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

32Ò" COMPARISON
long to it, inasmuch as they have not the same intimate
connection with its context which they have with that of
Miss Brooke ; which, though it be made up of two sepa-
rate pieces, contains hut 1S4 lines in all.
This accomplished translator observes, in her advertise-
ment to the poem of Conloch, that she cannot *' ascertain
the exact time in which it was written." And she gives
us to understand (p. 23.), that her original consists of two
distinct and separate pieces ; of the last of which she had
*' seen a number of copies, all in some degree differing
from each other, and none of them connected with the
first, except in this one copy which she got f.iom Mr O'-
Halloran."
This account agrees with tlic evidence which is furnish-
ed by the MSS. of the Committee ; for the first of the
pieces appears, with no great variation, in the dean of Lis-
more's MS., v.hich ascribes it to Gillecalum mac in Ollai',
or Gilcolm, the Son of the Physician ; and the second is
found, with a good deal of difference, in the MS. collect
lion of Edmond M'Lachlan, dated 1G30 ; but the author
of it is not mentioned : Nor does it seem to be possible,
as thie fgir critic has observed, to ascertain the age of either
piece, since tradition and history, for ought that yet ap-
pears, have lost all remembrance of Gilcolm, and his con-
tinuator still remains to be discovered.
The composition of the former bears the d-csignation of
Ursgeal in the MS. of the dean ; which term, as Dr Smith
has strictly rendered it (Gall. Antiq. p. 151.)? denotes
the " later tales," which were composed in imitation of,
and too frequently interpolated with, the more ancient
poems.
One passage of the continuation gives room to conjec-
ture, that its author may have flourished before the Pictish
kingdom was brought under the Scots sceptre, (A. D. 843.)
■^nd while the country of Sora was still known by its ak-