Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 4

2 1 8 GAELIC POETRY OF KNOWN AND UNKNOWN BARDS,
these in the islands ; and if tliey are to be found at all,
it is with those who prize them too much to lend to
such of the poorer classes as could read, to run the risk
of being disfigured with black drops, and sure to have
the not very agreeable odour of peat-reek. Donald
Macintyre, Aird, Benbecula, the best reciter of poems
that I have met, and who can read Gaelic well, never
saw any book of the kind until I shewed him Dr.
Smith's collection. I have traced out another copy
of Dr. Smith's at lochdar, which was presented to
one Peter M'Pherson, a bit of a poet, by the Eeverend
Duncan M'Lean, now Free Church Minister at Glen-
orchy, when missionary here about thirty-five years
ago. Every person with whom I have conversed
about Ossian's Poems, and who knows anything about
them, admires them very much, and believes them to be
the genuine composition of Ossian, as pure as might be
expected, considering that they were handed down by
tradition, and consequently lost a great deal of their
pristine splendour ; and received additions which, in-
stead of adding, detracted considerably from their ori-
ginal merit. I believe there are very few in the
Highlands, especially adults, but know something of
Ossian's Poems. Like the " Popular Tales," -which are
universally found throughout the Highlands, Ossian's
Poems have formed a very important part of the High-
landers' pastime through the long winter nights.
"When on my Avay home from Edinburgh last spring,
I read Laoidh Dhiarmid to a few in Skye. They re-
membered to have heard it before ; and some old men
remarked that, when they were young, tales and poems