavy earth opening between "their feet." Like the original ballad, Fingal ends in a wrestling match. "Behold the battle of the chiefs! There was the clang of arms, there every stroke like the hun

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44 Hill's Collect. in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1783. Perth Collect. p. 18. In these Poems, Fingal's house at Almhuin or Allen, in Ireland, is converted by Macpherson into Selma and Albion, and St. Patrick, who is termed Macalpin the clerk, into the son of Alpin.

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"dred hammers of the furnace.-Their dark brown shields are cleft in twain. Their steel flies, broken from their "hands. They fling their weapons down. Each rushes "to his heroe's grasp. But when the pride of their strength "arose, they shook the hill with their heels. Rocks "tumble from their places on high; the green headed "bushes are overturned. At length the strength of Swaran "fell. The king of the groves is bound." i. 302. This egregious bombast is concluded with a classical imitation; more extravagant still when applied to the combatants. "Thus have I seen in Cona, but Cona I behold no more,' (the ballads contain no intimation that Ossian was blind) "thus have I seen two dark hills removed from their place

by the strength of the mountain stream. They turn " from side to side, and their tall oaks meet one another on "high. Then they fall together with all their rocks and "trees."

"As if on earth,

"Winds under ground, or waters forcing way,
"Side long had pushed a mountain from his seat,
"Half sunk with all his pines."
MILTON.

The battle of Lora is derived from the tale of Erragon, a fictitious king of Lochlin; Larthmon from Lamonmor; Darthula from an absurd fable of the three sons of Uisleachan, slain by O'Conachar their maternal uncle, and of Deirdar, who stabbed herself on their bodies with a carpenter's knife; but the names and outlines of the story excepted, not a single sentiment, image, or idea of Macpherson's Ossian is to be found in these ballads 45. The

45 These and the two epics are almost the only poems of which Dr. Blair received attestations, But the last was so strongly attested as rehearsed by Macvuirick and others," with very little difference from the printed translation," that he pronounced from its poetical and sentimental beau

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sole foundation of the Temora is the death of Oscar, a ballad of sixty stanzas, from which that incident, and a few pathetic passages, are inserted in Ossian; "the howling of the dogs; the groans of the aged chiefs; but "C never more shall Oscar rise; no mother lamented her son, nor one brother for another, but each of us that were present wept for Oscar 46" Such are the originals, of which the names, and traditionary fables, and a few passages adopted by Macpherson, have persuaded his credulous countrymen that they had heard, and known the poems in their early youth. It is also observable, that such are almost the only passages produced by those who have chosen gratuitously to attest that the translation was authentic; and if, instead of an epic poem, Macpherson had proclaimed the discovery of an Earse gospel, I verily

ties, that "whatever genius could have produced Darthula, must be judged fully equal to any performance contained in Macpherson's publication." Diss. Append. Literal translations of the ballads which I have quoted, are now in my possession. Among these are two versions of Deirdar, and a third of Uisleachan's or Usno's children; but I again repeat, that not a single sentiment or line of Darthula is to be found in either. Cuthullin's chariot, the only other poem attested to Dr. Blair, is in the same predicament; a ballad containing the names of the horses alone. Such ballads are the only poetical treasures which the Antiquary and Gaelic Societies of Scotland have discovered in the highlands; but, unless when manufactured anew in the translation, in point of poetical merit they are utterly contemptible.

46 Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, i. 82. 106. Perth Collect. 305-18. Hill's Collect. Another pathetic passage is Fingal's lamentation; “Oscar, my beloved! son of my son! beloved of my beloved! my heart pants over thee like a blackbird; never more shall Oscar rise," transcribed by Macpherson: "The heart of the aged beats over thee. Weep ye heroes of Morven; never more shall Oscar rise." But when he proceeds to Ossian's lamentation, where the ballad fails him, the father is forgotten in the declamatory style of a modern poet, not expressive but descriptive of grief. ii. 17,18,

believe that he would have obtained the same attestations. But the man who believes that the same images employed in scripture, and the same classical beauties selected, with such curious felicity, by Homer, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, and Milton, not to mention contemporary poets, occurred fortuitously to Ossian, almost in the same words, but without imitation, is beyond the reach of argument, and must be abandoned to his faith.

of the Ears

VII. 1. The specimens of the original produced by Specimens Macpherson were translated into Earse, from the English original. original, by the translator himself. On this subject it is necessary to premise, that the authenticity of Ossian depends upon an historical theory, of which the poems are inversely the sole proof. The ancient Caledonians, whether Scots or Picts, were aboriginal Gaels, who, retiring northward from the Cimbric Celts and the Belgæ, peopled Scotland and Ireland successively; and whose legitimate descendants, the present highlanders, secured by their mountains from an intercourse either with the Saxons or Danes, instead of being a recent Irish colony, have preserved their primitive language and poetry, upwards of fifteen centuries, pure and unmixed. It appears, however, from inspecting their vocabulary, that the Earse or Irish is a mixed language 48, of which a large part is derived from the Saxon or Latin, through the medium of the priests. I acknowledge that the Teutonic was partly introduced by

47 Whoever peruses a Treatise on the Second Sight, published in 1763, within a year after the appearance of Fingal, by Macleod of Hammer, will not be surprised at any testimonies which Blair procured from the Highlands for the authenticity of Ossian. Above an hundred instances of Second Sight in the highlands of Scotland, are attested by living witnesses, and all of them as well authenticated as the poems of Ossian.

49 Macfarlan's Vocabulary; and O'Brien's and Shaw's Dictionaries of the Irish and Earse; which I have chiefly consulted.

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the Belga, who, pursuing into Ireland the Gaelic Celts, whom they had expelled from England, incorporated at length with the people whom they subdued 49. An admis

49 That the Belga were Germans is acknowledged by every writer from Merula to Clark (Saxon Coins) and Pinkerton, with the exception of such French and Scottish antiquaries as Pezron and his followers, who have transformed the Germans themselves into Celts. Such as still adhere to an opposite opinion, endeavour to explain away the first sentence in Cæsar, Belge, Aquitani, Celta, bi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus, inter se differunt, by a commentary on Strabo's ομογλωττες δε άπαντας αλλ' ενίες μικρον Ταραλλάττοντας ταις γλώτίαις;" their language is not altogether the same, but somewhat different in dialect." But they forget that Strabo is careful to discriminate the Celts proper, from the Gauls in general; and overlook the positive testimony of Cæsar, in the second book, plerosque Belgas esse ortos à Germanis; Rhenumque antiquitus transductos, propter loci fertilitatem ibi consedisse; Gallosque, qui ea loca incolerent, expulisse; c. 4. to which the authority transcribed by Ammianus Marcellinus alludes; Aborigines Celtas-sed alios quoque ab insulis extimis confluxisse, et tractibus Transrhenanis. 1. 15. c. 9. Lloyd himself acknowledges that the Belga were Germans, and that the Irish was comparatively a Teutonick language, which has borrowed some words from the Welsh, but a greater number from the Latin and French. Preface to the Welsh Dict. in his Archeologia, translated in Nicolson's Irish Hist. Library, 119. and confirmed by a list of Teutonick words. That Ireland was peopled from Cantire, by Scottish highlanders, rather than from the English coasts of the channel, by the aboriginal Gauls whom the Cimbri and Belga had expelled from England, is refuted by the small number of highlanders at the present day. The population of the seven counties in which Earse is spoken, Argyle and the Isles, Inverness, Perth, Dumbarton, Ross, Caithness, and Sutherland, scarcely amounts to four hundred thousand, of which Perth contains 133,000. Satist. Account, vol. xx. After deducting at least 130,000 for the Lowlands of Dumbarton, Perth, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, the highlanders are not a fifth part of the inhabitants of Scotland; and there is no reason to believe that the proportion was greater at any former period. Major, whose argument for the Irish descent of the Scots is misquoted by Stillingfleet, merely asserts that one half, not of the Scots, but of Scotland, (medietas Scotia) spoke Irish then; an assertion cautiously limited and strictly true, though the mountainous half and the isles of Scotland hardly contain a fifth part of the whole nation. The strange opinion that Earse was the nationa! and court language in the reign of Malcom III. rests on a passage in Tur,

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