Ossian Collection > Genuine remains of Ossian

4 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION.
tlie poems, he would better give him the MS, for which he
might expect his friendship and a future reward. The man
accordingly did so; and his brother Malcolm (from whose
affidavit, made in 1800,* these particulars are extracted)
avers, that it was a quarto, an inch and a quarter thick,
and that he never afterwards heard of it.
While in this island, he fell in with Cajitain Alexander
Morrison, who afterwards assisted him in translating and
transcribing. From him he received several poems, some of
which he translated and published, justly considering the
rest corrupt or spurious, t Much about the same time,
he accidentally met, at the house of Dr John Macpherson,
minister of Sleat, with one Ewan Macpherson, a Badenoch
acquaintance, who had come on a visit to his namesake from
the opposite coast of Cnoidart, where he then kept a school.
As he was a superior Gaelic scholar, the Doctor and Mr
Macpherson urged him very much to accompany the latter to
Long Island, that he might take down from recitation such
of Ossian's poems as were to be found in that quarter. He
was persuaded to go as far as Dunvegan; and on reaching
that place, he was induced by Macleod of Talisker, and
Maclean of Coll, to embark with Macpherson for Uist.
There he attended him for three or four weeks, during which
time he took down several of Ossian's poems from recitation,
and delivered them to James Macpherson, who was seldom
present when they were taken down. He likewise pro-
cured for him, fi'om Neil Mac-Murrich, the rej^resentative
of the celebrated bards of that name, a Gaelic manuscript
of the size of a New Testament, containing a few historical
pieces, and some of Ossian's poems. ;{: Mac-Murrich, about
the same time, delivered to him several MSS. belonging to
Clanranald; and one of his own, nearly as thick as a Bible,
but longer and broader. For the last — ^which, among other
" Appeiiilix to Report, p. !);?. Alexander had died in 1780.
t Appendix, p. 176 et se'].
J Ewan Macpherson'd Declaration, Appendix, p. ."4.