Ossian Collection > Critical dissertation on the poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

A DISSERTATION. lu
No writers began their ftccounts from a more early period, than
the hiftorians of the Scotch nation. Without records, or even tra-
dition itfelf, they give a long lift of antient kings, and a, detail of
their tranfadions, with a fcrupulous exadnefs. One might natu-
rally fuppofe, that, when they had no authentic annuls, they
fliould, at leaft, have recourfe to the traditions of their country,
and have reduced them into a regular fyftem of hiftory. Of both
they feem to have been equally deftitute. Born in the low country,
and ftrangers to the antient language of their nation, they content-
ed themfelves with copying from one another, and retailing ths
fiime fidlions, in a new colour and drefs.
John Fordun was the firfl who colledled thofe fragments of the
'Scotch hiftory, which had efcaped the brutal policy of Edward I. and
reduced them into order. His accounts, in fo far as they concerned
recent tranfadlions, deferved credit : beyond a certain period, ■ they
were fabulous and unfatisfadlory. Some time before Fordun wrote,'
the king of England, in a letter to the pope, had run up the antiquity
of his nation to a very remote sra. Fordun, polTefled of all the national
prejudice of the age, w^as unwilling that his country fhould yield,^
in point of antiquity, to a people, then its rivals and enemies.
Deftitute of annals in Scotland, he had recourfe to Ireland, -which,
according to the vulgar errors of the times, was reckoned the firft
habitation of the Scots. He found, there, that the Irifh bards had
carried their pretenfions to antiquity as high, if not beyond any
nation in Europe. It v/as from them he took thofe improbable
iidions, which form the firft part of his hiftory.
The writers that fucceeded Fordun implicitly followed his lyf-
tem, the' they fometimes varied from him in their relations of par-
ticular tranfadions, and the order of fuccefllon of their kings. '
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