sion so repugnant to the authenticity of Ossian, which disclaims the migration or the origin of the highlanders from Ireland, can avail the translator nothing; but the Irish, it is said, is the primitive, and was once the universal lan got's Life of Margaret, that the king, in a national council, acted as interpreter between the Scottish priests and the queen. But the Culdees were generally Irish priests, so distinguished then for their sanctity and learning; the queen herself was a foreigner, born in Hungary, (from which she returned ten years before her marriage,) and probably less acquainted with the Saxon; and in the abridgment of Turgot by a writer more attentive to the fact, the difference of languages disappears in a different idiom or dialect, such as the Scottish always was with respect to the English. Rex qui quod perfecte Anglorum idioma (linguam, Turgot), æque ut proprium calleret, vigilantissimus in boc concilio utriusque partis interpres fuit. Pinkerton's Vite Sanctorum, p. 339-76. The English introduced by a few Saxon exiles and slaves, might assimilate a collateral language to itself, but could never extirpate the national language, nor can it now explain the disappearance of Earse, which predominated in the plains of Ireland over the Belgick, and resisted the subsequent colonies of the English and Scots. The Norwegian was lost in the French language; and notwithstanding the endeavours of William the Conqueror, and his Norman successors, the latter was soon lost in the Saxon. The Welsh and Saxons have lived in the same island above a thousand years. The former have been conquered above five hundred, but the Welsh language is still preserved. But there was no conquest nor colonization by the Saxons in Scotland; and no adequate cause to supplant the Gaelic in the short interval of 160 years between Malcolm and Alexander III. No intermixture, nor the least vestige of an Earse original is to be found in the Scotch, which was unavoidable had the Saxon been superinduced upon the Gaelic; but the fact is that the Scotch was the national language in Malcolm's reign. No writings of the period are preserved; but the harbour where the queen's ship escaped from the tempest, was named St. Margaret's Hope; the place where she landed the Queensferry; whereas it would have been Portree, had the language been Earse. Her son David 1st's charter to the Abbey of Dumfermline contains Petteçorthin (Pit-cur), Shiram de Kirkalduit (the shire of Kirkaldy), Kinghorn, Smitheton Wymet; a proof that in 1126 the language from which these words were derived was Scotch. Sir James Dalrymple's Collections concerning Scottish History, 1705, p. 383. Two years afterwards he founded the Abbey of Holy-rood house, which, whether it was translated from, or into, the Domus Sanctæ Crucis de Crag (from its guage of the whole earth. Each word in the poems, of an obvious and late derivation from the Saxon, Greek, or Latin, will be vindicated as derived by these languages from the Celtick tongue. To contend with Celtick etymologists were an abuse of argument, and a waste of words 50. They who maintain that the Greek Tyrannus, and the Latin Rex, were adopted from Tiarna, and Righ a king, may believe that Dux and Comes are derived from Duke and Count. In addition, however, to the general rule, that a term common to different langnages, must be derived from the one to which its radical belongs, I shall offer two observations which can admit of no dispute. The first is, that as the Celtick has peculiar names for the objects of nature, while the terms of art, or of abstract vicinity to Salisbury craigs) demonstrates that the national language was not Earse. The Abbeys of Nervbottle and Dryburgh were founded by the samę prince; but no one will venture to assert that the Gaelic of Malcolm III. was transformed into Saxon in the reign of his son. The Celtick names in the lowlands are derived from the Cimbrick or Strathclyd Welsh; Esk, avon, aber, caer, lan; and when the Picts are once traced to Scandinavia, the affinity between theirs and the Saxon language, from the opposite peninsula of Jutland, must be conceived to be the same as that between the Swedish and German, the Welsh and Earse, or the Danish and Saxon; which last William the Conqueror, from his knowledge of Norman, a sister language, was enabled to comprehend. Dudon apud Duchene's Script. Norm. These facts are mostly suggested by Pinkerton's Dissertation on the Scythians, and Introduction to the History of Scotland, to which his opponents are not a little indebted for whatever information they possess on the subject. 5° See, for instance, Vallancy's egregious attempt, by tha abridgment, transposition, and alteration of syllables, to convert the Punic scene of Plautus into modern Irish; in which we discover that such words as Q all, O allmighty, nimh, numen, beannaithe, benedictus, umbal, humble, frotha, streams, ulla teamplui, holy temples, caisi, cause, pian, pain, were genuine Punic words, the language of Ireland, long before it was known to the Romans. Misc. Hibern. ii. 310. Such is also the absurd etymology of Beltain, (Bael, Sax. Beol, Swed. Beil, Scot. rogus, Tende, incendere,) from Bel, an Assyrian deity once worshipped in the highlands of Scotland. ideas are the same with those in the Latin, we must conclude that the latter, instead of being derived by the Romans from a barbarous people, were adopted by the Welsh and Irish from the refined language of a civilized nation. The second observation is, that terms common to the Celtick and Saxon, must be derived from the Teutonick, if discovered among those northern nations, who had no intercourse with the Gaels, whom they expelled or confined to the west of Europe. To illustrate the first observation, Pen, or Cean, Lamh, Cran, Grian, Gealach, Carraig, the head, the hand, a tree, the sun, the moon, a rock, are terms indisputably Celtick, which have no affinity to other languages; but leabhar a book, liter a letter, leagham to read, sgriobam to write, (from liber, litera, lego, scribo,) disprove the early pretensions of the Irish to letters; aradh a plough, ■raim to till, aran bread, (from aratrum, aro, arva,) demonstrate that the British and Irish Celts, a hunting or pastoral people, derived the names and instruments of husbandry from the Romans; or gold, airgead silver, (from aurum, argentum,) that they were indebted to the same nation for the precious metals. As an example of the second observation, Iarain, Pras, Copar, Luaidh, iron, brass, copper, lead, were derived either from the Saxons, or from the Belge, who were eminently skilled, as appears from Strabo, in the metallick arts, and were certainly superior in arms to an enemy whose spears and arrows were pointed with flints, and whose stone hatchets are still denominated Celts. Bial and Tuadh, the battle-axe or hatchet, are adopted from the Swedish Beyel, the Belgick and Saxon Tuych, and bill; Claidheam a sword, like the French and English glaive, from the Latin gladius, Saighead from sagitta 52; and to illustrate both 51 Innes's Critical Essay, 444. Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, 115, 451. O'Brian's Dict. Ihre's Gloss. Sueo. Goth. Shilter's Thesaurus Antiq. Teut. Ly's Saxo. Goth, Dict. Malvina's dream. observations, Cransaor a carpenter, is compounded of the Celtick crann a tree, and the Teutonick saw, the implement of his trade. Keeping these observations in view, we shall proceed to the supposed specimens of the original, which, without any previous acquaintance with the language, I have examined with more attention, perhaps, than the subject deserves. 2. The original Earse of Malvina's Dream, was produced by the translator, at lord Kaims's request 53. The greatest difficulty was to produce the English original; for a ballad in blank verse of eight syllables, with a few occasional rhymes 54, may enable us to conceive the extreme facility of composition in his vernacular tongue. In the following verses there are neither the numbers of ancient, nor the rhymes of modern poetry, nor the artful alliteration of the Scalds, and of the Irish bards, but the same rude rhythm or cadence with his measured prose. 53 Inserted in Shaw's Analysis, and in Smith's Seandana; a translation of his own poems into Earse, p. 23. Perth Collection, 29. 34 Macpherson would have done better to have avoided rhyme altogether a corruption of Greek and Latin poetry, first introduced, on account of its extreme facility, into Monkish verses, see vol. iii. note xxi. and adopted in Italian poetry in the middle of the ninth, into Saxon in the eleventh, and into Scandinavian poetry in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Tyrwhit's Chaucer, iv. 49. Pinkerton's Pref. to Barbour, 12. In Welsh poetry it was unknown to Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century; a sufficient proof that the rhymes of Taliesan and the Welsh bards are a more recent forgery. The introduction of occasional rhymes in Ossian, five hundred years before they were known in Europe, and a thousand before they were used in Wales, is alone a detection. But the rhythm of Macpherson's Earse Ossian, to which there is no species of versification similar in the Welsh or Irish dialects of Celtick, seems to me to be constructed, with less licentiousness indeed, upon the same principle of recitative or cadence, with his measured prose, in which each clause, numeris lege solutis, when the sentence is printed as in these specimens, is framed to represent, to the eye as well as to the ear, an irregular verse. See his Pref. to Homer, p. 18. and Mason's edit. of Gray's Poems and Letters, iv. 61. "Se guth anaim mo riun at ann ! "It was the voice of my love; "O' s'ainmic gu aisling Mhalmhin, thu 66 Open your airy halls, (halls of the sky). "Aithriche Thoscair nan cruai bheum, "O fathers of Toscar of shields (hard blows). Fosglaibhse dorsa nan nial, Open the gates (doors) of your clouds; "Tha ceuma Mhalmhine gu dian, "The steps of Malvina (Malvina's departure) are near.” If the mossy halls of Selma, its towers and its shaded walls, are inconsistent with the wattled huts of the third century, we discover here the Gothic hall and its doors by name. Talla, a corruption of hall, occurs neither in O'Brian, nor in the old description of Tigh Teamhra 55, the hall or house of Temora; and dorus a door, is a word equally universal among the Northern nations, and inconsistent with Ossian. Speur, speir the sky, is confessedly the Latin sphæra 5, transferred by the ignorance of the priests, from the starry spheres to the firmament itself. I shall be told indeed that the Greek paipa is derived from the Irish speur; but those egregious etymologists forget, that the sphere signified nothing more than a ball or globe, even when transferred to the firmament which it was employed to represent. The last line, the steps of Malvina, in the first edition, of Malvina's departure, are near, is transcribed from scripture: " the time of my departure is at hand.” 2 Tim. iv. 1. But the translator discovered that the Earse had no word equivalent to departure, as expressive of death, |