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

PUBLISHED AXD TRADITIONAL. 2 I 9
were very common, and regretted very much, that they
■were so much out of vogue Tvith the present generation.
I never met -with any of Ossian hooks there hut one,
the Eev. Mr. MacLauchlan's Gleanings, presented to a
" guide" hy an English tourist. I never heard of any
Irish hook containing these pieces in the islands, nor
have I ever seen any myself. As I have not MacPher-
son's, "which is the hest known of them all, nor Gillies',
nor Stewart's, I cannot say whether those who repeat,
recite passages a la IMacPherson, a la Stewart, or a la
Gillies. Donald Macin tyre recited to me a poem entitled
" Cath MacEigh na Sorcha," which I find in Dr.
Smith's collection, note page 176. They resemble
each other very much ; in some passages the language
is the same ; IMacin tyre's version, however, is longer,
though Dr. Smith's, upon the whole, is more heautiful.
In the course of a conversation lately with a gentleman
of no mean authority, on the Ossianic controversy, he
expressed his surjDrise that the anti-Ossianics would use
such futile arguments as that MacPherson was the
author of these poems, or that the people get them from
looks, while he himself had a distinct recollection of
hearing one Eory M'Queen, commonly called Euairi
Euadh, who was a catechist in this parish, recite poems
which can he found in ]MacPherson's. This M'Queen
died about thirty years ago at the advanced age of eighty.
He had a great many of Ossian's poems, which he learned
when a hoy by hearsay, and with which he afterwards
used to entertain his hosts when travelling from village
to village on his catechetical visits. A niece of his,
who now resides at Paible, Xorth Uist, has the same