Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, &c > Volume 1

48 FINGAL,
BOOK I.
rests their dust, Cuthullin ", these lonely yews
sprung from their tombs, and shade them from
the storm'*. Fair was Brassolis on the plain !
Stately was Grudar on the hill ! The ba)d shall
preserve their names, and send them down to
future times !"
" Pleasant is thy voice, O Carril," said the
blue-eyed chief of Erin. " Pleasant are the
words of other times ! They are like the calm
shower of spring '5; ^vhen the sun looks on the
75 Here rests their dust, Cuthullin.'] Gray's Elegy.
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth.
74 These lonely yews shade them from the storm.] In the first
editions, " These two hjnely yews sprung from their tombs, and
wish to meet on high;" the alteration of which was su2;a;ested to
the translator by Blair's criticism ; that " this sympathy of the
trees with the lovers, might be reckoned to border on an Italian
conceit." The conceit which the critic reprobates, and the
translator has rejected, was not worse than " Grudar like a sun-
beam fell ;" (in the latter editions, he " fell in his blood ;") or,
" Erin's torrents shall shew, the red foam of the blood of his
pride ;" (p. 45.) or, another passage, " But ah ! why ever lowed
the bull ? the spotted bull, leaping like snow !" Et vitula tu dig-
nus et hie. But the conceit was adopted from one of the Irish
ballads concerning Deirdae, (Macpherson's Darthula) ; and
may be found in many English ballads both of the true, and of
the pseud-antique. See Reliques of Ancient Engl. Poetry, iii.
120. — 241.; Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ii. 128.
75 The words of other times — are like the calm shower of
spring.] Homkr's Iliad, iii. 222.
Kat EHEA NI^AAESSIN loiy.oTct. XEIMEPIH2IN.