J. F. Campbell Collection > Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, appointed to inquire into the nature and authenticity of the poems of Ossian

LETTERS TO DR. BLAIR. 1^^
inyself ; yet the elder Clanranald declared, before another
«•-lergyman and myself, that he had himself transcribed
above one hundred pages of a large ancient manuscript
which treated of the wars of Fingal and Comhal his fa-
ther ; which manuscript has been carried over to Ireland
spme time ago bj a worthless person, in a clandestine man-
her, and is now, It is thought, irrdcoVefably lost ; b\;t the
transcript, he directed Mr Màcphèrson; when on his tour
through the Highlands, to recover oUt df the hands of one
Donald McDonald, late merchant in the Lvtckenbooths,
Edinburgh, who had got it, though not from Clanranald^
with a view to publish it along with some other Gaelic
pieces.
Mr M'Donald of Demisdale, a parishione* of mine,
declared before me that he remembers to have seen and
fead, a considerable part of the' said ancient manuscript ;
and rehearsed from mernorj, before me, some passages of it
that agreed exactly wuth the translation, viz. the terms o£
peace proposed by MorÌa in Swaran's name to CuchuUin j
Fing. Book ii. p. 26. Likewise, Fingal's orders for raising'
his standards, his orders to his chiefs befoi-e the battle, the
chiefs resolutions thereupon of fighting each of them a
Lochlin chief; contained in pages 57 and 58 of Fingal,
book iv. He concluded with rehearsing the description of
the single combat between Fingal and Sv/aran, which in
the original is expressed in the strongest language, and per-
fectly agreed with the translation, which is very just here
and in all the other places I had occasion to compare. The
passage alluded to, is Fingal, book v. page 62.
The next I examined was one Archibald M'Lellan,
likewise a parishioner of mine, who repeated before me, in
Gaelic, Ossian's account of his own courtship of Everal*
Kn at the lake of Lego, without any material variatiortj