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

OF POEMS. 325
am the pledge which you left abroad,
■To be educated in Dunscaich. <
Much am I offended with my mother,
Because she laid engagements on me,
And sent me to make trial of my skill in arms
With you, O Cuchullin of warlike exercise.
The swords and the shield of Conlach
Are ever glittering yonder on the plain.
And I lamenting them,
3eing without friend, or son, or brother.
Well it is for the victorious Loithre people
That he did not win, as a relic for destruction,
This red shield and sword.
Alas ! that it was not in Munster of Laithre,
Or in Leinster of pointed swords.
Or on the little flowery Cruachans,
That my beloved Conlach has fallen.
Alas ! that it was not within the limits of Italy^
In the Bega, or in Isben —
Had you fallen in the country of the Saxons.
It is still better for the nobles of Albion.
The last six lines but two, and the third which imme-
diately precedes them, shew Miss Brooke's to be the
more genuine, all the names being perfectly correct in
hers, whereas in Kennedy's they are, with three excep-
tions, totally devoid of meaning. It will also appear,
^rom a perusal of the whole poem as given by Kennedy in
444 lines, that the 29 now quoted did not originally be-
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