Blair Collection > Treatise on the language, poetry, and music of the Highland clans

PREFACE.
The religious and civil institutions, and the state of society among the
patriarchal or Highland Clans, have been so misunderstood and misrepresented,
as to have made on the English-speaking public the impression that these
Clans were in a state of lawless barbarity at the dawn of authentic history, and
continued in that condition until a period within the memory of men still living.
Several untoward circumstances, chiefly resulting from the translation of
Ossian's poems, have occm-red to confirm this impression. One learned and
talented Enghshmen, with a direct reference to these poems, contended that such
ideas and feelings could not be expressed in the rude gibberish of a barbarous
people ; and several English-speaking Lowlanders and Highlanders, taking
up this view of the subject, and having the same conviction as to the rude
uncultivated character of the language, maintained that the Highland Clans
had no poetry, and could not have had any poetry, excepting that which had
been recently forged for them in English, by writers of so unscrupulous a
character as to father their patched-up plagiarisms on mythic bards, known
only to the vulgar lore of a people who had never emerged from a state of
lawless barbarity. That these gentlemen were in total ignorance of the subject
on which they wrote so dogmatically, did not lessen the influence of their
opinions on readers who had no means of detecting that ignorance, and who
naturally gave them credit for too much honesty and decency, to believe them
capable of writing so confidently on a subject of which they knew nothing.
It is very true, that, on a recent occasion, the achievements and conduct of the
Highlanders were such as could not fail to cause doubt in the minds of an
enlightened people, on the ex jiarti statements of those who represented the
Highland Clans as plundering barbarians ; since it is impossible to believe that
a mere handful of barbarians could, not only encounter, but defeat a regularly
trained army, or that lawless marauders, in overunning a country, should have
committed fewer outrages than were ever known to have been committed by
any disciphned army in similar circumstances. These facts were known to the
writers above referred to, when they were writing down the Highlanders ! It