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

GAELIC MANUSCRIPTS. 295
minister of Kilmuir in Skye. In the latter, Liber Malcolmi
Bethune is written immediately before the words just quo-
ted ; both inscriptions bearing that those books were at
one time the property of Malcolm Bethune, who was one
of a family eminent for learning, that supplied the Western
Isles for many ages with physicians, whose diligence and
skill are gratefully remembered in the traditionary record of
their country.
The second of the Kilbride MSS. consists of a Tale in
prose, concerning a King of Lochlin, and the Heroes of
Fingal j an Address to Gaul the son of Morni, beginning
Goll mear mile ant —
Ceap na Cròdhachta —
An Elegy on one of the Earls of Argyll, beginning
A Mhic Cailin a chosg lochd ;
and a Poem in praise of a young Lady.
The writing of this MS. as is noted at the end of it, was
finished by Ewan M'Phaill at Dunstaffnage, a castle of
Lorn, the 12th October 1(303.
The third is a miscellaneous collection of Poems, partly
Scots and partly Irish, written by Eamonn, or Edmond,
Mac Lachlan, whose name it bears on the 36th and 129th
leaf of its remaining contents, as it does the dates of 14°
Julii 1654, and ultimo Julii 1655 on the 36th and 79th
leaves. The pieces it contains are comparatively modern,
and seem unequal in point of poetical merit. The
Sonnets, Odes, and Epistles are all excellent : and if the
writer of chis paper could presume to form an opinion of
ihem, he would venture to say that they yield to no com-
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