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

12 "REPORT ON THE
tended its meetings, were obliging enough to cor-
refpond with their friends and acquaintance in the
Highlands, on the fubject of its inquiry, in order
to procure from them fuch fafts and documents as
their fituations afforded opportunity of knowing or
colleding, with regard to the poems in queftion.
The refult of fuch inquiries, correfpondence and
information, the Committee is now to fubmit to the
Society, fhortly ftating what it fuppofes to be the
general produce of its refearch, and fubjoining in
an Appendix fome of the moft remarkable of thofe
documents from which its information was drawn,
or on which its opinions are founded.
Previouily to this ftatement, the Committee muft
take the liberty of mentioning fome difficulties under
vhich it laboured, in the courfe of this invefliga-
tion. It was early forefeen that fuch difficulties mufl
arife, from the change of manners in the Highlands,
where the habits of induftry have now fuperfeded
the amufement of liflening to the legendary narra-
tive or heroic ballad, where confequently the faculty
of remembering, and the exercife of repeating fuch
tales or fongs, are altogether in difufe, or only re-
tained by a few perfons of extremely advanced age
and feeble health, whom, in thofe diftant parts of the
country, where communication and mtercourfe is,
from many local caufes, very difficult and tedious), it
is not eafy to difcover, or when they are difcovere d,
to receive or to get tranfmittsd the information they
can give ; for though the Gaelic or Erfe (as it is vul-
gary called) is the fpoken language of thofe diflrifts,
I yet