Blair Collection > Selections from the Gaelic bards

156 ANCIENT GAELIC BARDS.
that they 'indicate a lively intercourse between Alba (Scotland)
and Lochlin (Scandinavia) long before the times of the Vikings,
and previously to all historical accounts of connections between
those countries."*
OSSIAN AND EVIR-ALIN.
a poet's wooing long ago.
"Suire Oisein," or Ossian's wooing, is one of those old and popular
bits of Highland poetry which, after having been sung for many
generations, or many centuries perhaps, in ten thousand huts and
houses, are still well remembered and repeated by people who
never read them in a book. It, and the "Lay of Diarrnad," and
the "Death of Oscar," and the " Banners of the Fingalians," and
also the "Address to the Sun," are, to this day, found among
old people who learned them from their fathers, who had again got
them from theirs, and so on. The legitimate traditionary lineage
of every one of these pieces can even yet be traced back with ease
for more than a hundred years, in a good number of Highland
cottages, where heroic poetry is never seen in print.
In the middle of last century, and before Macpherson published
his far-famed work, "Ossian and Evir-Alin" was one of the most
popular of Gaelic Ballads, as may be seen by a reference to the
correspondence printed by the Highland Society in their report on
Ossian. It is also found in all the collections of Gaelic poetry.
The different versions of it all agree in their essential features.
The age of the ballad it would not be easy to determine. It is
probably one of the oldest of all the Ossianic fragments : —
* " Warsae's Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scot-
laud, and Ireland." The Norwegians in Scotland. Section 9