Blair Collection > Treatise on the language, poetry, and music of the Highland clans

68 THK POETRY
Ireland, at least within the Pale, by a penal statute ; but they canio down in
the Highlands to the days of Dr Johnson ; who, while denying the existence
of Gaelic poetry, mentions that lomarba were at that time held in the Highlands,
as eisted-vodas are now held in Wales, to recite and celebrate this non-existinq
poetry ! In Anglia Sacra, mention is made of a Scot who was acquainted with
a hundred different measures of verse ; and Giraldus, not only states that the
Highlanders and Irish were superior musicians, but they also sung and played
" in parts," — which was totally new to him. This implies that there was no
dramatic poetry then in England. The Druid morality, which was very strict,
forbade, as already stated, the use of fiction, and, consequently of satirical and
dramatic poetry by the Bards. They required that the subject of all poems
should be strictly true, and told by the Bards in accordance with the truth ; but
they were not only allowed, but required, to relate these events in a manner
worthy of men of genius, feeling, and good taste. The strict exclusion of fiction
from Celtic poetry was no doubt unfavourable to dramatic poetry, and I do not
think the ancient Celtic clans had — -what we understand as — dramatic poetry ;
but we are assured by tradition, that their historical poems were dramatically
represented and recited at their lomarba ; and this tradition is sufficiently
corroborated by Giraldus Cambrenses' statement, that the Highlanders and the
Hibernians sung and played musical pieces " in parts." Major, a historian who
was evidently disinclined to give any credit to his " upthrough" countrymen, (as
he called the Highlanders,) in speaking of the musical taste and attainments
of James the First, could only illustrate their excellence by comparing his
performances with those of the " Hibernians and the Highlanders, who were the
best of all players on the harp." Now, I would pause and ask the reader here,
whether it is possible for him to believe that the Hibernians and the Highland-
ers had arrived at such eminence as players on the harp, without having a
poetry worthy of the music which they sung to tlie harp ? Poetry was the
very soul of music, until modern taste substituted harmony for melody, and,
by smothering the song in singing, devorced feeling from music, after a long life
of wedded happiness. Was it only in Hibernia and the Highlands (where the
best players on the harp known to learned musicians and antiquaries like
Giraldus and Major were to be found) that the music and poetry were unequal,
and altogether unworthy of one another? The best answer to this strange
assumption is to lay before the reader some specimens of Gaelic poetry of
unquestionable antiquity. But before submitting these specimens from Ullin,
Orran, and Ossian, three of our most celebrated bards, I beg leave to premise
that the poems from which I quote have been before the public, in print, and in
the native language, those of Ullin and Orran for more than eighty, and those
of Ossian for more than fifty years. I also beg leave to refer to the West of
Scotland Magazine, and to say that I have proved in my articles published
in that perodical, —
1. That poems bearing the same characteristic features with those after-
wards published and ascribed to Ossian by Macphcrson, had been universally
known for time immemorial in the Highlands ; and that they were referred to